Pages & Proofs

One of the more notable and rare children’s books found on AbeBooks is The Story of Ping by Marjorie Flack and illustrated by Kurt Wiese. Published in 1933, first editions of this book can now be priced in excess of £300. The story concerns a domesticated Chinese duck lost on the Yangtze River and it’s been […]

I’d like to introduce a new genre to both bookselling and cooked meat – it’s called Literaturwurst. I give you German artist Dieter Roth, who apparently created around 50 ‘literature sausages’, according to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which put on a Dieter Roth exhibition earlier this year. To make each sausage […]

Lobby cards are one of the more glamorous types of ephemera listed for sale on AbeBooks. Smaller than movie posters, lobby cards were first used in the early 20th century, to generate buzz and excitement about a new motion picture. Most typically glossy 8X10 on heavy card stock (as opposed to posters), these little promotional […]

The author Jane Austen is to appear on the next version of the £10 note, slated to appear in 2017. “Jane Austen certainly merits a place in the select group of historical figures to appear on our banknotes. Her novels have an enduring and universal appeal and she is recognised as one of the greatest writers […]

Our latest video addresses pen names in literature, particularly from the point of view of female authors. JK Rowling is Robert Galbraith in 2013 but then Mary Anne Evans was George Eliot when she published Adam Bede in 1859. Have things changed that much for female authors?

The longlist for the 2013 Man Booker Prize has been revealed today. The big names in contention are Jhumpa Lahiri, Colum McCann and Colm Tóibín, although there is plenty of literary talent on the list. Here are the books: Tash Aw – Five Star Billionaire Eleanor Catton – The Luminaries Jim Crace – Harvest Eve […]

I was at a dinner last night when someone, a customer of AbeBooks actually, told me about this book. I thought he was joking. How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb by Peter Kuran was published in 2007.  It’s a serious book about photography and the technical aspects of photographing an atomic bomb while exploding. Author […]

Shakespeare’s Globe theatre is planning an amazingly ambitious two year tour of the planet. The tour will begin April 2014 to mark the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth and will continue through until April 23rd 2016 to mark the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death. The theatre plans to visit every country on earth over […]

All right, that post headling might have been a bit misleading, but I thought it was funny. JK Rowling is not actually a man. What she very well might be is a genius. And not just the sort we already knew about – the imaginative, creative writing genius who created Quidditch and butterbeer and Hogwarts […]

A Texas bookseller is attempting to rebuild his bookselling business after a devastating storm ripped through Lubbock, Texas last month. The storm and its high winds, which struck around midnight on June 5th, destroyed 90% of Bill Gallagher’s inventory for his bookselling business, Shamrock Books. “The books were assembled over a span of 35 years […]