Bibliophemera

This billhead offers insight into how issues were dealt with between buyer and seller in the late 19 th century.  J.B. Lippincott & Co., the Philadelphia publisher and bookseller, received an order from J. King McLanahan of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania and shipped what they had along with this billhead containing confusing notation to the customer. Mr. McLanahan evidently sent it back with a question written on the billhead about what they meant regarding the missing book in his order, likely a recent book about Pope and his poetry in the Lansdowne Poetry Series of the 1870s. Lippincott responded that they were out of the book in Morocco binding, but it was presently being bound as ordered. Each communication moved with a pace at the mercy of local post offices in the US Postal System. This back-and-forth about a book that wasn't available for shipping must have taken days if not weeks to clear up. Something that today could be handled with a couple of quick emails in min...

I'm sad to hear of Bill Wittliff's passing yesterday, June 9, at age 79. He was a creative force in Texas as an author, screenwriter, photographer, publisher, bookseller, book collector, and designer of books and ephemera. Al Lowman, in Printing Arts in Texas (1975) ,  wrote, "Quite likely there is no more diversely creative talent in Texas today than this gifted designer, artist, sculptor, historian, writer, photographer, and poker player." I never really got to meet him other than exchanging greetings and thank yous at a book signing in Houston in 2007. I bought five copies of A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove , a collection of his photographs on the set of the Lonesome Dove miniseries in 1989. He was the screenwriter for that much beloved and now classic Western. He personalized a few copies for gifts, signed just his name on a few copies, which went up for sale later in my online shop, and, of course, I kept one copy he signed for my wife and me. It is...

In 2009, I blogged about an old billhead from New Orleans bookseller, F.F. Hansell &Bro. , dated 1900. There wasn't much information on that piece to indicate what kind of stock Hansell had in his store, but comments on that post indicated office furnishings were in the mix along with a few books. I wondered if they sold "real" books or maybe just account books and ledgers for businesses in addition to a few school texts a standard author or two. That question was answered with a recent addition to my collection--a Hansell brochure/catalog of popular books and standard authors representing an impressive inventory of quality literature. Real books. This undated (appears circa 1900), 7 X 10-inch folded sheet features Hansell's Home Library on the front (and continuing on the next page), with 204 cloth-bound volumes dressed in gilt tops to choose from. Titles such as Aesop's Fables, Alice in Wonderland, Emerson's Essays, Carlyle's French Revolution,...

Lord Alfred Tennyson, the great poet laureate of England, never visited America, but his writing was known throughout the land, even in the arid region of Pecos, Texas in 1893 a year after the author died. Only a few decades or so before, Apache and Comanche tribes roamed the area and only a few intrepid pioneers had attempted settlement in that remote part of the state. Thanks to railroad expansion in the 1880s, a bit of civilization came west to Pecos, including Mr. Tennyson, all dressed up in Morocco. I'm not sure what Pecos Bill would have thought about that. Above is the receipt for a $10 Class D membership, whatever that is, good for 10 years in the National Library Association. W.V. Glascock is listed as the agent who sold the membership. Mrs W.T. Monahan is the new member and probably anxious for some fine books to provide a little culture in her home in a desolate region of the West.  In addition to her membership, Mrs. Monahan would also receive a presentat...

I recently acquired a box of ephemera related to books and booksellers--mostly catalogs and mostly addressed to either Lucille Rasmussen, W.E.H. Rasmussen, or both. More on them in a moment. Apart from the bulk of nondescript, stapled sheets of cheap paper passing as catalogs of books for sale, are a handful of interesting pieces, such as this one from Kitemaug Press in Spartanburg, South Carolina--their Handlist of Miniature Books in Print . A folded 6 X 7-inch paper becomes a printed brochure or prospectus or bibliography. It's actually a bit of all three with a promotional card inside for their 1982 offering,  A Book of Many Things . The Kitemaug Press was started by Frank J. Anderson during his tenure as librarian at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where his papers are archived. As the biographical note from the preceding link states, Anderson developed an interest in printing, publishing, and miniature books while serving as librarian at Wofford C...

Here is a Victorian trade card that promotes both the offerings of a publisher and bookseller that stocks those products for his customers. The colorful lithograph that graces the front of the card promotes D. Lothrop & Co.'s Wide Awake series with a subscription rate discount, as well as the single issue price. Similar information is offered at the bottom of the card for another children's periodical, Baby-Land .  The publisher's popular illustrated books and a free bookcase also get a mention squeezed in at the bottom of the card, with details on the reverse side. Those details on the reverse side follow the stamp of a local bookseller who has those items in stock or can get them for you from the publisher. The bookseller who issued this card to store patrons was D.F. Wallace of Cortland, New York, about 30 miles south of Syracuse. More on him and Cortland history in the 1870s to 1880s here . On Christmas Eve, 2011, I blogged about another D. Lothrop...

