Inside Jacket

Attention Londoner’s – This weekend (November 6 and 7th) over 75 dealers from around the UK and abroad will congragate at the Chelsea Old Town Hall (King’s Road, London SW3 5EE) for two days of rare books, prints, maps, photographs, ephemera, letters and manuscripts.

Tickets are £5 at the door, but if you head to the Chelsea Boook Fair website you can print off a ticket to give you free entry to the fair. Fair Hours are Friday 2-7pm and Saturday 11am-5pm.

As a special attraction this year, the fair will also stage an exhibition on behalf of the London Library celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the 11th century Persian poem, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

The Library’s collection was donated by Edward Heron-Allen, a London solicitor who himself produced a prose translation of the Rubaiyat. Representative samples from the Heron-Allen collection, including the earliest editions (and even some of the strangest), will also be on show.

1. The Scots Musical Museum by James Johnson – $8,500
The pivotal collection of Scottish music compiled by Johnson with contributions, both musically and editorially, by Robert Burns – published in 1792 as four volumes, this bound in two. The collection gained international recognition after arrangements by Haydn and Beethoven.

2. Oeuvres by Pierre de Ronsard – $7,435
The complete first volume of the first edition of Ronsard’s poetry; bound with an incomplete copy of the second volume and the preliminary matter of the third volume. Ronsard (1524-1585) was known as the Prince of Poets in his native France. Published in Paris in 1560.

3. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien – $6,500
A signed second edition (printed in 1956) of Tolkien’s fantasy masterpiece.

4. The Bonefish Brigade by Zane Grey – $5,000
Privately published in 1922, this was a special edition with “Christmas Greetings” and a candle design printed in red and green on the upper cover. This was Zane Grey’s personal copy with his library blind-stamp on the front free endpaper.

5. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer; Frank Lloyd Wright; Yukio Futagawa – $4,500
The complete 12-volume monograph of Wright’s work. Published 1984, first American edition.

See the full list.

I was talking to Paul from Exquisite Corpse, one of our booksellers who specializes in art books, yesterday and he showed me a fantastic example of “things I would buy if only I could afford them.”

It’s a limited edition, signed, 10-page book by Lucas Samaras made up of individually die-cut boards bound together, and extensively illustrated on every page which have visual games and bright colored pop art designs. Among the designs is extensive text in a variety of fonts telling the story. Or as Beth described it ….A board book for grown-ups!

A cool $2 million worth of rare William Shakespeare volumes has been given to UCLA. There are 72 books, including a 1685 fourth folio of the Bard’s works. They’ll be stored at the university’s Clark Library. The books, published between 1479 and 1731, belonged to Paul Chrzanowski, a leading physicist.

Robert E. Thomas now 83 was still a teenager when he took two old looking books from one of the salt mines where German treasures were stored during World War II.  Plagued more by horrors he witnessed as a soldier than his possession of the two pilfered  books, Thomas has had the historic volumes for more than six decades.

“I’ve had these books since I was 18 years old,” Thomas said. “I’m relieved, for one. I wanted to return them to the original owners but I had no clue where to start.”

According to German ambassador Klaus Scharioth, the books are 16th-century works dating to the time of the Protestant Reformation when Germany was the hub of book-publishing.  The first book was published in 1593 and is a commentary on Roman law written by legal scholar Johannes Borcholt. The second dates to 1578 and examines the court administration in the Duchy of Prussia.

Thomas never read the books but made sure they were kept in safe locations in his California home.

(AP Photo/ Haraz N. Ghanbari)