Well, the third and final day of the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair (
Florida Antiquarian Book Fair) has come and gone. It was a truly fantastic weekend, and it was so good to see so many friends I have made over the years at this show! I wish the show could last longer, but, then again, I don't think my bank account could handle it. While not as crowded as yesterday, there were still a good number of people there, browsing through the thousands upon thousands of books or sale. I was right there with them, wanting to make sure I didn't miss anything.
Today, I made a new connection and new friend with a book dealer I didn't even realize was right in my backyard (my backyard being DeLand). Richard Oates of Blind Horse Books was set up right there next to Kerry (also of DeLand!), and he was offering up a variety of vintage and antique books, particularly ones associated with travel exploration and geography. Richard was great to chat with, and I learned he even runs a daily blog, sharing information and history about authors and their works, which for avid readers like me presents a whole new doorway to knowledge (check it out at
Blind Horse Books). Will and I browsed through his amazing display of books, magazines, pamphlets, and other paper ephemera, and quite frankly, I'm still in awe thinking about all he had there. But there was one book in particular...
Based on the cover, I immediately thought that perhaps
The Log of the Flying Fish by Harry Collingwood was part of a children's series, or at the very least, written by an author of children's books. Well, I was half right - turns out Collingwood is a pseudonym for British author William Joseph Cosens Lancaster, who wrote more than 40 boys' books of adventure, most of them nautical in nature (think Jules Verne). Published in 1886 (more than 100 years ago!), the copy of this book at Richard's booth was beautiful - one would never guess it is more than a century old! And the "flying fish" is not an actual fish, which I first thought when I saw the title, but it is about a ship that goes under water and also flies in the air. Hmmm, maybe a precursor to Stratemeyer's Tom Swift series, eh? Oh, and one must not forget the 12 beautiful full page illustrations by Gordon Browne, who illustrated a number of children's books in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
One of my finds this year was Molly Brown's Orchard Home by Nell Speed (in dust jacket!!!!). I had never heard of this series until Friday, when Will and I when antique mall shopping in St. Petersburg before the Book Fair started. At one of the malls, we found a copy of Molly Brown in Kentucky (without dust jacket, unfortunately), and since I'm originally from Kentucky, I picked it up, curious to see what parts of my home state would be featured in the book. So, imagine my surprise when we were looking at the various books in one of the booths and I came across Molly Brown's Orchard Home! To go from having never heard of the series to stumbling across two books in the series in the same weekend - well, the odds are astronomical! Needless to say, it's yet one more series I now find myself collecting!
Another awesome dealer at the show this year was Heartwood Books and Art out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This is the dealer from whom I bought those two pulp novels I mentioned in yesterday's blog post. They specialize in vintage mystery and detective fiction, sci-fi and fantasy, as well as horror and supernatural books - and, of course, old pulp magazines. They had quite an amazing display of first edition hardcover books from authors such as Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, Sax Rommer, Alan Moore, William Irish, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Wyndham, Rod Serling, and many others. The books are in utterly superb condition, and it's anyone's guess how they have survived the years in such beautiful shape! They also had a shelf filled with more pulp novels of all genres - from sci-fi to detective to fiction to risque - among them, I saw two different versions of
Night Nurse by David Charlson. I already have this book, but I only have one of the covers - I was so tempted to buy that other cover, but I managed to restrain myself.
What did interest me, however, was one of the books in their glass case -
The Quest of the Sacred Slipper by Sax Rohmer. The title definitely sounds like a children's mystery series book, and this title in particular brings to mind the Nancy Drew book,
The Scarlet Slipper Mystery. This particular book in Heartwood's collection was a first Canadian edition with its dust jacket in tact (not perfect, but still in beautiful shape considering it is over 100 years old!). For those who may not be familiar with the author, he is known for his Fu Manchu series of books, which featured a supervillain as the title character. Apparently this book has been reprinted a number of times in various formats, but this particular one is a very early printing.
Two other books this dealer had that caught my eye were anthologies from the early 1900s. The first is titled
Creeps (a collection of uneasy tales), which features a tagline that reads "Horror Stalking in Many Places." As a fan of horror tales, I was immediately drawn not only to the title and the tag, but also to the very haunting cover itself. The cover art appears to be by Nat Long (based on the signature and what I could find online to compare with), and it features a woman climbing to the top of a staircase with a candle lighting her way and an expression of fright on her face. Does this sound familiar? Well, any fan of Nancy Drew books would immediately realize the cover hearkens back to the original Tandy cover to
The Hidden Staircase! This book was published two years after the Nancy Drew book, so who knows - perhaps it inspired Long to paint this one!
The other book is titled
Shivers, and this was a third collection of "uneasy tales" in the same series as
Creeps. This book features the tagline "Terrors and Ghouls of Night" and contains nine stories by various authors. Also published in 1932, it features a strange and frightening cover (again by what appears to be Nat Long) of a blond young lady turning in fear to see an elongated creature behind her about to pounce off of a bed! The pose of this young lady seems to almost be a mirror pose of that of Nancy Drew from her first mystery,
The Secret of the Old Clock, as rendered by Russell Tandy - just sans the clock. While neither book is an exact copy, there are certain similarities that leaves one wondering if Long perhaps saw those Nancy Drew covers and was influenced when he produced the covers to these books. In any event, they both caught my attention and made me wish I could afford these copies!
One thing about this year's show that did stump both Will and me is the fact that so many booths had Edgar Rice Burroughs books - from Tarzan to John Carter to Jungle Girl to countless others. The show was advertised to be celebrating the 120th birthday of Dr. Seuss (which it did on Saturday!), and yet we saw WAY more Burroughs books than Seuss books, and there was even one dealer that had nothing but books by Burroughs! We don't believe the dealers planned it this way, but it was definitely a coincidence that so many brought them, and it left us wondering how we missed getting the memo! This month marks the 74th anniversary of Burroughs' death, so perhaps that was the reason?
And once again, the three day event came to a close, and with a back seat loaded up with books, but for ourselves and others, we had to bid farewell to old friends and new friends. It was a fantastic show, and we just wish we had more time to spend going through all those booths! And while the show will not be back until next year, their Facebook page (
Florida Antiquarian Book Fair - Facebook) allows me to follow along for any updates and to keep my anticipation going strong!
RATING: 100 vintage pulp paperbacks out of 100 for giving me access to worlds that only books can provide and bringing together collectors from all over to share their love and enjoyment of books in one place!
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