Mystery Reference Shelf or Two

Mystery and detective fiction is probably more popular today than at any time in its history, including the so-called Golden Age in the 1920s and 30s. I’ve tried to aim this list at generalist dealers who might want more information about mystery fiction, but do not need the reference works of a specialist in the field.

Because, as Christopher Morley said of Sherlockian writings, “Never has so much been written by so many for so few,” I have separated Holmes-related items from other mystery reference and included it in its own section at the end.

The items marked with an asterisk are the most highly recommended and useful of the reference materials for a generalist dealer. Through them, one can locate most of the others. The rest of the works listed are some of my favorites, and other mystery dealers probably have their own preferences. Chacun a son gout.

MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE FICTION, EXCLUDING SHERLOCKIANA

1. GENERAL CHECKLISTS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES :

*Hubin, Allen J. Crime Fiction III. A Comprehensive Bibliography: 1749 -1995. Though not a descriptive bibliography, Hubin is the major bibliographical checklist for detective fiction and an indispensable work for anyone collecting or dealing in the genre. In addition to the major author and title index for books, it includes short stories indexed by title and author, movies listed by title and book author, a series index, and a settings index. However, users should be aware that there is no critical commentary about the works listed: the worst writers are treated as equally as the best.

The first four editions of Hubin are available in book format, but this most recent update is available only on CD-ROM from Locus Press at https://amber.site-secure.net/locusmag/About/CDRomAd.html. The CD-ROM edition includes all entries from Hubin’s four previous editions: The Bibliography of Crime Fiction: 1749 – 1975, Crime Fiction: 1749-1980, Supplement to Crime Fiction: 1981-1985, and Crime Fiction II: 1749-1990.

*Albert, Walter. Detective and Mystery Fiction: An International Bibliography of Secondary Sources. Second edition, revised and expanded. 2000. As Hubin is the major checklist for mystery and detective fiction, Albert is the major checklist for mystery reference materials, excluding Sherlockiana. Its sections include: Bibliographies, Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, and Checklists; General Reference Works: Historical & Critical: Books and Articles; Dime Novels, Juvenile Series, and Pulps; and Authors. The section on authors is particularly useful since it lists bibliographies as well as books and articles about all major and most minor mystery writers.

Although the first edition was published in book format, the second revised edition is available only on CD-ROM from Locus Press at https://amber.site-secure.net/locusmag/About/CDRomAd.html.

The above two works are both indispensable and so are listed first. The books that follow are a sampling of some of the most useful checklists to supplement the above, and are listed in alphabetical order by author.

Adey, Robert. Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Minneapolis: Crossover Press, 1991. Revised and expanded edition. An indispensable work, very well done, for a popular, though limited, category of mystery fiction.

Barzun, Jacques and Wendell Hertig Taylor. A Catalogue of Crime. NY: Harper & Row, [1971]. The most extensive annotated general survey of crime fiction, with 3,476 entries arranged by author. It includes plot summaries and critical comments and is not complete in any sense of the word, but is almost always entertaining since the authors “call ’em as they see ’em” with no reluctance whatsoever in expressing their often controversial opinions. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1989.

I don’t feel this title is really necessary for a generalist, but I include it because it is one of those often seen on the reference shelves of dealers, most of whom, I suspect, have probably seldom used it.

Breen, Jon L. What About Murder? A Guide to Books about Mystery and Detective Fiction (Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press, 1981) and its very extensive update, What About Murder? 1981- 1991. (Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press, 1993). Breen does not attempt to cover the number of items in Albert, but his annotations show a lot of insight into the field, and make this work very useful. Both volumes are necessary since (as the title of the second volume makes clear) the items in the 1981 publication are not included in the 1993 update.

Contento, William G. And Martin H. Greenberg. Index to Crime and Mystery Anthologies. Boston: G. K. Hall, [1991]. This work includes the appearances of all short stories in hardbound mystery anthologies from 1875 to about 1990. More than 1,000 anthologies are indexed by editor and title with the contents listed. Stories are also indexed by author and title. It’s useful for helping customers find out if and where a short story was previously published.

This has since been issued on a CD-ROM as Mystery Short Fiction Miscellany: An Index by William G. Contento. It combines Index to Crime and Mystery Anthologies with Index to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Short Fiction: 1990-2000. I have not seen this CD, but according to Locus Press, it indexes 1,500 books and 1,100 magazine issues, for a total of 23,000 stories by 7,800 authors. It is available at:https://amber.site-secure.net/locusmag/About/CDRomAd.html.

Cook, Michael L. And Stephen T. Miller. Mystery, Detective, and Espionage Fiction: A Checklist of Fiction in U.S. Pulp Magazines, 1915-1974. NY: Garland, 1988. Two volumes. A thorough and extraordinarily useful work (as most of Michael Cook’s reference works are), these two volumes list all fiction published in mystery pulp magazines, issue by issue. Volume one lists these works by magazine title in nearly 700 pages set in double-columns. Volume two provides the same material indexed by author.

