By Margueritte Peterson

In August of 1809, a boy was born in Lincolnshire, England, who would go on to become one of Britain’s best loved poets. This boy was talented as a writer early on, and together with two of his brothers published a local book of poetry by the time he had turned 17. His family grew up rather close, and though he enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge in 1827, he was forced to drop out before getting his degree and return home when his father passed away four years later.

Do you know who it is yet? Some of you may have guessed, given the title quote of this blog. Once dropping out of Cambridge, Alfred Tennyson spent the next few years of his life taking care of his family. His second book of poetry, published in 1833, was met with quite a large amount of criticism from readers – despite it having the masterpiece “The Lady of Shalott” in it! Unfortunately Tennyson was not able to take the criticism in stride, and was put off of publishing again for a decade. Though not much time was spent above on detailing Tennyson’s rather homely and happy childhood, it should be noted, due to the fact that it helped inspire much of his creative writing, that within this decade he experienced quite a few hardships – his close friend (and soon to be brother-in-law) Arthur Hallam died suddenly. Not only did his death shake the core of the family, but they then moved to Essex where they lost a large portion of their fortune in a bad investment. Tennyson moved to London, and lived modestly while continuing to write poetry.

After the sting of negativity from his other publication had worn off in 1842, Tennyson published two volumes of poetry, the first with his prior works and the other with all new poetry. This time, he did not need to worry about criticism! The books were regarded as masterpieces and Tennyson enjoyed overnight fame. Throughout the 1840s he continued to publish, and was consistently regarded as one of England’s most talented poets. In 1850 Tennyson published In Memoriam A.H.H. – one of his crowning achievements. Dedicated to Arthur Hallam, his friend from many years before, the poem (133 cantos long) is a meditation on great loss and the search for hope after experiencing such tragedy. Some of its lines are often quoted as Tennyson’s most famous stanzas, such as: “I hold it true, whate’er befall;/ I feel it when I sorrow most;/ ‘Tis better to have loved and lost,/ Than never to have loved at all.”

Tennyson with his wife and sons in the 1860s.

The year that In Memoriam was published held many interesting events for Tennyson, including his marriage in June to Emily Sellwood, a lady (who was 37 when they married) whom Tennyson had known since childhood. Also in 1850 Tennyson was given one of the biggest honors of his career, succeeding William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate (a position he held until his own death in 1892 – the longest tenure of any Poet Laureate before or since). Though he was, given the position, often forced to churn out works for notable British events, he also endured success in the next few decades of his life. In 1855 he wrote one of his most famous pieces, “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” In fact, this piece was so popular that later in Tennyson’s life Thomas Edison used somewhat new technology (wax cylinder recordings) to make some of his earliest recordings – of Tennyson reading his own poetry, this piece in particular. (Listen to it here, though please ignore the creepy animation of Tennyson’s face!)

Our 6 volume holding of Tennyson’s Select Works, including Idylls of the King! Click the image to view.

Tennyson passed away at the age of 83 in 1892. He wrote his whole life, even until his last few years, and (as previously stated) held his royal position as Poet Laureate until his death. He authored dozens of poems, received awards, honors, and was even a favorite poet of Queen Victoria, whom he met on two occasions – the second of which was spent with the Queen explaining to Tennyson how comforted she was by In Memoriam after the death of her husband, Albert. Tennyson and his wife Emily had two sons, Hallam and Lionel, Hallam going on to take over his father’s Baronecy and publish the authorized biography on his father after Tennyson passed away. To this day, lines of Tennyson’s works are often well-known, if not always appropriately attributed to their rightful author. After all, how many of you knew that it was Tennyson who wrote “‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all”?

In late July, Tavistock Books gained a new member of the team, Ms. Kate Mitas. We give you the inside scoop on this bibliophile and what made her travel across the country to Alameda, California!

What drew you to rare books in the very beginning? Was it before your first ever bookstore job?

I didn’t really come into contact with rare books much before my first bookstore job. I come from a family of readers, so there were always books in the house growing up, but no one was a collector. When I did see rare books, it was usually in museums, and they seemed interesting but remote – I think in general I need a certain amount of tactile experience in order to really appreciate a book, rare or not. Also, I had an early, scarring experience with perceived rarity: when I was about seven, I had $3 to spend at a street fair, and I blew it all on some Grosset and Dunlap children’s reprint that came out in the 1950s, just because it looked “old.” And then it turned out to be devastatingly dull, and I swore I’d never judge a book by its cover again. It took a long time, and actually handling some remarkable books, for that promise to become the epic fail it is now.

Time to pry! Where are you from? What’s your background in the book business?

