Book Recommendation: "A Brave Vessel"

Since I work with Hobson Woodward, the author of A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' (Viking, 2009), it certainly wouldn't be fair of me to review it in the same way I would review any other book. But I will say that I have read A Brave Vessel, and enjoyed it greatly. Hobson's done a great job of recreating the Sea Venture voyage and its aftermath, and argues persuasively that William Strachey's narrative of the events was known to Shakespeare and utilized by him in the composition of The Tempest. He puts the notes to good use by adding further details there, and offers an excellent and lengthy bibliography.

Links & Reviews

- The AP reports on some of the items known to be missing from the National Archives. Senator Charles Grassley has demanded "an accounting" of all missing items.

- Sarah Vowell weighs in on the controversy over Rhode Island's official name in the NYTimes, making the case that "of Providence Plantations" shouldn't be dropped. I quite agree. Teach people that "plantations" in this case doesn't refer to slaveowners' farms, but just means settlements.

- As Ian noted on Twitter this week, the new ABAA website is now live, and looks great.

- Nick Basbanes posted his summer reading list on his blog this week.

- Via The Bunburyist, an online exhibit from the Westminster Libraries, "Arthur Conan Doyle: The Prolific Writer." There's even a quiz (weirdly, I did better on the advanced one than the simple one).

- Over at Pazzo Blog, a recap of the 30 June book auction in Northampton.

- Britannica Blog profiles E.O. Wilson (one of my perennial favorites).

- Also in the Times op/eds, Nicholas Kristof offers up his list of the best children's books ever. Mine would be a different list, but that's okay. Still worth reading.

- As I noted yesterday, the new Common-place is up.

- From BibliOdyssey, satirical maps of Europe.

- In the Globe today, a survey of some Boston neighborhoods mentioned in literature.

Reviews

- In the WaPo, Marie Arana reviews John Ferling's The Ascent of George Washington.

- Nick Owchar reviews Zafon's The Angel's Game in the LATimes.

Book Review: "The Book of William"

I'm always a little apprehensive about reading new books by my favorite authors: I get very excited about them, but then I worry that I might be disappointed, or something. In any case, I needn't have fretted about Paul Collins' latest, The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). It's pure bibliophilic gold - the best book about books - or a book, in this case - published in recent memory (perhaps since Nick Basbanes' A Gentle Madness in 1995).

The book is organized, appropriately enough, into acts and scenes; each act focuses on a separate century of the First Folio's existence, highlighting changes in its reputation over time and delving deeply into its production, use by later editors, and other aspects of the book's biography. Collins, with his knack for sussing out intriguing details about anything at all (Nancy Pearl has written "I'm pretty sure that if Paul Collins wrote a history of the Detroit phone book, I would read and enjoy that too"), makes the thrills of bibliographic research jump off the page.

Our author ably captures the vagaries of seventeenth-century publication practices and the brutal copyright battles of the eighteenth century (by the end of which Samuel Johnson and David Garrick had rehabilitated the First Folio's standing in the scholarly world and made the books collector's items). The nineteenth century brought the first scholarly census of First Folios (by Thomas Frognall Dibdin, in a footnote in his Library Companion), plus efforts to create photographic facsimiles of the book. Henry Clay Folger's obsessive collecting of Folios necessarily is treated at length (79 of the 228 known copies are at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC), and Collins concludes with a visit to the campus of Meisei University in Japan, which holds 12 First Folios of its own (and has a detailed website devoted to the books).

In visiting many of the sites which now house First Folios, Collins was able to view many of them himself (though not as many as the great Folio census-maker Anthony James West, who Collins also spends some time with in the book). His descriptions of the artifacts themselves are wonderful: Samuel Johnson's copy, covered with foodstains which seem to correspond remarkably with Johsnon's favorite plays, leads Collins to muse "Books bear a tangible presence alongside their ineffable quality of thought: they have a body and a soul" (p. 111). The "Meisei Folio" (one of the twelve copies in Japan) is in its original binding, and was heavily annotated by the man who was probably the book's very first owner (Collins suggests University of Aberdeen professor William Johnstone, some of whose books apparently went to the University of Abderdeen library - one hopes that perhaps a confirmed book of his also might contain marginalia which could be compared ...)

Collins also provides perhaps the most useful survey I've read of reproduction techniques and technologies, from entire resettings of type for the later handpress editions of the Folio (and later the smaller-format editions) to photographic facsimiles and now to digital scans which make examination, comparison, and collation of the Folios by scholars around the world easier than it's ever been (although in some cases removes the experience of the "genuine article"). The Hinman collator and other, more modern scholarly tools for comparing different copies of books even get their due!

