Bibliophemera

  Scouting used books the other day, I found a few that had, at some point in their history, resided on the shelves of different San Francisco book shops as long ago, possibly, as the 1930s. The bookseller labels inside the rear cover of each were ones I had not come across before so I had to add them to my collection. Coincidentally, both books were published in 1933. Gelber-Lilienthal In a copy of The Name and Nature of Poetry , by A.E. Housman, Cambridge University Press, I found this Gelber-Lilienthal label. Leon Gelber and Theodore Lilienthal (1893-1972) were the partners in the bookselling firm that bore their surnames. After Gelber died, Lilienthal ran the business and then sold it to Lew Lengfeld in 1946, who renamed it Books, Inc. Under that name, the business still exists today with a dozen stores (ten in California). The Princeton University Library blog, Graphic Arts , has a related post from December 2010 by Julie L. Mellby, which turned up in my initial...

Here's a letterpress print announcement from Herbert Fahey for the Roxburghe Club in San Francisco in 1947. The announcement, with an attractive border of antiquarian images of printing-related scenes, is for a presentation by Felix Cunha titled, Incunabula Medica . Cunha is described as a "Doctor of Medicine, Bibliophile, Author, Savant, Traveler." The printer Fahey, whose name appears on the back, was active in the book arts in California, having served as president of the  San Francisco Club of Printing House Craftsmen   in 1929. The Book Club of California also published his book,  Early Printing in California: From Its Beginning in the Mexican Territory to Statehood, September 9, 1850 (1956, printed by the Grabhorn Press).   I would assume he might have also been a member of the Roxburghe Club, which was formed in 1928 in San Francisco. What I know about Felix Cunha is pretty much what is printed on the announcement about him. A...

Charles Hoy Fort was a writer who, after several failed novels, finally found his audience with a nonfiction book titled The Book of the Damned (Horace Liveright, 1919), which is regarded as the first book to deal with the field of anomalistics , or paranormal phenomena. Fort and his writing attracted some very influential literary pals, such as Theodore Dreiser, an old friend who was instrumental in getting Fort's work published. Many others admired his writing and became founding members in a society dedicated to Fort and his works--the appropriately named Fortean Society. Writer Tiffany Thayer started the society. Dreiser served as the first president and they were joined in membership by notable literary figures such as Ben Hecht, Alexander Woolcott, Booth Tarkington, Dorothy Parker, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and H. L. Mencken. Ironically, Fort shunned the notion of such a society and refused to participate beyond the first meeting, in which he was lured to under false prete...

I usually write about a piece I've researched and can provide some history on, but this one is a stumper. Maybe someone out there will see this and have some information about it. This is an old trade card for a San Francisco bookseller and stationer, E.C. Thatcher and his business with the colorful name, Eureka Bazaar.   Looks like he sold a hodge-podge of items, not just books and stationery. With the shop name, proprietor's name, the address on Mission Street, you'd think I could turn up something on the Internet. Actually, I did get the following, which answers nothing and only creates more questions An 1888-89 Northern Pacific Coast Directory has this entry for Eureka Bazar (sic) at a different address in San Francisco (I presume, as the street address exists there today) with a different owner, a woman referred to as Mrs. Douglas: DOUGLAS MRS E A proprietress Eureka Bazar 1841 Fillmore res same Using all this information has produced not one iota...

Does this look like a haunted building? The Holmes Book Company was located here at 274 Fourteenth Street in 1931 according to the postmark date on the postal cover below. And according to some, a ghost roamed the stacks mischievously throwing books and making some of the patrons feel uneasy. An article on haunted Oakland touches on this phenomenon. You can search the Internet, using the keywords Holmes Book Company ghost , and find the same or similar references to the spooky goings on in the old book shop building. Holmes was Harold C. Holmes, who lived from 1877-1965. A brief biography of Holmes is found at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, where his papers are archived. He was born in Toronto, Canada, but his family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was about five years of age. There, his father started the Holmes Book Company, which had several antiquarian book shops in San Francisco and Oakland and offered the opportunity for Harold Holmes to enter the busine...

Buckley & Curtin were printers and bookbinders in San Francisco around the turn of the last century. Other than their billhead above, I can find barely a trace that they existed. So this post is about to veer off on a tangent into unbookish waters because there's enough on the name associated with the order to keep this post going. From Buckley & Curtin's billhead slogan, I assume that printing was their mainstay, more so than bookbinding, and they aimed to please with perfection: " Perfect Printing Pleases ." I hope for their sake that their customer was perfectly pleased with the order. But then the total cost for all that was only $15. The Board of Education (San Francisco I presume) ordered 8,000 admittance cards for Madame Schumann-Heink back in December of 1913. Had the Board not liked the final product, they would have had 8,000 reasons to be angry with Buckley & Curtin. Sounds like a lot of cards and a lot of admittance to something. But admittan...

Here's a 1968 announcement card for a meeting of the Roxburghe Club in San Francisco. The featured speaker is William R. Holman , former director of the San Francisco Public Library, as well as the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas. He wore and continues to wear many other hats, i.e., printer, book designer, publisher, and writer ( The Orphans' Nine Commandments ) . The Grabhorn-Hoyem Press designed and printed this card (5.5 x 8.5 inches), with its interesting typeface and partial border design. They and other printers in the San Francisco area were the subject of an 8mm film shot by Holman before he left San Francisco in 1967 for the University of Texas. The following year, 1968, he presented his film during a talk at the Roxburghe Club meeting on December 10th. Last month, I asked Mr. Holman about this piece, with respect to his film and talk at the Roxburghe Club. He said he shot the super 8mm film, describing it as "poorly made," of the Ba...