Here's a nice corner ad cover for a Philadelphia publisher and bookseller, P. Garrett & Co. This is reminiscent of another corner ad cover featured here previously-- S.H. Zahm & Co. , also of Pennsylvania, in Lancaster. The postmarks are only a year apart and I wonder if perhaps the same designer created both for those and other merchants throughout the region. Of Garrett, I can find little information, but his ad cover tells you a bit about his business at the time, which was 1891. He published and sold a series you can still find a good number of today: 100 Choice Selections . Those choice selections of poetry and prose, as the ad states, could be used for public readings, declamations, and social pastime. At 30 cents, the 216-page books sound like a bargain even in those times. Below is a Google Books image showing the title page of one of these publications several years prior. This piece provides Garrett's first name--the P stood for Phineas. Back t...

Today, Independence Day in America, I'm remembering the patriot printer, Isaiah Thomas. What follows is from a previous post about Thomas on this blog a few years ago. This portrait, by Ethan Allen Greenwood, was found at the Web site for  The American Antiquarian Society  along with the biography (copied at the end of this post) of the man who has been referred to as the "Father of Ephemera."  He was a patriot in the American Revolution, a publisher, a printer, and a bookseller. Early in the nineteenth century, he recognized the significance of printed ephemera in America's young history and the need to preserve it for the historical record of a growing nation. After his retirement from business, he pursued writing a history of printing in America and founded the American Antiquarian Society, for which he wrote the following justification: We cannot obtain a knowledge of those who are to come after us, nor are we certain what will be the events of future times;...

Review slips or letters from publishers often accompany review copies of new books they offer to booksellers. I usually find them tucked inside the front cover ( example here ), containing language that states the bibliographic details of the book, expected publication date, and a request to send reviews to the publisher. The American Booksellers Association refers to this as Advance Access on their Web site. And when I find them they exist as originally sent, as they are not forms to complete. Rather, they provide contact information for sending reviews. Not so the one below, which I got a kick out of because it appears the reviewer intended, for some reason,  to recycle the request itself into a review of sorts or at least a notepad for later transcription into a proper and separate review piece. This 1986 review copy of Tito's Flawed Legacy: Yugoslavia & the West Since 1939 , by Nora Beloff included a review slip from the publisher, Westview Press (Frederick A. Praeg...

This photo is cropped from the photo below that features a page from a 1922 issue of the once popular, long-defunct Italian publication L'Illustrazione Italiana . UNA NUOVA INIZIATIVA PER LA DIFFUSIONE DEL LIBRO proclaims the title at the top of the photo, or, in English (as best I can tell), A New Initiative for Distributing Books . I assumed at first this early bookmobile in Firenza (Florence) must be affiliated with a local library. Translating the caption below the photo and researching clues within it, I learned otherwise. The caption reads: L'AUTOCARRO LIBRERIA DEGLI EDITORI TREVES E DELL'ANONIMA LIBRARIA ITALIANA, FOTOGRAFAT IN FIRENZE DURANTE IL SUO VIAGGIO INAUGURALE or, in my best attempt at English through an Internet translation site, " The truck bookstore of the publisher Treves and of the anonymous Italian  books  , photographed in Florence during its inaugural journey ." So the bookmobile was a publisher's method of...

I came across this copy of William Goldman's Marathon Man (Delacorte Press, 1974) and found a card paper-clipped inside for one of the publisher's representatives, Theron Palmer. His card includes two publishers, the other being the Dial Press. A few clicks on the Internet introduced me to Mr. Palmer, courtesy of Chris Stephens and the riverrun bookshop blog , where some wonderful personal memories of the man are recounted and even a photo displayed. In the 1970s, writes Stephens, Palmer's territory was Oklahoma and Texas. That's a lot of ground to cover. You can drive all day and not get out of Texas. So learning of Theron Palmer's territory explains how this book wound up in Texas, where I found it. It was likely hand-delivered to a bookseller by Theron Palmer. Considering the vast territory Palmer had to cover, I wonder if he sometimes felt a bit like a "Marathon Man," driving the miles and miles of highway between bookstores. One thi...

In 1875, Boston publisher D. Lothrop & Co. advertised a book on the envelope below, presumably in time for Christmas since they referred to it as "The Children's Book of the Season." The back side of the envelope offers additional evidence that Christmas was approaching. More on that in a minute.  The book is Wide Awake Pleasure Book , and it came out about 1875, as best as I can tell. I have come across only one bookseller claiming a first edition of this book and the year given was 1875. The address for D. Lothrop & Co. offers a clue as well. Daniel Lothrop , according to a Wikipedia page about him, established his publishing business at the Cornhill address in Boston indicated on the above cover above in 1868. In 1874, he began publishing a magazine for children that shares the name of the book advertised on this cover. A year later, the Wikipedia article states, he needed more space and moved from his Cornhill address to another Boston location. If the...

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of meeting, via email, Laurel Davis, the Legal Information Librarian, Lecturer in Law, and Curator of Special Collections for the Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room in the Boston College Law Library. Somewhere in all that she also finds time to write the Rare Book Room's blog . She was working on an exhibit of early Massachusetts law books and found a Bibliophemera post about Little, Brown & Company that featured an 1892 billhead and some information that seemed a good fit for the exhibit. I was delighted to have her use it for The Golden Age of Legal Publishing in Massachusetts . I was actually in Massachusetts earlier this month, but on the western side of the state and just didn't have the time to see the exhibit in person. But there is the digital counterpart for those of us who can't travel to see this interesting collection of early Massachusetts law books. During our correspondence, I indicated I might have more e...