Get ready for the RBMS Booksellers' Showcase: a virtual book fair in conjunction with RBMS' annual conference. This virtual fair will take place at abaa.org/vbf from Tuesday, June 21 to Friday, June 24, 2022. Explore the finest rare books, manuscripts & ephemera. Shop the virtual booths of ABAA members and discover their latest acquisitions and rare finds. Learn more: www.abaa.org/vbf... The doors will be open continuously from 12pm EDT on Tuesday, June 21 until 8pm EDT on Friday, June 24, 2022. Never visited an ABAA virtual book fair before? Read "How to Shop a Virtual Book Fair"... [more Don’t Miss the RBMS Booksellers’ Showcase!]

Book Fairs are back! After two years without an in-person fair, the ABAA has been able to safely hold two so far this year with Boston coming up this fall. California and New York by all accounts were a success for exhibitors and customers alike, with New York particularly robust for sales and visitors, and exuberant crowds and attendance at record levels. At the height of the pandemic, some feared that Virtual Book Fairs would overtake in-person fairs in popularity. VBF's have been complementary, especially for those sellers and customers who are unable to travel, but are not replacements for in-person fairs as is apparent in these photos from the two events. Profile photo: Sunday Steinkirchner at the New York Book Fair, photo by Meredith Nierman. NCC Book Fair Committee triumphantly opens the Oakland Book Fair! L to R: Alexander Akin, James Bryant, Mary Hill, Michael Hackenberg, Laurelle Swan, Ben Kinmont, and Beverly Garcia-Garst. Photo by Joseph Driste. aGatherin' in Oakland, photo by Joseph Driste. Laurelle Swan awards the California Young Book Collector's Prize to Stacy Shirk. Photo by Joseph Driste. David & Caroline Brass in NY, photo by Meredith Nierman. Kiley Samz (B&L Rootenberg), photo by Meredith Nierman. Megumi Hill, photo by Meredith Nierman. Miranda Garno Nesler (Whitmore Rare Books), photo by Meredith Nierman. Michael Jennings (Neatline Antique Maps), photo by Meredith Nierman. [more Notes from the Field: Book Fairs are Back]

The ABAA Virtual Book Fair: New York Edition will take place May 4 and 5, 2022 at abaa.org/vbf... The ABAA Virtual Book Fair: New York Edition is the virtual component of the ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, and as such will feature material from the foremost booksellers from around the world. As a virtual fair, collectors and librarians around the globe can enjoy the convenience of shopping the booths of international sellers and discovering their latest acquisitions and rare finds. As at the ABAA's in-person book fairs, where novice and younger collectors have been excited by unique offerings at accessible price points, dealers at the ABAA Virtual Book Fair: New York Edition will offer “Discovery” items priced at $100 or less. Featuring the finest rare books, manuscripts, autographs, periodicals, illustration, and ephemera, the ABAA Virtual Book Fair: New York Edition will bring the best of the ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book Fair to the world! The Fair opens at 12 pm EDT on Wednesday, May 4, 2022 and will remain open continuously until 8 pm EDT on Thursday, May 5, 2022. Visit www.abaa.org/vbf for more information… [more ABAA Virtual Book Fair: New York Edition]

The New York International Antiquarian Book Fair takes place at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, April 21-24, 2022. Here are some highlights from among the rare books and related ephemera ABAA members are bringing to the fair! The Roger Gozdecki Collection of E.E.Cummings Offered en bloc by johnson rare books & archives on behalf of the family of Roger Gozdecki. Volk, Leonard (1828-1895; sculptor) Bronze Life Mask and Hands produced by the “Lost Wax” method. Chicago: Jules Berchem, American Art Bronze Factory, c1886. Signed by Volk below the chin of the mask and on the cuff of each hand. THE YEAR 1886. A beardless Lincoln had suddenly become popular after the 1886 publication of Lincoln's secretary's 10-volume biography that used Chicago's Alexander Hesler's beardless photograph for their frontispiece. Hesler then began producing copies of these photographs –taken of the presidential nominee at the behest of the Republican Party in 1860 – and had wide success in selling them. As well, when Richard Gilder “discovered” the original mask residing with Wyatt Eaton, Gilder and Augustus St. Gaudens got up a subscription to purchase the mask to donate it to the National Museum (now the Smithsonian). Volk certainly saw this commercial angle for his shaven mask and took advantage of that popularity by issuing his own mask and hands, but only in bronze and not in “cheap plaster!” By Volk's commission, Berchem produced this (and at least one other known set) for ... [more New York Book Fair Featured Items]