Cook, Michael L. Monthly Murders: A Checklist and Chronological Listing of Fiction in the Digest-Size Mystery Magazines in the United States and England. Westport: Greenwood Press, [1982]. By digest-size, Cook means the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine format, and Cook lists the title and author of every story in each issue of 110 of these magazines and also provides an index by author.

*Cooper, John and B. A. Pike. Detective Fiction: The Collector’s Guide. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994. Second edition. Although this work focuses on British detective fiction (including British editions of American writers), it is invaluable for its commentary on bindings and dust jackets. The endpapers, featuring the signatures of around 100 mystery writers from Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham to Ellis Peters and P. D. James, and the beautiful color photographs are the icing on the cake of a very useful book.

Menendez, Albert J. The Subject Is Murder: A Selective Subject Guide to Mystery Fiction (NY: Garland, 1986) and its companion volume The Subject is Murder Volume Two (NY: Garland, 1990). Most useful to dealers who have customers asking such questions as “Do you have any more mysteries dealing with advertising, art, architecture, gardening, schools and universities, religion, sports, television, Christmas, bookstores, writers, trains, medicine, law….” Well, you get the idea.

*Pederson, Jay P. St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. Fourth edition. While nowhere near as complete as Hubin, many generalist dealers might find it more useful for the writers covered because it includes a capsule biography of each writer covered along with a short critical essay on the writer and, if the author was alive at the time of publication, a few comments by the author on his or her own work. Many of the critical essays are written by well-known critics and by other mystery writers.

Because each edition dropped some writers and added others, the three previous editions are also useful. However, the three previous editions had a different name which St. James, for some reason changed with the fourth edition. The three earlier works were all known as Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers. The first two editions (St. Martin’s Press, 1980 and 1985) were edited by John Reilly and the third edition (Gale Publishing, 1991) was edited by Lesley Henderson.

2. HISTORIES AND CRITICAL WORKS:

Any good mystery reference shelf must include histories and critical works on the genre and Albert, cited above, is the best source for finding them.

The historical and critical books listed below are a few of my personal favorites. I have listed them alphabetically by author. I prefer older mystery writers to newer ones, and this is reflected in my selections.

Haycraft, Howard. Murder for Pleasure. NY: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1941. [reprinted, without revision, by Biblo and Tannen in 1974]. The first formal history of the genre, and still one of the best. It is obviously limited in that it stops in 1940.

Popular Press is not a book, but a publisher well known for its output in the area of mystery reference and criticism, and many of its older works are still in print. For critical books dealing with sub-genres of mystery fiction (women writers, espionage, golden age fiction, private eyes, police procedurals, etc.), Popular Press is an excellent place to start. Formerly at Bowling Green State University, Popular Press was acquired by the University of Wisconsin in July 2002. Because, at this writing, things are still in transition, their offerings can be checked out either at http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/popularpress.html, or athttp://www.bgsu.edu/offices/press/bcat.html .

Quayle, Eric. The Collector’s Book of Detective Fiction. [London]: Studio Vista, [1972]. Great illustrations, but most useful for pre-WWII authors.

Queen, Ellery. The Detective Short Story: A Bibliography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1942. Also reprinted by Biblo and Tannen. Though a bibliography, the Queens’ critical comments probably merit its being placed in the critical category.

Queen, Ellery. Queen’s Quorum: A History of the Detective-Crime Short Story as Revealed in the 106 Most Important Books Published in this Field since 1845. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951. This was reprinted in 1969 with supplements bringing it up to 1967.

*Steinbrunner, Chris and Otto Penzler with Marvin Lachtman and Charles Shibuk. Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection. NY: McGraw-Hill, [1976]. A very useful general reference, with a particular emphasis on films related to the authors and works discussed.

Symons, Julian. Bloody Murder. From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History. London: Faber and Faber, [1972].

3. AUTHOR BIBLIOGRAPHIES:

Author bibliographies are the most important part of a dealer’s reference shelf. In the field of mystery and detective fiction, a number of fine ones have already been published, but many more still need to be done. Albert, cited above, can provide information about not only about bibliographies already published in book form, but about preliminary bibliographies, checklists, and critical articles for many authors which may appear within various fanzines and magazines.

The descriptive bibliographies listed below (by subject, then author) are a few of the ones I feel are most useful and most well done:

Raymond Chandler: A Descriptive Bibliography. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979.

Dashiell Hammett: A Descriptive Bibliography. Richard Layman. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979.

Tony Hillerman: From “The Blessing Way” to Talking God.” A Bibliography. Louis A. Hieb. Tucson: Press of the Gigantic Hound, 1990.

A Macdonald Potpourri–being a miscellany of post-perusal pleasures of the John D. MacDonald books for bibliophiles, bibliographers, and bibliomaniacs. Walter and Jean Shine. Gainesville: University of Florida Libraries, 1988. Though not strictly a descriptive bibliography and though a little difficult “to get the hang of”at first, this is an invaluable reference for sorting out the first edition paperback originals of JDM. It can be used in conjunction with, but contains much more information in terms of paperbacks than, the Shines’ earlier A Bibliography of the Published Works of John D. MacDonald (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1980).

