Biblio Researching, Biblio-Connecting and Biblio Reviewing

This month I will post a thread from my Biblio Researching blog, and a thread from my Biblio-Connecting blog.  And I will provide a review of My Sentimental Library blog posts for the year.

From my Biblio Researching blog:
Researching the Value of Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare

From my Biblio-Connecting blog:
Biblio-Connecting: monthly blogs

From My Sentimental Library blog:

Jan:  Always Be On Time

My goal was to post at least one blog entry per month.   In two months I posted two        entries to this blog.  And in two months I posted two entries from my other blogs.

Jan:  Arthur Schlesinger's Bookplate:The Whole Picture

How I discovered the source document for Schlesinger's bookplate

Feb:  Changing Bookplates: Multiple Bookplates of Famous People

Inputs from the bookplate maven Lew Jaffe, the book collector Mark Samuels Lasner, and the scholar Linde Brocato.

Mar:  Two Hurt Books And Their Former Owners

Two books formerly owned by two New Yorkers: Paul Leicester Ford and Daniel Van Pelt.

Mar:  Maureen E. Mulvihill List of Online Work

The online works of the  guest hostess, the Irish-American Scholar Maureen E. Mulvihill.

Apr:  My William Targ Collection

Targ was a bookseller, author, editor, publisher, and book collector.  A true bibliophile.

May:  My Many Lives of Samuel Johnson

Grab a chair.  I have a lot of biographies of Samuel Johnson.

Jun:  Ten Books From Texas and Two Reminiscences

My first visit to Larry McMurtry's town of books in Archer City, Texas

Jul:   Blog Posts From Two of My Other Blogs

The first post is from my Biblio Researching blog and documents my somewhat fumbling research of a Greek classic.  The second post is a running diary of my life in the book world.  An abbreviated version was published in the October issue of The Caxtonian.

Aug:  Grand Moments

All about grandchildren, mine and those belonging to bibliophiles in my library.

Sep: My Autograph Letter Collection

Another part of My Sentimental Library Collection.  I strive to have copies of books by and about authors I collect, books they formerly owned,  bookplates if they had them, catalogues of their libraries, and autograph letters either to or from them.

Oct: In And About Foley

A post about an American bibliographer.

Nov:J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Bibliophile

My review of The Shakespeare Thefts perked my interest in Halliwell-Phillipps.

Dec:

Scroll back up to the top amigo!

Yes. 2011 has been a very good year for reading, researching, collecting, and posting about books. May 2012 be an even better year!

Wishing all of you a Happy and Healthy New Year!
Jerry

J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Bibliophile

James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-1889) is one of the bibliophiles in my library. He was one of the leading Shakespeare authorities for over forty years.  I have copies of books and periodicals which contain articles by or about him, a book he presented to a well-known American author, and also a book he formerly owned.  Recently, when a certain modern Shakespeare scholar implied in his book that Halliwell-Phillipps may have stolen a Shakespeare First Folio belonging to Sir Thomas Phillipps, I felt the need to defend him.  Here is my review of The Shakespeare Thefts by Eric Rasmussen, New York, 2011

J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps is well represented in my library.  Here is the book he formerly owned:

The Victorian Publisher Joseph Cundall edited this book and presented a copy to Halliwell-Phillipps.  This book was bequeathed to Halliwell-Phillipps's nephew and Executor, Ernest E. Baker, January, 1889.  I bought it online several years ago.

I bought the following book online from Krown & Spellman, booksellers from Culver City, Ca.:

Halliwell-Phillipps gave this copy to the American author James Russell Lowell when Lowell was our ambassador to England.  At that time, ambassadors were called ministers.

