Team Tavistock!

Vic with Brad Johnson of Johnson Rare Books.

With the new year being the start of the new book fair season, we always love to indulge and give you a report on our local fairs. This past weekend, we attended and exhibited at the Pasadena Rare Books LA fair, set up by Brad and Jen Johnson of Johnson Rare Books in Covina, CA. We braved terrifyingly bad weather, accidents all along the drive, and the possibility of pouring rain on our books to support these bookselling and organizing forces of nature (they even had goodie bags for us at our booths when we arrived) – and we are so glad we did! 

An ominous start to the weekend…

Now, we might be exaggerating just a teensy bit, as there really wasn’t any rain falling on our books, as we were able to unload in the garage, with plenty of help with dollys, unlike other local fairs we have attended! Luckily for us… it meant we didn’t really need to do much heavy lifting. The fair itself was a fun event, us getting to catch up with a lot of our fellow bibliophiles before the Oakland fair this upcoming weekend, and although the sales were a tad underwhelming for us (in all fairness, however, we were saving our big ticket items for the upcoming Oakland fair), it was definitely worth the trip in acquisitions – many of which you’ll be able to see on display at the Marriott this weekend! That all being said, many booksellers did have great sales… with one rumor that a seller sold out his entire booth!

Vic doing what Vic does best… talking about books! (And maybe a hint of baseball.)

Happy Pasadena Fair, Samm!

Between the fun of the fair, the ability to put faces to names (for this was Samm’s first Pasadena Rare Books fair!) wonderful dinners, great conversation and magnificent buying… we’d say this fair was worth every minute of our time.

Now on to the next! Don’t forget – the ABAA California International Antiquarian Book Fair begins this Friday and continues through the weekend… you won’t want to miss it! And if you were curious to see our shop while you’re in the area, this next week – we are only a few short minutes drive from the fair! Let us know you’d like to stop by and say hi soon. 

Samm relaxing after a full day of bookselling in the booksellers’ lounge!

206 years ago this week a book was published that changed the course of literary history, respect for women authors, and the romantic ideals of young women around the world. Over 20 million copies have been sold internationally. Little did Ms. Jane Austen know, Pride and Prejudice, the novel she sold publisher Thomas Egerton for one lump sum of 110 GBP, would sell out its first run in a matter of weeks, the three hardcover volumes valued at 18 shillings. 

Perhaps blogs on Jane Austen’s life are unoriginal, seeing how often she is touted as a great literary genius. We would like to add our own to the fold, since a) it is kind of shocking we have gotten away with not writing blogs on the lady for so long, and b) we love to love Jane Austen. Austen’s literary genius comes from her impeccable representations of English mannerisms, her wit, her clever dialogues, and her respected portrayals of young women in Regency England as she slowly but surely added to the transition of English Literature to 19th century realism.

And now let’s go over the story we all know… probably by heart, yes? (Not Pride and Prejudice… Jane Austen’s life. But… well… actually we know them both by heart.)

Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775 in Steventon, Hampshire. She was a welcome addition to a large family, and especially welcomed as the sole female sibling to be a companion to her sister Cassandra. This understanding ended up being amazingly true, as never before have we heard of sisters more devoted to each other than Jane and Cassandra Austen. Both were sent to boarding school in Reading in 1785, where they were taught the normal accomplishments of women of the day (needlework, dancing, spelling, etc.). However, their formal schooling lasted only a little under two years, before the school fees became too much for the Austen household to handle and the girls returned home. Never again would Jane or Cassandra live parted from the family unit.

The rest of the girls’ schooling would come from their father and brothers James and Henry (to whom Jane remained quite close). The family and their friends would stage private theatricals at the Steventon rectory, often comedic in nature (one doesn’t need to look far to see where her wit and satirical nature was developed). By the time Jane was 12, she had begun to try her hand at writing, working on short plays, poems, and other works of a satirical nature. Later on, these works would be compiled into a volume known as Juvenilia. At the age of 18, at the birth of her first niece Fanny, Jane sent the baby some humorous essays on the conduct of young women. Continuing to do such work for family and friends, which were cherished and often read aloud at gatherings.

Between the ages of 18 to 20, Austen wrote a short epistolary novel known as Lady Susan (not published in her lifetime). The plot of Lady Susan deals with a manipulative and seductive protagonist who uses charm and flirtation to get what she wants out of men, and is significantly different from any of Austen’s future novels. Throughout her twenties, Austen had several flirtations (mainly Tom Lefroy and an almost terribly matched marriage to Harris Bigg-Wither), but no one stuck. The marriage to Bigg-Wither could have provided her family with financial ease and freedom, but Jane refused to marry for money rather than love (a theme seen in so much of her writing), so rescinded her acceptance of the proposal. (You go, girl.) During her twenties she began the novels Susan, Elinor and Marianne and First Impressions – novels which would eventually turn into Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.

