Antiquarian Book Trade Research Articles

Lost, Burned and Recovered: Tracing the Provenance History of a Copy of Caxton’s Golden Legend in the John Rylands Library

Abstract On 29 June 1865, a fire at Sotheby’s in London destroyed extensive libraries prior to their sales. Among them was a copy of William Caxton’s Golden Legend owned by George Offor. This article demonstrates that this copy, hitherto believed to be lost, managed to survive the fire and now is Incunable Collection R4591 in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester. Further evidence confirms that before it was put on sale, Offor used it as ‘a hospital copy’ in order to ‘sophisticate’ other copies of the Golden Legend. This article also argues that prior to Offor’s ownership the copy was in the hands of a publisher and bookseller William Pickering, and he too removed several leaves from it and repurposed them. By filling the gap in the provenance history of this copy, this article throws further light on the antiquarian book trade in the nineteenth century.

The Distant Sound of Book Boats: The Itinerant Book Trade in Jiangnan from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries

The Distant Sound of Book Boats:The Itinerant Book Trade in Jiangnan from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries* Fan Wang (bio) I live near the Terrace of the Top Graduate.Throwing open the windows on all four sides of my little pavilion, I see book boats coming from the Stream of Zha, Carried by the rising tide of last night. – Chen Zhan (1753–1817)1 The morning arrival of book boats was a welcome sight to Chen Zhan, a distinguished scholar and book collector. As he notes in the comment accompanying his poem, there were no book stores in Xiashi, the town in central Haining county northeast of Hangzhou where he was born and lived for many years: these itinerant peddlers were his only commercial source for books. His remark is of interest to book historians on two counts.2 First, it suggests that even in the economically prosperous [End Page 17] and culturally sophisticated Jiangnan area (the lower Yangtze delta), bookstores were uncommon in eighteenth-century China: even a town in Haining, a county renowned for its cultural brilliance, lacked one. Second, we learn that a well-connected scholar and book collector such as Chen Zhan would consider travelling peddlers a regular, reliable means of book acquisition.3 Throwing open the windows of his pavilion, Chen Zhan offers us a rare glimpse of the itinerant booksellers who, complementing the bookstores clustered primarily in market towns and county/prefectural seats, played a significant role in the circulation of books in China at least from the sixteenth century onwards.4 During the three hundred years from the 1570s to the 1870s, the book trade underwent considerable growth and diversification. The expansion and stratification of the book market over this longue durée depended upon a smoothly functioning transportation network, especially in the Jiangnan area. Taking advantage of a water transport system greatly improved during the first half of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and a rapidly emerging money economy, book peddlers contributed to the geographical and social expansion of print culture in Chinese society, linking urban centers of book production with consumers of printed matter living in small towns and villages across the Jiangnan area. With the growing complexity and stratification of the book market, a group of itinerant booksellers also emerged who specialized in rare books and solicited the patronage of literati. As Chen Zhan's poem suggests, the increasingly extensive networks between traveling peddlers and private book collectors facilitated the thriving, elite-oriented antiquarian book trade that gained momentum in the later sixteenth century and peaked in Chen Zhan's lifetime. This article resituates itinerant booksellers and their book boats within the late imperial Chinese bookscape, foregrounding their significance as mediating agents between producers and consumers of books.5 [End Page 18] Substantial research has been done on itinerant book-distribution systems in early modern England, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands.6 But little scholarly attention has been paid to the significant role of book peddlers in late imperial China. This gap in the study of Chinese book culture is all the more unfortunate given the numerous references to book boats and book peddlers left by Chinese collectors and scholars in the form of colophons, miscellaneous notes, essays, correspondence, and poems – a treasure trove of evidence that both suggests the importance of the itinerant book trade in late imperial China and furnishes us with the primary sources needed to reconstruct the economic mechanisms, logistical arrangements, and cultural processes of book peddling. Drawing upon sources ranging from literary works and miscellaneous notes to handwritten colophons and local gazetteers, I sketch a social and cultural profile of the itinerant booksellers in the Jiangnan area from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. A fascinating variety of travelling booksellers inhabited the world of books in this period, from the smalltime peddlers who journeyed from village to village selling shoddy commercial editions to the high-end merchants who dealt in rare editions and frequented the homes of elite scholars. Their social and cultural functions varied as much as their wares and customers. Enterprising travelling booksellers ventured into publishing; intellectually ambitious ones leveraged their book expertise into participation in scholarly debates. Some took...

