Remember that Find I mentioned a couple of weeks ago?

Do you?

I know, remembering things you read on blogs is probably not up at the top of your list of things to do, so I'll give you a quick reminder.

About three weeks ago, I decided to go out book hunting. I kept thinking I was going in the wrong direction and then WHAM, found a GOOD book. Remember now?

At the time, I didn't want to mention the book until I had done a bit more research.

well...

I finally got the book listed in my database with detailed information.

The book is

A DICTIONARY OF THE KALISPEL OR FLAT-HEAD INDIAN LANGUAGE
Compiled by the Missionaries of the Society of Jesus Part II: English- Kalispel
 by
Giorda, Rev. J.  (also Joseph Bandini, Gregory Mengarini, Joseph Guidi and Leopold Van Gorp)


this is what it looks like:

and here's my LONG description:

 Giorda, Rev. J.  (also Joseph Bandini, Gregory Mengarini, Joseph Guidi and Leopold Van Gorp): A DICTIONARY OF THE KALISPEL OR FLAT-HEAD INDIAN LANGUAGE : Compiled by the Missionaries of the Society of Jesus Part II: English- Kalispel. 1879 (1877-1879). St. Ignatius Print. Montana. Hardcover. 1st Edition/ Later state wrappers. VG+ / NONE. Volume II only: the Kalispel - English portion of the dictionary.  Originally published in wrappers (paper covers) this copy has been case bound by a previous owner at some later date. The case binding is a plain light brown buckram cloth binding with gilt lettering and rules to the spine of the book. The binding has some very light rubbing and edge wear. 456 numbered pages plus added endpapers, a blank sheet behind front and rear endpapers, later state plain wrappers (in this particular case, mottled grayish paper with writing to the recto (partial advertising for another book printed by this publisher in 1886) - this page has a large chip missing from the bottom edge starting at the bottom corner and working it's way inward along the bottom edge. Next is another blank, this time heavily toned, followed by a title page and a preface, a key to pronunciation and a key to both parts of the dictionary. The  original rear wrapper verso includes an advertisement for May Blossoms from the Rocky Mountains in Honor of the Blessed Mother of God by a Father of the Society of Jesus, dated 1886.  Apparently, this copy was not bound until 1886, though the contents itself is from the original printing.   From Analysis of A Dictionary of the Kalispel or Flat-head Indian Language (Giorda, S.J.: St. Ignatius Print, 1877-9) by Steven M. Egesdal, Ph.D comes this fascinating overview of the work:   "Giorda first came to the St. Ignatius mission in Montana in 1867. He was a polyglot apparently gifted with special linguistic ability. 5 The Jesuit Oregon Province Archives contains a manuscript ascribed to him dated 1871. That manuscript has two parts, one Indian-English and the other English-Indian.6 The Indian-English part is about 230 pages, written on both sides. The page size is about 7½ inches by 12 inches, with about 30 entries per page. That equals about 13,800 entries. The English-Indian part is 72 pages, with about 30 entries per page conservatively, which equals about 4,320 entries. Comparing Mengarini’s 1868 Indian-English manuscript to Giorda’s 1871 Indian-English manuscript indicates that Giorda’s manuscript (i)incorporated most if not all of the material of Mengarini’s 1868 manuscript, and (ii) reorganizedand revised the material from Mengarini’s 1868 manuscript and expanded it greatly. In terms of rough, raw numbers, the overall entries in Giorda’s 1871 manuscript more than doubled. In turn,the published Dictionary further expanded and reorganized Giorda’s 1871 manuscript significantly."   And later in the paper, regarding the printing itself: "Printing of the Dictionary required three years to complete, on a hand-operated press in “The Shops”at St. Ignatius Mission. Jesuit Father Alexander Diomedi had directed its purchase and transport from St. Louis in 1875, ordered its specialized type and trained Indian boys as his typesetters. Work on the Dictionary began immediately after the press’ first product, Narratives from the Holy Scripture, a 154-page book written in Kalispel. At least 66 imprints can be attributed to the St. Ignatius Press, of which the Dictionary is easily the most significant. Because of its cost so far from supply sources, paper was usually inferior in grade, and often scraps of all kinds were used as end sheets and covers. Over time the need for printed materials in Kalispel declined, so the press was relocated to Spokane in 1899 to serve the growing needs of Gonzaga College. It was unceremoniously replaced and scrapped in 1908."  DESCRIPTION: The spine ends and corners of the book cover have a bit of  very light bumping and rubbing.  The text pages are clean and generally bright, though some pages have light toning, especially towards the edges of the pages. The quality of the print varies (from heavier to lighter ink) depending on the page.  The bottom edge and foredges of the text block are untrimmed and the text itself is uncut (unopened) at the top edge (for the most part).  Page 53 does have two longish tears starting at the top edge of the page which have been taped with clear tape by a former owner (and another smaller tear starting at the spine joint which has NOT been taped.  Several pages at the end pf the text have wrinkles to the center of the pages which appears to have happened during production or some time soon after. Overall, a generally very nice copy of a scarce title.


