Poets, Science Fiction

If you search the Internet, you can probably find several "association copies" with Hart Crane's bookplate. A word of caution: After his death in 1932 Hart Crane's mother gave (or sold) some of his personal papers including a pile of Crane's bookplates to a bookseller in New York City. The dealer then pasted the bookplates in books chosen at random from his stock and misrepresented them as being from Crane's library. Not only was the dealer a crook , he was not too swift, as some of the bookplates were pasted in books published after Crane's death.

When rummaging through used and antiquarian book stores one of the first areas I go to is the poetry section. My observation has been that poetry readers, in general, tend to use bookplates more often than other readers. Poets also tend to use bookplates more often than other writers. Harold Witter Bynner (1881-1968) used at least two bookplates .

The image shown above has nothing to do with Sci-Fi or Poets, although the expression"Crow Not, Croak Not" is truly poetic .I am assuming this is either Canadian or English and it may be a printer's or booksellers label but really do not know for sure.The company it was designed for is B or E Rankin Ellis . Do any of you have additional information to share with us?

The universal (off the shelf) bookplate shown below was sold by the Antioch Bookplate Company in the early 1960's. The late Robert Anton Wilson was in their employ at that time. Click On Images To Enlarge

Last week, I mentioned that in February there will be a posting about the bookplates used by science fiction writers and collectors. If you use a science fiction bookplate please send a scan to bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

Ken Sanders , a rare book dealer in Salt Lake City Utah sent me the science fiction bookplate used by Elizabeth D. Pope. In his email he states that : " Betty or Elizabeth Pope attended many worldcons in her day, mainly in the 1950s through the 80s and the 90s and met and became friendly with numerous sci fi authors of the day.Through Brigham Young University she was able to arrange for many of them to come through and over the years accumulated a vast collection of f & sf books.I purchased approximately 2500 books from her collection ,out of more than 10,000 books."

Since one good turn deserves another, I have added a link to Ken Sander's web site. Just click on the orange words (Poets, Science Fiction) up on top and wait a few seconds for the Internet to do it's magic.