It was February of 2013. I walked into the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, California, following the signs to the “Codex Book Fair and Symposium”… I had just handed in my resignation notice to my then-current employer, where I was selling software – and hating every moment of it. I had made the decision to make a career leap. A rather HUGE career leap – from selling software to being a bookseller. So I wanted to check out what this “Codex” thing was all about. The hall was a cacophony of sights and sounds: the glass wall with a view of the Harbour, soaring skyward, let in so much natural light it was like being outdoors on a warm spring day. Thousands of voices were talking, exclaiming, sharing, filled with delight and the joy of the discovery of the unexpected. As I walked down aisle after aisle of “artist books” I was overwhelmed with the beauty and imagination I saw before me, at every table. Books that were… well, more like art than books. But clearly books. And therefore something I could relate to, although the conceptions and materials and design were new and fresh and incredibly lovely. The Fragments of Parmenides OK, fast-forward a few years. I'm now happily cataloguing books, among them, some books from a Bay-Area printer, Peter Koch, of whom I had heard but had, as of then, not had the pleasure of meeting. As I examined his 2003 publication The Fragments of Parmenides I was struck again with the beauty of what I had before me: everything was shee... [more Discovering Artists’ Books]

When Doug Leen was a young park ranger working at Grand Teton National Park, he was cleaning up a barn when stumbled across a dusty old poster that caught his eye. It was a poster promoting the Park that—as he later learned—had been created in the 1930s as part of the Federal Art Project, a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program designed to provide work to artists in a time of economic hardship. As Leen will explain in his online talk during the ABAA's California Virtual Book Fair, that discovery launched him on a quest that continues today—to track down a copy of each of the fourteen National Park posters made during the thirties, and to create equally beautiful posters in the same style for the parks for which no poster was created in the WPA era. Although artists employed by the Federal Art Project produced more than 35,000 unique designs for posters promoting everything from theatrical performances to health and safety programs to travel destinations, only about 50 to 100 copies of each of the 14 National Park Posters were actually printed. As a result, they are quite rare and valuable. Leen discovered the Grand Teton poster in 1971. A 20-year effort led him to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, where 13 black-and-white negatives survived in the file drawers of the National Park Service archives. These negatives and the single poster, then the only one known to survive, were the templates used for an initial effort to reconstruct the original set. As republication p... [more The Ranger of Lost Art]

Join us for some Virtual Book Fair fun! The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America will host a Virtual Book Fair Scavenger Hunt via Facebook on November 13th and 14th. Enter for your chance to win a $500 gift certificate! Browse through the thousands of items shown on the Boston Virtual Book Fair website in search of the best and most creative answers to all five items on the Scavenger Hunt List! To enter, head to the ABAA Facebook page, and post: Five answers including links to the items in the Book Fair Be sure to use the hashtag #bvbfhunt and tag the ABAA's Facebook Account @ABAARareBooks! SCAVENGER HUNT LIST 1. Find an item with a connection to something on television 2. Find a book description that passes the book equivalent of the Bechdel test (no mention of a man anywhere in the description) 3. Find a printed book issued in an edition of fewer than 50 copies 4. Find an image of someone (or something) making a bad decision 5. Find an item inscribed or annotated by an author with at least 20 words BONUS: Post your favorite item in the fair! Contest Rules No purchase is necessary to enter or win, and purchases will not increase your chances of winning. This contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered, or associated with Facebook, and is void where prohibited. 1. CONTEST PERIOD The Contest begins on November 13, 2020, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Standard time and ends on November 14, 2020, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Standard time. These are the hours the Boston Vir... [more Boston Virtual Book Fair Scavenger Hunt]

