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We are Craig Horle and Laurie Wolfe of Classic Books and Ephemera, which we run out of our home in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. When we began the business in 2001 we did not anticipate the store-in-the-home phenomenon common to so many booksellers. Our cozy house is now so crammed with our stock and shipping supplies that living there has become almost secondary. However we do have room for the obligatory “bookstore cat,” Greystoke. Having eclectic interests ourselves, we have no

“I sell books about antiques.” “You sell antique books? I have an old school book that was my grandmother’s.” “No, I sell books ABOUT antiques, not necessarily antique books.” And so a typical conversation with a stranger ends—the same conversation for thirty-one years! Fortunately, the collector, the antique dealer and the book lover recognize what I sell, and their enthusiasm for my specialty has been my profession since 1977. My father, Walt Johnson, started promoting his

My first bookstore job was at Iowa City’s Prairie Lights. I was attending the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and working in a bookshop helped support my “plans” of becoming a writer. While there, and though I didn’t realize it at the time (or at least wouldn’t have used the term), I began collecting books: haunting the bargain tables for good buys (once even finding a third printing of Olympia Press’ two-volume Lolita for five dollars), and stalking authors who read at t

Ye Olde Booksellers Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms by Guido Bruno (Detroit: The Douglas Book Shop, 1922) is a swell little thing, the one in hand numbered 898 of 1,000 printed, with bumped corners and cracked hinges, at 125 pp. plus the index. It mostly covers New York City, excerpted in this issue; with brief stops in Chicago, Boston, and other cities that will have to wait until next time. The first passage is from his preface, and then w

Happy Hits Excerpts from recent online book descriptions. -Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Acceptable. Heavy edge and cover wear, some faux stains, inside great!! -Corners bumped, Spine worn at top and bottom with teat at center. -Book Condition: Good. No Jacket. 4to – over 9 3/4″ – 12″ Tall. 407 pp. For years 1907, 1908, 1909. All the main color plates have been cut out of book; also, a few pages are loose from binding. Spine cocked, some soil to covers; edge & corner wear

Table of Contents from the Editor From the President Interview with Paul Mills of AuctionExplorerBooks Book-Buying in Middle America, or, A New York Dealer’s Visits to Three Middle American Cities Ephemeral Assays: Jumpin’ Jehovah Book review: Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co Anyone for the Forsythe Saga? Cathy Graham and Serena Wyckoff of Copperfish Books, LLC Pros and Cons of AbeBooks.com for Buyers and Sellers Paul Mills of Clarke’s Africana

Most of us love books for much more than their commercial value, but how did we go from appreciating them to selling them? In many cases, collectors simply decided to specialize, weed, or trade up, and reselling is a logical way to make room and raise funds. In my case, mother ran a weekend barn sale in rural upstate New York in the 1980s. The rest of us avoided this in one way or another, most notably my dad who didn’t like strangers on the property all that much and retreat

Change, Challenge, and Response I had an article nearly finished for this edition of the Standard, and took the article to my “day job” today to finish the last ten percent. Today turned into an exercise in how to make smooth transitions between crises and the article went unfinished. After dragging myself back home I reflected on the day and found that it illustrated some things that I was struggling to explain in my article. Following one of my numerous credos—“never be afr