Today in the studio we have a copy of John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, inscribed by the author to an interesting—but not especially well-known—figure from Boston’s history. We’ll use it as a jumping-off point into a discussion of signatures and inscriptions more generally: some are simply nice to have, others substantially increase the collectibility and value of a volume, and many turn out to be written by a secretary or printed with the book itself. A look at some of the most common and convincing faux signatures rounds out this 100% authentic #brattlecast.
Brattlecast #120 - The Limited Editions Club
Today we’re talking about some of our favorite titles from the Limited Editions Club. Founded in 1929 by George Macy, the L.E.C. brought together leading artists, illustrators, book designers, and typographers to produce beautiful editions of classic works of literature, which were then distributed to club members on a subscription basis. Only about 1,500 copies of each title was published, and they were usually signed by their author, illustrator, or both. While many of their titles have fallen out of fashion today, some are still highly collectible; James Joyce’s Ulysses, with art by Henri Matisse (who hadn’t read a word of the book and instead illustrated six scenes from Homer’s Odyssey), and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland signed by Alice Hargreaves, the “original” Alice for whom the book was written.
Speaking of subscription-based media, we would encourage you to subscribe to the Brattlecast if you haven’t already, and to share so that your friends can join the club!
Brattlecast #84 - Facsimiles
Today we’re talking facsimiles: Why the real, original Declaration of Independence doesn’t look like it was printed on crinkly, pirate treasure map-style brown paper! The early work that Edgar Allan Poe hated so much that he tried to destroy, but only succeeded in making the surviving copies all the more monetarily (but not poetically) valuable! The publishing house creating such beautiful facsimile editions of modern literature that people started using them to do dust jacket fraud! The advances in printing technology that have recently made it possible to forge an entire book! And why, sometimes, the hardest thing about spotting a fake is letting its owner down easy.
Brattlecast #81 - One Book Collections
Perhaps amassing 2000 copies of Walden isn’t exactly what Thoreau meant when he exhorted us to ‘Simplify, simplify,’ however, some collectors do simplify their libraries by collecting different editions of a single book. Books like the Bible, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and the works of Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Dante Alighieri have been published so often, with such a variety of bindings, languages, and illustrations, that a collection of even one of these books would be impossible to ever complete. We’ll take a look at a few of these monomaniacal collections on this week’s brattlecast.