- Some pretty big news reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer: some 10,000 Maurice Sendak items long housed at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia will return to the Sendak estate, since the author chose not to leave the material to the library in his will. A museum and study center at Sendak's home in Ridgefield, CT is planned. The Rosenbach will receive Sendak's collection of rare books and correspondence, as well as a $2 million bequest.
- There's a piece in the Harvard Gazette about the early Audubon drawings at Harvard.
- The Cambridge University Library has succeeded in raising £1.1 million to secure the Codex Zacynthius, thanks to a £500,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
- New from Ikea, "BookBook."
- A foundation run by Warren Buffett's son Howard has purchased an archive of Rosa Parks-related items, including artifacts, photographs, and more. The material will be on a ten-year loan to the Library of Congress.
- The Church History Library in Salt Lake City is displaying early Mormon documents and books publicly for the first time.
- BYU Libraries have put out a pretty amusing video about book preservation (runs about eight minutes).
- Paul Collins talked to the LA Review of Books about his new book Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Life.
- Also from Paul Collins, "How to Pitch a Magazine (in 1888)" in The New Yorker.
- Christopher de Hamel is the new Senior Vice-President at Les Enluminures.
- Turkish filmmaker Oguz Uygur has created a lovely short film about paper marbling.
- Rizzoli Bookstore will reopen next year at 1133 Broadway, near Madison Square Park.
- The Summer 2014 issue of Common-place is out, and as usual it's full of goodies, including Erik Beck's "Finding a Lost Election" and a roundtable discussion on Sacvan Bercovitch's The American Jeremiad.
- Yale's Beinecke Library has acquired the papers of author/illustrator Mo Willems.
- There's an IndieGoGo campaign to install a climate control system at historic home of Edna St. Vincent Milay, to preserve the poet's personal library.
- Over at The American Literary Blog, a
- J.S. Makkos writes for The Atlantic about rescuing some 30,000 old New Orleans newspapers.
- Meredith Mann surveys printers' marks in the NYPL Rare Books Division.
- Alan Jacobs writes about David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks over at The New Atlantis.
- Also from Alan Jacobs, a short piece on the very obnoxious Answers.com for their massively annoying "Tweet your question to an expert" thing.
- Simon Beattie posted on the ABAA blog this week, "In Search of 'Rare Books.'"
- The University of Michigan has acquired the archive of political activist Tom Hayden.
- There's a new short video up about Boston's Brattle Book Shop.
- There's a crowd-funding campaign afoot raise £520,000 for the purchase of William Blake's cottage on the Sussex coast.
- A book bound by the Restoration binder known as the "Naval Binder" has been found at Houghton Library.
- From Adam Hooks at Anchora, "Monumental Shakespeare."
- Over at This is Money, Brian Lake of Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers (and president of the ABA) discusses Dickens collecting and its ongoing appeal.
- There's a quick rundown of the Miniature Book Society's Boston conclave at the Oak Knoll Biblio-Blog.
- And speaking of miniature books, a Conan Doyle story written for Queen Mary's dolls' house is to be published this fall by Walker & Company.
- Over at The Collation, some tips from Erin Blake on how to get and use raw data from the Folger's OPAC.
- Caroline O'Donovan writes for The Baffler about Boston's designation of a Literary Cultural District.
- Now available from the BSA via Bibsite, "British Book Auction Catalogues, 1801–1900," by Lenore Corel and edited by Annette Fern.
- A large collection of books on the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, has been donated to the Cornell University Library by alumnus Steven Chernys.
- Also now available for purchase is Ann Jordan's Laeuchli's A Bibliographical Catalog of William Blackstone (William S. Hein & Co., Inc., $149).
- A piece I wrote for the most recent FB&C about book thefts is up on their website.
- The Free Library of Philadelphia has received a grant of $25 million over three years from the William Penn Foundation to pay for renovation of the Central Library and several branch libraries.
- Doris Lessing has left 3,000 books from her collection to the Harare City Library.
- Iain Watts posts on the Royal Society's The Repository blog about the diary of Sir Charles Blagden, which sounds like a remarkably interesting source (alas, Blagden had execrable handwriting) for British science from the 1780s through the 1820s. Watts calls for an online annotated transcription of the diary, which motion I'll very happily second.
- Australian businessman and art collector Kerry Stokes has been announced as the buyer of the Rothschild Prayerbook. Reports here and here (with video), via Antipodean Footnotes.
- The SEA has updated the list of current and forthcoming books on early American topics.
- A book at Juniata College purportedly bound in human skin has been demystified: it's bound in sheepskin.
- The longlist for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize has been announced.
- From Jamelle Bouie at Slate, "A Few Helpful Rules for Reviewing Books About Slavery."
Reviews
- Philip Gould's Writing the Rebellion; review by Edward M. Griffin at Common-place.
- Diane Ackerman's The Human Age; review by Rob Nixon in the NYTimes.
- Norman Thomas di Giovanni's Georgie & Elsa; review by Lorna Scott Fox in the TLS.
- Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist; review by Wendy Smith in the WaPo.
- David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks; review by Miriam Barnum in the Harvard Crimson.
- Joanna Scott's De Potter's Grand Tour; review by John Vernon in the NYTimes.
- Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told; reviews by Hector Tobar in the LATimes and Jonathan Wilson at The Junto.
- Jeff VanderMeer's Acceptance; review by Scott Hutchins in the NYTimes.