A Book of Booksellers: Conversations with the Antiquarian Book Trade, 1991–2003. Sheila Markham

Previous articleNext article No AccessBOOK REVIEWSA Book of Booksellers: Conversations with the Antiquarian Book Trade, 1991–2003. Sheila Markham Leslie A. MorrisLeslie A. Morris Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America Volume 102, Number 4DECEMBER 2008 Published for the Bibliographical Society of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/pbsa.102.4.24293698 Views: 6Total views on this site COPYRIGHT © 2008 THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICAPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The antiquarian book trade in the Netherlands during the Second World War

On the eve of the Second World War the antiquarian book trade in the Netherlands was in deep crisis brought about by the worldwide economic malaise following I929. One consequence of this was a catastrophic decline in the status of the antiquarian bookseller almost to that of rag-and-bone man. In I935 the energetic Menno Hertzberger founded 'his' Nederlandsche Vereeniging van Antiquaren to improve the situation, but this failed to make over-full storerooms any emptier. With the outbreak of war much was to change, not all of it for the bad. For the many Jewish dealers - some of whom had already fled here from Nazi Germany - work was made impossible. They lost their livelihood and sometimes also their lives. But trade in 'old & rare' books flourished as never before. Never was more read or were old books more avidly sought after than in the dark days of I940-5. And when the war was over and the period of reconstruction had begun, it became apparent that in many respects the character of Holland's antiquarian book trade had changed: it was now more businesslike and looked more strongly towards the English-speaking world, including its approach to bibliography. The new-style antiquarian was, or at least wished henceforth to be, a specialist scholar, the equal of the academic librarian.

The Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL): The European Printed Archive

The Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) was formally constituted in 1994 with the aim of enabling European research libraries to collaborate on assembling the printed heritage of the hand press period in Europe and the wider world for the benefit of scholarship. On the tenth anniversary of its foundation, the Hand Press Book Database is now a substantial resource, and research libraries from all parts of Europe and beyond are investing in developing this important resource for early European printed material. The Consortium's original focus has extended to embrace other initiatives sought by scholars such as a multi-lingual thesaurus for place, author and imprint names in early printed material, a manuscripts and print search facility, and member services. Steps have been taken to determine the exact niche that the Consortium should seek to fill within a European ‘information landscape’, and in the wider sphere of international scholarship. A vital aspect of further development is to extend membership as widely as possible to research libraries, book historians, the antiquarian book trade, individual researchers and all those concerned with the early written heritage of Europe. An important step in this direction is widening membership to include libraries and important European historical collections in countries in the wider ‘diaspora’.

INTRODUCTION

The 45th Annual Preconference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries was titled “Ebb & Flow: The Migration of Collections to American Libraries.” From June 21–June 24, 2004, on the campus of Yale University, speakers addressed a variety of topics around this theme. Plenary speakers addressed the migration of books to North America during the colonial period, the development of university library collections in the nineteenth century, the epic collecting of J. Pierpont Morgan, and the post-World War II antiquarian book trade. Alice Prochaska, Yale University librarian, opened the conference with . . .

<i>Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade</i>, by Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador

<i>Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade</i>, by Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador

Out-of-print and secondhand: A view of the antiquarian book trade.

In this essay I seek to describe some of the workings of the secondhand and antiquarian book trade relating to Africa, in which I've been involved for twenty years. I apologise in advance if the account appears overly autobiographical, but in a sense there is no alternative to this method of presentation: there is no standard path to becoming a bookseller, no course on which to enrol and no qualification to achieve, as there is with librarianship. Those involved in the field become so for all number of reasons, those who stay involved do so through a love of books that sometimes borders on a passion, a passion mirroring that of their most avid customers. Lurking beneath the bookseller exterior we often find the nascent psychology of that fascinating species, the book collector. (Incidentally, I've never been happy with the term ‘Africana’, which in any case, and according to the Oxford English Dictionary definition, relates particularly to books on Southern or South Africa; however there seems to be no alternative label, and when it came to register a name for a new website, it was this that I chose. Nevertheless it throws up some odd expressions, including one I saw in a catalogue some years ago, which described an item as “An interesting and unusual Africanum”.)

The Time of My Life

Wojciech Zalewski, Stanford University Libraries' Curator Emeritus for Slavic and East European Collections, recalls significant people and events in his career, which spanned the years 1971-1999. He also discusses the many areas in which changes occurred during these years, including the antiquarian book trade; Western book dealers who left the business, others who struggled and succeeded, and new book businesses that arose; book exchanges; the birth of American Slavic librarians' organizations; and the beginning of true professional contacts between Western Slavic librarians and librarians in the region.

The impact of Internet trading on the UK antiquarian and second‐hand bookselling industry

This paper investigates the impact of the Internet upon the UK second‐hand and antiquarian book trade. Questionnaires were sent to all 681 UK members of the industry’s largest and most prominent association (PBFA) and 355 responses were received. To ensure depth as well as breadth of knowledge, in‐depth interviews were also conducted with ten companies. The results showed that, overall, e‐commerce presents an opportunity rather than a threat to this traditional retailing sector. Pre‐existing database management and distribution skills made the industry well suited to Internet trading. The number of companies trading on‐line was five times greater than the UK industry average and the booksellers were highly satisfied with the results. Not only did 90 per cent of survey respondents with Web sites consider that their aims in setting them up had been met in whole or in part, but 20 per cent of respondents derived more than 30 per cent of their sales from Internet trading. Moreover, 68 per cent of on‐line respondents stated that in their opinion their Web sites had resulted in overall business profits increasing. Predicted threats posed by the Internet such as reduced prices and margins, causing offence to existing customers and distribution system difficulties presented risks but could not outweigh the benefits of Internet trading.