This is the fact sheet that Krown & Spellman inserted in the book:

Halliwell-Phillips was a founding member of the Shakespeare Society in England.  I have the first volume of the Society's papers:

Halliwell-Phillipps was the author of three of the first twenty-five papers of the Society:

I will mention that this copy was formerly owned by the late Jerry D. Melton, book collector and drama instructor, who was elected Best Teacher in a Supporting Role.  His daughter Mary Melton is the Editor-in-Chief of Los Angeles Magazine:

One of the books the Shakespeare Society published was Patient Grissil, reprinted from the black-letter edition of 1603.  Jerry D. Melton was the former owner of this book as well:

In 1874, the New Shakspere Society headed by Frederick James Furnivall published a reprint of the First Quarto edition of Romeo and Juliet.  It was printed "directly from the facsimile prepared by Mr. E.W. Ashbee, under the direction of Mr. J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps."  To put it mildly, Furnivall and Halliwell-Phillipps didn't exactly see eye to eye, and Halliwell-Phillipps was not much involved with this Society.

Halliwell-Phillipps was known for publishing extremely limited editions of his books.  Some say he would publish two copies, keep one for his library, and throw the other one away.  Only 150 copies of his monumental Folio Edition of Shakespeare were privately printed between 1853 and 1865.  I have a later reprint of the Comedies:

Visitors were always welcome at Hollinbury Copse, the residence of Halliwell-Phillipps.  One of them was an English Professor from Central High School in Philadelphia, the high school A.S.W. Rosenbach attended.   The professor gave a talk about The Halliwell-Phillipps Collection before the Pennsylvania Library Club in 1895.

 By the way, it took me over two hours to find this book:

Here it is on the shelf.  It is the furthest book to the left –– the one that blends in with the woodwork:

Halliwell-Phillipps was well known in New York as well.  I have a number of early issues of Shakespeariana, the official periodical of the Shakespeare Society of New York and he is mentioned in a number of issues.  The July 1884 issue contains a report of one member's visit to Hollingbury Copse:

In the October 1888 issue, Halliwell-Phillips answers the following question:

HOW DID YOU BECOME A SHAKESPEARE STUDENT?

In answer to the leading question, "How did you become a Shakespeare student?" the accompanying letters have been received. This question is not a matter of idle gossip. Its interest turns upon that characteristic quality belonging only to genius, and above all to the genius of Shakespeare —the call it makes upon the life-long devotion of the various minds it especially attracts. Its natural election of its peculiar lovers is mysterious, the destined ways of its strong mort-main past the finding out of the idly curious. The workings of its fascinating influence under different conditions are implied rather than expressed in the autobiographic replies the question has called forth. It is with no idea of adding to the stock of more and less impertinent personal talk in which it is the fashion to indulge, that these letters are recorded here, but rather to give place to a body of experiential evidence carrying with it a significant witness and tribute to the lovable greatness of Shakespeare.

MR. J. O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS'S LETTER.

"To the best of my recollection Shakespeare fascinated me in very early life chiefly if not entirely by the unrivalled melody of his versification, and even now, so far as the effect in mere reading is concerned, my temperament is more distinctly affected by that melody than by the grander results of his genius. It was not until I had witnessed the exquisite impersonations of Miss Helen Faucit that I had the least appreciation of his dramatic art. They have dwelt in my memory ever since, witnesses in themselves sufficient for the conviction that no satisfactory high general criticism on his dramas is possible without the assistance of stage interpretation. Then, having a great fancy for record research, I have devoted the larger portion of forty years, 1847 to 1887, to the evidential study of the poet's biography. And this is all that is in my power to say in reply to your enquiry. Believe me.

Yours faithfully,
J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps."

Halliwell-Phillipps was even popular with the Bacon Society.  They referred to a number of his works to "prove" that Francis Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare:

Halliwell-Phillips is cited more than seven times in the following index.  And mind you, this is only Volume I.

I love the informative note about the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy which is in brackets above the index.  If you didn't see it, you need to take another peek!

One of the Bacon sympathizers managed to get in print in a London newpaper that Halliwell-Phillipps was supportive of the efforts of the Bacon Society.  The article was reprinted in Shakespeariana, which drew the following reply from Halliwell-Phillipps:

A DISCLAIMER OF BACONIAN INTEREST.

