Rare Bookin' It

I learned some things in my few hours in the Rare Book Reading Room: 1st off, I saw the two actual boox exchanged between Whitman and Thoreau! Both copies dedicated to the other on their title pages. Walt mention'd the walk and chat they took! How bout that! Can u imagine? ++ Also, the great Clark Evans talked more about Thomas Jefferson's books and how we got them, keep them, and use them, especially using E. Millicent Sowerby's Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, originally published 1952-1959. It's annotated with extensive entries describing the books TJ sold to the Library of Congress in 1815. ++ I saw a couple of the Lincoln's assassins broadsides. $100,000 Reward! The Murderer! Rare Book has thousands of these AND they get cataloged. They also have a few LP's of speeches ... OOOOH! I also saw Lincoln's grammar book from KY! The one he devoured as a young lad, making the 12-mile trip to "school" ~ He only had less than a year of total proper schooling, but this book this small book right in front of me! had a direct hand in forming his profound command of language.

I learned the LC acquired the Czar of Russia's Library in 1930. The Imperial Collection? That's crazy! How in the world did that level of imperial materials end up here?? In 1930? We were broke, yet that's the year we also acquired the Gutenberg Bible. Sheesh! ++++ I also learned the Liberry went 130 summers of Washington baking heat before they installed the first air conditioner ... of course, now the treasur'd collexions are closely monitor'd with temperature and humidity controls etc so it's all good ... ++++ For a long time, too, the "rare" books were simply mixed among the General Collexion and some were simply marked "Office" which meant the Liberrian kept the volume IN HIS OFFICE. If you needed the book, you simply went and knocked on his door to get it. Easy.


I learned our HUGE collexion of Incunabula -- printed materials from before 1501 -- is well cared for yet difficult to catalog since they usually have no title page or other informationstuffs. ++ I learned about the Beadle Brothers special Dime Novels. We have about 40,000 in our Rare Book section, and some are handsome to the maximum, heck yes.