In high school I hated to read and couldn’t have cared less about books. My teachers issued mass market paperback editions of the classics like army supply sergeants. Cover art was most likely a still from the latest film adaptation. No wonder I loathed the experience. It wasn’t until my first visit to Kafka’s Books in Miami Beach in 1996 that I became intrigued, even obsessed, with books: the musty smell, aisle upon aisle of books I had never seen or even heard of, the interesting dust jackets. The whole experience was like hunting for treasure. It became apparent that spending time in a used book store was something I loved! Within a few weeks I was being paid for the privilege; within a few months I was managing the store. I learned a lot about books and the book business that year. Kafka’s grew quickly and plans to add a cyber café developed. With the prospect of spending more time making coffee and serving pastries and less time handling books, it was time to move on. In 2000, after a short stint at one of the major chain stores, I found myself in Seattle. I knew I wasn’t cut out for the bureaucracy of corporate life and the appeal of new books wasn’t there for me. Spending time in those mega book stores was claustrophobic and I began to feel the same about the books they carried as I did about the ones in high school. I landed a job at a used book store in Bellevue and was soon scouting the book shops in and around Seattle, selling books on ABE and eBay, and generally enjoying the thrill of the hunt. With the birth of my children, I had to get a “real job.” In 2002, we moved back to Florida and I got my real estate license. I have done well in real estate, but my heart has never been very far from the used book business. So in July, 2007 I once again embarked on a journey into the online book world by incorporating Naples Books. I am a small, home-based bookseller with a stock of only 200 or so books, but plan on expanding my offerings in 2008. In addition to listing books on www.naples-books.com, my listings can be found on IOBAbooks, ABE, Amazon and will soon be found on Biblio, ChooseBooks and Alibris. I am also beginning to have delusions of opening a bricks and mortar shop some day (God help me!). Naples Books specializes in first editions, travel and adventure, and military history. Sam Heitman operates Naples Books, Inc. out of Lehigh Acres, FL and can be contacted at http://www.naples-books.com.

I began, as many dealers have, as a collector. Basically I collected (and read of course!) SF/fantasy and horror paperbacks. From Asimov to Tolkien via Lovecraft and Verne and all points in between. Obviously I was/am into the visual side of all this as well—the movies and TV series of this genre. I noticed early on that there was an interesting cross-over…that is, a book that “ties-in” to the film or TV show. I then came across a seller (long retired) who actually dealt inter alia in these type of books. I became his best customer! When he moved on to pastures new I bought all his stock up and cherry picked the ones I wanted for my own collection. I had no interest in the leftovers, but I began to think that others might. I then collated a simple typed list and put an advert in book and film magazines inviting any interested parties to send a stamped address envelope for said list. The response was encouraging and eventually this progressed to a proper regular printed catalogue. Sourcing stock was done through the normal channels of B&M stores (many about in those days), charity shops (not so many!), car boots, etc. Things took off quite nicely. Although these types of books were stocked by general paperback dealers they would be buried amongst their normal listings and often overlooked. I also made contact with sources in the U.S.A. which opened a whole new line of titles and printings for my U.K. customers. Although most tie-ins are paperbacks and are fairly common, over the years certain “cult” series always seem to be in demand with new generations discovering them, and these can command decent prices. Grapper recently went for a high price at auction—unfortunately not from this dealer! Back to my own book dealing, things were ticking over nicely with the regular printed catalogues. Then the INTERNET exploded onto the scene. Bookdealing was never the same again! I was fairly new to computers but learnt quickly—in order to survive. I joined ABE early on (since departed, due to “artistic differences” as they say) and also listed on various smaller sites. However I was determined to have my own site and after several false starts of trying to do it myself I looked around and found Chrislands—life savers! They spoon fed me through the set up and now it’s simply a matter of uploading data and images. A very reasonable monthly fee and any questions or problems are answered or solved very promptly. A casualty of this was my printed catalogue, which was no longer cost-effective to produce. Ironically I had several phone calls from people asking have they missed a catalogue. I replied that not enough “customers” bought books to make it viable. Yes you’ve guessed it. These were the same customers who bought one cheap paperback a year just to stay on the mailing list! Because of my niche market I’ve only ever dealt by mail order via a printed catalogue and now solely online. It would of course not be feasible to have a proper bookshop unless I branched out considerably, which I’m not keen to do, and this would also be economic suicide! So I’m quite content pottering along doing this. For those of a practical mind my wife is a full time College Lecturer which enables us (and two cats) to eat and me to work from home! Mark Sugen operates Sugen & Co. Film & TV Tie-Ins out of North Yorkshire, England (by mail-order only) and can be contacted at http://www.film-tvtieins.com.

