- From the Baltimore Sun, which continues to do a very decent job covering the Landau library thefts, a profile of NARA's Art Recovery Team and its inspector general, Paul Brachfeld.
- Ron Charles weighs in on this week's discussion of "Anonymous" the so-called (and idiotic) "authorship controversy" with a great essay in the Washington Post.
- Laura Massey has a great post about how early debates over Shakespeare's authorship (and the belief that Francis Bacon had hidden ciphered messages in the printed plays) led to the rise of modern cryptography.
- Over at Anchora, Adam Hooks has started a series on Shakespeare fakes with a look at the various editions (pirated, faked, forged) of Shakespeare's poems.
- The "Bright Young Things" series on the Fine Books Blog continues with an interview of the duo behind B&B Rare Books.
- A collection being called the "last great private library in New Zealand" (that of naturalist Arthur Pycroft, who died in 1971) will be sold at auction this week.
- From Nick at Mercurius Politicus, a fascinating meditation on the material aspects of signatures.
- A volume of Stafford County, VA court records for the years 1749-1755 has been voluntarily returned to Virginia by the Jersey City Free Public Library, where the book was recently found. It had been taken during the Civil War by a Union soldier. The volume's contents will be made available for researchers at the Library of Virginia.
- The ABAA Security blog has posted a list of a collection recently discovered to be stolen. If I get more information on the circumstances, I'll be sure to post.
- Anthony Horowitz, the author of the new Sherlock Holmes story The House of Silk (the first to be approved by the Conan Doyle estate) writes in the Telegraph about the enduring Holmes legacy, and about his experiences in writing a Holmes mystery.
Reviews
- Richard Brookhiser's James Madison; reviews by Richard Beeman in the NYTimes and Jack Rakove in TNR.
- Denise Gigante's The Keats Brothers; review by Lesley McDowell in the Independent.
- Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's Becoming Dickens; review by Frances Wilson in the Telegraph.
- David Bellos' Is That a Fish in Your Ear?; review by Adam Thirlwell in the NYTimes.
- Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising; review by Kevin Boyle in the NYTimes.
