PhiloBiblos

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:01:00 +0000

- From Small Notes, the blog of UVA's special collections library, David Whitesell reports a reunion between long-separated fragments of a Jefferson manuscript (a ~1769 draft of rules changes for the House of Burgesses).

- The AAS has acquired an unrecorded 1812 New York edition of Aristotle's Masterpiece.

- From Heather Wolfe at The Collation, a fascinating look at handwriting instruction during the early modern period.

- Over at the Ticknor Society's blog, an overview of the books George Ticknor was borrowing from the Boston Athenaeum.

- From the BBC, a look inside the UK's last remaining carbon paper factory. [via Brycchan Carey]

- An important collection of Philip Mazzei manuscripts has been given to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

- Quite a good exploration of early Bible leaves used as paper wrappers on the Cambridge Incunabula Project blog.

- The OED appeal I mentioned last week still stands, and got some attention this week from Rachel Maddow, among others.

- A 1939 journal by W.H. Auden, thought lost, has been found and will be sold at Christie's in June.

- From Medieval Fragments, a tour of one of the last intact chained libraries, at the Church of St. Walburga in Zutphen.

- At Salon, Andrew Leonard reports on a dark side of Wikipedia (its potential to draw vindictive sock-puppetry, &c.).

- Gordon Rugg on why the Voynich Manuscript matters.

- At Notabilia, a look at the distinctive shelf-mark of Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland.

- Sarah Faragher posted this week about a fantastic find at an antique shop: a copy of the 1773 edition of Johnson's Dictionary at what sounds like an extremely good price indeed.

- Always interesting: a step-by-step look at conservation on a 17th-century book from the Senate House collections. [via @john_overholt]

- In the TLS, Mark Davies explores a possible real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter.

Reviews

- John Taliaferro's All the Great Prizes; review by Thomas Mallon in the NYTimes.

- Dan Brown's Inferno; review by Jake Kerridge in the Telegraph.

- Marcia Coyle's The Roberts Court; review by Jeffrey Rosen in the WaPo.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 12 May 2013 12:01:00 +0000

- NPR reported this week on the Field Museum's ongoing financial difficulties, which may result in further deaccessioning of rare books and museum collections.

- Officials at the Vatican report that a 2006 restoration of a Pinturicchio fresco in the Room of the Mysteries revealed what they believe could well be the first European images of American Indians. The fresco was originally painted between 1492 and 1494, and the pope at the time (Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia) was quite interested in Columbus' findings.

- At the Eton College Library blog, a post on some M.R. James artifacts in the Eton collections. And speaking of James, BBC4 is currently streaming some of his stories adapted for radio (just a few days left to listen).

- New on the scene: Just Teach One, an effort to make available some "neglected or forgotten texts" for scholars of early American studies to use in the classroom (hosted by AAS and Common-place). Joe Adelman offers some thoughts from a historical and book-historical perspective over at The Junto.

- At the Incunabula Project blog, two participants in David Pearson's recent Masterclass at Cambridge on "Discovering Provenance in Book History" share their experiences.

- The Smithsonian's Design Decoded blog explores the phonetic alphabet of Benjamin Franklin. [h/t @john_overholt]

- The joys (and amusements) of pen facsimiles at The Collation.

- New: DPLA StackLife, a way to visualize DPLA collections (useful as an example of a new "front end" for the DPLA collections and how they can be "mashed up" with other resources).

Reviews

- Rick Gekoski's Lost, Stolen or Shredded; review by Pradeep Sebastian in The Hindu.

- Edward Rutherfurd's Paris; review by Rodney Welch in the WaPo.

- Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.

- Jill Lepore's The Story of America; review by Amanda Foreman in the TLS.

- Two recent volumes on Samuel Johnson; review by Kate Chisholm in the TLS.

Auction Report: April & May

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sat, 11 May 2013 16:37:00 +0000

Recent and upcoming auction doings:

- 10 April was a pretty amazing day for Christie's New York. The sale of the first part of the Collection of Arthur & Charlotte Vershbow on 10 April can only be described as spectacular. The sale realized a grand total of $15,842,145, with Goya's Tauromaquia leading the way at $1,915,750. Another Goya lot, Los Caprichos, sold for $843,750. And in their single-item sale on the same day, Christie's sold Dr. Francis Crick's "secret of life" letter to his son for an eye-popping $6,059,750.

- Bloomsbury sold Books on Horology, Science, and Medicine on 11 April; results here.

- At Swann on 11 April, Fine Books Including Incunabula and Writing Manuals, in 148 lots. The Noble Fragment Gutenberg leaf sold for $55,200, and the first edition of Audubon's Quadrupeds made $288,000. The (only?) presentation copy of Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield fetched $16,800, and early printing did especially well.

- Swann sold Printed & Manuscript Americana on 16 April. A collection of Civil War diaries and letters by two friends in a California regiment sold for $31,200, while an archive of material by natural historian William Cooper and his son James Graham Cooper made $40,800 (over estimates of just $1,500-2,500). An extreme Theodore Roosevelt rarity, a memorial volume to his wife and mother, sold for $38,400.

- Bloomsbury held a Bibliophile Sale on 18 April, in 655 lots. Results here.

- Christie's London sold Travel, Science, and Natural History items on 24 London, realizing £1,658,075. The manuscript speech by Wilbur Wright sold for £61,875, while the egg of an extinct elephant bird fetched £66,675.

- PBA Galleries sold Travel & Exploration, Cartography & Americana from the Library of Glen McLaughlin (with additions) on 25 April. Their website was having issues when I wrote this, so I don't have results information at present.

- Christie's Paris' sale of Importants Lives Anciens, Livres d'artistes et Manuscrits on 29 April brought in 2,407,762 Euros, with Hugo, Balzac and Proust manuscript lots taking top honors.

- At Sotheby's Paris on 29-30 April, the first part of the Bibliothèque des ducs de Luynes, Château de Dampierre was sold, for a total of 2,354,715 Euros. The grand folio volume with Blondel watercolors produced to mark the wedding of the dauphin in 1745 sold for 301,500 Euros, but it was a manuscript map noting action involving Lafayette during the American Revolution which took the top price, fetching 373,500 Euros (over estimates of just 60,000-80,000 Euros).

- Bloomsbury sold The Library of a Continental Gentleman: Natural History Books on 9 May, in 288 lots. Results here. A copy of Ventenat's Description des Plantes Nouvelles et peu Connues (1800-1802) sold for £13,000.

- Swann sold Art, Press & Illustrated Books, including inventory from the stock of Irving Oaklander on 9 May. See the summer Fine Books & Collection for an overview of this sale.

- Sotheby's London sells Travel, Atlases, Maps & Natural History on 14 May, in 219 lots. An early 18th-century illustrated manuscript of Piri Reis' Kitab-i Bahriye once in the Phillipps collection could fetch £100,000-150,000.

- At Bloomsbury on 16 May, a Bibliophile Sale, in 406 lots.

- Sotheby's London holds a sale of First Editions, Second Thoughts on 21 May. This sale includes 50 contemporary first editions, annotated by their authors, to benefit the charity English PEN. Browse the available lots here.

- On 29 May at Sotheby's Paris, Livres et Manuscrits, in 149 lots. An archive of Rousseau letters is estimated at 250,000-350,000 Euros.

- PBA Galleries sells South Sea: The Library of Richard Topel, Part II on 30 May, in 349 lots.

- Also on 30 May, Bloomsbury holds a 30th Anniversary Sale of Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper, in 424 lots.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 05 May 2013 23:15:00 +0000

- Your must-read piece this week is John Overholt's "Five Theses on the Future of Special Collections," which will appear in a forthcoming issue of RBM but is available now via Harvard's OA DASH repository. It is an excellent, timely, and provocative essay which I hope will receive the large audience it very much deserves.

