blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

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?!?

     

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On September 25, 1897, William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi. Despite lacking both college degree and high school diploma, Faulkner established himself as one of America's preeminent authors. The Nobel laureate's life holds a few surprises for most of his readers.

     

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"From the first, second, third, and fourth editions, all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out. There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait and see." 

- Mark Twain, to his editors (1906)

 

The much awaited second volume of The Autobiography of Mark Twain was released this week.. The autobiography offers a new--and often surprising--view of Mark Twain, often called the most American of American authors.

     

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As an apprentice to the craft of binding and restoring rare books, the author discovered “the sense of pride that comes from being part of a lineage stronger than blood and the responsibility of passing on that craft to the next heir.”

By the time I reached the University of Oklahoma library, I was already thirty minutes late. I took the elevator to the fifth floor, using the time to quietly think of an acceptable excuse. 

     

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Plenty of authors write from unusual places, but few can claim that they penned stories in a penitentiary. William Sydney Porter, better known by his pseudonym O. Henry, wrote many of his best known pieces from behind bars.

Upbringing and Young Adulthood

Born September 11, 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina, Porter spent much of his childhood reading. His tastes were voracious and indiscriminate, as is often the case with early readers; he devoured both dime novels and classics with equal enthusiasm. Two of his favorites were Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and Lace's translation of One Thousand and One Nights. Porter was tutored by his aunt throughout his youth, and after graduation he went to work at his uncle's drug store. 

     

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William Henry Ireland forged Shakespeare, and the Russian secret police fabricated records from a secret society. Literary hoaxes can be entertaining, dangerous, or humiliating. Today is our final installment on famous literary hoaxes. (Be sure to check out Part One and Part Two.) 

 

Miseducation in Native American History

When The Education of Little Tree was published in 1976, it was an immediate success. The book was billed as the memoir of the orphaned author, who grew up with his Cherokee grandparents. It sold over nine million copies and made school reading lists across the country. The Education of Little Tree did receive some criticism from the Cherokee tribe for its inaccurate depiction of Cherokee language and tradition, but that did little to slow sales.

     

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September 1 marks the birthday of Edgar Rice Burroughs, most famous for writing the Tarzan series. What began as a serialized story in a pulp magazine became a pop culture phenomenon, and Tarzan remains a powerful character in our collective memory. But Burroughs' journey to authorial stardom was studded with rejection, and he almost gave up writing entirely!      

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"I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing."

-Seamus Heaney (All Things Considered, 2008)

 

     

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