Auction Preview: February Sales

Another fairly quiet month on the auction front:

- There's a Bibliophile Sale at Bloomsbury tomorrow, 2 February, in 318 lots.

- At PBA Galleries, Rare Books & Manuscripts in 195 lots on 6 February.

- Heritage Auctions has a Rare Books sale on 8 February.

- Bonhams will sell Property from Serendipity Books on 12 February, in 270 lots.

- A few books are included in Bonhams 16 February Edinburgh sale.

- Also on 16, PBA Galleries sells Americana and Cartography (catalog not yet online).

- Bloomsbury will sell the Horological Library of Charles Allix on 22 February, in 138 lots.

- Swann Galleries is selling Private Press & Illustrated Books on 23 February, in 281 lots.

"The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore"

One of the short animated films nominated for an Oscar this year is "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," which I think all biblio-humans are likely to enjoy greatly. I know I did!

Book Recommendation: "Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbeaking Life"

Natalie Dykstra's Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) is another of those books I've had the privilege to anticipate for a long time. The author did much of her research for the book in collections held at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and I certainly delivered more than a few boxes to her table in the reading room during my time there. So I know just how long and how diligently she's been working on this book, and I am really just incredibly pleased at the result. I had a difficult time reading the last few pages (on the train home from New York the other day) because of the tears in my eyes.

Gilded and heartbreaking. No two adjectives could better describe the life of Clover Adams than these. Stung from a much-too-young age by a series of horrific family tragedies, partner in a complicated marriage, and too often remembered, if at all, only as a famous woman who committed suicide.

Dykstra has gone to great lengths to bring Clover's life into full view, providing much-needed family context and background, highlighting her deep and meaningful relationships with her father and others that sustained her through many years, and, above all, examining Clover's use of photography during the last few years of her life and how that art allowed her to express herself in a way that she couldn't otherwise.

Drawing on a wide range of archival materials, some previously published and others published here for the first time, Dykstra is able to tell Clover's own story, and she does it very elegantly indeed. A beautiful, sad, delight the whole way through.

Links & Reviews

Good morning from the train back to Boston after a very successful Bibliography Week.

- From Res Obscura, images from Heinrich Khunrath's alchemical work Ampitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, with some very useful background.

- The Fine Books Blog "Bright Young Things" series continues with a profile of Brian Cassidy (whose blog you should be reading, if you're not already).

- Mark O'Connell posted "The Marginal Obsession with Marginalia" this week on the New Yorker book blog.

- A new web magazine, American Circus, has recently come to my attention; the articles so far are promising, and by subscribing you'll get email notification of new issues. Worth a read, certainly.

- Over on The Collation, Sarah Werner posts about how two students looked at the same book and saw very different things.

- Konrad Lawson highlights some crowdsourced transcription projects in the Chronicle, and a new one launched this week from NARA.

- Writing for Slate, Caleb Crain offers to eat Matt Ygelisas' lunch.

- Adam Hooks, at Anchora, defends the mangling of Shakespeare.

- From Houghton's new "You've Got Mail" series, Franklin on electricity.

- Washington University has joined HathiTrust.

Reviews

- Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin; review by Nicholas Shakespeare in the Telegraph.

- Cullen Murphy's God's Jury; review by Samuel Freedman in the NYTimes.

- Frederick Turner's Renegade; review by Jeanette Winterson in the NYTimes.

Bibliography Week in NYC

For the first time, I've actually managed to make it down to New York for (part of) Bibliography Week ("Bib Week") an annual lineup of great bibliophilic meetings and events.

My train was late getting in on Wednesday so I missed that afternoon's festivities, unfortunately (but I heard very good things about them). On Thursday morning I had a good, very fruitful meeting with catalogers at the New-York Historical Society about some forthcoming Libraries of Early America projects, and then visited the Bib Week booksellers' showcase (or "mini-fair"), sponsored by the ABAA and featuring a good selection of dealers and titles.

