Limited Editions Club booklist and Monthly Letters

For more than a decade, ironjaw (Faisel) has built-up and maintained a collection of the Monthly Letters of the Limited Editions Club (LEC). This resource has been in demand by owners of LEC books, but access has been restricted to a small number of people who have made a personal request to Faisel for access. This had to be been done for security reasons as the resource has been hacked and damaged in the past.

Faisel asked me if I could devise a way for access to be easier which has led me to create a complete list of all LEC books with all the Monthly Letters that are in Faisel’s collection attached to the relevant book. Anyone can now access and download any of the available Monthly Letters.

There are already a small number of photos of each book also attached as well as a small number of reviews.

The intention is to have as much detail about each book as possible included, as well as a photo of every book, but this will take several months. In the interim, the basic book list has been published in Library Thing and is available by clicking the link below:-

LIMITED EDITIONS BOOKLIST AND MONTHLY LETTERS.

All the monthly Letters in Faisel’s database are included in this list, but there are still many missing. If you have a copy of a missing Monthly Letter, or if you have a better quality copy, please contact Faisel or myself or let us know on this thread.

I know there is a lot of information missing from the list, but this will be slowly added. On the other hand, if there are any errors or typos in the list, please let me know with a message on this thread.

Enjoy!

>1 wcarter: This is a godsend, thank you! May your tribe never fade away!

Link to ML for Marble Faun, 1931: https://www.librarything.com/topic/327511#7466149

I’ve checked through my collection and I have the following letters which are missing from the list. I also have the prospectus sheet for each. I knew making sure I only bought copies of books that have the Letter and prospectus sheet would come in handy! What would be the best way to scan and upload these?

Peer Gynt
Quarto-Millenary
Toni-Bungay
Russian Folk Tales
Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert
Book of the Prophet Isaiah
In the Penal Colony - There was no Letter for this title, just a prospectus sheet

By the way, the list says “Quatro-Millenary” rather than “Quarto-Millenary”. The photo collage does as well.

Thank you very much!

If you have additional Monthly Letters, please scan them, add them to a Word document so each scan is a full page, save as a pdf then send me a personal message and I will direct you to an email address where you can send the pdf. I will then add it to the database.
If you do not know how to make a pdf, you can just send me the scans and I will (eventually) do the rest.

>3 Salaxalans:
Thanks, typo fixed.

If there are titles in the list that have the Letter but not the prospectus sheet, would you like scans of those as well? Also, I do not have a scanner; would taking photos with my phone be sufficient? The Files app has a document scan feature.

>6 Salaxalans: The best quality photos you can take are appreciated from any device.

Smallpdf is a free resource to convert, combine, rearrange various image or document formats into a pdf file and vice versa: https://smallpdf.com/pdf-tools

>2 mr.philistine:
Marble Faun ML added to database. Thanks.

>1 wcarter:
Thank you!!

>1 wcarter: Amazing! Thank you for taking this on and providing a resource that's much more accessible. I'll add a link to my blog later today.

I'd like to propose my book for inclusion under Books of Interest on the First Series: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CF4LKX58.

Please feel free to use my posts for additional information!

Thank you Dr Carter and Ironjaw! What a wonderful resource.

>1 wcarter: You're my hero! That is soooo much more accessible. Thank you for the time and effort you put into that. Methinks thou art a gentleman and a scholar!

For books of interest: Great and Good Books: A Bibliographical Catalogue of the Limited Editions Club, 1929-1985 by Ralph Geoffrey Newman. I skimmed through a free e-book version of this once, and it didn't seem to have any new info compared to the LEC Biblio, but it can be accessed online for free so it can be useful

For the list of portfolios, the years 1980-2010 can be updated based on the list here that I received directly from the LEC:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/356314

from experience I know there could be copyright issues in publishing the ML without permission from Easton Press and LEC (for later ones), been working on that permission for a few years now

Considering the comment by >15 rocklands:, I will pause further development of the LEC booklist for the time being.
Are there any lawyers who would like to comment?
This matter my be further complicated (or uncomplicated) by the fact that I am in Australia, while Easton Press and LEC are in the USA.

