Bibliophemera

A few years ago, I acquired a cache of old letters written to Schulte's Book Store in New York City during the 1940s to 1960s. Most of the letters were from authors, artists, and collectors of varying degrees of note, such as authors  Rose Wilder Lane   and  Stefan Lorant , and woodcut illustrator  J.J. Lankes . These are just three I've written about from the two-dozen-plus letters in the collection.  I've been hoping to add a store catalogue to the collection to gain more insight into Schulte's stock and anything else about the business it might offer. Now I have one--Catalogue 81. There is no date, but an online search of the phone number (Stuyvesant 2550) turns up a few Schulte references dating from 1918 to 1924. So this catalogue is probably circa 1920s, a few decades before the correspondence mentioned above. But it does reveal on the cover some information that clearly shows Schulte's was a well-established book store long before the correspo...

Today is appropriate for revisiting a 2009 post I wrote about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and a book purchase he made in 1880. Today is Longfellow's birthday. One of America's most famous poets, Longfellow was born in 1807, 216 years ago. Below is my blog post from November 27, 2009, Longfellow's Receipt . In 1880, the revered American poet and scholar, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), bought a book printed in Pennsylvania German from H.L. Fisher, a York, Pennsylvania lawyer and poet. Fisher evidently self-published the book and had pre-printed receipts ready for the sales. I have in my collection the receipt he made out to Henry W. Longfellow for his purchase of a copy of  'S Alt Marik-Haus Mittes In D'r Schtadt, Un Die Alte Zeite , a centennial poem in Pennsylvania Dutch. So what interest did Longfellow have in some obscure German language book from a Pennsylvania lawyer who liked to write? That was one question I had when trying to determine...

Scouting books in a second-hand shop a few months ago, I pulled from a shelf this copy of Uncle Bernac , by A. Conan Doyle, better known as Arthur Conan Doyle and as the author of the Sherlock Holmes books. As I customarily do with older books, I checked the endpapers for a bookseller's label, or ticket, and a bookplate. Uncle Bernac had no labels from previous book shops where the book had resided during its life, but I found something more interesting--a book plate that introduced me to a fairly well-known book collector from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century--Philip Greely Brown. The provenance of the book begins with Brown. Above his bookplate in the upper-left corner are his initials and the date June 97, which is the publication date for this copy of Uncle Bernac. That makes sense--a bibliophile would want to purchase first editions. Then in 1951, somebody named Dave bought the book and presented it to his father for a Christmas present. Fast forward t...

Today, February 12th, is Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Here's a 1944 press photo from the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, Illinois, which I wrote about on this blog three years ago today. Enough time has gone by now and this seemed a good time to repost it, given all the attention Lincoln has gotten recently in books and film. The back of the photo has a typed sheet of paper that appears to be dated 2-8-44. Other notation, for the record: A-37690 and Wide World. The title of the release is "Lincoln's Words Live On." Here's the press release transcribed from the typed sheet (typos and errant punctuation intact): CHICAGO, ILL.-To the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, started on Abraham Lincoln's Birthday 11 years ago by Ralph Newman come writers, ans (SIC) scholars bent on research, and everyday people of all sorts to who the great statesman is still an inspiration. Carl Sandburg used the shop when he was writing his "Life of Lincoln". Four...