Ross Macdonald/Kenneth Millar: A Descriptive Bibliography. Matthew J. Bruccoli. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983.

Royal Bloodline: Ellery Queen, Author and Detective. Francis M. Nevins, Jr. Bowling Green: Popular Press, 1974. Not a descriptive bibliography, but the best reference source currently available for the two men who did so much to popularize detective fiction through their novels and critical and writings.

A Bibliography of the Works of Dorothy L. Sayers. Colleen B. Gilbert. Hamden: Archon Books, 1978.

Rex Stout: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography. Guy M. Townsend, editor. NY: Garland Publishing, 1980. This is not a descriptive bibliography and is not useful for determining first edition points, but it does attempt to list every item written by or about Stout up to its date of publication. It also includes media treatments of Stout’s works on radio, in the movies, and on television.

Julian Symons: A Bibliography. With commentaries and a personal memoir by Julian Symons and a preface by H. R. F. Keating. John J. Walsdorf. New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 1996.

The pages of back issues of the journal The Armchair Detective are very useful for specific author bibliographies. Otto Penzler, the dean of detective fiction, wrote a column called “Collecting Detective Fiction” from around 1982 through 1995. His checklists include publication information and points for first editions for many of the most prominent mystery writers. Fortunately, many of these have been recently updated and published in pamphlet form and are available from The Mysterious Bookshop which can be emailed at: info@mysteriousbookshop.com .

Firsts Magazine has a mystery issue once or twice a year and publishes mystery writer checklists. The November 2002 John D. MacDonald issue is particularly outstanding–see http://www.firsts.com/Nov02.html.

Allen and Patricia Ahearn have included many mystery writers in their Author Price Guides Series. See http://www.qbbooks.com/ind_apg.htm.

4. DEALER AND AUCTION CATALOGUES:

Although the Internet diminished the value of dealer and auction catalogues as price guides, they can still be very helpful in providing a lot of bibliographical information, and many are illustrated. The value of a catalogue, obviously, depends in great measure on how much additional information is provided–but even cloth colors, when listed, and numbers of pages can be helpful when researching a book.

5. PEER RESOURCES:

Don’t neglect fellow dealers as a resource. Most are always willing to help. I strongly recommend the following:

The Deadly Directory: 2002. Kate Derie, editor. Lists booksellers, organizations, events, periodicals, publishers, and information resources in the field of mystery and detective fiction. You can get more information at: http://www.deadlyserious.com.

6. INTERNET RESOURCES:

Unfortunately, the most useful site on the internet for mystery and detective fiction, The Mysterious Homepage, has mysteriously disappeared. It contained a wealth of links to other internet sources.

However Google or another search engine can be a valuable resource in locating sites related to mystery fiction in terms of specific authors, characters, sub-genres (bibliomysteries, historical mysteries, dime novels), publishers, and awards (both the Mystery Writers of America and the English Crime Writers Association have web sites).

Most published writers today either have their own web sites or have unofficial web sites run by fans.

Two internet sites are particularly good for examples of authors’ signatures and include many mystery writers in their lists: http://www.purplehousepress.com/sig.htm, andhttp://home.earthlink.net/~criswell/authors/agraphs.htm

SHERLOCKIANA

1. CHECKLISTS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES:

*De Waal, Ronald B. The Universal Sherlock Holmes. 1993. As Hubin is the essential reference work for detective fiction and as Irene Adler is the Woman, Ronald Burt De Waal has provided the most comprehensive bibliography of all things Sherlockian. The first edition of his work was The World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Boston: New York Graphics Society, 1974), which contained over 6,200 entries. The International Sherlock Holmes (Hamden: Archon Books, 1980) followed with more than 6,000 additional entries. The Universal Sherlock Holmes includes all entries from the first two volumes plus 12,000 new entries, for a total of 24,703 items.

Hubin lists not only all printings of the canon, individual stories and novels along with collections, but also pastiches, parodies, and writings about the writings. He includes newspaper articles, dramatic presentations, and all kinds of Sherlockian ephemera. It is a unique work–one of a kind.

The Universal Sherlock Holmes is available from George Vanderburgh of The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box at gav@bmts.com as a book in five volumes (four volumes and an index) bound either in paper with a plastic comb binding or in hardback. It is also available on CD-ROM.

*Green, Richard Lancelyn and John Michael Gibson. A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle. Oxford: The Clarenden Press, 1983. A complete descriptive bibliography, this is the standard reference work on Doyle. It was reprinted in 1984 with corrections, and that corrected edition was reprinted in 2000 by Hudson House and is widely available. It is now also available in a Windows program on CD-ROM from George Vanderburgh of The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box at gav@bmts.com.

Whitt, J. F. The Strand Magazine: 1891-1950. A Selective Checklist. London: Whitt, 1979. Although there is no definitive index of The Strand, this short paperbound work lists all material related to Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as all stories by P. G. Wodehouse, and a selection of other contributions, mainly by writers of detective, mystery, or fantasy fiction. It is quite scarce but worth buying when it turns up.

