blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

Random House is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. The publishing house was founded in 1927 by Americans Bennet Cerf and Donald Klopfer, who had acquired the Modern Library imprint from publisher Horace Liveright two years before. As for the name, Cerf said, "We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random," and Random House was born. The company entered reference publishing in 1947 with the American College Dictionary. Random House acquired Alfred A. Knopf, Inc in 1960 and Pantheon Books in 1961.
 

The rare book community is gearing up for the 53rd annual New York Antiquarian Book Fair, the biggest book fair in the world. The fair is one of the many reasons that New York has become an epicenter of literary culture. Here's a look at what famous authors have thought of New York City. 

Next week we'll be taking a field trip (of sorts) to the Big Apple. The occasion? Only the biggest and best book fair in the world! If you'll be in the area, be sure to come and visit. You can also check out several other literary hotspots nearby.

Born February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California, John Steinbeck truly made a mark on America as a writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath (1939), a novel that captured the daily struggles and strife of the Great Depression. Steinbeck wrote novels, travelogues, short story collections, and non-fiction, and his exceptional contributions to literature earned him the 1962 Nobel Prize. Steinbeck and his work have long fascinated collectors.

Born on March 22, 1846, Randolph Caldecott is best known for his namesake, the Caldecott Medal. Though he's now best known as an illustrator of children's books, Caldecott actually had a wide ranging career. His illustrations depicted foreign travel, high society, and Houses of Parliament. His paintings and sculptures found their way to the Royal Academy.

Born in Newark, New Jersey on March 19, 1933, Philip Roth began publishing short stories in 1956. His first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959) won the National Book Award, and since then he has published more than 22 books. In the 1990s, Roth won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1993), and the National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater (1995). American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998), the first two volumes of Roth's trilogy, received the Pulitzer Prize and many others.

Today we celebrate the birthday of John Updike, whose uncanny ability to write beauty into the mundane earned him numerous literary accolades and a position as one of America's legendary authors. Updike drew influence from a wide variety of authors, but it is perhaps Vladimir Nabokov who most profoundly impacted Updike's work. Though the two authors never met, they openly admired one another's work.

This year Alan Noel Latimer "Tim" Munby would be 100 years old and the ABAA recently blogged about an upcoming conference at King's College to mark Munby's centenary year. Bibliophiles and rare book collectors around the world are anticipating the event, and it's the perfect time to explore Munby's contributions to bibliography, collecting, and authorship.

If you collect rare books, identifying first editions is an important skill. Each publisher has developed its own own conventions for denoting first editions/first printings. Alfred A Knopf, Inc is an excellent example of a publishing house whose style of indicating first editions has stayed relatively consistent over the years, which isn't always the case.