Robin Bledsoe and Norman Fine
The Closing of a Literary Institution: An Opportunity for Readers and Collectors
Robin Bledsoe, bookseller, at right with customers...two members of the mounted police force...in the backyard of her bookshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Robin
As I close my bookshop and open a new chapter in my bookselling career, Norm has asked me to say a few words about my almost half century of selling horse books.
Ever since I received Somebody’s Pony for Christmas 1952, I’ve cherished and collected horse books. After earning an M.A. in art history and starting a publishing career, I began selling out-of-print books in my two fields of interest, horses and art. I named the business Blue Rider Books after a group of German artists who often painted horses. I found some books in nearby book barns, ran some classified ads, mailed out a list, and so it all began—100-plus catalogues, dozens of trade fairs and horse shows, and tens of thousands of books ago.
