We are thrilled to announce that the winners of this year's National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest: First Prize: Katya Soll, University of Kansas, Dictatorship, Recovery, and Innovation: Contemporary Theatre of the Southern Cone Second Prize: Hanna Kipnis King, Swarthmore College, "Plucked from a holy book": Ashkenazim on the margins Third Prize: Audrey Golden, University of Virginia, Pablo Neruda and the Global Politics of Poetry First Prize Katya Soll, Dictatorship, Recovery and Innovation: Contemporary Theater of the Southern Cone Missouri native Katya Soll is a doctoral candidate in Theatre and Spanish at the University of Kansas. Her collection focuses on how theater has been a conduit through which citizens in South America's Southern Cone have protested, absorbed, and recovered from dictatorship and oppression. Many parts of the collection were purchased during research trips to Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. Second Prize Hanna Kipnis King, "Plucked from a holy book": Ashkenazim on the Margins Hanna Kipnis King is a student at Swarthmore College and the winner of Swarthmore's A. Edward Newton Book Collection Competition. Her collection deals with the disenfranchised members of the Ashkenazi Jewish community, and how they have dealt with inadequate acceptance within its culture and traditions. Hanna gravitates to the poets, zinesters, novelists, theologians, and diarists; those that are writing in divergent and deeply personal ways of their experiences of misogyny,... [more National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest Announces 2014 Winners]

To mark the 75th Anniversary of 1939, we've asked some ABAA members to discuss publications from that momentous year. Jim Dourgarian, a specialist in Steinbeck (among other authors), recounts his experiences reading and selling The Grapes of Wrath. The 1930s were a turbulent and momentous decade for John Steinbeck. He published such diverse and quality books as The Pastures of Heaven, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, and finally, on April 14, 1939, his masterpiece— The Grapes of Wrath. I had been introduced to Steinbeck as a high school freshman. My English teacher said we could read only one of his books per semester because he was “too brutal,” but brutal was exactly what I wanted. I was hooked. Steinbeck spoke for the underdog, the oppressed— and that was me! And many of the people who populated his books seemed to be my people. Both sets of my grandparents were poor. They struggled mightily, all while maintaining their dignity and belief in hard work. Eventually I read The Grapes of Wrath. It's a 600-page book, and I am not a speed reader, but I liked the story. And I even liked wading through the inner chapters wherein Steinbeck writes of man's struggle and agricultural politics. I probably read it for the first time in the equally turbulent 1960s. Comparing those decades, the 1930s and the 1960s, was a revelation. Not much had changed. The Man still oppressed the people. The fear of communism was ever-present. Rage against the Mac... [more 1939: The Grapes of Wrath]

Coming soon: Catalogue 108 from Aleph-Bet Books, offering 500 collectible and rare children's and illustrated books. Ten Pound Island Co. just released Maritime List 225, entitled 'Old, Rare and Short'. Click here to browse. Tavistock Books recently issued 'A Catalogue of Catalogues'. Click here to browse. Kenneth Karmiole Bookseller, Inc. has issued "New Miscellany #38", a 16 page catalog of recent acquisitions. Edward T. Pollack's list of items he presented at the Brooklyn Antiques & Book Fair. Click here to browse. Brian Cassidy, Bookseller's latest catalogue, Fifty Cool Things Somewhat Haphazardly Arranged, includes strong selections of artists' books, Beat literature, punk and post-punk publications, and more. Click here to browse. The Boston Book Company just released their September New Arrivals list. Click here to browse. Ken Lopez Bookseller just released Catalogue 163. Click here to browse. E. M. Maurice Books' Autumn Catalog, Number 48, is available. Click here to browse. John Windle Antiquarian Bookseller is pleased to announce Catalogue 60: Books from a San Francisco Private Library, a major collection containing rare books and manuscripts in several fields, to be issued in parts throughout the year. Parts 1-3 have already been released; contact John to request existing parts or to be notified about new releases. E.K. Schreiber Rare Books has released their short list for September. Click here to browse. David M. Lesser, Fine Antiquarian Books LLC released Catal... [more September Catalogue and List Announcements]

The American Antiquarian Society was recently awarded the National Humanities Medal. We caught up with the Society's director, Ellen S. Dunlap, to hear all about it. Founded in 1812, the Society houses American books, broadsides, newspapers, graphics, and ephemera from first contact through 1876, and more selectively in manuscript collections. The award was given “for safeguarding the American story. Through more than two centuries, the Society has amassed an unparalleled collection of historic American documents, served as a research center to scholars and students alike, and connected generations of Americans to their cultural heritage.” Ellen and her colleague Matthew Shakespeare were returning from a business trip when she received a call from the NEH's acting director offering the award. The nomination process is somewhat secret, but usually is a collaboration between the NEH and the White House. Though Ellen was unaware that AAS was on the short-list, the organization has received NEH grants on numerous occasions and more than forty previous medal recipients were or are currently elected members of AAS. Ellen accepted on behalf of the Society and two weeks later was en route to the ceremony in Washington, DC with Bill Reese and Sid Lapidus in tow. They rubbed elbows with noteworthy folks like actor Morgan Freeman, singer Linda Ronstadt, literary critic M.H. Abrams, writer Julia Alvarez, and talk-radio host Diane Rehm. A full list of winners is here. She even got to ... [more American Antiquarian Society Receives National Humanities Medal]

