Sunday, November 29, 2015

Links & Reviews

- At Spitalfields Life, a peek inside Maggs Brothers Berkeley Square premises before the firm moves to new quarters. Lots of pictures, too.

- The Guardian reports on the upcoming Pierre Bergé library sale (Sotheby's Paris, 11 December).

- Gothamist gets a look inside the NYPL's under-construction Rose Reading Room.

- A University of Aberdeen release highlights manuscript fragments found in a German library which are written in a similar script to the Book of Kells.

- There's a new exhibit up at the National Library of Scotland, "Book Beautiful." It sounds like a good one if you're in that neck of the woods. More from The Scotsman.

- The Kelmscott Chaucer census blog reports on the three (count 'em, three!) copies of the Kelmscott Chaucer coming up for sale in December. Wow, that last one is something.

- There's an essay and slideshow of Judaica broadsides from the Valmadonna Trust collection in Tablet.

- Bloomberg View editorialized on the importance of the next Librarian of Congress, and John Y. Cole has a story in the Library of Congress Magazine about how each librarian has shaped the institution.

- In the NYRB, Bruce Holsinger has a brief piece on the history of writing on parchment.

- Caroline Alexander talks to the WSJ about her new translation of The Iliad.

- Tim Radford reports for the Guardian about a new study into the nature of 13th-century uterine vellum using a new technique.

- The 11th Australasian Rare Books Summer School will be held at the State Library of New South Wales, 1–5 February 2016.

- California bookseller Randall House Rare Books put out a press release on their role in selling the Brontë book with unpublished manuscript material to the Brontë Museum.

- Ann Blair has been named the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard, effective 1 January.

Reviews

- Mary Beard's SPQR; reviews by Dwight Garner in the NYTimes and Peter Lewis in the CSM.

- Stanley L. Quick's Lion in the Bay; review by Philip Kopper in the Washington Times.