Like so many of my IOBA brethren, my online virtual store began life as a bricks and mortar establishment. High in the Colorado ski country, Wolf Moon Books operated on Main Street in picturesque Frisco. I began my bookselling adventure in 1997 when I purchased “Frisco Books” from my then-neighbor, Peter Brindamour. I was a lawyer-turned-novelist at the time and Peter had offered to host my very first book signing. We became friends and I told him to call me first if he ever decided to sell his store. A couple of years later, he did just that. Owning my own store was my dream-come-true. For the first year, I was its only employee. I finally hired two part-timers, which included my twelve-year-old son, Ross, who matured before my eyes as he learned to handle customers and operate the computerized inventory system that was integrated into our POS setup. I carried only new books and though I aspired to be a general bookstore, my focus was regional topics since my primary customers tended to be tourists visiting the area. When a career relocation for my husband occasioned a move to suburban Kansas City, I sold Wolf Moon Books and focused my energy on my writing career, publishing three books in three years for Tor/Forge under my maiden name, Michelle Black. I still had bookselling in my blood and missed that world. I became curious about book collecting and decided to interview a local used book store owner, Tom Shawver. I admired his beautifully appointed and well-stocked store, Bloomsday Books. He gave me a great deal of insight into the world of antiquarian books and urged me to attend the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar in Colorado Springs. I took his advice and before I knew it, I was out in the trenches learning to book scout. I quickly found out that little of my experience as a “new book” bookstore owner translated into the world of used and collectible books, but the joy of buying and selling books is universal and I soon acquired (and am still acquiring) new skills everyday. The hunt for collectible books became a passion with all the elements of a treasure hunt. I am sure that most IOBA members are infected with a similar strain of this book fever. I have found the Internet the perfect medium to bring people together with the books they love. I have a general inventory with a focus on collectible mysteries, and even more particularly, pre-1960 Nancy Drew novels. My interest in the American West, which was the focus of my novel writing career for many years, also shows up prominently in my inventory. Today Everleaf Books is located on my 10-acre ranch in Spring Hill, Kansas, just south of Kansas City. Please stop by our online store anytime. Michelle operates Everleaf Books out of Spring Hill, KS and can be contacted at http://www.everleafbooks.com.

Excerpts from recent online book descriptions: – Very Good + in god DJ. [A book on John Baptist de La Salle.] – Slight sunfade to spine end, background color only not the words. It has faded to a light purple color and looks good still with red lettering (not faded). – A spill stain on the cover dose no damage to the rest of book. – Book is pretty nice, the dj is kind of ratty. – So much beaurocratic Bla-bla that I can’t figure who the actual publisher is. – Page 533 has chip on side of page, no words affected. The rest of book id great and this flaw is not large. The low price compensates for it. – Spine, edges inside border of endpapers all seem to have soil from smoke. – Hardback about very good condition (front & rear end pages torn out). – Like New. May be shiny, in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, no damage to binding, may have a remainder mark. – Our feedback rating says it all: Five star service and fast delivery! We’ve shipped four million items to happy customers, and have one MILLION unique items ready to ship today! [Actually at four stars.] – Not a bad copy overall, but toms of little things wrong with it. Worst fault is a brown stain from pp 64-70 top and bottom edges and in the gutters of the pages, bad on pp 66-7, from a very acid bookmark. – ******SHOWS SIGNS OF AGING*********************. – Ugly brown vertical streak on dedication page, neat inscription on front endpaper. – VERY EX-LIBRARY, STAINS. – The images are excellent but the edges of pages (in the white) look like someone with coal dust on fingers have paged the book. – Goof Condition. [My own, thank you very much.]