In reference to a letter of mine which you quote from a London newspaper in your last number [Miscellany of November, 1887], will you kindly allow me to state that the expression which it includes of an interest in the Bacon-Shakespeare business is a facetious interpolation for which I am not responsible. I have never taken the faintest interest in the subject, and having said so much to several American correspondents, naturally do not like to be exposed to the risk of their considering me a stupidly inconsistent old party.

        J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps.
        Brighton, England, Nov. 30, 1887.





In the January 1889 issue of Shakespeariana, the Shakespeare Society of New York mentioned an addition to Halliwell-Phillipps's Shakespeare Collection the title of which is all the more eerie because J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps died on Jan. 3, 1889.  The Society was able to literally stop the press and add the following editorial:

"Halliwell-Phillips is dead! We yesterday sent to press the last pages of this issue, adding at the last moment the brief item below, as to a new addition to his great collection at Hollinbury Copse. Twenty-four hours later the telegram reaches us.

To speak of the close of such a life, requires more than the impulse of a moment. To speak fittingly of it, who will dare? Later we shall try to dwell on his noble manliness, his inexhaustible patience, his magnificent hospitality, his large, unfailing friendliness—which, even more than his achievements in the great field of history he had made his own, and to which he gave life, time, fortune, and strength—crowd upon us. Just now we can only bend to the blow.

  He dies in harness. In a letter to The New York Shakespeare Society, which honored itself by electing him its first honorary member, he spoke of the weight of advancing years and the constant interruption it brought to his studies. But never a word of relinquishing them; and readers of Shakespeariana will remember the simple modesty with which, in our issue of October last, he alluded to his immense labors, covering almost half a century, as a simple matter of tendency and of taste! and as still in progress.

If his friends should be asked to say what was Mr. Halliwell-Phillips' most prevailing characteristic, we think they would say it was the courtly and tender and charming words with which he would welcome a newcomer into the great preserves where he himself has so long and fondly labored. He was as far above, was as incapable of, resenting the arrival of a new investigator as an intruder and an enemy, as he was of defending himself when attacked by those very newcomers—to whom he alone had given a place to stand and work to do!
Learned, brave, genial, modest, patient; his countrymen and lovers on two sides of the ocean will do him princely honor. But the highest encomium they will ever pronounce upon him will be that, in the midst of that small bickering, jealousy, criticism, counter-criticism, criticastering, and ungentleness, which unhappily have been too prominent among the disciples of the gentle Shakespeare, he has never cherished an unkind thought or said an unkind or an ungentle word!

What was the item that J.O. Halliwell Phillipps added to his collection?

Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps announces that he has added to his collection of Shakespeare Rarities at Hollinbury Copse, a copy of the printed original music to " Farewell, Dear Heart, since I must needs begone," quoted by the Clown, Twelfth Night, and a MS. book of travels of the last century containing the earliest known account of the interior of the room understood to have been that in which Shakespeare was born, in the Henley Street cottage.

In And About Foley

In the Library Thing catalogue of my library,  I have 149 works that I classify under bibliography.   But not all the books I identify as bibliographies are bibliographies.   Some are just either lists of books or books about bibliographies.  Beverly Chew, one of the early members of the Grolier Club, would not have approved.  In an article published in the August 1897 issue of the Book Buyer, Beverly Chew reviewed P.K. Foley's work,  American Authors 1795-1895:  A Bibliography of First and Notable Editions Chronologically Arranged With Notes, Boston, 1897:

 Chew believed Foley's work was not a bibliography, but was just another checklist of the works of American authors.  "A most serious defect," according to Chew was that Foley omitted the names of the publishers in the listings of the books.

