Saturday, February 25, 2017

Links & Reviews

- The 10th biennial conference of the Society of Early Americanists is coming up this week in Tulsa. I've organized a panel there on the future of American library history, where I hope to prompt a good conversation about current tools for working with historical library records and what tools we need in order to make even better use of these.

- After that, it's off to New York for Rare Book Week: three book fairs and lots of other goings-on.

- Harvard Magazine features a highlight article in celebration of Houghton Library's 75th anniversary.

- Coming soon, the Stationers' Register Online.

- Dawn Albinger of Archives Fine Books in Australia has a post up on the ILAB site about her work recently to restore a stolen book to its rightful home.

- A serialized Walt Whitman novel from 1852 has been identified and published. More coverage on NPR.

- From Erin Blake at The Collation, "Manuscripts in libraries: catalog versus finding aid."

- In the "Bright Young Booksellers" series, Nate Pedersen talks to Derek and Anna Walker of Edinburgh's McNaughtan's Bookshop.

Reviews

- John Stubbs' Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel; reviews by James McNamara in the NYTimes and Jeffrey Meyers in the LATimes.

- Anders Rydell's The Book Thieves; review by Michael S. Roth in the WaPo.

- Sean Wilentz's The Politicians & the Egalitarian; review by Christopher Childers at Reviews in History.

Upcoming Auctions

- Fine Books and Manuscripts at Bonhams London, 1 March.

- Rare Books at Heritage New York, 8 March.

- Fine Books and Manuscripts at Bonhams New York, 9 March.

- Early Printed, Medical, Scientific & Travel Books at Swann Galleries, 9 March.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Links & Reviews

- The California book fair(s) are behind us and here comes New York. Recaps from Oakland from Tavistock Books, Oak Knoll Books, and Lux Mentis. It was my first visit to the CA Antiquarian Book Fair in Oakland; the Rare Book School table stayed busy for much of the fair and it was a treat to see so many friends and meet lots of new folks. Found a few good books, too!

- More on that theft of a shipment of rare books from a warehouse in London: see the stolen-book.org page for a PDF list of the titles. The ABA posted a statement about the thefts, the Guardian covered the story, and the Daily Mail ran a report (which the ABA secretary described as "more than a little sensationalist" - take it with a grain of salt).

- Brenda Cronin profiles Glenn Horowitz for the WSJ.

- Robert Darnton offers "The True History of Fake News" in the NYRB.

- Mark Samuels Lasner has donated his collection of British literature and art to the University of Delaware.

- Ella Morton writes for Atlas Obscura about "library hand," the penmanship technique once common on library catalog cards.

- Audio of selected presentations from RBMS 2016 is now available.

- The Harry Ransom Center has posted video of Eric White's recent talk there about the HRC copy of the Gutenberg Bible.

- Don't miss Matt Kirschenbaum's "Books.Files" in the new Archive Journal.

- Sarah Werner asks "what do digitized first folios do for us?"

- The Newberry Library has received a Mellon Foundation grant to create a website for training in Italian Renaissance paleography.

- At their annual meeting during Bibliography Week, APHA presented awards to Lisa Unger Baskin and to the U.S. Government Printing Office, and a Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship to Amanda Stuckey.

- From Sarah Larson for the New Yorker: "The Librarian of Congress and the Greatness of Humility."

- The Internet Archive has reached the semifinalist stage in the competition for a $100 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

- APHA also offered a sneak peak into the forthcoming Printing History 21.

- Maddy Smith writes for the BL's Untold Lives blog about their recent acquisition of the only known copy of a 1650 schoolbook, The Grounds of Learning.

- Over at The Collation, an 1838 promptbook covered in coarse cloth.

- On the OUP Blog, Vincent Carretta asks if Phillis Wheatley's husband was a "crook or a dreamer"?

- New from the Bodleian: The William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné. See their press release for more.

- LitHub has launched a new series on librarians in the 21st century.

- Nick Holdstock writes for the Guardian about cataloging Doris Lessing's library.

