On the occasion of what would have been James Baldwin’s 100th birthday, let us assess the collectability factor of this brilliant author’s works: novels, essays, letters, plays and poems. Collectors often seek first printings of these works in their original books, magazine or journal publications, as well as signed copies or first editions of the collections in which they appeared. While a first edition of the author’s first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), may be what every Baldwin collector would like to own, scarcity pushed the price above most collectors’ reach, with the average price around $10,000 in today’s market.

Past sales of this popular title are a good indicator, but not an absolute indicator of how collectors have valued Baldwin’s works this century. The following are some comparable sales recorded by our Rare Book Sale Monitor for his magnum opus, Go Tell It on the Mountain.

1. First edition, wraps, association copy, inscribed to Edward Parone.
Date Sold Channel Condition Sale Price Inflation Adjusted Seller
 Dec 2023 auction good $10,795 $11,069 Sotheby’s
 Oct 2002 auction good $7,170 $12,439 Christie’s
2. Presentation copy of the first hardcover edition.
Date Sold Channel Condition Sale Price Inflation Adjusted Seller
 Sep 2023 auction near fine $12,165 $12,432 Christie’s UK
 Jun 2012 On-line near fine $6,500 $8,909 Abebooks
 Jun 2007 auction near fine $5,040 $7,608 Christie’s
3. First edition. Hardcover.
Date Sold Channel Condition Sale Price Inflation Adjusted Seller
 Mar 2024 on-line fine $10,000 $10,071 Biblioctopus
 Sep 2021 auction fine $7,500 $8,560 Christie’s

 

It is important to note that the title in the first group is the exact same copy, offered at different auctions, approximately 20 years apart. After adjusting the price to account for inflation, the price shows a slight drop in price. Auction results can fluctuate significantly from one event to the next due to competitive bidding dynamics which may lead to unexpected results. It is fair to consider the possibility that the condition of this book and the fragility of the wraps may have been a factor for the lack of collector interest 20 years later.

The hardcover, first printing groups paint a different picture. The dust-jacket replaced the art-work of the wraps (1st group), with a different design. Baldwin had, apparently, objected to a stereotypical depiction of African-Americans in the illustrations. This group with Baldwin’s signature shows a 40% increase after adjusting for inflation, over the last decade. The prior decade had a smaller gain of around 20%.  The third group affirms the conclusion that Baldwin’s most collectible title has seen an accelerating increase in collectability in recent years.

Collectors can still score some great value; however, in some of Baldwin’s other works. His second book for example, Giovanni’s Room, 1954, issued by The Dial Press, is also important because it brought Baldwin international acclaim for his open treatment of racial and sexual identity. The Atlantic named Giovanni’s Room one of the greatest American novels of the past century. First printings in near fine condition of this title, trade a little above $1,000.

His 1955 essay collection, Notes of a Native Son, published by Beacon Press in Boston, helped establish his reputation as a voice for genuine love for humanity that not even the frustrations and sorrows of the post-civil-rights era could fully extinguish.  First printings in near fine condition of this title, trade around $2,000.  The essays first appeared in various magazine or journal publications, which have increasingly gotten scarce thanks to ephemera collectors. Their enduring relevance to our present culture, contributes to their desirability among collectors and scholars. This list of essays includes:

  • “Everybody’s Protest Novel”. Partisan Review (June issue, 1949).
  • “Many Thousands Gone”. Partisan Review (November-December, 1952).
  • “Life Straight in De Eye” (later re-titled “Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough”). Commentary (January, 1955).
  • “The Harlem Ghetto”. Commentary (winter, 1948)
  • “Journey to Atlanta”. New Leader (Oct 9, 1948)
  • “Me and My House” (later re-titled “Notes of a Native Son”). Harper’s Magazine (November, 1955)
  • “The Negro in Paris” (later re-titled “Encounter on the Seine: Black Meets Brown”). Reporter (June, 1950).
  • “A Question of Identity”. Partisan Review (July-August, 1954)
  • “Equal in Paris”. Partisan Review (June, 1949)
  • “Stranger in the Village”. Harper’s Magazine (October, 1953)

 

One of Baldwin’s last published works during his lifetime, sure to become a rarity, is Jimmy’s Blues (1983). The book was first published by Michael Joseph in London with limited printing. Unlike most of Baldwin’s well-known prose works, this is a collection of poetry, making it unique in his bibliography. Baldwin often talked about his rough coming of age in Harlem and how at 16, a 38 year old Harlem racketeer, fell in love with him. Young Baldwin was grateful to this man in his boyishly tormented way, because he was able to share his poetry with him; he had no one else in Harlem to show it to.