Copyright has changed much over the years. It may well be that a number of these Monthly letters are no longer in Copyright. I have attached a link below that may be of some interest. One thing I have noticed is that none of these letters are marked as copyright. I believe that books and documents would be under copyright protection even if a copyright was never registered. But from what I have heard, if a copyright was never registered, it could not be renewed. And in the early days of LEC the copyright terms were much shorter than they are today. So you may find that some letters are in copyright and some are not. In any case it will not be long before the earliest will no longer have copyright protection.

https://library.fau.edu/external-relations/public-domain-day-2024-starring-steam...

As a relative newcomer to this community I am enormously grateful for access to this invaluable resource! Precious few of the LEC volumes I have acquired during my first year of collecting included a ML but every one that did enhanced my appreciation, enjoyment, and desire to learn (and collect) more. Thank you!

>16 wcarter: I'll spare you a lengthy disclaimer and leave it at this: I am a lawyer but I am NOT a copyright lawyer. That said, I'd personally feel entirely comfortable posting the letters. One of the main elements of whether use of a copyrighted material is fair use (i.e., a legally permissible unlicensed use) is the effect of the use of the material on the potential market for the material. Here, LEC isn't selling these letters and you're not depriving them (or anyone) of income by posting them. On top of that, *you're* not profiting commercially from posting them either, you're merely offering an educational resource. My gut feeling is that the worst that would happen would be a cease and desist letter from LEC, but I'd frankly be quite surprised if even that ever happened.

I'm not sure what >15 rocklands: 's attempted use of the letters was, but compiling them into a book and selling it, for example, would be entirely different than creating a free-access archive for educational purposes.

>1 wcarter: Aucassin and Nicolette is probably my favorite LEC book so I took a look at the listing and found it incorrect. The author is anonymous and the translator is Andrew Lang, who should probably get credit. More importantly the designer and illustrator is Vojtech Preisiig (he taught in Boston for many years at Wentworth institute before unfortunately going back to his native Czeckoslovakia), who signed the book.

>20 laotzu225: I appreciate corrections like this - done.
What I have done is very much a first draft that will be slowly corrected and updated in the next few months. What is here is already the work of many months.

>14 PBB: I have a copy of that book, purchased new when published. It was less expensive and more widely available than the "official" LEC bibliography and in fact, I was not aware there was such a thing. Newman's book was to me a godsend and has proven useful over the long haul. I only recently obtained a copy of the "official" one and rarely refer to Newman now, but it was for a while, the only game in town for me as I am sure it was for others.

>19 ChampagneSVP: And let us not forget that Michael Bussacco gathered a bunch of Heritage Club's Sandglass and reprinted them in two volumes which he sold, apparently w/o difficulties.

https://archive.org/details/heritagepresssan0000mich

>19 ChampagneSVP: my attempt has pretty much been for the same reason, I've created an updated checklist file with all the letters + delivery notes as a research tool about 2 years ago, I've mentioned it before in this group. After some discussion with Carol Grossman and her experience in working with the material, we've decided to get full permission from all relevant parties before releasing (it is also worth noting we are members of the ABA and ABAA respectively and will be held to a higher standard). After two years of discussion we finally did get official permission from Easton Press, but this permission was also denied at first, whether they were in a position to do so is for a lawyer to decide.

It could be safe for wcarter to leave as is, or it could be problematic, i only have my own experience to go on.

We will also be releasing a document soon, but currently busy fixing all the mistakes from quarto + bibliography 1985 and adding detailed information of the books after 1985

>23 Glacierman: That's something I think we're all looking forward to!

>1 wcarter: Absolutely monumental effort wcarter and ironjaw. Take a bow my good sirs !

Dear wcarter, I have the following ML's along with that separate single sheet that comes with them for the following. I will message you shortly to obtain the email address where I can send these:

- Youth, Typhoon and the End of the Tether
- The Queen's Necklace
- The Jungle Books

>8 mr.philistine: I tried smallpdf, but it doesn't allow removing of margin in the basic version.
I found https://www.ilovepdf.com good as it allows removing of margin and has the "Fit (same size as image)" option which help avoid those white spaces around the images.

>24 rocklands: Yeah, I could certainly see them being reluctant when asked for permission but would say that’s different than them aggressively going after a fan/collector for a noncommercial use. Who knows though.

I have decided to take the advice of >19 ChampagneSVP: and continue to develop the LEC booklist and see if anything happens.
Already, due to the generosity of several devotees another dozen Monthly Letters have been added, and I am slowly adding detail and pictures to the early books.
Further offers of scanned missing Monthly Letters welcome.

