Babar Books for the Sacramento Book Fair

Le Voyage de Babar (The Travels of Babar - Jean de Brunhoff 1932 1st Edition)

I've hinted about the above listed item (and one other that I'll show below) I'm sure, in the last several weeks.  I wanted to save these last two books for last - partly because I was still doing research trying to find some details about publishing history, etc. - and partly because I wanted to unveil them right before the book fair this weekend.

The story of the original Babar Books is one that many people might have heard at least portions over the years -- when one of his sons was home ill, Jean de Brunhoff's wife Cecile told him a bedtime story to help him get to sleep.  The boy ( and his brother who happened to have heard it as well) related the story to their father because they found it so interesting. Jean de Brunhoff was a painter by trade - he took the idea, drew a few illustrations,  and named the elephant Babar - thus history was made.  I'm sure there was much more to it than that, as there always is with creative endeavors.

So - that part of the story of these books is fairly straightforward.  Easy to research (though I hadn't known that Jean de Brunhoff's ties to the publishing world were so close -- his brother-in-law and brother worked for magazine and / or book publishers to some degree, and the family itself had been working in publishing for a number of years.

For me, the basic research about the books themselves has been  easy.  But one of the books came with an  additional item that is extremely unusual / rare.

The Story of Babar (Jean de Brunhoff - 1st American Edition by Smith & Haas, 1933)  (note - the first three books in the series were originally published in the US by Smith & Haas.  The series was taken over by Random House by 1936. Random House released new editions of the original three titles, making them 1st US editions thus)

What I had been calling a mailing envelope for a time - but now I've decided is more a variant style of dust jacket. 

Currently, I've found mention of the envelope once in a listing  -- in the negative. i.e.: "this copy does not include the rare envelope".   I have found ONE auction record in the last 50 years noting the envelope -- and with NO information about the history of this envelope.   There are copies of this book available with a regular dust jacket (one that wraps around the book and has flaps that cover the pastedown pages).  This envelop has a pastedown illustration in monochrome, which mirrors the illustration on the front cover of the  book.
It is obvious that this ephemeral item was intended to be used in the same manor as a dust jacket -- but why would the company make both a regular style dust jacket, and this much more fragile version?   Remember, this is a book specifically published with children in mind -- ok, in the 1930's it's possible that the idea was that adults read the  books to the children and that the books would be handled carefully, but....

I know I've mentioned that dust jackets on children's books from the early 1900's - the 1930's tend to be either in ratty, tatty condition (for the most part) or non-existent, and when found will add a premium to the books.  Two notable examples of this are The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum where the presence of a dust jacket can add an enormous amount to the price, and Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey - ditto. (I would include Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes - but that's my Scifi side coming through. The difference in price for a 1st Edition with a dust jacket and without is approximately 1000%).

Copies of the 1st Editions of any of the first three Babar books (either in the original French or the US editions) with dust jackets (in any condition) have become scarce - very scarce - and can take the prices up dramatically.   However, since mention of this variant dust jacket is lacking in most references and I haven't so far found any verifiable information other than one vague mention of it's existence and one verified auction sale which included an "envelope" but with no detailed description of it, this particular ephemeral item is somewhat of a wild card in how it adds value to the book. 

Because I'm one of those people who can't seem to give up until I find what I'm searching for, I'll continue to hunt down more information regarding this variant dust jacket / envelope.  If and when I do, I'll be sure and let you all know. Until then - wish me luck at the Sacramento Book Fair (three days and counting!)

Gravity's Rainbow.... a Twentieth Century Masterpiece?

I can't really comment on the masterpiece part of this mammoth book -- it's rather James Joycian in nature -- that is -- stream of consciousness style of writing, which I find difficult to want to read (I can start something like this, but the randomness of it tends to make me want to set it down & start something else).

What I do know is that this is one of the modern masterpieces that is also a collectable highlight for any Modern Fiction / Literary Fiction collection. The original Viking edition was limited to 4,000 copies in hardback (with a simultaneous trade paperback printing of a much larger number... I heard 15,000).

While this was not Pynchon's first novel -- that honor goes to a novel entitled "V." -- nor his second (The Crying of Lot 49), it is THE ONE that broke him out of the mass of modern fiction writers and put his name squarely in the public eye. Collectors started snapping up copies and soon found that there weren't many 1st editions to be found, which only added to the mystique and helped collectable prices spiral ever upwards. Now that nearly forty years have passed, this book can command high prices for fine copies & ridiculous prices for signed copies. Nice copies of the hardback first edition can command upwards of $3000.00 (unsigned).

This book was shortlisted for the Pulizer Prize -- was even nominated as THE winner, but a few of the judges pulled back at the last moment and in the end, nixed the award... which actually meant that NO book was awarded a Pulizer for 1974. It did go on to receive the National Book Award and was nominated for a Nebula Award.

In some ways, Gravity's Rainbow reminds me of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, in the way that both were passed around from hand to hand & pocket to pocket (both hard to do with the massively sized books), both were favorites of the college crowd and both continued to gain readers, even years after their initial publication. Both books became hightlights of modern literature (Gravity for Modern Fiction, while Stranger became known as one of THE books in the Science Fiction oeuvre). Now both books are used as texts in college (and high school) classrooms.

The copy you see in the picture above is a book club edition that I picked up recently. The neat thing about this copy is that it is nearly an exact duplicate of the original hardback. This copy was printed sometime during the initial print run with the same color and style of binding, the same number of pages, nearly the same dust jacket (the book club edition lacks a price on the front flap and a code at the bottom corner of the front flap). The only way to identify the book club edition (if it didn't have a dust jacket) is by the small indented maple leaf logo on the bottom rear corner of the book cover. For those of us who can't yet afford a copy of the Hardback First Edition for our collection, this book club makes a very nice place holder.