#Antiquarian book

[the-two-germanys]

Lapwings. Wood-block Printing: a description of the craft of woodcutting & colourprinting based on the Japanese practice

Frank Morley Fletcher London: John Hogg, 1916.

[lesewut]

Spinoza on film, 2024

[triflingthing]

Jimbocho Booktown in Tokyo!

[michaelmoonsbookshop]

The periodically controversial signs which sometimes adorns the bookshop door

[burningvelvet]

The first edition copy of Frankenstein given to Lord Byron by Mary Shelley (handled here by Adam Douglas, the Senior Rare Book Specialist at Peter Harrington's antiquarian book shop).

Mary personally inscribed the novel to Byron without her name because the novel was published anonymously. Percy Shelley writes of the copy in an 1818 letter to Byron: "You will receive your packets of books. Hunt sends you one he has lately published; and I am commissioned by an old friend of yours to convey 'Frankenstein' to you, and to request that if you conjecture the name of the author, that you will regard it as a secret. In fact, it is Mrs. S.'s. It has met with considerable success in England; but she bids me say, 'That she would regard your approbation as a more flattering testimony of its merit.'"

Byron brought this copy with him when he moved to Greece years later. It was found among his things when he died.

[yourfavouritebookseller]

Folio Society ◇ Old Books Shelf

[banefolk]

A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons by Frederick Accum, 1820.

This book was written by a famous English chemist and was an immediate success when it was first published and was into its fourth edition in only two years… but food adulteration statistics didn’t go down and Accum started to panic that instead of preventing it, he’d taught even more people how to do it, and he started vandalizing his own book in libraries and was forced to leave the country in disgrace.

Source: Christie’s Auction House

[dustyatticrarebooks]

Paris.📚📚📚

[theselkiesea]

Scotts Poetical Works

With a dedication from 1852

[unrighteousbooks]

Be Warned: An Impostor is Among Us

I recently finished reading Oliver Darkshire's book Once Upon a Tome. Mr. Darkshire is an antiquarian bookseller at Sotheran's Rare Books in London. While I greatly enjoyed the book, I was deeply disturbed to read this passage:

"Of all the nice letters I've ever received, the ones I hold particularly close to my heart were sent from a mysterious stranger masquerading as the bookshop-owning angel Aziraphale from the novel Good Omens."

I do not understand why Mr. Darkshire describes me as being "from the novel Good Omens," as though I were some sort of fictional character. Setting that aside, however, it is unnerving to realize that a complete stranger is wandering the streets of London, writing letters and pretending to be me.

I can offer no proof, but I believe that the likely suspects can be narrowed down to a very short list.

A few years ago -- well, I suppose it was actually many years ago -- there was a book called History of New York. It was subsequently revealed that the author of this book, one Diedrich Knickerbocker, did not in fact exist. Perhaps "Mr. Knickerbocker" has moved on from creating fictional personas, and is now hijacking the identity of legitimate booksellers such as myself. (Regular readers will recall that I have previously commented on Mr. Knickerbocker: https://www.aziraphale.com/post/143753123162/a-curious-bit-of-satire-in-an-unvisited-corner-of)

Meanwhile, I have also been informed that there is a man named Buster Poindexter who is notorious for falsifying his identity. I have it on good authority that Mr. Poindexter has openly confessed that he is suffering from a personality crisis. It should also be noted that the name "poindexter" is often used to refer to someone who is enamored of books. Coincidence? I think not.

Another likely suspect -- or possibly "suspects," plural -- is a person or persons going by the name Pratchett Gaiman, or possibly Gaiman Pratchett. Again, I have no proof, but I have lost count of the times someone in the shop has asked me about so-and-so Gaiman or such-and-such Pratchett.

Finally, I cannot completely discount the possibility that my friend Crowley might be playing some sort of elaborate prank. He insists that this is not his doing, but it is just the sort of device that he would employ to rile me. He knows that pranks are anathema to me.

[alkalinetrios]

📖 canon prima zoom 85n, kodak ultramax 400

[lesewut]

'Nature speaks in its own tongue.'

From the book series Secret Sciences - A collection of older and newer writings on alchemy, magic, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, witches and devils Published by A . v. Linden in 1918 after the  Amstadam original edition of 1700.  16th volume:  Seraphinic  Flower-Garden,  selections from the mystical-religious writings of Jakob Böhme.

'Magia is the Book of all students.'

Mysticism should not only be interpreted as a significant phenomenon of intellectual and religious history, but as the awakening of the religious feeling concerning nature. Perhaps certain symbolic interpretations have receded into the background of our rationally calculated world, since everything that cannot be empirically proven is dismissed as a phantasm. But if the human being separates himself from his collective deep consciousness, he lacks a decisive possibility to (re-)connect with deep collective consciousness. Mysticism has the aim to deepen the soul for religion and art, a poignant love unparalleled in the world/s of appearances. Dwelling in a cosmic strive for connecting with God and the Divine Energy, without the profanity of manifestation in images, but in a astonishing cognitive emotionality. Through the art of inner liturgy it can be possible to trace the ontological search for the human’s home. The eternal questions, like fixed stars above the head of the dust born, have been no less relevant since the first question, and yet have not come closer to the truth, which is always in progress and false, when decorated as stored and captured. And don't we notice with every achievement how our collected knowledge is revised in the cosmic expanses? That we are almost forced to think outside the box and to regard regularity in chaos as an illusion? The cosmic rift is not only dividing humanity from the cosmos, it divided man from himself and thus also human beings from each other. In the centre of revelation, which is common in all mystic practices: learning and learning to know the self, in order to understand more.

’Be sober, watch, fast and pray that you may deafen earthly reason and make it dead at once, that God's Spirit may take place in you! When he appears, he soon overcomes earthly reason and looks at the will in fear with its love and sweetness, since then always a beautiful twig is born out of the tree of faith, and serves all tribulations and temptations for the very best of the children of God.’

'Man comes to know the Creator in contemplation of himself.'

[technomancer-01]

Bloodborne Books || Oedon Chapel

“These hunts have everyone all locked up inside. Waiting for it to end... It always does, always has, y'know. Since forever. But it won't end very nicely, not this time. Even some folks hiding inside are going'bad. The screams of womenfolk, the stench of blood, the snarls of beasts... none of em's too uncommon now. Yharnam's done fer. I tell ya. But if you spot anyone with their wits about 'em... Tell'em about this here Oedon Chapel. They'll be safe here. The incense wards of the beasts.”

I’m honestly pretty proud of this one, I don’t usually draw backgrounds or environments and think that they take too long but this one took a reasonable amount of time and after taking a page out of @artofjosephr’s art walkthroughs on detailing. I was stoked to see how it turned out in the pamphlets up on muh Etsy

Insta

Etsy

[michaelmoonsbookshop]

Time flies when you’re having fun

[chicago-geniza]

Thinking about Her (the Habsburg peridot parure)

[yourfavouritebookseller]

Shakespeare's Works, 1866