If that is the case, then  the following works in my library by Merle Johnson, B.M. Fullerton, Jacob Blanck, and Wright Howes are not bibliographies either because they all committed this "most serious defect."  To be truthful, Johnson did not classify  his work as a bibliography in 1928.  His title was  American First Editions:  Bibliographic Check Lists of the Works of  One Hundred and Five American Authors.  B.M Fullerton called his  1932 work a bibliography:  Selective Bibliography of American Literature 1775-1900:  A Brief Estimate of the More Important American Authors and a Description of Their Representative Works.  When Jacob Blanck revised Merle Johnson's work in 1935, he expanded it to include 199 authors, but also referred to it as a bibliographic checklist.  Blanck, too, omitted the names of the publishers.  Then there is Wright Howes's book, first published in 1954 and revised and enlarged in 1962:     U. S. I A N A (1650-1950): A Selective Bibliography in Which Are Described 11,620 Uncommon and Significant Books Relating to the Continental Portion of the United States.  Even Joseph Sabin in the early volumes of the Dictionary of Books Relating to America omitted the names of the publishers. Wilberforce Eames, however, included the names of the publishers in later volumes.  Regardless of Chew's classification, the Library of Congress lists all the above works under bibliography. And Foley's work too!  Even the Grolier Club itself lists Foley's work under bibliography!  Unfortunately,  Publishers' Weekly didn't do the same in its article announcing Foley's death.  Foley's obituary begins, "P.K. Foley, Boston book dealer and author of the widely used check list on 'American Authors' in their first editions, died on April 13th after a long illness..."

Chew also wrote that the readers would be disappointed in Foley's work.  One reader who was not disappointed was the Philadelphia bookseller William J. Campbell (1850-1931).  Campbell may have been the original subscriber of this very copy of the book, but at the very least, he acquired it sometime before April  1915.  This postcard was inserted in the book with notes on the other side:

There is a great article about Philadelphia booksellers by George Allen that is part of Four Talks for Bibliophiles, Philadelphia, 1958, talks given at the Free Library of Philadelphia.  Allen recalls that the Campbell bookstore was the second oldest bookstore in Philadelphia.  The firm was started by William J. Campbell's father, John Campbell in 1849.  William J. Campbell was a physician, but gave up his practice and took over the bookstore when his father could no longer work.  According to Allen, William J. Campbell specialized in Americana and Frankliniana, and even compiled a bibliography of Franklin's works.  You will soon see that Campbell was quite interested in Longfellow as well.

Another satisfied reader and former owner of this copy of Foley's bibliography was the New York City bookseller Christian Gerhardt (1866-1955).   He acquired this copy of the book sometime before April 1920.  The letter below is from a sub-dean at Harvard and was loosely inserted in the book:

 Gerhardt  signed his name on one of the rear free endpapers.   The address, I believe, is his home address, and not one of the several addresses where his bookstore was located.

Both booksellers had a high regard for P.K. Foley, and referred to his work extensively.  Foley was a Boston bookseller who gained his knowledge of American first editions with fifteen years of experience first as a traveling book salesman and then as  the agent for subscription houses.  He visited many a bookstore in his travels.  His bibliography became a bible of sorts and provided a ready reference for himself and for his fellow booksellers.   "Not in Foley" was a term used by more than a few booksellers in the early 1900s to identify a book that was not listed in Foley's bibliography.

The rear cover of one of P.K. Foley's bookseller catalogues serves as an advertisement for his bibliography:

A circa 1920s American Autograph Shop listing from Ridley Park, Pa. provides some interesting information about a large paper edition and the trade edition of Foley's bibliography:

My copy is a large paper edition:

Besides having a copy of P.K. Foley's  bibliography and a copy of one of his bookseller catalogues, I also have a copy of the auction catalogue of his library.

As one would expect, Foley's library was rich in books about books:

I like the listing of Foley's copy of his own bibliography:"... The volume is replete with clippings, manuscript, and other material relating to American authors."

I've told you a little bit about Foley and a little bit about "Not in Foley."  Now I will show you what is literally "In Foley."  Foley's work is interleaved with blank pages to add additional notes and other material.

In Foley's bibliography, William J. Campbell loosely inserted notes on "points," particularly pertaining to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Christian Gerhardt, on the other hand, either inserted or pasted numerous – and I mean numerous – articles and "bibliographic checklists" from Publishers' Weekly.   Gerhardt was still active in bookselling in 1949 when he was hospitalized for a serious ailment at the age of 83.  At that time, AB Bookman's Weekly called him the "Dean of American Antiquarian Booksellers."

If Merle Johnson's name sounds familiar, it is because he published his bibliographic checklists in Publishers' Weekly before publishing them in a book.

