Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Village Books

On the way back through Pennsylvania we stopped off in Milton to pay a visit to Randall Jessup at Village Books. He’s the antiquarian book dealer who sold me Arthur Denison’s Chandara journal several years ago.


It was fun to show Mr. Jessup the finished edition of Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara. He said he’s been both sorry and glad that he sold the original manuscript to me.

He opened the glass case behind the counter and I was tempted by a gorgeous 1870 edition of Lear’s Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica, but I couldn’t afford it. Although his books are a bit pricey, I recommend his establishment to any serious collector who likes rare editions, especially of travel and adventure classics and original manuscripts (link).

Tomorrow: Art By Committee: Wind

4 comments:

Erik Bongers said...

What a shame, look at those dinosaur scratches on that precious book. Primitive creatures they were. A good thing we exterminated them.

Talk about rare books, my father has a book called Prehistoric Animals with illustrations by a certain ZDenek Burian. I think it's a copy from the 50's.

Erik Bongers said...

Hehe, fans of Dinotopia may want to check out the description of the Denison journal on the Village Books link on this post.
Especially the reference to Antoine d'Abbadie...

Tom Scholes said...

Hehehe, appreciate the hard work put into April 1st ;)

garrett said...

the village books site is really well done, even with the pre-dating to make it look old and not updated, but the signature line "standard time" linking it to gurney journey gives it away! sweet-looking book anyhow.