- Rare Book Week NYC is coming up soon! Book fairs, auctions, and exhibits galore.
- The Chemical Heritage Foundation has purchased Isaac Newton's manuscript copy of an alchemical treatise by George Starkey; the document also contains a record of one of Newton's own alchemical experiments. CHF curator James Voelkel says that digital images of the manuscript will soon be available via The Chymistry of Isaac Newton.
- The British Library has launched Discovering Literature: Shakespeare, a collection of articles, digitized materials from the library's collections, &c. Coverage from the Guardian.
- Hugh Schofield writes for the BBC Magazine about the Aristophil ponzi scheme.
- Eric Kwakkel's talk at the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, "Commercial Books Before Gutenberg," is now available for your listening pleasure (and there are lots of other good lectures available there too).
- The BBC reports on the Mapping Paper in Medieval England project, based at Cambridge.
- The Jewish Theological Seminary's Geniza Collection will be deposited at the Princeton University Library until the fall of 2019, when the JTS's renovated rare book room opens.
- Charlton Heston's collection of Shakespeariana (including two 17th-century quartos), plus a number of movie props and other materials, will be sold at Bonhams Los Angeles this week.
- Books on early American topics swept the Bancroft Prizes this year.
- Christie's London will sell copies of all four Shakespeare folios on 25 May; the First Folio is reportedly an unrecorded copy.
- On the Houghton Library Modern Books and Manuscripts blog, Ryan Wheeler highlights some books bequeathed to Houghton by Thomas Carlyle.
- Texas A&M has acquired an early map of Texas and related documents once in the collections of surveyor James M. Manning.
- The typescript of a history of superstition written at least in part by H.P. Lovecraft (under commission by Harry Houdini!) has been found, and will be sold by Chicago's Potter & Potter auction house on 9 April.
- From Exeter Working Papers in Book History, "Sir Walter Scott and the Parisian pirates: a bibliographical paddle in murky waters."
- The NYPL announced that digitization has been completed on a number of fascinating early American manuscript collections, including the papers and receipt book of printer Hugh Gaine.
- A volume of Grimm's fairy tales signed by Anne Frank will be sold at Swann on 5 May.
- The Diagram prize for oddest book title has been awarded to Too Naked for the Nazis.
Reviews
- Claire Harman's Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart; reviews by Deborah Friedell in the NYTimes and Jonathan Rose in the WSJ.
- Elaine Showalter's The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe; review by Rebecca Steinitz in the Boston Globe.
- John Aubrey's Brief Lives, edited by Kate Bennett; review by Ruth Scurr in the TLS.
