Still on the Shelf

One of the very few benefits stemming from all the Covid-19 downtime I'm experiencing these days is the opportunity to study my home library at my leisure. One of the volumes that hollered for attention this afternoon is this 1867 edition of The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. 

I remember buying this one sometime in the mid-eighties along with similar volumes of David Copperfield and Our Mutual Friend. Because all three volumes were published in 1867, I am assuming they were part of a larger set, but these are the only three titles I've ever seen. As indicated inside each of the three little books, I paid a whopping $10 for each of them. 

All three of the books are signed and dated by their original owner, a lady with wonderful handwriting by the name of Hattie M. Barnes.

As shown on the title page, the set was produced by Boston publisher  Ticknor and Fields.

The books all contain numerous "original illustrations" that are still covered by the little tissue paper inserts that have nicely preserved them for the last 153 years.

Despite how proud Hattie M. Barnes must have been to own the books, I hope that she had the excellent eyesight required to read the double-columned pages of small type contained in them - of which there are 480 in this volume. 

(Click on the photos for larger images.)

Smoky the Cow Horse (Scribner's Illustrated Classics Edition) - Will James

Smoky the Cow Horse (1929)

Will James intended Smokey the Cow Horse to be a book for adults, so imagine the man's pleasant surprise when the book won the 1927 Newbery Medal as the year's best addition to American literature for children.

James, whose real name was Joseph Ernest Nephtali Dufault, was born in Quebec in 1892 to French-speaking parents but he left home as a fourteen-year-old to move west and turn himself into a cowboy. By all accounts, he became a top hand who was particularly adept at turning wild horses into dependable cow horses. James, however, also had a couple of hidden talents not so common in the cowboy population: he was good at drawing animals and he could write. Those talents would not be enough to keep him from spending time in the Nevada State Prison in 1916 for cattle rustling, but the prison sentence seems to have been a wake-up call for James because it was while incarcerated that he vowed to turn his artistic talents into a profession. 

Front End Papers (not sure of the term)

James wrote and illustrated Smoky the Cow Horse, his most famous and most successful book, in 1926, and it was immediately so popular that it was reprinted ten more times between its September release and Christmas. The cowboy-author had twenty-seven of his self-illustrated books published during the Great Depression and almost all of them became bestsellers. Will James died in 1942. (1)

Smoky the Cow Horse is the only one of his books that I've read, and I still remember how intrigued I was that the story is told largely from the horse's point of view. The copy I purchased last Sunday for ten dollars is the Illustrated Classics Edition published by Scribner's in October, 1929, and all the photos attached here are from that book (explaining why they are so poorly cropped). I find it interesting that Smoky was published in the very month of the greatest Stock Market crash in American history, the crash said to have signaled the twelve-year-long Great Depression. Despite the economic hardships of the times, James enjoyed his greatest sales during the 1930s. 

Will James illustration between pages 100 and 101

Will James illustration between pages 16 and 17

Will James illustration between pages 72 and 73

(1) source: onlinenevada.org 

Sunday Rambling: Rather Be the Devil to Smoky The Cow Horse

As I do almost every Sunday, I stopped off at Barnes & Noble this morning before spending the rest of the day with my rather elderly (97) father. I have been blowing right through my book budget in the last few weeks so I limited myself to one hardcover from the remainders table, Ian Rankin's 2016 John Rebus novel Rather Be the Devil. I'm trying to add as many Rankin hardbacks to my library as possible, so picking this one up while it's still available on the remainders tables was kind of a no-brainer. But that doesn't mean that I didn't add a bunch of new books to the list I keep of books to be requested from the library. Some interesting stuff:

• The Grammarians (Cathleen Schine) -"The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret “twin” tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love, which has always bound them together, begins instead to push them apart. Daphne, copy editor and grammar columnist, devotes herself to preserving the dignity and elegance of Standard English. Laurel, who gives up teaching kindergarten to write poetry, is drawn, instead, to the polymorphous, chameleon nature of the written and spoken word."

• The Reckless Oath We Made (Bryn Greenwood) -"Zee is nobody's fairy tale princess. Almost six-foot, with a redhead's temper and a shattered hip, she has a long list of worries: never-ending bills, her beautiful, gullible sister, her five-year-old nephew, her housebound mother, and her drug-dealing boss.
  
  Zee may not be a princess, but Gentry is an actual knight, complete with sword, armor, and code of honor. Two years ago the voices he hears called him to be Zee's champion. He's barely spoken to her since, but he has kept watch, ready to come to her aid."