While on a mid-week visit to Antietam last April I noticed another guy touring the nearly deserted battlefield. He looked about my age and was dressed in the uniform of a musician from the Union Army. He noticed by the lettering on my van that I was a bookseller. He came over, introduced himself, and we started talking. His name was Steve Bartel, a graphic art designer, writer and drummer from Los Angeles. He was a reenactor who portrayed a “sheepskin fiddler” (drummer), and also had self-published a book of poems titled Pray Tell, Private Hell: Extracts from the Confessions of a Civil War Soldier. He pulled a copy from his knapsack and inscribed it to me in a very convincing 19th century hand. After five or ten minutes of pleasant conversation (I’m from California myself) I thanked him for the book, handed him my card, and we parted. I’m not usually one for self-published books of poetry, but I think I read Private Hell’s 100 poems through in one sitting. I found their sound and feel amazingly authentic. They’re short, very observant, full of the dark humor of soldiering, and refreshingly free of literary pretensions. The book is a perfect lesson in using literature to illuminate history in ways non-fiction rarely can. It seems that Steve was channeling his great great uncle, Pvt. Alonzo C. Hayden, who was killed and buried on the field at Gettysburg. Many of the poems are based on historical incidents, such as Lincoln’s little speech at Gettysburg (too short to be captured by unprepared photographers), Father Corby blessing the 69th New York Volunteers at Gettysburg, the death of Stonewall Jackson by friendly fire, etc. Here are a few examples: Fancy This, or, The Roadbed Is Not On The Level Oh, fancy the comforts of life such as this! Our rations are hardwood, our coffee is piss. Our money? What money? Our clothes fall apart. Our feet are more weary than Abraham’s heart. We go up against guns as big as you please, and can’t see the forest because of our knees. Our officers know what they know: flowing bowls! So fancy our comforts, then pray for our souls. -Pvt. Hell Emmitsburg Road, or, Private Haymaker’s Muse* I have this heavy feeling in my heart as though there is already a lead ball here. And as I look across these amber fields, I somehow feel I’ve come this far to fall here. It seems to be a thousand yards or more… a thousand yards of shot and shell and hell. Well, Lord, is this the day you made me for? I guess the next half-hour’s work will tell. -Pvt. Hell *Pvt. William Monte of the 9th Virginia remarked, pulling out his watch as the remains of his regiment reached the Emmitsburg Road during Pickett’s Charge, “We have been just 19 minutes coming.” Moments later he was struck and killed by a shell. The Last Shot I am shot! Oh God, please take me quick— I don’t want to go where you go if you’re sick. Oh the blood! I can feel it seep down my shirt but it’s odd in the way that it doesn’t hurt. And is this aroma the smell of death? That’s strange—it’s so like a saloon-keeper’s breath, and the growing stain is not red, I see… why, my flask took the ball that was meant for me! too bad my whiskey’s gone to St. Pete. -Pvt. Hell Heavenly Perdition Ignorant, I asked God: “If you are omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, how can there be a Hell?” And God said: “Hell is where I am not… hence, in Hell, I disguise myself as the Devil.” “Holiday in Hell?” said I. “Paradox in Paradise,” said He. -Pvt. Hell At the end of December, while cataloguing a book, I came across an obscure and amusing anecdote about Lincoln which reminded me of just the sort of thing this Mr. Steven Bartel makes into verses. I pulled out his book, read it again, and still thought it damned fine, so decided to get in touch with him. A Google search soon revealed that he had died suddenly just days earlier, leaving a wife and two young kids. To wrap this all up then, after a couple of unanswered emails to the address I had with his book I sent a note to the mailing address. Last Friday I got a call from his dad. Yes, he has copies of the book. I told him my story of meeting Steve on Antietam field. He told me it was some kind of very aggressive cancer—he was gone in a matter of weeks. I’m not sure why this whole episode affected me so. Must be I’m getting old.

Book Culture (formerly Labyrinth Books) 536 West 112th Street, New York, NY http://www.bookculture.com

I don’t mean to sound insensitive with the following account, but things like this happen in the world of house calls. My son was along on this one, to speed the work, for company, and you never know…he might consider this for a career some day. If there was a slim flicker of hope there, this visit may have snuffed it out. It was an old green and white house on a quiet outskirt city street, perched way up high with a long black iron railing along two flights of steps that were something of an engineering marvel. I’ve mowed some severe grades in my time but can’t imagine how they do this one. I’d say it looked like the house from Psychoexcept it was not alone, as there was a long row of these, and it was the dead of winter. Street parking only, and little if any side or back yard. We knocked and knocked but no answer. A faded Pet Finder sticker on the door listed eight or so cats and dogs. Thank goodness for cell phones. The senior citizen who finally came to the door would have been described as a crone in the past. Bright white hair including facial, two remaining teeth on the far bottom ends like gleaming white posts at the track, stooped, with piercing blue eyes. She grabbed my son’s hand during the introductions and did not let go, remarking on his looks about half way through. “I may be old, but I’m still sharp. I used to do flea markets. I need at least $75 for these. There’s a lot of them.” Fair enough, though she had said something on the phone about just wanting to get rid of them. These were newer. There were many “very old” ones in the attic (the only reason I came) that would have to wait until next time. As we entered the dimly lit living room, it was immediately apparent that this was sort of a Colliers Brothers situation, for those familiar with that early example of packrat achievement. Piles and paths only, though a huge Christmas tree must have displaced the usual lay of the land. No pets greeted us, but stuffed animals were in great abundance. We just watched the director’s final cut of Blade Runner together a couple of nights earlier and it kind of looked like Sebastian’s apartment from that movie, but with no room for somersaults. There was a glorious stained glass window on the right hand side of the house, but it was almost completely blocked by an enormous cabinet of some sort. As our eyes began to focus I could see nice antiques like partially buried Victorian marble top stands everywhere. As I began to recalibrate she interrupted with a bulletin. “I have to tell you that I have a mentally retarded grandson asleep upstairs right now. He doesn’t like strangers in the house, and he can get full of rage. He’s pretty fast too.” She went on to say he was in his forties, etc., but as the short and pitch black center staircase leading to his present location ended right at our feet, boy and I were already planning our escape through the front door. (He told me later that he would have bounded down the steep snowy front lawn where bare feet or slippers may have hesitated to follow. All that advice about exit strategies must have took.) Unfortunately, these boxes of books were arrayed left and right, so I had to venture away from the one escape route. I quickly determined that it was all unsalable dreck, with an unhealthy proportion of Dungeons and Dragons titles in the mix. Back by the front door, I broke the news that it was not what we needed. I did extend my standard $25 charity book sale offer, but she thought I was trying to lowball her and refused, to our great relief. “What am I supposed to do with these? I thought you wanted books.” “Well, like I said on the phone and just now, I don’t take any old books. You could try to call other booksellers in the Yellow Pages, but I don’t think they will come over or want them if they do come over. I don’t think an auction hall would take these either. You could have a yard sale when it gets warmer, or just put them out on the sidewalk for free.” “Can you at least move them out onto the porch for me? I have to make room. I have a vintage clothes dealer from Hudson coming next.” This was no small favor, as the large boxes and laundry baskets full of books were hard (and noisy!) to get at, but at least we helped her a bit. As we descended toward the street down pitched and timeworn steps that were dangerous even without carrying heavy boxes or being chased, I pictured the plight of the distant clothes dealer whose potential treasures were closeted deep within the bowels of this dark and seemingly dangerous house. Did she have the nerve to proceed?

