Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - December - 2002 Issue
The Grolier Club Collects by Abby Tallmer
Collector: William T. Buice III
are mostly non-American, and consist of such items as a book of Scottish poet Robert Burns’s poems; an autograph note by Emily Dickinson containing her recipe for coconut cake; a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; and an astounding and unique set of page proofs for Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol, corrected and emendated by Wilde throughout. (Collector: Mary, Viscountess Eceles). The “Literature” section spills over to Case 5, which includes wonders like Virginia Woolf’s first publication for The Hogarth Press; an early Jack London poem in manuscript; a Jorge Luis Borges translation of Hart Crane’s poem “To Brooklyn Bridge” into Spanish; and works by such varied authors as Henry James, Tom Stoppard, Harper Lee, and William Burroughs.
Next comes a framed item on the wall which again will probably interest Americana collectors: a January 12, 1776 map line engraving entitled “Plan for the City of New York” by Bernard Ratzer. The flat vertical case follows: it is filled with stunning examples of fine bindings in an array of textures, colors, and materials.
We now emerge on the other side of the room. There are again some framed items on the wall (a Matisse work and a lithograph of “Brooklyn Bridge” executed in 1930 by Louis Lozowick. Case 6 is devoted to “Association Copies,” mostly literary materials that link an author, usually by inscription, with a significant person in his or her life; Case 7 , “Book Illustration,” showcases typography, lithography, and other elements of fine printing, mostly non-American; and Case 8 is entitled “Photography and Other Works on Paper” and does include some items of interest to Americanists, including an original signed photo of FDR waving to the crowd from a railway car and a fascinating photo album by Isaiah West Taber called “Grand Presentation Photographic Portrait of California’s First International Fair,” 1894, containing 166 albumen photos, only 3 known copies of which exist. Case 9, “Bibliography,” consists of all sorts of examples of same; and Case 10, “Science and Medicine,” shares its space with “Children’s Literature.” The notable item to mention in this case for Americana collectors is an item contained in the “Science and Medicine” section of the case, an 1844-48 lithograph by Louis Nagel of “The Highland Mammoth Boys, Charles & Alexander, Aged 9 and 11 years old and Weighing Over 500 Pounds!! Now Exhibiting at the American Museum, New York.” This item made me think of the Grolier Club’s last show, “Quack, Quack, Quack…” about medical quackery and fraud, also covered in the pages of October’s AE Monthly and still available to readers in the AE Monthly article archives.
