Sunday, October 23, 2016

Links & Reviews

- The American Antiquarian Society has unveiled plans for a three-story, 7,000-square foot addition to Antiquarian Hall. See the September Almanac for details.

- Over on the OUP blog, Cóilín Parsons writes on "Big data in the nineteenth century."

- At The New Antiquarian, an "In Memoriam" post for bookseller David Holmes, and Rich Rennicks offers up "Ten Reasons to Attend the Boston Book Fair."

- From Mark Oppenheimer on the New Yorker's Page Turner blog, "The Lost Virtue of Cursive."

- Rare Books Digest offers an analysis of the second- and third-quarter book auctions.

- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian about a House of Lords debate this week in which numerous peers criticized the Government for cuts to libraries over the last several years.

- It's that time again: Megan Rosenbloom writes about anthropodermic bindings for Lapham's Quarterly.

- Hay-on-Wye, perhaps the most famous "book town" in the world, could lose its public library, the BBC reports.

- Florence Fearrington has given $5 million to the Wilson Special Collections Library at UNC Chapel Hill.

- Phoenix Alexander writes for the Beinecke's blog about an apparently unrecorded pamphlet found during cataloging of a large collection of slavery tracts.

- I'm not at all just how newsy this is, but the Washington Post reported this week on analyses of the manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence which suggest that twentieth-century conservation efforts may have caused damage to the manuscript.

- The Museum of London has acquired a manuscript account of a January 1667 report to the House of Commons by Sir Robert Brooks, chairman of the committee charged with investigating the origins of the Great Fire of London.

- Book collector Howard Knohl, a selection from whose collection will be sold at Sotheby's this week, is profiled in the Orange County Times.

Reviews

- Richard Holmes' This Long Pursuit; review by Daisy Hay in the Guardian.

- Ronald C. White's American Ulysses; review by T.J. Stiles in the NYTimes.