Original glossy newspaper file photo, measures 8” by 10”, rubber stamp on reverse reads, “Photographic Illustrations by Nick Lazarnick, 230 Park Ave., N.Y.,” pencil inscription on reverse reads “Harry Hansen about 1956,” Composition Room markings indicate size and placement in an unknown newspaper. As booksellers we are drawn to book backdrops, appearances of books in movies, etc. Before I had the calling I used to go to a book-lined bar in northern New Jersey called The Library, and even those hoary cloth bound dogs had an early appeal even in that swirling sea of spilt beer and hormonal urges. Over the last half year or so President Bush has been appearing in front of perhaps the most pathetic assemblage of books ever seen on TV. It is a single shelf right behind his head. Nondescript shabby spines, no dust jackets, and worst of all two volumes in a set are divided by ten or so other examples of reject dreck. I thought for sure some handler would recognize how awful these look and order up a row of shiny colorful designer-type stock with raised spine bands and gilt lettering, but they must figure a book is a book so mission accomplished. If taken to task they could always summon up the ghost of Pat Nixon’s respectable cloth coat. Against this backdrop I was delighted to come across this photo. The subject immediately struck me as a book man at home in his element, dapper and wise, with all that slightly out-of-focus gold just out of reach amid those deep half tone shadows (shiny inky black in the original). I hoped information on the reverse would prove this to be the case. Rather than the usual International News Photos or Associated Press taped paper caption, however, there was only the slim lead of a name. Harry Hansen. Good Google returned a great page right at the top though, courtesy of The University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections & University Archives. The first two paragraphs below are excerpted from “Harry Hansen’s Literary Career” by William Roba (Books at Iowa 35, 11/1981). This is a lengthy account which is well worth reading. “In 1954 Ben Hecht described Iowa-born Harry Hansen as a quiet book lover who ‘lived among books like a pilgrim in a rain of manna.’ This is an appropriate description, for Hansen’s literary criticism appeared primarily in newspapers. His career during a unique period of American book publishing, from 1915 until 1945, was recorded in thousands of daily columns. Hansen’s writings combined an admiration for European writers with an abiding appreciation of Middle West regional writing. “Since he was literary editor of the Chicago Daily News, the name of Harry Hansen (1884-1977) appears in many books describing the Chicago writers of the early twentieth century. But there has been no analysis of his role in the ‘Chicago literary renaissance’ of the 1920s. Furthermore, no extended discussion of his career has been published since 1929. Hansen’s career conveniently falls into three distinct periods. The first is his boyhood in Davenport, Iowa; the second covers his years in Chicago; and the third relates to his residence in suburban New York City.”

Flitted out of an old book and now slipped into the bottom corner of my monitor.

From the inside front cover of Essays on Property and Labour as Connected with Natural Law and the Constitution of Society by Francis Lieber (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1842).