*Shaw, John Bennett. The Basic 100: The 100 Most Important Critical Studies and Association Items to the Sherlock Holmes Canon. Various places and dates. John Bennett Shaw, who owned the largest Sherlockian collection in private hands before it was donated to the University of Minnesota’s Special Collections, first developed this list in 1977 based on an exhibit of items from his collection 11 years earlier. He revised it a number of times before his death in 1994, and others have continued tinkering with it since then. A 1998 list done with the approval of Shaw’s widow and annotated by Carl Thiel is readily available as a paperback from George Vanderburgh of The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box at gav@bmts.com. Shaw’s own 1988 version, without commentary, is available on the web athttp://geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7846/shaw_yop.html. For generalist dealers, the Shaw reference can answer a number of customer questions about which books they might recommend about Sherlock Holmes.

2. OTHER SHERLOCKIAN REFERENCES FOR A GENERALIST BOOKDEALER :

Redmond, Christopher. A Sherlock Holmes Handbook. Toronto: Simon & Pierre, [1993]. For a one-book introduction to Sherlock Holmes, Redmond’s book is my favorite. It contains the most basic information that a beginner would want. The introduction includes short summaries of the entire canon, 56 stories and 4 novels, and the following chapters provide specific information about Holmes and Watson, Doyle, and their world in very readable form. The very detailed index makes the book exceptionally useful and reader-friendly.

Tracy, Jack. The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana. Garden City: Doubleday, 1977. Alphabetically arranged, this is a fine reference for locating names, places, and general subjects in the canon quickly and easily.

Herbert, Paul D. The Sincerest Form of Flattery: An Historical Survey of Parodies, Pastiches and Other Imitative Writings of Sherlock Holmes 1891-1980. Bloomington: Gaslight, 1983. Long before Doyle’s death in 1930, other writers began to appropriate the character of Sherlock Holmes. In the beginning, they used parodies to make fun of Holmes who had, in a very short time, become one of the best-known fictional characters in England and the United States. After Doyle’s death made it clear there would be no more Holmes stories, others tried their hands at writing serious pastiches which they hoped might fill the void. Pastiche and parody have coexisted for a little more than a century now, and one Sherlockian recently wrote that he had identified more than 4,000 such items.

Herbert does not attempt to list all the parodies and pastiches he knows, but instead he divides his book into subject-oriented chapters, organizing parodies and pastiches around historical figures, historical events, fictional characters, science fiction, trades and special interests, cases mentioned as being in Watson’s tin dispatch box, Christmas, Holmes’ relatives, and many more. His book also includes a bibliography of parodies and pastiches. For a generalist dealer, the Herbert book can help to guide customers looking for “more Sherlock Holmes.”

There are, as one can see from the entry on De Waal, literally thousands of Sherlockian books and pamphlets, not to mention hundreds of journals and newsletters devoted to Holmes, but the ones above are probably all a generalist dealer would need. The rest of the writings should probably be left to Morley’s “so few,” mentioned at the opening of this essay, the readers, the collectors, and the enthusiasts who still believe, with Vincent Starrett, that “it is always 1895.”

By: Michael S. Greenbaum

URL: http://janusbooks.com

#collecting #reference

Ephemeral Assays—The Good Book

So much for the classical origins of ephemera. What does the term mean for us here and now in the opening years of the new millennium? For some basic paper training, one could begin appropriately enough with a published source of information . . . also known as the dreaded price guide.

I go to one crowded country auction where hanging on the wall near the slow checkout desk is a nice framed 1930s-era oil painting of an old-time auction. They were often held right in front of the failed farm house back then, and the auctioneer’s white shirtsleeves are rolled up as he knocks down the dispossessions of the defeated to thirty or so spectators and far fewer actual bidders. “Those were the days,” someone on line (rather than online) in the 1980s once commented. “Well I used to go to lots like that,” said a very old-timer near by, “and all they did was bitch about the good old days when you could find great stuff cheap and the crowds were smaller.”

Although everything is relative, there is something to be said for the modern-day theory that our related businesses have been somewhat ruined by the “Antiques Roadshow,” published price guides, eBay, and the proliferation of reproductions and fakes. As for the first bump in the road, although there is a heightened awareness among yard salers and estate settlers, I usually find it pretty easy to sidestep speculation that the proffered item would elicit gasps in the final segment on the Roadshow. General price guides that come out annually (Schroeder’s, Kovel’s) are pretty hit-or-miss for a particular piece. The prices in specialized guides (which cover hundreds of categories by now) are sometimes thought to be manipulated upwards by the top dealers who write them based on their own self-interest. (My brother numbers himself among early collectors of ephemera related to fireworks, and they all dread the day when that price guide comes out and quotes go sky high.) A good rule of thumb in some areas is that half the book price is a good starting point in most negotiations. One guy I know whips out 1980s-era price guides when he is buying but manages to quote current editions when selling. Ebay, largely responsible for spawning those packs of hyenas so evident every Saturday morning at estate and garage sales throughout the land, will require an article unto itself. To summarize, though, there’s an upside and a downside and a whole lot of shaking out going on.

