Hélène Golay
Collections often sprout from the seed of a single book. In this case it sprouted from a book and a human tooth. I was browsing the shelves at Capitol Hill Books, an establishment of which I’m happy to now be a co-owner, but at the time of this story I was a regular customer. I stumbled upon a copy of Rainbow Rowell’s 2012 young adult novel Eleanor & Park in which the previous owner had written a letter–dated just a few weeks earlier–to all future readers explaining how the book was racist and an inaccurate representation of Korean-American culture. That same day my boyfriend (now spouse, also a co-owner of CHB) handed me another book —a cheap Penguin paperback edition of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative containing an envelope. It was addressed in childish pencil “Dere Tooth Fere” and inside was…a human baby tooth. I bought both titles, not to read, but as examples of readers interacting with their books, whether consciously or not, and I’ve been adding to that collection ever since.
The collection has expanded to include not just ownership inscriptions and marginalia but also gift inscriptions, graffiti, justification inscriptions, and the imaginative ways in which readers enhance their personal copies through, for example, a hand-made pictorial dust jacket or original illustrations bound in as plates. The facets of this rather bizarre collection are numerous, and I hope I have managed to represent all of them in the four volumes displayed here.
Erskine Caldwell.
Tobacco Road.
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, [1932].
This is a signed reprint of Caldwell’s classic novel. An early owner has fashioned a home-made dust jacket out of construction paper to which they have mounted their own original water-colors to the upper jacket and spine panels. The artwork is a bit crude— there seems to be a disembodied human leg floating to the left of the depicted scene, but at least the artist has included the author, title, and “Signed by author.”
J.B. Fagan; Dorothy Croissant [extra illustrations].
“And So to Bed”: A Comedy in Three Acts.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, [1926].
Here is one of the earliest books to join Rowell’s novel and that human tooth and it cemented my resolve to build my own collection. This copy’s title page has been enhanced with a manuscript edition statement (Copy 1 of 1) and annotated title page by Dorothy Croissant. Bound in are Croissant’s water-color costume designs (tissue-guarded!). However, I could find no evidence that she did indeed work on any production of this forgotten comedy.
Dick Humelbergius Secondus.
Apician Morsels.
New York: J. & J. Harper, 1829.
Humelbergius’s comic gastronomical work was one of my favorite books to come out of the M&S Rare Books inventory that my former employer Lorne Bair Rare Books and four other partners purchased in…2018? I cataloged this book back then, was seduced by the gin-nosed fella hand-drawn on the upper cover of this lovely example of an American publisher’s binding, and was very sad indeed to put it on the shelf with the rest of our inventory. Three years later, when it was still inexplicably unsold, I bought it.
Scott, John.
Partisan Life with Col. John S. Mosby.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1867.
Possibly the ugliest book in the collection but also one of my all-time favorites–a gross water-stained Civil War history in modern library binding. However, this copy has the 1990 manuscript note on the front pastedown signed Reba Bryant in which she leaves this volume to Robert J. Connor, Jr. upon her demise. A year later she rescinds this promise, “due to his not talking with Ann.” Signed Reba Bryant, Louella Buler witness. Humph.