>28 wcarter: I do not think you will encounter any problems with that approach.

ML for Three-Cornered Hat, 1959 is missing pages 1 and 4. Could anyone post the missing pages on https://postimages.org/ ? Thanks.

Thanks to the assistance of George Macy Devotees members, many more Monthly letters have been added to the LEC booklist and we now have a total of 462 Monthly Letters linked to the list.
If you have any of the missing copies, plese send me a personal message.

>30 mr.philistine:

I have the ML and will scan it tomorrow.

Scanned the entire ML and Innocent Card and uploaded to

https://postimages.org/

as a single PDF. Will also send to >31 wcarter:

>30 mr.philistine: >32 Django6924:
ML for Three Cornered Hat now added to booklist.

>32 Django6924: >33 wcarter: Much appreciated, thank you.

Thirteen more letter added in the last 24 hours due to generosity of several GMD members.
Also, nineteen more books have had added details and pictures added today.

Hi Everyone, just another word of advice / caution. you are collecting items which are under copyright, which can technically cause legal problems down the line as i mentioned before. It is one thing to do this under the radar, but there is one request circulating among rare book dealers, which is bound to get someone in trouble. Like most organizations many of the antiquarian organizations (ABA, ABAA, IOBA and so forth), have email groups to discuss various topics. The request below has been one of those topics of discussion today and this is a rather large group of worldwide dealers. It is a very good way of getting noticed by the copyright holders. Asking someone in the trade to "illegally" photocopy material and send to a group who wants to make it widely available for free, can be problematic and you are potentially exposing the dealer in question to legal ramification themselves.

On a personal note i am a part of this group and an LEC collector and dealer. I also want to see this resource being made available to all collectors. My own list, with linked ML, Delivery Notes and other Ephemera was finished over two years ago already, but I haven't published it, due to the copyright issue and decided to work towards getting all of that done. I've (with collaborators) have spend 100's if not 1000's of hours on this and several years getting bounced around by publishers to finally get the permission to make this material available. i might just be worth waiting until we publish our checklist which will be entirely with permission of all the copyright holders. It is mostly done but we are doing the final fact checks for the later 20 years of books. We are trying to not just do a rehashed list from previous sources, but actually correcting the great many mistakes that has existed in these resources and which are copied over repeatedly each time a new list is created.

"Hello,
We are compiling LEC letters with announcement card. I wonder if you would be able to share photos of each page of the letter and the announcement card for this title. I will not be able to pay you for your time and effort. But we are trying to make this resource available free of cost.

Thanks,"

P.S. Also, and a bit selfishly, if this really turns sour i would hate to have the permission Carol and I worked VERY HARD to get get revoked. Hopefully that won't happen, but one never knows.

Like ChampagneSVP said in post 19, nobody is depriving LEC or anyone else of income by posting scans of the letters for a select group of people that are interested in this information and are, mostly, members of this discussion group. Another excellent point is that no one is profiting commercially from posting the letters. The scans are offered as an educational resource.

rocklands, are you intending to publish your compiled materials for profit? If yes, you do not need to worry about your profits suffering. A lot of people would prefer to buy a hard copy book with all letters/ephemera printed in it.
I do not see how someone else's not-for-profit actions can damage your acquired permission.

>37 booksforreading: no our checklist will not be for profit, we considering doing a larger website with much deeper information which might be subscription. Let me just get ahead of this straight away, my comments above are NOT aimed at protecting PROFITS, but genuine concern about where this can go.

The LEC are not the copyright holders, Easton Press is (well for everything pre-1970. Saying that it is posted for benefit of all is not a legal argument, nor is saying it is not for commercial profiting, those factors have no impact on the copyright.

The point of my post was, in an effort to get copies of all the letters, the efforts of this project and group is starting to be discussed by a wider audience which is only one step away from getting to the copyright holders attention, which is not a great situation for anyone involved.

