Sunday, April 16, 2017

Links & Reviews

- Christela Guerra reports for the Boston Globe about current effort at the BPL to get a full inventory of the rare books and manuscripts in their collections.

- From John Garcia at JHIBlog, "The Other Samuel Johnson: African-American Labor in the Vicinity of the Early U.S. Book Trade."

- Over at The Pressbengel Project, making parchment out of salmon skin.

- Humanities magazine has an interview with library historian Wayne Wiegand.

- Maria Sibylla Merian is the featured subject at Echoes from the Vault.

- The NEH Impact Index is well worth spending some time with.

- Lisa Fagin Davis posts at Manuscript Road Trip about Otto Ege and the Lima (OH) Public Library.

- Jennifer Schuessler reports for the NYTimes on the James Baldwin archive, newly purchased by the Schomburg Center but some of which will remain closed to researchers for twenty more years.

- Scott Rosenberg writes for Backchannel on "How Google Book Search Got Lost."

- AAS has a podcast interview with Ezra Greenspan about his work on Frederick Douglass, editing Book History, and more.

- More on that archive of Sylvia Plath letters mentioned last month from Sylvia Plath Info and the Guardian.

- In the Irish Times, a story about a library theft that has inspired a new children's book.

- The British Library has announced a major expansion plan.

Reviews

- The Card Catalog, a new Library of Congress publication; review by Rebecca Rego Barry for the Fine Books Blog.

- Lyndal Roper's Martin Luther; review by Andrew Pettegree in the NYTimes.

- Brian Doyle's The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World; review by Jenny Davidson in the NYTimes.

- Shelley DeWees' Not Just Jane; review by Caroline Franklin in the TLS.

Upcoming Auctions

- Images & Objects: Photographs & Photobooks at Swann on 20 April.

- Americana - Travel & Exploration - World History - Directories - Cartography at PBA Galleries on 20 April.

- The Maurice Neville Collection of Modern Literature (Part III) at Sotheby's New York on 24 April.

- Rare Books, Autographs & Maps at Doyle on 26 April [includes books deaccessioned from the College of New Rochelle].

- The Giancarlo Beltrame Library of Scientific Books (Part III) at Christie's London on 26 April.

- Printed & Manuscript Americana at Swann on 27 April.

- The Library of the Late Hubert Dingwall at Bloomsbury on 27 April.

Sunday, April 09, 2017

Links & Reviews

A very nice Virginia Antiquarian Book Fair is in the books; if you missed it this year, make sure you get it on your calendar for next spring. Well worth a visit.

- Philip Durkin writes for the Shakespeare's World blog about a new use of "white lie" discovered by a transcriber, antedating the previous OED citation by nearly two centuries!

- Now on display at UVA's Special Collections library, a new exhibition on Borges and his publication history, curated by Nora Benedict.

- What looks a very interesting new concept from the American Philosophical Society: a circulation-driven recommendation tool for archival and manuscript repositories. It'll be very interesting to see this in action.

- Rachel Chanter writes for the Peter Harrington blog about a Bob Dylan artwork forgery: a cautionary tale indeed.

- JHIBlog is hosting a "book forum" on Jeffrey Andrew Barash's Collective Memory and the Historical Past. Michael Meng has the first post.

- Hugh Gilmore has the first in a series about a recent house-call to look at a professor's book collection.

- Always look through the box of random books.

- Over at Modern IP History, Zvi Rosen writes on his efforts to find and make available more than 2,000 pages of pre-1870 American copyright records that had been presumed lost.

- The Kickstarter campaign for Bruce Kennett's biography of W. A. Dwiggins remains open; though the project was fully funded, you can still sign up for various rewards, &c.

- The Watkinson Library (Trinity College) has received a nearly-complete set of the Modern Library's first series (some 600 volumes).

- The Daily Beast has a report on the January theft of rare books from a London warehouse.

- Videos of the 2017 Sandars Lectures by Toshiyuki Takamiya are now available.

