“The point is, both live in books and bibliography. Take heed!”

 

Edward Eberstadt. TYPED LETTER SIGNED TO THOMAS STREETER. April 23, 1936. Letterhead of Edward Eberstadt, 55 West 42^nd Street, New York. 1 p. 4to. [with] Howard M. Ballou and George R. Carter “The History of the Hawaiian Mission Press, with a Bibliography of the Earlier Publications,” in Papers of the Hawaiian Historical Society No. 14, 1908, pp. [9]-42. 8vo. Printed wrappers. The bibliography includes a couple of annotations by Streeter. This exciting find was plucked by me from a miscellaneous group of pamphlets and ephemera at Willis Monie Books, Cooperstown, NY in 2024.

 Eberstadt writes, “Dear Tom, Something over a year or more ago we were talking about your acquisition of one of the early Lapwai imprints, and if you will remember I told you that I had a bibliography of the earliest printings of this press. I just came upon this little brochure and am sending it on to you for perusal. The last few pages have to do with the establishment of the press at Lapwai.

“Ballou, who wrote this, was a very dear friend of mine, but he has now passed into the beyond. Carter, who collaborated with him (allegedly) was Governor of Hawaii. Governor Carter brought together the finest collection of Hawaiiana every assembled, and Ballou made and printed a very interesting bibliography of it. I think Carter is dead too. The point is, both live in books and bibliography. Take heed!”

And Thomas Streeter certainly did take heed, producing the monumental Bibliography of Texas 1795-1845 (1955-1960).

Which leads us to this recently acquired association set…

Thomas Streeter.  BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TEXAS 1795-1845. PART I. TEXAS IMPRINTS. . . PART II. MEXICAN IMPRINTS. . . PART III. UNITED STATES AND EUROPEAN IMPRINTS. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955-1960. 5 vols. lxxi 259 + [v] 263-616 + xxiv 283 + xlii 278 + xlii 278 p. Plates. 8vo. Contemporary full leather, spines stamped in gilt, raised bands.

The Eberstadt Co. – John Jenkins – Michael Ginsberg set.  Ginsberg writes on the ffep, “This set was in Lindley Eberstadt’s office. J[ohn] J[enkins] gave it to me as gesture of affection.  He was capable of great passion on rare occasion.”

The Eberstadt Company (Edward and sons Lindley & Charles) were major suppliers of rarities to Streeter for decades.  They also brokered the sale of Streeter’s Texas collection to Yale.  Michael Vinson writes in Edward Eberstadt & Sons, “Thomas W. Streeter’s passing on June 12, 1965, meant to the Eberstadt’s not only the loss of a great friend and customer but the end of an era of Americana collecting. . . Since Streeter was a customer of the Eberstadt’s from the early 1920s, it was only natural that Charles and Lindley. . . would help organize and select items for the Parke-Bernet Galleries to feature in the [Streeter] sales.”

In 1975, thirty-five-year-old Texas bookseller John Jenkins purchased the remaining stock of the Eberstadt Company, after a lengthy courtship and negotiations with primarily Lindley Eberstadt.  Jenkins writes in detail of the blockbuster acquisition in “The Eberstadt Caper,” in Audubon and Other Capers (1976):

“By this time [1975] it was clear to me that it was all or nothing with Lindley on the stock; there would be no picking and choosing.  In April he finally let me come to see what I had dreamed of seeing for so many years. I brought Michael Ginsberg, an Americana expert, with me to help evaluate.  Lindley and I talked price awhile—I bluffed about being able to raise the money, and Lindley knew I was bluffing.  For exactly one hour Mike and I looked at the stock.  We added up random shelves and multiplied by the total number of shelves.  We averaged the cheapest with the rarest books.  Each way we figured it, the total value came to ten million dollars or more.  We could hardly believe it.  I told Lindley I would be back in touch and he said fine. . .   On August 6, we all met in New York.  Our side had agreed to put up the entire [purchase] amount in advance, in escrow, to be paid over half a dozen years, with stiff interest. . .

“The packers never showed up.  All afternoon, all evening, all night, all morning the next day, all afternoon and into the evening—34 non-stop hours Mike, Lt. Scott, and I carefully packed 670 crates containing 41,000 fragile rare books.  At midnight the truck arrived.  The loaders also failed to show.  For five more hours the three of us loaded the crates into the truck, ever so carefully.  We crawled into our station wagon and drew lots for who would get the first four-hour sleep shift in the back seat.  For 41 more consecutive hours we followed the Allied van and played games with our walkie-talkies, stopping occasionally for a bite to eat or call in to Texas at various check points. . .  I had a strange nightmare [about Nixon].  ‘Let go, let go, Tricky Dick!’ I screamed as I awoke, nearly causing Ginsberg to drive off the road. . .

“It was an unbelievable collection.  The Texas materials, gathered over a sixty-year period, were extraordinary.  Added to what the Eberstadts had accumulated were many pieces from the famous Thomas W. Streeter Collection.  The Streeter Texas Collection had been sold to Yale, but the Eberstadts (who brokered the sale) got many of the items from Streeter’s collection that duplicated what Yale already had.  The Eberstadts also were instrumental in arranging the Streeter auctions, and were heavy purchasers in those seven unforgettable record setting sales.  In the several thousand Texas items we acquired were hundreds of works listed in Streeter’s Bibliography of Texas, and hundreds more that were unlisted and formerly unknown.”

