blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

Halloween often ranks as people's favorite holiday--after all, who can resist costumes and candy corns? Many of us love the holiday for much spookier reasons; we love those ghosts, goblins, and ghouls. Ghosts have haunted the pages of many a book, including those of some of the best works of world literature. We’ll list ten, beginning with the creepiest, ghouls in BOOOOks!  See?  You've already had your first scare and we haven't even started the ghostly countdown.  Hold on tight--you're about to take a trip through a haunted house full of ghastly literary characters.

Today we celebrate the life of the English poet John Keats. Keats was born on October 31, 1795 in London, England and died a very short 25 years later in Rome, Italy of tuberculosis. With such a short life, most would assume that he could not have produced much, if anything, of worth. Yet Keats is perhaps one of the most well known of the English Romantic Poets. Through his poetry he sought the perfection of poetry filled with vivid imagery that expressed philosophy through classic, often Greek, legend.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one of literature’s most renowned mysteries; Sherlock Holmes is on the case after a ghostly hound stalks, and perhaps kills, Sir Charles Baskerville. Written in 1901, it is now part of school curriculums and popularized in film and television. Yet despite cultural familiarity with the novel, the allegations of adultery, plagiarism, and murder that haunt its creation remain largely unknown.

When Modernist ideals and styles began to flourish among English and American poets during the 1910s and 1920s, Ezra Pound was at the forefront of the movement. As an American expatriate to Europe, he has been credited with creating a bridge between the two continents that helped global poetic trends to shift and merge together. Critics also claim that Pound created the definitive examples of what a Modernist poem should look like.

Halloween is the time for ghouls, goblins, witches, and...ghosts. In the art world, ghosts aren't merely the phantoms, banshees, and spooks of horror stories; there are also ghosts of the pen. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would ghostwrite music for wealthy patrons, and plenty of famous authors have written works on behalf of others as well. 

Few writers exist in isolation. Instead, most benefit from some type of support, whether from an editor, mentor, or friend. As a work grows, each individual who touches it leaves an indelible mark. The line between author and collaborator begins clearly enough, but authorship can grow murky the longer the collaboration takes place. In Lyrical Ballads, Nostromo, and The Waste Land, multiple writers shaped the final product. Yet the work of those not included in the byline has largely faded to obscurity. Today we explore a few famous cases of (potential) ghostwriting from the world of literature.

"We all have such personal associations with the books--inscribed or uninscribed--that we possess, and in this sense all copies of books are association copies." 

-Thomas Tansell, Other People's Books

Tansell's words ring true with many a bibliophile. But some association copies are more valuable than others, especially in the rare book world. Association copies, books that were owned by authors themselves, someone close to authors, or by an otherwise notable individual, fascinate us because they tell stories beyond the ones printed on their pages. 

Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Anne Tyler, author of The Accidental Tourist, was born in Minneapolis Minnesota on October 25th, 1941.  She grew up in rural North Carolina in a Quaker commune.  Tyler did not attend a traditional school until she was 11 years old, instead going to the tiny schoolhouse that the mountain children attended in the mornings and in the afternoons going to homes within the commune to learn from those within the community.

It's commonly known that “Frankenstein” was the creation of nineteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Goodwin (later, Shelley) in a contest to create the scariest ghost story as a guest at the Lord Byron’s Italian villa.  However, there may be significantly more to the story. There were four separate European scientists who may perhaps have played muse to Mary: Luigi Galvani, Giovanni Aldini, Andew Ure, and perhaps most influentially, Johann Konrad Dippel.

Even the earliest recorded tales have elements of horror, fear, and despair, and the archetypes of horror have likely lasted much longer. The vampire archetype, for example, can be traced all the way back to the ancient civilization of Sumer; the vampire-like being Emikku would inhabit the bodies of people who had died violently or who were buried improperly. 

From modern-day dinosaurs to soapy hospital dramas, Michael Crichton is probably the creative mind behind at least one of your favorite guilty pleasures in novels, movies, or television shows. In 1994, he became the first writer to have his work land at number one in film, television, and book sales all at the same time. His most well-known creations – Jurassic Park and "ER" – reflect the frequent genres and themes he chose: action, science fiction, medicine, and biotechnology.

The ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography, given every fourth year to the most outstanding scholarly book about books and worth $10,000, is one of the most prestigious prizes in the field of bibliography.

October is the month of goblins, ghosts, and ghouls. While these imaginary creatures are surely scary, another sort of monster has fascinated and frightened us since 1886. That year, Robert Louis Stevenson published Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The tale has gripped generations of readers because it reminds us that we all have monsters lurking within.

Despite James Boswell’s great efforts, he is really only known for two things: his outstanding biography of Samuel Johnson, and that he contracted various venereal diseases at least 17 times.

Few characters have captured our imagination like Bram Stoker's Dracula - the fearsome figure who makes frequent appearances around Halloween. However, Stoker's depiction of Dracula wasn't quite accurate, and neither are many interpretations of the character that we find today. 

A Washington Post reviewer declared William Boyd's Solo the "boldest departure of the James Bond series." When Boyd took up the mantle of the James Bond legacy, he used the privilege to reinterpret the character of 007. 

Today we celebrate the birth of a novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass.  He was born on October 16, 1927, in the Free City of Danzig, now Gdansk, Poland. Grass used his “frolicsome black fables [to] portray the forgotten face of history,” as noted by the Swedish Academy when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.  

Born in Cuba on October 15, 1923, Italo Calvino became one of Italy’s most famous writers.  He was one of a family of scientists; his parents, Mario and Eva, were botanists and his brother, Floriano, became a geologist. When Calvino returned to Italy as a young boy, he faced considerable familial pressure to pursue a life of science.

If necessity is the mother of invention and diligence the mother of good luck, then the father of Pinocchio was a benefactor of both. Carlo Collodi was a fiery Florentine political activist who wrote The Story of a Puppet begrudgingly as a magazine series. In its original form, La Storia di un Burattino (1881) is a fast-paced, real-world, often cruel tale of the peril and spite of young Pinocchio. Collodi is said to have disliked children and had none of his own; the Pinocchio he originally wrote and the Disney film we are most familiar with are strikingly different.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 Dec 1865 - 18 Jan 1936) died in England at the age of 70, the most famous and highly paid writer of his time. Born to Victorian parents who named him after Staffordshire's Rudyard Lake, Kipling split his boyhood between the markets of Bombay India and an abusive English foster home. His life of travel and tragedy led to two near nervous breakdowns, but made his creative work accessible to both the aristocracy and the everyman.

The Nobel Prize in literature has had an interesting and often controversial history since first awarding the prize in 1901.  The year 1964 is perhaps one of the more intriguing stories of the Swedish Academy’s tradition.

Excitement has been building about this year's Nobel Prize in Literature! The winner is traditionally announced the second week of October. The Nobel Prize is certainly the most prestigious award in literature, and it's been conferred on the world's best authors since 1901.

This week we celebrated the birthday of Henry Graham Greene. The playwright, explorer, poet, and spy was above all one of the most widely read novelists of the 20th century.  He wrote 24 novels, nearly all of which were adapted to film. His works include The Heart of the Matter, The Power and the Glory, Brighton Rock, and The End of the Affair. Despite several nominations, Greene never won the Nobel Prize. 

On October 1, American author Tom Clancy passed away in Baltimore, Maryland. Renowned for his ability to create stories from the raw material of real-life conflict, Clancy was one of the few authors who built a multi-media empire. Clancy's books found their way into film, television, and even video games. 

The field of Americana is incredibly wide, spanning not only multiple centuries, but also the entire Western Hemisphere. For the rare book collector who wishes to specialize in Americana, this means that the first step is choosing an area of specialization (discussed in Part One). Then you can start building your collection around that focus. A meaningful, valuable collection of Americana often has multiple layers: primary sources, secondary sources, and bibliographical materials.

The term "Americana" can seem a nebulous one, especially to new rare book collectors. It encompasses much more than simply American history; experts often define Americana as any written items produced in the Western hemisphere from the time that Columbus and his contemporaries arrived in the Americas. So if the term "Americana" applies to books, manuscripts, and ephemera produced over the course of nearly six centuries, over multiple continents, where the heck should a collector begin?!?