Terms Used to Describe Rare Books

Video Transcript

Hi. I'm Erik Bosse. I'm with the Aldredge Bookstore. I'm going to talk about terminology. It's always useful to know what people in the know mean when they start using these very specific words talking about books. Something I think we all are probably familiar with is the dust jacket. And if you're dealing with anyone from England often times they refer to these as the dust wrappers. For certain types of books, particularly modern first editions it can make or break the collectability, the desirability of that book. You might be looking at something that in a pristine copy with a beautiful dust jacket might be $500. Without that dust jacket that same book might be $50. When you have a paperback of whatever type. This, this is the wrapper. The cover here. The cover which would be on the hardback also known as the board because it's made out of cardboard would be the board. And in the paperback would be the wrapper. And on the back of course we have the spines. The spine of the book. Older books you'll see with raised bands on the spines here. Some books have the bottom fore edge and the top edge all gilded, all with gold leaf on them. Inside the cover of your book. When you lift up the boards. You have the end papers. Often times their just white or maybe a solid color. But it's very common to find books from the 18th and 19th century where they might have very decorative, in this case marbled, paper as their end papers. So that when you move from your end papers which again aren't always that decorative you move to your first free end paper, also known as the fly leaf and we have what's referred to as the half title page. And on the verso, the back side of this first free end paper or fly leaf. In this particular book we have other books by that author. So here at the half title page we flip it over which takes us to the title page. Now for most books but not all books but it's almost completely standardized in the 20th century and the 21st century, when you flip it over from the title page is when you get to the copyright page. And this is the important information if you're trying to find out whether or not a book's a first printing, first edition. The date of publication should all be here.

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