- The editors of the OED have issued a public appeal for help in identifying a book cited in the dictionary but which doesn't seem to be held in any libraries and is only found mentioned in a few places (so far). Quite a fun rabbit-hole to lose yourself down, as I've discovered. Let's help them find this book!

- At The Collation, Erin Blake explores "Two disciplines separated by a common language" - that is, "print culture" as either pertaining to printed pictures or printed words.

- Jennifer Howard profiles Bethany Nowviskie of UVA's Scholars Lab for The Chronicle.

- The Bodleian Library has acquired a manuscript of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "Binsey Poplars" for £50,000.

- In today's New York Times, a look at how the sequester budget cuts are affecting the Library of Congress.

- The National Library of Wales announced this week that they will no longer be claiming copyright over digitized copies of items from its collections.

- From the medievalfragments blog, a summary of a recent (and very awesome) find: 132 medieval notes and fragments found in the binding of a 1577 book.

- Sarah Werner expands on her recent Collation post on digitized copies of the First Folio at Wynken de Worde, asking just what it is that we should want as users of such digital surrogates (and not just of the First Folio, but of such things generally).

- New from the Massachusetts Historical Society, a digital presentation of the wonderfully interesting Harbottle Dorr annotated newspapers. See the blog post announcing the launch.

- David Rubenstein has lent a copy of the Stone Declaration of Independence to the State Department and will fund reproductions of the broadside to be displayed in every U.S. embassy.

- Over at EMOB, Anna Battigelli summarizes a recent Beinecke Library conference on digital archiving, Beyond the Text: Library Archives in the 21st Century.

- From Cultural Compass, the blog of the Harry Ransom Center, a post about the process used to create a digital version of the Center's Blaeu "great wall map."

- At Boston 1775 this week, J.L. Bell talked to Nat Philbrick about Philbrick's new book on the Battle of Bunker Hill: Part I, Part II.

- The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists announced the launch of their new journal this week: J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists.

- Over at Brown's curio blog, a look at a first edition Great Gatsby inscribed to T.S. Eliot by Fitzgerald (who spelled Eliot's name wrong) with Eliot's pencilled marginal notes throughout.

- I'm not sure if this is new or not, but it's new to me so I wanted to mention it: The Morgan Library & Museum has posted a piece on the provenance of their copy of the Gutenberg Bible.

Reviews

- Randall Woods' Shadow Warrior; review by Evan Thomas in the NYTimes.

- Steve Vogel's Through the Perilous Fight; review by Joyce Appleby in the WaPo.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 14:04:00 +0000

- Over at The Collation, Sarah Werner rounds up all the available online facsimiles of the First Folio (there are eight, by her count).

- A fire at the National Library of Wales this week led to water damage throughout the part of the building where the fire occurred (which houses office space and new acquisitions, not the bulk of the library's collections).

- In an Italian court this week, Marino Massimo de Caro and thirteen others were indicted for criminal conspiracy and will go to trial in early June (this is on top of the previously-handed-down sentence of seven years in prison for theft).

- Micah Vandegrift explores the DPLA and what it may mean in the long run for libraries.

- I mentioned the recent recovery of a bunch of books stolen from the Lambeth Palace library two weeks ago; new on that front is a BBC Magazine story on the case with some new and interesting details. The employee/thief is described as a "low-level employee" and that he had defaced many of the stolen books to remove provenance markings, suggesting that he probably intended to try and sell them (some of the stolen books have not been recovered, and may have been sold).

- On the occasion of the anniversary of her birthday, Gary Kelly proposes that we might think of Mary Wollstonecraft as the "first modern woman."

- Adam Hooks at Anchora profiles the leaf book A Noble Fragment.

- From Tablet, a profile of historian and book/document thief Zosa Szajkowski.

- From The Bibliophile's Lair, Rick Ring notes his recent acquisition of a cuneiform tablet (an itty-bitty one!) for the collections at Trinity's Watkinson Library.

- At Selling Enlightenment, the first major article drawing on the big French Book Trade in the Enlightenment project: Mark Curran's "Beyond the Forbidden Best-Sellers of Revolutionary France," which looks quite interesting indeed.

- In The New Yorker, Sally McGrane highlights a recent article in the German newspaper Die Zeit, a diary of the "Hitler Diaries" hoax by one of the editors of Stern at the time of the diaries debacle.

Reviews

- Mary Roach's Gulp; review by Jon Ronson in the NYTimes.

- Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill; review by Walter Isaacson in the WaPo.

- Michael Pollan's Cooked; review by Bee Wilson in the NYTimes.

- Denise Kiernan's The Girls of Atomic City; review by Scott Martelle in the WaPo.

- Elizabeth Strout's The Burgess Boys; review by Sylvia Brownrigg in the NYTimes.

- The Selected Letters of Willa Cather; review by Tom Perrota in the NYTimes.

An MP's Account of the Ireland Forgeries

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 13:07:00 +0000

I recently stumbled across another example of a contemporary diary account of the William Henry Ireland Shakespeare forgeries (previous installments: William Godwin, George Canning, John Quincy Adams, Joseph Farington), this one coming from MP Charles Abbot, later Lord Colchester (The Diary and Correspondence of Charles Abbot, Lord Colchester, Speaker of the House of Commons 1802-1817, ed. Charles, Lord Colchester. London: John Murray, 1861).

22 January 1796: Went to Mr. Ireland's, in Norfolk Street in the Strand, by appointment of Sir Philip Gibbes, to meet the Portuguese Ambassabor D'Almeida, and see the newly produced manuscripts of Shakspeare. We saw the MS. play of Lear, and an entire new play of Vortigern and Rowena. Also his profession of faith, letters, to and from him, accounts, receipts, and deeds, &c., innumerable; besides his supposed library of books, to the number of seventy volumes at least, such as Spenser, and various chronicles and pamphlets of the time he lived in, interspersed with his marginal observations. A love-letter to his mistress, Ann Hathaway, whom he afterwards married, and a lock of his hair enclosed. Sir Isaac Heard, who was present, and had often seen these articles before, was firmly persuaded of their authenticity. I am not; doubtless the number of pieces produced makes the supposition of a forgery more difficult; but my opinion, as far as any can be formed on such an inspection, and hearing the accompanying narrative, is against their authenticity: 1. Because there is no great variety of Shakspeare's MSS. extant by which the authenticity of this specimen of handwriting can be judged of. 2. Because the paper appears to be artificially stained or darkened; and especially upon the printed books in those places only where the handwriting is inserted. 3. Because I do not think any of the compositions which I saw surpass the merit of many daily imitations in the newspapers. 4. Because if the internal evidence fails, or is inconclusive, the external evidence is of all others the most suspicious, and nearly destructive of their being true originals; for Ireland refuses to say where or from whom he procured them, and even denies that he knows it; they being delivered, as he says, by his son to him, and received by his son from some gentleman who will not suffer himself to be named. His story is even further the more suspicious, because Shakspeare's reputation has now for so many years been celebrated, and yet no one fair or entire copy of any one of his numerous plays has ever been found; and here is only one a whole fair copy of the long play of Lear, but two new entire plays, also pretended to be entirely in his handwriting, whose titles never before were known, viz. Vortigern and Rowena, and King Henry II. It is to be noted also, that a deed of trust from Shakespeare to Hemmings, the player, speaks of a play entitled Henry III., but even that deed does not mention Henry II.

