NEWS & COMMENT prizes galore are available to younger book collectors. But where to find them? Sarah Bennett has been in touch with all the main sponsors and will report in our next issue. For one of them, however, The California Young Collector’s Prize, the deadline is on our very doorstep – 1st December 2018. The chair, Ben Kinmont (bkinmont@ gmail.com) assures us that some leeway will be tolerated and so we give the details here and now: • Collectors must be under 35 and living in California, • What the judges will be looking at is thoroughness, the collectors’ approach to their subject and the seriousness with which the collec- tion has been catalogued, • The winner will get $500 to spend at the next California International Antiquarian Book Fair, $250 in expenses getting there and setting up, the chance to exhibit the collection, a year’s membership of the Book Club of California and, • A year’s subscription to the book collector which means getting four printed issues of about 200 pages each and access to our archive since 1947. rick gekoski , who was born in 1944 (a banner year), has had a long and distinctive career as a writer and book dealer. A few years ago he broke away from the world of cancels and missing maps to write Darke , a novel that garnered plaudits from all sides. He has now written a second novel entitled A Long Island Story , published by Canongate. According to one reviewer it’s on the very threshold of the ‘Great American Novel’ genre. when oliver goldsmith died in 1774 he was living in The Temple but was so poor from having spent most of his life in the literary desert that he had to make do with what was virtually a pauper’s grave just outside the Temple railings. Now, 244 years later, his tombstone is fast deteriorating. We should care about this. “The Vicar of Wakefield” came first, then “The Deserted Village”. Finally, in 1773, he attained one of the high spots of eighteenth century literary life with “She
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