A little Vintage Swimwear For You...

As is often the case, the notes on the back of photos like these, recently added to the collection, tell us tantalisingly close to nothing, but enough to pique the interest. The top one reads "Sept 48", the bottom, "Juli 47"

I'm sure I've said this before but...

You know when you can't remember if you've actually said something aloud or not? This is the blog equivalent. I was sure I had blogged about this before but searching my own blog I can't find any sign of it. So, if this is all horribly familiar, I apologise.

Standing in a bookshop the other day, for no particular reason except I was waiting for someone and I had finished my own browsing, I picked up a copy of the Faber Book of Love Poetry. I literally flicked a few pages until the book was open in my hand and my eye settled on the poem below. It was one of those breathtaking moments when you realise someone has articulated an interior experience that you know well, but had no words for until that moment. 

I'm not so unworldly that I don't appreciate you can be a good person without sharing my aesthetic. Not everyone is going to be blown away by this poem. But on the off-chance that one or two of you out there are sufficiently similar to me in your taste and experience I offer you a poem by the little-known (but much appreciated by those who do) E. J. Scovell (1907-1999).

In A Wood

I saw my love, younger than primroses,
Sleeping in a wood.
Why do I love best what sleep uncloses,
Sorrowful creaturehood?

Dark, labyrinthine with anxiety,
His face is like a coiled infancy;
Like parched and wrinkled buds, the first of the year,
Thrown out on winter air.

Stiller than closed eyes of a nested bird
Clear from the covert of his sleeping,
One looked out that knows no human word
But gives me love and weeping.

Catalogues...

Back now from the metropolis and diving into my inbox with some verve. One of the joys of the big book fair is the sport of catalogue hunting and I have a good half-shelf worth of shiny, silky catalogues to read through at my leisure. So, not wanting you all to miss out on the wonders that are catalogue heaven here are three, not exactly new, catalogues you can view online that seem to cover many of our interests here. The top one is a catalogue of weird and generally supernatural fiction from Adrian Harrington. Then we have the latest short list from Elysium Press and a somewhat older but still current catalogue from the nice people at Arbery Books. Go on, knock yourselves out..!

I won't bore you with a full report on The Olympia Book Fair and I didn't manage, as I thought I might, to blog my way through it. However, I did keep up a reasonably regular series of Tweets so if you are on Twitter please do think about following me @callumjbooks. 

London International Antiquarian Book Fair

For the next few days I shall be in London working for an Antiquarian bookseller on their stand at the London International Antiquarian Book Fair in the National Hall at Olympia. And if you think that sounds grand, it is: a little bit anyway. I've loved being involved with this book fair for the last few years both as a customer and working for my friends The Old Stile Press, who had a stand there last year. It's a great atmosphere full of some absolutely amazing books, the very best you will see grouped together anywhere in the world outside a great library or institution and a great chance to meet other dealers and collectors from around the world.

If you happen to be going along please do send me a quick email or tweet me a Direct Message and I will let you know where to find me so you can come and say hello. I will try and blog and tweet from the fair but it can be some very long days so you'll have to forgive me if it goes a little quiet for the next few days.

The Ones That Didn't Get Away

Some of you may remember me expressing my frustration at 'The One That Got Away'. a few days ago when I failed to win an auction on Ebay for an album page of vintage swim photos. Well, as it happens, I did win the auction for another couple of pages from the same album and here, as promised, are the scans...

1940s Portrait Photos

Seems as though vintage photographs are the flavour of the week here on FFEP. If you're waiting for more book-related goodies I'm sure there will be something for you coming up soon. In the meantime I'm sharing these lovely portrait photos. At a local auction this morning I bought the photographic remains of  what I'm sure must have been an amateur - but very good - photographer. Among the bag of his own prints from the 40s on bromide paper were these 10 x 8 photos that stood out. Of course, the little boy is perhaps the most compelling image but I thought all three of these had real character, insight and, for the most part, cut through at least the top layer of the sentimentality of era.

