In less than two weeks, Boston will be the place to be for rare and antiquarian book collectors! While the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair and the Boston Books, Print, and Ephemera Show will be the main events, the city is home to a number of literary landmarks that certainly merit spending a few extra days in and around Boston.
The leaves have changed colors, and the air has turned crisp and cool. Sunsets are also coming earlier and earlier. These shorter days mean longer nights--and more time for evening reading! If you love to curl up with a good book, you'll love this list of excellent reading copies, all priced at $20 or under. Many of them are even signed by the author.
Legendary illustrator Hilary Knight famously brought to life the impish Eloise. The son of two artists, Knight was born in Hempstead, Long Island. He lived next door to the public library for the first six years of his life and spent many hours among the books that later shaped his artistic style. Knight was particularly influenced by illustrators Edmund Dulac and E. H. Shepard. “These are probably my most favorite books of all,” he said. “They are so funny. Shepard’s pen-and-ink drawings [in Winnie the Pooh] are so simple and direct; he was a truly remarkable artist. Dulac, on the other hand, was sheer fantasy. He was glamorous and exotic.”
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.
