Our members list new acquisitions and recently cataloged items almost every day of the year. Below, you'll find a few highlights from these recent additions... Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1976. Inscribed by Robbins: "To Paul, with 'eternal' gratitude for introducing me to the Clock People. Your friend, Tom Robbins." Paul Dorpat, who is the first person acknowledged in Robbins' Author's Note for the book, was a co-founder with Robbins and others of Seattle's first underground newspaper, Helix; and an issue of the paper featured a story about The Great Clock and the legend of the Eternity of Joy, the text of which parallels Chapter 59 of Cowgirls (in addition to "the clockworks" playing a larger role in the novel as a whole). A dozen or so ink and pencil notes in the text, presumably by Dorpat. Apart from the annotations and a bit of spotting to the boards, this is a near fine copy in a very good dust jacket with a chip at the upper rear spine fold. One of the best possible association copies of this beloved, irrepressible novel. Hardcover. Near Fine. Offered by Ken Lopez, Bookseller. Browse books by the late, great Tom Robbins... THE TWO EAGLES by Chambers, María Christina London / New York / Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1943. Fine in near fine jacket.. Lengthily inscribed first edition of this YA romance featuring an American girl falling for a boy in Mexico City, by the popular mid-century Mexican American author. Better known a... [more Weekly Highlights]
Browse the latest catalogs, newsletters, and e-lists of rare books, fine bindings, incunabula, print ephemera, and much more from the members of the ABAA below. (Also includes podcasts, blog posts, and other digital formats.) *New* indicates any catalogs brought to our attention since late-December 2024. AARDVARK BOOKS/EZRA TISHMAN BOOK APPRAISALS SABF 2024 Highlights 16 Recent Aardvarkian Acquisitions Featured item: Delafield, Emily Prime (Illustrated by Bertram Goodhue) ALICE IN WONDERLAND : A PLAY : COMPILED FROM LEWIS CARROLL'S STORIES ALICE IN WONDERLAND AND THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE.; Originally presented, for the benefit of The Society of Decorative Art, at The Waldorf, New York, March thirteenth, 1897, and now for the first time printed. NEW YORK: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1898. FIRST EDITION. Hardcover. 8vo. Lovely, paper-covered boards, brilliantly colored -- Bertram Goodhue's genius dances off the late nineteenth-century page, and still pops -- powerfully -- into our 21st century consciousness -- 125+ years later! 1-1/2-inch spot (spilled turquoise ink) to top left of rear board, and a repaired 1 1/2 in. x 1/2 in. closed tear to paper over spine. A play with characters from the Carroll classic,including of course Alice in Wonderland, The White Rabbit, The Queen of Hearts, The Knave, Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, The Cat, The Mad Hatter, etc., Gorgeous color Illustrations to both covers by the legendary typeographer and font-invent... [more Latest Catalogs of Rare Books]
Edit: the recording of this event can be viewed on our YouTube channel... Join the ABAA Gender Equity Initiative on Tuesday, January 28th at 2pm ET, for a Brown Bag Lunch featuring a panel discussion with CABS-Minnesota alums and faculty. They will share their stories and experiences in the in-person, hands-on antiquarian book seminar. Learn how one of the many valuable resources in this niche community, CABS-Minnesota, can benefit you, whether you are an ABAA member, aspiring new rare book dealer, librarian, or collector wanting to build a network with specialists in the trade, meet peers equally passionate about antiquarian materials, and dive deeper into the contemporary rare book market. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER... CABS-Minnesota Panel List Garrett Scott - Garrett Scott, Bookseller Garrett Scott has been selling antiquarian books since 1991. He has taught at the CABS-Minnesota antiquarian book seminar since 2015. Garrett is the current director of the seminar. The seminar got its start in Denver in 1977. Rebecca Romney - Type Punch Matrix Rebecca Romney is the co-founder of Type Punch Matrix, a rare book firm based in Washington, D.C., and a CABS alumna from 2017. She is the co-founder of the Honey & Wax Prize, serves on the Board of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), the Council of the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA), and on the Board and faculty of the Antiquarian Book Seminars (CABS-Minnesota). Her upcoming book, Jane Austen's Bookshelf (... [more January Brown Bag]
