Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths And Their Shared Passion (1997)

A biography of two real characters! I would never have imagined that I would find a book about two old ladies who I had never heard of so unputdownable. I enjoyed this book about books so much that I started searching out the author's other books and found not all of them so well written or enjoyable as this one. I couldn't even slog through the first chapter of [b:The Life of Margaret Fuller: A Revised, Second Edition|2330119|The Life of Margaret Fuller A Revised, Second Edition (Contributions in Women's Studies)|Madeleine B. Stern|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266736738s/2330119.jpg|2336683]. ( )

A biography of two real characters! I would never have imagined that I would find a book about two old ladies who I had never heard of so unputdownable. I enjoyed this book about books so much that I started searching out the author's other books and found not all of them so well written or enjoyable as this one. I couldn't even slog through the first chapter of [b:The Life of Margaret Fuller: A Revised, Second Edition|2330119|The Life of Margaret Fuller A Revised, Second Edition (Contributions in Women's Studies)|Madeleine B. Stern|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266736738s/2330119.jpg|2336683]. ( )

This was a somewhat dry but sweet look at a lasting platonic (as both ladies point out!) friendship based on their love of books and scholarly pursuits. Madeleine and Leona take turns telling their story about their life in books.

Madeleine Stern was a teacher and author who loved doing research for the biographies she wrote. She had heard some rumors about Louisa May Alcott when she was working on a book about her. With a little detective work, she discovered that Alcott followed in the footsteps of her heroine Jo March and wrote some "blood and thunder" tales that helped pay the bills. This was my favorite part of the book as the mystery unfolded: "...Louisa May Alcott had indeed produced a corpus of deviational narratives. She might have hidden the details of her double literary life, but she had scattered through her letters and her journals and even in Little Women itself a plethora of clues. I needed to don my deerstalker, take up my magnifying glass, and embark on the hunt." (117)

Leona Rostenberg had her own literary adventure when she discovered the serialized installments of Charles Dickens' Master Humphrey's Clock scattered around a barn when she was looking for books to sell in her fledgling rare books business. She bought these mouse-chewed papers for sixty cents at the auction she was attending.

Madeleine was growing tired of teaching and decided to join her best friend in the antiquarian book store. They spent much of their time traveling around to find books, including a poignant journey to post-war Europe. They thrived in each other's company pursuing their passion for books. This was an enlightening joint autobiography and one that most bibliophiles would enjoy reading. ( )

Two members of the Greatest Generation recall their lives with books and each other. Leona Rostenberg and Madeline Stern seem to have embodied the idea of the Antiquarian book dealer. Knowledgeable, intensely inquisitive, and in love with books not for their investment value but for their significance to history and society, both women write about their academic and book discoveries with a contagious sort of excitement. You can tell as you read that these women loved their jobs, and what's not to love about discovering a goldmine of pseudonymous wild tales from the author of Little Women, or coming across one of the earliest volumes of Americana to ever exist in a British catalog for a fraction of its value?

The world as it was when Rostenberg and Stern were hitting eureka after eureka in the postwar attics of Europe are long gone, but as long as there are people like Leona Rostenberg and Madeline Stern in the world, the love of books and discovery will never die. ( )

As a novice book collector myself (modern first editions; frowned upon by these authors as "too easy" to collect), I was excited to receive and read this book. It is an elegant story of 2 women who lived outside of and beyond the expectations of upper middle class young women in the 1930's and beyond. They defied convention and became highly educated women and chose a life of book writing, collecting and selling, along with "literary sleuthing" to make connections between antiquarian books and moments and key figures in history. Thanks to their sleuthing we also know much more about Louisa May Alcott's "scandalous" stories published anonymously or pseudonomously.

I found most of the book to be enjoyable but did skim the final chapters that were highly detailed descriptions of books bought and sold. Still quite an enjoyable book. ( )