When I began selling rare books as a career, I specialized in English literature. More specifically, I specialized in Virginia Woolf and the eccentric writers, artists, and bohemians that made up her inner circle, the Bloomsbury Group. Mrs. Dalloway is, after all, my favorite book, and I dreamed of one day coming across a special association piece- perhaps something owned by a Bloomsbury group member, or a book from Virginia's own library. This dream came to fruition last fall, when I was able to purchase ten books from the library of Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf's sister. They came by way of Bell's two surviving granddaughters. Of association material, these are significant not just for familial and personal value, but also for literary value: Vanessa, Virginia's only sister and confidante, was also her chief dust jacket designer. This very special material lends value for research, giving us a glimpse into how these writers and artists lived, and additionally, how their books lived. How were their books regarded? Are they well-preserved, or worn to shreds? Are they dog-eared and full of marginalia, or barely touched? In the case of these ten books, I've been half-jokingly calling them “artist's copies,” because most of them are rather worn and damaged, with tattered dust jackets if the jackets had been preserved at all. But if pieces of the dust jackets did survive, interestingly enough, the portions that bore Vanessa's designs were the parts that were preserved. Three ... [more The Intrinsic Value of Association Material]

Last Friday PBS NewsHour did a feature on a fine press printing of Walt Whitman's seminal poetry collection Leaves of Grass. The limited edition is being published by Arion Press and produced in the same way the first edition was produced on 1855-- on a movable-type printing press. [more Fine Press Printing of Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ Released]

Last month I bought three pamphlets about a murder that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1830. It was a sensational affair in its day, a victory for prosecutor Daniel Webster, and an interesting sidelight in the history of American jurisprudence. But that was not why I bought the pamphlets. In 1829 William Low of Salem was sent to Canton to manage the affairs of Russell & Co. the great American China Trade firm. He brought his wife along and, to keep her company, his twenty-year-old niece, Harriett Low. Happily for posterity, Harriett kept a detailed diary of her years in China. The Low household was a center of social life for American traders in Canton, and Harriett saw, and wrote about, everyone of importance in that group. Her diary was excerpted in Emma Liones's classic book China Trade Post-Bag, and reprinted in its entirety about fifteen years ago as Lights and Shadows in Macao Life. She met Robert Bennett Forbes, AKA “Black Ben,” author of one of the great American autobiographies, his brother John Murray, who would go on to become one of the great commercial minds in American history, and George Chinnery the eccentric and gifted painter (the old lech was sweet on Harriett and painted a lovely portrait of her. I visit it every once in a while at the Peabody Essex Museum), and Robert Morrison, the great missionary and translator, and William Hunter, a young American who went native and penned one of the liveliest accounts of China Trade life. She fell in love ... [more The Novel I Never Wrote]

Printed American broadsides of the 18th and 19th centuries—what we might think of today as “posters”—were an important public means of spreading news and information within a community. A broadside might print a political manifesto, a religious sermon, a military declaration, news of a great battle, or a Presidential proclamation. A broadside might advertise a newly arrived shipment of goods or a new production of a play or circus. Merchants and inventors used broadsides to sell their wares or to attract investors. American broadsides fall under the broader category of historical ephemera—printed items created and intended only for temporary, fleeting use. These ephemeral artifacts documented the beliefs, activities, and concerns of a very specific time and place in American history. Eighteenth and nineteenth century American broadsides were public notices and announcements; mass media in an age where the “worlds” in which men and women lived were much smaller and less connected. From an American broadside circa 1854 printed in Charleston, South Carolina. Illustrated broadsides from 18th and 19th century America are desirable, as are broadsides lettered in color. Unlike a book, a broadside's authorship often was anonymous or obliquely suggested. This broadside from the American Civil War denounces Copperheads, those individuals whom's loyalty to the Union cause was of dubious nature. (Image detail) By the 20th century, printing technologies in America had grown ... [more American Broadsides, History on a Sheet of Paper]

The making of catalogs is on my mind tonight. I just put my own nineteenth catalog to bed — it left for the printer's an hour ago, a massive thing by my standards; over a hundred pages, just shy of two hundred-fifty items, all pictured. Research and cataloguing aside, lots of work goes into a catalog like that. The last two weeks at Lorne Bair Rare Books have been spent frantically photographing, photo-editing, laying-out, and proofreading. None of which I would describe as traditional “booksellerly” vocations — in fact, I'm not sure a single new book has gotten catalogued around here in the interval — but there we are. The New Antiquarian (if I may be so bold) finds himself going to great lengths these days to sell a book. Not that there's anything “new” about rare book catalogs! For a few hundred years they were the standard medium through which antiquarian books were distributed. But then (you've heard this one before) came the internet. Not everyone stopped printing catalogs when on-line bookselling came to prominence, but many did. Those of us who continued putting them out were looked on with a bit of suspicion by some of our more progressive colleagues, as though we weren't quite getting with the program. Now, it seems, there's a bit of a resurgence in printed catalogs — I'm seeing more of them lately, many from dealers new to the scene. Clearly there's something up. I'm not certain exactly how many of my colleagues issue printed catalogues, but I'm cer... [more What My Friends Think I Do: Part II In A Series]

I'm from Maryland and John Waters is my favorite famous hometown boy. (I'm reading his new hitchhiking memoir Carsick now.) I serendipitously met him once at a gallery in P-town and he was just as engaging one-on-one as he is in this video—a recent interview from the LIVE from the NYPL series. Unsurprisingly, Waters is a great story-teller and in it, he talks about his book collection (think counter-culture and LGBT literature with punny titles) and name-checks our friends at Bolerium Books. He also discusses the problems institutions face when collecting material that is no longer "PC" or otherwise considered distasteful. -Susan Benne [more John Waters, Charm City Book Collector]