"Ain't we got fun?" Celebrating the Roaring Twenties

TICKETS NOW ON SALE: We're looking forward to the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair in March as we celebrate the Roaring Twenties, a time of prosperity and social upheaval. In literature, It was a time that produced such masterpieces and The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby. In pop culture, there were the silly flagpole sitters and the dance craze, The Charleston. Comics such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton held forth on the silver screen. Babe Ruth was the King of Swat and some saw gangster Al Capone as a hero.

We’ll have more later but that’s just a taste of the excitement as we return to The Coliseum in downtown St. Petersburg for the 40th Florida Antiquarian Book Fair.  

As always, dealers from all over will have books, maps, prints, ephemera, photographs, autographs, and more — from all eras, not just the Roaring Twenties.

Tickets at Eventbrite

Tickets now on sale for the book fair

You can order tickets here.

New tees now available at our Florida Book Fair GearStore

You can order reading the QR code or simply clicking on the image. Either one will take you to the page of the style show in the picture. Please note that all three styles are available in four different colors, so you have numerous choices. Thank you for supporting the book fair. We hope you enjoy your shirts. We’d love to see photos of you wearing your shirts. Tell us the names of the people in the photos and where you were. We’ll publish them here. You may send your photos to floridabookfair2@gmail.com. Thank you for supporting the book fair.

It won't be long now!

The long wait is almost over. The Florida Antiquarian Book Fair gets under way on April 1 at The Coliseum in downtown St. Petersburg. Booksellers from all over the country will be on hand to show rare and collectible books, vintage maps and prints, and collectible ephemera, photographs, and autographs. The Florida Antiquarian Book Fair is the oldest and largest book fair in the Southeast. You can purchase tickets online at Eventbrite.com or at the door.

We miss you, dear friends.

 Friends we've lost since the last in-person book fair in 2019.

Three days for book lovers: 39th annual Florida Antiquarian Book Fair to feature books to fit every budget and taste

Georgia bookseller Lee Linn trades in hard-to-find 1960s and 1970s Black Urban Fiction, and decorative bindings

Lee Linn of The Ridge Books in Calhoun, Georgia, is a longtime exhibitor at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. She made this FIRST LOOK video to highlight some of the items she plans to bring to the book fair in April 

 A selection of titles from Holloway House, a Los Angeles publisher best known for 1960s and 70s Black urban fiction. Ephemera from Norman Studios in Jacksonville, which produced movies in the 1930s with entirely Black casts. Collection includes promotional material sent to theaters. 

One of her favorites, Lee will include books with decorative bindings from early 20th century, featuring such artists as Margaret Armstrong and Harrison Fisher. Also in her collection will be Florida stereo views, including scenes from Jacksonville and Tampa areas, citrus groves, alligators, and foliage. She'll also have cookbooks, ranging from Cross Creek Cookery to Mary Randolph’ s Virginia Housewife to recipes from water skiers in Winter Haven! 

And finally, she'll have a first edition of the Lomax’s Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly, with DJ (poor one!) ownership signature of musicologist Rudi Blesh. She also will have a little children’s reading corner with some free books.

First Look: Here's an opportunity for book lovers to learn what's coming to the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair in April

 

After a two-year pandemic induced hiatus, the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair will be Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, April 1-3, 2022 at The Coliseum in downtown St. Petersburg. With this feature, FIRST LOOK, we're sharing some of the most interesting items that will be featured at the book fair. Barbara Loe, owner of Cardtique, LLC, in Osprey, Florida, is a longtime collector and dealer in Victorian era ephemera, and a member of the Ephemera Society of America. Barbara shares items in several categories, including Valentines, trade cards, and admission tickets from the era of chromolithography, a painstaking printing process which produced elaborate and beautiful printed items. Please check our Facebook page, our Instagram page, our YouTube channel and our blog for more FIRST LOOK items for the upcoming book fair.

A Brief Introduction to Book Collecting From BIBLIO

BY STEPHEN BAKES

You know that feeling you sometimes get where you come to the last page of a really great book and you can’t quite believe that it’s over? You want it to keep going. You want something more. That’s the first symptom of a burgeoning addiction to book collecting.

There isn’t one type of book collector. If you’ve ever kept a copy of a book that you had already finished reading, you’ve already started in collecting books. If you’ve ever bought a hardcover copy to replace the paperback, you are getting deep into addiction.

How to get started

Buy what you like.

Although your book collection may go up in value over time, it’s never guaranteed. If you focus your collection on books that you know that you love, you will always be surrounded with a collection that reflects your love.

Find a theme.

The focus of your collection may be a specific author, subject, binding style, series. You may want to collect rare works by classic authors, or you may collect paperback editions of golden era science fiction with their arresting cover illustrations. Collections are as diverse as their owners.

Start slowly.

One of the easiest ways to get started is to find a specific book that you love and buy a really nice copy of that book. It doesn’t need to be cost prohibitive to start. If, for example, one of your favorite books is For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, you may be ready to spend a few hundred or a few thousand on a really lovely first edition, first issue with all the right points (what are points of issue?), but you can also buy a facsimile of the first edition, published by the First Edition Library, for only a few dollars.

You can read the complete article here.

Calling all lovers, book lovers, and lovers of books. You're going to love this. Act now ... time and love wait for no one.

VALENTINE POP-UP SALE! Save right now on two Three-Day Passes to the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair at The Coliseum in downtown St. Petersburg April 1-3. Buy one ticket and get a second one at half price. That's $15 for two tickets good all weekend at the book fair. Tickets for you and your book lover. What a perfect Valentine gift! Don't delay. After Valentine's Day, it's over. Follow this link to Eventbrite.com: https://2022floridabookfairtickets.eventbrite.com/?aff=FBVAL