• After the Flood (Kassandra Montag) - "A little more than a century from now, our world has been utterly transformed. After years of slowly overtaking the continent, rising floodwaters have obliterated America’s great coastal cities and then its heartland, leaving nothing but an archipelago of mountaintop colonies surrounded by a deep expanse of open water."

• The Ventriliquists (E.R. Ramzipoor) - "Brussels, 1943. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the country’s most popular newspaper, Le Soir, now turned into Nazi propaganda. Helene’s world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist, Marc Aubrion, who draws her into a secret network that publishes dissident underground newspapers."

• The Winemaker's Wife (Kristin Harmel) - "Champagne, 1940: Inès has just married Michel, the owner of storied champagne house Maison Chauveau, when the Germans invade. As the danger mounts, Michel turns his back on his marriage to begin hiding munitions for the Résistance. Inès fears they’ll be exposed, but for Céline, half-Jewish wife of Chauveau’s chef de cave, the risk is even greater—rumors abound of Jews being shipped east to an unspeakable fate."

• The Long Call (Ann Cleeves) - "In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his estranged father’s funeral takes place. On the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too." (First book in a brand new detective series)

• The Ungrateful Refugee (Dina Nayeri) - “With inventive, powerful prose, Nayeri demonstrates what should be obvious: that refugees give up everything in their native lands only when absolutely necessary . . . A unique, deeply thought-out refugee saga perfect for our moment.” ––Kirkus Reviews (I read the first few pages of this one and found it fascinating...first one I'm going to put on my library hold list.)

But the best part of my day was still ahead of me. I found a used book in a local used-book bookstore that I remember from my childhood. Smoky The Cow Horse by Will James was already over thirty years old when I first read it, and now it is pushing ninety. It's still in beautiful shape with the exception of a little foxing and some yellowing of the book's pages. The book's Canadian author also beautifully illustrated this Illustrated Classic Edition from Charles Scribner's Sons and I can't wait to re-read it. 

Look for a separate post in the next few days that will include pictures of the actual book I bought today and not just that stock photo I used up above. Smoky The Cow Horse deserves a blog post all of its own.

Book Finds: One Hundred Best Novels Condensed

All my life, I've haven't been able to resist picking up old books I stumble across because you just never know what you might come across.  After all, they were published for a reason and a specific intended audience, and you might be part of that intended audience even years and years later.  One Hundred Best Novels Condensed: Four Volumes Combined into One, edited by Edwin A. Grozier is one of my latest snags - for all of fifty cents - and it was meant to be.

 The book is over 500 pages long and includes three-to-five-page summaries of what were considered to be some of the "one hundred best novels" in 1931 when the book was printed. I see, though, that Best Novels was first printed in 1919 (in four separate volumes?), so maybe it's the best choices as of 1919.  Either way, most of the titles will be familiar to anyone fairly well versed in the classics, although there are a few that I have absolutely never heard of.  The plot summaries were written by three different men (Grozier himself, Charles E.L. Wingate, and Charles H. Lincoln) and the style differences are fairly obvious.  Some of the summaries are actual recaps in the voice of one of the three men and others are done more in the voices of the original authors, including direct quotes from the originals (I definitely prefer the latter style).  Each summary also includes a one-page biography of the book's author, so there is a lot of information packed into these faded green covers.

The reason I like this little book so much is that the plot summaries are exactly what I need sometimes to remind me of the intricacies of the plot lines of books I may have read decades earlier; these days I can barely remember the details of the books I read last month.  The fact that it's also a quick way to choose something from the past that I still haven't read is just an added bonus (not to mention that it also allows me to pretend to myself that I actually read something I know I'll never get around to reading).  This one will be receiving some more wear and tear in the coming years.

Pennsylvania Library Finds 174-Year Old Book among Sale Donations

Something like this is just unbelievable to me. How can anyone be so oblivious when it comes to books that they would donate a book that is almost 175 years old to a library sale? Was it not kind of obvious that this one bears little resemblance to a James Patterson novel?

The picture, at left, is of the book's author, Lydia Maria Child, who was 31 years old when this book was published in 1833. The fact that her book was rebound together with a slave's memoirs results in a very meaningful volume.

Volunteers sorting through donated books for a book sale found an abolitionist text and a slave's memoir, both dating back to the 1800s.

The books were discovered together last month in a single leather-bound volume that was clearly an unusual find, said Liza Holzinger, coordinator of the Bethlehem Area Public Library's book sale.

