The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Dr Falk Eisermann is head of the Incunabula Division at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and is considered a world expert in the field. He also heads the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (Union catalogue of incunabula), GW for short. Founded in 1904 it's objective is to list all 15th-century items printed from movable type. Today the job is reportedly about fifty percent complete. Lots of work remains.

I met with Falk in his green-carpeted office at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin to talk about his role as a rare books librarian, about incunabula, and about his quest to find and catalogue it all.

Dan Morgan is the proprietor of an antiquarian bookstore in Prague 6 that replicates the feel and function of a living room. Back in the 1990s Dan was invited by his future wife to visit Prague. He never left. In 2008 he 'got into' books thanks to a woman who sold them in his neighbourhood and who introduced him to Czech modernism and Samizdat. Coming full circle, by good fortune he was able recently to buy the entire stock of her original bookstore. I met with Dan at his shop. We talk about the cultural evenings he hosts, about the unheard stories that people tell of Prague's past; the important role Cubism played in moving Czech book design from Art Nouveau to Modernism; book designers Josef Casek, Ladislav Sutnar and Jaroslav Svab; the huge influence of renaissance man Karel Teige ('Captain of the Avant-Garde') and his ABC book; Jindřich Toman's amazing monographs on Czech modernist book design, notably the one on photo montage; Toyen; visually striking books; a collector's intuition; and the quality, but inexpensive, books produced by state-run publishing house Dru stevní Práce.

Library exhibition catalogues, just like Bookseller catalogues, constitute a damned fine collecting area if you ask me. Beautiful, informative, and cheap - especially when you consider how much money and time, care and attention goes into producing them - they're well worth acquiring, despite not being particularly rare. What better service can I provide the collector to get a grip on this under-appreciated field than to talk to someone who evaluates them if not exactly for a full-time living, then certainly for a good time? Emma Sarconi is a librarian and book historian who seeks "to facilitate conversations around the impact of special collections in our lives by providing quality reference services, instruction design, project management and event planning." She currently works as the Reference Professional for Special Collections in Firestone Library at Princeton University, and chairs the RBMS Leab Exhibition Awards Committee. The Leab Awards are given annually in recognition of excellence in the publication of catalogues and brochures that accompany exhibitions of library and archival materials. They are administered by the Exhibition Awards Committee of the ALA/ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), whose operating expenses are covered by a generous endowment from Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab, editors of American Book Prices Current. I spoke with Emma via Zoom about the criteria used by the committee to judge the catalogues.

Jordi Nadal was born in Barcelona in 1962 and holds a degree in Germanic Studies from the University of Barcelona. In 1998 he took the Stanford Professional Publishing Course and then began his career at Vicens Vives, later moving to Herder (Germany). He has been director of EDHASA, editorial and publications director of Círculo de Lectores, consultant at Random House in New York, general director of corporate development for Spain and America at Grupo Plaza & Janés and assistant director at Ediciones Paidós, as well as Deputy General Manager at Planeta Agostini Profesional and Formación. In 2007 he founded Plataforma Editorial. He is the co-author of Meditating Management… and Life (Plataforma Editorial, 2012) and author of, among other books, Libroterapia (Plataforma Editorial, 2017, 2020) and The Invention of the Bicycle (Plataforma Editorial, 2020). We met via Zoom to discuss his book Book Therapy: Reading Is Life (Mensch Publishing, 2021). Our conversation covers, among other things: how actions and inactions characterize reading; whether or not reading 'betters' a person; Camus and being kind to others in an unhappy world; why we're motivated to share treasures and enthusiasms with friends, and how reading and writing is so very human. It's a lively, colourful encounter with a passionate reader, writer, publisher and white-shirt enthusiast.

For years Paul Delaney was professor of English at the University of Moncton; prior to this he taught at various institutions in London, England. During his lifetime he has had an ongoing interest in Acadian genealogy, a topic upon which he continues to publish and conduct research. His biography of Charles de Sousy Ricketts (1866-1931), published in 1990, was the first major study of a man whose "spirited career encompassed many aspects of late Victorian and Edwardian culture," including fine press book design and production, stage design, typography, painting, sculpture, art criticism, and art collecting. Friends included W.B. Yeats, Thomas Moore, ​A. E. ​Housman, ​Oscar Wilde and many other luminaries of the period. Drawing upon a wide range of material​, much of it unpublished​ and/​or newly discovered​ at the time​, ​​Delaney ​"​reveals a man of strong opinions and artistic convictions"​ ​who despite a ​fierce opposition to Post Impressionism and ​​Modernism​, was noted for his love and deep ​knowledge of art, as well as his ​wit, ​conviviality, generosity and ​artistic ​versatility.​​​ ​​Delaney's biography illuminates cultural and artistic​ life in England​ during the 1890s and early decades of the​ 20th​ century​, and provides a detailed portrait of one of the period's great personalities. ​Ricketts, during his lifetime, established a reputation as a​ great​​​ art connoisseur​. In 1915 ​he ​turned down ​an offer ​to become director​ of the National Gallery​, a decision he later regretted​. He did however ​serve​ "disastrously" as adviser to the National Gallery of Canada from 1924 until his death in 1931. ​He also wrote three books of art criticism, two volumes of short stories and a memoir of ​Oscar ​Wilde. Selections from his letters and diaries were​ ​published​ posthumously​. I met with Paul Delaney at his home in Moncton, New Brunswick, where we talked about, among other things, his nom de plume (J. G. P. Delaney), about Ricketts of course, and his adventurous mother; about Ricketts' long time companion artist Charles Shannon; about publisher and editor Rupert Hart Davis, and about Paul's experience writing the biography of artist Glyn Philpot.