2025 Bibliography Week Showcase Join us for an in-person Bibliography Week Showcase at the L'Alliance New York's Le SkyRoom on Wednesday, January 22nd from 10:30am-4pm. The Showcase features 31 dealers exhibiting printed and manuscript material from the Middle Ages to the present day. Admission is free! Browse exhibiting dealers below. Location: Le Skyroom L'Alliance New York (FIAF) 60th Street between Park and Madison, NYC (across from the Grolier Club) The Bibliography Week Showcase is hosted with the Bibliographical Society of America and the Grolier Club and is part of Bibliography Week 2025. 2025 Bibliography Week Exhibitor List (by alpha) Booth Number Exhibitor 14 Lorne Bair Rare Books 25 Brenner's Books - Rare & Collectable 11 Bull's Head Books 15 Capitol Hill Books 5 W. S. Cotter Rare Books 16a James Cummins Bookseller 18 De Simone Company Booksellers 13 Arthur Fournier Fine & Rare LLC 27 Rodger Friedman Rare Book Studio 3 mark funke, bookseller 17 Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller Inc. 19 Honey & Wax Booksellers 9 John W. Knott, Jr, Bookseller 6 Michael Laird Rare Books LLC 7 Martayan Lan Rare Books, Maps and Prints 4 McBride Rare Books 2 Bruce McKittrick Rare Books 8 Musinsky Rare Books 1 Penka Rare Books and Archives 24 Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books & Manuscripts 16 William Reese Company 12 Riverrun Books & Manuscripts 20 Barry Lawrence Ruderman 23 Ken Sanders Rare Books 10 Tavistock Books 22 Triolet Rare Books 26 Type Punch Matrix 21 Ursus Books 28 Michael R. Weintraub... [more 2025 Bibliography Week Showcase]
We are sharing the difficult news that the 2025 ABAA California Book Fair has officially been cancelled. As of today, January 13, FEMA and the Red Cross have assumed responsibility for the operations of the Pasadena Convention Center for 30 days as an evacuation center for those displaced by the fires. All tickets purchased through Eventbrite will be refunded to the original payment method. We thank you for your understanding, and our hearts go out to all those affected by the disaster in Southern California. [more 2025 California Book Fair Cancelled]
The 2025 winner of the California Young Book Collector's Prize is Kierra Duncan. Kierra is 27 years old. She was raised in the Los Angeles area and graduated from UCLA summa cum laude in English and current doctoral candidate at Princeton University. Duncan's collection, “Translating Blackness Across Space: American, British, and Caribbean Editions of 20th Century Black Literature.” wowed the judges with her collection Translating Blackness Across Space: American, British, and Caribbean Editions of 20th-Century Black Literature. Duncan brought together works by Toni Morrison, V.S. Reid, Gayl Jones, George Lamming, Eric Walrond, and Sylvia Wynter to chronicle and analyze manifestations of Black identity in anglophone literature and publishing. Along with collecting the work of iconic twentieth-century Black writers, Duncan examined book design, marketing, and other paratext to gain insight into how publishers communicated Black stories when selling books to new national audiences. Duncan wrote that her collection was "driven by two needs. First, the urge to figure out what that sticky, elusive something is that made Black inaccessible when published in another English speaking nation. Second, to identify the (un)conscious methods deployed by publishers to address this problem before the reader even began the book. I remain guided by a question: What alterations were made to a literary text in order to make it accessible to other English speaking nations? To explore this qu... [more 2025 Annual California Young Book Collector’s Prize Awarded]