- A complaints book of the Plantin Press journeymen for the period 1713–1769 is available online [via Aaron Pratt on Twitter].

- The Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American History and Culture have jointly acquired a photo album containing and early and previously unknown photograph of Harriet Tubman.

- Atlas Obscura has a piece on the work by researchers at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage who are trying to "capture, analyze, and catalog historic and culturally important scents."

- Will Pooley's "Floundering" is a great read on the sometime drudgery of archival research.

- Acme Binding's Paul Parisi is the subject of a brief profile in the Boston Globe.

Reviews

- A. C. Grayling's The Age of Genius; review by Thomas Colville for Reviews in History.

- Yale's new edition of the Voynich Manuscript, edited by Raymond Clemens; review by Eamon Duffy in the NYRB.

- Paul Watson's Ice Ghosts; review by Ian McGuire in the NYTimes.

- Brian Doyle's The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World; review by James McNamara in the WaPo.

- Michael Dirda highlights several recent books about books in the WaPo.

Upcoming Auction

- Rare Golf Books & Memorabilia at PBA Galleries on 13 April.

Sunday, April 02, 2017

Links & Reviews

Lots of book fairs coming up this month: I'll be at the Virginia Antiquarian Book Fair in Richmond next weekend, then the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair (21–32 April) and the Washington Antiquarian Book Fair (28–29 April) - if you're there too, please do come by the Rare Book School table! (Speaking of which, there are still open seats in several RBS classes this summer in case you're thinking about applying).

- The ABAA blog reports a theft from Atlanta Vintage Books on 30 March. A list of the stolen items is included.

- A 17th-century notebook containing scholarly notes on Shakespeare's works showed up at the "Antiques Roadshow" stand at Caversham Park in Berkshire. The segment will air on tonight's episode of the show (in the UK). Grace Ioppolo notes on Twitter that other manuscripts quoting Shakespeare can be found in the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts (CELM).

- The University of Rochester has acquired an important collection of letters by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other suffragettes, as well as related printed material. The archive was collected by Isabella Beecher Hooker, and used as a kind of "circulating library," according to Jennifer Schuessler's report in the NYTimes. See also the University's press release.

- The NEH announced $21.7 million in grants for some 200 projects this week.

- The presidents of Independent Research Libraries Association (IRLA) libraries released a joint statement this week in support of the NEH, IMLS, and NHPRC.

- In the TLS, Dennis Duncan offers "Index, A celebration of the".

- Over at Medieval Manuscript Provenance, Peter Kidd profiles bibliophile Henry Huth.

- "Typographic Satire" from the Princeton Graphic Arts Collection blog.

- Rebecca Rego Barry writes for the Fine Books Blog on "HarperCollins at 200." The company's bicentennial website is very much worth a browse (disorienting effects aside).

- Submissions for the 17th ILAB Breslauer Prize are due by the end of April.

- Paul Moxon is compiling a list for the APHA website of printing history publications written or edited by APHA members, award laureates, lecturers, and fellows. Help him if you can.

- This week's Bonhams sale "The Contents of Glyn Cywarch" was a rare white-glove auction, in which every lot sold. I'll have more on this one in the next Fine Books & Collections.

- Richard Hell offers some "Confessions of a Book Collector" in the Village Voice.

- Allan Stypeck of Second Story Books is the subject of a WaPo profile by Neely Tucker.

- A collection of material related to Mata Hari sold at auction in the Netherlands this week for €45,000.

Reviews

- David Bellos' The Novel of the Century; reviews by Tobias Grey in the NYTimes and Michael Lindgren in the WaPo.

- Caroline Winterer's American Enlightenments; review by Tom Cutterham at Reviews in History.

Upcoming Auctions

- Printed Books, Maps & Atlases at Dominic Winter on 5–6 April.

- Fine Books with Science at Medicine at PBA Galleries on 6 April.

- Spring Magic Auction at Potter and Potter on 8 April.