Andrew Coyne needs little introduction to Canadian audiences. He writes a weekly column for the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper and is a member of the At Issue panel on CBC TV's The National newscast. He has previously been national editor of Maclean's magazine and a columnist for the National Post newspaper. James Elliott Coyne (1910-2012) was a scholar, lawyer, public servant, family man, and "practicing eccentric." A Rhodes scholar, and captain of the Oxford University hockey team, he practiced law with his father in Winnipeg during the 1930s before joining the Bank of Canada's research bureau in 1938. He became deputy governor in 1950, and governor in 1955, succeeding Graham Towers. During his tenure he was embroiled in a much publicized conflict with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, known as the Coyne Affair, which led to his resignation and a clarification in the role required of the governor of the Bank of Canada. I met with Andrew Coyne via Zoom to discuss his extraordinary father. Our conversation includes a response to my assertion that understanding James Coyne requires an appreciation of how deeply he felt about Canadian independence, and economic nationalism.

Canada has an impressive tradition of producing great printer- publishers. Three of our best are Stan Bevington, Tim Inkster, and Andrew Steeves. Ancient interviews with all three can be found here on The Biblio File website. The one with Andrew took place a dozen years ago so I figured it was time to clock another. I drove down to Kentville, Nova Scotia last month, where Andrew lives and works, and sat down with him again right next to the place where the wall cordoning off his office used to sit (it came down about a decade ago), inches away from where our previous talk too place. Andrew bills himself as a writer, editor, typographer, letterpress printer and literary publisher. Over the past two decades he's won more than 50 citations for excellence in book design from Canada's Alcuin Society. His essay collection Smoke Proofs: Essays on Literary Publishing, Printing and Typography appeared in 2014. We talk here mostly about the specifics of book design and how Andrew makes books that very beautifully and aptly express their contents; we also discuss the challenge of selecting titles; the use pilcrows, the importance in life of paying attention, and much more.

Michele K. Troy is professor of English at Hillyer College at the University of Hartford. She studies Anglo-American literary modernism in continental Europe and is the author of Strange Bird: The Albatross Press and the Third Reich, the first book to be written about the Albatross Press, a Penguin precursor, that entered into an uneasy relationship with the Nazi regime to keep Anglo-American literature alive under fascism. The press was, from its beginnings in 1932, a "strange bird": a cultural outsider to the Third Reich but an economic insider. It was funded by British-Jewish interests. Its director was rumored to work for British intelligence. It distributed fiction in English by both mainstream and edgier modernist authors such as D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway to eager continental readers. Yet Albatross printed and sold its paperbacks from the heart of Hitler's Reich.

Michele and I talk about how weird this is, among other things.

Since 1972, Dr. Steven Lomazow has been building a collection of important American periodicals; it's now considered to be the most extensive in private hands.

"The Steven Lomazow Collection of American Periodicals has been curated for the purpose of demonstrating the role of magazines as a reflection of all aspects American popular culture from pre-revolutionary times to the present day."

Highlights of the collection were featured in an exhibition at The Grolier Club in New York this Spring called Magazines and the American Experience. A celebration of this vitally important American medium, the exhibition illustrated, among other things, how magazines fostered the development of distinct communities of Americans by creating networks of communication. The accompanying catalogue expands upon the exhibition with a series of essays by leading media historians. It's enhanced by more than four hundred illustrations.

Steven has been a consultant to the Newseum in Washington, D.C and is presently a member of the American Antiquarian Society. He is a board-certified neurologist with a practice in Belleville, New Jersey.

We met via Zoom to discuss why collecting magazines is so pleasurable, American magazines in particular. The discussion references Vogue, Life, Look, Harper's, Leslie's, Hearst's and many more iconic publications.

On this episode of The Biblio File Book Club Heather O'Neill and I discuss one of her favourite novels, Agota Kristof's The Notebook.

This dark, fractured fairy tale of a story, told in simple, striking, visual language, describes the devastating impact of war on children and their families. Set in an unknown country during wartime it follows the lives of twin boys coping with life after they've been left by their mother to live with their dirty old grandmother. A dangerous weirdness ensues.

We met at Le Figaro, a popular restaurant located in the Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal to talk about this disturbing, memorable work.

Heather is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, in 2006. It won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2007 Canada Reads Competition. Other novels include The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and The Lonely Hearts Hotel. Her latest, When We Lost Our Heads, will be available on Feb. 1, 2022.

Listen to the two of us as we compete for your attention with birds, trucks, screaming babies, and a tree full of cicadas.