Now, this isn't the LONGEST description I've written, not by a long shot, but it's more description, background info and looking up on something than I've done in a while (mostly because I don't FIND such fun things to research often -- I WISH I did).

One of the questions I had about this book when I was researching it (well, for pricing, more correctly) was because this copy has been bound (the original format was paper wrappers which are still intact in this bound copy), would that make a huge difference on the price.

My answer, after deliberation was -- not really.

First of all, there are VERY few copies of this book available, no matter what the binding.

Second, the binding (though rather plain and dull, but not ugly) is actually keeping the contents of the book in better condition than if it were NOT bound.

Third, this book is collectable and useful because of its CONTENT, not it's binding.  As the book is non-fiction and very (VERY) specific, the content is more important than the fact that it was rebound.

So, the upshot of those questions was that I didn't feel that the fact that the book had been protectively bound was a detriment to the price of the item. 

Mostly, I'm just fascinated with the background, history and all the little details that I learned about the book (and the Kalispel Indians at the same time).

This is the sort of find that makes me LOVE my job.

Of course, I wish I found stuff like this every day (and wish I SOLD stuff like this regularly too  :)  ) but that's not the way this job works.

Most days, I slog along listing regular books for regular folk (which isn't a put-down by any means, these are all good books in their own way) or doing my taxes, or just moving boxes around.

Today, I get to do a bit of all of the above.  And I still enjoy it.

Antiquarian Books: An Insider's Account by Roy Harley Lewis

I love reading books about booksellers -- when I was first a newbie book clerk (though the owners didn't call me that, I was basically a girl-of-all-work that no one else had time for or wanted to do), I got a chance to read through many of the bookseller memoirs that the owners of the store had found or bought for their own use. Even back then, when I knew NOTHING about collectable books, I found these reminiscences both intriguing, and awe-inspiring. These were men (and a few women) who were casually jotting down their encounters with the likes of Gutenberg Bibles, Caxton press books, Edgar Allan Poe first editions, rare maps, all sorts of incunabula (early printed books from approximately 1470's-1540's) manuscripts, letters written by the likes of King Henry VIII and George Washington....

When I get a chance (mostly, I have to stumble across a copy of one of the books as I generally don't go looking for them at the moment) I read more of these memoirs.  The information inside is great. I can try and remember some of the more obscure bits to help if I ever come across something unusual, or actually start to research something that catches my fancy.

Mostly I read them because these are people who do the same sort of thing I do (well......).

The latest book I found is Antiquarian Books: An Insider's Account by Roy Harley Lewis.  Lewis is an Englishman -- most famous for his guide to bookstores around England called The Book Browser's Guide (which by the way is an hilarious commentary -- he cycled around England on his bike, stopping at any used / antiquarian bookstore he could find and made notes on when it was open, the sort of stock available, etc. BUT -- his pithy, sometimes snide, sometimes hilarious asides made the book a real treasure). The book covers all of the usual subjects: Auction houses, incunabula, interesting dealers he's known, bookstores of note, etc.

One paragraph I read last night, however, really caught my eye & I thought I'd share it for it's prognostication about the future of bookselling as an endeavor:

"On the subject of investment, it may not have occurred to you but, if there were a major swing in the City or on Wall Street towards buying books as part of a commercial investment programme, unrelated to aesthetic considerations, the antiquarian-book world would in effect become a mini stock-market, as with any other commodity. With individuals and organizations buying and selling as they would stocks and shares, what would happen if someone panicked? Or, if someone spread the rumour after a reliable tip-off, that incunabula were 'out'? An apparently wild analogy, on the face of it, but to continue the hypothesis, the offloading of valuable 'property' more suddenly than the traditional book market could withstand would result in a catastrophic drop in values across the board. Admittedly, we are fifty years or so away from that sort of nightmare, but it cannot be dismissed as idle SF speculation, because the wheels have already been set in motion."  (this was published in 1978 by the way).

WELL --

If you're not a book dealer currently, you might not realize just how very true those last several sentences really are.

It didn't take a stock market approach to verify that reality -- all it took was a little thing called a computer.


A computer, and the ingenuity of men and women who turned the computer into a selling machine.

What once was a stable population of knowledgeable book dealers (prior to 1995 there were approximately 10,000 book dealers of all shapes and sizes in the US -- don't ask me what the world population was, I don't have info on that)  has, because of the computerization and ease of offering the stuff  found in your garage as saleable items, turned into a population of no less than 70,000 (and that's on Amazon.com alone).