Table of Contents Books About Bookselling: A Backward Look From the Editor The ABE Bookseller Ratings Deception Rare Book School: A Week Among Bright Bookish Minds The Price Guide Is Right (or Is It?) Judith Tingley of Meetinghouse Books and MARIAB A Book Dealer Visits Peru, or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation Ephemeral Assays: Self Listing Book Repair: Revelations, Decisions, and Disclosures The Pros and Cons of Amazon.com for Buyers and Sellers Joe Orlando of Fenwick Street Used Books and Music Bob Schilling of Schillingslist, Gresham, Oregon Victor Goldring, Goldring Books, Eastbourne, East Sussex, UK Ye Olde Booksellers: Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms Blurbettes: Faux Real: Genuine Leather and 200 Years of Inspired Fakes Addenda

A Backward Look: 50 Years of Maine Books and Bookmen Francis M. O’Brien. Portland, ME: Anthoensen Press, 1986. My first impression of this book is that it’s only 49 pages long, which is good because the deadline is only a week away. And the author spends half the time on non-book topics. His family history. A rather idyllic childhood in the “Forest City.” Many early jobs, including sitting in a tent on a hill near a bridge and recording all the incoming state license plates for the Maine Publicity Bureau. Almost getting fired as an usher. (“Ma’am, we say please in Portland, Maine.”) Going to sea for a few years. Living in New York City; the Left Bank (where he bought a copy of Ulysses from Sylvia Beach and saw James Joyce); Ireland (to write); New Mexico; etc., and then back to Portland. I began to wonder why this was as much about Portland as it was about books, and why it was so slim (Maine brevity?), and then found the publisher’s note I ignored the first time through. “This book is based on a transcription of the fourth annual lecture in the Anthoensen Press Lecture Series, as presented by Francis M. O’Brien at the Portland Public Library, a co-sponsor of the event. The date was Saturday, May 10, 1986, at 1:30 P.M. The Rines Meeting Room was filled with over a hundred interested people with a diversity of literary interests. Mr. O’Brien himself was the unifying point of interest, so much interest that there were many requests to have the lecture published for posterity. It is a pleasure for the Anthoensen Press to accommodate that wish.” And so they did, with a print run of 500 copies. Mine is borrowed from a library whose commercial binder saw fit to remove the original front wrap. There are only a few real copies online, all priced at $100, and one ABAA member was kind enough to let me use his digital image of the cover. I suggested that this late review of the work may stimulate interest in his signed copy. Once I finished reading it, however, I was so stimulated—because it was half about all the little experiences, kindnesses, and bookish influences that went into the creation of such a bookseller—but another of the copies is not only signed but includes the author’s corrections “so noted on last page.” From the description though it appears it’s hardcover, probably the author’s personal bound copy, probably missing the original front wrap, so I’m up in the air, but will decide before this comes out. I could buy all three copies, keep the one I like, and price the other two at $150, which will look pretty good compared to the ridiculous Anybook phantom copy ridiculously priced at $499.88, but that doesn’t always work out, and besides, I’ve blown my cover. At any rate, Mr. O’Brien must have been gratified to produce such an interesting and collectible Maine book. Excerpts follow. “Books were precious in our neighborhood, and there was a great deal of swapping and borrowing, and we thought nothing of walking a mile or two to get them, no matter what the weather. I attended the Cummings School on Ocean Avenue, which was built in the 1890s. It had a small library, which had been closed up for some years, for what reason, I don’t know. Another boy, Leslie Hassell, and I got permission from Ma’am Elwell, our principal, to open it up, dust off the books, and act as librarians. Leslie was severely handicapped and on crutches, so I did most of the physical work. (I might add that Leslie became an outstanding horologist and in World War II was commissioned a navy commander and was in charge of some very important navy clockwork.)” “We, and I mean a number of girls and boys, developed a great thirst for reading, and somehow or other, we managed to find most of the books that the bibliographer, Jacob Blank, forty years later, listed in his excellent checklist of American juvenile classics called From Peter Parley to Penrod, except that we didn’t know they were classics, just good reading. They were the books by the prolific Maine writer, Jacob Abbott; Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book; Goulding’s The Young Marooners, laid in Georgia; the books by Oliver Optic; Horatio Alger; Harry Castleman; Cudjo’s Cave by J. T. Trowbridge, who later attracted other writers to summer at Kennebunkport; Norway, Maine’s Charles Asbury Stephens, who wrote wonderful stories about life on the old farm; glorious Mark Twain; Dan Beard, one of the founders of the Boy Scout movement; Kirk Monroe; Howard Pyle; Kate Douglas Wiggin; W. O. Stoddard; Ernest Seton Thompson; Frank Baum; Henry Shute; Jack London; Owen Johnson; Lewis Carroll; Booth Tarkington; Grimm’s fairy tales; Arthur Rackham; Robert Louis Stevenson; Lang’s color fairy tale books; and so forth and so on. We boys even read girls’ books, like the ‘Flaxie Frizzle’ stories that were written by Rebecca Clark, another Maine writer who lived here in Portland at one time, in Park Place, just below Danforth Street.” “For the first time I had a chance to explore Portland, and I ranged it from Cleaves Monument at the top of Munjoy Hill to the streets and alleys between, all the way out to Libbytown and beyond. I discovered the public library and its children’s room, then under the charge of Miss Linda Hackett. We became friends, and remained so for the rest of our lives. The