So where do books and ephemera fit in the pantheon of antiques when it comes to description and value? Libraries catalog and loan books, but dispensing advice on pricing is generally beneath them. Scarce books, as we all know, have been rather difficult to find and price until fairly recently. Collectors would spend years tracking down an elusive tome that can now be had in multiple from kitchen table booksellers via the net. The beauty of books is that so darned many have been published that it’s impossible to list them all in one volume or set of volumes. (Another great advantage is that they are generally too difficult to counterfeit compared to their hard relatives in wood, clay, glass and metal.) “Prices realized at auction” in ponderous sets or fast but pricey CDs are generally skewed toward known valuables, and big city bidders often pay very inflated prices in the heat of battle. Only recently have online out-of-print book search services (and the meta-crawler comparison engines which keep them somewhat honest) standardized real-time pricing practices and separated the scarce from the truly rare.

Ephemera though, ever elusive, still slips under most of the above-mentioned radar. Some gets picked up by specialized price guides (e.g., sheet music), and searching eBay under “Completed Auctions” can be revealing, but there are millions of oddball ephemerons whizzing around which resist the banality of bibliographic description, the corral of the catalog record, and the pull of the price tag. We weren’t meant to see these often fascinating and beautiful items created “for its one April day of life” decades or centuries later, many examples survive and are readily available, there is always something to learn, and you can fill in historical blanks while making a nice profit from these slips and pages of paper while others fight it out over familiar items of known value which only yield so much profit after expenses. Even among ephemera fanciers, cluelessness often prevails. Would-be paper lions fight over the single Kennedy Life magazine everyone and their mother saved in the attic while I carry out the box of 1920s Vogues worth $100.00 each. All this to me is the great appeal of the Wild West that is ephemera.

There is one price guide that does a pretty good job of introducing us to the field in question. Warman’s Paper (Radnor, PA: Wallace-Homestead, 1994 first edition), which covers the various types of ephemera commonly sold and collected today, is probably the best single primer. It was reprinted by Chilton in 1997, and there are always ten or so copies available online in the $10.00 to $20.00 range. I remember reading this cover-to-cover on a long plane flight, and it still sits on the first shelf of my price guide collection. Though more mercantile than authoritative or scholarly, Warman’s is tops in both areas compared to any other general ephemera guide, and it’s always a pleasure to delve between these happy yellow covers.

Warman’s was written by Norman E. Martinus, an unassuming and otherwise unpublished Outer Banks ephemera specialist; and it was conceived and edited by the famous and incredibly prolific Harry L. Rinker. I used to read Rinker a lot some years ago, and two tidbits always come to mind. He is a pretty serious speculative buyer of new collectibles, carefully storing away multiple mint condition examples for future profit. Personally, I prefer older artifacts with more character that have been handled by departed souls, and items which are not so aware of their own collectibility. And Rinker once shared the fact that he avidly collects any rectal thermometer he can get his hands on, antique or otherwise, which is one item I would pass on no matter how high up they may go. We can let all that slide though, because Rinker is usually ahead of the curve and one gets the feeling that the authors of Warman’s have no hidden agenda other than to share their knowledge of and enthusiasm for the field of ephemera.

The book opens with a spirited discussion of “ephemera” versus “paper,” highhandedly concluding that the former term is “incredibly pretentious and snobby.” “A Salute to Our Predecessors” pays tribute to Robert D. Connolly’s Paper Collectibles: A Collector’s Identification and Value Guide, the second and last edition of which was published in 1982. Gene Utz’s Collecting Paper and the defunct House of Collectibles paper guides get the dissing they deserve. There are lists of ephemera-related reference books, periodicals, societies, shows, and repositories. The pricing philosophy and research methodology is explained. This is a buyer’s guide with retail prices, and sellers can only expect to make ten to fifteen cents on the dollar. “Not all paper is collectible. . . . Identifying and separating collectible paper from non-collectible paper in a large lot is time consuming.” Amen, brother! It takes years to develop expertise, to amass a large inventory, and to form relationships with the right sellers and buyers. The point is made that the paper market is a complex field that “differs substantially from other antiques and collectibles markets.” Subsequent sections include “Caring for Paper,” and “Spotting Restrikes, Reproductions, Copycats, Fantasies, and Fakes.” The lengthy front matter of this guide is highly informative, written in a lively manner, and well worth the price of admission all by itself before you even get to the thousands of items listed with their wonderful accompanying illustrations.

Warman’s is then arranged by topic and by subject. This may sound a little redundant or confusing, but they explain the difference and you get the hang of format versus content after awhile. Good indexing saves the day too. Topics include advertising, billheads, catalogs, diecuts, erotica, family letters, games, illustrators, lobby cards, menus, newspapers, photographs, record jackets, scrapbooks, tobacco cards, valentines, gum wrappers, etc. Subjects include amusement parks, barber, Civil War, Disney, Elsie the Cow, fishing, Girl Scouts, horses, Indian, jewelry, kitchen, Lincoln, motorcycles, Nabisco, ocean liner, political, radios, science fiction, Three Stooges, unions, Volume One Number Ones, world’s fairs, etc.

