Friday, June 18, 2010

Reaching for That First-Edition High


The Wall Street Journal has a piece about trying to find that elusive first-edition you've been craving (or didn't know you craved until you found it) at book sales.

From the story...

Nonetheless, I'd been infected by the book bug. And while I haven't unearthed another "Gatsby," you never know what faded masterpieces you'll find among best-sellers of more recent vintage at country book sales. At this weekend's event I acquired a first and I suspect only edition of Eugene O'Neill's 1929 play "Dynamo"; what I misidentified as a first of Hemingway's "For Whom The Bell Tolls"; an 1888 translation of Victor Hugo's "Ninety-Three" (mostly because of its pretty cover); Andre Gide's 1930 "The Immoralist" (and, tucked inside, a mint-condition book mark from Concord Books, a Times Square bookshop that opened the same year and went out of business in 1965); and, my personal favorite, "Meet Calvin Coolidge: The Man Behind the Myth." It's a modern (1960) edition, but who wouldn't be delighted to display that morsel on his coffee table?

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