First LEC

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First LEC

1Tom9019
ag. 24, 2021, 1:21 pm

I just received my very first LEC: the two volume edition of Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon.

My second LEC came shortly after: Hugo’s Waterloo.

Both are great, Waterloo is gorgeous. What is it called when each page is a sheet folded back on itself the way Waterloo is?

What was your very first?

2MobyRichard
Editat: ag. 24, 2021, 4:00 pm

>1 Tom9019:

French fold I believe.

My first LEC was....an auction lot of 80+ books. :p. I forget which one I read first. Probably Aeschylus or Xenophon or something like that.

3kermaier
ag. 24, 2021, 6:18 pm

I think mine was Twain's The Notorious Jumping Frog & Other Stories.

4maisiedotes
ag. 24, 2021, 6:25 pm

My first, which I bought a month ago, was Green Mansions. It is my only LEC. I'm still in the HP toddler pool.

5Jobasha
ag. 24, 2021, 6:27 pm

My first were Thus Spake Zarathustra and Gawain and the Green Knight. Both lovely editions.

6Glacierman
ag. 24, 2021, 6:50 pm

>1 Tom9019: I was just thinking of starting a "My First LEC" thread! You read my mind!

My first one was Tristan and Iseult, purchased from the old California Book Auction Galleries for $35.00, fine in slipcase and acetate d/w. I still have it, although the many moves since then have been hard on the slipcase and it now shows wear at the corners and edges.

The second was The Warden by Trollope purchased at an AAUW used book sale, also many years ago, for $15.00, also Fine in slipcase.

Neither volume had their MLs.

NOTE: California Book Auction Galleries closed in late 1991 at the death of its owner, Maurice F. Powers. Its successor in spirit, PBA Galleries (originally Pacific Book Auctions), was established in 1992 by former employees of Powers' company. I bought and sold quite a few books through California Book Auction.

7AMindForeverVoyaging
ag. 24, 2021, 7:30 pm

>6 Glacierman: You actually did start a "first LEC" thread - https://www.librarything.com/topic/326783. So it would have been your second "first LEC" thread lol Maybe instead you could start the first "second LEC" thread :)

8terebinth
ag. 24, 2021, 7:44 pm

I still don't have very many, but I think the first I sought out must have been the selection of Landor's Imaginary Conversations, from 1936.

9kdweber
ag. 24, 2021, 8:35 pm

I was looking for a nice copy of De Rerum Natura and ended up buying the LEC edition. I was so impressed I decided to research the publisher and find out more about this Limited Editions Club. Among other things, the search led me to LibraryThing. Wonderful serendipity. I now have 466 LECs.

10Glacierman
ag. 24, 2021, 9:21 pm

>7 AMindForeverVoyaging: Getting old. I had utterly forgotten that!

11kermaier
ag. 24, 2021, 11:02 pm

>9 kdweber:
I think that Lucretius was my 2nd LEC — love it.

12Sport1963
ag. 24, 2021, 11:23 pm

>1 Tom9019: The Black Tulip. 26 years ago. I dove into that rabbit hole and am now seven titles shy of owning the entire LEC bibliography. It's been a fun obsession.

13wcarter
ag. 25, 2021, 12:20 am

>12 Sport1963:
Very impressive!
And the seven you are missing are..........

14maisiedotes
ag. 25, 2021, 12:02 pm

To add to the discussion:

Did you buy your first LEC within the last five years?
Within the last ten years?
20/30/40 years ago?

To those who started collecting a long time ago and have a substantial collection:
Roughly how many books do you buy per year now?

15Glacierman
ag. 25, 2021, 12:22 pm

>14 maisiedotes: Over 40 years ago. My God! Has it been THAT long? Tempus fugit.

16Sport1963
ag. 25, 2021, 12:36 pm

>13 wcarter: Of the seven, I have three lined up for purchase over the next several months (all Shiff-era):
Octavio Paz - Sight & Touch
Leopold Sedar Senghor - Poems
Margaret Walker - For My People

Still on the hunt:
The Ideal Book, Two Essays (more ephemera than in the "formal" LEC bibliography)
Dwiggins - Towards Reform of a Paper Currency
Maya Angelou - Our Grandmothers
The First Book of Moses, Called Genesis

Those last two titles are fairly pricey - but they do come up for auction every once in a while.

17stopsurfing
ag. 25, 2021, 2:15 pm

My first was Toilers of the Sea, a bit under a year ago. Was a bit underwhelmed by the drab paper dust jacket and conservative binding at first, but once I started reading it I fell in love: must have been the typesetting, integrated illustrations and the fact it was letterpress. I’ve found that letterpress printing, even though the contrast to offset is often very subtle, seems to give me a kick of delight while I read. I’m fairly new to this book collecting lark, but it’s books like Toilers that keep me looking for that next kick…

18kdweber
ag. 25, 2021, 4:07 pm

>14 maisiedotes: I started buying 15 - 20 years ago. I don't buy many LECs anymore. I've bought one (Spoon River Anthology) this year, maybe 5 last year. I should have bought more in the peak years as I was purchasing in a charmed era with LEC prices heading ever downward. A real surprise the last couple of years as prices have started to rise. I'm mainly focused on getting new fine press books directly from current small publishers as I want the craft to continue.

19maisiedotes
ag. 25, 2021, 4:21 pm

>18 kdweber: That's what I was thinking. When one already has amassed a substantial collection, it would seem natural to branch out.

