Edit: You can view a recording of this event here: -- -- The Brown Bag Lunch Series, presented by the ABAA Gender Equity Initiative, is a series of short virtual talks covering various topics, from crash courses in areas of expertise to best business practices. Please join the Gender Equity Initiative on Zoom on November 8th, 2023, at 2 PM ET for a Brown Bag Lunch Series with Joyce Kosofsky from Brattle Book Shop. November 8th @ 2pm Joyce Kosofsky - Brattle Book Shop "How to keep a used bookstore running—It's a business." People always say that they'd love to run a bookstore. Joyce has been doing that (along with her husband, Ken Gloss) since 1978. There's not a lot of sitting around and reading (if any). It's a lot of work. Physical and mental. There's stocking stock (books are heavy), dealing with customers and other dealers, and poop in the lot. There's the physical aspect of the building's upkeep and the emotional toll when it all burns down (literally) and starts all over from scratch. What Joyce would like to share is a brief timeline of the past 45 years of running a used bookshop with all its faults. Joyce Kosofsky grew up in Boston and attended UMass/Amherst, graduating with a BA in Journalism. She worked as a cub reporter for a local daily newspaper, then at an advertising trade journal, and then at the Boston Phoenix newspaper. Joyce decided she did not like journalism, so she took a break. Ken (her husband) asked her to help out at the bookshop. That was in 1978... [more Brown Bag Lunch Series: Joyce Kosofsky]

The 45th Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair returns to the Hynes Convention Center in Boston's Back Bay, October 27-29, 2023. (More details here...) Celebrating its 45th year, this three-day event features fine and rare printed material from around the globe, including illuminated manuscripts, modern first editions, childrens books, ephemera, photographs, maps and autographs, as well as antiquarian books on a vast array of topics brought to you by members of the ABAA and ILAB. Here is a selection of the items our exhibitors will be offering at the Fair... . Child's own Book. Kindlein's Lieblingsbuch. Le favori des enfants. Images indéchirables. Indestructible pictures. Anzerreissbare Bilder. Small 4to (200 × 165 mm), pp. ; illustrated throughout, hand-coloured lithographed leaves; original publisher's illustrated cloth (reproducing the title-page), a few marks. First edition of quite possibly the first German children's book to be printed on cloth, thereby making it 'indestructible' for giving to small children. Geissler (1802–1872), a children's book illustrator, began publishing children's books and ephemera in Nuremberg in 1830. The fact that the title is given in English, German, and French shows he must have had an eye on the export market. Offered by Simon Beattie Ltd., booth 116. Reichenbach (Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig) Album of drawings and watercolours of nocturnal birds, , c.1880 An album with 127 fine original illustrations of nocturnal birds, most in wat... [more Boston Book Fair: Featured Items]

The Library of Congress named Stephanie Stillo the new chief of the Library's Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Stillo joined the Library in 2016 and previously served as the curator of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection and the Aramont Library — two of the division's notable collections. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division is North America's largest collection of rare books. Spanning eras and subjects, its holdings include nearly 1 million books, broadsides, pamphlets, theater playbills, title pages, prints, posters, photographs, and medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. President Thomas Jefferson's library is at the center of the collection, which was sold to Congress in 1815. As division chief, Stillo will lead the collection's development, stewardship, interpretation, promotion, and service to meet the needs of government officials, scholars and the public. During her time at the Library, Stillo has collaborated with division staff to launch several engagement initiatives — including the division's first crowdsourcing campaign and two large symposiums — as well as the Artists and Archives program, which manages an archivist every year to process archival arrearage relating to the contemporary book arts. She also oversees the division's popular video series “From the Vaults” and co-manages the division's blog, Bibliomania. “Over the past seven years as Curator of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection and the Aramont Library, I have had the p... [more Library of Congress Names Stephanie Stillo Chief of Rare Book and Special Collections]