Lionel Wiggam Photo

One of the things I've often thought about collecting for myself is photographic portraits of poets. If there was ever any part of me that thought this was a serious proposition it was dashed to the floor and trampled on recently by reading the sale catalogues from Bonhams of the Roy Davids collection - why would a mere mortal attempt such a collection when the Olympian Gods had obviously trodden the path before - but this doesn't stop me occasionally searching for such on Ebay.

This is Lionel Wiggam, described in this press photograph from the 1930s as a "New American poet". He doesn't appear to have published more than a couple of volumes of poetry but they appear to have been very well regarded. Obviously he's a devastatingly handsome young man and he was, for a time, one of the Ford Modelling Agency's top 10 models. There are some brief but touching remembrances of him on the Princeton Alumni website which were uploaded there following his death in 2005 at the age of 88. I have a little history crush but I promise to also track down his poetry in the near future and see what all the fuss was about...

Some people shy away from these press photos because they are often heavily stamped, written on the verso, sometimes also on the front, often marked up or heightened in black and white. Personally, I think this is like the patina on an old piece of furniture: it gives you a sense of the photo's age and its history in the world.

Isle of Wight and Indiana Jones

Those of you who follow me on twitter will know that I've been braving storms and high seas to visit the Isle of Wight today to do a touch of book hunting and, what in some parts of the world is charmingly called, "Antiquing". I've met some lovely dealers and seen some lovely objects, a number of which very nearly made me open my wallet, but I resisted. Almost. In fact this photograph was about the only thing I bought today. That doesn't matter because the real purpose of the visit was to see and spend time with my good friend A, who is just coming around to the wonderful world of antiques and didn't need encouragement from me to spend considerable sums of money!

But the photo I liked. I'm assuming we're in Egypt and that's some kind of pyramid but I know there are those who read this blog who know that part of the world and perhaps the building is oddly enough shaped to be easily recognised? Anyway, the thing I liked about it in particular was that ranged in the sand of the desert are a small group of biplanes and people milling around them. It's all just so Indiana Jones...

Woodcuts by Pam G. Rueter

I can't tell you anywhere near as much as I'd like about Pam G Rueter (1906-1998), the artist behind these enchanting woodcuts. There is a dutch Wiki page which Google will translate into English for you should you need it, that gives a basic outline of his life and career. I know him primarily as a prolific ex-libris artist but his work is certainly a lot wider than that. These images are all from a book in Dutch that I picked up recently and completely failed to understand except that these all come from a section in the book which appears to be representative of the work Rueter did to please himself. I love the macabre creatures and the dense black inkiness. 

Thank you to all those who have read, commented on or bought from the Strange and Supernatural Fiction Catalogue. Sales have been going really well but it's still worth having a flick through it if you are supernaturally inclined. The contents of my catalogues don't go on general sale on retail sites on the Internet until visitors here and those on my mailing list have had their chance to look through it all.

Strange and Supernatural from Callum James Books

For the last few months we've been working on another full-length catalogue, and some of the goodies it contains have been trailed here and on twitter so it will come as no surprise to know that we have just released our "Strange and Supernatural" catalogue. Over 220 titles with nearly 190 photographs, it's taken nearly three months to write and research and it's been a real joy to do. Of course, as a visitor to Front Free Endpaper, you get a look inside too:

Strange and Supernatural Catalogue in PDF format

The titles in this catalogue won't go on sale through Internet retail sites until those on my mailing list and those of you who've seen it here have had a chance to look it over.

You may also notice, if you go by the Callum James Books website that there's been a few changes. The website has been in dire need of updating for a long time and whilst we look into ways of rejuvenating it and making it cover the whole range of things that CJB does, for the time being, it has been pared down to show only our recent selling catalogues. If you are after one of our publications, please just drop us a line and we'll try and sort you out with one but for a little while at least they won't be appearing to buy directly from the website.