old and rare: thirty years in the book businessby leona rostenberg; madeleine b. stern

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Old and Rare: Thirty Years in the Book Business by Leona Rostenberg; Madeleine B. Stern Review by: Lawrence Clark Powell The Library Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Oct., 1976), pp. 463-464 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4306737 . Accessed: 09/06/2014 21:34 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Library Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 194.29.185.203 on Mon, 9 Jun 2014 21:34:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Old and Rare: Thirty Years in the Book Businessby Leona Rostenberg; Madeleine B. Stern

Old and Rare: Thirty Years in the Book Business by Leona Rostenberg; Madeleine B. SternReview by: Lawrence Clark PowellThe Library Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Oct., 1976), pp. 463-464Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4306737 .

Accessed: 09/06/2014 21:34

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheLibrary Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.203 on Mon, 9 Jun 2014 21:34:27 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Old and Rare: Thirty Years in the Book Businessby Leona Rostenberg; Madeleine B. Stern

REVIEWS 463

in its physical aspect and layout it is so poorly put together as to constitute an insult to its subject matter. With a little more care, for the same expenditure, it could have appeared the valuable book that it is.

Sue Allen, New Haven, Connecticut

Old and Rare: nirty Years in the Book Business. By LEONA ROSTENBERG and MADELEINE B. STERN. New York: Abner Schram, 1974. Pp. 234. $12.00. ISBN 0-8390-0131-2.

Bibliographical literature has been enriched in our time by America's antiquarian booksellers. To Charles P. Everitt's Adventures of a Treasure Hunter, Edwin Wolf and John F. Fleming's Rosenbach, E. Millicent Sowerby's Rare Books and Rare People, David Randall's Dukedom Large Enough, and David Magee's Infinite Riches can now be added these memoirs by Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine B. Stern.

In all of them, scholarship and human interest are readably and meaningfully wed. They could be used as texts in a course on the symbiosis of antiquarian booksellers and scholarly libraries. Not only have the coauthors of this latest work aided collection development in many of our research libraries, they have also contributed to biblioli- terary scholarship with books and articles of their own.

Leona Rostenberg came the hard way to antiquarian bookselling. The "villain" in her way was Professor Lynn Thorndike, Columbia University's renowned medievalist. He refused to accept her dissertation on the Strasbourg printers of the Renaissance, although she had passed her doctor's orals with distinction and spent a fruitful time researching in the archives of the Alsatian capital. In despair she apprenticed with Herbert Reichner, the scholarly refugee bookseller from Austria and editor of the Philobiblon, who proved a choleric taskmaster. It was her knowledge of classical and modern languages that made her most useful to him, although she was also able to clear shipments through customs, no mean feat then and now. Although she calls this chapter "Five Years in Siberia," Rostenberg recognizes that it was an educational experience that supplemented her Columbia seminars and her research in Strasbourg. She also learned that there is no substitute for direct contact with books, and that bibliographical mastery comes from the tactual and optical as well as from the intel- lectual sense-plus a bit of serendipity.

In 1943 Leona Rostenberg, urged by her friend Madeleine Stern and against the wishes of her loving parents (trade is for men), founded her own business. "Mady" Stern soon joined her, and ever since then they have formed a happy partnership, traveling, buying, cataloging, and selling rare books to libraries and collectors and at the same time contributing to their respective fields of historical bibliography and feminist Americana.

Their reminiscences in separately initialed chapters make a lively story, rich in anecdotes, titles, prices, and people. They pay homage to the great acquisitioncrs: William A. Jackson of Harvard, Donald Wing of Yale, John Fall of the New York Public, Mabel Erler of the Newberry, and Molly Pitcher of the Folger. Colleagues in the trade also are present: Irving Davis, Ifan Kyrle Fletcher, Bill Fletcher, Clifford Maggs, Charlie Harris, David Low, Harold and Olive Edwards, Percy Muir, Peter Murray Hill, Winnie Myers, and others in Britain, France, and Italy. There is also the formidable Miss Hamel of Grafton and Co., who tyrannized her male employees and warned her customers not to lay hands on the books.

A warmth of spirit and generous goodwill pervades this book. These two scholarly booksellers have led rich, active, and useful lives, and their memoirs are a kind of thanksgiving. Books such as theirs and the others cited might well be required reading

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Page 3: Old and Rare: Thirty Years in the Book Businessby Leona Rostenberg; Madeleine B. Stern

464 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

for library school instructors and students. They could help restore humanistic and bibliographical values to a library world obsessed by acronymic nonsense, endless reorganizations, "goals and objectives," and other presently fashionable nonsense.

Lawrence Clark Powell, University of A rizona

Essays on Information Science and Libranres: Festschrift for Donald Urquhart. Edited by KEITH BARR and MAURICE LINE. Hamden, Conn.: Linnet Books; London: Clive Bingley, 1975. Pp. 211. 512.50. ISBN 0-208-01370-9.

This is a good example of what a Festschrift should be. It contains three addresses given at honorary degree ceremonies for Donald Urquhart, a bibliography of his published work, and a number of diverse essays, all of which acknowledge his contri- bution. The record is impressive, and the evidence to support the claim that "the twentieth century, in Donald Urquhart, has given us a librarian-innovator to match Panizzi" is overwhelming. For those interested in Urquhart's place in library history, the book is essential reading, but it is much more than that. It is one of the few publications on library and information science and services which' is really concerned with the future of those services.

The list of contributors should be sufficient to ensure the commercial success of the book. They are just the people contributing new insights into subjects of concern to all of us. Every essay in this book raises problems, asks questions, and suggests topics which need investigation. With Urquhart's retirement, and with the usual mutterings of gloom so prevalent in our profession, some of us have been worried about the future of the British Library. The five contributions from members of its staff show that there is no cause for worry. With people like H. T. Hookway, M. B. Line, K. P. Barr, D. T. Richnell, and B. J. Perry in charge it must become a dynamic and user-oriented institution.

The last quarter of the twentieth century will not be a comfortable one for librari- ans. Not only must we tame and use the computer, but we are also likely to see the abandonment of the old distinction between types of library. The acquisitive instinct, which has been our outstanding characteristic, may become a sin rather than a virtue. Increasingly we shall be asked to justify expenditure in terms of user needs and eco- nomic efficiency. In this context essays by K. A. Stockham on public library systems, B. J. Perry on information science research, and B. C. Vickery on scientific and technical information are relevant.

As for the acquisitive instinct, consider B. J. Enright's assertions in his essay on "Bibliochlothanasia" that "academic concern centres more around accidental acqui- sition than on gaps," and we are in danger of having libraries from which the most useful books have been stolen and the less useful remain," or finally his quotation from the final report of the Project for Evaluating the Benefits from University Li- braries that "weeding the stock" in university libraries is "the ungrasped nettle."

One of the best essays in the book is that by Wilf Saunders on "Professional Educa- tion: Some Challenges for the Next Decade." His statement is clear and uncompro- mising. "It is taken for granted that [professional education] will be a unified whole which accommodates both library and information science." He looks back at the last decade (1964-74) as one of excitement and progress and sees the decade ahead as less exciting. But the sober problems which he lists are real enough: "Developing the theoretical framework of our subject, increasing the duration of our courses, offering more scope for part-time study, expanding and improving our contribution to contin- uing education."

The essay to read for sheer pleasure is Maurice Line's "Demystification in Librari-

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