I grew up outside of Dayton, Ohio, and have lived and worked in various places around the country since then. About eight years ago I landed a job at Cellar Stories Bookstore, in Providence, R.I., whose rare book room finally made me reconsider my staunch anti-collecting position. I started out doing the shelving and shipping, and otherwise being a general minion, then became the manager there a year later (a.k.a., Chief Minion). The store has been around for 34 years and is pretty beloved by the community, so it was a great opportunity to learn the basics of the trade – cataloging, buying, sourcing books for customers, and all the rest of it – from an established dealer, many of whose long-standing customers I now consider friends.

About a year and a half ago I moved back to Dayton and put my skills to use assisting at Blue Jacket Books, in Xenia, O.H., which went into new ownership four years ago and has already come into a couple of nice collections. For what it’s worth, during my time there I also learned the knack of herding the owners’ three goats (should anyone wish to know: stuff your pockets with alfalfa and stride purposefully in whatever direction you want them to go, like a general marching into battle at the head of an army that may or may not have gone into full retreat behind her – occasionally it even works!). All in all, it’s been a privilege to work at two shops so dedicated to continuing the trade.

Ms. Mitas herself! Hard at work at her new desk in Tavistock Books.

What would you say is the coolest or most interesting bookstore/library that you have ever been inside of? (I know, I know… left field!)

Hmm . . . that’s a tough one, since I tend to love just about every bookstore or library I’ve been in for one reason or another. I’m going to opt for a small treasure: the Adams family library in Quincy, MA. It was built out of stone by Charles Francis Adams, John Quincy’s son, in order to be fireproof, which sounds formidable, but, covered with ivy and surrounded by a garden in full summer bloom, is remarkably unprepossessing. And inside it’s got to be the most reader-friendly presidential library (and was used for that reason by succeeding generations of Adamses, including Henry): it’s a single large room filled with couches and writing tables, and has books lining the walls two stories high – no second floor, just a balcony running alongside the upper tier for browsing ease, as well as maximum natural light. Most of John Adams’s books are in the special collections of the Boston Public Library, but the rest of the family weren’t exactly slouches, and, really, it just seems like a delightful place to hunker down with a good book. I kind of want to live there, in fact. Minus the huge portrait paintings.
What are you most looking forward to with the position at Tavistock Books?

I have an enormous amount to learn about the antiquarian side of the trade, so . . . pretty much everything! I’m incredibly lucky to have Vic as a teacher, and I’ll get to work with amazing material. What more could I ask for?

Just to be even… what are you least looking forward to with the position? 🙂

Having to pretend I don’t hate the San Francisco Giants. (You said Vic wasn’t going to read this, right?)

What is your favorite book and why? Do you have a favorite literary genre?

I’m terrible at culling my favorites down to one, so I’ll call your favorite book and raise you two of my favorite authors, instead: Italo Svevo and Flannery O’Connor. I love mordant, absurdist humor, and both authors utilize it in very different ways, with very different ends in mind. I do tend to lean more towards modern literature and poetry, but am interested in a lot of genres and periods. Ask me again in a few months, and I”ll probably have different answers for you.

Where do you eventually hope to take the position? What will you do with the knowledge of the rare book trade?

Eventually, I’d like to open a shop of my own, but at this point, that’s very much an “eventually.” In the meantime, I’m going to focus on building up my expertise, do as much as I can to help keep the shop running smoothly, and simply enjoy the education I’ll be getting along the way. I think I’m in for some interesting and fun times, whatever they may bring!

Announcing the upload of our newest PDF catalogue: Find Another! A Short Summer Miscellany.

In these days of internet bookselling, with thousands of booksellers listing millions of books for sale, it is said to be successful in such a competitive environment, one must routinely offer

1. the cheapest copy, or,

2. the best copy, or,

3. the only copy.

Here at Tavistock Books we prefer, when able, to pursue the 3rd option as our primary business paradigm, for, by definition, the 3rd tenet encompasses the first two. Here then is our Summer list, which is comprised of 30 items, each of which is the only copy currently offered on the market.* Or, borrowing Peter Howard’s slightly more emphatic expression, “Find Another!”.

We time the issuance of this list to coincide with the convening of this year’s RBMS Conference, whose attendees we welcome to Oakland, home of the World Champion Golden State Warriors, and a scant 2 mile 51A bus ride from Alameda, where one will find Tavistock Books, soon to celebrate our 18th anniversary on Webster Street. We also welcome your visit to the shop, should you care to come browse 15,000 other books, et al, in addition to the 30 items found in this catalogue.

Enjoy – both the list, as well as your stay in Oakland, should you be one of the many visiting our lovely San Francisco Easy Bay.

*a recent point-in-time determination made by searching viaLibri.net, with the full realization that the market is dynamic, and other copies may come and go over a given period of time.

