- Parts of Jane Austen's unfinished manuscript of her novel The Watsons will be sold at Sotheby's London on 14 July, with estimates of £200,000-300,000.
- Last September I noted that book thief Sean Cowie had skipped bail and was on the lam; this week the Stirling Observer reported that Cowie (now back in police custody) has told police he has cancer, but his former girlfriend says he's simply lying.
- The University of Pennsylvania libraries have received a $300,000 NEH grant to digitize approximately 1,000 European and American manuscripts from 1601-1800. The digitized manuscripts will be added to the Penn in Hand: Selected Manuscripts site.
- Google Books announced this week that it's making available a selection of 16th and 17th-century books in full color: and they're quite nice, actually.
- Art book collector Arthur Jaffe is profiled in the Orlando Sun-Sentinel.
- The LATimes has a "summer reading guide" out today, with recommendations from a wide variety of genres.
- Since 2007 this blog has followed the murder case of Missouri book collector Rolland Comstock. This week reports emerged that the case was before a Greene County grand jury, but that no indictments were handed down. The Columbia News-Leader ran a retrospective and update on the Comstock story as well.
- John Hendel covers the 125th anniversary of Linotype, writing for The Atlantic (it includes the trailer for Doug Wilson's "Linotype: The Film," which looks tremendously interesting.
- At Salon, Paul Shaw looks at "Fonts that could have been great."
- Amazon announced that Kindle book sales have surpassed sales of print books for the first time. Michael Lieberman at Book Patrol has the best take on this I've seen yet.
- From the Fine Books Blog, Rebecca Rego Barry looks at some recent auction consignments by historical societies.
Reviews
- Jacqueline Yallop's Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves: How the Victorians Collected the World; review by Mary Crockett in the Scotsman.
- Michael Parker's The Watery Part of the World; review by Emily Barton in the New York Times.
- Frank McLynn's Captain Cook, Master of the Seas; review by Roger Hutchinson in the Scotsman.
- Revolutionary Founders (ed. Alfred F. Young, Gary Nash and Ray Raphael); review by Mary Beth Norton in the New York Times.
- Daniel Richter's Before the Revolution; review by J.H. Elliot in the NYRB.
