Mail Order Catalogues and Building One's Library/Collection
26 Sep, 2023
2023-9-26 8:49:16 PM UTC
2023-9-26 8:49:16 PM UTC
I began to get specialty book catalogues in the early 1970s. At that time, I was interested in H. P. Lovecraft as well as Tolkien, Lewis, MacDonald, Morris, &c., and somehow I learned that a guy named Stuart David Schiff would send a current Arkham House catalogue if you sent him 25c -- or at least that's what I seem to remember.
It wasn't long before T-K Graphics of Baltimore came on the scene, a publisher in a small way -- I think there was a booklet on Tolkien, maybe more that one title -- and with a mail order catalogue (I think maybe the -ue was still used back then --?) offering titles from various specialty publishers.
By the mid-1970s, the Cornerstone Bookshop -- proprietors Terry and Nancy Duniho -- of Plattsburgh, NY, came on the scene. I kick myself for not saving their catalogues, which were chatty and loaded with books relating to Tolkien and the other Inklings. From them I bought, among other books, a 1924 first edition of the American edition of Greville MacDonald's George MacDonald and His Wife. My memory is that it cost no more than $15-25 dollars as the binding was weak. I presented myself in the mending room of the library of Southern Oregon State College and was kindly given cloth hinge(s) for repairing the book. You could, I suspect, have bought Tolkien's Beowulf essay in the 1972 Folcroft limited edition in buckram from them.
Still later, I began to get catalogues from the F&SF Book Co., which I think was a well-known book source in science fiction circles. I think they had a Staten Island address.
Businesses such as these were really boons for a reader like me, living in an Oregon town. (A local small book store, Blue Goose Books, did somehow turn up Bob Foster's Guide to Middle-earth from Mirage Press, with its wraparound Tim Kirk dustjacket. I didn't have to use mail order to get that one.) In each case the sense was that these were businesses, yes, but that the proprietors were also, in some degree at least, bookmen and bookwomen.
I hope we can gather here some information about such businesses. The Cornerstone Bookshop still exists in name and location, but my sense is that it has become basically an ordinary indie bookstore, and queries about the old Duniho catalogues have been unanswered.
It wasn't long before T-K Graphics of Baltimore came on the scene, a publisher in a small way -- I think there was a booklet on Tolkien, maybe more that one title -- and with a mail order catalogue (I think maybe the -ue was still used back then --?) offering titles from various specialty publishers.
By the mid-1970s, the Cornerstone Bookshop -- proprietors Terry and Nancy Duniho -- of Plattsburgh, NY, came on the scene. I kick myself for not saving their catalogues, which were chatty and loaded with books relating to Tolkien and the other Inklings. From them I bought, among other books, a 1924 first edition of the American edition of Greville MacDonald's George MacDonald and His Wife. My memory is that it cost no more than $15-25 dollars as the binding was weak. I presented myself in the mending room of the library of Southern Oregon State College and was kindly given cloth hinge(s) for repairing the book. You could, I suspect, have bought Tolkien's Beowulf essay in the 1972 Folcroft limited edition in buckram from them.
Still later, I began to get catalogues from the F&SF Book Co., which I think was a well-known book source in science fiction circles. I think they had a Staten Island address.
Businesses such as these were really boons for a reader like me, living in an Oregon town. (A local small book store, Blue Goose Books, did somehow turn up Bob Foster's Guide to Middle-earth from Mirage Press, with its wraparound Tim Kirk dustjacket. I didn't have to use mail order to get that one.) In each case the sense was that these were businesses, yes, but that the proprietors were also, in some degree at least, bookmen and bookwomen.
I hope we can gather here some information about such businesses. The Cornerstone Bookshop still exists in name and location, but my sense is that it has become basically an ordinary indie bookstore, and queries about the old Duniho catalogues have been unanswered.
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