Books Tell You Why. All About Collecting Rare Books

Collecting Melville's Masterpiece: Moby Dick

By Adrienne Rivera. Oct 18, 2017. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Fine Press, Book Collecting, American Literature, First Editions

Herman Melville's first novel Typee, was a critical and popular success. Indeed, it launched him headfirst into a massive literary career. However, his subsequent books did not receive as many positive reviews, and in his lifetime, he slipped into relative obscurity as something of a one hit wonder despite continuing to publish both novels and short stories. He died in 1891. It wasn't until what would have been his hundredth birthday that the “Melville Revival” began. His books were reprinted, scholars began studying and writing about him, and his unfinished works were released. Since this revival, Melville has taken his place as one of the American literature greats. His novel Moby Dick, while considered a disaster at the time of publishing, is an area of study all its own and is considered one of the best American novels ever written. Melville collectors may be interested in learning about the following editions of the seminal work and potentially adding one to their shelves.

A Guide to Reading Tim O'Brien

By Brian Hoey. Oct 14, 2017. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature

World War II proved to be a reliable source of material for American novelists. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961), Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948) and many other esteemed entries into the 20th century canon have delved by turns into the gritty reality and the existential absurdity of that pivotal moment in American (and World) History. With Vietnam the case is slightly different. While there are acclaimed American novels on the subject (like Karl Marlantes’ Matterhorn (2009) and, more recently, David Means’ Hystopia (2016)), it never produced a tremendously high number of literary blockbusters. Luckily, we have Tim O’Brien.

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women

By Adrienne Rivera. Sep 30, 2017. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature, Movie Tie-Ins, Civil War

Louisa May Alcott was born in New England in 1832 to transcendentalist parents. Her early education was comprised of lessons from a host of impressive family friends including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. A love of education and writing was instilled in her at an early age but due to financial struggles, Alcott was forced to pursue a variety of jobs. It was while working to help support her family that she first turned to writing as an escape. She began writing for the Atlantic Monthly, and letters she wrote while working as a nurse during the Civil War were collected and published as Hospital Sketches. She wrote several novels under a pseudonym before penning her most well-known novel, the enduring classic Little Women. But in spite of the success of the novel which brought her acclaim and financial security, the story of the March sisters was not as close to Alcott's heart as one might think.

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald: Behind the Scenes

By Andrea Diamond. Sep 23, 2017. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature

Lean back, close your eyes, and imagine an evening in Paris in the 1920s. Jazz music curls around every street corner, streetlights glimmer, and champagne flows like a river. The sound of laughter and dancing fill the air as parties grow more gregarious, and the socialite scene comes to life. Among the throngs of people immersed in the frivolity, you are likely to find a brash southern woman, and her charming husband, regaling those around them with details of their latest creative endeavors.

The War that Inspired A Separate Peace

By Adrienne Rivera. Sep 16, 2017. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Awarded Books, American Literature

Author John Knowles was born in West Virginia in 1926 to a well-off family. His family's comfortable living allowed him to go the private preparatory school, Phillips Exeter Academy. Upon graduation, he served for two years in the United States Army Air Force during World War II. He attended Yale University after his service ended and while there, wrote humor stories for The Yale Record. He also worked on the Yale Daily News. He continued his journalism after school with a job at the Hartford Courant and eventually as assistant editor at Holiday. It wasn't until prompted by friend and Pulitzer Prize winning author and playwright Thornton Wilder that he turned his attention seriously toward novels.

An Introduction to Sherwood Anderson, Creator of Winesburg, Ohio

By Adrienne Rivera. Sep 13, 2017. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature

Midwest writer Sherwood Anderson was born in 1876 and raised in Ohio. Like the characters in his most enduring work, Winesburg, Ohio, he lived most of his life in small towns. Much of his writing was inspired by the places he lived and the people he met during a somewhat transient childhood. Anderson was one of seven children born to his mother and father. His father, Irwin McLain Anderson, was a former Union soldier with considerable debts and a habit for drinking, forcing the family to move frequently. To compensate for his father's difficulties keeping a steady job, Anderson worked a variety of part-time jobs. The family eventually settled in Clyde, Ohio, where Anderson worked at different times as a newsboy, stable hand, printer's devil, and occasionally as his father's assistant when he found work as a sign painter. Anderson ended up leaving school in the ninth grade in order to support his family.

Sixty Years On the Road: Kerouac's Masterpiece Then and Now

By Adrienne Rivera. Sep 5, 2017. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature, Movie Tie-Ins

One of the most important players in the Beat movement—a group of writers whose work focused on the human condition in a post-World War II America with an emphasis on exploration of the country, a rejection of materialism and commercialism, and the recreational and spiritual use of drugs—was writer Jack Kerouac. Born to French Canadian parents in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac did not learn to speak English until he was six years old. Kerouac briefly attended Columbia University to play football. When he broke his leg, his football career ended, and he dropped out. It was around this time that Kerouac first met members of the Beat movement: Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. In 1950, he began working on what would become his second published and indisputably famous novel, On the Road, which celebrates its sixtieth anniversary today.

Collecting Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea

By Leah Dobrinska. Sep 2, 2017. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Book Collecting, Awarded Books, American Literature

Cited in the Prize motivation for Hemingway’s 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature and earning him his only Pulitzer, The Old Man and the Sea is one of the legendary author’s most beloved tales. A short story, merely 140 pages in length, The Old Man and the Sea details the excursion of Santiago, a Cuban fisherman. Today, we take a closer look at the publication history of this classic Ernest Hemingway story. Here’s what you should know if you’d like to add an edition of The Old Man and the Sea to your collection.

Four Contemporary Cuban American Writers You Should Be Reading

By Adrienne Rivera. Aug 24, 2017. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Awarded Books, American Literature, Movie Tie-Ins

One of the most well-known Cuban American writers today is Oscar Hijuelos. Interestingly, as a result of a year long hospital stay in his childhood, Hijuelos lost his fluency in Spanish, the language his family spoke at home, but he gained fluency in English. This imbued him with a sense of separation from his culture, a feeling that he imparts in all of his novels. Are you interested in Latin American literature? If so, Hijuelos should definitely be on your list. But what other contemporary Cuban American writers should you be reading?

Major Modern Literature First Published in Periodicals

By Brian Hoey. Aug 16, 2017. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature

In Charles Dickens’ day, periodicals were the center of literary life. Many of Dickens’ novels, beginning with The Pickwick Papers (1837), were serialized in popular periodicals. The same is true of authors like William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who first developed Sherlock Holmes as a character in serial format). At the height of the serial novel’s popularity, the anticipation over Little Nell’s fate in the final installment of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) caused American readers to riot while waiting for the new volumes to be shipped. With the rise of television and radio as venues for storytelling, the serialized novel quickly lost its prominence, but print periodicals would remain an important part of literary life. In fact, many of the most important works of modern literature first appeared in magazines like The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. Let's explore some modern literature first published in periodicals.