A madness most discreet.

Less than two weeks until Valentine's Day! If your beloved is the sort of person who doesn't care for flowers and chocolates one way or another, or likes something supplementary, you should visit Babbitt's Books before the 14th and pick out a gift or two. Here are just a few suggestions:


1. We have several classic poetry books from the late 1800s in stock right now. The cloth bindings come in all colors and are handsomely gilt-stamped, which makes the books an attractive accompaniment to, say, one dozen red roses or a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Authors range from Thomas Moore to Tennyson to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Perhaps the best thing about these books, next to the fact that they're old and pretty and filled with romantic poems, is their inexpensiveness.  For example, we have an 1872 copy of Lord Byron's poems for only $16. You'll find the rest of the books on our counter shelves for $4 to $40. 


Not that we're inducing you to marry, but a few years ago a young man came in and bought one of the aforesaid poetry books so he could cut a hollow into the pages and put a ring inside for his girlfriend and (we hope) soon-to-be fiancée. 


2. Do you remember that we have totes and tees? The totes come in two designs and each design comes in green on white or white on black. The tees come in two designs as well and are printed on Jerzees heavyweight blend, which gives them a soft feel. (They're nothing like those awful, stiff-feeling, heavyweight Hanes tees.) Tees are men's unisex and range in size from S to XL. The totes are $9 and the tees are $15. 

3. We still have plenty of vintage Valentines, too,  for those of you who are considering an alternative to store-bought cards. 

 $1 (1950s-era)

$1 (1940s-era)

$2 (1920s-era)

$7 (mechanical, 1940s-era)

$8 (die-cut, 3D, circa 1890-1910)

$15 (die-cut, 3D, circa 1890-1910)

4. The following items aren't as Valentines-related, but I couldn't resist showcasing them. Brian has been slowly but surely putting out some of the prints we've accumulated over the years. Some are wood engravings, some are steel engravings, and still others are chromolithographs. Prints are a great way to get some new artwork into your home without spending an arm and a leg. The ones you're about to see are 7" by 10", but many that we have are larger.

 $10 ("Mammals of Earth, Air, and Water" lithograph, 1902)

 $12 (wood engraving by E.H. Dewey, circa 1880. It's a Costwold ram, but I like to think of it as Fat Sheep.)

$15 ("Academic Gowns--British Usage", 1902)

$18 (this is my ultimate favorite--"Octopods and Decapods", 1902)

As always, Kathleen and Brian and I (Sarah) will be more than happy to point you in the direction of these featured items when you come in. We also reserve books for 48 hours, so don't be shy about e-mailing us if you want to stake a claim to any of these Valentine's delicacies. Hope to see you soon!

On the 19th day of Christmas, Babbitt's Books gave to me . . .

. . . a nice collection of books by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

First up is the restored edition of Ariel, Plath's most famous collection of poetry. The first edition of Ariel, published two years after Plath's suicide in 1965, was edited and arranged by her estranged husband Ted Hughes, who diverged quite a bit from her original manuscript, adding in more than a dozen new poems and excising a dozen others entirely. This edition, which has a foreword by the couple's only surviving child, Frieda Hughes (Nicholas Farrar Hughes committed suicide in early 2009), preserves Plath's own arrangement. It also includes a facsimile of her manuscript, with both hand-written and typewritten poems. Still, Plath and Hughes had the habit of reading each other's work, and some critics argue that Plath would have approved of Hughes's edits. Did Hughes do his wife a favor by accentuating her better, bolder poems and cutting the weaker ones? Frieda Hughes says it best in her foreword.


"When she died leaving Ariel as her last book, she was caught in the act of revenge, in a voice that had been honed and practiced for years, latterly with the help of my father. Though he became a victim of it, ultimately he did not shy away from its mastery. 
This new, restored edition is my mother in that moment. It is the basis for the published Ariel, edited by my father. Each version has its own significance though the two histories are one."


Next up is the first American edition of Hughes's Wolfwatching, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1991. It is one of the last books of poetry published before Hughes's death from cancer in 1998, and explores man's interaction with the natural world.

Third in line is a lovely-looking collection titled Selected Poems: 1957-1994. This anthology draws from four decades of Hughes's work, and is as close as you will get to a definitive collection of the former Poet Laureate's work, as it was personally compiled by him when it was originally published in 1995. This copy you see here is a clean, new-looking reprint from 2002. 

