Apologies for the delays in getting a post up: it hasn't been for lack of news, but simply because much travel over the last several weeks has kept me very busy. The SEA conference in Tulsa was an excellent one, and it was a delight to see so many friends both there and during the book fair festivities in New York last weekend.
- From the book fair: Scott Zieher for the Village Voice; Erin Schreiner for LitHub; Rebecca Rego Barry for Fine Books Blog.
- The president's budget plan calls for the elimination of the NEA, NEH, and IMLS, among many other effective, efficient, and worthy programs. While this is indeed only a proposal, it says much about the priorities of this administration, and if you value the good works supported by these and other programs targeted, I urge you to contact your representatives and tell them so. Some links on this front: Christopher Knight in the LATimes "The NEA works. Why does Trump want to cut it?"; Andrea Scott in the New Yorker; Amanda French's "A Visit to the Rayburn Building"; "Why We Need the NEA and the NEH" by Mellon Foundation executive vice president Marlët Westermann; a call from AHA to its membership urging them to contact Congress about the budget plan; Sophie Gilbert in the Atlantic on "The Real Cost of Trump's Abolishing the National Endowment for the Arts"; PEN America's excellent "What You Can Do" post; statement by the leadership of the Digital Library Federation;
- The March Rare Book Monthly articles include Michael Stillman's report on the brazen warehouse theft of rare books in late January, a piece by Forum Auctions' Rupert Powell on the state of the book auction world, and Eric Caren on several of his upcoming auctions.
- From Molly Hardy at Past is Present, "Running the Numbers on Early American Literature."
- The Newberry Library has acquired the Bexley Hall Rare Book Collection.
- Helen Hazen writes for the American Scholar about her job as librarian of a convent library in Peru and her efforts to catalog the rare materials in the collection.
- From Sarah Laskow for Atlas Obscura, "The Unsung Delight of a Well-Designed Endpaper."
- Vincent Noce has an update in The Art Newspaper about the Aristophil collection of rare books and manuscripts, auctions of which could begin at Drouot as early as September. The sales could be spread out over "at least six to ten years," according to the report.
- Jane Kamensky has won the New-York Historical Society's annual book prize for A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley.
- Senators McCaskill and Carper have written to AOTUS David Ferriero expressing concern about the Trump Administration's compliance with the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act.
- Jay Moschella has an update on the BPL's project of digitizing their earliest printed books.
- Ebook sales in the UK fell in 2016, for the second year in a row, as print sales increased.
- New blog of interest: Caribbean Histories.
- The family of Antonin Scalia will donate the justice's papers to the Harvard Law School Library.
- I've neglected to link to a recent volume of the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society which will be of interest to many readers; the papers are drawn from the APS symposium "Fabrication, Verification, Authentication," and include Nick Wilding's essay "Forging the Moon," on the Galileo forgeries.
- Owen Williams and Rachel Dankert post for The Collation about "The Folger as a Collection of Collections."
- Registration is open for this year's Texas A&M Book History Workshop.
- From Tess Goodman at Inciting Sparks, "Reading As If To Live."
- Jackie Penny posts at Past is Present about the upcoming construction project at AAS.
- Daniel Dreisbach has a post for SHEAR adapted from his new book Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers.
- The Maine State Library and Archives have jointly launched the Digital Maine Transcription Project.
- Rebecca Romney gets the "Bright Young Booksellers" spotlight.
- The Liesborn Gospels will return to Germany after a $3 million deal.
- Noah Sheola posts for the Houghton Library Blog about recataloging several undated seventeenth- and eighteenth-century quartos of Julius Caesar from the Houghton collections.
- Over at The Junto, a Q&A with Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman, editors of The American Revolution Reborn.
- The Book Collector has launched a contest to design the "27th letter."
- There's an excellent cataloging/provenance mystery post over on the Perne & Ward Libraries blog.
- Publisher George Braziller died this week at the age of 101. See the NYTimes obituary.
- Peter Steinberg has a post at Sylvia Plath Info about an important Plath archive currently offered for sale by bookseller Ken Lopez.
- At Verso, the Huntington Library's blog, Andrew Walkling posts about the printing process(es) used for a 1685 songbook.
- Scholar-librarian Michael Turner also died this week: Ian Gadd has a post on SHARP-L about Turner's long and productive career.
- Oxford professor Adam Smyth talks to cataloger Lucy Kelsall and conservator Nikki Tomkins about the library of Nicholas Crouch, now at Balliol College.
Reviews
- Charlie Lovett's The Lost Book of the Grail; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at the Fine Books Blog.
- The American Revolution Reborn, edited by Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman; review by Christopher Minty at The Junto.
- James Barron's The One-Cent Magenta; review by Timothy R. Smith in the WaPo.
- Spencer McBridge's Pulpit & Nation; review by Jonathan Wilson at The Junto.
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A House Full of Females; review by Louisa Thomas in the WaPo.
- Eugene Hammond's Jonathan Swift and John Stubbs' Jonathan Swift; review by Claude Rawson in the TLS.
- Sidney Berger's The Dictionary of the Book; review by Dennis Duncan in the TLS [paywalled].
Upcoming Auctions
- Fine Literature with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Beats at PBA Galleries on 23 March.
- Texana and Western Americana at Heritage Auctions on 24 March.
- Spring 2017 auction at Arader Galleries on 25 March.