The early 1800s were a tumultuous time for the Austen family, as with her father’s sudden death in 1805 her sister, mother and her were left on the charity of their brothers and other extended family members. The ladies moved around the countryside often, until finally in 1809 being offered a cottage in Chawton by Austen’s elder brother, Edward. If is here that Austen perfected and wrote more novels, at a relatively quick pace. This was seemingly due to quiet country life, with fewer distractions and more time to focus on her skill. Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and Emma in 1815. These novels, though published anonymously “By a Lady” were favored and popular during their time. Though they brought her rather little fame or money, she was known and by the 1830s she would become a household name.

Unfortunately Jane would not live to see those days, as by 1816 she began feeling unwell, with what can today be attributed to Addison’s disease or Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. By March of 1817 she was no longer strong enough to write, and passed away on July 18th, 1817, at the young age of 41. Much of her work was published posthumously, despite her personal life being somewhat of a mystery – after her death her sister Cassandra destroyed (possibly) thousands of her letters, leaving only 161 known letters to investigate – to protect her sister’s privacy. Who knows what kind of further work could have been achieved by this literary lioness had she not fallen ill… who knows what other heroines we might have been able to empathize and laugh with had she lived long enough to write.

The important fact is… Jane Austen existed, and due to her wit and cleverness we have Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy to show us how its done… right in time for Valentine’s Day!

Happy 2019! Hope our followers had a safe and happy New Years (and more importantly made use of our Pop Up New Years Eve Sale). And now without further ado, onto a whole new year of book loving, bookselling, and book worship!

Copyright (literally meaning the right to copy) can be a slippery slope in terms of infringement. Where does one draw the line? Well, that is exactly what the last century has aimed at helping delineate. On realizing that characters, not just titles, can be taken and used for copies of original works, authors fought for characters, plots and fictional places to be copyrighted as well, to protect their interests. On January 6th, 1930, author of Winnie-the-Pooh A.A. Milne transferred exclusive merchandising and other rights of Pooh and the Thousand Acre Wood to Stephen Slesinger, who then in 1961 granted those same rights to Walt Disney Productions.

In the coming years, Slesinger would find faults with Disney and how they interpreted the somewhat vaguely worded contract, and would file lawsuits against the corporation. However, our blog is not meant to be a description of all the lawsuits between Stephen Slesinger and Walt Disney Productions. Rather, we would like to bring attention to what fiction copyright laws mean today and how infringement is decided.

In the United States, for a work to allow for copyright protection, it must meet certain regulations. It must be tangible (art, literature, etc.) and it must involve creativity – meaning that it must be an original work. The tangible aspect implies that facts and ideas are unable to be copyrighted – they must be put forth in a work of art or writing. Now, this is not quite as cut and dry as it seems. In fact, in the same year that A.A. Milne transferred rights to Mr. Slesinger, the United States held a court case deciding on the eligibility of fictional characters to be protected under copyright law – not merely as they are part of a larger work. In the case of Nichols v. Universal Pictures, two tests was developed to find whether characters were eligible for their own copyright. The first test was the well-delineated test – meaning that for a character to be copyrighted it needed to have a well-rounded personality and meaning in the story – for example, as characters James Bond and Tarzan pass this test, but an un-named poor factory worker (more of a stereotype) would not. The second test requires the character to be central to the storyline, and not merely a vessel for putting the plot forward. Sam Spade of the Maltese Falcon detective novels was found not to be copyrightable, as he was looked at as a vessel for storytelling, rather than as central to the plot. In terms of plot, for a copyright lawsuit to be made against an infringement a test must be made to prove the works as “substantially similar.” as the US Legal website states, “Though there is no ready-made yardstick as to what constitutes a “substantially similar” work, the basic test to determine whether a work is “substantially similar” to another is to see whether a person looking at the two works would believe the two works to be the same. This protects the author of a literary work from another person changing a few words here or there in a work and claiming it to be his own.” Amen to that – though unfortunately perhaps a bit vague.

In the basest terms, these days it is behooves an author to copyright their work. It cuts down significantly on time and expenses should there ever be an infringement on their creativity, and also “U.S. copyright law gives persons who register their works the option of recovering statutory damages for infringements which occur after the registration of the work, and not just the actual damages the copyright owner can prove he has suffered. Statutory damages are damages which the court can award without regard to the amount of damages which the copyright holder has suffered, or could prove he has suffered. In addition to an award of damages, a successful copyright infringement plaintiff may also obtain an injunction against further infringement by the defendant and, in appropriate circumstances, obtain the destruction of infringing copies of the copyrighted work.” As you can see, should you be worried about your characters or plot, it does make sense to register the work with the US Copyright Office.

There are so many aspects to copyright law – and these are just a few in terms of fictional character and plot! If you would like to read more about the history of copyright law, etc., we suggest checking out Copyright.USlegal and this timeline of the history of copyright in the US. To read more on the legal battles between Slesinger and Walt Disney Productions, read this article here.