Centennial celebrations often lead to renewed interest in an author’s works. Universities and literary institutions organized conferences and symposia on his work. Media coverage, documentaries and articles about Baldwin are happening throughout 2024. Libraries and museums curate special exhibitions showcasing rare manuscripts, first editions, and personal items of the author. Such heightened attention can lead to increased prices for rare editions in auctions and private sales.

{ 0 comments }

In our increasingly data-driven world, it is more important than ever to have easily accessible ways to view and understand data. As “Big Data” grows bigger, explanatory visualizations are increasingly necessary to make sense of the trillions of rows of data generated every day. Combining data with great storytelling using pictorial symbols create a visual form that is universally accessible regardless of literacy or culture. Such transformation of complex information into self-explanatory visuals has been achieved through the use of a different type of art: Isotypic art.  Through the use of Isotypes, informative messages are conveyed with combinations of not only shapes and colors but also tabular, graphical, map schematics and other pictorial figures in serial repetition.

Otto Karl Wilhelm Neurath, an Austrian-born philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist, invented the ISOTYPE (International System of Typographic Picture Education), during the late 1920s. It was first known as the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics (Wiener Methode der Bildstatistik), because it was developed at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien (Social and Economic Museum of Vienna). The term Isotype was applied to the method around 1935, after its key practitioners were forced to leave Vienna during the rise of Austrian fascism. The Isotype with its incredible versatility and depth remains the foremost influence on data visualization worldwide.

It was only when Neurath started to collaborate with the German artist, Gerd Arntz, that the idea of the Isotype got the necessary graphic power to expand its reach. Die bunte Welt (The colorful world), published in 1929, was the first publication of the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics and the first appearance of Arntz’s clarity and precision in the Isotype graphic form. The book was designed to be suitable for older children but the complexity of the charts invoked a broader adult audience. The following year Neurath and Arntz released a groundbreaking publication on information visualization: Bildstatistisches Elementarwerk published in Leipzig by Bibliographisches Institut. The book contains 100 illustrations in color presented by Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum. A copy of this scarce book sold at a Christie’s auction in December 2010 for $6,250, more than double its estimate. More recently, a second copy of the book was sold by U.K. book dealer, Peter Harrington for £7,500.

In 1931, Otto Neurath and his assistants travelled to Russia in order to train Russian artists and technicians in the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics. He had agreed to help establish an institute for pictorial statistics referred to as the Izostat Institute. The actual name was ‘The All-Union Institute of Pictorial Statistics of Soviet Construction and Economy’ (Vsesoiuznyi institut izobrazitel’noi statistiki sovetskogo stroitel’stva i khoziaistva). Some of the scarcest works published by the Izostat Institute include: The Struggle for Five Years in Four, published in 1932 and The Second Five-Year Plan in Construction published in 1934.1

Izostat Institute

Back to Vienna, Neurath was forced to flee to Holland where he met his future wife Marie Reidemeister, after the 8th Army of the German Wehrmacht crossed the border into Austria. The couple was forced to move again in 1940 to England where they established the Isotype Institute in Oxford, in 1942. Marie Neurath was the Isotype transformer, the real designer of the work which she continued after her husband’s death in 1945.  During the first three years of the Isotype Institute’s existence, while Otto was still alive, the focus was in the production of charts in wartime publications sponsored by the Ministry of Information: The New Democracy series published by Nicholson & Watson; and a few titles published by George G. Harrar & Co Ltd.

Rudolf  Modley who served as an assistant to Otto Neurath in Vienna, introduced the Isotype methods to the United States through his position as chief curator at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. His work was not a linear continuation of Isotype, but an attempt to adapt the visual language to American conditions. “Neurath’s method Americanized” was the slogan used to promote the book Rich Man, Poor Man: Pictures of a Paradox (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935), in an advertisement in the American magazine Survey Graphic.  A few years later, A Genetic Approach to Modern European History (New York: College Entrance Book Company, 1938), printed the title addendum “with Isotype Illustrations” on the front cover.

