Booklovers Rejoice!

This email was sent to me from a friend who has an amazing library. As is clear, he's a great lover of the written word. Some of the manuscripts/editions he touched reminds me of my days at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where (after being virtually frisked) we could check out early Shakespeare folios and a first printing of Paradise Lost.

My friend's email follows:
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Attended the 38th SF International Antiquarian Book Fair this past Sat.
An amazing journey through the literary history of England and America.
It was so much fun and there was so much to learn from the booksellers.

In short, held and touched some of the most important works of literature:
First edition of Ulysses (value $150,000)
TS Eliot's Wasteland $65,000
TS Elitot's Prufrock (signed) $45,000
Faulkner's Sound and Fury (signed) $50,000
Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby $40,000
Salinger's Catcher in the Rye $45,000
Dickens Christmas Carol $45,000
Dickens Serial version of David Copperfield $17,000
Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea (signed) $30,000
The History of King Lear (Tate edition) $28,000
Shakespeare's Third Folio $150,000
A signed copy (by Abe Lincoln, 1864) of the Emancipation Proclamation:
value $1.5 million

I also saw first editions of just about every important work in modern
literature history. Stanford University had an incredible display of
just some of their most valuable rare books:
A second folio of Shakespeare's Works (1632)
A first edition Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) (featured in the
bestselling Rule of Four)
A first edition of King James Bible (1611)
Dryden's Virgil (1697)
Dante's Diving Comedy (1497)

Also displayed were books owned by the founding fathers, each of which
had the owner's signature.

A bibliophile's dream....

Price to enter show: $10. Experience of holding historical
documents/books you couldn't really afford.... priceless.