I remember also, in a conversation with Mr. Malone, hearing him instance the following circumstances to prove the imposture:—1. That Lord Southampton's handwriting, produced by Ireland, is quite unlike all the specimens in the British Museum. 2. That Hampton Court, called Hamtown by Queen Elizabeth, in a supposed letter under her hand, never was so called without the addition of "Court" in her time. 3. That the words "derangement" and "acceded to" are modernisms, and unknown in Shakespeare's time, &c., &c.

If the whole be a forgery, as I think it must be,—at least till these two new plays are submitted to the public eye and judgment, for their contents to be ascertained and appreciated,—it is certainly a very elaborate forgery, and an unprecedented attempt to impose on the literary judgment of the public. Chatterton's were comparatively few and soon detected.

2 April 1796: I dined at Montagu's, and went afterwards with him to the representation of Vortigern, a pretended play of Shakspeare, but in truth a miserable cento and parody, patched up principally from Macbeth, with a character of Queen Katherine, and a scene or two imitated from As You Like It. Nothing for which an original character or idea might not be found in Shakspeare, and nothing not expressed in the worst taste. The play was heard with patience into the third act, then it was laughed at, and hissed and laughed at to the end, and then not suffered to be given out again.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:45:00 +0000

Well that was one heck of a week, to put it politely. I'm relieved that it's over, and so very glad (and proud) that the city I know and love has shown such resilience and defiance in the face of Monday's tragedy. All credit to the those who gave of themselves this week, from the medical personnel to the tremendously efficient law enforcement officials to the responsible reporters who kept us up to speed all week long. My thoughts are with all those who lost loved ones this week and all those still recovering, and I look forward to walking down Boylston Street again soon.

- Some big news from the the Philadelphia library world this week: the Rosenbach Museum and Library and the Free Library of Philadelphia announced on Wednesday that they intend to merge and form The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation. The Pew Charitable Trust will be providing some of the funding for the merger. Peter Dobrin reported on this for the Inquirer as well.

- From the Fine Books Blog "Bright Young Things" series, an excellent interview with Joe Fay, the manager of the rare books department for Heritage Auctions in Texas.

- At Public Domain Review, Marri Lynn writes on Vesalius' use of metaphor in his De humani corporis fabrica. And don't forget to support PDR before 1 May (I have done so, and hope others will too).

- Over at The Junto, Michael Hattem reflects on the year he worked on the Benjamin Franklin papers project at Yale.

- Whitney Trettien has a fascinating guest post at The Collation this week, on a particularly interesting interleaved Book of Common Prayer.

- At the Princeton Graphic Acts blog, Julie Mellby posts about an 1813 Old Bailey trial for book theft.

- A copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer was appraised on the Cincinnati "Antiques Roadshow" episode recently, and William and Sylvia Peterson, authors of the Kelmscott Chaucer census, would like to contact the owner so that they can document the copy.

- From Tablet, Batya Ungar-Sargon profiles the Voynich Manuscript and the quest to decipher it.

- And now for something completely ridiculous: CNBC's show "Treasure Detectives" aired a clip of "art forgery expert" Curtis Dowling on the supposedly widespread practice of forgers "faking" old books (including references to using walnut oil to fake smells and handling patterns, as well as something about painting bindings). At Bibliodeviant, Adrian Harrington's Jonathan Kearns calls this segment what it is: utter nonsense. Read the whole thing.

Reviews

- Clive James' new review of Dante's Divine Comedy; review by Joseph Luzzi in the NYTimes.

- Megan Marshall's Margaret Fuller; review by Kathryn Harrison in the NYTimes.

- Philip Gura's Truth's Ragged Edge; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:02:00 +0000

- Your must-read of the week is Eric Naiman's "When Dickens met Dostoesvky" in the TLS, an absolutely riveting account of what appears to be a long-running, complex and widespread series of academic hoaxes (the fruits of which have ended up in several major Charles Dickens biographies, among other publications).

- The Chicago Tribune reported on Tuesday that the city's Field Museum is mulling the sale of its rare book collection, after a "committee of scientists and executives tasked with evaluating the museum's financial situation suggested in a report to the president" that the books "could fetch up to $50 million." The Museum has since 1970 been home to what is often called the finest copy in existence of Audubon's Birds of America, among other rarities.

- Stephen Enniss has been named the new director of the Harry Ransom Center, and will succeed Thomas Staley at the end of August. Enniss is currently head librarian at the Folger, and was previously at Emory.

- Another don't-miss: Sarah Werner's post at The Collation this week on mourning pages and what they can show us.

- A trove of books and other items stolen from the Lambeth Palace library prior to 1975 have been recovered; the thief, apparently repentant, left along with his will a sealed letter containing a confession and instructions on how the books could be retrieved. The article identifies the thief only as "an individual who had once been associated with the library."

- As part of their illustrations series, Echoes from the Vault explores the amazing images in Athansius Kircher's Musurgia Universalis (1650 edition).

- The "Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies," a 15th-century Flemish illuminated manuscript purchased by the Getty Museum in December for £3.8 million, has been placed under an export embargo by the British government so that authorities can attempt to raise funds to keep the manuscript in the UK.

- A collection of 28 letters from J.D. Salinger to the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York and its leaders between 1967 and 2006 have been donated by the center to the Morgan Library.

- Over on the Tavistock Books blog, a profile of Shakespeare scholar (and prankster) George Steevens.

- The Princeton Graphic Arts blog posted this week that Henry Morris has announced that the most recent Bird & Bull Press publication, Busby's Street Scenes, will be the last.

- Classicist Giovanna Ceserani's Mapping the Grand Tour project is highlighted by James Kierstead in the Stanford Report.

- John Overholt passed along on Twitter this week a really remarkable "correction" which appears in the 13 April issue of The Lancet. It concerns the journal's treatment of John Snow, of cholera map fame, in both their 1858 obituary and an 1855 editorial, of which: "The Editor would also like to add that comments such as 'In riding his hobby very hard, he has fallen down through a gully-hole and has never since been able to get out again' and 'Has he any facts to show in proof? No!', published in an Editorial on Dr Snow's theories in 1855, were perhaps somewhat overly negative in tone."

- The BBC is going to adapt Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell as a miniseries. Dave Itzkoff's NYT ArtsBeat post on this contains the wonderful line "No casting was immediately announced for Jonathan Strange, Mr. Norrell or the footnotes ...".

- Amanda Katz has a playful takeoff on André Aciman's new novel Harvard Square, imagining the novels named for other squares in the Boston area.

Review

- Rick Gekoski's Lost, Stolen or Shredded; review by Stuart Kelly in The Scotsman.

Bay Psalm Book Sale Date Set

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:27:00 +0000

Sotheby's announced this morning that they will sell the Old South Church Bay Psalm Book on 26 November in New York. They've placed an estimate of $15-30 million on the volume.

The Bay Psalm Book will be displayed at Sotheby's New York from 12-14 April before being exhibited around the country in the coming months. From 18 November through the sale it will again be on display in New York. The press release indicates that a schedule will soon be posted at http://www.sothebys.com/baypsalmbook.

The church membership voted in December to sell the book, one of two copies still in its possession (of an original five which came to the church through the bequest of Rev. Thomas Prince).

For more on the extant Bay Psalm Book copies, see my November post: The Bay Psalm Book of 1640: Where Are They Now?

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:40:00 +0000

- A new version of the Atlas of Early Printing was released this week, and is well worth spending some time with. Quite a useful resource and teaching tool.

- Writing in Latham's Quarterly, Paul Collins explores, well, "Monkey Business."

