Out of print and rare editions on dance, theatre, music, and stage design & costume. Also, we offer original letters and manuscripts, drawings, sculpture (occasionally), and prints including old-master prints from the 16–18th centuries. Most of our general inventory is listed on this website on the database page.

We also have finely-printed, limited-edition, and beautiful art books as we have for many years. At present, we have books bound by Therese Moncey, P.L Martin, Zaenshdorf & Co, as well as Rivière. We have original art books by Picasso, Braque, Segonzac and others. We also have finely printed books by the Golden Cockerel, Cranach, Allen, Circle, Gregynog.

This year marks the 30th year of Golden Legend, Inc. We were first located on Melrose Avenue and then at 7615 Sunset Boulevard for sixteen years. 

In the ten years since we left our open shop on Sunset for our bright and sunny office on South Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, our business has changed greatly as has the rare book business in general.

These days, email is an essential part of life, almost replacing the telephone and completely replacing the fax machine. Our research routine includes consultation of the web for its databases and links to digitized books. We buy research books via Amazon and often pay via Paypal.

During the growth of the internet, we asked many times whether the physical book is still needed. With virtual texts and digitized manuscripts coming into general use, we wondered if the old or rare book is necessary at all. Why not use a facsimile of a 17th century book instead of the original?

The simple truth is that the text is only part of the book although the most important part—the soul, if you will. The body of the book is unique with each copy of an edition having its own unique history. After some time, two copies of the same edition will take on different characteristics at the hands of their previous owners. One will now bear astute notes and comments, or perhaps a loving inscription, or maybe a beautiful new binding; another will suffer through flood or fire or a knife (perhaps at the hands of a censor). Perhaps the book will be restored with pages from a later edition (with differences in the text). It should be obvious that we have much to learn from each book that comes down to us when we understand the effects that centuries of use can and must have on a book. 

Although Golden Legend receives book orders via the internet, sometimes from complete strangers, we have actually met most of our customers—certainly our regular clientele. Many have come to us via book fairs or through our lists and catalogues (over 300 issued since 1981). We have known some of our regular customers for over twenty years: one the head of a major German ballet company, another a dance critic from Tokyo.

A few years ago, I acquired a 17th-century manuscript written by Pierre Paul Sevin of Tournon, France who was a painter, draftsman and designer of festivals in the mid-17th century for the Catholic Church. His festival designs included the canonization in 1666 of St. Francis de Sales attended by Queen Cristina of Sweden and many notables from around Europe

Two years ago, I received a polite email from a graduate student in Lyon asking if I could photocopy the manuscript for his use because he was doing his dissertation on Sevin. I politely refused for several reasons, including the probable decline in value in the unique original after a copy became available. This young man was not so easily discouraged, indicating he could not come to California to see it because he had commitments working at an art museum in the suburbs of Lyon as a curator and teaching art history at the University of Lyon. He stressed the scholarly need for him to consult the mss because—after all—his entire dissertation was about Sevin.

Out of guilt, but also with an understanding of the basic reason for having rare material in the first place: to share it with those who need to study it, I wrote that I would send the manuscript for him to read if he could ask his University Librarian to receive the manuscript and safe-keep it for a month or so. No photocopying allowed. He quickly arranged for the rare book librarian at the Bibliothèque Municipal de Lyon to take charge of the manuscript. Off went the manuscript via FEDEX. A month later, he emailed that he had finished reading it. The manuscript was promptly sent back, with a thank-you note that included an invitation to see Lyon.

ANTIQUARIAN

A person who collects, studies, or sells valuable old things—called
also antiquary.

In Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles in the opening scene, the town parson, an amateur antiquarian meets Jack Durbey to declare that Jack is from a celebrated ancient Normal family. Here begins the tale that ends with the fall of Durbey’s innocent young daughter Tess.

Parson Trigham’s research, correct or erroneous, leads him to a conclusion based on evidence from the past, in this case from tomb inscriptions. An antiquarian bookseller has a similar job of identification when he discovers an antique book: identification, description & authentication, plus the added task of evaluation. 

Given the many hundreds of thousands of books printed before the modern era (roughly the period of 1820-1840 where books began to printed on machine-made paper, bound by mechanized binding machines, and illustrated with lithographs or photographs which afford very large press runs), the bookseller needs great experience and careful research. Antiquarian books can be very individual due to the many past owners over the centuries and also due to early methods of printing and binding which made no two books quite alike. Our job is to account for the variations of typography and text within issues and later editions of books, changes of format in at the hands of binders, and of owners who have annotated, sophisticated, decorated, added to and even mutilated their books. 

Like many booksellers, I have handled both modern and antique books over the years. During the last decade, I have gravitated towards the antique, especially early-printed books (16th through 18th century), because that is where the challenges are. Rarely a week goes by when I don’t encounter an early-printed book that comes as a complete surprise to me because I have never seen anything like it before or because it is a hitherto unknown variation of what I thought it was. Working with early-printed books is slightly like hiking up a mountain to find wild-flowers, plants, and animals that are like those I have seen before but with variations or, on occasion, wholly different. 

A few years ago, I acquired a manuscript diary of one Sir William Breton, (whose known dates were only 1763–1773) of London who habitually recorded the name and location of every play he attended during the year but not much about his life, friends, or professional associations. This love of theatre was commendable, but I needed to find out more about the compiler and his relation to the these plays. Was he a critic or an author? I had no idea and could not readily find much in the reference sources at hand.

One inclement weekend, while I was visiting the campus of the University of Illinois, I spent most of the weekend in their fabulous campus libraries and emerged with a fairly full biographical picture of Breton actually Bretton (b. ca. 1720 d. London 1773), an English courtier who spent most of his life in service to Augusta Princess of Wales and George III. I also developed an idea of the historical value of the diary because it added a great deal of information about Bretton’s relationship to the politically important Lord Bute (whose box Bretton often used). Finally, the diary vividly portrayed the character and activities and interests of Bretton, who can only be described as an English “courtier” of the late 18th  century whose dilettante interests, life of privilege, and dutiful service are vividly documented in the diary. Ultimately, I offered and sold the manuscript to Harvard University’s Houghton Library.

The question of guarantee and authentication often comes up in world of book selling because books and manuscripts often have lost their provenance or chain of ownership. One example of these problems comes immediately to mind. A few years ago, a German colleague offered me an 18th century book on dancing that was known for its beauty and its rarity: Gregorio Lambranzi’s Nuova e curiosa scuola de' balli theatrali (Nuremberg, 1716) complete and beautifully illustrated and in fine condition, although in modern binding. I immediately found a prospective client, the New York Public Library’s Dance Division. The Library wanted the usual guarantee that the book was complete, but they also wanted the guarantee that book was not stolen or “liberated” from a German institution after World War II. Concerning the completeness, this was a relatively simple matter. The pagination matched identically with the copy at the J.P. Getty Research Institute here in Los Angeles and also with the few known copies listed in the bibliographies. A careful examination of the pages showed they were all printed from the same stock and all showed the same amount of use. As the book was in a modern binding, no evidence was found of any insertion of pages from another copy. 

Hours by appointment

Golden Legend, Inc.

11740 San Vicente Blvd Suite 109

Los Angeles, CA 90049

Tel: 310-721-3584