Friday afternoon was the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America, held at the Grolier Club. Prior to the business meeting three featured new scholars talked about their work: Steven Carl Smith on the New York book trade in the early national period, Juliette Atkinson on the circulation of Dumas' work in England, and Barbara Heritage on "Authors vs. bookmakers: Jane Eyre in the marketplace." All three talks were excellent, and served well to highlight how much good book history work is being done these days. Later, outgoing BSA president John Neal Hoover delivered a lecture on his research into the use of books in American cinema from 1900-1970, showing some representative clips of how books are used in both scene and plot (a database of scenes he's built will be available on BibSite later this year, he reported).

This afternoon the American Printing History Assocation holds its annual meeting, and in the evening a memorial gathering will be held to honor the life and work of Sue Allen, longtime RBS faculty member and expert on 19th-century American publishers' cloth bindings.

Bringing together bibliophiles and other great biblio-humans (it's sort of like a Rare Book School "old home week"), Bib Week is an excellent opportunity to catch up with old friends, make new connections, and certainly to learn more about the field and take in some of the many things New York has to offer. The Grolier Club's current exhibit "Printing for Kingdom, Empire, & Republic: Treasures from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale," is well worth a visit, just by way of a single example (but hurry, it's only up through 4 February!).

And now, off to the day's events (and a visit to Argosy Book Store). Watch the Grolier Club's website later this year for announcements about Bib Week 2013, and, if you can, do come.

Links & Reviews

- Released this week, a tremendous new resource on the history of paper, based on research by Tim Barrett and others: Paper Through Time. The background essay and other materials make for fascinating reading.

- Also new, the Cranach Digital Archive.

- Ann Trubek went inside Cleveland's bibliophilic society The Rowfant Club (one of the few remaining all-male biblio-organizations), and tells the tale.

- From bookseller Ken Karmiole, an essay on "Collecting the Physical Book in the Digital Age."

- A new exhibition at Cambridge University, Shelf Lives: Four Centuries of Collectors and Their Books. [h/t Mike Widener]

- Sarah Werner has posted her syllabus for her class "Books and Early Modern Culture."

- The Harvard Gazette reported this week on the launch of WorldMap, a new open-source mapping platform.

- In the Harvard Magazine, a look at Brontë juvenilia in the Houghton Library collections.

- Rebecca Rego Barry's essay "A Rare Book Collector's Guide to the College Library Book Sale" is now online at The Millions.

- Over at Past is Present, Tracey Kry highlights the Cardiff Giant, quite a good hoax from 1869 (which happened near where I grew up, and now resides at the wonderful Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown).

- The Poe Toaster failed to make an appearance in Baltimore for the third year in a row; observers now believe that the tradition has probably come to an end.

- A National Churchill Library and Center will be founded at The George Washington University, as part of an $8 million gift to the university from Chicago's Churchill Centre.

- From Ed Pettit at Ed and Edgar, a literacy quiz that he gave this week to a college class.

- The Collation has begun a series of guest posts by Folger interns: the first, by Ashley Behringer, examines the origins of a particular manuscript collection.

- Given the events of this week, if you read one review today, make it Caleb Crain's The Nation piece on William Patry's How to Fix Copyright and Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi's Reclaiming Fair Use. Joseph Adelman's Publick Occurrences blog post is also a must-read.

Reviews

- Michael Dirda's On Conan Doyle; review by David Mikics in TNR.

- Ian Donaldson's Ben Jonson: A Life; review by Charles Isherwood in the NYTimes.

- John M. Barry's Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.

- John Matteson's The Lives of Margaret Fuller; review by Mary Beth Norton in the NYTimes.

- Julia Flinn Siler's Lost Kingdom; review by Sara Kehaulani Goo in the WaPo.

- Richard Bailey's Speaking American; review by John McWhorter in the NYTimes.

Book Review: "The Rector and the Rogue"

The latest installment of the Collins Library, a McSweeney's imprint edited by the inimitable Paul Collins, is The Rector and the Rogue by W.A. Swanberg, first published in 1968 and re-issued in 2011. Collins' instinct for underappreciated gems certainly hasn't failed him here: what a book!

