“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.” So says Shirley Jackson in We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Frankly, we couldn't agree more. Jackson is known for being one of the most prolific horror writers in America, influencing big-name authors such as Stephen King and Neil Gaiman.
Louisa May Alcott (29 November 1832 – 6 March 1888) was an American writer, feminist, abolitionist, and Civil War nurse. Her name is attached most often to her novel Little Women, but her work encompassed thrillers, adult novels, and theatrical plays, and she wrote many of her early novels under the pseudonyms Flora Fairfield and AM Barnard.
Born in New York City on November 20th, 1936, Don DeLillo has become an acclaimed author whose postmodernist works portray an America which has become consumed by materialism and dumbed down by a culture of meaningless interactions. He grew up in a working-class Italian American family in the Bronx. His was a childhood filled with family and wholesome entertainments. He described it as one in which he was “always out in the street. As a little boy I whiled away most of my time pretending to be a baseball announcer on the radio. I could think up games for hours at a time. There were eleven of us in a small house, but the close quarters were never a problem. I didn’t know any other way.”
The literary landscape of America shifted on March 16th, 1950. On this day, the first National Book Awards were presented in New York City at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Although notable authors were already recognized before this day through the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize, the National Book Awards set themselves apart by focusing on literature alone and awarding prizes chosen exclusively by writers. Their mission is to "celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of great writing in America."
"Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'"
Today we celebrate the 91st birthday of devout humanist and black humorist Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana to Kurt Vonnegut Sr., the partner in an architectural firm, and Edith Lieber, the heiress to a brewing company. Although Vonnegut was born into a successful family, the fortune quickly took a nosedive with the start of the Prohibition era and the Great Depression. The firm went out of business, leaving his father unemployed. His mother turned to prescription medication and alcohol to cope with this turn of events.
Today we celebrate the birth of noted author of Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell. Born in Atlanta Georgia in 1900, Ms. Mitchell drew her influences from her experiences in the south. The Pulitzer Prize winner continues to influence us today.
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.
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.
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.
