Good morning everyone,

The barrage of incoming books has continued well into October, and we've been working through several exciting collections over the past few weeks.

First off, please note a small but important change in our hours: we will now be open WEDNESDAY THROUGH SUNDAY, 10:00 to 5:00.
For several decades, our hours have been Tuesday through Sunday, 9 to 5, but over the years weekends have become increasingly busier and weekdays and mornings less and less so. These new hours will, we hope, help us to keep costs down without inconveniencing many customers. If you are not local and wish to come by on a Tuesday or an early morning, please call or email us ahead of time and we will try to accommodate you!

Right -- onto the books. We were especially excited to have the chance to buy the intact library of John Turner Wait (1811-1899), a US Congressman and lawyer from Norwich, CT, described in his 1899 New York Times obituary as "one of the most prominent citizens of Connecticut." His great-great-great granddaughter decided to sell the books to us; they had been kept in Wait's barrister's bookcase until I removed them myself. (Talk about fresh to the market!) On the other side of her family, she is descended from Samuel Huntington, an 18th-century Governor of Connecticut, and Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War, and there are some books from the Huntington and Welles families mixed in, too.

The books are mostly from the 19th century, with a smattering from the later 18th century. There are many 19th-century Connecticut histories, especially for the Norwich, New London, and Glastonbury regions, and an unusually extensive collection of Green's New London almanacs from the 1790s to the 1830s. There are also a good number of items on Connecticut's role in the Civil War. There are some condition issues, but we hope the decent prices and terrific provenance will help to compensate for them! [Please note: we will be getting more from this collection closer to the end of the year -- what we do have now is on several shelves at the front of the store, as well as in the first glass case.]

Other notable collections include:

--More PRESIDENTS! These are mostly presidential studies and biographies from Grant to the present day, with some earlier presidents as well as figures like Webster, Clay, and Calhoun represented in good numbers. Many of the books, particularly those on modern presidents, are quite scholarly. [These are still being processed, but they will be put in the center of the Lower Barn, where the other presidential books were, as they are priced.]

--More Archon Books! Over the next few months, we'll be buying the vast majority of Archon's own file copies -- yep, nearly every book they ever published. Most are high-quality 1950s-1970s reprints of historical and literary scholarship in a wide range of fields. [They will be in their respective subject categories as well as on the 'new arrivals' ledges in the Lower Barn.]

--A sizable collection of plays and works on the history of drama from a theatre historian -- everything from academic books on 16th- to 19th-century theatre in the Lower Barn to shelves and shelves of quality plays and criticism for only a few dollars each in the Upper Barn (just on your left as you enter the building).

There's certainly plenty to look through, so please do stop in and say hello sometime soon. We'll look forward to seeing you!

All the best,
--The Crew at Whitlock's