In chronicling the creation, sale, study, and even destruction of First Folios from their genesis in 1623 to the 21st century, Collins has provided a pitch-perfect popular history of this amazingly rich and complicated story. This is a book that anyone with even a passing interest in Shakespeare, books, reading, or bibliography will want to devour. And the twenty-page section of further readings at the back is a superb contribution in its own right. I confess, I've already ordered a few things from it, including the first two volumes of West's census (of a projected five).

Read this book.

Book Review: "Trilobite"

Once I'd read Richard Fortey's Dry Storeroom No. 1 (review) I knew I'd be on the lookout for his earlier works. Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution (Vintage, 2001) is the first of those I stumbled across. Fortey, who spent a career studying trilobites, shares his enthusiasm with the fossilized critters, outlining their discovery, biology, habits, geography, you name it. He also offers up a survey of his predecessors in the field of trilobitology (each with their own quirks and foibles, of course), and describes many of the key scientific debates of the 20th century (plate tectonics, punctuated equilibrium, &c.)

Fortey is one of the best active writers of scientific narrative. His sense of humor and obvious enjoyment of his field of study are infectious, and although there are many detailed scientific descriptions and explanations, those never overpowered the narrative (and were fascinating to read). Plus, I greatly respect anyone who can use such delightful words as ruckle, beetling, fusty, boffin and sempiternally, and phrases like cobble of knobbles and pong of putrefacation (look them up, I did).

If you can read this book and not get at least a little itch to go out and crack open some slates looking for trilobites, you've got more will power than me.

An Independence Day Hodgepodge

It's become something of a tradition around here that I post a collection of Independence Day-related links: in 2007 I highlighted some digitized images of relevant documents (that post is now slightly out of date but the URLs still work), and in 2008 I put together a hodgepodge similar to this one.

- A new issue of Common-place is up: it features several articles on Thomas Paine's reputation then and now.

- In the NYTimes, historian John Gilbert McCurdy examines the bachelor founders. Among them, at least for a time, were Delaware's Caesar Rodney, North Carolina's Joseph Hewes, and Massachusetts' Elbridge Gerry (Gerry married in 1786). McCurdy is the author of Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States. In yesterday's Times, lawyer Adam Freedman noted the English roots of our founding document, and historian Kathleen DuVal reminded us of the different political systems deployed by the Indians and Spanish residents of North America.

- Over at McSweeney's, Peter Krinke has a little fun, offering up a lost John Adams diary entry from 3 July 1776.

- In the WSJ, Rachel Emma Silverman reports that a ciphered letter sent to Jefferson in 1801 by his friend Robert Patterson has been cracked by mathematician Lawren Smithline. And the message? "In Congress, July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and seventy six. A declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. When in the course of human events ..." In the Jefferson papers at MHS are some of Jefferson's own codes and ciphers, which I find endlessly fascinating.

- Last weekend I mused about what it would be like to take Jefferson's recommended reading list to heart. Tom Edsall from the 19th Century Shop emailed to say that they'd recently released a catalog which features a ready-made collection of books drawn from the Skipwith List (comprising about 90% of the titles included there, in correct editions and period bindings). You can read their description here [PDF - the collection is at pp. 41-42 of the PDF, pp. 78-81 of the catalog]. For $525,000, it could all be yours. It's an absolutely brilliant idea.

- I finally decided last night to start watching the HBO "John Adams" series from last spring. I watched the first two episodes, and enjoyed them very much. With the important caveat that they are not entirely accurate (see John's series of Boston 1775 posts), the series was very well cast, and I enjoyed the episode covering the runup to Independence very much.

Enjoy the Fourth, all.

Take John Adams' words of 3 July 1776 to heart: "But the Day is past. The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

"You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. -- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."

This Week's Acquisitions

Here's what arrived this week. The Brattle's review copy shelves will be the death of me yet.

- The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World by Paul Collins (Bloomsbury, 2009). Publisher. Review coming later today.

- American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham (Random House, 2009). Brattle.

- A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare'sThe Tempest by Hobson Woodward (Viking, 2009). Brattle. Hobson's a coworker of mine, so I've really been looking forward to this one.

- The Book in America: A History of the Making and Selling of Books in the United States by Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, Lawrence C. Wroth and Rollo Silver (R.R. Bowker, 1951). Brattle.

- John Jay: Founding Father by Walter Stahr (Hambledon, 2006). Brattle.

- Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading by Robert DeMaria, Jr. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). Brattle.

- Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson by Peter C. Mancall (Basic Books, 2009). Brattle.

- Curiosities of Literature: A Feast for Book Lovers by John Sutherland (Skyhorse, 2009). Brattle.

- So Long as Men Can Breathe: The Untold Story of Shakespeare's Sonnets by Clinton Heylin (Da Capo Press, 2009). Brattle.

- Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist by Thomas Levenson (Houghton Mifflin, 2009). Brattle.

Dunlap News Hits the Press

The discovery of a previously-unknown Dunlap Declaration which I mentioned yesterday has now hit the big time: stories from the AP, Times, Independent are among those out so far.

Book Review: "The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet"

Reif Larsen's The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet (Penguin, 2009) is the sort of book that doesn't lend itself well to reviews (or at least, to the composition of a review). This is partly because it's difficult to describe, and partly because it's somewhat uneven: I want to rave about certain aspects of it, and some others just didn't seem to work quite right. So I'm not sure how this is going to end up, but let me give it a try.

T. S. Spivet is a 12-year old Montana ranch boy, whose proclivities run to making maps, tormenting his older sister, and analyzing the stuffing out of every aspect of his life and the lives of those around him. He's intensely precocious in some respects, but childish in others ("I had a stash of Cheerios in every pocket of every piece of clothing I owned, which often led to a mess in the laundry room"), and the tensions between these two conflicting elements of his personality carry through the book. The story opens with a surprise phone call to T. S. from an official at the Smithsonian, announcing that Spivet has won their prestigious Baird Prize and asking him to travel to D.C. for the award ceremony. Naturally, an odyssey ensues as T. S. packs up and ships out, hopping a train headed east.

We follow his travels across the country as he muses about himself, his family (distracted parents, both marred by a recent tragedy), and his hunger. A subplot, in the form of a pilfered notebook from his mother's study, revolves around one of T. S.'s ancestors, another precocious young scientist trying to make her way in the world. The narrative is complemented by marginalia - footnotes, drawings, charts and maps - part of the wonderfully complex and delightful design of this book (it is certainly one of the most aesthetically pleasing trade hardbacks I've read recently). These additions do nothing to detract from the narrative, indicated as they are with handy arrows which tell you precisely when to check them out. If you don't like footnotes, this will probably annoy you. I found it enjoyable.

At about the halfway point, things start to get a bit odd, and it's all downhill from there. The final few chapters, covering T. S.'s time in Washington, didn't fit well at all with the rest of the book; the end came suddenly and, I'm sad to say, was a disappointment. Spivet's wit and humor mixed with pathos and emotional upheaval, which made the first two thirds of the book a delight, evaporated into a grand muddle of weirdness which I think Spivet himself would have been unable to diagram coherently.

Overall, I have to give Larsen very high marks for the design of the book, the wonderful character he's created in T. S. Spivet, and the first nine or ten chapters. I will look forward to his next book with anticipation.

26th Dunlap Declaration Discovered

We don’t know exactly how many copies of the Declaration of Independence John Dunlap printed in Philadelphia on the night of 4 July 1776, but we now know that at least twenty-six have survived the ravages of time. The twenty-sixth copy was discovered in October 2008 by rare book dealer Joseph Felcone of Princeton, NJ.

Felcone was at the National Archives of the UK, working on his current project, a "full-blown inventory and copy-specific bibliography of 18th-century New Jersey printing." From the Colonial Office record group, he had requested several volumes of bound pamphlets, letters, broadsides and other documents. Because he was on a tight schedule, he writes, he had to move quickly: "I turned a page, saw the impression of type on the blank verso of a folded-in sheet, unfolded just enough of the top corner to see the words D of I [Declaration of Independence], knew it wasn't NJ, and kept right on going. A few pages later something made me turn back to the Declaration just to see what printing it was. I opened it, saw it was a Dunlap, folded it back, and kept on going, and promptly forgot about it."

When he got back to the States, Felcone emailed Dr. Mandy Banton, then Principal Records Specialist for Diplomatic and Colonial Records (since retired), telling her of the Dunlap broadside and suggesting that they might wish to remove it from the bound volume and find more suitable and secure housing for it. Felcone says that she wrote back and thanked him for the notice, and that the copy had indeed been taken out of the bound volume and housed separately. His discovery, perhaps rather ironically, makes the UK National Archives the single repository with the most Dunlap Declarations (three copies of the twenty-six known).