"When this appeared on my desk, I couldn't believe it," Holzinger said. "I was pretty impressed by it, especially after I started doing research on the topic."

The volume contained a first edition of Lydia Maria Child's 1833 book, "An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called African," and an 1840 second edition of "The Slave: Memoirs of Archy Moore."

Daniel Wilson, professor of history at Muhlenberg College, said Child's book was an early abolitionist text that received a lot of attention when it was published.

As a book collector, I have to cringe when I read something like this, but it is exactly the kind of thing that draws me to yard sales and flea markets when I have some time to spare.

More Dickens Lust

Some of you will recall a post that I made last month regarding the two 1885 Dickens volumes that I picked up via a couple of eBay auctions. I was excited about getting my hands on two of the ten volumes that were being auctioned on eBay in February and posted some pictures of the two books and an inscription that the original owner placed in one of the books during the 1886 Christmas season.

As it turns out there were some 15 volumes in this set, and a very generous lady from California has taken the time and trouble to box up the whole set and send it to me here in Houston.



This is an example of the type of illustrations that each book contains:



And this picture is an example of the front covers of the various books (they are all the same):


One of the books even included a small set of instructions on how one should properly open a book in order to best preserve its binding:



This last shot shows an 1875 volume of Dombey and Son that was included in one of the boxes of books. It is one volume of the Globe Edition of Dickens' Works.



I'm in the process of finding these 16 books a proper home on my library shelves and plan to give them a prominent spot because of the great respect that their age and content demand. I'm also happy to report, that unlike quite a few books of this age, the print is large enough that I will actually be able to read the books rather than only to display them. My sincere thanks go to the previous owner of the books who so generously passed them on to me.

The Trash Man Almost Cometh

Thanks to an alert family from Vienna, Virginia, a set of 100-year-old books on the Ulster O'Neils has been safely returned to Ireland where the books are much appreciated. In fact, the Belfast Telegraph considers this to be a newsworthy event.

The O'Neill books by Thomas Mathews, from the house of Sealy, Bryers & Walker in the Southern capital, had been tossed into four cardboard boxes outside a Victorian house along with first editions, unwanted anthologies, paperback classics and a vintage copy of Ulysses and collections of poetry by WB Yeats.

But before the binmen arrived book lover Pam O'Connor, passing by, spotted the treasure trove of literature and saved the lot for posterity.

She loaded the four boxes into her car and took them home, where she and her family examined the unwanted hoard which she found out had been the property of James C O'Neill, a professor of romance languages at the University of Michigan, who had died.

Whoever cleared the O'Neill house was obviously uninterested in the value of the books.

...

Mr Swindall, whose JIRI Books company promotes the Belfast Book Fair every November, contacted Mrs O'Connor through an internet website and persuaded her to let him have the O'Neill three-volume set.

"I'm sure there is an O'Neill out there who has been searching for this extremely rare set for years," he explained.

"The last time a similar set turned up and was catalogued by a local book dealer was 1986 and it was snapped up immediately."

Stories like this one make me cringe when I read them and realize just how close these books came to being destroyed out of sheer ignorance. While I realize that not everyone is a book lover, I do find it almost impossible to understand how anyone could be willing to trash anything of this age and beauty without at least first trying to find it a new home.

All of us, as is anyone who ever takes five minutes to read even one book blog or one book review, are in the process of building private libraries that are very important to us. Those libraries contain the books that have filled our lives with so much pleasure, some of them even having attained a reasonably dear monetary value at this point, and they represent who we are. Have you ever wondered what will happen to those books when you are no longer around to care for them and protect them? Will they end up being sold off at a buck a book in some garage sale or will they end up being boxed up for the trash collector? Or will you be one of the lucky ones who have a booklover in your family who will cherish your collection when you are gone? It may sound a bit strange, but I see signs in my 8-year-old granddaughter that such a person might have come along for me and I actually find that to be comforting.

Dickens Lust

I can't help myself. I love buying books and adding them to my personal library, and with eBay and other internet books sources making it all so easy these days I really have to watch myself. Here's a good example of what happens to me on a regular basis. The other night I spotted ten very attractive Charles Dickens novels that were published in 1885 by Belford, Clarke & Company of New York. The original owner of the books signed and dated each of them when she received them for Christmas 1886.