Lastly, for those who want to read more about Plath's and Hughes's acrimonious marriage, we have a hardcover, jacketed copy of Diane Middlebrook's Her Husband: Hughes and Plath--A Marriage. You get to learn what annoyed Plath about Hughes (his "scratching, nose-picking, with unwashed, unkempt hair & dogmatic grumpiness--all unnecessary & unpleasant" [99] is apparently part of it) and vice versa (Plath's anxiety, sexual jealousy, sentimentality, etc.). Perhaps each of them had a point. Hughes ultimately left Plath for poet Assia Wevill, whom he also cheated on, but Plath's bipolar depression must have been hard to live with.

In addition to the four books pictured above, we also have a hardcover, jacketed copy of Hughes's Birthday Letters, a book of poems about his late wife that brought wide acclaim shortly after his death--just as, ironically, the posthumously-published Ariel brought Plath her biggest fame. Love them or hate them, these two late poets are forever destined to be linked. 

Title: Ariel: The Restored Edition

Publisher: HarperCollins

Year: 2004

Features: First Edition, Dust Jacket

Condition: Very Good+

Price: $20

Title: Wolfwatching

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Year: 1991

Features: First Edition, Dust Jacket

Condition: Very Good

Price: $25

Title: Selected Poems: 1957-1994

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 

Year: 2002

Features: First FSG Edition, Dust Jacket

Condition: Very Good+

Price: $10

Title: Her Husband: Hughes and Plath--A Marriage

Publisher: Viking

Year: 2003

Features: First Edition, Dust Jacket

Condition: Very Good

Price: $4

On the 22nd day of Christmas, Babbitt's Books gave to me . . .

. . . a $35 copy of Always The Young Strangers, signed by Carl Sandburg. 

Those of you not familiar with Sandburg's oeuvre will know him vaguely as a Chicago poet, but his prolificacy extended beyond verse. He won one of his three Pulitizer Prizes for a multi-volume biography of fellow Illinois resident, Abraham Lincoln. The American fairy tales that he dreamed up for his three young daughters were collected in a 1922 anthology called Rootabaga Stories. Folk music fascinated him, and long before he ever published any poetry, he taught himself guitar and played popular folk songs to an eager audience.

Always The Young Strangers is the account of his life, from his childhood in Galesburg, Illinois to his enlistment in the 6th Illinois Infantry during the Spanish-American War. (He never saw combat, in case you are curious.) Sandburg has signed the book on the half-title page with a felt-tipped pen and dated the signature 1953. The name that appears above the date is the previous owner's. Her bookplate is on the verso of the front blank flyleaf, but it can probably be removed with care. There's even a tiny smudge near the 'g' in Sandburg's last name; perhaps a smudge from the great author himself? 

The endpapers of the book are illustrated with photographs of a young Sandburg and his parents. Galesburg figures heavily in this book: Chapter 2. is titled "The House on Berrien Street", Chapter 7. "Along Berrien Street", and Chapter 14. "Prairie Town."

Says Sandburg in Chapter 14., "This small town of Galesburg, as I look back at it, was a piece of the American Republic. Breeds and blood strains [stains?] that figure in history were there for me, as a boy, to see and hear in their faces and their ways of talking and acting" (280). 

This childhood home on Berrien Street has been turned into a museum, the Carl Sandburg Historic Site Association. The house is unimaginably tiny, a veritable doll's cottage. It is boggling to imagine Sandburg, his parents, and six siblings squeezed inside. Unfortunately, I visited in late 2008, when then-governor Rod Blagojevich had shut down Sandburg's childhood home and numerous other historic sites across Illinois, so I could only peer in the windows of the house and walk through the yard, where the ashes of Sandburg, his wife Lillian, and two of his daughters are buried. If you're a fan of Sandburg, a holiday jaunt up to Galesburg with your family and friends might be in order. 

Sorry for the small cell-phone picture, but holy cow! I'm sitting on the doorstep of Carl Sandburg's childhood home!

The only other thing I'd like to say about this book is that I've just managed to sell myself on it, so you'd better grab it before I do.

Title: Always The Young Strangers

Author: Carl Sandburg

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace and Company

Year: 1953

Features: Signed, Presumed First Edition

Condition: Very Good-

Price: $35