Duttenhofer's Books

Charley Harper

duttenhofers — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 22:55:04 +0000

Visit, if you can, the enchanting exhibit at the DAAP gallery (’til Feb. 16) of the work of Cincinnati artist Charley Harper (1922-2007). It introduced me to the little “Ford Times” magazine I’d somehow never seen before. Harper’s charming illustrations were in many issues in the 1950s. One of our favorite customers brought us a couple of copies.

Maybe one day the January 1951 Look magazine with his weather map will turn up. The serendipities in my work are a neverending delight. Books and pictures are more important to me than the dollars they’re “worth.” I wouldn’t be in this business otherwise. Dollars are the dullest part of value. I hope that isn’t the epitaph of the used book trade!

Chromolithography

duttenhofers — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:00:09 +0000

From "Wie das kind sein soll" circa 1890s

Chromolithography was state of the art color printing in the late 1800s. It made fine art prints available to the middle class. The inks are still rich and bright a hundred years later.

These unexpectedly vivid illustrations show up in otherwise unremarkable children’s books. They are a delightful surprise inside dingy covers, the color pictures on better paper interleaved with acid-tanned text pages.

Here are some from a book of nursery rhymes, 1900, about 5×7 inches:

Don’t judge a cover by its book

duttenhofers — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:20:22 +0000

Beware the book club dust jacket placed on a collectible 20th century book. The book club edition jackets had the same cover art. You can spot one by noticing there is no original price printed on the upper corner of the front flap. If that part has been clipped off, it may have been to remove a price, or to obscure the absence of one.

Some of you know what book this front flap belongs to:

Old djs have the charm of their times. Once they’ve survived a few decades, they deserve some respect.

But before dust jackets were common, books could look like these (among hundreds we have here), circa 1890s-1910s:

Uncollected

duttenhofers — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 22:19:51 +0000

See “Shelf Life” by James Wood in the Nov 7 New Yorker for a glimpse of one thing that’s true in this day: it’s hard to find a new home for thousands of intelligent old books; and one thing that’s been true always, hard to take though some find it: a collection is not necessarily greater than the sum of its parts.

Wood tried to dispose of his deceased father-in-law’s good history books with the respect they were due. He found a university uninterested, a library that only wanted newer books, a bookstore that had no money, a bookstore that had no space, and eventually a couple of buyers who chose to acquire only some of the volumes.

Many people with a collection to sell want it to stay together, and believe it is more valuable and attractive together. But the pleasure is in the collecting. A book collection’s owner is its glue. Owner gone, collection over, books dispersed to other fates– am I the only one who doesn’t think that’s sad? All ownership is temporary.

True Stories

duttenhofers — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 22:41:05 +0000

“I have a rare Where’s Waldo book with no Waldo in it. It must be a misprint. Is this valuable?”

“It’s in pretty good condition except the front and back covers have come off.”

“I have an old Christmas Carol signed ‘your friend, Charles Dickens.’ It’s from 1906.”

“Can you give me a list of all the books you don’t want to buy?”

“A gladiator on each side”

duttenhofers — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 22:34:39 +0000

One of the first bestsellers of the industrial age, The Last Days of Pompeii (Edward Bulwer Lytton, 1834) had avid readers for more than a century, from the early years of mass literacy to the advent of tv. I have been paging through a Heritage Press edition (1957).

Here’s a sample of what we’re missing:

‘I feel humbled when I look at his limbs,’ replied, at the left of Sosia, a slighter and younger figure, with his arms folded on his breast.

The slave looked first at one, and then at the other. ‘Virtus in medio! — virtue is ever in the middle!’ muttered he to himself; ‘a goodly neighbourhood for thee, Sosia– a gladiator on each side!’

‘That is well said, Lydon,’ returned the huge gladiator; ‘I feel the same.’

Gullivle

duttenhofers — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 21:44:52 +0000

Thanks to the internet, you can find an outlandish price for an old book faster than your grandma can find “Antiques Roadshow” on the cable tv guide. Absurdly high prices mislead buyers into thinking those asking prices are actual values, when in fact, no one ever paid that price for that book, despite the seller’s stubborn optimism. Peculiarly low prices are found for copies in poor condition sold by unprofessional sellers who don’t describe them accurately. (Amazon! More on that later.) These unfortunately drag down the value of good copies sold by reputable dealers.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced an extravagant over-abundance of books. Only a minority of these have both enduring literary value and bindings that remain attractive and usable today.

Gulliver’s Travels is in print for its fourth century (first published 1726). That kind of record, more than for instance a recent film (Jack Black notwithstanding), is a true indicator of value. We have an 1853 16mo (sextodecimo, about 4×6 inches), which sadly is quite wrecked and ruined– cloth torn and some missing, signatures separating, title page torn and scribbled on, last page half missing. Is it worth a thousand dollars because it’s 158 years old? No. Even if it was very good, it might only fetch $50; a nicer 1850 London edition was recently unsold on ebay for $35. I won’t be the one to throw it in the trash, but I also won’t include it in my online listings. The condition is too poor. The market is cluttered with junk. This one will sit on a shelf here until someone is charmed enough to pay a small price for it.

This kind of copy can serve to hold a place until you find a better one someday.

Rare, old and used– and so are the books

duttenhofers — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:17:32 +0000

Here to share my three decades of bookselling experience. Mysteries of the old book business will be revealed. What’s an old book worth? How do you buy a quality used book online? What’s up with Amazon?

All of us who value books– readers, buyers, sellers, collectors, scholars– have a common cause. I’ve always thought of the books that exist as one global library, a cultural trove. Ownership is temporary. The books travel and have lives beyond any particular person or place. All of us are caretakers in a way, custodians, guardians. If there are fewer printed books in the future, preservation of the good ones here already is even more important. As a bookseller, I get to share in that with people all over the world.

Last week, I sent Music and Theater in France 1600-1680 to a customer in Japan. I sold an 1889 edition of Herndon’s biography of Lincoln to an Indian gentleman in California, who told me it was a gift for a friend in India opening an institute for the study of democracy. Two continents, two centuries, two cultures.

Next time you sit back and open a book, savor the privilege, the peace, and the power to read.