More Ephemera?

Ok, I was going to wait for the aforementioned volume to arrive in the mail before posting this, but I am afraid that in the interest of keeping this blog active, I cannot afford to wait on the mail any longer. The volume has been in the mail for 10 days, according to the tracking page, and has not, as yet, arrived! Now I know where the term "snail mail" comes from. 


I do, however, admit to having had better service in the past, and to being mystified as to why this particular parcel has spent so long in the mail system. Maybe (hopefully!) it's just a fluke. I eagerly await tomorrow's mail, in hopes that the slow-moving volume shall appear; according to the tracking page, it left the nearby sorting facility on the 14th, and according to one of the sorting facility's personnel (whom I called the other day) it has two days to make it from the sorting facility to my local branch, and my local branch has another two days past that to deliver it. That means that it should have been delivered on the 18th (yesterday.) I shall give them a 1 day margin (tomorrow's mail) before resorting to more direct inquiry methods (i.e., a trip down to the sorting facility.)


At any rate, I was going to include this item in the post containing the mailed volume, but it now seems that it shall appear in a post of its own, so let's get to it, shall we?


I am not sure whether or not this item counts as ephemera, or as part of the book that it came with (in the same manner as a dust jacket... would a dust jacket count as ephemera?) It is a newsletter that came with my 1950 edition of Plutarch's Lives. The book's introduction is by Carl Van Doren, whose brother, Mark, wrote what is still recognized as the definitive scholarly treatment of Dryden's poetry. Here is a picture of the newsletter, unfolded. (It is printed double-sided on a single sheet, folded in the middle, designed to be read as a four page pamphlet.)

Whether or not it counts as true ephemera, I nevertheless enjoy owning it and looking at it. They don't do this sort of thing anymore, at least as far as I know. If there are any book clubs nowadays that do anything similar, I suspect that the newsletter would (more than likely) be delivered via email. If any of my gentle readers can contradict me in this regard, please feel free to drop me an email, I would love to know about it.

Well, that concludes this little post; the next post will (hopefully) happen soon, and you won't want to miss it. Until that time, I bid you adieu, and wish you all the best in your book collecting endeavors.