Surrounded by Books and Book Lovers

A trip to the 64th Annual ABAA International Antiquarian Book Fair

Thanks to The Scholar Wife, The Middlebrow was able to attend the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America’s annual fair, held this year at the Park Avenue Armory. This will be a picture-heavy post because the fun will be in showing you some of the rare and important books that delighted me.

Interest in rare books is a specialized hobby. Some people love ancient medical and scientific texts, some want cookbooks or books about wine, others want art and there are even folio editions of Shakespeare. I am more interested in American and European modernism, with an emphasis on books that have personal or cultural significance. More on that later. I’ll start with a story about me, Alfred Jarry and Shapero Rare Books of London. In 2023, The Renaissance Son and I followed the Scholar Wife to the TEFAF art fair in Maastricht and at Shapero’s booth there, I was shown a rare copy of Jarry’s Ubu Roi, with paintings by Joan Miró. It was a moving experience that I wrote about soon after.

In New York, Shapero had a different crew, but I mentioned the Jarry/Miró book, which they confirmed is still in their collection but did not travel to the United States. Instead, I was told a new bit of information about Jarry, which is that you can tell that a copy of Ubu Roi is a real first edition (private printing) because the surrealists behind that private printing stamped each copy with an image of an owl wearing a dunce cap. It was then suggested that The Middlebrow find this image and get a tattoo of it. I’m not sure why they thought I would do such a thing (my own tattoos were well covered) but I am exactly the sort of person who would.

The stamp, by the way, doesn’t seem to be easily found online and even Google’s vaunted Gemini failed to produce it. So, if you know anything about this, please let me know. With that story, and another wonderful experience with the fine folks at Shapero out of the way, here are some of the wonderful things I saw at the fair which, if you are in New York, goes on through Sunday, April 7th.

This is a 19th century illustrated book called Metamorphosis, and it works by folding and unfolding pages so that figures are transformed. In this case, you can see a gryphon. If you close the top flap, you get a lion. If you open the bottom, you get a bird of prey. What I loved about this is that it wasn’t “published.” This is apparently a copy that somebody who had borrowed and loved the book made for themselves. The effort, care and passion that went into this is staggering.

Here we have Ernest Hemingway’s first short story collection, published in a small edition in Paris. A copy made its way to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who used it to advocate for Hemingway with Maxwell Perkins at Scribner’s. Literary history was changed by a small Paris press and a big-hearted author.

This is the copy of Ulysses that Sylvia Beach, owner of the Shakespeare & Co. bookshop in Paris, published when nobody would touch James Joyce’s challenging foray into myth and the stream of consciousness. Again, it’s about people marshaling their devotion and resources in the service of art, and changing the world.

This is a first edition that I had never seen before, of Fitzgerald’s only play, which is about a postman who wakes up as President. It’s funnier and better than its reputation, but I am a Fitzgerald fanboy.

Finally, these are the dust jacket and cover designs for J.D. Salinger’s Granny and Zooey, with notes from the author. The style of Salinger’s books is iconic and here we see just how much attention he paid to those details.

That’s all from my trip to Booktopia. There’s another day left and it’s well worth a visit!