Mystery Pier Books on Hollywood's famed Sunset Boulevard has no shortage of celebrity clients, and their instagram account captures some of the famous faces that visit their shop in search of first editions, from Margot Robbie to Johnny Depp, and from Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (a faithful client and good friend for 25 years) to the great director Guillermo del Toro. But a recent post bears witness to perhaps their highest-profile client yet: His Holiness, Pope Francis. While His Holiness did not visit the store in person, a personal friend of the Pope's is a long-time customer of Mystery Pier, and they came to owners Harvey and Louis Jason seeking a very specific book as a gift for the Pope. The Jasons sourced the book in question, a 1845 first-edition of St. Ignatius Loyola's “Spiritual Exercises” in Spanish, from another ABAA member, Owen Kubik, owner of Kubik's Fine Books. And His Holiness was very pleased when presented with the gift. In fact, Harvey and Louis Jason have received two blessed rosaries from Pope Francis in thanks for their services. [more Mystery Pier Books Blessed by Pope Francis]

Meet the latest antiquarian booksellers accepted as members of the ABAA. New Full Members: Donald Lippincott, Open Boat Booksellers Don Lippincott is a lifelong New Englander and has been involved in the book trade since 2011. Patrick Olson, Patrick Olson Rare Books Patrick Olson has been indulging an interest in old books since high school. He first joined the rare book trade in Chicago in 2003, during his junior year of college. Four years later, after receiving his MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he embarked upon a decade-long detour holding a variety of professional positions working with rare books: as a rare book cataloger at the University of Illinois and MIT, as a curator at the University of Iowa, and then as a curator and eventually Head of Special Collections at Michigan State University. For six years, he taught rare book cataloging for the University of Illinois's Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Patrick returned to the trade, under his own name, in 2018. He specializes in early print in all fields, with a particular fondness for unusual continental material. Richard Thorner, Resser-Thorner Americana Richard Thorner of Resser-Thorner Americana first exhibited as a specialist in paper/ephemera at several New England shows in 1993. His “paper roots,” however, are verifed as having started around 1972, through a childhood photograph of him examing a library of books purchased by his mo... [more The Latest Members of the ABAA]

Rare book donations are being sought for an auction to help "turn the page" on Russian aggression in Ukraine. Helping Ukrainian Books and Booksellers (HUBB for short) is preparing an international rare book sale to support colleagues under fire in Ukraine. They have scheduled an online auction for mid-November and are actively seeking donations of rare and collectible books, manuscripts, artwork, and ephemera. HUBB was founded by Mitchell Kaplan, Jane Unrue of Scholars at Risk, Carolyn Forche, Christopher Merrill, and Askold Melnyczuk shortly after the start of the war. The group has contacted Oleksandr Afonin, president of the Ukrainian Publishers and Booksellers Association (UBPA) to offer assistance. So far, they've raised over $30,000. HUBB recently distributed $10,000 among some 60 publishers and booksellers across Ukraine. Afonin says that these modest grants have made a big impact on individuals whose lives have been disrupted by the war. In the second round, Ukrainian libraries were invited to apply for grants to fund new books. Melnyczuk reports that HUBB has been able to fund 30 out of the nearly 1,000 applications. "Right now, we're asking supporters to aid our effort by donating a rare or collectible book, manuscript, photograph, artwork, or item of ephemera from their personal collection, which Catalog Sale will put up for online auction in mid-November," Melnyczuk says. "This is an immediate opportunity for booksellers, dealers, and collectors to directly aid th... [more Rare Book Donations Sought for Auction to Benefit Ukranian Booksellers]

ABAA-member Kenneth Gloss, an internationally known rare book specialist and appraiser who runs the Brattle Book Shop in Boston and appears on national TV, will speak at New York's Grolier Club to talk about the "improbable finds" of his decades-long career. The presentation will take place on Thursday, October 5, 6:00 pm at The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY, and is open to the public. As Ken reflects on the surprises he's experienced while bookselling: “One day you find yourself drinking from Thomas Jefferson's coffee service, and the next day you're fumigating your truck of fleas. The house you're visiting could contain a handful of Turner watercolors, or a roomful of live ammunition.” His upcoming talk will cover spectacular finds, such as T. S. Eliot's copy of The Great Gatsby and Isaac Newton's copy of Principia Mathematica. On a particular occasion, Ken remembers, “a customer walked into the Brattle Book Shop with a Nuremberg Chronicle and a Kelmscott Chaucer!” And he's experienced some unexpected challenges, too—when he was invited to look at “about 500” books, Ken instead encountered three floors of more than 20,000 nearly perfect dust-jacketed books that he simply had to buy (and figure out how to transport). The unusual and the extraordinary will abound in this illustrated lecture. Ken will talk in part about the history of his historic bookshop (www.brattlebookshop.com/about...), which goes back to circa 1825. He is a second-generati... [more Grolier Club in-person lecture: Ken Gloss]

