So, I’m a bookseller. I research prices on-line of equivalent condition and edition exemplars of each and every book I hope to catalog for listing and sale on-line. My search this morning for “Mark Twain” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” returned “17,000+ results.” SecondSale is offering their Good condition softcover copy of the Revised Edition of the Signet Classic Series Edition, published in 1997, for $3.50, with free shipping. Their 11-word “description” reads: “Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc.” SecondSale didn’t narrate their copy’s condition or its author, edition, story-line, importance, pagination, collation—nothing.
On the other hand, my colleague Erik Tikhonov (of E.T. Rare Books) spent 20 pages to describe his book, in this case, a “1612 Quarto First Edition King James New Testament Printed By Robert Barker in London-Bound With The Book of Common Prayer, Great Bible Psalter, and The Whole Book of Psalms.” Its first home was likely in a small Wiltshire, England village called Burbage. Prolly don’t come with no CD or access code. For $45,000, it’s yours.
Where Tom Sawyer above was captured by “Good,” Erik’s narrative hits all the cracking high-C notes of an epic, a teen-anthem, a thesis, an homage, a eulogy: “crude one-off limp calf leather binding . . . [t]hick Quarto (about 7.5”-8” x 7.5” x 3.125”)” nearly three pounds in weight. “Rebacked early 18th c. . . . leather binding with uneven black painted edges . . . Covers with double-filleted panels, framed inner panels, and centerpieces . . . Sympathetic modern baggy toned brown calfskin leather spine with four raised double-filleted bands and saddle stitched ends . . . The cover’s cracks were reinforced on the flesh side with rope pulp. Sympathetic modern blue endpapers and plain fly-leaves to avert acid migration, with the original blue pastedowns relaid. The original crude brilliant brass cornerpieces (with etched lines) and catch plate were lightly cleaned. Sympathetic modern center leather strap, brass hasp, strap plate, and black tacking nails (replacing old rusted trefoil lead nails).” Lacking endbands, thus vertically vulnerable, this New Testament lies in a matching clamshell case.
It goes on. He goes on. This is what a few booksellers do. He names the sources he consulted and thanks the conservators and rare book specialists who provided notes as to the book’s production and restoration. He notes seemingly every person or family through whose hands this has passed. Towns, wills, villages, trades, legal notices, births, deaths, marriages, tools, methods, supplies, techniques—everything and everyone who fabricated the book’s constituent parts and bound them together are narrated here superbly. Concluding that “The Crudely Executed One-Off Binding, Indicates A Non-Bookbinder” (likely German or English, he notes later), Erik has “read” the book’s existence and history. Odd flecks of white paint might suggest a story. Leather debris and fine sewing-needles left in the gutters, ditto.
Every picture tells a story, don’t it?
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