I certainly wouldn’t want my comment to be taken as legal advice. And I very much wouldn’t want Carol Grossman and rocklands’ hard work to suffer as a result of any actions here, and agree with rocklands that emails like the one quoted above are more likely than not to harm the project. In case anyone is interested in quick primer on Fair Use, one can be found here: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/

>39 ChampagneSVP: I'm also not a judge, and my only experience is via my academic background and this project. at the bottom are the four factors looked at in fair use. From what I understand is, if I write a book and I want to use a paragraph of someone else's work (or a monthly letter) and I quote a small section of it that is considered fair use.

This is not how this project is being approached, the letters are being scanned and published in it's entirety for the 81 year history of the press, it is not a selective process. Let me put it this way, if you want to quote your favorite journalist from the new york times in a blog post and you quote a paragraph from one of his articles in a 20 year career I would imagine that is fair use. If you however published his entire output in the NY Times from a 20 year career for other fans of his work, should that be considered fair use? This is what is happening here.

I think also keep in mind we will all like to see this information being made available, but the risk will fall on the shoulders of a very few individuals. I think everyone should be cautious in giving advice or saying everything should be fine, because you are not making that statement for yourself, but on behalf on someone else making the efforts to support the group and taking the personal risk.

I'm also really exposing myself uncomfortably in typing these post, because i know the best case scenario is my message will be unpopular and worse case scenario i will face attacks and or accusations of self-interest.

Bottomline, do not poke the bear. Emails going out to dealers requesting them scan letters for the project is not a good idea. you are making the dealer complicit and really pushing the boundaries of fair use (FYI I do not know who send those emails so do not consider this a personal attack, it's not it's a request to not do it).

https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
The four factors judges consider are:

the purpose and character of your use
the nature of the copyrighted work
the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
the effect of the use upon the potential market.

note point 3
the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and

For me, it’s less of a “which way would the judge go” question (bc yes, could go either way) and more of a “will EP care?” question, coupled with my experience that a cease and desist will nearly always precede a lawsuit, giving anyone who’s uploaded letters the chance to remove them before facing any sort of legal trouble. That said, I hadn’t considered the potential impact on the license you worked hard for, and now that you’ve mentioned it, it’s an important consideration. And I wholeheartedly agree that actively emailing dealers to beg for letters garners a whole lot more attention than just maintaining a wiki on a relatively obscure website with a relatively small audience.

I have not been emailing dealers asking them to copy Monthly Letters, and do not know who has. The supply from GMD members has been keeping me busy enough so far.

>39 ChampagneSVP: this is US-specific.

There are some international copyright conventions of course, but the US Supreme Court is not the arbiter of these apart from in the US.

It's too bad all the current links are Dropbox-based. Makes the project hard to clone/replicate. Y'all should use git or a similar robust protocol.

>38 rocklands: no our checklist will not be for profit, we considering doing a larger website with much deeper information which might be subscription.

Subscription over time = Profit

Would your checklist include access to LEC ephemera or will that access fall under the 'deeper information' for subscription?

>44 mr.philistine:

Don't confuse future plans with the checklist. The checklist will not cost money, so not sure what you are trying to say.

The website we're looking to do will provide an enormous amount of information and will be building on Carol's Book. If we had to release it as a book it will be several volumes worth of work, I don't think it will be unreasonable to charge at least something for this work, do you? Also remember in this case "profit" is a very strong word, publishing books like this is not a money making venture and will never pay for the time and effort that goes into producing it. If we are lucky we will cover our actual cost of hosting and building the website.

We need to decide what will be included in the checklist. The checklist will include the corrected information on all publications, it will likely include a link to the ML and SN and a photo of the publication. The idea with the checklist will be for it to be the authoritative resource regarding LEC, the order of publication etc and what we expect will eventually be the tool referenced when LEC books are sold by dealers or auction houses. This will also not be a static list and we will continue to edit it if new information comes to light. It will be published as a pdf file with hyperlinks to the additional information.

The majority of the ephemera will likely be for the website and we are likely looking at 100's if not 1000's of pieces of ephemera. We will also do where possible detailed information on each publication, more detailed photos and more. This is a project that will take many years to finish and if we go ahead will probably launch at some stage in a basic form and be build up from there with constant updates.

Additional Note: I almost forgot the website will eventually include information on other George Macy companies as well, it really is a big undertaking. regular articles being posted on various tidbits of information, unusual occurrences or situations and so forth.

