The original form of a book, story, or poem, as it was created by the author. Manuscripts can take many forms and can have many versions, or drafts. Dealers should be careful to determine the nature or priority of manuscripts that they offer for sale, although this isn’t always so easy, especially with the advent of computer generated manuscripts. The most satisfying and least problematic manuscripts for collectors and dealers alike are those which exhibit work in the hand of the author – corrections, deletions, new passages inserted, or altered, etc., as was the case with this original Pearl S. Buck manuscript Son of Fate, which was offered in out Catalog 124. A really satisfying manuscript looks like the dog’s dinner – the author has cut, pasted, scribbled, bled, and cried on it. Oh yes, and hopefully, he or she has signed it – not inherently necessary for the substance of the manuscript, but for the collector, something like the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae.

What you won't be if you spend too much on books and your spouse finds out about it. Don't worry, we're happy to send your books to secret locations in order to prevent them from finding out. More strictly speaking, this is when the dustjacket from one copy of a book is supplied to another copy of the book. Don't try this at home, as it tends to ruin the bibliographical integrity of the book. Dealers ought to note when a jacket has been supplied, but they seldom do. The term book marriage actually goes all the way back to the beginning of the Enlightenment in the mid 1600s, when books were usually sold unbound and printers would smuggle politically dangerous (or salacious) works out of their country of origin by hiding them within more respectable or pious publications. Which brings us back to our original point, as when a parson's wife in the 1750s found Fanny Hill hidden in her husband's newest New Testament.

Baseball reference book Baseball By The Books: A History and Complete Bibliography of Baseball Fiction by Andy McCue that is a reasonably complete listing of fiction titles that feature the game of baseball. Recommended if you like baseball fiction, and unlike most reference books, can be acquired inexpensively.

A pamphlet, book, or broadside, usually ephemeral in nature, made by a mechanical printing or copying process using a stencil. Often seen in amateur printing, or for limited runs of printing, as for instance in screenplays. The stencils would wear out pretty quickly, so these were by their nature a self-limiting process. This copy of the screenplay for the film 1939 film Man About Town, offered in our Catalog 127, was on mimeographed sheets. This copy was also signed by most of the cast, including Jack Benny, Dorothy Lamour, Betty Grable, and "Rochester" Anderson.