- From Echoes from the Vault, a few fakes and forgeries from the special collections at the University of St. Andrews.

- The Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog celebrated its fifth birthday this week. Many congratulations to all involved, particularly Mike Widener, and here's to many more years!

- Another of my favorite blogs also had a birthday this week: Caleb Crain marked the tenth anniversary of Steamboats are Ruining Everything by relaunching with a fresh new look: well done!

- Reported stolen from Peter Harrington, The Federalist in original boards. See the full description.

- Travis McDade writes on the OUP Blog about the professionalization of book theft rings, noting that the involvement of someone specifically to remove library markings is usually a good indicator that a theft scheme has "gone pro".

- Over at the Royal Society's The Repository blog, Felicity Harrington muses on reading Hooke's Micrographia, then and now.

- A "former bookstore owner" from Cambridge, MA (whose identity I imagine will be easily determined by many readers of this blog) has reported that someone's been breaking into her house and stealing poetry books.

- In a delightful essay at the Public Domain Review, Patricia Fara explores the iconography of Joseph Banks. And by the way, the PDR is raising funds to keep their project going, and if you can give, I encourage you to do so (I have).

- As the Digital Public Library of America prepares for its launch event on 18-19 April at the Boston Public Library, Robert Darnton provides some background and future plans for the project in an NYRB essay. A good overview look at the project, as is Tim Carmody's Verge piece on the DPLA.

- Mills Kelly's "Lying About the Past" course has been deep-sixed. Mill posted about this on his blog this week, and Dan Berrett at The Chronicle followed up.

- From the American Birding Association blog, a report that a pair of ornithologists are attempting to use descriptions and drawings by William Bartram and other 18th-century birders to identify a previously-discounted species, the painted vulture.

Reviews

- Monte Reel's Between Man and Beast; review by David Quammen in the NYTimes.

- Mary Roach's Gulp; review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.

- Joyce Carol Oates' The Accursed; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.

Auction Preview: April

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 12:57:00 +0000

Coming up in April:

- Christie's New York sells the first part of the Collection of Arthur & Charlotte Vershbow on 10 April, in 352 lots. Watch the new FB&C for my full preview of this sale, which contains some really, truly, amazing books and be will fascinating to watch.

- Also on 10 April, Christie's New York sells Dr. Francis Crick's "secret of life" letter to his son, which is estimated to fetch $1-2 million.

- On 11 April at PBA Galleries, South Sea: The Library of Dr. Richard Topel, Part I, in 365 lots. A first edition of Vancouver's Voyage of Discovery could sell for $25,000-35,000.

- Also on 11 April, at Bloomsbury, 169 lots of Books on Horology, Science, and Medicine.

- At Swann on 11 April, Fine Books Including Incunabula and Writing Manuals, in 148 lots. A Noble Fragment Gutenberg leaf is estimated at $40,000-50,000, while a first edition of Audubon's Quadrupeds could fetch $250,000-350,000. What is being described as the only presentation copy of Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield is estimated at $6,000-9,000. Lots of fascinating things in this one.

- Swann sells Printed & Manuscripts Americana on 16 April, including items from Peter Scanlan's Theodore Roosevelt collection, in 434 lots. Little bit of everything here!

- Bloomsbury holds a Bibliophile Sale on 18 April, in 655 lots.

- Christie's London will sell Travel, Science, and Natural History items on 24 London, in 267 lots. A manuscript speech by Wilbur Wright is estimated at £50,000-80,000.

- PBA Galleries will sell Travel & Exploration, Cartography & Americana from the Library of Glen McLaughlin (with additions) on 25 April. No online catalog for that one yet.

- Christie's Paris holds a sale of Importants Lives Anciens, Livres d'artistes et Manuscrits on 29 April, in 243 lots. Some important manuscript material here by Balzac, Proust, and Hugo.

- At Sotheby's Paris on 29-30 April, the first part of the Bibliothèque des ducs de Luynes, Château de Dampierre, in 364 lots. A grand folio volume with Blondel watercolors produced to mark the wedding of the dauphin in 1745 is estimated at 200,000-300,00 Euros.

Auction Recap: March

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 12:27:00 +0000

- On 11 March, ALDE sold the Bibliothèque du Chateau de La Plagne, in 331 lots. Results are here.

- PBA Galleries sold Fine Literature, Children's Books, &c. on 14 March, in 621 lots (results). The Hemingway family photo album sold for $10,800. The first printing of Tender is the Night with later jacket didn't sell.

- Bloomsbury held a Bibliophile sale on 14 March, in 579 lots. Results are here.

- Bonhams sold Books, Maps, Manuscripts & Historical Photographs on 19 March, in 235 lots; results here. A very neat collection of albumen prints by early photographer Lady Clementina Hawarden sold for £115,250. A magnificently-bound manuscript recipe book from the library of the first Earl of Yarmouth fetched £42,050.

- Also at Bonhams on 20 March was the The Xi'an Incident: The Papers of Hyland "Bud" Lyon sale, in just eight lots. With premiums the lots brought in a total of $2,710,125.

- The Christie's London sale of The Library of a Spanish Bibliophile on 20 March brought in £624,775, with a first edition of Juan de Arfe's Quilatador de la plata, oro y piedras selling for £40,000.

- Bloomsbury sold Travel, Topographical, Sporting and Natural History Books, Maps, Prints and Photographs on 21 March, in 366 lots. Results here.

- Results for PBA's sale of Rare Americana and African American History on 28 March are here. A broadside lithograph for the Overland Mail Company fetched $18,000, and a single volume from the first octavo edition of Audubon's Birds sold for $12,000.

This year, the truth wins ...

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 22:41:00 +0000

Most years I think up something silly to post on April Fool's Day. But this year I realized that nothing I was going to come up with would beat this actual news report, from Buffalo NY's WGRZ:

History Mystery: Rare Book on Slavery Found in WNY Home.

Honestly, I don't even know where to start.

Previous 4/1 fun:

2009: Find Suggests a Real "Gulliver"
2010: Known Shakespeare Forger Doubted "Double Falshood"
2011: Scholar Discovers Lost Longfellow Translation
2012: Book Review: "Mimes in Vichy France"

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 15:33:00 +0000

- Your can't-miss post this week is Heather Wolfe's look at 17th-century filing practices.

- A fire broke out on Monday at the Walworth Town Hall building in Southwark, London, which houses the Newington Library and Cuming Museum in Southwark. There was some damage to the collections of the museum and library, but it sounds as though it could have been significantly worse.

- The Globe & Mail has published an update on the John Mark Tillman thefts case, including the little tidbit that Tillman's son Kyle, 23, also faces charges related to the thefts (obstruction of justice, possession of stolen property, and perjury). The CBC has posted a similar story, noting that the number of seized artifacts has now passed 2,000. And from the RCMP, a photo gallery of recovered items.

- They did it with menus, and now the NYPL has turned to crowdsourced transcription of playbills: head over to ensemble.nypl.org and help transcribe!

- Over at Fine Books Blog, Rebecca Rego Barry posted "Ten Reasons a Pessimist Can be Optimistic about the Future of the Book."

- Also from Canada, the Calgary Herald reports on the continuing troubles at LAC, which now include a troubling new "code of conduct" for archives staff.

- The New-York Historical Society's new Audubon exhibit is now open, and this week they also posted a very interesting piece that's also in the show: a Meiji-era woodcut depicting the episode when Audubon opens up a box of watercolors only to find they've been destroyed by rats.

- Jennifer Howard reported last week on the forthcoming edition of Willa Cather's letters. Read the whole thing, it's well worth it!

