Lots to cover once again. Here goes:
- The Bavarian government has returned more than 500 books stolen from the Girolamini and other Italian libraries. The books were seized from the Munich auction house Zisska & Schauer in 2012.
- The recovery of some of the Doves Type, noted in December, is the subject of several more complete accounts now, including a long piece in the Creative Review by Rachael Steven and a report from Justin Quirk in The Sunday Times.
- Nick Basbanes writes for the Fine Books Blog about recent attacks against books and libraries in Iraq.
- UPenn has received a $7 million gift to create a digital humanities lab.
- Jennifer Howard has launched a new project, "Books in the Wild," to document visually how we interact with books.
- Fairly surprising place for it, but there's a piece on historical bibliography (and Bible typos) in the Washington Post's Style blog.
- The Harvard magazine reports on "Cold Storage," a new documentary about the Harvard Depository.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer has a new report on the ongoing feud between the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia and the estate of Maurice Sendak.
- The Library of Congress has acquired the papers of composer Marvin Hamlisch.
- Materials related to the codebreaking efforts at Bletchley Park, including several unique Banbury sheets, have been found in the rafters of buildings at the site during renovations.
- From the BPL Collections of Distinction blog, a look at some excellent volvelles in Apian's Cosmographica.
- The Warburg Institute and the University of London have reached a "binding agreement" through mediation about the future management of the Institute.
- In the LA Review of Books, Matthew Kirschenbaum asks "What is an @uthor?"
- Bernard Bailyn talked to The Junto about his new book, Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History.
- The NYTimes ran a story on the aftermath of the big Brooklyn warehouse fire was destroyed thousands of pages of archival records.
- The Boston Globe highlights the BPL's recent digitization initiatives.
- Michael Hoinski reports for the NYTimes on Gaylord Schanilec's new work, Lac des Pleurs.
- The manuscript of Don McLean's "American Pie" is set to be sold at Christie's in April, with an estimate of up to $1.5 million. McLean claims that the manuscript will "divulge all that there is to divulge" about the meaning of the song's lyrics.
- Over at The Collation, a neat find on the endpapers of a quarto Henry VI.
- From Stefan Fatsis at Slate, what should a dictionary look like in the 21st century?
- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian on the sale of a first edition of Aristotle's Masterpiece at last weekend's California International Antiquarian Book Fair.
- Beinecke Library curator Timothy Young has posted ten reasons why the physical book still matters.
- An Elmira, NY man has been charged with the theft of a plaque from Mark Twain's grave.
- The folks at Bookfinder have released their list of the most-sought out-of-print books of 2014.
- Pradeep Sebastian profiles London book-runners Martin Stone and Driff in his "Endpaper" column.
- The BBC Magazine ran a feature on maps, drawn from the recently-published Times History of the World in Maps.
- A copy of the Magna Carta from 1300 has been found in a scrapbook in Sandwich, England. This copy is just the seventh of this version known to exist.
- Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature have announced the planned launch of Literary Hub on 8 April. Just what this new site will do is pretty opaque, but it seems worth watching. More from the WSJ.
- The Cambridge University Library has mounted an exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Aldus Manutius. More of these are coming, including what promises to be a fantastic one at the Grolier Club in New York.
- From Eric Kwakkel, a look at "medieval books on the go."
- Scholium Group has posted earnings warnings and spun off two companies (South Kensington Books and Ultimate Library). Is it just me, or is it really weird to read press releases like this about books?
- Manuscript Road Trip visits Rhode Island this week.
- A collection of 19th-century dust jackets, most from the 1870s-1890s, is up for grabs from South Carolina book dealer Books Tell You Why. Rebecca Rego Barry highlights the collection at Fine Books Blog.
Reviews
- "Decoding the Renaissance," the current Folger exhibition; review by William Grimes in the NYTimes.
- Peter Gay's Why the Romantics Matter; review by Peter Swaab in the Telegraph.
- Andrew Levy's Huck Finn's America; review by Parul Seghal in the NYTimes.
- Martha Hodes' Mourning Lincoln and Richard Wightman Fox's Lincoln's Body; review by Jill Lepore in the NYTimes.
- Richard Marsh's The Beetle; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Robert Middlekauff's Washington's Revolution; review by Daniel Shribman in the Boston Globe.
- Michael Rosen's Alphabetical; review by Carlos Lozada in the WaPo.
- Richard Brookhiser's Founders' Son; review by Drew Gilpin Faust in the NYTimes.
- Ruth Guildings' Owning the Past; review by Nigel Spivey in the TLS.
- Mary Pilon's The Monopolists; review by Jen Doll in TNR.
- Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger's Robert Love's Warnings; review by Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan at Reviews in History.
