Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - January - 2005 Issue
More Books About Books From Oak Knoll
A genuine signature from forger H. Buxton Forman.
Oak Knoll even has a book for all of you Trekkies out there. It is by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens titled The Art of Star Trek. It includes a history of the art and design used in the original television series and the many movies which followed, concluding with "Generations" from 1994. It includes numerous color photographs and sketches. Very logical. Item 633. $35.
Here's another book at the cutting edge of technology: Cyberbooks, by Ben Bova. In it, fictional computer developer Carl Lewis creates a device which will allow text to be read on a hand-held electronic reader, without need for books and print. Doesn't sound all that cutting edge? Ho-hum? Well, the year this book was published was 1989. Can you remember that long ago? I hadn't even heard of the internet at that time, and Google, which is now about to make countless millions of old books available electronically, was still many years from existence. The world has changed at what Captain Kirk would call "warp speed" since then. We may not yet have reached the age of beaming up, but we certainly have reached the age of loading down, or "downloading" as they say in the trade. Item 110. $20.
Item 676 is from Edgar Lee Masters, best known for his "Spoon River Anthology." However, the name of this one is Mitch Miller. Mitch Miller? The title just makes you want to sing along. But wait. The publishing year is 1920. Radio had barely been invented then, let alone sing-along TV. Who is this Mitch Miller? It turns out that this Mitch never heard "The Yellow Rose of Texas," let alone heard of television or even radio. Miller was a boyhood friend of Masters who was tragically killed by a freight train at the age of 10 in 1879 while trying to hop aboard. $35.
Item 250 is a presentation copy of Shelly's Rosalind and Helen, printed in 1888, from H. Buxton Forman. Forman was a book collector, writer, and expert on 19th century British literature. He dabbled in poetry, though creating books about, and bibliographies of, the works of others were his forte. Of course, Forman is remembered for none of this. What he is remembered for is using his great knowledge to aid master forger Thomas Wise in the creation of his notorious forgeries. Forman's career would have ended in disgrace but for his having the good sense to die before he was found out, something Wise neglected to do. This book includes a few lines in verse from Forman to his good friend Louis Vanuxern in 1897. $300.
Oak Knoll Books is located on the web at www.oakknoll.com and on the wire at 302-328-7232.