For most people, managing one career, mastering a sport, or overcoming a major medical challenge are the work of a lifetime. ABAA-member Zhenya Dzhavgova, owner of ZH Books in Fremont, California, has done all these and more in a very short time, as well as successfully navigating the shifting sands of integrating into a new culture, language, and most-recently parenthood. After moving to the US and completing her education, Dzhavgova got involved in the antiquarian book world, and via the well-worn path of Colorado Antiquarian Book School (CABS) and the University of Virginia's Rare Book School (RBS) established herself as a specialist on Slavic and Eastern European books. In 2016, she became a member of the ABAA, but thereafter her story diverged from the “typical” path of an antiquarian bookseller. Her odyssey began in the summer of 2021, in the middle of a global pandemic, when Dzhavgova was diagnosed with breast cancer, and not one, but two types at that! Here is the story of her medical odyssey in her own words: I have been told I had pretty much achieved an impossible goal. I am a former athlete, I eat a healthy diet, I never do drugs, I am active, I had always been very healthy, until I wasn't! Exactly two years ago, at the end of Summer 2021, right in the middle of the pandemic during a routine checkup – I was diagnosed with not one, but two types of breast cancer. I was 41, with a 4-year-old daughter. Even worse, it turned out that MRI, the most advanced imagi... [more Zhenya Dzhavgova: Medical Emergencies and Sporting Triumphs]

J & J Lubrano Music Antiquarians LLC, established in 1977 and long-time members of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America, the Professional Autograph Dealers' Association, the Music Library Association, the American Musicological Society, &c., are internationally recognized dealers in rare printed and manuscript music, rare books on music, autograph letters of composers, and music-related iconography, 15th - 21st centuries. We pay special attention to the particular collecting interests of our clientele and over the last 46 years have helped to develop some of the most important antiquarian music collections, both institutional and private, in the U.S. and abroad. We aim to provide accurate and informed descriptions of material offered to best enable our customers to make the wisest decisions regarding their acquisitions. We operate from private premises in the township of Syosset, on the north shore of Long Island. The area is known for its attractive parks, pleasant villages, and proximity to the Long Island Sound, as well as very good schools, hospitals, and high-level healthcare. Syosset is approximately one hour by train from New York City. This is a full-time, on-site position, with compensation commensurate with qualifications and experience but in the range of $45,000-$60,000. Responsibilities - Create original cataloguing for rare music-related material utilizing an in-house music reference library of approximately 5,000 volumes together with online reso... [more J & J Lubrano Music Antiquarians LLC Seeks Cataloguer]

The Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (BIABF) returns to the Hynes Convention Center in Downtown Boston, October 27-29, 2023. Celebrating its 45th year, this three-day event features fine and rare printed materials from around the globe, including illuminated manuscripts, modern first editions, children's books, ephemera, photographs, maps and autographs, as well as antiquarian books on a vast array of topics. For more information, visit www.bostonbookfair.com... ABOUT THE FAIR More than 100 rare-book dealers from Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Serbia, the UK, and the US will exhibit an alluring treasure trove for seasoned bibliomaniacs and first-time attendees. Prices range from the millions to the eminently affordable. Each item on view, whether immaculately preserved or intriguingly weathered, tells its own story. Each bookseller holds a seemingly bottomless wealth of knowledge, both artistically and historically, about each item in their collection. “This is one of the most important annual events in the country for rare book enthusiasts,” says Julie Roper, CEO of Capricorn Event Management, LLC, who has managed the Boston Book Fair since 2015. “After the height of the pandemic, we are seeing resurgent demand for in-person fairs, where a global community of the top dealers offer the most sought-after collections of books, maps, illustrations, and ephemera on the market.” Whether browsing or buying, the Fair offers something for every taste and bud... [more 2023 Boston Book Fair]