Current Events & Trends | February 2024 | Rebecca Rego Barry

Collecting Carolyn Wells

Rebecca Rego Barry

A selection of Rebecca's Carolyn Wells collection

Throughout the process of writing my new book, The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells: Investigations into a Forgotten Mystery Author (published by PostHill Press on February 13). I kept reminding myself that this was not a book collection, it was a biography. 

However, after I had acquired more than a few interesting items for “research,” I had to come to terms with the fact that I could not separate the two. Carolyn Wells was both the author of more than 180 books and a major book collector, offering at least two paths for collecting material related to her.

Little by little, I starting collecting her in earnest. I’m no completist; I include only items that seem special — her own titles signed by her or someone in her circle; volumes containing her bookplate; letters of a literary nature; and neat ephemera. Here is a sampling of my collection:

One of a handful of publicity portraits of Carolyn Wells from the Brown Brothers photo archive, circa 1895. Found on eBay!
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Rebecca Rego Barry

One of a handful of publicity portraits of Carolyn Wells from the Brown Brothers photo archive, circa 1895. Found on eBay!

A copy of Patty at Home (1904), one of Wells’s immensely popular young adult novels, inscribed by her to her longtime friend and collaborator, Gelett Burgess. Burgess then gifted it to Betty Chester, and from there the book spent some time with the Paine Furniture Company before book collector Kurt Zimmerman spied it for sale and bought it for me in 2021.
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Rebecca Rego Barry

A copy of Patty at Home (1904), one of Wells’s immensely popular young adult novels, inscribed by her to her longtime friend and collaborator, Gelett Burgess. Burgess then gifted it to Betty Chester, and from there the book spent some time with the Paine Furniture Company before book collector Kurt Zimmerman spied it for sale and bought it for me in 2021.

A tattered sixth edition of Edward Lear’s A Book of Nonsense (1846) previously owned by Wells. Lear was one of her all-time favorite writers.
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Rebecca Rego Barry

A tattered sixth edition of Edward Lear’s A Book of Nonsense (1846) previously owned by Wells. Lear was one of her all-time favorite writers.

A lovely matted photo of Wells, circa 1890s, inscribed “Yours sincerely / Carolyn Wells Houghton / as was — twenty years ago!” I bought this one at Between the Covers Rare Books in 2023.
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Rebecca Rego Barry

A lovely matted photo of Wells, circa 1890s, inscribed “Yours sincerely / Carolyn Wells Houghton / as was — twenty years ago!” I bought this one at Between the Covers Rare Books in 2023.

A first edition of Wells’s The Lover’s Baedeker and Guide to Arcady (1912) that she inscribed for Mina Miller Edison, Thomas Edison’s wife, on the occasion of a lunch at the Edisons’ home in May 1913. I bought this one at the Old Bookshop of Bordentown back in 2021, and it became the basis for a chapter in my book about Wells’s work in silent film with Edison and others.
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Rebecca Rego Barry

A first edition of Wells’s The Lover’s Baedeker and Guide to Arcady (1912) that she inscribed for Mina Miller Edison, Thomas Edison’s wife, on the occasion of a lunch at the Edisons’ home in May 1913. I bought this one at the Old Bookshop of Bordentown back in 2021, and it became the basis for a chapter in my book about Wells’s work in silent film with Edison and others.

A first edition of Wells’s nonfiction history & how-to,The Technique of the Mystery Story (1913). This copy was owned first by Gelett Burgess and then by major book collector E.T. (Ned) Guymon, whose very cool bookplate can be seen here. Purchased this one in 2022 from Babylon Revisited Rare Books.
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Rebecca Rego Barry

A first edition of Wells’s nonfiction history & how-to, The Technique of the Mystery Story (1913). This copy was owned first by Gelett Burgess and then by major book collector E.T. (Ned) Guymon, whose very cool bookplate can be seen here. Purchased this one in 2022 from Babylon Revisited Rare Books.

A 1929 autograph letter signed from Wells to her close friend (and fellow collector) Harriet Sprague in which she discusses buying a first edition of Henry David Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers — very probably the copy I own. Both acquired from bookseller Rusty Mott.
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Rebecca Rego Barry

A 1929 autograph letter signed from Wells to her close friend (and fellow collector) Harriet Sprague in which she discusses buying a first edition of Henry David Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers — very probably the copy I own. Both acquired from bookseller Rusty Mott.

Wells’s novels were serialized in pulp magazines like Complete Detective Novel throughout the 1920s and ’30s. This example featuring “The Skeleton at the Feast” with cover art by H.L. Parkhurst was published in May, 1931.
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Rebecca Rego Barry

Wells’s novels were serialized in pulp magazines like Complete Detective Novel throughout the 1920s and 1930s. This example featuring The Skeleton at the Feast with cover art by H.L. Parkhurst was published in May, 1931.

The final auction catalogue (annotated by someone at the auction) dispersing Wells’s library after her death in 1942. Her Walt Whitman collection went to the Library of Congress, and friends received specific bequests from the collection, but the rest were sold.
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Rebecca Rego Barry

The final auction catalogue (annotated by someone at the auction) dispersing Wells’s library after her death in 1942. Her Walt Whitman collection went to the Library of Congress, and friends received specific bequests from the collection, but the rest were sold.

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