- Daniel Pollack-Pelzner explores "The Radical Argument of the New Oxford Shakespeare" for the New Yorker's Page-Turner blog.

- Behind a paywall, alas, but Haaretz has a report on the Kafka manuscripts by Hilo Glazer.

Reviews

- Karen Baston's Charles Areskine's Library; review by Alexander Murdoch at Reviews in History.

- Anders Rydell's The Book Thieves; review by David Holahan in the CSM.

- Randall Fuller's The Book That Changed America; review by Jerry A. Coyne in the WaPo.

- "The Art of the Qur'an" at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; review by Robert F. Worth in the NYRB.

- A November 2016 symposium on women's book history at Texas A&M; review by Kate Ozment at Early Modern Online Bibliography.

Upcoming Auctions

- Americana - Travel & Exploration - World History - Photographs - Cartography at PBA Galleries, 23 February.

- Books and Works on Paper at Bloomsbury, 23 February.

Sunday, February 05, 2017

Links & Reviews

- The ABAA put out a security alert this week about the theft of a shipment of rare books from a West London warehouse.

- Mike Cummings has a piece in YaleNews, "Authenticating the Oldest Book in the Americas," about the recent scholarly work on dating the Grolier Codex.

- Two notebooks from the collections of Philadelphia's Girard College were recently returned; they went missing from Girard sometime between 1964 (when they were microfilmed) and the early 2000s, when their absence was noted.

- The February Rare Book Monthly features Michael Stillman's analysis of 2016 book auction prices, Bruce McKinney writing about a new book on the Eberstadt firm, and more.

- The AAS has acquired a collection of more than fifty manuscript sermons by Massachusetts minister Joseph Avery.

- David Sellers guest-posts on the Oak Knoll blog about printing, design, and bookselling in Havana, with some pictures from his recent trip there.

- Barbara Bair posts for the LC blog about the recently-digitized Whitman papers from the Charles E. Feinberg Collection.

- Peter Dobrin provides an update on the Sendak library matter.

- Provenance images from the collections at Bryn Mawr can now be found in the Provenance Online Project.

- The Concord Free Public Library has acquired a collection of Louisa May Alcott manuscripts.

- Over at Echoes From the Vault, the first post in a series on "book use and marginal contentions" in 18th-century books from the St. Andrews collections.

- Amy McDonald writes for the Devil's Tale blog about the Aldine Press Metadata Project.

- The ABAA has published an "In Memoriam" post for Bernard Rosenthal, with some wonderful stories from his colleagues.

- New: the Needham Calculator, useful for determining the category and size of 15th-century paper.

- Lorraine Berry writes for the Guardian on bibliomania.

- Lisa Fagin Davis has launched an Ege Field Guide, for identifying Otto Ege manuscript leaves "in the wild."

- Derek O'Leary posts on the JHI Blog about "Jared Sparks' American Archives."

- Over on the Course of Human Events blog, a look at the custodians of the engrossed parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence over the years.

Reviews

- Michael Sims' Arthur and Sherlock; reviews by Graham Moore in the NYTimes and Amy Henderson in the WaPo.

- Laurel Thacher Ulrich's A House Full of Females; review by Beverly Gage in the NYTimes.

- Robert McCracken Peck's The Natural History of Edward Lear; review by Adam Kendon in the TLS.

- Raymond Clemens' new edition of the Voynich Manuscript; review by Dustin Illingworth in the LARB.

- Matthew Mason's Apostle of Union; review by Daniel Crofts for Reviews in History.

- The Royal College of Physicians' exhibit on Sir Thomas Browne, "A Cabinet of Rarities;" review by Ruth Scurr in the TLS.

Upcoming Auctions

- Livres et Manuscrits at Sotheby's Paris, 8 February.

- Rare Books & Manuscripts at PBA Galleries (in Oakland), 12 February.

- Icons & Images: Photographs & Photobooks at Swann, 14 February.

- Remaining Books from the Library of Franklin Brooke-Hitching at Forum Auctions (online sale), 15 February.

- Books, Maps & Manuscripts at Freeman's, 17 February.