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It is one of the strangest stories in the history of modern literature. A novel rejected by every commercial publisher who saw it. A novel prosecuted for obscenity in the United States before it had even been issued as a book. A novel barred from entry into the United Kingdom by His Majesty’s Customs for…
It is one of the great near-misses in modern publishing history. In 1953 a forty-one-year-old schoolmaster named William Golding finished a short, strange novel about a group of English boys stranded on a tropical island after a plane crash, and sent the manuscript out to find a publisher. More than twenty London houses read it.…
There is a particular category of rare book that transcends the ordinary parameters of the collecting field. These are not simply early printings of significant texts they are the physical embodiments of cultural turning points, volumes whose first appearances in the world marked moments from which literature, science, and intellectual history did not return. To…
Some books exist in multiple registers simultaneously. There is The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as a text — the collection of quatrains composed in eleventh-century Persia by the mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyám, rendered into English verse by Edward FitzGerald in 1859, and subsequently translated, illustrated, printed, and bound in more editions than any comparable…
The Nobel Prize in Literature is the most consequential recognition in the literary world. Awarded annually by the Swedish Academy since 1901, it has conferred its authority on writers whose work has, in the Academy’s enduring phrase, been of the greatest benefit to mankind — a formulation capacious enough to encompass poets, novelists, essayists, and…
In the spring of 2026, PBS’s Emmy Award-winning Made With Love series turned its attention to a question that has rarely felt more timely: in a country marking the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, what does it still mean to make something by hand? The result was a special episode, Celebrating America 250: Made With Love,…
On May 14, 2026, Raptis Rare Books and Churchill Cigar Company had the extraordinary privilege of hosting legendary musician, musical director, and rock icon Mark Rivera for an unforgettable evening centered around his memoir, Sideman: In Pursuit of the Next Gig. The event brought together music lovers, book collectors, cigar aficionados, and members of the…
In April 2026, the CBS affiliate WBZ-TV turned its cameras on a subject that might seem, at first glance, an unlikely candidate for a lifestyle feature: a modest workshop in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where books are still sewn, rounded, backed, and tooled entirely by hand. The segment, produced for the station’s New England Living series and reported by…
Raptis Rare Books was recently featured in the May 10, 2026 issue of Florida Weekly: Celebrating 250 Years of America – Florida Weekly History comes to life this season on Worth Avenue, where Raptis Rare Books will mark the 250th anniversary of the United States with a remarkable exhibition of founding-era treasures. Set within the gallery’s…
Purple State of Mind: Fox News Commentator Dana Perino Launches her New Romance Book in Palm Beach.
May 18, 2026 BY VALERIE STAGGS FLORIDA WEEKLY CORRESPONDENT Inside Raptis Rare Book Store on Worth Avenue, stacks of FOX News Commentator Dana Perino’s new book, “Purple State,” sit waiting for the hundreds of eager fans in line at the author’s recent book signing. The books’ bright pink and purple covers brought a splash…
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