Bibliophemera

This is the bookplate for Clare Ryan Talbot (1899-1981), an avid collector of bookplates, who devoted her professional life to collecting, appraising, selling, writing, and researching bookplates. She also ventured into allied enterprises with bookselling, antiques, and publishing—each incorporating bookplates into the mix. This bookplate was reserved for her books about California only, as she noted in pencil on the back of the bookplate. Below that note, she also translated the Spanish above the illustration on the front, “La Candela del Señor” to “Candles of the Lord.” Her bookplate was engraved by James Elwood Webb (1884-1940), a Los Angeles artist and owner of an engraving and stationery shop, who painted in addition to designing and engraving bookplates. Interestingly, another Californian, Margaret Ely Webb (1877–1965) has been linked with James Webb as the designer of a bookplate residing in a collection at Kent State University’s Special Collections and Archives Library (...

I've been wanting to write about this bookplate since acquiring the book I found it in about eight years ago-- Handel,  by C.F. Abdy Williams, published in 1901 by both J.M. Dent & Co. (London) and E.P. Dutton & Co. (New York). The bookplate's setting features a meadow or pasture, where a young man, John Woodroffe Garthwaite, sits in a chair with a book in his hands and a dog by his side. The current pandemic reminded me of this image and the parallels to social distancing activities we are practicing today to mitigate the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19). Of course, the scene was composed for reasons other than fighting a pandemic, but the finished product carries a visual message about social distancing into the future some 120 years. Mr. Garthwaite certainly appears socially distanced from any person and is enjoying a fine social distancing activity--reading! The book's publication date and some genealogy research on Garthwaite help date the bookpla...

Here is a bookplate with an unusual pairing of the same middle and last names: Samuel Hooper Hooper. The bookplate features a boar's head, which can be found in other family crest or armorial designs. But I'm not sure what the button-like objects are or represent. Samuel Hooper Hooper showed up quickly in an Internet search that landed on a BOSarchitecture.com page featuring a building Hooper once lived in. The site also offers some biographical information on Hooper: "Samuel Hooper Hooper was a real estate investor and investment banker. In later years, he became a wine importer. He organized and led the Boston Assembly society balls for many years, and was a founder and the first president of the Tennis and Raquet Club." His biblio connection? He was a member of "one of the oldest and most distinguished independent libraries and cultural institutions in the United States:"  The Boston Athenaeum .

This copy of Ship of the Line , by C.S. Forester contains a Naples Library bookplate that triggered an instant memory of being on a ship in Naples, Italy about this time last year (see A Napoli Bookseller's Postcard ). Now, which Naples was this library in? I knew it wasn't in Italy, given the English printing on the label, but how many towns in the US are named Naples? Naples, Florida seemed the most likely choice, but as I looked through the book for clues, I found a sticker on the endpapers in the back of the book that stated this book came from Naples,  Maine . I've been to Maine a number of times, but never heard of a town named after Old Napoli. If you hug the coast in your Maine travels, you'll miss Naples. Although inland about 30 miles or so northwest of Portland, it does boast of a waterfront location--freshwater instead of salt water like its namesake in the Mediterranean. Naples, Maine is a resort town on Long Lake. From the library's Faceb...

Levi K. Fuller  (1841-1896) was Vermont's 44th governor, serving a two-year term upon his election in 1892. This I learned after acquiring a few old Vermont Legislature booklets with Fuller's bookplate.   Bookplate might even be an inaccurate description of the paper pasted on the booklets. Label seems more fitting somehow given the business-like nature of these aids to finding a book's proper place when returning it to the shelf. And business-like would be an accurate characterization of the man behind the name on the library label. The organization and efficiency indicated by his library served him well in his diverse pursuits of business, political, civic and philanthropic endeavors.  Fuller trained as a machinist and studied engineering and manufacturing, which helped him land a job with Estey Organ Company in Brattleboro, Vermont. Though he married the owner's daughter, he rose through the ranks to the executive level on his ow...

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...

A few posts back ( San Francisco book shop labels ), I referenced a bookplate I had in a book that belonged to Alfred Sutro. While that's true, the reference doesn't hold up. I had the wrong Alfred Sutro it turns out: The author dedicated this book to his friend, Alfred Sutro, whose leather bookplate I have in a copy of Byways in Bookland, by James Westfall Thompson The author was John Drinkwater and he dedicated his 1933 book, Laying the Devil , to Alfred Sutro. Upon further investigation into Sutro's connection to Drinkwater, I discovered this Alfred Sutro was from England, not California as was the Alfred Sutro whose bookplate I have. Two book-world Alfred Sutros across the pond from each other... Who'd a thunk? Not me, obviously. Drinkwater's Alfred Sutro (1863-1933) was a respected playwright, while The Alfred Sutro (1869-1945) I had in mind was a San Francisco attorney and avid bibliophile, who served as President of the Book Club of California. T...

Forty-one years ago today--May 22, 1971--the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library was dedicated in Austin, Texas. Officially known today by a slightly modified name, The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library & Museum, the library is most commonly referred to as the LBJ Library. The former president's memoir, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency 1963-1969 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) was published the same year the library was opened. A library bookplate was designed for First Edition copies sold at the library that year. Assuming these First Edition copies were available for purchase when the library's gift shop doors opened for business, it is likely that this bookplate was the first or one of the first bookplates issued by the LBJ Library. 

