Apologies for the radio silence; it's been a busy month. As I mentioned previously, I traveled to the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair two weekends ago and to the Washington Antiquarian Book Fair last weekend; both were excellent events with good, vibrant crowds.
- Garrett Scott has a really touching "In Memoriam" post on the ABAA blog about Robert Fraker of Savoy Books, who died this week after a battle with cancer. I remember well Robert's wonderful talk at the 2012 AAS event Garrett mentions. About ten years ago at the Boston Book Fair, Robert sold me one of the items I'm most pleased to have in my own collection, and consistently since then he's had something to show me at the fair that he knew would make my mouth water and/or that I would want to help find a home for. Visiting him and his wife Lillian at their booth has long been a highlight of the fair for me. My deep, deep condolences to Lillian, his family, and his colleagues, and thanks to Garrett for his lovely post.
- Entries for this year's National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest are now being accepted; they are due by 31 May.
- May's Rare Book Monthly articles include Michael Stillman on a stolen library book returning to the shelves and a report on the BPL's rare books inventory.
- Serial book thief Laéssio Rodrigues de Oliveira and an accomplice, Valnique Bueno, are suspected in the theft of more than four hundred rare books from the Rio de Janeiro Federal University in Brazil during a construction project. Via Mitch Fraas, a longer article about the thefts, in Portuguese, includes a list of the stolen titles.
- A list of stolen maps and engravings has been posted over on the ABAA blog, as has the description of a copy of Paine's Common Sense stolen by fraud to someone in Los Angeles and two more books stolen in the New England area in mid-April.
- Princeton has acquired a vellum fragment of a Gutenberg Bible preserved as a binding. Eric White has an excellent writeup.
- Lisa Fagin Davis has a thorough post on the manuscript recently returned by the Boston Public Library to the Italian government. More via the Fine Books Blog and the Boston Globe.
- The Harry Ransom Center has acquired the archive of Peter O'Toole for $400,000.
- The earliest known draft of a portion of the King James Bible, identified at Cambridge in 2015, has now been digitized and published in the Cambridge Digital Library.
- Joe Felcone talked to Wendi Maloney for an LC blog post about his work with 19th-century copyright records.
- A 13th-century manuscript stolen from a Turkish library was identified in a Sotheby's auction catalog withdrawn from sale, according to Turkish media reports.
- Fascinating post by conservator Kristi Westberg for the Huntington blog about "Preserving the Signs of Censorship."
- Adam Reinherz goes inside the Caliban Books warehouse for the Jewish Chronicle.
- The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has acquired an important collection of early Virginia maps.
- In the New Yorker, "How to Decode an Ancient Roman's Handwriting."
- Two new digital collections from the Library of Congress are now available: Manuscripts from St. Catherine's Monastery and the Margaret Bayard Smith papers.
- A manuscript copy on parchment of the Declaration of Independence in the West Sussex Record Office, while long cataloged, is being studied closely for the first time by researchers for the Declaration Resources Project; they have concluded it probably dates to the 1780s. Coverage in the NYTimes and Phys.org.
- Rebecca Romney looks at thirty years of cover designs for The Handmaid's Tale.
- Nicholas Pickwoad's obituary of Christopher Clarkson appeared in the Guardian.
- Lauren Hewes has posted a second installment of photographs showing printers at work, from the AAS collections.
- Cambridge (MA) bookseller and bookbinder Robert Marshall died on 9 April; an obituary appeared in the Boston Globe.
- From Mike Furlough, "What Libraries Did With Google Books," based in part on James Somers' Atlantic piece "Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria."
- Over at Manuscript Road Trip, a stop in New Bedford to look at an important and understudied Book of Hours in the New Bedford Public Library.
- More Shakespeare's World finds for the OED.
- Among the scholarships available for this year's CABS is the new Belle da Costa Greene Scholarship for a bookseller or librarian from an underrepresented community.
- A new book has been published to mark the Houghton Library's 75th birthday. Looks like a good one! More on the anniversary celebrations here.
- Swann sold a complete copy of The Cherokee Messenger on 27 April; it fetched $4,500.
- New: a University of Surrey project, Women's Literary Culture before the Conquest.
- The UVA Law Library has received a grant to digitize copies of the books Jefferson included in his original selection of law texts for the university.
- Robert Oldham writes for the APHA blog about Adam Ramage's one-pull common press.
- The State Library of Massachusetts blog has a post on the history and travels of the manuscript of William Bradford's Of Plimoth Plantation.
Reviews
- John Julius Norwich's Four Princes; review by Alan Mikhail in the NYTimes.
- Peter Brooks' Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris; review by Sunil Iyengar in the WaPo.
- Beth Underdown's The Witchfinder's Sister; review by Carrie Dunsmore in the WaPo.
- Helena Kelly's Jane Austen, the Secret Radical; review by Ruth Franklin in the WaPo.
- Jeff Vandermeer's Borne; review by Elizabeth Hand in the LATimes.
- Charlie English's The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu; review by Peter Thoneman in the TLS.
Upcoming Auctions
- Travels, Atlases, Maps & Natural History at Sotheby's London on 9 May.
- Printed Books, Maps & Documents at Dominic Winters Auctioneers on 10 May.
- Manuscripts at Heritage Auctions on 11 May.
