Catalog 112, About This Catalog
ASSOCIATION COPY - This term, often scoffed at by laymen, is applied to a copy which once belonged to, or was annotated by, the author; which once belonged to someone connected with the author or someone of interest in his own right; or again, and perhaps most interestingly, belonged to someone peculiarly associated with its contents.
-- John Carter, ABC for Book Collectors
When I first began collecting books, before it occurred to me to
be a bookseller, one of my great pleasures was attending a reading
by an author whose books I admired, and waiting in line at the end
of the reading for a chance to meet the author and get my copies
of his or her books signed or, preferably, inscribed to me. There
was a similar thrill when I encountered signed copies of books in
my "scouting" of used bookstores whenever I traveled; while not
quite so personal a connection as actually meeting the author,
there was still nonetheless a bit of magic in the realization that
the copy of a book that I now held in my hands had at one time
been held by the author; the signature was the residual evidence
of this connection across time and space, but it was the
connection more than the signature itself that gave me the
particular kind of excitement I felt. It seemed to humanize the
authors; bring them out of the realm of the "literary pantheon" --
and thus the abstract -- and provide a physical connection: their
hands, my hands. (I experienced a similar moment of something
approaching awe recently in a canyon in Utah, when I picked up a
piece of chirt -- a hard stone used for arrow points -- that had
been worked and then discarded by an Indian, probably a thousand
years ago, and realized I was doubtless the first human since that
individual to hold this particular rock in my hand. For a moment
time disappeared and there was a connection between us, and I felt
connected across time and space to a world utterly unknown to me,
but one every bit as real as the one I inhabit daily.)
As a beginning book collector, I had to learn a lot of the jargon of
the field, and such words and phrases as "presentation copy,"
"galley," and "issue point" took on new and unexpected meanings.
One of the first phrases I learned was "association copy," which I
(mis-)took to only mean a presentation copy inscribed by
the author to some particularly notable person. Since then, I have
realized that Carter's definition is more encompassing and, in
some ways, more subtle than my original understanding. The "value"
of an association copy lies more in the "association" -- which is
something intangible -- than in the inherent value of a celebrity
autograph. I have come to feel as though that near-magical
connection is what is important, and the signature or inscription
is most important as the evidence of something much larger than
the autograph per se, something that is hinted at by the
inscription or ownership signature but not limited to it. It is as
if each association copy charts a small part of the mental,
emotional, even spiritual, landscape of the owner or recipient, or
the author or, ideally, both. And the connection hinted at between
two individuals in that mental landscape is what is most profound.
Most of the association copies in this catalog are books inscribed
by their authors to someone of special interest -- whether another
writer, a family member, a publisher, a bibliographer, etc. All of
them suggest a historical context, a connection, that is usually
only hinted at by the inscription itself. Part of the pleasure of
collecting these kinds of books is the chance to gain a small
glimpse of that context -- a little entryway into the mental
terrain of a noteworthy author. I hope you find these books as
engaging as I have.
-- Ken Lopez