- And speaking of documentary editions, Jeff Looney of the Thomas Jefferson Papers was recently profiled in the Washington Post.

- From the Houghton blog, a neat new acquisition: a hollow-cut silhouette of Arthur Maynard Walter, one of the founders of the Boston Athenaeum. The silhouette was made by Moses Williams, one of the few known African-American silhouettists of the early 19th century.

- DPLA Director of Content Emily Gore is interviewed by Annie Schutte on the Knight Foundation blog.

- Dave Gary recently had the chance to visit and explore the library of William Seward, at his home in Auburn, NY. Not surprisingly, he found some absolutely great stuff.

- New developments in the de Caro case, too: he and fourteen accomplices have reportedly confessed to additional thefts from more libraries, including the Biblioteca dell’Osservatorio Ximeniano and the Biblioteca Scolopica San Giovannino, both in Florence.

- The Grolier Club's new exhibit on book thief Guglielmo Libri is reviewed by Eve M. Kahn in the NYTimes.

- There's a long profile of George R.R. Martin in the Telegraph.

- Others have already covered the Supreme Court's strong first-sale ruling more thoroughly than I need to, but do read Jennifer Howard's Chronicle report on the case.

- Bookseller Norman Kane (The Americanist) passed away on 23 March; he was 88. Fine Books Notes has a short notice, plus links to their profile and interview with Kane from 2011.

- A couple unpublished F. Scott Fitzgerald poems will go on the auction block this week.

- An update on a link I posted around this time last year: the 1555 copy of Vesalius containing the author's own annotations for a projected third edition is now being made available for study at the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, where it is on deposit. The library is planning an exhibition next year to mark the 500th anniversary of Vesalius' birth.

Reviews

- Steven Galbraith and Geoffrey Smith's Rare Book Librarianship; review by David Gary at Function Follows Forme.

- Joyce Carol Oates' The Accursed; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.

- Sandra Day O'Connor's Out of Order; review by Adam Liptak in the NYTimes.

- Andrea Stuart's Sugar in the Blood; review by Amy Wilentz in the NYTimes.

- Catherine Bailey's The Secret Rooms; review by Nicola Shulman in the TLS.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 15:21:00 +0000

I'm just back from the DH: The Next Generation symposium in Boston, which was invigorating and excellent. I'll working on a writeup of both this and the SEA meeting, and hope to have that up shortly.

You all probably heard the rotten news that Google has decided to phase out Google Reader in a few months. I've used Reader for years as the best way to sift through all the blogs, newspaper book review sections, and other resources I try to keep up with each week (starring items in Reader is one of the many ways I collect things for these weekly links posts, too). So I'm very disappointed that it's going away, and like many others I'll be looking for a suitable replacement. If you find one that you like, I'd love to hear about it, and when I find one I like, I'll let you know.

And now, on to the links:

- Marino Massimo de Caro was sentenced to seven years in prison this week as well as lifetime exclusion from holding any public office for his role in the thefts from the Girolamini Library in Naples. Others involved in the case received lighter sentences: Viktoriya Pavlovsky received a prison term of sixty-four months and permanent exclusion from public office; Alejandro Cabello and Mirko Camuri were sentenced to fifty-six months in person and a five-year exclusion from office; and Lorena Paola Weigandt Federico Roncoletti received sentences of thirty-two months in prison. Preliminary hearings in the next round begin on 26 March, when a judge will set a trial date for de Caro and thirteen others on conspiracy charges.

- Some really fantastic news from the University of Rochester: they're planning to digitize portions of the William Henry Seward and Seward Family Papers, after work by undergraduate and graduate students in what sounds like a great course sequence as well as some fantastic faculty-library collaboration.

- New blog: Medieval Bookbindings, which I certainly recommend adding to your reading list. See also Anthony Tedeschi's post on this one.

- New resource: DevDH.org, a site to collect "lectures, podcasts, and resources to aid humanists in initiating, developing, and sustaining projects." Follow them on Twitter at @DevelopDH, too.

- One of the Old South Church copies of the Bay Psalm Book has been digitized, so you can take a look at it here. I'm updating my Bay Psalm Book census post with some additional information gleaned from this scan.

- Whitney Trettien has a great post up with some really fascinating contextual information about the Little Gidding Harmony (the digitization of which I noted here last week).

- Library Journal covered the Maine Shared Collections Strategy this week, an eight-library consortium between public, academic, and government libraries.

- Freeman's Auction House in Philadelphia will sell, in several parts, the library of the Mount St. Alphonsus Redemptorist seminary and retreat center in Esopus, NY which closed in 2012. The library includes some 4,000 books which may fetch up to $700,000 total.

- Dan Cohen talked to Library Journal this week about the DPLA and his vision for its future. In other DPLA news this week, the National Archives announced that it will contribute 1.2 million records as part of the pilot launch.

- The ABAA and other biblio-groups weighed in this week on Amazon's attempt to control the .book, .author, and .read top-level domain names, calling it anti-competitive. If you want to weigh in, there are some ways to contribute here.

- Japan's Toppan Printing has created what they're saying is the world's smallest printed book, with pages of .75mm.

Reviews

- Megan Marshall's Margaret Fuller: A New American Life; review by Dwight Garner in the NYTimes.

- Alister McGrath's C.S. Lewis: A Life; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- Steve Ferguson highlights a very lovely and curious binding at Notabilia.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:23:00 +0000

Apologies for the lack of a links & reviews post last weekend; I was traveling back from the SEA meeting in Savannah, and by the time I got home was too sleepy to get started on this. So consider this week's a double-feature (and I'll have more to say on SEA soon, too). If you want one perspective on Savannah in the meantime, as well as a link to the Twitter archive, see Rachel Herrmann's post over at The Junto.

- New: Manuscripts Online, a nifty search engine for written and early print culture in Britain through 1500.

- Another neat new resource: Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, on "reassembling the early modern social network."

- In a must-read post, Heather Wolfe takes a close look at a manuscript diary from the Folger collections and realizes that perhaps the authorial attribution of the diary had been mistaken at some point. Some great detective work here.

- A new Audubon exhibit (really the first installment of three) is now open at the New-York Historical Society. It was reviewed by Edward Rothstein in the NYTimes this week, and featured in the BBC Magazine.

- Some really great news this week: Dan Cohen has been named the executive director of the Digital Public Library of America. They couldn't have made a better choice. Dan posted about his decision to move to the DPLA here.

- An early Charlotte Brontë manuscript poem will go under the hammer at Bonhams on 10 April, and could fetch £40,000-45,000.

- John Palfrey writes in Library Journal about the importance of the first sale doctrine and how the digital shift has led to new, knotty issues in that area.

- If you'll be in Cambridge this summer, there's going to be what looks like a tremendously-interesting conference to celebrate the centenary of A.N.L. Munby, "'Floreat Bibliomania' - Great Collectors and their Grand Designs."

- The ABAA security blog has posted a list of books stolen from Lost Horizons Bookstore in Santa Barbara, CA.

- NARA hosted a presentation this week on the Landau-Savedoff thefts, which you can watch here (and I do recommend watching it if you can; it's well worth it).

- David Rubenstein has donated $10 million to the new Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mt. Vernon.

- Over at the Fine Books Blog, Zhenya Dzhavgova writes about the awesome efforts by booksellers and others to help out Blue Jacket Books in Xenia, OH, much-damaged by a burst water pipe.

- The Toronto Star reports today on what appears to be a severe reduction in acquisitions by Library and Archives Canada. Warning: includes some absolutely ridiculous statements by the head of LAC.

- Eric White has posted at CERL an introduction to and database of C15 print runs.