First World War was in progress, we had just entered it the previous year, and even at ten years old, I suppose that I was caught up in the mutual intoxication of war fever, and it was to take me a long time in the future before I began to wonder why the decent people of the world allowed their leaders to work out their designs for murder, a question that is still not answered. “We boys dug trenches in my aunt’s back garden next to the mews behind the Park Street row houses and played with homemade arms. At that time, there was a charming little park, with benches and a fountain that was used in warm weather for the benefit of the owners of the houses on Park Street. Three of the houses, then called the Baltimore Flats, were occupied by men whose libraries I bought many years in the future. There were Isaac Watson Dyer, a bibliographer of Carlyle, whose great Carlyle collection is at Bowdoin College; Alfred Brinkler, noted organist and teacher; and Thomas Eddington Calvert, a former editor, and to me my ideal of what a man of letters should look like.” “Huston’s was a treasure house. He was a steady buyer of old collections, and some very important books went through his hands. It was a grey, battered, dusty establishment, with unpainted floors. The general categories were on the first floor, and above were two rooms filled with Americana. In the basement, which was off-limits, were piles of remainders of various Maine books (many printed on Exchange Street itself) which A. J. had bought cheaply when the sales had slowed down. Brown Thurston Company, about opposite where the Anthoensen Press is now, the leading printers of the time, had published many Maine town histories and genealogies as well as Williamson’s bibliography of Maine. “I became a customer of Huston’s in a very small way. He would fill his window with five- and ten-cent books, and I used to buy them consistently. A. J. commented on this once, and predicted that some day I would be buying books for a dollar or more.” “At last, there was a break. Under the new Roosevelt administration, there was organized what was called the Civil Works Administration, the predecessor of the WPA, a make-work program. An advertisement appeared calling for ten people to catalogue books, manuscripts, and other items at the Boston Public Library, that had been donated to them over a period of fifty years, but they had never had the funds to take care of. Many applied and I was one of the lucky ones. We were ensconced in the Treasure Room, the rare book division of one of the great libraries of the world, with access to a superb reference collection. Miss Swift, the director, and Zoltan Haraszty, a droll and eccentric Hungarian scholar, showed great patience with us. For me, it was really the first important learning experience that I had with books as tools. “Our group consisted of nine men and one woman. Most of us were typically angry young people of the times, disgusted with the system, rather leftish in our views. Merle Colby, who had written two best sellers and taken his family to Europe, had come home broke. He and Oliver LeFarge had been the literary white hopes of the Harvard Class of 1926. Merle had managed the old Alfred Bartlett Bookshop in Boston out of college and always wished to return to the book business. He later became administrator of the Federal Writers Project for New England; still later he went with Ernest Gruening when he became governor of Hawaii, and then later of Alaska. Colby edited the Federal Writers’ guidebooks for both emerging states. He wrote another novel dealing with Washington intrigue called The Big Street, but died in the 1960s. “Mike Aronsberg was an excellent photographer and later fought in the Spanish Civil War. He had had a bookshop at one time. Charles Flato, not much more than three feet in height, with a hunchback and crippled legs, was a colorful man with a beard, who wore a broad-brimmed black fedora and a black cloak and got around with the aid of a walking stick, with which he would whack people who got in his way. He had great wit, had written for the Hound and Horn, a leading quarterly of the time, and was an authority on Brady photographs. Frank Leveroni had managed Goodspeed’s Park Street Bookshop. “John Cheever had had one or two things published up to then, but was destined to become the finest short-story writer of our generation. I corresponded with John a few times over the years, and wrote him a letter just before he died a couple of years ago, and got back a sad reply, one line, ‘Francis—carry on.’ He died about a week later. “We all got along well, and a constant topic was the joy of being able to open an old bookshop as the way to an independent life.” “The very first day I opened a man came up from the waterfront and said there was a barrel of books in an old building that he would deliver for a dollar. A dollar was a magic figure in those days. He brought them along, and I looked them over and found three or four books of interest, but one intrigued me because it had been printed in Portsmouth in 1802. The title was Julia, or The Illuminated Baron, by ‘A Lady of Massachusetts.’ This is one of the rarest books in American literature, and was in wonderful condition in the original leather binding, but of course a neophyte like myself would not have known of it. It was one of the first Gothic novels published in this country and the author was really a lady of Maine, Sally Barrell Keating Wood, our first novelist, who later wrote other books in the same vein. I’m glad to say that Dorothy Healy has a copy of it in the Maine Women Writers Collection at Westbrook College. “One of my first callers was Garland Patch who worked at the navy yard, but was also the custodian of the Thomas Bailey Aldrich House and Museum nearby, and a budding antiquarian. He said he was interested in early Portsmouth printing and I sold him the book for thirty-five cents. That was the standard price for old fiction in those days and I hadn’t learned to differentiate. The book would bring about a thousand dollars today.” “The depression was still on, and a lot of people were moving elsewhere. One man from a wealthy local family who lived in one of the finest houses on the Cape shore called me one day to look at his books. They filled a fine library room, mostly fiction and more or less current things. And when I asked him if he wanted to put a price on them, he said: ‘Look, I’m going to fulfill the dream of a lifetime. I’m selling the house, my wife and daughter are going to have an apartment in New York, and I’m going to paint and live on one of the smaller islands in the Caribbean, and I’m going to restrict myself to a very limited budget. I’ve got most of the fare down there, but I’m lacking’—and here he named a relatively small amount. I’m ashamed to say how little it was—‘If you want to give me that, you can have these books, and those on the third floor.’ Well, I don’t know whether this is reprehensible or not, but I’d never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. The books on the third floor turned out to be some wonderful art books that he had bought as an art student in Paris before the First World War. I often wondered if he had ever fulfilled his dream. Fairly recently, a relative told me that he stayed on the island only a few months and then joined his family in New York, dying a few years later. “The shop promised to be very successful. I got serious about bibliographies, and started buying and reading them. I acquired my original copy of Williamson’s Bibliography of Maine, published in 1896, which lists and describes over eleven thousand books of Maine interest, published up to that date. I got my copy from A. J. Huston who had a small remainder, for the price of seven dollars. This work is indispensable to a bookseller, or a librarian, and is regarded as the finest state bibliography in the country. Many states do not have one, including, surprisingly, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. Vermont has a pretty good one, Rhode Island an attempt at one. People desiring a copy of Williamson in recent years, have paid as much as two hundred fifty dollars for one, but the state library, with a special grant, has recently had the work reprinted in excellent style on good paper, in a limited edition of two hundred fifty copies, at sixty-two dollars postpaid, no discounts to anybody. This is a real bargain. About half the copies are sold, and I would rather invest in this book than any stock on the New York Stock Exchange, for they will rise in value when the edition is gone.” “Another spring rolled around and in April of 1940 I opened up once more at 668 Congress Street, at Longfellow Square, which was Erskine Caldwell’s old place, the Longfellow Bookshop of the late twenties. There were a lot of changes in Portland. With the coming of World War II, two great shipyards were built in South Portland, where they were to build hundreds of ships; they employed thirty thousand workers from all over, who were making good wages and had some extra money to spend, on books among other things. “There were dislocations in many other ways. Some of the big old houses of Portland were being converted into war housing, and several times a week I would show up at the shop to unload a few hundred books. “The largest library I ever bought was at the Deering Street house of Dr. William Fenn, the old pastor of the High Street Congregational Church, who had died in 1914. The house had been closed up since, but was maintained by heirs who lived in Delaware, connected with DuPont. There were ten thousand books there, bound periodicals and pamphlets, including what I now realize was a remarkable collection of books dealing with the Darwinian controversy, which had changed the face of revealed religion forever. It should have been kept as a collection but I was too distracted at the time to do so. I think it was probably the most scholarly collection of books I ever had. “Some of the finest books in town began to appear during these years. Hubbard Winslow Bryant, of Boston, had come to Portland to open an antiquarian bookshop and curio business about 1860, but was taken on by John Bundy Brown (then our richest citizen) as a confidential clerk, and remained so for the next thirty years. Sometime in the 1860s, a series of articles appeared in the old Portland Press, entitled ‘The Private Libraries of Portland,’ under the initial ‘B,’ which I have good reason to believe was Bryant. With some self-interest among his opening paragraphs, he stated, ‘It is to be hoped that in the course of time we shall be blessed with all the concomitance of modern civilization, including the old book business and the horse railroad.’ He was not to have his own bookshop until around the turn of the century, when among his occasional visitors was Winslow Homer, who may possibly have been related. Hubbard Winslow was the name of a popular clergyman in Boston, and it was common to name children after clergymen, but there may have been a connection. A. J. Huston said that Bryant pestered—he used the word ‘pestered’—Homer into designing a bookplate, the only one known to have been done by him. I happen to own one of Bryant’s reference books with the bookplate, an exceedingly rare article, and I had another copy which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In the articles, ‘B’ deals with some of the outstanding book collections of the town, listing a great many titles. James Olcott Brown, son of J. B. Brown, had a gentleman’s library, with some first editions of the New England writers. Bishop William Stevens Perry had two thousand volumes and five thousand pamphlets, including a great many items relating to the early history of the Episcopal Church in America, as well as a collection of the letters of the Reverend Jacob Bailey, the frontier missionary and Tory of Pownalborough. The Perry collection was a fairly large collection with some very early quartos and folios, including the great Bayle’s Dictionary, the English edition of 1724 in five volumes; and Leigh Hunt’s copy of Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, one of the great classics of English literature. It is hard to imagine how that ever got to Portland, yet we recall the phrase about ‘the curious mobility of books.’ Dana’s books were later sold at auction. “John Neal, an outstanding Portland literary figure, who was called ‘that wild fellow’ by Hawthorne, had about three thousand volumes, later mostly destroyed in the Great Fire, although some important works presented to him have come down through descendants who are still living here. “Oliver Gerrish’s books were strong on Swedenborgianism and Freemasonry, but he had some good old books, including much natural history. He also had a number of books bound in Russian leather by the excellent Portland bookbinder, George Coleman, of the 1830s. “William Willis, the historian of Portland, had formed a library ‘to delight the historian, the antiquarian, and the general student.’ In 1834, he had printed a catalogue of his library consisting of almost fifty pages. He had since acquired many additions, and some of the books are listed. He owned the first six volumes of the Falmouth Gazette, the first newspaper in Maine, beginning in 1795. “The first separately printed item in Maine is probably a copy of the ‘Lumber Act,’ which was printed in an early issue of the Gazette and advertised as available at their office. It is likely that it was a broadside, but no copy is known. “For Mainers, a copy of this incunabulum turning up would be almost as thrilling as finding a copy of the Cambridge 1639 ‘Freeman’s Oath,’ the first item to be printed in North America, but of which there is no known copy. A fraudulent copy of this has recently been exposed. “Willis also had many items relating to Maine history as well as to general history and literature, about three thousand volumes in all, with a number of early manuscripts. He also had a book that was taken from Father Râle, the French missionary to the Indians, when he was killed by the English at Norridgewock. I believe most of Willis’s books are now here in the Portland Public Library. “Philip Henry Brown, another son of J. B. Brown, had three thousand volumes, which contained the rarest and most valuable items of all, very strong in fine bindings and illustrated books, and early books of travel, foreign and American. He also owned a copy of Gillray’s caricatures in elephant folio, with the extra volume of suppressed plates (containing scatological humor); also an elephant folio volume of early states of Hogarth’s engravings, which is now in my possession; besides an unusual collection of facetiae (an old-fashioned bookseller’s term for erotica). Brown’s books descended to his daughter, Mrs. Frank True, and were sold at auction in the 1950s, and I was fortunate in purchasing some of them.” “Out of some of the foregoing collections, and many others, such as the great library at the Deering Mansion (the site of what is now the University of Southern Maine); I acquired over the years many fine books for my stock. During this period, I began to send out lists of books to libraries and individuals. In 1945 I had my first printed catalogue. About that time, our two children were born. The books were piling up, both in my shop basement and in my High Street home. In 1949 we acquired an old farm on the Saco River in Hiram. We did a lot of fixing up, and have been using it for storage ever since. “In 1952 my wife and I decided to give up the Congress Street shop and do business from home, where we have since catered to old and new customers and have done a fairly active appraisal business of books and old manuscript material. “I have occupied but a small niche in our book world. What of the others? Locally we had several new bookshops until recently. Now the business is dominated by a single chain, relentlessly efficient and successful, but lacking the warmth that one enjoyed with Charles Campbell, Edith Riley, Janet Palmer, and Leo Boyle, and with the doyens of the wholesale trade, Dan and Ruth McDonough. “The antiquarian trade has risen in twenty years from single numbers to a fraternity of eighty members today, the Maine Antiquarian Booksellers Association. “The circle of book collectors is sizable, and some have made their own contributions to literature and historical research. So far as the devoted quest of books is concerned, I must mention several who should be honored: James B. Vickery, historian of Bangor and Unity, indefatigable book-hunter; William B. Jordan, historian of Cape Elizabeth and mordant critic of Portland’s past; Dorothy Healey, co-founder of Westbrook College’s Maine Women Writers Collection; lastly, a lay scholar who, through stress and storm, has succeeded in building probably the finest collection of works of history in Maine, Bradford Hale. Then there is that mysterious angel of local bookshops, the Bear. “Before I conclude, I must pay tribute to one of the glories of Portland: the Anthoensen Press, which unfortunately is more renowned in the world of bookmen and scholars than it is in its own hometown. That was the fate of Thomas Bird Mosher, who also occupied the present home of the Press, at 45 Exchange Street. I wonder if that great craftsman, Fred Anthoensen, had ever read Lamb’s advice to a printer: ‘A little flowery border, neat not gaudy,’ or Ruskin’s rejoinder that admiration of ‘neat but not gaudy’ is commonly reported to have influenced the devil when he painted his tail green. I don’t think the Anthoensen Press will ever paint its tail green. “Well, I have rambled on long enough, and I thank you for your company and your patience for what undoubtedly is a dull tale. “I don’t know whether you want to take any more time, but if anybody wants to ask questions, I’m ready. But keep in mind the rules of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Vatican Library, probably the first public library in the world: that any reader who asks more than three senseless questions of the attendant is to be removed.” Shawn Purcell operates Balopticon Books & Ephemera IOBA Standard, Fall Edition 2007, Volume 8, No. 4.