The Antiquarian Book Trade in Britain 1695—1830: The Use of Auction and Booksellers' Catalogues

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Antiquarian Book Trade in Britain 1695—1830: The Use of Auction and Booksellers' CataloguesRichard LandonRichard Landon Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America Volume 89, Number 4DECEMBER 1995BOOK CATALOGUES, TODAY AND TOMORROW: REPORTS AND PRESENTATIONS FROM THE 1995 BSA CONFERENCE Published for the Bibliographical Society of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/pbsa.89.4.24304319 Views: 10Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref COPYRIGHT © 1995 THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICAPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Michael F. Suarez, SJ, Michael L. Turner The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, (Sep 2010).https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521810173

Out-of-print searching and buying: Bookquest vs. typed lists

This paper compares Cornell 's experience in getting out-of-print titles using BookQuest as opposed to using lists generated in-house and sent to antiquarian booksellers and the Library Bookseller, a publication based in Berkeley, California, that advertises in the antiquarian book trade on behalf of libraries

The librarian/bibliophile and the antiquarian/op books from the publisher's perspective

John J. Walsdorf took the route of professional librarianship and then bookselling as a career. Jack, as he is most often called, received his Master of Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His first professional job was with the Milwaukee Public Library system. He spent a year with the Oxford City Library system in England, where he left librarianship to join the Oxford-based bookselling company of B.H. Blackwell, Ltd., of Oxford, England. Jack's hobbies include reading, writing, antique collecting and book collecting. His major subject collections include William Morris and the Kelmscott Press, T.J. Cobden-Sanderson and the Doves Press, and a number of author collections, including Larry McMurtry, Anne Tyler, Willie Morris, T.J. Wise, August Derleth, Julian Symons, and Charles Dickens. Among his publications are: William Morris: A Descriptive Bibliography of Books by and about William Morris (1983), Ed.; Printers on Morris (1981); Men in Printing: Anglo-American Profiles (1976); A Collector's Choice, William Morris in Private Press in Great Britain (1969); and The Antiquarian Book Trade in Great Britain (1969). He has also been a contributor to other books: Advances in Understanding Approval and Gathering Plans in Academic Libraries (1980), and Shaping Library Collections for the 1980s (1980). Jack is currently working on a bibliography of the major English mystery writer and critic, Julian Symons, due for publication in 1991. His activities as an author and collector have resulted in exhibitions of his collections at such diverse institutions as UCLA, Baylor University, Louisiana State University, University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee, and George Washington University. He is also the only Oregonian to have membership in the Grolier Club of New York City.

A report on the keynote address of Jacob L. Chernofsky

Jake Chernofsky is listed in the 1984 Who's Who in America as a “trade magazine editor, publisher,” but he is more than that. He has been editor and publisher of AB Bookman's Weekly since 1975. Before joining the magazine, Jake was a journalist working for weekly and daily newspapers and wire services in various parts of the country. Jake has served on the National Advisory Board of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, as well as having held membership in several bibliographic and printing history organizations. Jake has lectured on various aspects of the antiquarian book trade in the United States, England, and Russia. He has been co-director of the nationally know Out-of-Print & Antiquarian Book Market Seminar held annually at the University of Denver since its inception in 1979. He has also represented AB Bookman's Weekly at national conventions such as last year's Dallas convention and the ACRL convention in Cincinnati.

Hermann Ernst Ludewig: America's Forgotten Bibliographer. Book Arts Press Occasional Publication, 3. Michael WinshipThe Gentle Invasion: Continental Emigré Booksellers of the Thirties and Forties and Their Impact on the Antiquarian Booktrade in the United States. Book Arts Press Occasional Publication, 4. Bernard M. Rosenthal

Previous articleNext article No AccessSHORT NOTICESHermann Ernst Ludewig: America's Forgotten Bibliographer. Book Arts Press Occasional Publication, 3. Michael Winship The Gentle Invasion: Continental Emigré Booksellers of the Thirties and Forties and Their Impact on the Antiquarian Booktrade in the United States. Book Arts Press Occasional Publication, 4. Bernard M. Rosenthal PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America Volume 83, Number 2JUNE 1989 Published for the Bibliographical Society of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/pbsa.83.2.24303733 Views: 1Total views on this site COPYRIGHT 1989 THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICAPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Literature of Science and Technology Approached Historically Southampton University Library Occasional Paper No 4

R V Turley Southampton: University 1973 pp 23 price £0.60 This guide comprises 15 pages (A4 size) devoted to helping an undergraduate find his way into scientific literature, for the purpose of studying the history of a science, not the practice of it. Four additional pages are concerned with the disposition in the Southampton University Library of the works cited; the classification scheme used by the Library of Congress; a note on collecting history of science books; and a guide to the antiquarian book trade.

German Antiquarian Booktrade

German Antiquarian Booktrade