To illustrate, let’s start off with a healthy breakfast. Under the topical heading of “Cereal Boxes,” we sit down to a whirlwind historical tour. Wheat cereal and hot cooked oatmeal were dispensed by weight in a plain sack at the good old general store until the turn of the century. Packaged, ready-to-eat cereal came in the early 1900s, aimed at Mom. In the 1930s kids were targeted, either through “free” premiums or on-pack promotions featuring cut-outs, contests, and games. In the middle years, entire radio and TV shows were sponsored by various manufacturers. When this approach was jettisoned in favor of spot commercials, sugar-coated brand characters were created to ensure recognition (and tooth decay). Profits were Grrrrreat! The last few decades have seen a shift toward movie and sports tie-ins, which make the boxes even more transitory. One example of a “fantasy” cereal box (not just a reproduction but a fake which depicts an item which never existed to begin with) is a computer-generated Wheaties “Last Breakfast Cereal” box with Jesus Christ on the front. When I see old cereal boxes, it makes me wonder why on earth someone saved them to begin with, and how they came down to us safely. These boxes shared their contents for a brief happy moment in a sunny deco kitchen or in the blue glow of Howdy Doody over kitschy fifties formica, only to suffer decades of dark interment in some dry, milkless attic. “Box completeness” is key to these collectors. Rare unconstructed and file copies command the highest prices. I love early color print ads from pre-Depression periodicals, and I like some of the premiums, like a neat 1949 Post Toasties Popeye tin ring which recently sprang up spinach-like from a battered $5.00 auction box lot $45.00 stronger, but cereal boxes themselves don’t do much for me. As Count Chocula proved years ago, there’s no accounting for taste. Still, when Kellogg’s Corn Flakes (1950s Superman offer) and Nabisco Rice Honeys (1969 Beatles Yellow Submarine with stickers) boxes go for $300.00 a pop, one should crackle and snap. If this topic doesn’t leave you soggy, Warman’s Paper directs your attention to a couple of related periodicals—Free Inside, and Flake.

For an example of a subject heading, let’s run away to the circus. Circus Report seems to be a leading periodical. Clubs include the Circus Historical Society (which publishes Bandwagon). Among the categories of circus ephemera listed are advertising trade cards, books, booklets, broadsides, letters, letterheads, magazines, photographs, posters, programs, and tickets. Prices range from a $10.00 route card (Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, 15th/16th week, 1926, 3x 5″) to an $85.00 broadside (Zircus Hippodrom Und Menagerie, German, contortionist wearing spotted tights and other acts, circa 1920, 9 x 19″) to a $200.00 poster (Downie Brothers Circus, close-up of clown’s face surrounded by other performing clowns, Erie Litho, circa 1920, 28 x 41″). Some circus posters sell for thousands, and when the cost of any antique is high, reproductions and suckers are born every minute, so watch out! Ephemera is rife with crossover appeal, as Warman’s illustrates. I recently sold a colorful Ringling Brothers Circus Magazine and Program with 4/26/1953 Sunday afternoon tickets stapled to the inside cover. This issue happens to contain a great original Hemingway circus article. Who could provide such a rare paper item to the serious Hemingway collector for a mere $35.00? Only an earnest ephemeralist.

“I never met a piece of paper I didn’t like,” concludes Rinker. “The field is so vast that there is room for everyone. Jump in and enjoy yourself.”

#collecting #ephemera

Regarding Black Writers & Literature

Q: One of your specialties is Black literature. How/why did you choose this area to specialize in?

A: I had both personal reasons and what I like to think are practical business reasons. The civil rights movement was very active when I was a college student, and in the years right after that, and while I was only involved in very minor ways (participating in a tutoring program, etc.) it was something I believed in, and I began to read and buy books related to blacks in America. In fact, this was one of the common areas of interest between me and my first husband (now deceased), who was black and working as a part-time lecturer in black studies when I met him. Since we had two daughters, I continued to buy books in this area, so that they would have them available.

When I started as a bookseller back in 1993, I was planning on selling books mostly by catalogues and at shows, and so within the overall area of modern first editions, I decided to focus on women authors and African American writers, two areas I both liked and felt were somewhat neglected, since historically most booksellers and book collectors in the U.S. have been white males. I also felt that since I was more knowledgeable about these areas than many booksellers, it gave me a little bit of an advantage that would offset my newness in the business.

Long considered to be the first novel to be published in the US by an African American women writer, “Iola Leroy” by Frances E. W. Harper, first published in Philadelphia in 1892, remains an important landmark in black literature, even though modern scholarship has discovered earlier novels

Q: Which Black authors do you consider the best overall and why?

A: In terms of sheer literary elegance, I would have to say Ralph Ellison and the best of W. E. B. DuBois’s writings are extremely powerful. I think we all know the list of classic African American authors, ranging from Frederick Douglass to Hurston to Wright and to Baldwin, so I am not going to select a ‘best’ from among them.

