George Koppelman & Daniel Wechsler
Authors of Shakespeare’s Beehive: An Annotated Elizabethan Dictionary Comes to Light
George Koppelman and Daniel Wechsler have independently both spent more than two decades working with rare books. Each is a member of several respected rare books organizations, including the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and The Grolier Club. Since first meeting at Mr. Wechsler’s Upper West Side shop, Book Ark, in 1995, they have shared a common bond over a love for, and a devotion to, the labyrinthine world encompassed by books.
Mr. Koppelman, in operating Cultured Oyster Books (1993 -present), and Mr. Wechsler, in operating Sanctuary Books (2001-present), have each gone through the process of cataloguing thousands of books, spanning all fields and time periods, to say nothing of the countless additional books and manuscripts that they have had the opportunity to handle apart from those that they have owned personally or as part of their respective businesses. Occasionally the two firms have combined forces on cataloguing projects, none as significant, or as spectacularly time-consuming, as the present one: the annotated copy of John Baret’s, Alvearie; or Quadruple Dictionarie, 1580, that is represented here, and which is the subject of their joint publishing effort, Shakespeare’s Beehive: An Annotated Elizabethan Dictionary Comes to Light. Due to the delicate nature of the project, and the possibility of particularly sensitive reactions that have for some time been anticipated, an independent company, Axletree Press LLC, was formed subsequent to the joint acquisition of the Baret, to more carefully manage the acquisition and to oversee all by-products of research related to the book.