- Quite a strange story over a signed first edition of The Great Gatsby on offer by bookseller James Robert Cahill: William M. Hitchcock, son of the man to whom Fitzgerald signed the copy of the book, claims that the book was stolen from his home. The book was purchased by Cahill at a Bonhams auction in 2010 (lot description) for $61,000. The FBI reportedly investigated the case in 2012 but closed the case last month.

- Over on the Queens' Old Library Books Blog, a post by Lindsey Askin on Roger Ascham's marginalia.

- Erin Blake highlights a neat new Folger acquisition, one of ten theater "super-scrapbooks" that got away at the original sale, when the Folgers' agent bought the other nine.

- Newly-digitized at Houghton Library, a fascinating 1620s "gospel harmony," known as the Little Gidding Harmony.

- From the T Magazine blog, a profile of the very cool Monkey's Paw bookshop in Toronto (definitely on my list of places to visit someday!).

- In Slate, Matt Kirschenbaum offers a new preview of his forthcoming book Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing.

- Mark Hartsell guest-blogs on the LOC blog about scholars using Thomas Jefferson's books in the reading room.

- A lawsuit was filed this week by a Sherlock Holmes scholar, alleging that the detective is in the public domain and that the estate should not be able to continue to collect licensing fees.

- LATimes book critic David Ulin's essay "The weight of books" makes for essential reading for those of us with, um, many books.

- Over at the Religion in American History blog, Michael Altman offers up "Reading About the 'Hindoos' with John Adams," where he muses about John Adams' marginalia in Priestley's A Comparison of the Institutes of Moses with that of the Hindoos and Other Ancient Nations (scanned here).

- Via the Princeton Rare Books blog, a new study of the Kelmscott Chaucer copies at Princeton, by Robert J. Milevski.

- It was difficult to miss that photo of cat prints on a manuscript document which made the rounds recently. Emir O. Filipović, who took the original image, wrote about the experience over at The Appendix.

Reviews

- Susan Jacoby's The Great Agnostic; review by Jennifer Michael Hect in the NYTimes.

- Sandra Day O'Connor's Out of Order; review by Joan Biskupic in the WaPo.

- David D. Hall's Cultures of Print; review by David Gary at Function Follows Forme.

- Ernest Freeberg's Age of Edison; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.

- Andrew Pettegree's The Book in the Renaissance; review by David Gary at Function Follows Forme.

- Jonathon Keats' Forged; review by Catherine Schofield Sezgin at the ARCA blog.

- Jim Crace's Harvest; review by Philip Womack in The Telegraph.

Auction Report: February Recap / March Preview

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:18:00 +0000

First, let's get February's sales recapped, then we'll take a look at March.

- Bonhams sold Fine Books & Manuscripts on 17 February, in 300 lots (results). A 1619 Mercator atlas sold for $27,500, and an inscribed original "Peanuts" strip fetched $25,000. The copy of Bien's Audubon failed to sell.

- PBA Galleries sold Rare Books & Manuscripts on 18 February, in 225 lots (results). The top lot was a copy of the second volume (only) of the first book edition of The Federalist, which sold for $16,800. The collection of all sixteen printings of the first edition of the Alcoholic Anonymous Big Book and the first issue King James Bible didn't sell.

- At Bonhams on 18 February, Printed Books and Maps, in 436 lots (results). A collection of ~70 maps of Germany and Eastern Europe (mostly C16-18) made £16,875.

- Bloomsbury sold the Beatrix Potter Collection of Mark Ottignon on 27 February, in 307 lots (results). A first issue of The Tale of Peter Rabbit sold for £20,000.

- Also at Bloomsbury, on 28 February, Literature, Manuscripts & Modern First Editions, in 386 lots (results). The two lots of Hester Thrale Piozzi letters were the main attraction, selling for £26,000 and £15,000.

- On 28 February at PBA Galleries, Rare Golf Books, Clubs & Memorabilia from the collection of Georgia Dyer Burnett, in 391 lots (results). A copy of History of the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society was the top lot, at $8,400.

And here's what's coming up for the rest of March:

- On 11 March, ALDE sells the Bibliothèque du Chateau de La Plagne, in 331 lots.

- PBA Galleries sells Fine Literature, Children's Books, &c. on 14 March, in 621 lots. A Hemingway family photo album and a first printing of Tender is the Night with later jacket are each estimated at $10,000-15,000.

- There will be a Bibliophile sale at Bloomsbury on 14 March, in 579 lots.

- Bonhams sells Books, Maps, Manuscripts & Historical Photographs on 19 March, in 235 lots.

- Also at Bonhams, on 20 March, The Xi'an Incident: The Papers of Hyland "Bud" Lyon, in just eight lots.

- At Christie's London on 20 March, The Library of a Spanish Bibliophile, in 427 lots.

- Bloomsbury sells Travel, Topographical, Sporting and Natural History Books, Maps, Prints and Photographs on 21 March, in 366 lots.

- No preview yet for the PBA sale of Rare Americana and African American History on 28 March.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 15:03:00 +0000

Apologies for the somewhat abbreviated post: I've been busily preparing for this week's trip to Savannah for the Society of Early Americanists meeting, so I'm sure I missed a few stories as they whizzed by. If you're coming to the meeting or are in Savannah I hope I'll see you there (and if anyone has recommendations for restaurants or bookstores in the city, I'll be more than happy to receive them!)

- At ProfHacker this week, professor Jonathan Sterne discussed his and his partner's winter break project: organizing their library. This was particularly timely since I've been doing the same thing lately (I'll have more to say about it once I finally finish, which actually does seem like it may be a possibility at some point in the reasonably near future). It's quite a job, that's for sure!

- On Friday the White House announced a new policy with the goal of providing open access to federally-funded research. Link roundup here.

- The shortlist for the Oddest Book Title of the Year was announced this week. See them and vote here.

- Over at The Collation, Goran Proot analyzes a rare Dutch auction advertisement in the Folger's collections.

- The Justice Department has declined to weigh in on the GSU e-reserves case (that sound you hear is a deep sigh of relief from those on the good side of this appeal).

Reviews

- Bernard Bailyn's The Barbarous Years; review by Alan Taylor in TNR.

- John Darwin's Unfinished Empire; review by Alex von Tunzelman in the NYTimes.

- Ellen Gruber Garvey's Writing with Scissors; review by Christopher Benfey in the NYRB.

- Ernest Freeberg's Age of Edison; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.

- Jim Crace's Harvest; review by Sam Leith in the TLS.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 15:33:00 +0000

I went down to Longfellow Books on Friday afternoon just to say hi to the staff and buy some books. The store was buzzing and I was amazed at how much progress had been made in just a couple days to get things back up and running. The booksellers were exhausted, but said all the support and energy from the community was keeping them going. The Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance has launched a three-pronged effort to help with recovery, and if you want to buy a few books from Longfellow you can order through their website or by phone.

- A new blog you should be following: Function Follows Form, by David J. Gary, who's been doing great work on Rufus King's library and other book history-related things. Some of the early posts take a close look at some aspects of King's library space, the travels of the library over the years, &c.

- The Private Libraries in Renaissance England database hosted by the Folger Library is newly updated and enlarged with material from the forthcoming eighth volume in the printed series.

- Over at The Cataloguer's Desk, looking back on forty-five years of Peter Harrington catalogues.

- A great new acquisition at Princeton highlighted in their Rare Books blog: a 1785 East India Company tea catalogue.

- Winterthur has acquired the John and Carolyn Grossman collection of printed ephemera, comprising some 250,000 items. The collection had been on deposit at Winterthur since 2008.