Jenkins would retain Mike Ginsberg as a consultant after the collection’s arrival.  Vinson tells an expanded version of the Eberstadt caper utilizing an interview with Ginsberg in Bluffing Texas Style (2020).

Michael Ginsberg's note in the Eberstadt-Jenkins-Ginsberg set of Streeter's Bibliography of Texas

Notable Bookseller Catalogue: The Rosenbach Company. THE SEA (1938)

 

Harrison Horblit's Annotated Copy

The Rosenbach Company. THE SEA: BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS ON THE ART OF NAVIGATION, GEOGRAPHY, NAVAL HISTORY, SHIPBUILDING, VOYAGES, SHIPWRECKS, MATHEMATICS, INCLUDING ATLASES, MAPS AND CHARTS. Philadelphia: The Rosenbach Company, 1938. xi 224 p. 837 items offered. Large 8vo. Blue printed wrappers.

Ownership signature of Harrison D. Horblit (1912-1988) with his annotations and notes throughout.

One of the finest subject catalogues issued by the Rosenbach Company. Some of Horblit’s earliest important acquisitions were from this catalogue (see below).

The anonymous foreword states, “The present catalogue is of a collection of manuscripts and books relating to the Sea, showing the development of geography and the science of navigation from the classical works of Pomponius Mela, Solinus and Ptolemy and the hazardous astronomical guides of ancient times down to the highly practical works of our own day.” The foreword goes on to detail many outstanding items from the collection and concludes, “This catalogue is a milestone in the history of book-selling, containing much unpublished material and the most important collection of books relating to the sea and the history of navigation ever offered for sale.”

The catalogue was ahead of its time in terms of subject and immediate orders, but this benefited the ground-breaking collector Horblit, who would become a steady, important customer of Rosenbach. Wolf & Fleming record in Rosenbach (1960), “There was a new wave of young collectors, attracted by the moderate prices asked for books of which they had special knowledge. Harrison Horblit, a textile manufacturer and yachtsman with a real flair for significant books in the field of navigation and the tangential sciences, began to be a regular visitor, sweeping up in a few months late in 1945 most of the early English scientific books still unsold from the seven-year-old Sea Catalogue.”

Horblit’s biographical entry in The Grolier 2000 explains, “Horblit’s love of books grew out of his love of boats. Imrie de Vegh in his 1947 letter proposing Horblit for membership in the Grolier Club called him ‘one of our leading collectors of books on the science of navigation.’” His obituary in AB Bookman, May 30, 1988, adds “An avid yachtsman, Horblit owned the auxiliary yawl ‘Suluan’ and participated in the North American Yacht Racing Union and Yacht Racing Association of Long Island.”

Horblit would form an exceptional collection on Early Science, Navigation & Travel, some items sold at auction in 1974 by Sotheby’s, others sold by H.P. Kraus in a series of catalogues, and many gifted to Harvard. He also gathered an unparalleled collection about the English bibliophile Sir Thomas Phillipps gifted to the Grolier Club, and he assembled a collection about the early history of photography now at Harvard. Horblit authored the influential One Hundred Books Famous in Science (Grolier Club: 1964) and curated the Grolier Club exhibition of the same held in 1958. 

Thomas Tanselle called Horblit “one of the great book collectors of the twentieth century” in a lengthy biographical essay for the Grolier Club Gazette (no. 48) which featured Horblit’s Sir Thomas Phillipps Collection.

 

The Sea. Rear cover annotated by Horblit

Mark Twain in the Hill Country

It took me twenty-one years, three months, and eleven days to realize my wife Nicole doesn’t talk as much as I thought. This revelation occurred to me on a drive back from a trip to the Austin area. She is quietly reading the news on her phone while I expound about our most recent visit with book collector Kevin Mac Donnell and his wife Donna. I’ve known them for over thirty years. Nicole and I have been seeing Kevin and Donna semi-regularly for two decades. Kevin has the greatest collection of Mark Twain material in private hands and one of the finest single-author collections ever assembled. This may sound like friendly hyperbole, but it is not—nary a whiff of exaggeration, nor a modicum of puff involved.

“Remember, I was just there, too,” Nicole replies when I pause to take a breath, but I sense no real resistance, so I continue telling her what she already knows about Kevin’s background.

Kevin began collecting Twain in the 1970s. His transition from librarian to antiquarian bookseller during this time opened new vistas of opportunity. He performed the difficult balancing act of collecting and dealing in the same subject areas. He built personal collections of various nineteenth century authors including an important Henry David Thoreau collection, all eventually sold to facilitate Twain acquisitions. His hunt for material is relentless and his knowledge on the subject profound. He has become a primary source for all things Twain.

