The ABAA is proud to announce the winners of the 2021 National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest. First: Jessica Camille Jordan (Stanford University) for "Six Decades of Leo and Diane Dillon." Second: Read W. Brown (New York University) for "The Serious Business of Fun: A Collection of Books on the Video Game Industry." Third: Shannon D. Bohle (Johns Hopkins) for "Life through Space and Time: A Personal Journey through Modern Science, Collecting Hand-signed Autographs, Manuscripts, and First Editions." Essay Award Joseph E. Hiller (Duke University) for his essay "Como un detective salvaje: Gathering Small Press, Experimental, and Untranslated Latin American Literature." The National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest is jointly administered by the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA), the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies (FABS), the Grolier Club, and the Center for the Book and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division (the Library of Congress) Congratulations to all the winners of the 2021 National Collegiate Book Collecting Competition! [more 2021 NCBCC Winners]

UPDATE (Feb 9, 2022): An arrest has been made in connection with the theft of nearly 5,000 missing items from FSU Libraries' Robert M. Ervin Jr. Collection. The investigation remains open and ongoing, and FSU Libraries are still awaiting details on the items that have been recovered. As they learn more and gather information about what was recovered and what remains missing, they will continue to update the spreadsheet below. This spreadsheet and notice detail materials stolen from Florida State University. 4,996 items from the Robert M. Ervin Jr. Collection were stolen from FSU Special Collections & Archives between March 17th, 2020 and February 10th, 2021. The Robert M. Ervin Jr. Collection consists of comic books, serials, and containing and related to superheroes, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Publications include those by Marvel Comics, DC Comics, underground comix publishers, foreign-language titles, pulp magazines, and Big Little Books. Over 1200 serial titles are represented, predominantly from the 1950s through the 1970s. Other works include monographs and serials related to comic book collecting, history, and criticism as well as posters and prints featuring comic book characters and art. Please contact Katie McCormick if you have info concerning the missing items: Katie McCormick Associate Dean of Libraries for Special Collections & Archives (she/her/hers) Florida State University Libraries 116 Honors Way, Rm 110D Tallahassee, FL 32306-2047 Tel: (850) 644-6... [more UPDATE: Items Stolen from Florida State University’s Robert M. Ervin Jr. Collection]

It is with great pleasure that the Northern California Chapter (NCC) of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA) announces the winners of the 2021 George Robert Kane Memorial Scholarship, Nicholas Pillsbury and Cecelia Shaw. This year, we had two exceptional candidates who were quite similar. Both were highly recommended, both are currently working as booksellers, and both want to continue in the librarian/special collection field. Because the scholarships combined were less than we normally expend due to the courses being online, we decided to offer both of them a scholarship as they were both so deserving. Nicholas is currently working at Bad Animal Books, a combination bookstore / wine bar / restaurant in Santa Cruz, CA, and is handling all of the rare books online. His experience as a librarian and his M.L.I.S. education has been helpful in the business and he exemplifies the store brand very well. He wants to work as a bookseller for a few more years before possibly working in archives or special collections. Nicholas would like to attend Cal Rare Book School. Cecelia is currently working at Bolerium Books in San Francisco, CA. She is a relatively new employee and is hard working and well-liked by all. She is very interested in the bookselling trade and wants to work at Bolerium for a few years before continuing her academic pursuits. Cecelia used to be a librarian and is fresh out of college, UC Berkeley. She loves the book store and going on sales cal... [more 2021 George Robert Kane Memorial Scholarship]

Meet the latest antiquarian booksellers accepted as members of the ABAA. Full Members: Victoria Dailey, Dailey & Turner Rare Books & Ephemera, Los Angeles, CA Victoria Dailey has rejoined the ABAA as a full member after being an Emeritus Member for a short time. In other news, Victoria has recently been named the Deputy Editor of The Book Collector. Daniel Moyer, Daniel / Oliver Gallery, Brooklyn, NY Dan Moyer is one half of the Brooklyn based gallery Daniel / Oliver (along with co-owner Ollie Lott). Daniel / Oliver handles photographic material and other works on paper, primarily unique collections and comprehensive archives, which chronicle American stories. Dan Moyer is also a playwright and screenwriter. His play “Half Moon Bay” premiered at the Cherry Lane Theatre in NYC and he has written for the Facebook Watch show “Limetown.” Michael Pyron, Michael Pyron, Bookseller, Conshohocken, PA Michael Pyron has been a bookseller for 20 years and has been binding and repairing books for nearly as long. He has been a reader most of his life, but was introduced to the idea (and reality) of the “antiquarian book trade” at Black Swan Books where he worked for more than a decade from 2001-2012. It was also at Black Swan Books where he was introduced to conservation and bookbinding and was offered a steady supply of books that required attention and a boss who gave him plenty of latitude to learn by trial and error—a remarkable gift for someone learning a craft. In Novem... [more New ABAA Members]

