We have received news of a theft from a private residence in Sharon, CT. Missing is a set of Lutheran bibles, dated mid-17thC, no fewer than 6, no more than 8, each measuring 15" tall, 12" wide and 4.5" thick, each with a metal clasp. The title below has been lifted from a description of the same title currently available on ABE. While we are not sure of the date, there were evidently five editions of this title between 1555 and 1600. Der Erste (-Achte) Teil aller Bücher und Schrifften des thewren/seligen Mans Gottes Doct. Mart. Lutheri/vom XVII. jar an/bis auff das XXII. Zum Vierdten mal gedruct , nebst Index. Martin Luther (* 10.11.1483 in Eisleben, Graftschaft Mansfeld; + 18.02.1546 ebenda) Published by Thomas Rebarts Erben / Donatum Richtzenhan, 1572 Individuals with information on this theft can contact: Tpr Jeremy Ribadeneyra Connecticut State Police Troop B 463 Ashley Falls Rd North Canaan, CT 860-626-1820 x1033 [more Theft of Bibles from Sharon, CT]

Denver has its very own "Booksellers' Row" after the relocation of two ABAA members, Anderson Butler Rare Books and Gallagher Books. Anderson Butler Rare Books has opened and Gallagher Books has re-opened after moving seven doors South of their previous location. Anderson Butler Rare Books relocated to Denver from Seattle a year ago and have just rented the storefront at 1460 South Broadway. Mark Anderson has been in the antiquarian book business since 2001. Mark's wife, Nora Butler Anderson, joined him in the business in 2008. The original store opened on the second-floor of a Seattle building in 2010. Now in its new street-level incarnation on Antique Row, Anderson Butler Rare Books specializes in antiquarian, collectible and eclectic books, manuscripts, art and ephemera across many fields including Americana, Literature, Travel and Philosophy. They are especially interested in books relating to the Culture of Time: Almanacs and Calendars, Astrology and Divination, and Horology. Anderson Butler Rare Books, 1460 South Broadway, Denver. Inside Anderson Butler Rare Books. Gallagher Books was started by Don and Sue Gallagher in 1994 in the Antique Guild that used to be at the corner of Louisiana and Broadway. After 12 years in that location, the Guild was redeveloped and Gallaghers moved to the 1400 block of the row where they had a shop for 10 years. Now they are in the new location just two doors from Anderson Butler. Don died in the spring of 2015 and Sue has continued the b... [more Denver’s Booksellers’ Row]

ABAA member Kenneth Karmiole has donated $100,000 to the Book Club of California to endow an annual lecture series entitled “The Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Lecture on the History of the Book Trade in California and the West.” The lecture series will focus on the book trade — printing, publishing, and bookselling — over the past two centuries. Planning for the inaugural lecture (tentatively planned for the final quarter of 2017) is under way, and details will be announced next year. Kenneth Karmiole is a philantrophist and antiquaraian bookseller. He has been a member of the Book Club of California since 1976 and is currently serving on its board of directors. The Book Club of California said, “Mr. Karmiole's leadership and vision are inspiring. His initiative, and in particular his generous endowment — the first of its kind for this institution — will significantly bolster the Book Club of California's ongoing efforts to engage high-profile speakers and scholars whose research and writing enlarge our understanding of the history of the book and book culture in the West.” --- Kenneth Karmiole talked with the ABAA about his bookselling career in 2014: Image of Kenneth Karmiole credit: Joanie Harmon - UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies [more Kenneth Karmiole Endows New Lecture Series]

Thanks to the ABAA for hosting the first (but not last) networking event for women in the book trade at this year's Boston Antiquarian Book Fair, the inaugural program in the ABAA's Women in Bookselling Initiative. The Boston gathering was inspired by a series of lively events in London this year, the first one organized by the women of Maggs, with later events sponsored by Peter Harrington, Quaritch, and (next up) Daniel Crouch. We were also motivated by ongoing conversations about the place of women in the trade at the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS) and York Antiquarian Book Seminar (YABS) this summer. Ashley Wildes (Between the Covers), Alanna Miles (Caliban), and Kim Schwenk (Lux Mentis) Our point of departure is this: while individual women have played key roles in the American book trade for at least a century, they remain under-represented at the top. The 2016 ABAA directory lists only 62 women as full members. What can we do to make the trade more inclusive and welcoming, and to encourage women booksellers to aim higher? How can we see more women represented on the ABAA Board of Governors? The recent adoption by the ABAA membership of a Code of Conduct addressing sexual harassment was a necessary start. In the larger picture, we hope to encourage collaboration and mentorship between women at different levels of the trade, all of whom face the daily challenge of “not looking like a rare book dealer” in a profession where the ability to project authority i... [more ABAA Women in Bookselling Initiative Launches in Boston]

