Rare Books Uncovered: True Stories of Fantastic Finds in Unlikely Places

by Rebecca Rego Barry, Nicholas A. Basbanes (Foreword by)

Overview

Feed your inner bibliophile with this volume on unearthed rare and antiquarian books. Few collectors are as passionate or as dogged in the pursuit of their quarry as collectors of rare books. In Rare Books Uncovered, expert on rare and antiquarian books Rebecca Rego Barry recounts the stories of remarkable discoveries from the world of book collecting. Read about the family whose discovery in their attic of a copy of Action Comics No. 1--the first appearance of Superman-saved their home from foreclosure. Or the Salt Lake City bookseller who volunteered for a local fundraiser--and came across a 500-year-old copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Or the collector who, while browsing his local thrift shop, found a collectible copy of Calvary in China--inscribed by the author to the collector's grandfather. These tales and many others will entertain and inspire casual collectors and hardcore bibliomaniacs alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781627888233
Publisher:	Voyageur Press
Publication date:	12/01/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
Sales rank:	998,656
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Rebecca Rego Barry is the editor of Fine Books & Collections magazine. She has written about books for Preservation, the Barnes & Noble Review, The Awl, the Daily News/Page Views, American Libraries, Publishers Weekly, and many other periodicals, as well as WAMC Northeast Public Radio. She is Victoria magazine's 2014 Writer-in-Residence. Rebecca has been in the book business for over 15 years. After graduating from Syracuse University with degrees in English and Journalism, she joined the venerable publishing house of Simon & Schuster in New York. She moved on to Drew University, completing a masters degree in book history and serving as the preservation and archives associate in charge of the university's archives. She later completed postgraduate courses in archives and special collections at Drew University, the American Antiquarian Society, and the University of Virginia's Rare Book School. After relocating to the Hudson Valley, she spent a year as a reference librarian at Marist College before joining Fine Books & Collections.

Table of Contents

Foreword Nicholas A. Basbanes 6

Introduction: Have You a Tamerlane in Your Attic? Redux 9

1 A Prewar Stockpile in Brussels 16

2 The Five-Hundred-Year-Old Book under the Bed 21

3 Philly Flea First Edition Find 25

4 A Revolutionary Manuscript Filed in the Attic 30

5 Tarzan in a Trailer Park 36

6 Bargain Borges 40

7 Leather-Bound Beauty in a Cowboy Outpost 44

8 Seeking Alice 49

9 Superhero Jackpot 52

10 Scarce Scottish Imprint Hiding in the Stacks 56

11 Kerouac's Hand-Annotated Bibliography, for $20 61

12 Dumpster Emergency 67

13 A French Folio in a New England Barn 71

14 A Better-than-Technicolor Gone with the Wind 76

15 Rummaging Up a 1905 Lippincott's Gazetteer 80

16 An Eighteenth-Century Dictionary Discovery 83

17 Sendak's Seven Stories 87

18 Swap Meet Yields JFK-Signed Book 91

19 Recovery of Nineteenth-Century Senate Ledgers 95

20 A Textbook Turned Lipstick Blotter 99

21 Frankenstein Rises from the Shadows 102

22 The Townsend Document Surfaces 107

23 Where (and When) to Seek Hypermoderns 111

24 A March Made in Germany and England 115

25 An Astronomer's Accidental Acquisition 118

26 Mendelssohn, for a Song 122

27 A Family Bible Worth $350,000 126

28 Mark Twain Stashed in a Barrel 132

29 The Bard's Book? An Epic eBay Buy 137

30 A Cobwebbed Cellar Tenders Treasure 143

31 Following the Flag 146

32 The $1.50 Declaration 152

33 The Curious Case of a Very Overdue Harvard Library Book 157

34 A Cache of Cards Concealed 162

35 The Motherlode of Mini Books 166

36 A Garage Sale Jumpstarts a Career 169

37 An 1815 Arkansas Deed Retrieved in Oregon 173

38 A World War II Comic Uncovered 176

39 Advice from Texas: Look High and Look Low 179

40 Memoirs of a Tattooist … under a Fedora 184

41 Homecoming for a Tome Mislaid since the English Civil War 188

42 A Sleeper: Marmaduke Sampson's Rationale of Crime 193

43 Reclaiming Abandoned African Americana 196

44 Ex Libris Vatican Library, in Oklahoma 201

45 The Box Lot of the Century 205

46 Return to Sherwood Forest 211

47 Thick & Thin 215

48 Greetings from Salem 218

49 A Connection to Capote 222

50 The Doctor's Diaries Emerge 225

51 Retro Geography in Reno 229

52 McMurtry Surveys the Shelves 232

53 Free on Craigslist: A Trove of Vintage NOLA Newspapers 238

54 A Godsend at the Salvation Army 243

55 Flowers in the Attic 246

56 Much Ado about a Little Notebook 249

Afterword 252

Selected Reading 255

Acknowledgments 257

Index 258

Editorial Reviews

"...a welcome gift for a passionate reader or collector." - Washington Post

"Rare Books Uncovered celebrates books, collectors, and the thrill of the hunt" - Victoria Magazine

"Rebecca Rego Barry's Rare Books Uncovered: True Stories of Fantastic Finds in Unlikely Places is one of the finest books about books ever written." - American Book Collecting

From the Publisher