Idyll Musings

The daily adventures of a bookselling family.

Idyll (n) - a short prose piece depicting a rural or pastoral scene in idealized terms; a carefree episode or experience; a romantic interlude; a scene or event of a simple and tranquil nature.

Monday, October 20, 2008

The Old Post Road

We have acquired a 1st edition, third printing (1962) of this book by Stewart H. Holbrook, edited by A.B. Guthrie, Jr. The book is part of the American Trails Series, and is the story of the Boston Post Road.

From the dust jacket cover:

"A superb exploration of the most famous of all post roads, its exciting and colorful history - from the first rider in 1673 to the present day - told in a fascinating excursion into Americana."

The book is in excellent condition, and the dust jacket has only slight wear and a few small tears to the edges of the dust jacket.

I found the following biographical ionformation on Wikipedia.

Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr. (January 13, 1901 – April 26, 1991) was an American novelist, historian, and literary historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1950 for his The Way West.

Stewart Hall Holbrook (1893 - 1964) was an American lumberjack, writer, and popular historian. His writings focused on what he called the "Far Corner": Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. A self-proclaimed "low-brow" historian, his topics included Ethan Allen, the railroads, the timber industry, the Wobblies, and eccentrics of the Pacific Northwest.
He wrote for The Oregonian for over thirty years, and authored dozens of books. He also produced a number of paintings under the pseudonym of "Mr. Otis."

We are offering this book for sale for $18. oo. No website yet, so conatct us if you are interested.

Mark

Mystery Book

I'm counting on the knowledge and expereince of fellow bibliophiles for help with this one. I have a book titled The Charm of Venice, an Anthology. It was compiled by Alfred H. Hyatt, with illustrations by Harald Sund. The publisher is the Musson Book Company, Toronto. There is no copyright date. The book has green covers with gold lettering.

The mystery is that I cannot find this edition of this book in my usual lookup sites. It's not on addall, Alibris, Amazon....and I also can't find much information on the publisher. I do know that the publisher existed in the late 1800s.

Can anyone shed some light on this title, the publisher, and when it might have been published?

Mark

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Yesterday's Finds

Andrea and I went bookhunting yesterday, and we picked up a couple of nice finds. Not antiquarian mind you, but the prices were oh-so-right!

Emily Bronte, Her Life and Work, a biography by Muriel Stark and Derek Stanford. This is the First American Edition, published in 1966 by Coward-McAnn, Inc., New York. The book is in near-fine condition, and the dust jacket shows a little wear.

The second book we found is somewhat ironic, given the fact that we recently moved to Arizona from Salem, Massachusetts. The book is titled The Peabody Sisters of Salem, and it was written by Louise Hall Tharp. This edition was published in 1950 by Little, Brown and Company, and is dedictaed to the "Hawthorne descendants."There is no dust jacket, and the purple cover shows slight fading. Inside the front cover, and again on the title page, evidence that a bookplate was removed, but it was done without tearing the pages. Other than that, this book is also in great condition.

Mark

Monday, October 13, 2008

My Dream Library!!!

I have seen this circulating on various blogs for the last couple of days. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out here!
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all

This is the library of Jay Walker, the Internet Entrepreneur who created, among other things, Priceline.com.

The library is over 3000 square feet!

This is exactly how I want my library to look. How about you?