I had the great pleasure of representing Rare Book School at the Washington Antiquarian Book Fair this weekend: it's the first time I've been able to attend this fair, and I found it very much worth the visit. There were some excellent books to be found, good crowds on Friday night and all day Saturday, and the fair was organized extremely well. The addition of the Typewriter Rodeo on Saturday afternoon was a nice touch, too.
Prior to the fair I stopped in at the Folger Shakespeare Library for their current exhibition, "Shakespeare, Life of an Icon." If you can go check that out before it closes at the end of this month, take the time and do it: the chances of all the great items included ever being in the same place again seem pretty slim.
- A reward has been offered for information leading to the return of the books stolen from bookseller Lawrence Van De Carr following the California Antiquarian Book Fair.
- The Lindau Gospels is currently on display at the Morgan Library, and in bright light too, so the details of the crazily jeweled binding are readily visible.
- A inscribed copy of Brideshead Revisited sold for £52,500 at the auction of the Duchess of Devonshire's estate.
- The National Library of Scotland has digitized more than 3,000 Scottish chapbooks from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- Simon Beattie highlights a German translation of an English novel, the original of which is known only from advertisements, reviews, and a single copy of the first volume of three.
- Teresa Breathnach has a new blog about shipboard printing, which seems like it'll be worth a follow.
- David Whitesell's new exhibition on gothic fiction is now up at UVA: he blogs about the show at Notes from Under Grounds. Another one worth a visit if possible.
- Some 6,000 items from an archive kept by Bob Dylan have been acquired by the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the University of Tulsa. The deal was brokered by Glenn Horowitz.
- Caroline Duroselle-Melish has a great Collation post up about fallen type in handpress-era books.
- Barbara Heritage writes on "New Directions in Bibliography and Critical Hermeneutics" for the JHIBlog.
- Tim O'Neill writes for Slate on a Quora question about what lost ancient works historians would most like to recover.
- Seamus Heaney's papers are now open to researchers at Emory University.
- Claire Voon writes about "blooks" for Hyperallergic.
- Alix Christie has a nice piece remembering Elizabeth Eisenstein for the Seattle Review of Books.
- A judge has agreed that Harper Lee's will can remain sealed.
- The March Rare Book Monthly articles are up: they include Michael Stillman on what AbeBooks is up to lately, a profile of Louis Weinstein (formerly of Heritage Book Shop and now a collector of Hawaiiana), and a quick overview of a sale of items from Charlton Heston's estate, soon going on the block at Bonhams.
- From Emily Rhodes in The Spectator, "A bookseller's guide to book thieves."
- The Hinckley family has donated five rare Mormon books from the library of Gordon Hinckley to BYU.
- Alexis Buchanan writes for Nonprofit Quarterly about severe building issues that threaten the collections at the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library in Chicago.
- Amazon will open a second brick-and-mortar store in San Diego this summer.
- Diane Dias DeFazio is profiled in the FB&C "Bright Young Librarians" series.
Reviews
- Elaine Showalter's The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe; review by Jill Lepore in the NYTimes.
- Ricky Jay's Matthias Buchinger; review by Jim Ruland in the LATimes.
- Fergus Bordewich's The First Congress; review by Carol Berkin in the NYTimes.
- Stephen Cross' The Fever of 1721; review by Joyce Chaplin in the NYTimes.
- Jack Lynch's You Could Look It Up; review by Alberto Manguel in the NYTimes.
- Claire Harman's Charlottë Bronte: A Fiery Heart; review by Michael Upchurch in the Boston Globe.
