From The Editor by Craig Stark #76, 28 August 2006

A third entry in our series on series appears today - The Everyman's Library. If you're a veteran bookseller, you've probably seen 100s if not 1000s of these over the years. Do you grab them or leave them behind? I'm guessing you might pass on most if not all of them, especially if you've tried to resell them. But it might be smart to take a second look. Similar in concept to the Modern Library series, EMLs, though seemingly dirt common, sometimes attract strong collector interest. As usual, bookselling success depends heavily on the identification of high spots, and the EML primer in today's issue will get you started.

Next up is Terry Seymour. Terry has collected EML books and ephemera for over 20 years and, to date, has assembled a collection of over 7,000 items. Like Stan Shelley (First Edition Library) and Michael Bussacco (The Heritage Press), Terry has contributed a valuable reference to the cause - A Guide to Collecting Everyman's Library. He's also put together a complete checklist of EMLs. The checklist includes authors, titles, series numbers, publications dates and, best of all, indications of scarcity. It's available for purchase at BookThink. Also, Terry has written a short introduction to the checklist that includes some important information for EML booksellers.

If you liked this article, Digg it!