Marie Neurath continued the work after her husband’s death and under her direction, between 1947 and the late 1960s; the Isotype Institute produced many books for children series. A great example of her transformative ingenuity is printed on the last page of Icebergs & Jungles, which was published in 1954. In a graphic representation she helps the reader visualize the effects of altitude and latitude to the mountains of Mt. Logan, The Matterhorn and Mt. Kilimanjaro. It is incredible how she was able to pack all the informative data in a single, self-explanatory, visual representation.

Since its inception, the visual data vocabulary conceived by Otto Neurath, has served a broad audience who adopted his new method of information visualization. Even after the explosion of computer use, the Isotype maintained its spot with the new tools of information representation and graphic design. Whether AI will have an impact on Isotypes remains to be seen. As large language models (LLMs), are now capable of generating text on a seemingly endless range of topics with or without “hallucinations,” the day when AI starts using a visual data vocabulary may not be too far off.

1‘Isotype revisited’ Eric Kindel and Sue Walker, with additional commentary by Christopher Burke, Matthew Eve and Emma Minns (2010)

{ 0 comments }

The Collectible Japanese Fairy Tales

May 4, 2024
Thumbnail image for The Collectible Japanese Fairy Tales

The Japanese Fairy Tales Series was published by Hasegawa Takejiro between 1885 and 1922. Hasegawa combined the talents of well-known traditional Japanese woodblock printers like Kobyashi Eitaku, Suzuki Kason, and Chikanobu, with celebrated foreign translators, creating an enduring international success. Most of Hasegawa’s books were produced in limited amounts, generally four to five hundred at a […]

Read the full article →

Rare Book Sale Monitor – 2023 Review

February 5, 2024
Thumbnail image for Rare Book Sale Monitor – 2023 Review

The rare book trade finished another year of sales and according to the Rare Book Hub, sales of the highest priced items did worse in 2023 compared to 2022. Rare Book Hub compares auction sales from most auction houses and it includes items such as trading cards, in addition to books and ephemera. According to […]

Read the full article →

The Most Popular Novelists of the 21st Century

December 2, 2023
Thumbnail image for The Most Popular Novelists of the 21st Century

Kenneth Gloss, the owner of Brattle Book Shop in Boston, whose bookstore sells general used books and rare books, reported to Bloomberg in 2020 that rare books and manuscripts have proven to be the bright spot in the industry. The consensus among dealers of rare books is that overall the market has sustained itself, even […]

Read the full article →

Is this the Year for Behavioral Finance to Shine?

September 27, 2023
Thumbnail image for Is this the Year for Behavioral Finance to Shine?

Financial analysts have been aware for quite a long time that excess market volatility is a phenomenon which cannot be rationalized by the principles of fundamental analysis and statistical technical analysis alone. The task to identify what drives stock prices and what drives investors’ decision making is incomplete without the addition of the emerging field […]

Read the full article →

The Mechanical Models of Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind

July 30, 2023
Thumbnail image for The Mechanical Models of Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind

Advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is progressing with unexpected speed, spreading across nearly every industry and discipline. The stakes in the race for generative AI are rising and technology companies are spending big. With the proliferation of big data and large-scale data lakes, we have now entered the world of large language models of chatbots […]

Read the full article →

Tesla’s Controversial Articles, a Meme Phenomena

July 6, 2023
Thumbnail image for Tesla’s Controversial Articles, a Meme Phenomena

  In one study, scientists at McGill University in Canada used eye-tracking technology to study which news articles volunteers paid most attention to. They found that people often chose stories about negative criticism in preference to positive or neutral stories. They concluded that people in general are more interested in inappropriate, offensive, or controversial news, […]

Read the full article →

The Fictional Mystery Dartmouth College Wished Away

March 5, 2023
Thumbnail image for The Fictional Mystery Dartmouth College Wished Away

In June 1920, a few minutes after a dispute at a Dartmouth College dorm room, Bob Meads, a sophomore, who sold bootlegged whiskey he sourced from Canada, fatally shot senior, Hank Maroney of the Theta Delta Fraternity. Another Dartmouth College sophomore at the time, Clifford “Kip” Orr, deeply affected by the murder of his classmate, […]

Read the full article →

Cyberpunks among us

January 28, 2023
Thumbnail image for Cyberpunks among us

We have entered the cyberpunk age. Many of the things that were predicted in cyberpunk literature are here now. The global cyber threat continues to evolve at a rapid pace, with a rising number of data breaches each year. Viruses, trojans, spyware, ransomware, adware, botnets, SQL injections, phishing cyberattacks developed by malicious programmers, threaten individuals, […]

Read the full article →