The 4th Annual Virginia Antiquarian Book Fair was held this Friday and Saturday at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. If you have a chance to get to this one next year, give it a try: the venue is quite nice, admission is free, and there were some really interesting books and ephemera to be had.
- Rick Ring has edited a selection of Lawrence C. Wroth's "Notes for Bibliophiles" column and the volume is now available from Scott Vile's Ascensius Press.
- Over at medievalbooks, a look at the evolution of several forms of medieval scripts, including an image of a ~1450 advertising sheet for different types of script.
- Folger conservator Austin Planncurley writes for The Collation about creating a replica of John Wilkes Booth's diary for the current Folger exhibit, America's Shakespeare.
- The May Rare Book Monthly is out, with Bruce McKinney's report on the New York Book Fair and an open letter from McKinney to the president/executive producer of the Armory, a piece by Michael Stillman on the ongoing dispute over Maurice Sendak's estate, and a report on a comics book heist in Macon, Georgia.
- The Kislak Center at Penn has issued a call for papers for a March 2017 interdisciplinary conference, "To the Ends of the Earth."
- Jonathan Kearns has posted his look back at the New York shadow shows.
- The Shakespeare's Beehive authors were interviewed for "CBS Sunday Morning" last weekend. The interview also includes comments from Heather Wolfe and Michael Witmore of the Folger, and the news that Koppelman and Wechsler have loaned the volume to the Folger for study.
- Manuscript Road Trip heads to Newfoundland this week to survey the manuscripts at Memorial University in St. John's.
- Liam Moloney writes for the WSJ on the recent renovations to the Vatican's Gallery of Maps.
- The New York Library for the Performing Arts has digitized its collection of Shakespeare prompt-books.
- A new electronic catalog of 15th-century printed books is now available.
- Harvard's Weissman Preservation Center is highlighted in the Harvard Gazette.
- Peter Harrington is exhibiting (and selling) a remarkable collection of Alice in Wonderland-related rare books. Boudicca Fox-Leonard reports for the Telegraph.
- Library of Congress catalogers write about 18th-century medley prints for the Picture This blog.
- British Library conservator Flavio Marzo reports on some 2005 work he did on the 1603 Montaigne volume which is thought to contain a Shakespeare signature.
- Erik Ofgang writes about the Voynich Manuscript for Connecticut magazine, featuring lots of comments from Beinecke curator Ray Clemens.
- From the BBC magazine, Sarah Dunant on the "lost art of reading other people's handwriting."
- A new animated Watership Down adaptation is coming next year from Netflix and the BBC.
- Maybe not bookish, but still terribly cool: workers digging for water lines near Seville found 1,300 pounds of uncirculated Roman coins.
- Bibliophile Paul Ruxin died in mid-April following a tragic accident. See the Chicago Tribune obituary or Jerry Morris' reflections for the Florida Bibliophile Society. I had the great pleasure to hear a talk by Mr. Ruxin at the Boston Public Library in 2007, and enjoyed the experience tremendously. My condolences to his family and to those who knew him.
Reviews
- The exhibition on John Dee's library at the Royal College of Physicians; review by Sara Charles for Reviews in History.
- Joshua Hammer's The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu; review by Ben Macintyre in the NYTimes.
- Peter Onuf and Annette Gordon Reed's Most Blessed of the Patriarchs; review by David O. Stewart in the WaPo.
- Nicholas Guyatt's Bind Us Apart; reviews by Eric Foner in the NYTimes and Mark G. Spencer in the WSJ.
- Jack Lynch's You Could Look It Up; review by Micah Mattix in The New Criterion.