Update: The Booksellers begins a series of virtual cinema screenings on Friday, April 17, as release plans have obviously had to change because of shelter-in-place orders. Visit this page for information on which art-house cinemas are sponsoring virtual screenings in different cities from April 17. --- The hotly anticipated documentary about the rare-book world, The Booksellers, opens in New York City this week, just as the rare-book world itself descends on the city for the 60th annual New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. Described by The Hollywood Reporter as “a treat for anyone who appreciates the printed word,” the filmmakers interviewed book collectors, dealers, librarians, and bibliophiles over several years to capture a picture of the rare-book world at this point in time. Directed by D.W. Young, executive produced by Parker Posey, and produced by ABAA-member Daniel Wechsler, the film is a celebration of the book and book culture, as well as a survey of the influence technology has had on the book trade, and how interest — nay obsession — with finding and preserving significant books and related items has endured despite what alarmist mainstream media headlines might have us believe. The Booksellers features interview with a great many ABAA-members, as well as prominent collectors and writers, such as Fran Lebowitz, Gay Talese, Susan Orlean, and Kevin Young, resulting in a panoramic view of the trade from many perspectives. Trailer The film debuted to ... [more The Booksellers Documentary Opens]

In commemoration of the centennial of the 19th Amendment, the 53rd California International Antiquarian Book Fair, February 7-9, 2020 in Pasadena, will feature a special exhibit and panel discussions on the women's suffrage movement. This celebration will highlight the contributions of successive generations of women, from protofeminists like Mary Wollstonecraft, to the abolitionists and the temperance movement, through pioneering crusaders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the suffragettes who eventually won the vote, as well as those activists who have continued the fight for equal rights in the 21st century. Among these women is the California artist whose iconic artwork adorns the book fair's poster. Bertha Margaret Boye (1883–1931) was born in Oakland, the daughter of German immigrants. Her father was a cabinet maker, and her mother a homemaker. She was the middle of three sisters; the oldest worked as a nurse and her younger sister was a portrait painter. Boye had just completed studies at the famous Mark Hopkins Art Institute in San Francisco when she entered and won the poster contest sponsored by the College Equal Suffrage League in 1911. She received a $50 prize for her design, which was reproduced on cards, handbills, and publicity stamps. Boye's design was the precise image leaders of the movement sought. The first suffrage campaign in California, in 1896, failed. When conditions suddenly changed in 1910 and a progressive Republican administration... [more The Image of Suffrage]

The Boston Book Fair is the annual fall gathering for book lovers and collectors of rare books, featuring the top selection of items available on the international literary market. The 43rd annual gathering of U.S. and international dealers, sanctioned by the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, takes place in Boston, Massachusetts over the weekend of November 15-17, 2019. Here are a few preview items to tempt you, including copies of some of the most-famous rare books of all time! Allen Ginsberg, Original Carbon Typescript for Part I of “Howl”, (ca. early 1956) Previously unknown original carbon typescript of the most important postwar American poem: Allen Ginsberg's “Howl.” Almost certainly the only surviving draft version of this iconic poem remaining in private hands, and the only one to ever be separately offered for sale, this copy was struck from what has become known as the fifth draft (so identified in HOWL: Original Draft Facsimiles and Variant Versions . Barry Miles, Editor. New York: Harper & Row, 1986) and most likely dates from early 1956. It is this draft that Ginsberg read in what is the earliest known recording of the poem at Oregon's Reed College from February 1956 (indeed you can hear him turning the pages at precisely the right time on the recording), performed just three months after the legendary Six Gallery reading where the poem debuted. Provenance: this copy of “Howl” was ... [more Boston Book Fair: Preview Items]