Rare Finds – A Guide to Rare Book Collecting

“It is a woman’s writing, but whose?” – (William Thackeray on the authorship of Jane Eyre) The pseudonymous publication of Jane Eyre in 1847 by “Currer Bell” sparked one of the greatest literary controversies of the 19th century. The novel proved an immediate and almost unprecedented success, selling out within three months while the public [...]

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 “The authentic interpreter of Machiavelli is the whole of later history.” —Lord Acton” Almost immediately upon its 1532 first appearance in print, The Prince exerted a formidable and far-reaching influence. Henry VIII’s agent Thomas Cromwell obtained a manuscript copy only a few years after the first publication. The works of Shakespeare and Marlowe abound with [...]

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“A Book Of Mine Where A Sound Heart And A Deformed Conscience Come Into Collision And Conscience Suffers Defeat.” Critics blasted Twain’s dark, brilliant Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the moment of publication, vilifying the book for its “coarseness” and “blood-curdling humor.” Nonetheless, it emerged as arguably the defining novel of American literature, prompting Hemingway [...]

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No need for X-ray glasses from Q’s laboratory to see the value of Ian Fleming’s phenomenally successful James Bond books. An officer in His Majesty’s Secret Service during World War II, Fleming burst onto the literary scene in 1953 with the first in his series of spy novels, thrilling readers for over fifty years. 007 [...]

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“This mammoth work is a necessary part of any Civil War library” (Eicher). “Zealous in their work, often regardless of danger, and at all times handicapped by the vexing difficulties of the photographic process of that day,” pioneering photographer Mathew Brady and his assistants created an unprecedented photographic record of war, capturing “scenes of actual [...]

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“For 160 Days We Marched Through The Forest” “Only a man of Stanley’s iron resolution and invincible resource could have carried through the awful marches and counter-marches in the tropical forests…” (DNB). Stanley had already successfully completed three major expeditions in Africa by the time he accepted what would prove to be his most ambitious [...]

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“One Of The Classics Of Antarctic Literature” Cherry-Garrard served as assistant zoologist on Robert Scott’s tragic 1910-12 expedition to Antarctica. Dr. Wilson chose Bowers and Cherry-Garrard as his companions for a winter journey in 1911 to Cape Crozier to collect Emperor Penguin eggs. “On their return five weeks later Scott described their journey as ‘the [...]

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“Passages Of Unearthly Beauty” Joyce began writing Finnegans Wake in 1922, the same year Ulysses saw publication. Compared to that book, Finnegans Wake “took longer to write… was conceived and executed under a greater range of symbolic and mythic guidelines, was dictated to more famous amanuenses, among them Samuel Beckett, was used as a weapon [...]

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“A Woman Must Have Money And A Room Of Her Own If She Is To Write Fiction” Based on two lectures she gave at a women’s college in Cambridge in 1928, Woolf’s foundational essay on women and writing has become a classic feminist text. “Her aim was to establish a woman’s tradition, recognizable by its [...]

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“America’s First Great Scientific Contribution” Until the mid-18th century electricity was little more than a parlor trick used to delight kings and amaze crowds. One such itinerant “electrician” aroused Benjamin Franklin’s curiosity, and he embarked on a series of experiments that would “snatch lightning from the sky,” opening up the new field of electrical science [...]

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