Rare Book Monthly

Articles - July - 2018 Issue

Bill Reese: In Memoriam

Bill Reese, left, with Joe Felcone in the last year

Bill Reese, left, with Joe Felcone in the last year

In the rare book business a few names resonate down through the ages, their quotes, collections, statements, catalogues and books so substantial that even their ephemera and paraphernalia become collectible.  Often their hard edges and hard truths dissolve in the alchemy of death that transforms careers into dirges of praise.  Bill Reese is the latest of such men, one of the very few who can be mentioned in the company of Streeter, Eberstadt, Rosenwald, Rosenbach and Huntington.  As collectors and/or dealers they had their strengths and weaknesses but in the fullness of time have emerged as transcending luminaries among the frequently well-educated and always gifted who pursue not just books, but also their relationships and stories that illuminate the field.  For them, as for few others, authors, material and circumstances have danced in their imaginations to become original insights and perspectives that today are orthodoxy for others.  Bill had that gift, that magic that will live on through his choices, clients, catalogs and quotes.  It has been said of others but it is no less true here today; he belongs to the ages.

 

He built collections and he built mine.  The first one was about the new world before 1625, and ten years later, the opening of the American west.  He was an intellectual raconteur offering insights and objectives, illuminating possible paths but never cluttering them with irrelevant choices because he had them in stock.  He offered perspective and always took my calls.  I had questions and he often had the answers.  And he offered, when called for, unvarnished truth. 

 

Since 2000, building the Americana Exchange Database and its successor has been complicated.  He suggested the first database structure we employed, was the first to subscribe, subscribing at the highest level, and maintaining his membership every day since.

 

In 2009, the rare book field swooning from the recent financial decline, I sent to auction 81 items to test the market recovery and he, without ever saying he would, broadly supported the sale ensuring its success and signaling that the bottom was in and recovery for the field at hand.  We had no understandings, he and I.  After the sale I sought to thank him and he simply said, “it was good business.”  It was also extraordinary friendship and while I live, my gratitude will neither decline nor diminish.

 

We will all go on, but there is now an irregular piece of the collecting puzzle missing, that will stand empty, not to be filled or replaced, simply in its shadowed emptiness a space uniquely his that will remind us of who we lost and what we miss.   


Posted On: 2018-07-01 05:08
User Name: mairin

Lovely homage to Bill Reese, Bruce, pleased to see this, and nicely written.
(I mailed to your office, last week, a paper copy of the NY Times obit.)
He and Bob Barry were two of my best contacts in CT. Reese was always
helpful, and such a gentleman. He couldn't find an Anne Bradstreet for me,
but when I ment'd an upcoming guest lecture of mine on Mary Shackleton Leadbeater,
he put in the mail, at once, a useful catalogue of his which included some good context
on abolitionist material, one of Leadbeater's subjects. He shall be missed and remembered
by many. / Maureen E. Mulvihill / Guest Writer, Rare Book Hub (2016 / 2018).
____


Posted On: 2018-07-03 22:06
User Name: rarerobinson127

I am one of many far down "the chain" who came to value his honesty, guidance and trust. To have known him was an honor and inspiration.


Posted On: 2018-07-27 14:35
User Name: pine12

Bill Reese was chosen to be the Honored Guest Bookseller at our first Gold Rush Book Fair here in Nevada City. In a telephone call, he quietly explained that he would have been happy to attend, but that on the date we had chosen he would have to be in London at one of the most important book fairs in the world. Nevertheless he sent Nick Aretakis representing the Reese Company with some California gold rush treasures of jaw dropping scarcity and value. It was a generous thing to do, yet typical of Bill Reese. We were very grateful. There will never be such another. John Hardy for Hardy Books


Rare Book Monthly

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