An Extensive Selection of Rare and Collectible Material offered --
Book dealers may have 10,000 books and hope to sell 300 or 400 a year. To do this they post online, issue catalogues and display at shows. Consider then what the Friends of the C. H. Booth Library in Newtown, Connecticut will be doing this month – offering 120,000 books, DVDs, CDs, LPs and more during their five-day annual Book Sale beginning Saturday, July 14th and expecting to dispose of every item by the end of the fifth day. Their goals are to raise money for the library and place every item in a new home. The fair is in fact two events joined at the hip. One hundred and nineteen thousand items are interesting, useable and appealing, the other roughly one thousand items rare and collectible.
The event formally kicks off at 7:00 a.m. Saturday when numbered tickets go on sale for $5.00. The doors on day one will not open until 9:00 a.m. but the highly motivated can secure their place in line early and then go off for breakfast. Come 9:00 am when the doors open the motivated will head for the early opportunities in their areas of interest. Those interested in rare and collectible material will make a beeline for the Rare Book Room where interesting and desirable material is offered at an attractive discount to retail. Folks looking for fresh fiction, children’s, history and all sorts of 20th century material will head for the main rooms where all categories and every item is priced.
Here is the five-day schedule. For more info go to the book fair web site.
Saturday: 9-5 Admission is $5.00
Sunday: 9-5 Admission is free
Monday: 9-7 Admission is free. All material is half-price.
Tuesday: 9-7 Admission is free. All remaining material is $5.00 a bag [bags supplied]
Wednesday: 9-noon Admission is free. All remaining material is free.
Over the course of the five-day event the Friends hope to earn $100,000 to fund library activities over the coming year. The boy scouts are also hoping to clean up. They will be feeding the masses on Saturday and Sunday with a selection of hot dogs and hamburgers.
So what is in the Rare Book room this year?
SELECTED LIST OF ITEMS FROM THE SPECIALS ROOM (ROOM 201) AT THE 2012 BOOTH LIBRARY BOOKSALE
[Art] Green, Roger. Max Papart. NY: Rizzoli, nd(c1984). With foldout color lithograph tipped in. Four-line inscription by Papart on title page, 1988, with drawing. Fine with fine jacket. $45.00.
[___] Picasso, Pablo. Picasso and the Human Comedy. NY: Harcourt Brace, nd(1954). Constituting the American edition of Verve, Nos 29 & 30. Very good in slightly worn jacket. $600.00.
Also, Verve, French edition, Vol 5 Nos 19 & 20, Couleur de Picasso, Paris, 1948, paper covered stiff boards, very good, $75.00.
[___] Verve. Volume I, Nos 1-4, Vol 2, 5 & 6; together the first 6 issues in 5 volumes. Issues 1-4 are in very good condition, 5 & 6, the first double issue, shows minor chipping to edges, 1 X ¼” piece lacking from foot of spine. $1,250.00.
Avedon, Richard. Observations. NY: Simon Schuster, nd(c1959). Comments by Truman Capote. Minor shelf soil, head and foot of spine with wear, foot lacking publisher’s name, acetate jacket worn with pieces missing, slipcase worn at edges but solid, with no tape reinforcements. $195.00.
Baedeker, Karl. Egypt and the Sudan. Leipzig: 1929. 8th edition. Good. $95.00.
____. Germany. Leipzig, 1936. Very good. $45.00.
____. Russia. Lacking title and backstrip. As is. $150.00.
A number of other Baedekers will be available.
[Booth, John Wilkes] Forrester, Izola. This One Mad Act . . . The Unknown Story of John Wilkes Booth and his Family, by his Granddaughter. Boston: Hale Cushman Flint, 1937. Good. $50.00.
[Botanical prints] A multitude of chromolithographs removed from The Garden, Supplement to the Garden, Supplement to the Gardener’s Chronicle, some from House and Gardens, and perhaps others. Together, approximately 400 prints, will take some time to go through. $1,000.00.
Burton, Richard. Meeting Mrs. Jenkins. NY: Morrow, 1966. Burton’s real name was Richard Jenkins; this is “a remarkable portrait of both [Elizabeth Taylor] and her personality,” in three scenes separated by some years. Inscribed on the half-title “To Fred With deep affection always Elizabeth Taylor Jenkins & Richard Burton.” Very good with good jacket. $250.00.
Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. NY: Scholastic, nd(2008). Stated First Edition, October 2008; date sequence begins with 08, printing sequence begins with 1. Generically inscribed, “May the odds EVER be in your favor! Love, Suzanne Collins”. Fine with fine jacket. $2,500.00.
[de la Mare, Walter] Georgian Poetry 1911-12. London: Poetry Bookshop, 1916. 7th thousand. Among many others, there are five poems each by Rupert Brooke and de la Mare; de la Mare signed the volume November 16, 1916, when he was at Yale to accept the Howland Memorial Prize awarded posthumously to Brooke; de la Mare also gave a lecture on Youth and Poetry. Front hinge chipped, cracked. $40.00.
Dickens, Charles. The Chimes. NY: Historic Arts, nd. “[L]arge type, special edition of my Grandfather’s favorite Christmas-New Year story . . .”, printed note signed in ink by Enid Dickens Hawksley. Very good. $45.00.
Eliot, T S. Journey of the Magi. London: Faber Gwyer, nd. Ariel Poems No. 8. Some chips and soil to wrapper. $25.00.
See also Valery in this list; other Eliot volumes will be available.
[Foxe, John] Fox’s Book of Martyrs. Revised and Improved by John Malham., edited by T Pratt. NY: Borradaille, 1828-29. Two volumes in one. Very worn, boards separated, plates incomplete, but with five early lithographs by Pendleton, and one, not called for in the binder’s directions, by Imbert; this last signed, “on stone by Miss H. T.[?].” As is. $75.00.
Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield. London: Harrap, nd(1929). Illustrated by Arthur Rackham and signed by him, copy 159 of the English edition of 575. Gilt top edge, deckle fore and bottom, gilt vellum remarkably clean. $450.00.
Hadden, James M. A Journal Kept in Canada and Upon Burgoyne’s Campaign in 1776 and 1777. Albany: Munsell’s Sons, 1884. With an Explanatory Chapter and Notes by Horatio Rogers. Historical Series #12. Howes H6. Deckle edges. Inscribed from Rogers to R H Lilly, June 17, 1884. Partially unopened. Backstrip worn, some tears, paper label present but worn to illegibility. $150.00.