<http://www.tavbooks.com/tavistock/images/pdfcatalogs/11_catalog.pdf>

Enjoy.

Vic Zoschak, Principal

Margueritte Peterson, Aide-de-Camp

We know we’ve been inundating you with blog topics on world class authors, illustrators, artists, and events in history. Is it too much? We thought we’d give you a bit of a reprieve from the education and simply let you read about some new acquisitions we’ve recently catalogued that we are pleased to share with the world. Relax, enjoy, but don’t get too comfortable – I’m sure we’ll be back shoving information down your throats soon enough! (Click on the corresponding images to be taken to the listings on our website.)

1. The Holly Tree Inn by Charles Dickens: I never understood the phrase “selling like hot cakes” until we got in quite a few of these Peterson’s Cheap Editions of some Dickens titles. We only have a couple left – one this Holly Tree Inn, circa 1867-68, with some average wear (spine rolled, chipping to edges… just look at the picture). This collection of stories began with “The Boots at the Holly Tree Inn” and in 1855 it came out in Household Words as a series of stories about a comfortable and cozy fictitious inn. Our copy still in original publisher’s wrapper with woodcut vignette to front wrapper (get it while it’s hot…).

2. Richard Halliburton, Adventurer, Archive of Four Letters in Original Envelopes with b/w Photographic Images: Who took the first aerial picture of Mount Everest after receiving express permission by stunning the Majarajah of Nepal with bi-plane aerobatics? Richard Halliburton was a legendary American travel writer and adventurer. Reading stories of his feats and antics seem surreal – after all, who flies an airplane upside down over the Taj Mahal? Richard Halliburton performed many phenomenal (and more than mildly insane) feats over his short life – culminating with a burning desire to sail a Chinese Junk Ship from Hong Kong to San Francisco in 1939. Halliburton oversaw the design and building of a ship for his specific purpose, and the crew got underway. Unfortunately 3 weeks into the journey Halliburton and his crew encountered a typhoon on the open ocean and all were lost at sea. This a collection of the last four letters sent to his fans and investors, from his Chinese Junk project in China, describing the momentously annoying building process (he famous wrote to his followers: “If any one of my readers wishes to be driven rapidly and violently insane, and doesn’t know how to go about it, let me make a suggestion: Try building a Chinese junk in a Chinese shipyard during a war with Japan.”) and the building excitement at the coming voyage. 

3. Manuscript Science Lecture Notes from student P. L. Hinton at Randolph Macon College, 1858: These lecture notes follow a series of lectures by a (Professor) B. Puryear, where the student takes copious notes on subjects from dew on the ground in the morning to temperature (expansion), vaporization, evaporation, electricity, chemistry (hydrogen gas, nitrogen gas, carbon, etc.), the atmosphere, among other scientific things. One of the interesting parts of this school notebook, however, is that at one point Hinton notes a speech, “Delivered before the F. L. Society on the Admission of a new member. Mrs. Tolbert by Willie Star of Richmond City. The Franklin Badge.” Possible secret society, maybe, perhaps? Randolph Macon was founded in 1830 by the Virginia Methodists and is the second oldest Methodist-run college in the country.

4. USS Enterprise, Navy Cruise Book: Commissioned in 1962, Enterprise was the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier & the 8th United States naval vessel to bear the name. Like her predecessor of World War II fame, she is nicknamed “Big E”. At 1,123 ft, she is the longest naval vessel in the world, a record which still stands. Enterprise’s crew numbered some 4,600 odd sailors, aviators, et al. 1969 was a fateful year for this ship, as on the 14th of January, a MK-32 Zuni rocket loaded on a parked F-4 exploded after being overheated by an aircraft start unit. The explosion set off fires and additional explosions across the flight deck. This horrific event is pictorially captured in this volume, as well as the crew, ship’s departments, etc, as is the norm for a cruise book such as this. No copies found listed on OCLC.

5. [Photograph Album]. Boat Construction in 1916 and The Sunshine: Many photographs in this album were taken by Edwin Levick, a famous boating photographer, most well-known for his many images of years of America’s World Cup races, operating prolifically from the 1910s to the 1940s. Though the first pictures in this book are not attributed to him, it is possible he is the photographer. The first 31 images follow the construction of the powered boat MARIE, from a simple wooden outline of the hull to completion. The last 19 images are of the luxurious SUNSHINE, of it elegantly gliding on the water and its sumptuous interior rooms, from the kitchen to the staterooms and the lifeboat deck. Though no information was able to be found on the SUNSHINE, we can assume these pictures were taken sometime in the early 1920s.

Hope you enjoyed learning about some new items in the Antiquarian Book Trade! Check back in again soon for more exciting blog posts.