Education
She graduated from Barnard College in 1932 with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature.
(The rare book dealers who delighted readers with the hist...)
The rare book dealers who delighted readers with the history of their bookselling days in "Old Books, Rare Friends" now offer the other side of their story -- an intimate look at the joys of a relationship that has lasted more than half a century. When their friendship and business partnership began in the 1940s, Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern were pioneers in a man's world. Now approaching their nineties, the duo, who -- among their many discoveries -- unearthed Louisa May Alcott's pseudonymous blood-and-thunder stories, remains a vibrant institution in the rare book trade, even as the Internet changes their field -- and their community -- forever. After publishing "Old Books, Rare Friends," Rostenberg and Stern received a flood of fan mail asking about their personal lives, and they have responded with poignant honesty and the warmth for which they are famous, as they reflect on their lives and their remarkable partnership. "Bookends" recounts their fascinating histories: family backgrounds, business adventures, the men they did not marry, and their approach to the bittersweet trials of aging. More than just a dual memoir, "Bookends" is also a chronicle of the cultural changes of twentieth-century American life and a loving farewell to the golden age of book collecting. Filled with wisdom and humor, this volume is a tribute to Rostenberg and Stern's passion for the written word -- and for life itself. Catching us off guard with their candor, they offer their insights regarding their business, their way of life, and their worldview. Above all, they present the story of a special relationship. At a time when people find it increasingly difficult to connect, here wehave the seamless story of a shared life. It is the unique product of an earlier time, yet it is a timeless reflection on the very nature of friendship. Though their fantastic partnership is un-reproducible, the ideal they have established, for the integration of one life so completely with another, contains lessons for all of us. Without husband or children they created a loving home when this was uncharted territory for women. They nurtured a business and life partnership that has lasted more than half a century and has only gotten stronger with time. When the passing years began to claim one's hearing and the other's sight, they became each other's eyes and ears. A meditation on aging and togetherness, this book is also the narrative of two pioneering single, Jewish women making their way in tandem through a world largely organized to keep them in their place. It is a gentle, wise story, told in their inimitable style, sparse, unadorned, and honest. Their affirmations supersede their uncertainties. As they write, "Bookends support books and come in pairs...If the word encapsulates our past, it looks also to the future, and to the books -- lived together, written together -- that will follow." They confront the challenges of aging in a no-nonsense tone, and, in facing them, give us an ideal of enduring human friendship that can't help but touch the heart.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743202457/?tag=2022091-20
( An abolitionist and a champion of free love and women’s...)
An abolitionist and a champion of free love and women’s rights would seem decidedly out of place in nineteenth-century Texas, but such a man was Stephen Pearl Andrews (1812–1886), American reformer, civil rights proponent, pioneer in sociology, advocate of reformed spelling, lawyer, and eccentric philosopher. Since his life mirrored and often anticipated the various reform movements spawned not only in Texas but in the United States in the nineteenth century, this first biography of him sharply reflects and elucidates his times. The extremely important role Andrews played in the abolition movement in this country has not heretofore been accorded him. After having witnessed slavery in Louisiana during the 1830s, Andrews came to Texas and began his career as an abolitionist with an audacious attempt to free the slaves there. His singular career, however, comprised many more activities than abolitionism, and most have long been forgotten by historians. He introduced Pitman shorthand into the United States as a means of teaching the uneducated to read; his role in the community of Modern Times, Long Island, was as important as that of Josiah Warren, the “first American anarchist,” although Andrews’s participation in this communal venture, along with the significance of Modern Times itself, has been underestimated. Other causes which Andrews supported included free love and the rights of women, dramatized by his journalistic debate with Horace Greeley and Henry James, Sr., and by his endorsement of Victoria Woodhull as the first woman candidate for the Presidency of the United States. These interests, together with his consequent involvement in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal, provide insight into some of the more colorful aspects of nineteenth-century American reform movements. Andrews’s attacks upon whatever infringed on individual freedom brought him into diverse arenas—economic, sociological, and philosophical. The philosophical system he developed included among its tenets the sovereignty of the individual, a science of society, a universal language (his Alwato long preceded Esperanto), the unity of the sciences, and a “Pantarchal United States of the World.” His philosophy has never before been epitomized nor have its applications to later thought been considered. “I have made it the business of my life to study social laws,” Andrews wrote. “I see now a new age beginning to appear.” This biography of the dynamic reformer examines those social laws and that still-unembodied new age. It reanimates a heretofore neglected American reformer and casts new light upon previously unexplored bypaths of nineteenth-century American social history. The biography is fully documented, based in part upon a corpus of unpublished material in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0292732104/?tag=2022091-20
(This work yields a fascinating and original perspective o...)
