First, more Poe. Ed's got a list of additional Philly events this week, the Globe notes a couple events happening here in Boston, and Paul Lewis has an essay in the Globe on Poe's Boston connections.
- Caleb Crain is in the NYTimes with an essay on radical children's literature. More about the essay and the genre at Steamboats.
- For your viewing pleasure, a Stephen Frey documentary on the Gutenberg printing press. Nicely done. [h/t LISNews]
- Carolyn Kellogg reports on some major doin's in the Providence public library system: a non-profit consortium has offered to take over several branch libraries to avoid closures. I need to read up on this some more, but Kellogg's piece is a good starting point.
- Paul Collins notes a possible (additional) trouble spot for Border's and other chain book-retailers/distributors: lawsuits from small publishers. There's also a "Stray Questions" piece with Paul over at Jacket Copy [h/t Laura]
- Laura's got a really lovely gallery of photos (with commentary) from a recent tutorial on quill-pen cutting.
- J.L. Bell comments on Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air.
- Jill Lepore has a piece in this week's New Yorker on presidential inauguration speeches [full text not yet online]
- Also from the New Yorker, Justin Vogt reports on a really bizarre dispute at the State Department over the official documentary history of the department, "Foreign Relations of the United States."
- Nick Basbanes has further comments on the Hitler's library discussion which has been raging this week over on Ex-Libris, clarifying particularly the question of books taking from the collection by Walter Pforzheimer.
- Mike Widener posted on the Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog this week about the Lewis Morris collection recently added to LT; I can add that the John Worthington collection is now online as well. Two excellent additions to the Libraries of Early America project, and my many thanks to Mike for working with me to make them happen.
- Richard Seaver, a famed New York editor, translator and publisher, died this week at age 82. His obituary appeared in the NYTimes on Wednesday.
- BibliOdyssey's offering this week is jewels, the illustrations taken from the Kleinodienbuch der Herzogin Anna von Bayern, a series of one hundred gouache sketches of jewels commissioned by Duchess Anna and Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in the 1550s. They've also got images from the Ripley Scroll, a 15th century alchemical manuscript.
- Tim's got a lengthy Thingology post outlining the first major points of objection against the proposed new OCLC policies.
- FaceBook + Jane Austen = ?? (AustenBook, of course). Note: this will only be funny if you are familiar with Facebook. (h/t VSL:Web)
- An ExLibris thread this week somehow turned into reminiscences of Philadelphia bookseller George Allen, and someone passed along this autobiographical essay Allen wrote about the book business.
Reviews
- Richard Cox reviews Nina Burleigh's Unholy Business and Sharon Waxman's Loot.
- In the NYTimes, Christopher Dickey reviews James Bamford's latest work on the NSA, The Shadow Factory. I haven't read this one yet, but the earlier books on the same subject were quite good.