I am not even going to try and select some favorites because so often it is a question of which writer affects you the most on a particular day or in a particular mood. I will mention a few who I think don’t get the recognition they deserve: Percival Everett (who has written many novels over about 20 years, with a new, very funny one out just this year), Paule Marshall, Gayl Jones (her personal tragedies made her name better known for a while, but I think she is still not read enough), James Alan McPherson (he won the Pulitzer prize for one collection of short stories, but I wish he would write more), Sherley Anne Williams, George Lamming (from the Caribbean) I could go on and on and on another day, my list might be completely different. Many of the African American writers whom I like are poets, rather than novelists.

Q: Do you think Black authors have a unique perspective because of being Black, or is that irrelevant? If they do have a unique perspective, do you think they’re writing things that non-Blacks can relate to, or are their experience foreign to most other races/ethnic groups? I guess what I’m asking is whether most Black literature is based on a past of poverty and oppression that any struggling ethnic group can relate to, or is it unique to American Blacks?

A: To the extent that some (not most) African American literature is based on a past of poverty and oppression, I think it speaks to all groups who have struggled against these – however, the black experience in the U.S. is unique in many ways: the length of their history in the U.S. going back to the 17th century, the fact that they were brought to the U.S. unwillingly as slaves, and also that the form of slavery to which these Africans were subjected in the west was in many ways the worst the world has ever known (the only one which considered slaves as chattels, of no more significance than ownership of cattle).

The other important thing to realize in looking at African American literature is that in many ways it is part of a world literature or a trans-Atlantic literature. The term “diaspora” is used to indicate the spread of those of African descent to most parts of the western world. So my own personal perspective has been broadening to include Afro-Caribbean writers (many of whom left the Caribbean and went to England, France, Canada and the U.S.), Afro-Brazilian, and African writers. In fact, if you are talking about a writer from Puerto Rico or Cuba who has come to the United States, is that writer a Latin American or an African American or both?

One other point: the best literature is universal – Thus Grapes of Wrath speaks to all readers, not just migrant farm workers, and I think so does Wright’s Native Son, and Baldwin’s Go Tell It on a Mountain and Zorah Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine, to give just a few examples.

Q: Do most Black authors only write about Black characters? I’m curious about this, as Caucasian authors seem to write about all nationalities and racial and ethnic groups (although perhaps not with the authority that an author from a particular country or racial or ethnic group brings to writing), and most of the admittedly few current Black authors I’ve read seem to stick to Black characters and Black situations.

A. I guess I am partly curious about why you say that white writers seem to write about all nationalities and ethnic groups. Certainly one sees this in children’s literature where in the past the writers were almost exclusively white, but the children were often from different countries, or little black children. But I think in serious literature it is much less common for a white writer to have the protagonist of the work be of another race. Again, in the past, some Southerners wrote novels in dialect, but these were intended to confirm white readers in their belief that Negroes were simple, child-like, happy folks, or untrustworthy and shifty or whatever.

I don’t want to say that there aren’t any exceptions, because of course, there are but they are precisely that, exceptions: To give just one very modern example, Susan Straight is a white woman who set her first few books exclusively within the black community but she was married to a black man and living within that community at the time and her books stand out precisely because they are uncommon.

1829 bill from an estate sale listing the slaves sold at auction. Documents like this are a vivid testament to the inhumanity of slavery.

Some other interesting exceptions occurred during the Harlem Renaissance when you had a white woman like Nancy Cunard create the massive anthology “Negro” or Marc Connelly write a play like “Green Pastures” Langston Hughes referred to this phenomenon rather uncomplimentarily in one of his poems, but the fact remains that the Harlem Renaissance was a time in which it was “popular” to be black. Similarly, during the Civil Rights era and the Black Power movement, there was a certain allure to the whole scene which led to many writers who were not black featuring black protagonists.

However, it is true that most white writers have, in a sense, more freedom to write totally outside their own culture or their own experiences. They have been given this freedom by society, where they are not expected to “uphold the race” and by publishers. However, one of the ongoing issues for many black writers is not just expressing themselves creatively but also how much of an obligation do they have to work to correct injustice through their writing. Should they always be thinking of the white reader who might read their books and find his/her stereotypes confirmed if they described a black man as brutal or unfaithful (a criticism leveled against Alice Walker and Gayl Jones, for example)?

Richard Wright, whose books focused on the daily injustices blacks faced in America, felt that Zora Neale Hurston was wrong in writing her novels about a self-contained black world. I just got a copy of Bronze, the second collection of poetry by Georgia Douglas Johnson, a minor Harlem Renaissance writer. Her first collection was criticized because it dealt with the “heart” and not race, so this was her book of poems on race (although still infused by the heart), and in her last book, she again ignored race.

An interesting example is Charles Perry: his first and only published novel Portrait of a Young Man Drowning, was based on his own experience of juvenile gangsters in his Brooklyn neighborhood, but it features almost exclusively white characters – a decision made, according to Perry’s daughter, out of a fear that issues of race could cloud the humanity of the characters. Did this make it harder for him to get published?