Kevin’s collection of over 8,000 Twain items includes books of course, almost every variant recorded and unrecorded, Twain’s own copies of many works, dozens of important association copies, books from Twain’s library, along with 1,000 + letters, manuscripts, inscribed photographs, printed ephemera, advertising, memorabilia to the present day, folk art, and even Twain’s writing desk! But there is no room here to go into detail as I did while talking to Nicole in the car—I refer those with further interest to the festschrift “Kevin Mac Donnell: Legacy Collector and Scholar” that makes up the entire Fall 2016 issue of the prestigious Mark Twain Journal.

However, I can’t help but touch on our latest tour of the Twain collection housed on their third-floor build-out designed specifically for it. You enter by ascending a stairwell packed with eye-catching pictures, rare advertising posters, and other frameable goodies. Multiple spaces contain glass front bookcases and custom shelving designed and much of it built by Kevin himself who is a skilled carpenter. (He is also a classically trained pianist but that is an aside for another time.)

The entire third floor is well-nigh stuffed with an explosion of Twain, yet he and Donna have curated this museum-like experience, so all the spaces are utilized efficiently but invitingly. Kevin’s recall about each item and his storytelling ability makes the tour mesmerizing. He can provide a nickel tour or a deep-sea submersible version depending on interest. Either way, one is transported to another time. And there is even a guest space within the collection area. But this might be too much for an overnight aficionado of Twain. Kevin recalls a three-day visit by the curators of the Mark Twain Museum in Hartford, CT. They were there to see the collection and borrow about fifty items for a long-term loan exhibition. One curator became so enthralled that she began selecting additional items that had no bearing on the exhibition “just because she wanted to have them around her back in Hartford.” Kevin gently reeled her back in, sympathetic to her passion, but he probably moved her to another guest room in a more neutral area of the house.

Kevin has retired as a bookseller to focus on collecting, writing, and researching Twain-related topics. He has had a dozen articles published in the Mark Twain Journal, along with other essays about biblio-topics in various publications. There is a book in the works. As a speaker, he is engaging and in demand. On this visit, he shows me his PowerPoint presentation about the history of Mark Twain collecting since Twain’s time that he will soon give at the Grolier Club in conjunction with Susan Jaffe Tane’s exhibition “A First-Class Fool: Mark Twain and Humor.” The items for his presentation are drawn from his collection. The subject matter is right up my proverbial alley, and I jealously covet a few of his outstanding biblio-association copies. Coveting is labeled a sin in the Bible but is a natural occurrence among collectors.

Nicole, Donna, and I are in Kevin’s book office talking as he inscribes a few of his journal appearances for my own collection. Donna expresses mild displeasure with the disordered desk and surroundings of stacked books. Nicole suddenly interjects, “Compared to Kurt’s office, Kevin’s space is right out of Better Homes & Gardens.” This zinger at my expense draws a hearty round of laughter that would have made Twain proud. Kevin beams, and Nicole has made his lifetime Christmas list.

“They’re a great couple,” Nicole comments briefly as I relive the moment on the drive home, “And his collection certainly wouldn’t be what it is without her full support.”

I can only agree wholeheartedly and praise Nicole for her own support. This is simply reaffirming what we worked out between us long ago, but it is nice to express it out loud occasionally.

The drive back to Houston is almost three hours. Nicole is texting and paying no attention to me. Her actions are mildly annoying, but nonetheless I begin anew with a Shakespearian monologue about an important acquisition that arrived in the mail while we were on our three-day getaway. It awaits us upon our return. The item is a Sketch of Thomas P. Barton’s Library (1860), a separate issue of the chapter in James Wynne’s pioneering book Private Libraries of New York (NY: Eli French, 1860), this example one of six on large paper, inscribed by Barton to the publisher himself, French!

This rare relic of early American book collecting is the only presentation example by Barton I’ve encountered. Thomas P. Barton (1803-1869) began collecting in the 1830s. By 1860, when Wynne devoted a chapter in his book to Barton’s 15,000 volume library, it was recognized as one of the finest in the city. Barton was particularly interested in English drama and had the best Shakespearean collection in America, including the four folios, numerous quarto editions, and extensive amounts of ephemera. After Barton’s death, the Boston Public Library purchased the collection. Barton’s role as an American pacesetter in collecting Shakespeare was significant, followed by many important enthusiasts and later collectors including Henry Folger and Henry Huntington. I’ll have to show the item to Kevin Mac Donnell when he visits me. Great collectors appreciate one another’s efforts.

I find out belatedly at the end of my monologue that one of our three grown kids is having an issue. Thus, Nicole’s extended texting session.

“She just needed her mom’s input,” Nicole says, “She’ll be okay.”

“Yes … good,” I reply, settling down some, jolted back into the world. We are home soon.

“Please bring in our suitcases and the bag of books we bought,” Nicole says after we pull in the driveway. “You can also make me dinner and then tell me more about Kevin’s collection and the Barton guy,” she adds with a smile.

I bring in the bags and make dinner with alacrity after retrieving the Barton package from the mail, but I give her a reprieve on further book talk. Silence is golden. Temporarily, at least.

This essay first appeared in my column in the FABS Journal, Spring 2025.

Nicole, Kevin, and Donna in the Twain Library