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W. T. H. Howe (1868–1939) was one of the most prominent book collectors and literary patrons of the Golden Era of book collecting, yet his efforts have been largely forgotten. This piece strives to correct that oversight, providing information about Howe's life and situating him among American book collectors of his period. Fellow collectors such as Barton Currie and Richard Curle lauded his foresighted purchases of Poe and Hawthorne works at the famous Wakeman sale of 1924; later he made splashy purchases of Lewis Carroll first editions that positioned him as a major contributor to the 1932 New York "Alice" exhibition. Howe accumulated a huge treasure trove of literary manuscripts and rare books that he kept in Cincinnati, where he was president of the world's largest textbook publisher, the American Book Company. Friends with rare booksellers such as Walter Hill of Chicago and Alfred Goldsmith of New York, Howe shaped collecting trends to emphasize nineteenth-century and contemporary writers. When Howe died suddenly without a will, his collection was slated for auction, but bookman Mitchell Kennerley brokered a deal with Alfred Berg, who purchased the library en bloc and donated it to the New York Public Library. Ironically, this saved Howe's collection intact, but obscured his role in building the foundation of today's Berg Collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This volume of essays examines the collection of manuscripts and old books owned by Robert Edward Hart (1878-1946), now housed at the Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery in Lancashire. McKendrick focuses instead on a fifteenth-century manuscript book of hours in a contribution titled "Contextualising the Art and Innovations of the Master of Edward IV in the Blackburn Hours (Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Hart MS 20884)." Richly illustrated with beautiful color images, the book is intended to celebrate the life and passions of Robert Edward Hart, a ropemaker and bibliophile with a desire to collect early printed and manuscript books for himself and for the next generation. [Extracted from the article]

Somewhat frustratingly, there are so many that some magazines, such as the 1920s periodical I The Flapper i (1922) and the music publication I Hep Cat's Review i (1956), are not discussed in the main text. In her introduction to the volume, magazine scholar Heather Haveman notes that "between 1825 and 1850, almost three thousand new magazines were launched, followed by almost sixteen hundred the next decade. [Extracted from the article]