Welcome to the Paper Trail

(A First Dispatch from the Margins of History)

Sometimes history doesn’t announce itself in a book or a monument—it hides in a flyer, a letter, or a handbill that somehow survived. Inside a box of forgotten paper might be nothing—or everything: a protest leaflet folded behind a ledger, a love letter from a vanished address, a poster still carrying the faint smell of ink. These scraps are the ghosts of lives that never expected to be remembered.

Ephemera is the democracy of history. Printed by whoever had access to a mimeograph and a message, it tells us what people felt, not just what they were told to think. A single handbill can reveal more about a decade than any textbook. That accidental survival is what draws me in. Paper was meant to be thrown away, yet it endures—outliving causes, companies, even countries—waiting for someone curious enough to ask, Who printed this, and why?

At Tomberg Rare Books, I spend my day chasing those questions through archives, attics and flea markets. This blog follows that trail: brief stories from the edges of history, where lost paper finds its voice again.

If you’ve ever felt the tug of history in a piece of paper—welcome. You’re among friends here.

Andrea Tomberg

Tomberg Rare Books