Swanberg's book is the story of what must be one of the most elaborate practical jokes ever undertaken. The unsuspecting rector of New York's Trinity Church was the main victim; over a period of several weeks his home is inundated by a procession of tradesmen and visitors, summoned there by postcards signed by the rector, Morgan Dix. One morning it's more than 25 used-clothing dealers, come to buy Mrs. Dix's wardrobe; another it's fourteen of Dix's fellow clergymen, invited to lunch with a not-actually-visiting English bishop. Eventually Dix goes to the postal authorities and the police, and an investigation reveals that Dix is not the only victim. But the victims seem totally unconnected, and the investigators are absolutely flummoxed as to the prankster's motive (it's presumed to be extortion, but that angle proves nothing but a red herring).

A lucky break leads to the eventual discovery of the mastermind behind the scheme/performance, a curious character who seems at first glance an unlikely conspirator, but whose past record, when explored more carefully, proves anything but spotless. I'll leave it to Swanberg to explain the rest of the story, as he does it very well indeed. Suffice it to say, it wasn't the first time, or even the most serious crime.

The hoakster, E. Fairfax Williamson, had been inspired by a previous practical joker, Theodore Edward Hook, who had carried out a similar scheme against Mrs. Octavia Tottenham in 1809, sending hordes of people thronging to her Berners Street home in London on a single morning. Swanberg explores Hook's work as the precursor to Williamson's even more elaborate persecution of Dix, a most enjoyable tangent to the main story.

Swanberg's writing is lively and humorous, and Collins' afterword, which offers up a fantastic corollary to the Williamson hoax by suggesting that perhaps the joke still hasn't yielded up its last punchline, is brilliant. Highly, highly recommended.

Book Review: "Why Read Moby-Dick?"

Nathaniel Philbrick's Why Read Moby-Dick? (Viking, 2010), at just 130 generously-spaced pages, makes for a very quick, but very enjoyable introduction to Melville's great novel. As Philbrick notes, the Moby-Dick can be a bit intimidating to start or to persevere with; with this little book he encourages a fresh look.

I've read Moby-Dick several times, but most recently about nine years ago, and Philbrick's book made me want to dive right back in again. I found myself nodding emphatically on page 8, when he calls the book "too long and too digressive to be properly appreciated by a sleep-deprived adolescent, particularly in this age of digital distractions." Moby-Dick is a book which makes great demands of its readers, both in time and attention. And that's not a bad thing. I certainly wish I had more time to hunker down with books like that, and I've been making a conscious effort to do so.

Philbrick's short chapters examine various aspects of the book itself, but also the context of Melville's life as he was writing, and his own personal reading and experiences which shaped the novel (he argues, for example, that without reading the letters Melville was sending as he was working on the book, it's difficult to understand the final product). He explores Melville's use of language, and his unconventional, even unique experiments with genre, style and plot. And he's pulled out some of the best quotes from the novel, highlighting Melville's sense of humor, his ability to set a scene, and to build up a head of literary tension.

Even if you don't agree with all of Philbrick's particular interpretations of the novels events and themes, this little book will at least make you think about Melville's novel in a new light, and maybe, just maybe, you'll reach over and pluck that copy off your bookshelf and read a chapter or two. It's going to snow this afternoon ... I think I may do just that.

This Week's Acquisition

Just one new arrival this week:

- The Conan Doyle Stories (Blitz Editions, 1990). A compilation volume of Conan Doyle short stories that I haven't yet read.

Audubon Sells at Christie's

The Duke of Portland's copy of Audubons' Birds of America sold just now at Christie's New York for $7,922,500 (including premiums), not meeting the previous record price. Information on the buyer when it becomes available.

[Update: The buyer is now being identified as "an American collector," who bid by phone. If I find out more, I'll add it. If you bought the Birds, let me know!]