Gerhardt even loosely inserted clippings from catalogues, a practice which  has added to a nightmare I am facing.

There are bibliographic notes on the other side of this calendar sheet.

There are so many loose inserts that I have moved some of them to the back of the book for the time being.

Below is a 1930 letter from Houghton Mifflin Company.  The year 1930 is significant because that is the year Gerhardt went to the penitentiary for six months.  An undercover detective found a flyer for Flesh and Other Stories by Clement Wood in Gerhardt's bookstore.  The flyer displayed an illustration of a bare-breasted woman with several strands of pubic hair in view.  Gerhardt was convicted on obscenity charges.

The letter, above, loosely inserted, is the last dated entry in the book.  I know Gerhardt continued in the book business, but I don't know if he still had the book when he was released from prison.  I bought the book on eBay in the early 2000s from a professional bookseller whose name I can't recall.

Finally, here is the reason why all these loosely inserted sheets are giving me nightmares:

The binding is in tatters.  Some of the sections are loose.  There are well over one hundred inserts.  The book has been on my bookbinding pile for almost a decade.  I need to rebind the book, but somehow keep the inserts where they are.  I'm going to rebind this book in November.  Wish me luck!

My Autograph Letter Collection

If someone told me today that she was an autograph collector, I would assume she was collecting signatures of famous people, and not letters written by them.

The term, "autograph" has come a long way since Walter R. Benjamin (1854-1943) first published a periodical in 1887 devoted to the collection of autographs:  The Collector: A Monthly Journal Devoted to Autographs.  In the second issue, Benjamin wrote:

There is much confusion about the term "Autograph." An autograph is properly a letter either written or signed by a person. Autograph signatures should be spoken of as "Signatures." If this distinction is clearly understood much misunderstanding will be avoided.

Walter R. Benjamin modified his own interpretation of the term, "Autograph," expanding its meaning in a New York Sun interview in 1911.  This interview was reprinted in the Jan-Mar 1957 issues of The Collector...  by his daughter, Mary  A. Benjamin (The Autograph Lady). Walter R. Benjamin wrote:

 Nowadays, we call  a signature  an "autograph," and  a signed letter either an "Autograph Letter Signed" or an "Autographed Letter Signed." Google "Autograph" and you will get about 48,400,000 hits.  Google "Autograph Letter Signed" and you will get about 381,000 hits.  Google "Autographed Letter Signed" and you will get about 262,000 hits. Both terms can be shortened to A.L.S. or even "ALS," but  Google either of them and you will get about 2,130,000,000 hits, most of which refer to Lou Gehrig's disease.

Walter R. Benjamin preferred "Autograph Letter Signed"  over "Autographed Letter Signed:"

I prefer "Autograph Letter Signed."  All the letters in my autograph letter collection displayed here are either to or from authors and other people whose books I collect. Some but not all of these letters have been displayed on my moislibrary.com website.

 It is only fitting that the first autograph letter I should display is an autograph letter written to Walter R. Benjamin by Harry B. Smith (1860-1936):

It is Benjamin's fourth class of autograph, fully written by Harry B. Smith, renowned librettist, and book collector. It is a contents letter at that, instructing Benjamin to bid on certain items of a Sotheby auction on Smith's behalf.  I should research these items to see if they are included in Smith's A Sentimental Library.  



The first autograph letter  I acquired, almost ten years ago, which was also of the fourth class of autographs, came with an autograph of the first class, a signature. The Cleveland book collector Paul Lemperly (1858-1939) would buy a copy of an author's work and mail the book to the author for his signature.  Lemperly hired E.D. French to engrave an elaborate bookplate to paste in the book for the author to sign.  The bookplate read, " This volume, for insertion in which the author has been pleased to write his name, _________________ is the property of Paul Lemperly."  Lemperly got a bonus when he sent a copy of Ardours and Endurances to its author the English War Poet Robert Nichols; Nichols pasted an autograph letter to the book:

Here is a description of the letter.   I should  note that it was the A. Edward Newton collector David Klappholz who brought this ebay auction to my attention, opening up an interesting offshoot for My Sentimental Library Collection.  Thank you Dave!

