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Announcing: Catalog #314 (for January, 2022) is now available…
December 31, 2021 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
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Catalog 314 (in its entirety)
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Noteworthy Catalog 314 ($250+)
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Combined Catalogs (current, w/ remnants of previous)
Don’t forget about this month’s DISCOUNTED ISSUES.
The links above will redirect to the latest catalog in approx. 30 days,
upon which time it will update to the most recent catalog.
Announcing: Catalog #313 (for December, 2021) is now available…
December 3, 2021 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
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Catalog 313 (in its entirety)
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Noteworthy Catalog 313 ($250+)
-
Combined Catalogs (current, w/ remnants of previous)
Don’t forget about this month’s DISCOUNTED ISSUES.
The links above will redirect to the latest catalog in approx. 30 days,
upon which time it will update to the most recent catalog.
Snapshot 1801… The importance of newspapers…
November 4, 2021 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
In 1803 the well-respected Columbian Centinel and Massachusetts Federalist dated August 19, 1801 printed an article affirming a new publication, the Country Gazette of the United States (Philadelphia), and made a powerful statement regarding the importance of newspapers which we have shown below. This declaration is reflective of new president Thomas Jefferson’s comments regarding newspapers from back in the late 1780’s:
“The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.”
If either the publisher of the Columbian Centinel or Thomas Jefferson were alive today, do you think they’d feel the same? Please share your thoughts.
Announcing: Catalog #311 (for October, 2021) is now available…
October 1, 2021 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
- Catalog 311 (in its entirety)
- Noteworthy Catalog 311 ($250+)
- Combined Catalogs (current, w/ remnants of previous)
Don’t forget about this month’s DISCOUNTED ISSUES.
The links above will redirect to the latest catalog in approx. 30 days,
upon which time it will update to the most recent catalog.
Announcing: Catalog #310 (for September, 2021) is now available…
September 3, 2021 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
- Catalog 310 (in its entirety)
- Noteworthy Catalog 310 ($250+)
- Combined Catalogs (current, w/ remnants of previous)
Don’t forget about this month’s DISCOUNTED ISSUES.
The links above will redirect to the latest catalog in approx. 30 days,
upon which time it will update to the most recent catalog.
Announcing: Catalog #309 (for August, 2021) is now available…
July 30, 2021 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
- Catalog 309 (in its entirety)
- Noteworthy Catalog 309 ($250+)
- Combined Catalogs (current, w/ remnants of previous)
Don’t forget about this month’s DISCOUNTED ISSUES.
The links above will redirect to the latest catalog in approx. 30 days,
upon which time it will update to the most recent catalog.
Announcing: Catalog #306 (for May, 2021) is now available…
April 30, 2021 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
- Catalog 306 (in its entirety)
- Noteworthy Catalog 306 ($250+)
- Combined Catalogs (current, w/ remnants of previous)
Don’t forget about this month’s DISCOUNTED ISSUES.
The links above will redirect to the latest catalog in approx. 30 days,
upon which time it will update to the most recent catalog.
A Fly on the Wall at Lincoln’s Cooper Union Speech…
March 11, 2021 by Laura Heilenman · Leave a Comment
How often have we all said, “I wish I could have been a fly on the wall.”? This week, as I helped a customer with an order, I was struck again with how often that statement is uttered here in our RareNewspapers office. This gentleman was beside himself over an issue we had obtained covering Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Speech (see image below). Hearing him excitedly describe the content soon grabbed my imagination as well. As I finished his order and set the phone back into the cradle, I dug in to find any additional issues we may might still have highlighting this historic speech. Reading aloud (yet quietly to myself), I was transported to the scene. Follow me for a few moments to this history defining moment in time, picking up at the end of William Cullen Bryant’s (American poet & editor of the NEW YORK EVENING POST) introduction of this great American Hero…
“‘I have only to pronounce his name to secure your profoundest attention’ [Prolonged applause, and cheers for Lincoln]. Mr. Lincoln advanced to the desk, and smiling graciously upon his audience, complacently awaited the termination of the cheering and then proceeded with his address as follows…”. What followed was the speech that triggered Lincoln’s famous quote: “Another Republican Orator on the Stump.”
So many current phrases could be used to describe this moment in time: “A Star is Born”, “For Such a Time as This”… but for me, all I could think of was, “I wish I could have been a fly on the wall”, and I’m so grateful to the THE NEW YORK TIMES reporter who helped me to be one on February 28, 1860.
Lincoln & Whitman … it’s all in the perspective…
March 8, 2021 by Laura Heilenman · Leave a Comment
“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times”… The concept of polar opposites has always been fascinating to me and as I perused issues we have dated March 8 across the decades, the following two contrasting events caught my eye:
On March 8, 1865, Abraham Lincoln gave his 2nd Inaugural address. The country had spent the last several years in despair as brother killed brother, parents grieved and wives desperately tried to determine how they would survive without their husbands. The Civil War was the darkest period in our young countries history, arguably, even to this day. President Lincoln bore this heavy mantle with grace and dignity when it may have killed a man of lesser conviction.
Simultaneously, Walt Whitman was taking the epic that was the American Story and transforming even it’s dark and ugly pieces into a more palatable and poetic form.
On March 8, 1888 the New York Herald printed another of Whitman’s works titled, My Canary Bird. Publishing his works in the newspaper put Whitman’s perspective of America in the hands of the common man which is exactly where he would have wanted it. Beauty from Ashes, the American Story had a devotee in Walt Whitman. He had a way of making “The worst of times” into “The best of times”.
Announcing: Catalog #304 (for March, 2021) is now available…
March 1, 2021 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
- Catalog 304 (in its entirety)
- Noteworthy Catalog 304 ($250+)
- Combined Catalogs (current, w/ remnants of previous)
Don’t forget about this month’s DISCOUNTED ISSUES.
The links above will redirect to the latest catalog in approx. 30 days,
upon which time it will update to the most recent catalog.