- David Levy has some interesting new information on a chess manuscript once believed to be in the hand of Oliver Goldsmith.

- Also from Princeton's Notabilia blog, the printed book label of the Wisbech Literary Society, and the very lovely 1694 printed book label of Margaret Harrington.

- On the JCB Books blog, a great new acquisition of a 1609 Mexican imprint with a gorgeous binding, one of the earliest woodcut illustrations produced in North America, and a neat overall story.

- A typewritten Gandhi letter sold for £115,000 at an auction in Shropshire this week.

- An interesting discovery this week pointed out by Book Patrol: Northern Kentucky University is selling off a collection of rare books appraised at $24,000 on the auction site GovDeals.

- In the NYTimes' Disunion blog, Louis Masur explores the reception of Les Miserables during the American Civil War.

- The AAUP has filed an amicus brief in the GSU e-reserves case, siding with the publishers.

- Oxford and Cambridge have launched a joint fundraising campaign to purchase a portion of the Hebrew manuscript trove from the Cairo Genizah. The 1,700 manuscript fragments in the "Lewis-Gibson" collection are currently held by Westminster College, and may be sold off and dispersed if the Oxbridge effort proves unsuccessful.

- Over at The Junto, Sara Georgini interviews Thomas Lannon, an NYPL curator who's worked on the Emmet Collection.

Reviews

- Todd Andrlik's Reporting the Revolutionary War; review by Michael Hattem at The Junto.

- John Burt's Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism; reviews by Steven B. Smith in the NYTimes and Michael Dirda in the Washington Post.

- Paula Byrne's The Real Jane Austen; review by Maxwell Carter in the NYTimes.

- Daniel Stashower's The Hour of Peril; review by Del Quentin Wilber in the Washington Post.

- Jim Crace's The Harvest; review by David Ulin in the LATimes.

Auction Report: February

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 16:48:00 +0000

- PBA Galleries sold Angling/Sports & Pastimes/Natural History books on 7 February. Results are here. The top lot was an archive of letters to and from Randolph Huntington, the man who introduced Arabian horse breeding to the United States. The 1,000+ letters fetched $18,000.

- Bloomsbury held a Bibliophile Sale on 14 February; results are here.

- Skinner, Inc. had a Discovery Sale: Books and Manuscripts on 14 February. Results are here. An extensive collection of New England ephemera did unexpectedly well, fetching $11,000 on a $300-500 estimate (somebody found something delicious in there!).

- Bonhams sells Fine Books & Manuscripts on 17 February, in 300 lots. A copy of Bien's Audubon, missing two of the plates, is estimated at $80,000-120,000.

- PBA Galleries will sell Rare Books & Manuscripts on 18 February, in 225 lots. A collection of all sixteen printings of the first edition of the Alcoholic Anonymous Big Book rates a $200,000-300,000 estimate, while a first issue King James Bible is estimated at $100,000-150,000.

- At Bonhams on 18 February, Printed Books and Maps, in 436 lots.

- Bloomsbury will sell the Beatrix Potter Collection of Mark Ottignon on 27 February, in 307 lots.

- Also at Bloomsbury, on 28 February, Literature, Manuscripts & Modern First Editions, in 386 lots. Includes a collection of Hester Thrale Piozzi letters, among other items of interest.

- On 28 February at PBA Galleries, Rare Golf Books, Clubs & Memorabilia from the collection of Georgia Dyer Burnett, in 391 lots.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:01:00 +0000

We got about 32 inches of snow here in Portland yesterday, and the snowbanks and drifts around the neighborhood are very impressive indeed. Thankfully the snow stayed fluffy and light, and though the wind gusts got pretty nasty for a few hours, the power stayed on, so it's been an enjoyable storm in this neck of the woods. Between bouts of shoveling and walking around to take pictures yesterday I got a another chunk of the book-reorganization accomplished, too.

- Unfortunately the storm proved particularly nasty for Longfellow Books downtown, where a burst pipe caused the sprinkler system to go off and led to widespread damage in the shop. They're closed until further notice. Stay tuned for ways to help as we get more information, or watch the shop's Facebook page.

- From Public Domain Review, Martin Spevack introduces Isaac D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature.

- Over at The Collation, part two of Erin Blake's series on myth-busting early modern book illustration, this time considering how many impressions one might get from an engraved copper plate.

- Jennifer Howard reported this week on upcoming appeals in the GSU e-reserves case, including concerns that the Department of Justice may get involved.

- Garrett Scott at Bibliophagist has a great post this week on how researching a particular book or pamphlet can often prove to add much to its value.

- Eugene Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" was damaged by a vandal this week at a museum in Lens, France. The woman who defaced the painting was detained and conservators indicated that the graffito could probably be "easily cleaned."

- From the Houghton blog, a look at some books from Herman Melville's library newly acquired for Harvard's collections.

- Maine State Archivist David Cheever is considering the pursuit of legal action against an auctioneer trying to sell what purports to be an original order for a military draft in Maine's 1st congressional district, signed in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln. More on this as events warrant.

- At The Appendix, an interview with author Adam Hochschild.

- Quite an amazing story of a publisher suing a librarian for saying negative things about the publisher's product. Jessamyn West as a full roundup of links and coverage. Another report in The Chronicle.

- In the TLS, Sarah Knight and Mary Ann Lund explore how the now-confirmed remains of Richard III compare to traditional literary and historical descriptions of the monarch.

- A new online exhibition from the Library Company of Philadelphia: Black Founders: The Free Black Community in the Early Republic.

- The British Library has purchased approximately 100 diaries and some 900 letters of Sir Alec Guinness.

Reviews

- The Forgotten Writings of Bram Stoker; review by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post.

- Ad Stijnman's Engraving and Etching, 1400-2000; review by Elizabeth Upper in Apollo.

Call for Assistance: Tabulae Rudolphinae Census

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 19:09:00 +0000

The following announcement was posted on Ex-Libris this week and is reposted here with permission. I hope anyone with access to the book will respond to the query (as you all now, I'm a big fan of book censuses and love to help out with them in any way possible).

"My name is Stefano Gattei and I teach history and philosophy of science at the IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy.

I am currently working on a census of all existing copies of Johannes Kepler's Tabulae Rudolphinae, 1627. The first edition of this book presents components in 3 different states, which can be recognized by a few characteristics of the first few pages. My census aims at providing a precise descriptions of each copy, and therefore reconstruct the book's complex publication history.

In order to do that, I need answers to a list of 10 questions, which take just a few minutes to reply. My census will be published in a forthcoming book of mine on Johannes Kepler's Tabulae Rudolphinae (published by Oxford University Press/)/ and will describe all available copies in public libraries. I have already seen a number of copies in private collections, but I know there are several more, either in private hands or on the antiquarian book market.

I would ask all members to let me know if they have copies of Kepler's book, and possibly help me get in touch with private collectors who bought them in the past. Of course, individual owners are free to indicate whether they want to be explicitly mentioned in my census or else prefer to be kept anonymous."

Please contact Stefano Gattei at stefano.gattei@imtlucca.it if you can assist with this important work.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 16:03:00 +0000

I've been reorganizing my books this weekend, after finding myself terribly frustrated when I couldn't immediately find a volume I wanted. Lots of moving and re-ordering and getting distracted by things I'd forgotten I had (and thus, great fun!).

- Two new arrests in the de Caro thefts: Bologna-based bookbinder has been arrested, charged with obscuring ownership marks in the books stolen from the Girolamini library. A man who acted as go-between for the thieves and the buyers of stolen books was also arrested.

