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...

The Children's Book Shop in New York has a new catalogue and proprietor Marian Cutter is letting her customers know it's available for thirty-five cents.   The postmark on the address side of the card indicates the date is November 12, 1921, so the holiday season is nigh and this catalogue will no doubt provide some timely mail order shopping.  The color illustration on the card is a nice touch, perhaps even a bit unusual for such a postal piece. A pied piper figure leads children into Marian Cutter's shop at 5 West 47th with the following notice printed beneath the image:  Our Catalogue is now ready and will be sent to you on receipt of thirty-five cents . Ms. Cutter had just opened her shop two years before, in 1919, nearly two years to the day. It was a pioneering effort, the first book shop in New York City to specialize in children's literature. Boston and Chicago already had children's book shops and now New York would, too. And soon other major...

Location, location, location. The old adage for a key to a business’ success apparently came into play for bookseller W.I. Whiting in New York during the 1890s. He thought if he hitched his wagon to the wealthy Wall Streeters, he’d make a killing himself with his impressive inventory of a quarter-million books. That was not to be. Not even close. It's always fun to find a piece of ephemera for a business whose proprietor shares my surname. Even more so when the proprietor is a bookseller. And the possibility that I might be remotely related to him is intriguing. I hope so, for he appears to have been quite the character and would make an interesting addition to my genealogy. William Ivan Whiting had trouble getting his banking neighbors to come by his shop and buy books. Seems they’d rather hit the 400 bars in the area instead. His book shop near Wall Street had trouble selling two books a day to that crowd. Two sales against a quarter million books makes for a patheti...

A chariot driver and team of horses leap across the landscape (Manhattan?). Following that graphic, the title, Today's Books , jumps out at you on the cover of this little bookshop catalog. Today is March 1946 and Today's Books could be purchased at the Mayfair Bookshop, owned by George W. Stair in New York City at 7 West 49th Street--Rockefeller Center. Thumbing through the catalog for items of interest sixty-five years ago, an ad for this book caught my eye: The Story of the Stars and Stripes: A Paper for Joe , by Bud Hutton and Andy Rooney. Yes, that Andy Rooney --the 60 Minutes journalist and author. You could also call him an ex-college football player (Colgate University) and a World War II veteran . And he was already a veteran author in 1946, having written his first book while serving in Europe in 1944. Rooney was drafted into the Army in 1941. In 1942 he began reporting for the military newspaper The Stars and Stripes in London. The following year, 1943, he and fiv...

N. Tibbals & Sons have an agent in their New York basement at 124 Nassau St. So states the trade card for their publishing and bookselling business. The back of the card states their agent is now in their basement with a bunch of very cheap books. And you need to come and see for yourself. These books have just come in from New York (Isn't Tibbals in New York?). And did they mention how cheap they are? The front of the card has the typical colorful Victorian, flowery decor, this one with butterflies. These images seldom, if ever, have anything to do with the business indicated on the card. But this card reiterates the business pitch on the front also, not the business name. In case you missed the message on the flip side, these guys have a basement full of very cheap books to sell you. There's an agent down there, too. According to Publisher's Weekly, Volume 52 , in an obituary for Nathan Tibbals, N. Tibbals & Son started in 1848 and conducted business for years at ...

Here is a stapled booklet of bookplates for children, dated 1918. They were sold by Lloyd Adams Noble , Publisher. The booklet contains three different designs to choose from. Each page has three of the same bookplate in perforated panes with an adhesive on the back for moistening and applying to the book. A protective guard between each page prevented the bookplates from sticking to each other. This booklet is missing one bookplate at the back, otherwise it is completely intact with minimal wear despite its age and supposedly having been handled by children. I have seen individual plates for sale from these booklets, but a whole booklet appears to be quite scarce. I'm not sure when this series of bookplates started or ended, but this set is copyrighted 1918 and I know the bookplates were still being published in 1921. A Lloyd Adams Noble title from that year, Pieces for Every Day the Schools Celebrate, by Deming and Bemis , contains ads in the back in which it is stated that three...

In 1924, an employee of the Penguin Book Shop in New York used this company post card to reply to a customer about an order. "J" informs the customer, whom he (or she) seems to know, that one of the books, Psychopathology of Everyday Life is on the way. Another book, Cowboy Songs , has been ordered. An eclectic reading list to be sure. What is not sure is the history of this book shop with the playful typeface in its logo. For some reason, I thought this would be an easy one to research. That's not proving to be the case. All the vital stats are on the card: Thirty-nine West Eighth is the address. The phone number is STUY 0693. And they're no help. But I did find a book with an interesting title that provides some sense of the backdrop against which the Penguin Book Shop operated. That book is Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn: A Social History of the Tea Room Craze in America , by Jan Whitaker (St. Martins, 2002). The Bohemian lifestyle and culture flourished in Gree...