THE BRITISHinfo@rarebooksociety.org |
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GENRE FICTION | |
This course is aimed both at potential collectors and potential booksellers wishing to specialise in certain categories of genre fiction - the kinds of fiction to which labels have been attached over the years for marketing and other reasons. The period covered will be from the gothic novel of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century on to the mid twentieth century. The emphasis will be on books published in the British Isles, but the USA and Canada will also receive due attention - and there will be material on the different sub-genres - the different styles of publication - the importance of the libraries and other aspects of distribution in influencing form, content and scarcity.
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Each of the units will include some kind of assignment, piece of coursework, or element of active participation - and each of which must be successfully completed before moving on to the next unit. There will be a final test at the end to ensure that the lessons have been satisfactorily assimilated. Any help you may need will be available either from a Rare Book Society administrator or direct from the writer of the course by e-mail correspondence. | |
The fee for the course is anticipated to be in the region of £200 - £250 and it is expected to be available from May 2005. The course will be delivered by means of password access to hidden areas of the website. To see how this works, simply use the password - interested - to access the details of how to register page. You will be kept informed and notified as soon as formal applications begin to be processed. | |
This course is being compiled by George Locke of Ferret Fantasy. Born 1936. Trained and qualified as a pharmacist in the late 1950s, practising thereafter until the late 1960s. Spent several years as sub-editor of The Pharmaceutical Journal and edited Sailplane & Gliding for two years in the early 1970s. A collector of old science fiction and fantasy for many years, entered the full-time book trade as a specialist in those subjects about 1972, extending the inventory to include crime fiction and then pre-1950 fiction in general. Widely recognised in the book trade as the most knowledgeable dealer in the byways of science fiction, fantasy and crime fiction. Author of Voyages in Space : A Bibliography of Interplanetary Fiction 1801-1914 (1975); Science Fiction First Editions : A Select Bibliography and Notes for the Collector (1978); A Spectrum of Fantasy : The Bibliography and Biography of a Collection of Fantastic Literature (three volumes, 1980-2002 - plus occasional supplements); Thirty years of Dustwrappers : 1884-1914 (1988); Pearson's Weekly : A Checklist of Fiction, 1890-1939 (1990); The Premier Magazine 1914 to 1931 : An Annotated Checklist (1999), etc. Editor of A. E. Waite : The Quest for Bloods : A Study of the Victorian Penny Dreadful (1997); and (with Takayuki Tatsumi) of Sources of Science Fiction : Future War Novels of the 1890s (1998). Now semi-retired - and twice as busy as ever! | |
| The Rare Book Society was founded by members of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association (International) - and the Association enthusiastically endorses the programme. |
Return to the Rare Book Society home page. | |