Today, March 26th, is the birthday of one of America's greatest poets.  Robert Frost  was born on this day in 1874.  I recently acquired a copy of Frost's bookplate above while researching the bookplate's designer, J.J. Lankes , for a blog post about a Lankes letter, which will appear here soon.  Lankes and Frost became friends and collaborators in the 1920s when Lankes created the woodcut print illustrations for Frost's New Hampshire (Henry Holt, 1923). That collaboration would continue over the next few decades.  Goodspeed's Book Shop also featured some Lankes illustrations on the covers of their  The Month at Goodspeed's  publication for January 1943. Inside this catalog, offered for sale, are some of the woodcut prints that made it into Frost's  New Hampshire , annotated with comments from Lankes. Below are some illustrations from my copy of New Hampshire , which I referenced in a post on the Archaeolibris blog several y...

I haven't featured a bookplate, or ex libris, here in a good while, but here's one for which I have more questions than information to share. Henryka Raczyniewskiego was either a noteworthy Polish collector of ex libris or a collectible illustrator of ex libris. His collection, of which category I'm not certain, resides now in the Nicolaus Copernicus University Library's new Digital Library in Toruń, Poland: Kujawsko-Pomorska Biblioteka Cyfrowa . From the information presented, I can't answer the collector/illustrator question. The library's collections available thus far seem an impressive start for assembling ephemera representative of Polish culture and history, including the ex libris collection where I found the scant bit of information available on Raczyniewskiego. Presently, that's all the information I can find about him. Hopefully, someone more knowledgeable will have additional information to share. As to whether he was a collector ...

An odd grouping for a post on this blog, eh? Perhaps it deviates a bit from the usual fare, but there is a book ephemera tie-in. Mrs. Paul's Kitchens gave away copies of Michael David Harris' book, Always on Sunday: Ed Sullivan, an Inside View (Meredith Press, 1968) to promote an October 17, 1971 CBS special on the Ed Sullivan years. Sullivan's show had been off the air since June of that year. Inside the book, I found the letter from Mrs. Paul's Kitchens detailing all this, while also plugging their fish sticks and related products. I remember both the Ed Sullivan Show and eating Mrs. Paul's Fish Sticks when I was growing up in the 1960s, so this had a good bit of nostalgic appeal to me (still enjoy old Sullivan clips, don't like the fish sticks!). In addition to the letter explaining the reason for the gift book, there was a presentation bookplate affixed to the front free endpaper: Compliments of Mrs. Paul's Kitchens, Inc . Now there's a rarity for ...

I heard today from Gregg Silvis at the University of Delaware Library, who had seen my post about John Stuart Groves' bookplate and Delawareana. He thought their digital bookplate collection, William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection , would be of interest to readers on this blog. It certainly was to me. In addition to the bookplate collection, try the University of Delaware Library Digital Collections link and have fun with that visual feast of history. This also ties in neatly with something else I wrote earlier this year, some thoughts on digital ephemera , after receiving a digital copy of a bookplate. Quoting from the William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection , here' the scoop on William Augustus Brewer and his wonderful collection: Reverend William Augustus Brewer was an avid bookplate collector. His wife, Augusta LaMotte Brewer, bequeathed his collection to the University of Delaware Library after her husband’s death. The William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collect...

My last post was about a Philadelphia bookseller, John Penington & Son , whose 1875 trade card I had recently acquired. A few months ago, I had purchased a copy of Forty Years Among the Old Booksellers of Philadelphia with Biographical and Bibliographical Remarks , by W. Brotherhead (published by A.P. Brotherhead, Philadelphia, 1891). Affixed to the book's endpapers, I found a couple of paper items I like to feature here occasionally--a bookplate and a bookseller's ticket, or label. Inside the book's front cover (front pastedown), I see this book formerly was a volume in the private library of H.S. Pickering, so stated by his straightforward, no-frills bookplate: Of H.S. Pickering and books or libraries there is nothing to be found through repeated searches. There was a man by that name who wrote a book about covalent something or other, but I doubt that was my Pickering with the bookplate. My Pickering would be more appropriate as a relation to the Pickering ...

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...

Here is the bookplate of James Hustler. More precisely, James Hustler of Acklam in Cleveland in the North Riding of the County of York, Esq. The bookplate is dated 1730, which I think makes it the oldest in my small collection. It's affixed to the backside, or verso, of the title page of a slim 51-page volume, sans covers, titled A Sermon Preached Before the Learned Society of Lincoln's-Inn . The title page allows that the sermon was preached on January 30, 1732, by a Layman. The price of the book was one shilling. All that's left of the book's binding is the spine--a thin strip of cracked leather, with remnants of gilt and raised bands, clinging tightly to the leaves by antique threads (I wish the covers' hinges could have boasted the same durability!). But the ex libris of the distinguished Hustler fares well almost a score shy of three centuries. Jose Vicente de Braganca has already written about Hustler and this bookplate on his blog Ex Libris//Bookplates . I...