Add to that round the clock behind-the-scenes programs that will RE-PRICE your books for you to match the LOWEST price listed on a site (courtesy of programmers who want to HELP people sell their products more quickly), you've got the perfect storm of price wrecking.  Books that can't even be SHIPPED for the cost at which they are for sale are being offered on every venue, by people who think that selling books as widgets is not only a good thing but think (and this without actually doing any cost accounting) that they are actually making money.

Of course, after the debacle we've had with the housing bubble and the stock market going ga-ga over imaginary money, Lewis's prophecies regarding books could also be quite easily slipped into these other markets and shown to be ever so true (but as I'm lousy at investments and finance, I'll keep my nose clean by just mentioning and not going anywhere near in-depth).

As for books --  who knows where this free-fall of book values (and here we're really talking about anything that is not truly RARE, as the really rare books have gone up in price.) will end.  Right now, we're in the middle of the roller coaster ride that is book values.  Add in e-books and on-line options and all the other electronic options that will be coming our way in the next 10-25 years and all bets are off.

Who knows what will happen down the road -- not me, that's certain.

Getting back to Roy Harley Lewis....

When I picked up the book, I was expecting a good read with lots of juicy details about great and rare books, strange and wonderful book dealers, and a bit about his own life and adventures in the book trade. I didn't think I'd get food for thought about the current state of book selling, but I did.

If you ever get a chance to pick up this book, do so.  Some of the information is a tad dated (any of these memoirs is bound to have old info, especially on prices), but the stories are great, the juicy bits are still juicy, the rare stuff makes me hunger for the rarified air of the million dollar businesses, and I got to think about what it's like to sell books in my own time.

12 days without a post... hmmm... and SIGNED Ansel Adams

First off -- I did go to the Gold Rush Book Fair and had a great time (well, partly, but more on that in another post).

I was hoping to get back and have some nice blog entries right after the fair.... obviously, that didn't work out.

Kids being out on summer vacation definitely change the picture of getting work done (two + months to go...) and then we've had a bit of travel to visit relatives over Memorial Day Weekend, which pushed my time further out of whack (and on top of that, my trusty laptop has finally, after six years, decided that it really doesn't want to shoulder on and it's not worth taking anywhere, so I was basically computer-less during the book fair, and during the travel weekend.) I'm not whining, mind you, I can live without the computer attached to me all the time, but the blog did get behind in the meanwhile.

Ok --


The book pictured here is a real puzzler (what in my life recently, hasn't been a puzzler?)

I found this while traveling up to the book fair (and NO I won't tell people where I found it) and at first glance, though Yeah... a nice, SIGNED Ansel Adams title. Now Adams didn't really sign a great deal of his books for people, so signed editions are at a real premium and that was a GOOD thing.

So, being the capitalist that I am (realist actually, I want to pay the bills and feed the ever hungry kids) I put a decent, but not exorbitant price on the book and set it up in my book fair booth for people to buy. I got LOTS of looking. Lots of picking up and handling. But lots, again, of people putting it back down again.

Hmmm.. Signed Ansel Adams, nice condition.... what's going on?

Well, I get it home and think to myself that I'll do a bit more research on the book just because (one gets an inking on things like this).

Turns out, the first edition of this book was published 1983, which is the year before Adams died. This particular copy is a third printing -- copyright 1984. Hmm...

I check Wikipedia (and a bibliography page for Adams as well, etc.) and find out that he died in 1984 (April to be exact).

Still possible that everything is hunky-dory, I just have to verify that the 3rd printing was available before April 1984.

Hmmm.... not as easily done. I tried to check Books in Print for that year, nothing. I emailed the New York Graphic Society (no response so far). Checked with other dealers... not much to go on.

So I put the book aside for a few days to wait for inspiration to hit.


Try to check with dealer associates again - this time, give more detailed information about what I'm trying to do. I get an answer that helps out immensely.

BUT --

finally, I take a look at the dust jacket and most particularly the rear dust jacket blurb....

which mentions Adam's death in 1984. Drat!

But... again,

all is not lost.

Dealer friend comes back with information that makes it VERY possible that this item is in fact signed by Adams (now, a small bit of additional info for you... so far, as far as most experts can tell, there has been little to no forging of Adams signature (except on forged photographs -- which is a slightly different animal). Dealer has a copy of this same book, also signed -- but his copy comes with a leaflet from the publisher stating that a number of copies were signed by Adams just before his death to give to family and friends.


So, through my research, I believe that this IS an actual Ansel Adams signature -- and that it was done before (obviously) his death in April of 1984 with the help of his publisher -- that copies of the bound book, produced sometime late 1983 or early 1984 were given to him to sign, and then, at a later date, a revised dust jacket was added (dust jacket production and book binding are two separate issues and many times are done at completely different times) before the books were given away.

If that scenario is correct (and at this point, I'd need proof that it ISN'T to make me feel that it's a forgery), then this book contains a signature which is indeed rare.

Cool.