Author Archives: Garrett

“Cleanliness is conducive to health,” notes an entertaining and illuminating 1853 committee report, which continues, Who can tell, but that disease was kept from our city, the last summer, in a great degree, merely by this one establishment? Thirty-eight thousand … Continue reading →

The anecdote below is drawn from an address delivered in 1848, fairly well along in retirement by the Michigan Whig William Woodbridge–second governor of Michigan, friend to Lewis Cass, son-in-law to the Revolutionary poet John Trumbull–to the Detroit Young Men’s … Continue reading →

“We introduce ourselves as the two youngest of lecturers and writers of ancient history in the world today,” write Bernice and Eunice Fütterer in the spring of 1911. They continue, We are nine and ten years old and we are lecturing … Continue reading →

While I was sitting at my desk this morning and cataloguing, I harkened back to the one axiom to which I cling as a bookseller: research on a book or pamphlet creates value. The bookseller takes an item and does … Continue reading →

Startling Geographic Discovery. After the most patient, impartial, and exhaustive research, the Earth is found to be not a Sun-supported and revolving Globe at all . . . So utterly false and physically impossible is the popular or accepted theory … Continue reading →

The Paris Review blog notes a recent feature on five books dictated from beyond the grave, with the remark, “Dead Mark Twain was especially prolific,” which is true enough as it goes–though certainly Twain was not the only restless author … Continue reading →

I’ve recently picked up this moderately curious framed receipt dated April 2, 1901, for the deposit of 1546 (and 85/100) Francs, payable on the Fourth Street National Bank for the Comptoir National d’Escompte de Paris, with a signed autograph note … Continue reading →

I have been remiss in posting anything on the September 29th American Antiquarian Society symposium “Poetry & Print in Early America,” held in celebration of the publication of the long anticipated successor to Wegelin’s Early American Poetry, the fruit of … Continue reading →

1. Who are the Back Alley Librarians? We are a group that meets infrequently and at irregular intervals in Ann Arbor to discuss (more or less) books and ephemera as material objects. Or, in the words of our founding member … Continue reading →

With most of the crowd I run with on a daily basis, the attractions of the book or pamphlet as a physical object are, as with most truths, held to be self-evident. For those who don’t quite get it, I … Continue reading →