This work yields a fascinating and original perspective on the efforts of publishers and the progress of publishing from a common trade to an admired profession. "Revolution" begins with the effects of the great 15th century innovation of movable type to the introduction of electronic publishing in the late 20th century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1584560746/?tag=2022091-20
( This acclaimed biography of Margaret Fuller, first publ...)
This acclaimed biography of Margaret Fuller, first published nearly five decades ago, is now available in a new, expanded edition. Based on Fuller's detailed journals and other writings, it records the life and experiences of a literary critic, radical educator, and outspoken feminist who was deeply involved in the political, spiritual, and cultural ferment that characterized mid-nineteenth century America. It also provides a comprehensive update on recent scholarship and documentary materials that have come to light since the biography's original publication. Madeleine Stern examines Fuller's Massachusetts background, her friendship and literary collaboration with Ralph Waldo Emerson, her feminist writings, and her role as an educator of women. Universal in her interests, Fuller also concerned herself with the new sciences of phrenology and animal magnetisim, the advancement of the arts in Boston, the last stand of the Indians of the West, and the ill-fated Italian Republic. She became more widely known as the literary critic on Greeley's New York Tribune and later as America's first woman foreign correspondent. Stern includes a detailed chronology of Fuller's life and a review of Fuller scholarship, including biographies, editions of Fuller's works, and documentary sources. Drawn entirely from facts and impressions recorded by Margaret Fuller herself, this work provides a uniquely lifelike portrait, as well as the carefully researched resource for women's social history and the social, spiritual, and intellectual history of nineteenth-century America.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0313275262/?tag=2022091-20
(A reviewer stated in a glowing review: "If you love books...)
A reviewer stated in a glowing review: "If you love books at all, then go forth and hunt down this one. It is a rare treasure in itself, an authentic feelgood odyssey through the world of booksellers, their wares and their curious habitats."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0929246004/?tag=2022091-20
(Ranging from excerpts from the "Little Women" trilogy to ...)
Ranging from excerpts from the "Little Women" trilogy to experimental short stories, juvenile fiction, and autobiographic tales, this collection reveals the range of Alcott's imagination and her constantly shifting interests in both subject and style.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316783498/?tag=2022091-20
(First edition. Many different contributors have prepared ...)
First edition. Many different contributors have prepared 46 articles discussing some of the more obscure 19th century American publishers. Listing of references for each are included. Essential book in the study of American publishing. xxii, 358 pages. cloth.. 8vo..
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816184712/?tag=2022091-20
(Two of New York's most legendary antiquarian dealers have...)
Two of New York's most legendary antiquarian dealers have put pen to paper again and traced the fates of 30 unique books. Both authors scanned the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries looking for boks with interesting narratives. Each book selected has it own dramatic experience, origin and destiny. This collection of essays brings to life a cast of characters such as Shakespear, Descartes, Shelly, Poe, George Eliot, and many others.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1584560487/?tag=2022091-20
( Victoria Woodhull is remembered as the first woman to r...)
