I managed to pick up three different Cheap Street Press books from a couple of different sources over the last week:
Also laid into this copy is the four page prospectus for the book:
I already had two other Benford Cheap Street books (the hardback Of Space/Time and the River and the chapbook of We Could Do Worse), which means I’m still missing:
Plus several Cheap Street books by other authors.
One of my favorite authors is Gene Wolfe (which you might have noticed before), so naturally I’ve tried to collect all his books. This includes all his chapbooks, some of which can be quite difficult to find.
Among his hardest to find are the ones he did for Cheap Street. Over the years I have picked up four of the five pure chapbooks done by them (as well as the two hardback books, Empires of Flowers and Foliage and Bibliomen), but frequently I would have trouble remembering which of them I have, a difficulty not aided by rather bland exteriors of the chapbooks themselves and the fact that all came in a standard Cheap Street envelope when I bought them, none of which revealed what was inside.
So, for both the sake of Gene Wolfe collectors, and to jog my own memory, I’ve scanned the title pages of each of the ones I have (click to embiggen):
Or, to list them in order of publication:
I think I paid in the $35-$40 range for each of those.
Chalker and Owings says that seven copies of each of the above were done as leather-bound hardbacks. Not only do I not have those, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of them offered for sale.
As far as I can tell, I’m only missing two Wolfe chapbooks now:
I’ll have to add those to the want list.
I think I have a first edition hardback of every other Gene Wolfe book.
More about Cheap Street here.
I have a complete collection of Greg Bear’s first edition hardbacks (though I do still need to pick up a copy of the recently published Hull Zero Three). However, until recently I was missing two Bear books, one very easy to find (Foundation and Chaos, a copy of which I just picked up at one-quarter the publisher’s price), and the other one, the Cheap Street Sleepside Story, very expensive. However, I finally picked up a copy from a noted SF dealer having a 50% off sale (the same dealer I bought the first edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four from) for $175.
Here are some pictures. The open book and traycase are too large to fit on my scanner, and the visible weave of the cloth made it hard to get a good picture without getting moire patterns:
Full description:
Bear, Greg. Sleepside Story. Cheap Street, 1988. First edition hardback, one of 127 total copies, of which this is one of 52 copies signed by Bear and artist Judy King-Rieniets comprising the “Publisher’s Edition,” done in two-part red and black Japanese cloth, a fine copy in Japanese cloth tray case, without dust jacket, as issued.
For those unaware of the press, Cheap Street was the imprint of Nan and George O’Nale, founded in 1980, doing very small runs of beautiful, hand-bound books. (Jack Chalker noted that they were the only publishers that refused to provide information for The Science Fantasy Publishers, the massive book on SF small presses that he and Mark Ownings compiled, and described them as temperamental, secretive, and hostile, at least to him. Like many of Jack’s descriptions in The Science Fantasy Publishers, there are probably several grains of truth to that view which also need to be taken with several grains of salt…) The last science fiction book they did was Howard Waldrop’s Flying Saucer Rock and Roll (which I also have), though Howard tells me they did one non-SF book after that, a book of jokes related to the Forest Service (which George O’Nale had evidently worked for). Unfortunately, in 2003 the O’Nale’s committed double-suicide, leaving behind careful instructions as to where their bodies would be found and for the disposition of their estate.
I don’t have a complete Cheap Street set, though I do have a goodly number, and hope to pick up the rest when I can find them at attractive prices.
Edited to Add: This first issue of Andrew Porter’s fanzine Monadock reprints the Roanoke Times piece on the O’Nale suicide, the original of which no longer appears to be up on the Roanoke Times website.