Between Boards: New Thoughts on Old Books

by Leona Rostenberg

Reminiscences of two grand ladies of the bookselling world. These decades long friends, business and life partners became widely known in the late 1990s while in their late eighties when their memoir on the rare book trade, "Old Books, Rare Friends" became a deserved best seller.

Genres: Books About Books, Essays

221 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1978

About the author

Leona Rostenberg was born in the Bronx on December 28, 1908, to Dr. Adolph and Louisa D. Rostenberg. Her father was a dermatologist. She met Ms. Stern in 1930 while she was a senior at New York University and Ms. Stern was a freshman at Barnard.

Ms. Stern lent Ms. Rostenberg $1,000 to start her rare-book business and eventually joined her as partner. They lived first in Ms. Rostenberg's family house in the Bronx, and then in Manhattan.

The discovery in 1942 of the works by Alcott, all written before she gained fame as the author of "Little Women," brought a moment of detective-work thrill for Ms. Rostenberg and her partner and forever altered Alcott scholarship.

A past president of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America, Ms. Rostenberg wrote numerous books herself: scholarly works on printing history, and memoirs written with Ms. Stern that twinned their love of literary sleuthing with reminiscences of their life together.