I guess I've discovered books at a high during the market. Like real estate, there's not much you can do about it unless you can wait it out.

20GusLogan
Editat: des. 17, 2021, 8:31 am

>14 maisiedotes:
Oh dear, I’ve gotten to 80 in two and a half years, and that’s counting the works of Shakespeare as one item. But I’m about to slow down dramatically, I’m two books away from having a book (the one I’m keenest on, not any book!) from each Macy (G+H) series and I’ve accumulated most of the works I’m convinced I want to read. I’ll probably still keep an eye out for bargains…

My first was the 1940 Ivanhoe. It’s far from my favourite.

21kdweber
ag. 25, 2021, 4:44 pm

>16 Sport1963: With your impressive LEC collection, it's hard to believe that you somehow managed to avoid picking up a copy of The Ideal Book.

22JedediahG
ag. 25, 2021, 7:06 pm

My first was Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace in February of 2020. I'd just discovered the Folio Society a couple months before and that forum led me here. I don't think Ben-Hur is considered a particularly fancy LEC but I was blown away by the quality and even more blown away by my next purchase, which was The Life of Benvenuto Cellini. Both books were substantially nicer than most of the Folio Society books and both were substantially cheaper. When my wife and I were in the stage where we were moving frequently, I'd begun saying that I'd never buy another paper book and that I'd be digital only from then on—mostly because of how heavy the book boxes were! But while I'll still definitely read digital books in a pinch, I'm back to my first love—real paper books. And the ones I'm buying now are better than anything I had back in the day though I'm still a sucker for a cheap paperback sci-fi novel with 70s artwork and yellowing pages. I'm probably up to 10 or so LECs, 5 or 10 Heritage Press, and 5 or 10 Folio Society books.

23Sport1963
ag. 25, 2021, 11:34 pm

>21 kdweber: I've passed on quite a few copies of The Ideal Book, just haven't found one in NF condition. I've have thoroughly enjoyed the hunt, and will probably go on upgrading my less than NF titles as long as I am breathing. I'm fortunate enough to have a 26 year old son who has the collecting bug. He gets the LEC duplicate titles when I upgrade.

I am more patient and much more discerning than 25 years ago. Boy, did I make some dumb (naive) buying decisions.

24maisiedotes
ag. 26, 2021, 12:21 am

>22 JedediahG: It's reassuring to know there are other relative newcomers here!

25kdweber
ag. 26, 2021, 1:15 am

>23 Sport1963: "Boy, did I make some dumb (naive) buying decisions."

I can relate! Besides poorer condition copies I bought plenty of Easton Press HP copies which I'm slowly replacing with the LEC originals.

My NF copy of The Ideal Book ($19) was from the second printing of 500 from The American Institute of Graphics Arts. Are you looking for the first printing?

Realizing I'm unlikely to ever complete my LEC collection (particularly the later Shiff livre d'artiste books) I settled on a facsimile copy of Dwiggins' Towards Reform of a Paper Currency (S1) from Kat Ran Press which had the same limitation (452).

26BionicJim
ag. 31, 2021, 1:11 pm

I had serendipitously discovered Heritage Press with Omoo, which to me was of such outstanding quality that I carefully read and studied the included Sandglass and learned of the "big sister" Limited Editions Club. Not being prepared to pay too much for a used book on eBay, I risked $20 on Sindbad, which was very nice, but not a huge bang for me. It was a few months later that I placed a low-ball bid on the Shakespeare set and won, to eventually discover what extraordinary books looked like.

27UK_History_Fan
set. 7, 2021, 10:30 am

Finally getting around to contributing to this thread. My first LEC purchase was On Conciliation With The Colonies by Edmund Burke for $65. The year was either 2009 or 2010 (see below) when I really started accelerating my book collecting during the Great Financial Crisis. I knew nothing about the Limited Editions Club prior to this purchase and became exposed only due to this listing by an eBay seller I regularly purchased from. Given my interest in this historical period, and not having any other books by Burke (first LEC predated the Folio Society 2010 release of Reflections on the Revolution In France), I placed a bid. I ended up paying more than intended due to the emotional charge of bidding in an auction. Only later did I realize I paid far above the then market rate for this title, especially as it did not come with the original Monthly Letter. Since then I have acquired 505 titles and 681 volumes at a cost approaching $35,000. Slippery slope indeed.

I do hope to complete the pre-Schiff era collection someday (missing many of the harder to find or overly expensive titles) but have taken a significant pause in my book buying over the past 2 to 3 years due to several factors, not least of which is a distinct lack of bookshelf space with no expansion opportunities short of a new condo/home (impractical logistically and financially due largely to the quantity of my book collection).

28ChrisG1
set. 7, 2021, 12:08 pm

>27 UK_History_Fan: Wow - sounds like a fabulous collection! Regarding shelf space, there's always the dreaded "culling the herd" method. Are there volumes you don't really care that much about? Or at least less than what you would replace them with?

29UK_History_Fan
set. 8, 2021, 1:07 am

>28 ChrisG1:
Yes, more so now that I’m retiring this year and am changing priorities/ focus. I just don’t look forward to the time consuming process of photographing listing boxing and stressing about protecting those I wish to remove from my collection.

30GusLogan
abr. 27, 2023, 12:49 pm

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