Vintage and Antique Poetry Books
Wanna-Beats: In 1959, Café Bizarre Gave Straights an Entree Into Beatnik Culture
By Ben Marks — America hit peak hippie in 1967, thanks to the avalanche of media hype that accompanied the Summer of Love. In contrast, there was no single catalyzing event to mark the moment when our nation reached peak beat, although one could make a good case for 1959. "At the remove of time, it's really hard to tell the difference between beat and beatsploitation.” My colleague Hunter Oatman-Stanford essentially did that a few years ago in an article titled “Cool for Sale, From Beatnik Bongos to...
Walt Whitman—Patriotic Poet, Gay Iconoclast, or Shrewd Marketing Ploy?
By Lisa Hix — Modern Americans tend to think of Walt Whitman as the embodiment of democracy and individualism, a literary icon who lifted up the common man when he wrote, “I Hear America Singing” in his revolutionary free-verse poetry collection . But have you ever considered Walt Whitman, the brand? “Walt Whitman believed in this book. He knew that 'Leaves of Grass' was unique. It provoked people, and he realized the controversy would sell it.” Starting in the late 19th century and continuing today,...
The Last Word on First Editions
By Ben Marks — Strictly speaking, a book’s edition refers to the setting of the text. So the first time you set the text and print a book with it, and then sell a bound book that you’ve just printed, that’s the first edition, first printing. If you use the same setup of text and print it again, that would be the second printing—a printing is therefore a subclass of an edition. The printing is also called the impression, as in first or second impression. In general, the first edition, first printing...
To Catch A Thief: A Rare Book Expert on His Literary Obsessions
By Maribeth Keane and Anne Galloway — I don’t remember a time when I didn’t read books. In grade school, I devoured library books. I also loved comic books, and was wheeling and dealing them as a child—buying them for a nickel, sell them for dime. Bertrand Smith let me into the rare book room, and I bought a Maxwell Parrish "Arabian Nights." I bought an just for the illustrations. At the time I had no idea the artist was a Welsh woman named Gwynedd Hudson. Turns out she only illustrated two books—Alice and Peter Pan. I fell...