Can something be copyright-protected if it doesn't have a copyright notice on it? I don't recall an ML ever having such a notice. I know the LEC books mention something like "special contents of this edition are property of George Macy Company" but I take that to mean the illustrations, introduction, etc. I would think the ML, as a separate object, would need its own notice.

According to the Copyright Alliance: "Prior to 1989 including a copyright notice on a copyrighted work was required under U.S. law, but that is no longer the case. Although copyright notice is no longer required, a copyright owner would be wise to include a copyright notice because it prevents an infringer from raising a defense of innocent infringement."

So perhaps pre-1989 MLs are fair game? I'm not trying to be argumentative, just sharing my thoughts.

How does uploading scans of ML not constitute fair use? None of this is for profit. The availability of ML here only serves to bolster the market for LEC.

>46 A.Nobody: I hadn’t inspected one recently but you’re right. No notice. Bodes well.

Work has steadily progressed on this project over the last two weeks.
1929 to 1937 and 1982 to 2010 are now complete.
Many random books from the intervening years have also been dealt with.
It is harder to find details about many of the later years as they are not covered in any bibliography, so they were tackled first.
The supply of Monthly Letters has dried up though.
Please inspect your collection and the list. if you have any of the missing Monthly letters (or better copies) please scan or photograph them then send me a Personal Message and I will reply with an email address where you can send them for upload to the list.

>49 wcarter: I'll see what I have.

>49 wcarter: I discovered my 1954 Cyrano de Bergerac was hiding the Announcement, Monthly Letter, and Ephemera with different translations of Cyrano's Ballad he composes while dueling the Vicomte de Valvert.

I've uploaded the three documents to the Drive where I believe you can retrieve them for this excellent new repository.

>51 BionicJim:
Thank you.

Shouldn't this thread be pinned at the top of the Group list (as in the Folio Society group)? It seems this will be returned to repeatedly and it should always be at the top.

>53 laotzu225:
This can only be done by the administrator, Django6924

IT IS DONE!!!!!!

After eight months and about 600 hours of work, the Complete List of Limited Editions Club books is finished.

Every book has extensive details about it, a link to a picture, and where available, a link to the appropriate Monthly Letter.

A reminder that the link to the list is now pinned to the top of the George Macy Devotees forum website or can be accessed at -
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Groups:LIMITED_EDITIONS_CLUB

I realise there will be typos, errors and omissions as I am yet to edit the list. Please bring any you find to my attention.

Anyone who has copies of the missing Monthly Letters or Announcement Cards, please scan or photograph them and then send me a personal message by clicking on my name at above left beside the 55, and follow the prompts on the right side of the screen. I will reply with an email address where you can send them to me.

I rewarded myself by purchasing a copy of the last book I catalogued, the 1972 Panchatantra. I worked in to towards the middle from both ends of the list to give myself some variety and this was 637th. book catalogued.

>55 wcarter: Thank you! What an effort. This will be a great resource.

>55 wcarter: Congratulations on compiling this amazing resource wcarter, it is so much appreciated! I will post about it again on my blog when I work on the next book post.

>55 wcarter: Well done! This has helped so many of us and will continue to be a valuable resource. Your knowledge, expertise and organizational skills are much appreciated. I refer to the list whenever considering a purchase or just to answer a question. It’s nice to search the forums for members’ comments on a particular issue but having a reference like this is a different and in many ways a better thing altogether.Quite a feat. Thank you.

I would like to provide at least one of the missing monthly letters but you already have the ones that I have in my collection.

Does anybody have a copy of the Salome (1938) letter to share with the group? I'm excited to have recently acquired the set, even without the letter, but I would love to learn more about its production. The style of Derain's illustrations seem to be such an anomaly for the LEC.

>55 wcarter:
Kafka’s Metamorphosis rather than Metamorphoses. 1984 LEC. Since you ask for corrections.

Terrific work, for which many thanks!

>60 GusLogan:
Thanks. Fixed.

>59 encephalophagy: I can only second this request re the 1938 Salome!
Getting copies of missing Letters is one of my dreams.

Another six Monthly Letters and Announcement Cards have been added to the LEC list in the last month as contributions trickle in. Check to see if one you want has been added, or see if you can supply any that are missing.

Thanks to member PBB who has supplied further Monthly Letter copies, the list is now complete with every Monthly Letter for the first ten years. There are still some missing from later years.

>64 wcarter: Thank you PBB! A huge update!