PhiloBiblos

Auction Preview: February Sales

2012-02-01T06:22:00.005-05:00

Another fairly quiet month on the auction front:

- There's a Bibliophile Sale at Bloomsbury tomorrow, 2 February, in 318 lots.

- At PBA Galleries, Rare Books & Manuscripts in 195 lots on 6 February.

- Heritage Auctions has a Rare Books sale on 8 February.

- Bonhams will sell Property from Serendipity Books on 12 February, in 270 lots.

- A few books are included in Bonhams 16 February Edinburgh sale.

- Also on 16, PBA Galleries sells Americana and Cartography (catalog not yet online).

- Bloomsbury will sell the Horological Library of Charles Allix on 22 February, in 138 lots.

- Swann Galleries is selling Private Press & Illustrated Books on 23 February, in 281 lots.

"The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore"

2012-01-31T17:58:00.001-05:00

One of the short animated films nominated for an Oscar this year is "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," which I think all biblio-humans are likely to enjoy greatly. I know I did!

Book Recommendation: "Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbeaking Life"

2012-01-31T14:55:00.002-05:00

Natalie Dykstra's Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) is another of those books I've had the privilege to anticipate for a long time. The author did much of her research for the book in collections held at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and I certainly delivered more than a few boxes to her table in the reading room during my time there. So I know just how long and how diligently she's been working on this book, and I am really just incredibly pleased at the result. I had a difficult time reading the last few pages (on the train home from New York the other day) because of the tears in my eyes.

Gilded and heartbreaking. No two adjectives could better describe the life of Clover Adams than these. Stung from a much-too-young age by a series of horrific family tragedies, partner in a complicated marriage, and too often remembered, if at all, only as a famous woman who committed suicide.

Dykstra has gone to great lengths to bring Clover's life into full view, providing much-needed family context and background, highlighting her deep and meaningful relationships with her father and others that sustained her through many years, and, above all, examining Clover's use of photography during the last few years of her life and how that art allowed her to express herself in a way that she couldn't otherwise.

Drawing on a wide range of archival materials, some previously published and others published here for the first time, Dykstra is able to tell Clover's own story, and she does it very elegantly indeed. A beautiful, sad, delight the whole way through.

Links & Reviews

2012-01-29T08:46:00.000-05:00

Good morning from the train back to Boston after a very successful Bibliography Week.

- From Res Obscura, images from Heinrich Khunrath's alchemical work Ampitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, with some very useful background.

- The Fine Books Blog "Bright Young Things" series continues with a profile of Brian Cassidy (whose blog you should be reading, if you're not already).

- Mark O'Connell posted "The Marginal Obsession with Marginalia" this week on the New Yorker book blog.

- A new web magazine, American Circus, has recently come to my attention; the articles so far are promising, and by subscribing you'll get email notification of new issues. Worth a read, certainly.

- Over on The Collation, Sarah Werner posts about how two students looked at the same book and saw very different things.

- Konrad Lawson highlights some crowdsourced transcription projects in the Chronicle, and a new one launched this week from NARA.

- Writing for Slate, Caleb Crain offers to eat Matt Ygelisas' lunch.

- Adam Hooks, at Anchora, defends the mangling of Shakespeare.

- From Houghton's new "You've Got Mail" series, Franklin on electricity.

- Washington University has joined HathiTrust.

Reviews

- Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin; review by Nicholas Shakespeare in the Telegraph.

- Cullen Murphy's God's Jury; review by Samuel Freedman in the NYTimes.

- Frederick Turner's Renegade; review by Jeanette Winterson in the NYTimes.

Bibliography Week in NYC

2012-01-28T10:20:00.003-05:00

For the first time, I've actually managed to make it down to New York for (part of) Bibliography Week ("Bib Week") an annual lineup of great bibliophilic meetings and events.

My train was late getting in on Wednesday so I missed that afternoon's festivities, unfortunately (but I heard very good things about them). On Thursday morning I had a good, very fruitful meeting with catalogers at the New-York Historical Society about some forthcoming Libraries of Early America projects, and then visited the Bib Week booksellers' showcase (or "mini-fair"), sponsored by the ABAA and featuring a good selection of dealers and titles.

Friday afternoon was the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America, held at the Grolier Club. Prior to the business meeting three featured new scholars talked about their work: Steven Carl Smith on the New York book trade in the early national period, Juliette Atkinson on the circulation of Dumas' work in England, and Barbara Heritage on "Authors vs. bookmakers: Jane Eyre in the marketplace." All three talks were excellent, and served well to highlight how much good book history work is being done these days. Later, outgoing BSA president John Neal Hoover delivered a lecture on his research into the use of books in American cinema from 1900-1970, showing some representative clips of how books are used in both scene and plot (a database of scenes he's built will be available on BibSite later this year, he reported).

This afternoon the American Printing History Assocation holds its annual meeting, and in the evening a memorial gathering will be held to honor the life and work of Sue Allen, longtime RBS faculty member and expert on 19th-century American publishers' cloth bindings.

Bringing together bibliophiles and other great biblio-humans (it's sort of like a Rare Book School "old home week"), Bib Week is an excellent opportunity to catch up with old friends, make new connections, and certainly to learn more about the field and take in some of the many things New York has to offer. The Grolier Club's current exhibit "Printing for Kingdom, Empire, & Republic: Treasures from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale," is well worth a visit, just by way of a single example (but hurry, it's only up through 4 February!).