Victoria Woodhull is remembered as the first woman to run for the presidency of the United States—in 1872—and as an advocate of a single standard of morality for both sexes. We the Women describes a side of Woodhull less well known: the first woman stockbroker in America, she was successful on Wall Street while lambasting in her journal the railroads, insurance companies, and other special-interest groups. Stern offers biographical sketches of Belva Ann Lockwood, who fought for the right to practice law before the Supreme Court; Isabel C. Barrows, the first woman stenographer in the State Department; Rebecca Pennell Dean, criticized for not "knowing her place" when she joined a college faculty; Ellen H. Richards, the first university-trained chemist and a relentless worker for public health; Lucy Hobbs Taylor, who led women into the field of dentistry; Sarah G. Bagley, the first woman telegrapher; Rebecca Lukens, a premier captain of industry whose vision helped shape America's iron age; Mary Ann Lee, the ballerina who introduced Americans to revolutionary dances from abroad; Ann S. Stephen, the author of the first Beadle Dime Novel; Candace Wheeler, who brought women into the profession of home interior decoration; and Harriet Irwin, Louise Bethune, and Sophia G. Hayden, who paved the way for women to become professional architects. These nineteenth-century American women were the first to succeed in professions previously open only to men. Madeleine B. Stern has restored them richly to life in We the Women. The determination and intelligence of these women won for women a place in the arts, science and technology, education and the law, and business and industry. Among Stern's other books are Louisa May Alcott and The Life of Margaret Fuller.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0833755358/?tag=2022091-20
(First edition. An important research tool by this well-kn...)
First edition. An important research tool by this well-known bookseller. The ten chapters cover different areas of the country. Also gives a guide to the literature on the subject. Presentation from Stern on the free endpaper "For Alice Jones with best wishes, Madeleine B. Stern." xviii, 246 pages. cloth.. 8vo..
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0313247293/?tag=2022091-20
(First edition. The dynamic-duo of New York's antiquarian ...)
First edition. The dynamic-duo of New York's antiquarian book scene have written a unique and interesting series of essays on the creation of new fields of book collecting. With hard-won authority the authors share with their readers their extraordinary careers that span more than fifty years. Rostenberg & Stern were pioneers in cultivating interests in such diverse fields as Feminism, Judaica, Black Culture and Utopia. We empathize with the wonder and excitement of the authors as countless rare and beautiful books pass through their hands. We learn the byzantine and unspoken "rules of the game" of the rare book trade, and how - in the mid-1940s - two young Jewish girls broke into the male-dominated field of antiquarian book selling by specializing in new and unchartered fields. NEW WORLDS IN OLD BOOKS is a must read for any bibliophile. 210 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1884718892/?tag=2022091-20
She graduated from Barnard College in 1932 with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature.
She received her Master of Arts in English literature from Columbia University in 1934. was particularly known for her work on the writer Louisa May Alcott. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943 to write a biography of Alcott, which was eventually published in 1950. The pair lived and worked in Rostenberg"s house in the Bronx.
They were known for creating unique rare book catalogs.
In 1960, helped found the New York Antiquarian Book Fair. Books by Madeleine B.
( An abolitionist and a champion of free love and women’s...)
(The Life of Margaret Fuller: A Revised (Rev) (Contributio...)
(Ranging from excerpts from the "Little Women" trilogy to ...)
(The rare book dealers who delighted readers with the hist...)
( Victoria Woodhull is remembered as the first woman to r...)
( Victoria Woodhull is remembered as the first woman to r...)
(This work yields a fascinating and original perspective o...)
( This acclaimed biography of Margaret Fuller, first publ...)
(Hardcover: 341 pages Publisher: Rr Bowker Llc (December 1...)
(Two of New York's most legendary antiquarian dealers have...)
(A reviewer stated in a glowing review: "If you love books...)
(This book and its author were praised by historian Frank ...)
(Book by Rostenberg, Leona and Stern, Madeleine B.)
(First edition. Many different contributors have prepared ...)
(First edition. An important research tool by this well-kn...)
(First edition. The dynamic-duo of New York's antiquarian ...)
(First edition. The first autobiographical sketches by the...)
(1953. Article at pp.133-155 in The Papers of the Bibliogr...)
Rostenberg and Stern were active members of the Antiquarian Booksellers" Association of America, at a time when few women were members.