The Antiquarian and Rare Bookseller Today: The Decline of the On-the-street Bookshop and Its Consequence Overheard at a recent book fair, one bookseller to another: “Business used to be a lot more fun.” The role of the old, rare, and antiquarian bookseller has changed greatly in recent decades, from a rich brick and mortar presence in every major city of the U.S. to almost no physical bookshops on the street today. In the 1970s and '80s, there were important bookshops centrally located in every major city of the United States. Many of these shops gathered in “book rows.” In New York, for example, there were dozens of bookshops on 4th Avenue alone. Presently there are, according to the ABAA, two large full-service antiquarian books in New York City: Argosy and the Strand. Of the 39 New York City ABAA booksellers, 29 are open by appointment only; of the 10 remaining who keep open business hours, six have offices, not storefronts. There are, of course, other booksellers, mostly used and out-of-print dealers who are not in the ABAA, but the ratio is undoubtedly similar to the above. At present, there is no large brick and mortar full-service antiquarian or rare bookshop on the streets of Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., downtown Philadelphia, or Dallas. Booksellers now operate from home or office with few or no walk-in clients. The ability to meet potential new clients is limited to exhibiting in the expensive and competitive antiquarian book fair cir... [more Book Collecting in the United States (Part 2)]

The box containing letters apparently taken by unknown persons from outside residence: John Muir ALS August 2, 1908 to Mr Young August 20, 1904 to Mr Ray April 11, 1909 to W G Chapman Feb 9, 1910 to H L Abbott April 12, 1906 to an editor If offered, please contact ABAA Member George Houle. [more Missing: 5 John Muir Letters Shipped by UPS to Montello, WI]

The focus around the office and blog has been the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair for the past few weeks. Now that the fair is over, here's a roundup of the big stories book collectors are talking about. Shakespeare Canon Expands, and Co-Authors Named -- The biggest news in some time comes from the editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare, who have concluded that up to 17 of "Shakespeare's" plays were written collaboratively, and have named Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kidd as official co-authors of several plays! Not only that, but the "Shakespeare" canon has been expanded to include several additional plays, including the previously anonymous Arden of Faversham and The Spanish Tragedy, now thought to have been a collaboration between Thomas Kidd and Shakespeare. Read more... Thomas Beckett's Personal Book of Psalms Found -- Do we need to add "alledgedly"? Former President of ABAA Robert D. Fleck Dies -- We collected some touching tributes from members here... F. Scott Fitzgerald's Last Unpublished Stories Coming to Print in 2017 -- Some unpublished stories and pieces from the later part of his career when he writing in Hollywood and lacking in confidence. Dealers Unite Against Thefts of Rare Books -- The New York Times shone a light into the world of rare books and showcased how effective the "tight community of bibliophiles and antique book dealers" are at shutting down the potential market for stolen rare books. ASU Libraries Acquire Collection of Early Renaissance Texts -- C... [more Rare Books News]

In February of 1964, in my freshman American Literature Survey Class, I first encountered Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Our teacher was Daniel Hoffman, a worthy poet, critic, and educator who'd go on to publish two dozen books, one of which, Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe was nominated for the National Book Award. All in all, a serious customer. At that time, furthermore, he was 41 years of age, at the height of his powers as a teacher. Sparks flew as he paced in front of his desk, expounding on Jonathan Edwards, Fenimore Cooper, Poe, the Transcendentalists – inspiring us, challenging us, prying us loose from our childish preconceptions, frightening us, taking us places no teacher had ever taken us. And then we got to Moby Dick. He started right off by reading us a chapter. As I recall it was “The Honor and The Glory of Whaling” – one of those intermediary chapters that expands the scope of the story through space and time to the realm of gods and myths. It was the first time and, until just recently, the last time I'd ever heard the book read aloud. And of course, it had a profound effect. With those words still ringing in our ears, he went on to demonstrate how each of the themes resonated back through the book, strands in a mighty cable such as the one Father Mapple spins in his sermon. We youngsters, of course, were utterly gobsmacked by this performance, for it was as much a performance as it was a lecture. At the end of that first hour, Professor Hoffman told us pro... [more A Boy & His Book: Moby Dick]

“Lynd Ward was way ahead of his time, a visionary, in understanding the importance of the book as an object, as a container of a kind of content. His books were made with great attention to that container and he worked within it as precisely as a concrete poet works with language.” — Art Spiegelman The so-called graphic novel -- which may be no more than a successful rebranding of comics -- has become a very popular genre, with its own bestseller list in the New York Times, and growing shelfspace in new book stores. In light of this new-found prominence and respectability, it's interesting to look back at the precursors to the graphic novel, the stages the idea of the illustrated novel-length story went through before settling into the form we current know. One of these stages was the wordless novel, in particular the work of American Lynd Ward, who was both an influential illustrator of children's books (he won a Caldecott Award) and a pioneer of the wordless novel. Lynd Kendall Ward grew up in Chicago and studied Fine Arts at college in New York in the early 1920s. A year studying wood engraving in Germany in 1926-'27 led to his discovery of Frans Masereel's wordless novel The Sun (1919). Told in a series of woodcuts without any words, the concept spoke to the young American artist. He returned to the U.S. in late 1927, where he began his career as an illustrator by working on drawings for Dorothy Rowe's The Begging Deer: Stories of Japanese Children. In 1929, Ward ca... [more Lynd Ward and the Wordless Novel]

A theft of a number of maps and prints focused on Arctic Exploration, Ethnography, and Circumpolar Navigation has been reported in Juneau, Alaska. Please contact our offices at the ABAA if you have any information reguarding these items. [more Stolen in Juneau, Alaska]