- From Garrett Scott at Bibliophagist, a great ~1880 broadside from a Croyden flat earth group offering a £1,000 prize for anyone who could offer a "public and practical defence" of Newton's theory of gravity.

- The Boston Public Library has received an anonymous $500,000 gift to fund cataloging and conservation of its rare book collection.

- In the Chronicle this week, Geoffrey Nunberg looks back at the Radcliffe Take Note conference last November.

- Early this week some incredibly disturbing reports emerged from the Malian city of Timbuktu, where thousands of Arabic manuscripts were believed destroyed when retreating Islamist militants set fire to the Ahmed Baba library. As the week went on, the news improved: although the library building was damaged, the vast majority of the manuscripts seem to have been saved. More reports: Time, Simon Tanner, The Atlantic, The New Yorker.

- From Eleanor Shevlin at EMOB, "Digital Tools: Image Matching within Printed Materials."

- Kathryn Gucer guest-posts at The Collation on the Folger Library's impressive collection of mazarinades.

- Norman Foster's plans for the NYPL central branch got panned by Michael Kimmelman in the NYTimes this week.

- Over at Sarah's Books, a visit to an (unnamed) used bookstore where she found some great books and listened to the clerk's "familiar tales of woe."

- The Litchfield, CT Historical Society has launched a fantastic new database of those who attended Tapping Reeve's law school and Sarah Pierce's female academy.

- The Vatican Apostolic Library has uploaded the first 256 manuscripts of some 80,000 they plan to eventually digitize.

- Rhode Island marks 350 years of its colonial charter this year. A new website includes some interesting contextual essays.

- Emma Rothschild's book The Inner Life of Empires now has a very nice online complement, with maps, glossaries, notes and more.

- Alexis Madrigal writes in The Atlantic on Defoe's plague writings as a way to help us understand new media (newspapers were the "next big thing" right then).

- In Latham's Quarterly, Laurent Merceron writes on ergot poisoning.

- The Folger's Heather Wolfe, in New Zealand to teach at Dunedin Rare Book Summer School, spoke to Radio New Zealand about paleography. Listen here.

- A German auction house posted images of a poisons cabinet disguised as a book, which sold for 5,200 Euros.

- Via the new Slate history blog, the N-YHS looks back at the time when a committee tried to persuade the Society to back a move to change the country's name.

- Michael Dirda has posted his final American Scholar column (sadly).

- By far the most chuckled-about phrase in the bibliotwitterverse this week appeared in Jeffrey Rotter's Atlantic Cities post on data visualization in 19th-century census charts (which is quite interesting). The following sentence caused more than a few of us to think "say what, now?" when we read it: "While researching the spread of Chinatowns in New York City, he discovered a trove of maps and charts in a musty backroom of the Library of Congress web site" [italics are mine].

Reviews

- Michael Dean's I, Hogarth; review by Andrea Wulf in the NYTimes.

- Christoph Irmscher's Louis Agassiz; review by Rebecca Stott in the NYTimes.

- Susan Brigden's Thomas Wyatt; review by Alastair Fowler in the TLS.

- Roseanne Montillo's The Lady and Her Monsters; review by Deborah Blum in the NYTimes.

- Jenny Uglow's The Pinecone; review by Megan Marshall in the NYTimes.

Major New Theft Case in Canada

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:45:00 +0000

A new theft case has made the news: the CBC reported this week that the Fall River, Nova Scotia home of John Mark Tillmann, 51, contained more than 1,300 books, documents and other artifacts believed stolen from multiple collections. After a traffic stop back in June in which stolen documents (including a James Wolfe letter from the collections of Dalhousie University) were found in Tillmann's car, police searched his house and found the additional materials.

An RCMP investigator told the CBC "We believe that items such as books, documents, paintings, antiques were stolen from private collectors around Atlantic Canada, also from local universities, museums and even the legislature."

Tillmann has so far been charged with four counts of unlawful possession of materials worth more than $5,000:

- the 1758 James Wolfe letter from Dalhousie University

- two 19th-century marriage records from the Nova Scotia Provincial Archives

- four books from Mount St. Vincent University (these reportedly include a first edition of Darwin's The Origin of Species stolen from the university before 2009

- an 1819 painting from the collections of the Provincial Building Legislative Library

Nova Scotia police say they've been in contact with authorities in Newfoundland and with the FBI as they work to track down stolen items. News reports suggest that the thefts may have taken place over more than two decades. Police displayed some of the recovered items this week: video here. Dalhousie University archivists said this week that the Wolfe letter had been damaged by tearing off a section of the page which would have contained a library stamp.

Another item recovered is a piece of sheet music from the collections of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland believed stolen for "family reasons" (it was connected to the Tilman family). Joan Ritcey, head of the Centre for Newfoundland Studies, said she recalled Tillmann's visit to the archive.

Tillmann's rap sheet includes fifteen convictions for such deeds as extortion, assault, and fraud. He was already due in court next month on additional charges of assault, forcible confinement, and uttering threats. In a report published Friday, it was revealed that in a parole hearing several years ago, Tillmann admitted that he frequently bought and resold stolen goods.

The RCMP are requesting the public's help in identifying the owners of some of the recovered items, and reportedly will be adding images of the materials here.

Tillmann currently remains in custody, with a bail hearing set for 27 February. Prosecutors oppose Tillmann's release.

Links & Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (JBD) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:15:00 +0000

- New and interesting: Letterpress Commons, a community-based website designed as an "up-to-date manual" of letterpress techniques and information. And from Enlightenment scholar James Schmidt, Persistent Enlightenment. I've added sidebar links to both.

- At Contents Magazine, a must-read interview with the founders of The Appendix, which I certainly encourage all readers of this blog to be paying attention to.

- From the Royal Society's blog, a post on recent discoveries about their copy of Boyle's Sceptical Chymist, made because a scholar (Greg Girolami at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) is working on a census of extant copies of the book. As I've written before, I am a huge fan of book censuses in general, and encourage anyone who gets the opportunity to participate in them to do so!

- Over at Biblioguerilla, a book with Erasmus' name burned out wherever it occurred, "according to the prescriptions of the Expurgatory Index," and a fantastically-titled 1791 booksellers' catalog.

- This week's court of appeals decision on recess appointments [PDF] makes for fascinating reading for anyone interested in arcane-but-important constitutional provisions. Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell has begun a series on the origins of the recess appointment power: here and here. NB: Jay Wexler's recent book The Odd Clauses also has a useful primer on recess appointments.

- The "Identifying the Unidentified" series continues over at Past is Present.

- From Kevin Smith at Duke, some notes on the key importance of the Wiley v. Kirtsaeng case now under consideration at the Supreme Court.

- PBA Galleries, the San Francisco-based auction house, is now under the ownership of Sharon L. Gee.

- In today's New York Times, Steve Lohr profiles some of the "big data" projects being carried out by Matthew Jockers and others in "Dickens, Austen and Twain, Through a Digital Lens."

- Georgia governor Nathan Deal's proposed budget contains $4.3 million to keep the Georgia Archives open and restore five jobs cut last fall. A task force charged with developing a plan to transfer management of the Archives from the Georgia Secretary of State's office to the University of Georgia held its first meeting this month.

- Meanwhile, north of the border in South Carolina, genealogists and historians are concerned that a long string of budget cuts at the Department of Archives and History is having severe consequences for access to archival research material.

Reviews

- Joyce Chaplin's Round About the Earth; review by Jeffrey Wassterstorm in the LA Review of Books.

- John W. O'Malley's Trent: What Happened at the Council; review by Michael Dirda in at Washington Post.

- Bram Stoker and the Stage, ed. Catherine Wynne; review by Tracy C. Davis in the TLS.