L.L. Bean, Inc. Outdoor Sporting Specialties, A Company Scrapbook, Edited by William David Barry, is a 163-page softcover privately printed in 1987 for L.L. Bean, Inc., The Anthosensen Press, Portland, Maine. There is mild shelf wear to the cover. Inside, the pages are clean and unmarked and the binding is tight.
L.L. Bean, Inc. is one of only a handful of American businesses to have attained legendary status in the public mind. The company's enviable reputation rests on the integrity of its product line, its first-rate customer service, and its ability over the years to change as its customers' needs have changed. When we were invited, as free-lancers, to work on this project, we were told that the company wanted objectivity. As the book developed, that proved to be so: at Bean's, image and legend are quite inseparable from reality.
The book itself was the idea of Leon Gorman, who envisioned a scrapbook based on information from company files and archives. Scotland's great poet Robert Burns once wrote: "Oh wad some power the giftie gie us/to see oursels as others see us." In this tradition, such a collection would allow the reader to see the company as others have seen it through the decades. We have selected material that, in our opinion, best reflects the life of "L.L." and the history of the company. Given the array and richness of possibilities, this selection was a difficult but always fascinating process.
--Bruce Kennett and William David Barry, Portland, January 1987, from the Introduction to the book
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 86-073125