Just two more very different examples: Many people still do not realize that Frank Yerby was a black man. His earlier books did not have a picture of him on the dustjacket, and almost all of his books are historical fiction, adventure novels, and so on, set almost exclusively within a white world. When Charles Chesnutt published his first book, even though it used dialect, it was thought that he was white. In fact, he was light skinned enough that he could have easily passed for white, but instead his novels became increasing more “political” and less popular. What had been considered his last novel, The Colonel’s Dream, was published while he was still relatively young, and only a few years after his first, and sold poorly. In fact, a recently found later novel of his has just been published, and this is the story of a man who grows up thinking he is black, and discovers that he is white (does this count as a black writer writing a novel with a white protagonist?)

So African American authors have both pressure from others in their communities to write about black people for many different reasons and from publishers who find it easier to keep writers in a ‘box’, a desire to overcome the prejudices and injustices they have faced, a dramatic history to write about is it surprising that they mostly write about black characters?

Q: Do you believe it is harder, today, for a Black author to find a publisher? To be marketed as a mainstream author by publishers? Or do their works command a smaller audience which discourages publishers from pushing their work?

A: Most African American writers would be considered ‘mid-list’ writers. I think that all mid-list writers are having problems now in finding publishers, but yes, this situation is probably exacerbated for black authors. I recently went to a signing by Mary Monroe, who just published her second novel more than 10 years after her first one and the reason was that she could not find a publisher. I can give several other examples of women who have had good critical reviews, or even won prizes for their books, but they wind up with no publisher for a while.

Zorah Neale Hurston’s first book in a slightly battered, but still vivid and attractive, and very scarce, dustjacket with art by Miguel Covarrubias.

Marketing is, of course, another issue and it is one that becomes very obvious in some bookstores where African American writers are for the most part put in a separate section of the store. In a way, this increases the ‘ghettoization’ of black authors, by implying that only black readers will be interested in their books. Writers like Toni Morrison obviously have broken out of this, but I think this trend is increasing.

Q: What genres seem to attract the most Black authors? Does their being Black usually have an effect on these choices?

A: African Americans write in all genres aside from straight “literature” there are many black writers in mysteries, romance, science fiction, juvenile and children’s literature. Perhaps the genres where they are relatively under-represented are science fiction and Western fiction.

Q: Am I mistaken that most of the currently popular Black literature authors are women? If that is true, what is your thinking on why?

A: If by popular you are referring to those who appear on the best seller lists consistently like Bebe Moore Campbell or Terry MacMillan or even Toni Morrison, then it might seem so. Remember most book buyers in the U.S. are women, and one of the things that Campbell and MacMillan seem to have done is to write novels about black women facing emotional/family/romantic/financial problems in a way that has more to do with being middle class American than specifically African American so that makes their novels popular enough that they will hit the best seller list. I don’t pay attention to the best seller lists all that much but I will agree that there do not seem to be any African American male writers who approach the popularity of Clancy, King, Koontz, etc.

However, when looking at literature overall, there are many popular African American writers who are men. With some exceptions, popularity usually means that a book is less challenging, so I am not sure that is an important goal.

Q: Are most Black literature authors (as opposed to autobiographical, nonfiction, or politically related writing) from the U.S.? If so, why?

A: Well, I dealt with this a little above, but no, most of them are not from the United States. Africa and the Caribbean have both produced Nobel Prize winning authors (to use just one yardstick) the Caribbean especially has produced a large number of interesting authors, both in the past with such writers as Aime Cesaire and currently with not just “giants” of literature like Derek Walcott, but also with many interesting younger writers, such as Jamaica Kincaid and Edwidge Danticat and Caryl Phillips (and remember, not all black literature is written in English – much of it is in French and some in Spanish.) Many writers move between countries – in other words, lots of Caribbean writers go to Canada or England or the U.S., and back again.

Q: Do you think that popular Black authors are helped a lot by the publicity Oprah gives their work? What other venues or people are helping Black authors?

A: I can’t really give a complete list of authors Oprah has selected, but it seems to me that her effect has been much more dramatic on some of the white woman writers she has selected: specifically, I am thinking of her first selection, Jane Hamilton, who was very little known until that happened.

In a sense, Oprah is much more conservative in selecting African Writers: many have already won recognition. Toni Morrison was already a Nobel Laureate, Ernest Gaines had won the National Book Award, Crosby books were already all best sellers, etc. I might be missing someone but offhand I cannot think of an unknown young African American fiction writer who she selected.

Q: I’ve had some Black customers who only collect works by Black authors. Do you find this prevalent?

A: Most collectors have to limit their collection – African American collectors are no exception. Certainly, many of them collect primarily in certain periods (Harlem Renaissance, or modern literature or late 19th century), but I have had African American collectors who only collect mysteries, one who was a serious Anne Rice collector, others who collect children’s books.

And many of the collectors whom I have dealt with who collect African American authors are not themselves African American.

Q. What percentage of your sales are books by Blacks?

A: I actually looked this up because I wasn’t sure and I was surprised to see that African American books are approximately 15% of the books which we have catalogued and represent about 15% of our sales (in terms of numbers of books). The only difference is that the average sales price is somewhat higher than our overall average, and this reflects the fact that I will put more energy into “buying” in this area.

I would like to see a higher percentage of our books in this area, actually, but finding really good quality books is becoming more and more challenging.

Interview by Shirley Bryant.

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