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This month, the Rare Book Room Dispatch is featuring the legendary Robert Frost (1874–1963), the Poet Laureate of Vermont and four-time Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winner. Perhaps one of the best known poets in America, we felt like it would be perfect to feature him during the month perfect for thinking deeply while ambling slowly along snowy forest paths...

"And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions…" — George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789

Washington issued a proclamation on October 3, 1789, designating Thursday, November 26 as a national day of thanks.

Perhaps George Washington picked the third Thursday in November because he didn't want another holiday on the calendar too close to the Fourth of July or crowding his own birthday in February. American Thanksgiving has morphed into a holiday...

The nights are colder, the days shorter, pumpkin spiced coffee is ubiquitous: it’s witching time.

Saducismus Triumphatus: or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions, 1681, by Joseph Glanvil (or Glanvill, if you prefer). A small octavo, rebound in plain modern buckram, this title is one of the prize pieces showcased in the Rare Book Room right now.

Weaving Puritan theology with 17th century philosophy, Glanvil (1636–1680) conjured a theory of the supernatural born from his conviction that the world was unknowable through the method of pure reason and that the supernatural deserved a closer look...

An anatomy book from 1696 that focuses on the circulation of the blood and the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction; completely dissimilar books featured in the Rare Book Room or history and fiction intertwined?

L’Anatomie de l’Homme Suivant la Circulation du Sang & les Dernieres Decouvertes De’motre’e au Jardin Royal, 3rd Edition [Translated as: The Anatomy of Man Following the Circulation of Blood & the Latest Discoveries Demonstrated at the Royal Garden] is beautiful, bound in full contemporary leather boards and containing 19 anatomical plates...

It’s late July already. Though the 4th (and the 14th) have passed by, here’s a look at some items in our rare book collection that take us back to the Revolutions of July: The American Revolution, 1775–1783, and the French Revolution, 1789–1799.

Why would July foment revolutions? It’s the perfect season. Too hot to sleep, the roads are dry and clear, which means that artillery can move easily, and there are no crops to reap or sow...

In the first chapter of Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, the young d’Artagnan is sent out into the world armed with three gifts from his father: a yellow Béarn horse “without a hair in its tail,” 15 crowns in ready money, and a “recipe for a certain balsam…which has the miraculous virtue of curing all wounds which do not reach the heart.”

Not a bad thing to have if you’re determined to become one of the King’s Musketeers.

It is his mother who supplies the recipe. The action in Dumas’s adventure classic takes place in France between 1625...

Note: the Rose City Book and Paper Fair is happening June 16–17 at the Red Lion in NE Portland. There’s a $5 entry fee. Approximately 60 dealers who are part of the Cascade Booksellers Association will attend. Powell’s will be exhibiting at booth #32. It’s a book-and-paper love fest! See you there.

Legendary* bookman Peter Howard named his Berkeley area bookstore ‘Serendipity,’ which means the occurrence and development of events by chance, in a happy or benevolent way. I’ve been thinking a lot about Mr. Howard and his store...

Soundcheck

Are you a bibliophile who simply needs more biblio in your life? Here's the solution: visit the website of Portland artist and Powell's customer Bithia Bjurman. She finds inspiration for her artwork in nature, food, her family, and at Powell's. Her pastels are gorgeous.

After drinking in the amazing artwork, head over to the Biblio Bunny's Instagram page. The B.B. gives Powell's a lot of love and highlights new additions to her carefully curated collection of antique and rare tomes...

Nestled in the third floor Pearl Room of the flagship Powell's in downtown Portland you'll find the Rare Book Room, or the "RBR" as it is colloquially known.

One thousand square feet of retail space is dedicated to our most beautiful — and expensive — books. This is the home of our oldest book, the works of Decimus Magnus Ausonius, printed in 1494. The room also houses our second most expensive book, the 2 volume "Journals of Lewis & Clark," printed in 1814 and priced at $25,000.00...