The 2021 National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest is now accepting entries! Established in 2005 by Fine Books & Collections Magazine to recognize outstanding book collecting efforts by college and university students, the contest is now sponsored by The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA), the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies (FABS), the Grolier Club, and the Center for the Book and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. The contest aims to encourage young collectors to become accomplished bibliophiles. Book-collecting competitions are held at more than three dozen colleges and universities across the United States, and some of these contests have been conducted for many decades, dating back to Swarthmore College's first competition in the 1920s. All college or university prizewinners are encouraged to enter. Student collectors whose institutions do not offer a book collecting contest may also enter. The contest rules can be viewed here... Applications may be submitted here, and all entries for the 2021 competition must be submitted by June 15, 2021. The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America promotes ethical standards and professionalism in the antiquarian book trade, encourages the collecting and preservation of rare books, and supports education and research. The Fellowship of American Bibliographic Societies was formed in 1993 as a national organization of member book collecting groups. The C... [more National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest 2021]

The Kenneth W. Rendell Collection on the Detection of Forged Handwriting Donated to the Grolier Club. The Grolier Club Library is pleased to announce the receipt of a major gift, the Collection on the Detection of Forged Handwriting, which is the most important and comprehensive collection on the subject known to exist anywhere. The gift is from club members Kenneth W. Rendell and Shirley McNerney. Rendell, a leading dealer in historical letters and documents, has exposed numerous famous forgeries such as the Hitler Diaries fraud, Mussolini's diaries, the Mormon forgeries and murders, and Jack the Ripper's forged diary. This collection was formed over a 60-year period and consists of thousands of forgeries, facsimiles of handwriting, reference books, and archival files concerning major cases in which Rendell has been involved. The collection is wide-ranging, encompassing historical letters and manuscripts from the early 17th century to the modern day. Classic forgeries of Shakespeare, Robert Burns, Schiller, Washington, Lincoln, Franklin, Berlioz, Wagner, Poe and numerous others are included. Rendell made every effort over his long and distinguished career to acquire original examples of past forgers from many sources, including the files of dealers such as Charles Hamilton, Mary Benjamin and Goodspeeds. The gathering together of so many “original” forgeries – often destroyed and notoriously difficult to collect – alongside genuine examples of handwriting and a specia... [more Kenneth W. Rendell Collection on the Detection of Forged Handwriting]

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]

Bibliophiles everywhere are invited to join the hunt for rare books and all manner of fine works on paper March 4-6 during the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America's California Virtual Book Fair. Exhibitors from 14 countries will present a carefully curated collection of more than 4000 books, maps, manuscripts, photographs, and rare historical artifacts. “The ABAA's California International Antiquarian Book Fair has always been the most eclectic and inclusive, and we expect this virtual fair to be no different. More than 150 exhibitors from 14 nations will be offering a diverse array of rare books and fine works on paper. This one's not to be missed,” said Brad Johnson, ABAA President. Exhibitors will offer a rich selection of manuscripts, early American and European literature, modern first editions, children's books, maps and autographs, as well as antiquarian books on history, science, law, architecture, cooking, wine, and a wide range of other topics. Visitors will also be able to interact with book, map, autograph, and ephemera sellers in real time. “The virtual book fairs have been an important way for booksellers and collectors to stay connected during this past year of closures and canceled in-person events, and they have produced a number of unexpected benefits,” said Sheryl Jaeger, ABAA Vice President and Chair, Virtual Book Fair Committee. “The obvious—you don't have to leave home, fly, or pack your wares. The virtual fairs also allow those p... [more Visit the California Virtual Book Fair]

The public programs at the upcoming California Virtual Book Fair have been announced. The events are free, but pre-registration is required. Thursday, March 4 2:00 PM EST: A Matter of Time Join knowledgeable panelists as they explore topics ranging from horology, timepieces, the artistry and history of watchmaking, rare books and archival materials. In partnership with Vacheron Constantin. Jonathan A. Hill is a rare book and manuscript seller specializing in science, medicine, natural history, bibliography, and early printed books. Eric Ku is an internationally renowned collector, expert, and seller of vintage and contemporary watches. Sigrid Offenstein is Collections and Archives Manager for Vacheron Constantin. Register for this event... 3:00 PM EST: Virtual Tour: What's Cooking? WHAT'S COOKING? A virtual tour with our experts in culinary history examining the important cookery books and food- and drink-related ephemera offered at the book fair. Ben Kinmont is an artist, publisher, and antiquarian bookseller specializing in gastronomy. He sells 15th to early 19th century books about food and wine, domestic and rural economy, health, perfume, and the history of taste as Ben Kinmont Bookseller, ABAA. Lynda Claassen is Director of Special Collections & Archives at UC San Diego, which is home to the American Institute of Wine & Food Culinary Collection with more than 7,000 volumes about culinary history. Randall Tarpey Schwed is a collector of books and ephemera primarily relat... [more California Virtual Book Fair Special Programs]