The next letter, signed by  the bibliographer and librarian Wilberforce Eames (1855-1937) is of the third class of autograph letter, basically a signed document acknowledging receipt of two books given to the New York Library by Frederick H. Hitchcock (1867-1928), the publisher of both books:

Here's another letter written in the Lenox Library, but this one is more of the fourth class, a full autograph letter written by the bibliographer and librarian S. Austin Allibone (1816-1889).  It is addressed to Thomas D. Suplée, thanking him in an informal and personal way for sending a copy of The Life of Theodorick Bland Pryor, First Mathematical-Fellow of Princeton College:

Since we are on bibliographers, here's a rather strange method of response from the bibliographer Jacob Blanck (1906-1974) to a letter from the Ohio bookseller Paul H. North:

The next autograph letter is of the second class; Christopher Morley (1890-1957) is responding to a request for a photograph:

Christopher Morley is present again in an A.N.S (Autograph Note Signed):

I needed help from Stephen Rothman, editor of The Baker Street Journal, to identify who O.M. was.

Another example of the second class of autograph is Edward Martin's reply to a request for a photograph:

I own a book from the library of Edward Martin (1879-1967). There was a bookplate pasted on the inside cover.  Who is Edward Martin?  In 2004, I wrote an article for the online AB Bookman's Weekly about the bookplate:  The Story of a Bookplate.  I eventually acquired Martin's autobiography, Always Be On Time.

Some of my friends may remember an October 2007 blog post about a letter from George Birkbeck Hill (1835-1903) to a still-unidentified American book collector.  In the top left-hand corner, someone had written the name "Cowan."  I thought it might be Robert Ernest Cowan (1862-1942), and acquired one of his letters from the New York bibliophile David W. Lowden to compare the handwriting:

Cowan it is not –– or at least Cowan was not the one whose marginalia was written in the book.  It is possible, though not likely, that Cowan was the recipient of Hill's letter.

Some recipients are easier to identify.  The T.L.S (Type Letter Signed) to "Mary" from L.P. Curtis was to Mary Hyde (1912-2003) and was inserted in her copy of Curtis's book, Chichester Towers:

 A harder recipient to identify was in the note inserted in the book I found in Umatilla Florida!

One of my oldest letters is an 1848 letter written by the English author Henry Hallam (1777-1859), accepting an invitation to breakfast with a "Lord" whose name I can't decipher:

Another English writer whose autograph letter I have is Edward Arber (1836-1912), best known as the editor of the eight-volume English Garner series:

Shortly after the publication of his book, Obiter Dicta, Augustine Birrell (1850-1933) received a letter from a woman who was going to review his book in an Oxford publication. I have his reply:

"Hither-unpublished Obiter Dicta," was the title of my essay the Caxton Club published in Other People's Books:  Association Copies And the Stories They Tell in March 2011.  My essay was about Birrell's annotated copy of Lord Acton's Lectures on the French Revolution.

Authors are often asked to review works from unpublished authors.  Here is how the American poet Edward A. Guest (1881-1959) handled such a request:

I have a decent collection of books  by and about the English Poet Austin Dobson (1840-1921), and an autograph letter from him concerning an anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund he could not attend:

I also have an autograph letter to Austin Dobson from Hartley Carrick that Carrick inserted in Dobson's copy of The Diary of John Evelyn.  It serves as a presentation note:

Here's a letter to the Leigh Hunt Collector and Torch Press Publisher Luther A. Brewer (1858-1933) from W.L Washburn thanking him for Brewer's review of one of his works:

The author, publisher,  and bibliophile, Henry H. Harper (1871-1953) inserted a T.L.S. inside the copy of Library Essays that he sent to John G. Milburn:

The American author John Preston responded to the American writer Louis Untermeyer (1885-1977), thanking him for his kind words about his book, The Liberals:

Here's a letter from the American writer Brander Matthews(1852-1929) which accompanied his payment of dues to the National Institute of Arts, Sciences & Letters:

The English publisher John Murray IV (1851-1928) bought some woodcuts from the American artist J.J. Lankes (1884-1960), sending payment via registered letter from  Barclays Bank as well as an autograph letter:

The Johnsonian William K. Wimsatt, Jr. (1907-1975) typed an interesting letter to the Johnsonian Alan Hazen (1904-1977) concerning anonymous quotations and quotations attributed to Johnson in Johnson's Dictionary.  Wimsatt wrote out a "P.S." to the T.L.S. and then included a mimeograph sheet of some of the anonymous quotations:

Hazen inserted Wimsatt's letter inside the copy of Wimsatt's book, Philosophic Words:  A Study of Style and Meaning in the Rambler and Dictionary of Samuel Johnson  that Wimsatt had given him.

The most recent autograph letter I acquired was from the Rare Book Room of the Strand Book Store on Broadway in New York on September 12, 2011.  It is a letter from Adrian H. Joline (1850-1912) written to Gen. William S. Stryker congratulating him on his honorary LL.D. degree.  The letter was inserted in a copy of Adrian Joline's Edgehill Essays by a former owner –– not Stryker; he has no connection with the book other than Joline's letter being inserted:

A belated entry –– and only because I just acquired a book by her on Oct. 1st –– is an autograph letter from the American essayist Agnes Repplier (1855-1950).  Agnes Repplier was a bibliophile, and some of her essays are about books.  I've seen a photo of her having tea at A. Edward Newton's library.  In the letter below, she is expecting a certain Mrs. Hopkins from Baltimore for a visit:

I believe this "Mrs. Hopkins" is the author Margaret Sutton Hopkins (1864-1941) who wrote under her maiden name, Margaret Sutton Briscoe.

I keep most of my autograph letters in acid-free page protectors in a three-ring binder. Some of my autograph letters remain in the books they came with.   Inserted in a copy of Carolyn Horton's Cleaning and Preserving Bindings and Related Materials, and serving as a presentation note is an A.L.S from the publisher Herbert Hanna to the bookbinder and book conservator Harold Tribolet (1911-1983):

My friends will recognize this T.L.S. from the bookseller and all-around bibliophile William Targ.  It is inserted in John Richardson Starrs's copy of Targ's The Pauper's Guide to Book Collecting:

Inserted in a copy of All in a Century:  The First 100 Years of Eli Lilly and Company is a T.L.S. to the bibliophile Frederick B. Adams, Jr. (1910-2001) from Eli Lilly (1885-1977).  The Lilly firm made its money in pharmaceuticals, but the Lilly name is known in the book world because of  J.K. Lilly, Jr. (1893-1966) and his Lilly Library at  Indiana University:

Inserted in a copy of The Silent Traveler in New York  is an impressive note to Frederick B. Adams Jr. from the author of the book, Chiang Yee:

Ellen Shaffer thought she recognized the name and writing of a former patron of Glen Dawson's book store in Los Angeles.  She did!  Her letters are inserted in J.C. Dykes's copy of Four Talks for Bibliophiles:

Both autograph letters below serve as "presentation letters" and remain in my copy of Letters of Sir Thomas Bodley to  Thomas James, First Keeper of the Bodleian Library:

The Bodleian Library first opened its doors in 1602.   Sir Thomas Bodley's letters were written from 1599 to 1613.   Strickland Gibson, Sub-Librarian at the Bodleian Library, presented this book of letters to L.F. Powell (1881-1975) "...in appreciation of his valuable services to the Samuel Johnson Exhibition (Bodleian Library) November 1934."


L.F. Powell presented this book to Donald Hyde  (1909-1966) in 1962 "...in appreciation of your magnificent gift to the great library in which as a young man I learned my trade."

What was Donald Hyde's magnificent gift?  Donald Hyde paid for the repair to the ceiling of Duke Humphrey's Library at the Bodleian:

Duke Humphrey's Library at the Bodleian was first completed in 1487 and rededicated in 1602.  Truly a magnificent building and a fitting photo finish to the display of my autograph letter collection!