The ABAA Diversity Initiative is proud to announce the first season of a guided discovery program for those historically underrepresented among workers in the trade. Designed to co-occur with annual ABAA book fairs, the program offers an introduction to antiquarian book fairs, career insight with ABAA members, visits to local ABAA member open shops/offices, networking with institution professionals, and more. This Diversity Discovery Program offers stipends of up to $2,500 to two individuals to visit the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair during the week of the fair. Participants will be guided by an ABAA member and with an itinerary of multiple networking activities. The Fall 2024 ABAA Diversity Initiative Discovery Program selected Julie Browny and Patrick Matherly as recipients. The program successfully concluded on November 7th, 2024. Want to get to know Julie and Patrick and their program journey? Read their blog below! Read Julie Browny's blog here... Read Patrick Matherly's blog here... The program would like to thank the following libraries, private collectors, and ABAA firms for hosting the participants. John A. Buchtel, Lauren Graves, BOSTON ATHENÆUM John Overholt, Molly Schwartzburg, Mathew Wittmann, Houghton Library Victor Betts, Jenny Gotwals, Patrice Green, Schlesinger Library Alexandra (Allie) Alvis, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library Lisa Baskin Alan Klein Sandy Neubauer Brattle Book Shop Bernett Rare Books Bromer Booksellers The program would also ... [more 2024 ABAA Discovery Program Participant Experience]
Meet the latest booksellers to have been granted membership of the ABAA. Full Members Daylon Orr, Fugitive Materials, Brooklyn, New York Daylon is a bookseller, archives broker, and publisher with a focus on underground, oppositional, queer, and non-Western histories. Born in Tucson, Arizona and raised in Brooklyn, he graduated from Hunter College with a BA in Postcolonial Literature and Critical Theory. After nearly a decade as an archivist and rare bookseller, Daylon founded Fugitive Materials in 2020. Fugitive Materials specializes in radical, underground, and oppositional histories with a focus on the material cultures of resistance: the detritus of radical social movements; histories of labor; policing, and prisons; radical pedagogy; anti-colonialism and protest in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East; and underground art. Daylon is a member of the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA), and a graduate of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS). He is also the host of Fugitive Materials Radio on Montez Press Radio, exploring under-recorded histories through interviews with activists, artists, and intellectuals. Ernest Rodriguez, The Rose Books & Obscurities, Monterey, California Ernest J. Rodriguez, proprietor of The Rose Books & Obscurities, is a first-generation rare bookseller specializing in early 19th and 20th-century Western Esoteric literature and 17th-century Rosicrucian and Alchemical works. Ernest first started acquiring rare books some nine years a... [more Latest Members of the ABAA]
Armed Services Editions, small-format paperback books distributed to US servicemen during WWII, are credited with achieving a great deal: not just with improving morale among the troops, but also with revolutionizing the post-war publishing industry, making certain books into classics, and expanding the American middle class. The book When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win WWII, by Molly Guptill Manning, reveals the largely forgotten story of the Armed Services Editions. When the US entered the war after Pearl Harbor, librarians initially got behind a nationwide book drive, the Victory Book Campaign, which aimed to collect 10 million donated books and supply them to the troops. Although this campaign was eventually successful, it took time, and many of the donated books were too old or heavy to be of use. A group of publishers came together to form the Council on Books in Wartime, and resolved to produce a series of lightweight, durable books which reprinted popular novels and classics that would be of interest to the soldiers, sailors, and airmen serving their country. The format was innovative: paperback, stapled (later glued) on the short side, and printed in small type across two columns to fit more words on a page and make reading under battlefield conditions easier. The covers were thumbnails of the original hardcover jacket image, and carried lists of the other ASE titles released that month. The books were initially printed in two sizes, both designed ... [more Collecting Armed Services Editions]
Join the ABAA Gender Equity Initiative for a Networking Reception at this year's Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. The reception will take place on Saturday, November 9, at 7 pm EST, in the Rochambeau's Left Bank Room (2nd floor). Stop by for a quick refreshment before your dinner plans. Saturday, November 9, at 7 pm EST Rochambeau The Left Bank Room (2nd floor) 900 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02115 [more Networking Reception]