ON EDITING THE E-SYLUM 上市 Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 7, Number 5, February 1, 2004, Article 15
ON EDITING THE E-SYLUM
Steve Pellegrini, in submitting the following item on the first
John J. Ford sale catalog, writes: "If you need an item for a
future newsletter feel free to use this if you care to. I can
imagine how much work & time must go into producing a
weekly newsletter. Hope my occasional purple rambling at
least gives you some back-up material. I think you know how
much your Monday letters mean to us all. I think that the
steady stream of new members says it all."On the phone earlier this week, John Adams asked, "I don't
know how you get the E-Sylum out each week." Well,
sometimes I don't know, either.... But one secret is that a lot
of the submissions come in on Monday, and I cut and paste
them into the draft immediately, and edit them right away if I
have time before calling it a night. By Thursday most of the
week's material is in place, at least crudely.There is no file of backup material. If I get it, I publish it
immediately. I once tried holding things back for the "rainy
day pile" but one day decided it was too much bother.
Besides, I figured, the more material in one week's issue, the
more there will be for readers to comment on the next week.
That thought has borne out week after week, although not
always according to expectations. Some items I'm sure will
generate a lot of response bring nothing. And some of the
most innocuous-seeming items will generate extremely
interesting responses from unexpected quarters. That's the
joy of it all - you never know where the train of thought
will take us, but ride never ceases to be interesting. The
E-Sylum readership is an fascinating bunch, and I'm happy
and honored to be the focal point bringing it all together.The bulk of my work takes place in the evening after my
wife and kids are in bed, which gives me special empathy
with William F. Gable, whose coin collection was sold on
May 27-29, 1914 by S. H. Chapman. Gable was not only
a numismatist but a bibliophile. Gable (1856-1921) owned
a tremendous collection of books, manuscripts and autographs,
which was sold in several sales by the American Art Association
of New York, beginning in 1924. The introduction to the first
sale (November 5-6, 1923 states:"Many and beautiful were the tributes paid to him by his
thousands of friends. Few, however, of these friends knew of
his great and varied collection of books and manuscripts of
literary and historic interest. This was due mostly to the fact that
the hours spent in collecting the books and letter, now about to
be sold, -- the happiest hours of William F. Gable's life -- were
taken from those generally allotted to sleep. It had been his
custom, from the years of his early youth, to sleep only four or
five hours each day.... Those hours of the night, during which
most men slept, William F. Gable read and reread his prized
literary possessions, wrote letters to his many book-dealer
friends, read catalogues of sales, and lovingly filled out folders
for his autograph letters."-Editor]
- 2004-02-01
- 7