Zoe Abrams Rare Books

Back-to-school season brings back memories of rentrée in Paris, and writing a similarly-timed blog post there last year. Now I’m writing from Philadelphia, PA, new home of Zoe Abrams Rare Books!

We moved back from Paris about a month ago and I just finished my next list of books for sale (stay tuned to the “shop” tab!), gathered from travels in France and further afield, all broadly concerning education: dictionaries, manuals, schools, etiquette, languages, and prize bookplates and bindings awarded to excellent students.

One of the most interesting items has to do with phys ed for 19th-century women and children. Here is the description with a photo I took (not the most graphically exciting, let’s admit it, so I’m adding a couple more photos of other items at the end):

[DAURIAT, Louise]. Discours prononcé par Madame Louise Dauriat, a la séance d’ouverture du Gymnase Civil et Orthopédique, le 6 Juillet 1834. [Paris]: Félix Malteste, [1834].

8vo, 20.4 x 12.8 cm. 16 pp. (small marginal waterstain on one page). Bound in recent marbled boards with printed label pasted onto front cover. Inscribed by the author on the title-page, “Á M. Guyot avocat, de la/ part de l’auteur.”

FIRST EDITION of this speech delivered by Louise Dauriat at the opening of a gymnasium founded by Spaniard Francisco Amoros (1770-1848), who was largely responsible for introducing children’s physical education in France. Mme. Dauriat advocates for the physical education of women as well as men, citing Spartan culture as an example and quoting Plutarch, “Elles faisaient connaître…qu’elles étaient capables de réussir aussie bien que les hommes…” (p. 5). She goes on to suggest that women’s moral education is way too limited, as is their instruction, or at least in extreme disproportion with their capabilities; and their physical education is totally “nulle.” One solution is for mothers to take responsibility for their children’s physical education. Most radically, Dauriat suggests young women should not marry until they have attained “toutes les forces dont elles sont capables” [all of the forces of which they are capable].

It turns out this pamphlet is not only avant-garde for its time but also quite rare. I was unable to trace it in any library at last search. I dare you to try (let me know)!

Here are some other items you can expect to find in my latest list (PS – in case it wasn’t obvious, EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE! Please write to info@zoethebookseller.com for more information, pictures, or to sign up for the ZARB mailing list, delivering occasional micro-catalogues directly to your inbox).

Early morning in Paris. Rainwater on little round tables sparkling in the sun at an outdoor cafe; an aproned young woman arranging bouquets of baguettes at the corner boulangerie; a crescendo of buzzing scooters and banging trash trucks (finally the latest strike is over).

In August we are going home to Philadelphia. I’m now working on what will probably be my last list of items for sale before we take off: albums and almanacs. These range from a 19th-century chronicle of a Belgian dining club to a collection of photographic postcards of actresses from the turn of the century. On my way to work this morning, via my kitchen, I began picturing our experience abroad as if I were already back in Philadelphia, sorting through a wunderkammer of memories. Behold the electric tea kettle on the white tile counter. Boil the water for the French press. Open the tiny refrigerator. Smell the leftover Époisse. Rush to the living room window facing the street. Sit at the desk with no drawers.

There are many things we will import. The electric tea kettle, for one. My metric postage scale from the Office Depot on rue Monge and my rolling pin from Dehillerin, where Julia Child shopped. Lists of what cheeses and wines we like best, scribbled onto receipts from Androuet and into a booklet from this year’s Salon des vins at Champerret. Souvenir magnets and postcards from Stonehenge, Keukenhof, Lapland, etc. Paper directories for SLAM and ABA, and other ephemera collected at book fairs. A folding linen-backed map of Paris purchased at a flea market near the Opéra metro.

Our Paris has already acquired a mythic quality, like any absurdly great pause from “normal” life, and we haven’t even left yet! (Here’s one of my favorite recordings that perhaps best captures the nostalgic mood around the home office these days.)

Concerning ZARB, I’ve developed a routine suited particularly to life here, where the next bookseller is just around the corner and the next auction is in five minutes. Although the U.S. market is less concentrated, it’s there in force, bien sur — and anyway modern technology means the only real concern with buying internationally is condition and shipping — so ZARB will translate just fine. And, hopefully, we’ll be back someday.

A French friend told me that the acronym for Zoe Abrams Rare Books – “ZARB” – is verlan (slang formed by reversing syllables, e.g., l’envers) for “bizarre.” Fitting! The past six months have been a whirlwind of auctions, flea markets, brocantes, book fairs, dealer visits across Europe, and lots of exciting material coming and going here at ZARB, our bizarre little enterprise. With two lists down and a third in the works, I’ve learned a lot. For example, did you know cliché is a printing term? From clicher, to make a stereotype, which is also a printing term meaning a plate made from composed type. I’m not the type to go on pedantically so… never mind.

What is a typical ZARB day like? I go to the office as early as possible, meaning I make coffee in the kitchen and then shuffle to my desk a few feet away. With such a short commute, there’s more time for my favorite activities: searching sale catalogs and, if I find something for a client or inventory, or just if I think it’s worth going, visiting book venues across Paris. Depending on what’s in my email I could be out the door and off to an auction, fair, market, or shop, sometimes with very little notice. Or, I could be at my desk all day cataloguing the material I already have. When I’ve done enough writing and research at home, I take my laptop to the Bibliothèque Nationale, a research palace with excellent vending machines, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a forest in the center of the building, and a movie theater across the plaza.

Since almost the moment we arrived in Paris from New York, my husband and I have been traveling a lot. When we’re in a foreign city, I spend all day at local bookshops or markets. It is really fun but it is also real work! There’s a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time; I try to look at everything but I buy very selectively. Clothes get dirty, occupational hazard. At the end of each trip, I enter my new inventory in my database and calculate costs. When inventory reaches critical mass, I make a list of items to sell. Of course there are also special books I’m saving on the shelf, but, as a wise colleague once said, “it isn’t a business if you aren’t selling.” To that end I also frequently make offers hors serie.

Most of my routine I learned from working with and watching other dealers, to whom I owe a lot. However every small business is different and I love being on my own schedule. À Paris, mon rêve! The bibliosphere here is incredible. So many bookshops, you could barely visit them all in a year; so many sales, you wish you could be in three places at once; so many catalogs, you could spend days reading them. At some point you have to prioritize and actually sell something to fund the next adventure — which is exactly what I’ll be doing today!

I leave you with this rubber stamp wisdom:

“To be is to do”—Socrates.
“To do is to be”—Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra.

Freud’s waiting room. Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna.

Inaccessible books in ready-to-wear. Le Bon Marché, Paris.