[Two Homemade Photo Albums]: E 6th St [and] The Grossman's East Chatham Building Book

New York, 1971. Hardcover. Very Good. Two tall octavo volumes. Unpaged. A few images loose or detached but all are present, very good or better. Homemade photo albums and journals made by Jill Grossman for her husband the noted publisher Richard Grossman. *The Grossman's East Chatham Building Book* (133 photographs, various sizes, both black and white and color, many captioned, hand-drawn map) photographically records and captions the construction of the Grossman's New York State House in East Chatham between 1968-1969, and is presented and dedicated to Richard by Jill in 1971. It shows the couple building the house: framing, raising walls, roofing, painting, gardening, gathering firewood, smoking pot, and generally living an idyllic country life. *E 6th St* (handpainted boards with applied handwritten title. 41 photographs, various sizes, both black and white and color, mostly uncaptioned, applied title page elements) is dated in 1970 (probably completed in 1971, as the final picture is dated on Christmas in 1970), shows a few images of their apartment but mostly concerns itself with scenes from New York's then-gritty streets, including images of the Fillmore East marquee, storefronts, a wall with layers of stripped posters, graffiti, posters advertising Bella Abzug's Congressional Campaign, and street characters. Richard Grossman made his living and his fame as a small publisher, publishing books such as Ralph Nadar's *Unsafe At Any Speed* and Helen Hanff's *84 Charing Cross Road*. The creator of the books, Jill Kneerim, was Grossman's second wife (later divorced) and is a respected literary agent. These charming handmade books capturing a brief but interesting moment in time in the life of the liberal New York publisher.