Felcone’s own understated words must suffice as a fitting conclusion: "The whole thing was really very English. No cause for excitement. You find a new D of I, you have a cup of tea, and you move on."

Officials at the UK National Archives say a press release about the discovery will be made public later this week.

Book Newsletters Arrive

The July Fine Books Notes and Americana Exchange are now live. The former includes an interview with the Library of Congress' Mark Dimunation, and a piece on an interesting Poe family Bible in Virginia; the latter has a brief notice on the recent Graham Arader sale, including a post-sale statement by Arader, among other features.

Audubon Institute at IU

Twenty high school teachers from around the country will attend a four-week institute at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, "Picturing John James Audubon."

The institute, funded by a $200,000 NEH grant and directed by Christoph Irmscher, will "feature experts on Audubon, American art and natural history. In addition to becoming immersed in all things related to Audubon, the institute's ... attendees will hone their own writing skills under the tutelage of three award-winning authors who are institute faculty members -- renowned writer Scott Russell Sanders, author of, most recently, A Private History of Awe; poet Dave Smith, chairman of the Hopkins Writing Seminar; and Canadian novelist Katherine Govier, author of Creation, a novel about Audubon. Also participating in the institute will be PBS filmmakers Diane Garey and Larry Hott, who directed Drawn from Nature, an 'American Masters' documentary about Audubon."

Many of the events and classes will be held at IU's Lilly Library, which houses a remarkable collection of Audubon materials (including a double elephant Birds). Participants will also be able to visit nearby Audubon-related locations (including Henderson, KY and Cincinnati, OH). The teachers come from a variety of disciplines (school librarians, science, history, art and literature teachers).

What a fabulous idea!

Links & Reviews

- Maira Kalman has a very nice post, "Time Wastes Too Fast," at her NYT blog. An interesting look at Jefferson and his legacy.

- Mega-publisher Elzevir's in trouble again, for offering $25 gift cards (plus a free copy of the book!) to contributors (or their friends) who would give one of their new titles a five-star review on Amazon. The company says such practices are "not their policy." [h/t librarian.net]

- From Strange Maps, Kircher's chart of Atlantis.

- Longtime Salt Lake City bookseller Sam Weller died this week at age 88. There is a very nice obituary in the SLC Tribune.

- A massive collection of John Updike material has come onto the market, Book Patrol reports. More than 500 books and other items, collected over three decades.

- In the Projo today, a profile of the PPL's special collections.

- Apropos of many conversations this week, J.L. Bell's got a post highlighting Jefferson's list of recommended reading for his friend Robert Skipwith. I've been thinking alot about this list lately. It'd be kind of fun to read all these titles today and see how they've held up, I think. ... You know, in my spare time.

Reviews

- Ian Tattersall reviews Colin Tudge's The Link in the TLS. He's not convinced. Guy Gugliotta reviews the same book in the WaPo.

- Also in the WaPo, A.J. Jacobs reviews Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages.

- Alexander Nazaryan reviews Christopher Beha's The Whole Five Feet for the NYTimes (a memoir of reading the Harvard Classics).

- Carlos Ruis Zafon's The Angel's Game is reviewed by Terrence Rafferty in the NYTimes.

This Week's Acquisitions

A box of wonderful goodies arrived from Colophon Books this week:

- Robert Dodsley: Poet, Publisher & Playwright by Ralph Straus (Burt Franklin, 1968). Colophon.

- Forged Documents: Proceedings of the 1989 Houston Conference; edited by Pat Bozeman (Oak Knoll, 1990). Colophon.

- Printing and Society in Early America; edited by William L. Joyce, David D. Hall, Richard D. Brown, and John B. Hench (American Antiquarian Society, 1983). Colophon.

- A Directory of Printing, Publishing, Bookselling & Allied Trades in Rhode Island to 1865 by H. Glenn Brown (New York Public Library, 1958). Colophon.

- The Family Romance of the Impostor-Poet Thomas Chatterton by Louise J. Kaplan (University of California Press, 1989). Colophon.

- The first printing in Jamaica ... with a discussion of the date of the first establishment of a press on the Island by Robert Baldwin. With a facsimile of the earliest extant Jamaican imprint, the second edition of the Pindarique Ode, the only known copy of which is preserved in Chetham's Library, Manchester, England; by Douglas C. McMurtrie (Priv. pr., 1942). Colophon.

- Charles Thomas Jackson: The Head Behind the Hands by Richard J. Wolfe and Richard Patterson (Norman Publishing, 2007). Book cart.

- Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian (W. W. Norton, 1991). Commonwealth.