Now, right up front, I realized that I could not afford all ten of the books since each one of them had a starting bid price of $5.00 plus $5.00 in postage and handling fees. But imagine my surprise and delight when I picked up two of them for bids of only $5.50 and $7.50, respectively. Two of the books were subsequently withdrawn from the eBay auction but two others were still available when I checked last night. At least one of the ten went for something over $20.00 but I didn't follow them all too closely because I didn't want to be tempted into bidding for others in the set. I won't be receiving the books for about another 10 days, but I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them.





The first picture is self-explanatory but this second book is a front view of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. I've also included a copy of one of the simple inscriptions made by the original owner that Christmas season some 120 years ago. The books appear to be in pretty decent shape so I'm hoping that I'm not disappointed when they arrive.

Lions and Tigers and Books, Oh My!

I suppose that I've been a fan of the Wizard of Oz books ever since those flying monkeys scared the bejeesus out of me when I was about six years old. I've probably seen the movie ten times since then and the monkey scenes are still my favorites. But I'll never be obsessed with L. Frank Baum (or with any other author, come to that) the way that Mark Shapiro is obsessed with him. Shapiro seems to be a compulsive type of guy who really gets into his collections and now he's wondering how to share his L.Frank Baum collection with the rest of us.

In 1992 at a swap meet in Long Beach, Calif., he saw a book for sale - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. He bought it for 50 cents.

A couple of months later, he saw a magazine that listed valuable collectibles. His 50-cent book had a listed value of $10,000 (now $18,000).

Shapiro began researching Baum, a former journalist (like Shapiro), who wrote 14 Oz books between 1900 and 1919, when he died. Shapiro bought books, board games, posters, trinkets - anything related to Baum.

He retired from teaching in 2001 and devoted most of his life to finding all things Baum.

Shapiro said he uses winnings from his other passion - horse racing - to pay for memorabilia.

...

He says he now owns two first-edition, first-state books. (Those "first-state" books were created on the first run of the presses before corrections were made.) A mint-condition first-edition, first-state Wonderful Wizard of Oz book has a $35,000 to $45,000 price tag at AbeBooks.com and BookFinder.com.

"I've seen other Baum books offered for $37,000 or $39,000, and they're not in the condition his are," said Mark Kirchner, a hand bookbinder in Newport Beach, Calif.

"His are better."

...

He wants this story to spread the word. Maybe someone from a museum will call and offer him some space. Maybe an elementary school will set up a tour.

Maybe someone will tell him what he's supposed to do with all this stuff. Baum's spirit, as powerful as it is, hasn't written an ending yet.

Shapiro has put together an amazing collection, no doubt about it. Now he's reached the point (at 60 years of age) that he's starting to wonder what will become of the books when he's gone. In the meantime, he wants to enjoy them by sharing them with others who will appreciate what he's accomplished. Well done, Mr. Shapiro.

The Circle of Useful Knowledge

I want to share one of my favorite little books because, though a book of only 255 pages, it contains much of the practical knowledge to be had in 1893 when it was published. I've spent several hours wandering around inside this book since I received it as a gift from a friend in New York, and I expect to spend several more doing the same.

According to Charles Kinsley's preface, "The "Circle of Useful Knowledge" is a system of useful information, and contains hundreds of valuable receipts in the various departments of human effort, which can be relied upon, as they are tried receipts and have been procured from the most reliable sources, many of which have cost the author quite a sum of money for the right to publish them. They tell how to manage a farm, how to cook, all about wines and vinegar, how to fish and tan, how drugs and chemicals are composed, how to be your own doctor and nurse, - in short, everything connected with everyday life is treated of in a concise, clear style that tells what you wish to know."

And Mr. Kinsely wasn't kidding. Want to know how teach a horse to follow you? How to free your hands from warts? How to cure ringworms? How to clean silk? How to salt ham? How about the best way to make boots or shoes last three years or how to get rid of mosquitoes without using smoke? It's all there and more. Mr. Kinsley's little book is jam-packed with hundreds of tidbits that are still interesting and useful today.

Here's one of Kinsley's "receipts:"

To Clear Your Dwellings from Bed-Bugs

Corrosive sublimate and the white of an egg, beat together, and laid with a feather around the crevices of the bedsteads and the sacking, is very effectual in destroying bugs in them. Tansy is also said to be very effectual in keeping them away. Strew it under the sacking bottom. Common lard, or equal quantities of lard and oil, will destroy or keep them away. The best exterminator is black hellebore pulverized. It is a deadly poison to them. Place it where the bugs will be apt to crawl.

Never fear, Mr. Kinsley is on the case. His little book is likely to have an answer for most of life's nagging problems.