And now, off to the day's events (and a visit to Argosy Book Store). Watch the Grolier Club's website later this year for announcements about Bib Week 2013, and, if you can, do come.

Links & Reviews

2012-01-22T09:39:00.000-05:00

- Released this week, a tremendous new resource on the history of paper, based on research by Tim Barrett and others: Paper Through Time. The background essay and other materials make for fascinating reading.

- Also new, the Cranach Digital Archive.

- Ann Trubek went inside Cleveland's bibliophilic society The Rowfant Club (one of the few remaining all-male biblio-organizations), and tells the tale.

- From bookseller Ken Karmiole, an essay on "Collecting the Physical Book in the Digital Age."

- A new exhibition at Cambridge University, Shelf Lives: Four Centuries of Collectors and Their Books. [h/t Mike Widener]

- Sarah Werner has posted her syllabus for her class "Books and Early Modern Culture."

- The Harvard Gazette reported this week on the launch of WorldMap, a new open-source mapping platform.

- In the Harvard Magazine, a look at Brontë juvenilia in the Houghton Library collections.

- Rebecca Rego Barry's essay "A Rare Book Collector's Guide to the College Library Book Sale" is now online at The Millions.

- Over at Past is Present, Tracey Kry highlights the Cardiff Giant, quite a good hoax from 1869 (which happened near where I grew up, and now resides at the wonderful Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown).

- The Poe Toaster failed to make an appearance in Baltimore for the third year in a row; observers now believe that the tradition has probably come to an end.

- A National Churchill Library and Center will be founded at The George Washington University, as part of an $8 million gift to the university from Chicago's Churchill Centre.

- From Ed Pettit at Ed and Edgar, a literacy quiz that he gave this week to a college class.

- The Collation has begun a series of guest posts by Folger interns: the first, by Ashley Behringer, examines the origins of a particular manuscript collection.

- Given the events of this week, if you read one review today, make it Caleb Crain's The Nation piece on William Patry's How to Fix Copyright and Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi's Reclaiming Fair Use. Joseph Adelman's Publick Occurrences blog post is also a must-read.

Reviews

- Michael Dirda's On Conan Doyle; review by David Mikics in TNR.

- Ian Donaldson's Ben Jonson: A Life; review by Charles Isherwood in the NYTimes.

- John M. Barry's Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.

- John Matteson's The Lives of Margaret Fuller; review by Mary Beth Norton in the NYTimes.

- Julia Flinn Siler's Lost Kingdom; review by Sara Kehaulani Goo in the WaPo.

- Richard Bailey's Speaking American; review by John McWhorter in the NYTimes.

Book Review: "The Rector and the Rogue"

2012-01-21T15:05:00.003-05:00

The latest installment of the Collins Library, a McSweeney's imprint edited by the inimitable Paul Collins, is The Rector and the Rogue by W.A. Swanberg, first published in 1968 and re-issued in 2011. Collins' instinct for underappreciated gems certainly hasn't failed him here: what a book!

Swanberg's book is the story of what must be one of the most elaborate practical jokes ever undertaken. The unsuspecting rector of New York's Trinity Church was the main victim; over a period of several weeks his home is inundated by a procession of tradesmen and visitors, summoned there by postcards signed by the rector, Morgan Dix. One morning it's more than 25 used-clothing dealers, come to buy Mrs. Dix's wardrobe; another it's fourteen of Dix's fellow clergymen, invited to lunch with a not-actually-visiting English bishop. Eventually Dix goes to the postal authorities and the police, and an investigation reveals that Dix is not the only victim. But the victims seem totally unconnected, and the investigators are absolutely flummoxed as to the prankster's motive (it's presumed to be extortion, but that angle proves nothing but a red herring).

A lucky break leads to the eventual discovery of the mastermind behind the scheme/performance, a curious character who seems at first glance an unlikely conspirator, but whose past record, when explored more carefully, proves anything but spotless. I'll leave it to Swanberg to explain the rest of the story, as he does it very well indeed. Suffice it to say, it wasn't the first time, or even the most serious crime.

The hoakster, E. Fairfax Williamson, had been inspired by a previous practical joker, Theodore Edward Hook, who had carried out a similar scheme against Mrs. Octavia Tottenham in 1809, sending hordes of people thronging to her Berners Street home in London on a single morning. Swanberg explores Hook's work as the precursor to Williamson's even more elaborate persecution of Dix, a most enjoyable tangent to the main story.

Swanberg's writing is lively and humorous, and Collins' afterword, which offers up a fantastic corollary to the Williamson hoax by suggesting that perhaps the joke still hasn't yielded up its last punchline, is brilliant. Highly, highly recommended.

Book Review: "Why Read Moby-Dick?"

2012-01-21T07:24:00.002-05:00

Nathaniel Philbrick's Why Read Moby-Dick? (Viking, 2010), at just 130 generously-spaced pages, makes for a very quick, but very enjoyable introduction to Melville's great novel. As Philbrick notes, the Moby-Dick can be a bit intimidating to start or to persevere with; with this little book he encourages a fresh look.

I've read Moby-Dick several times, but most recently about nine years ago, and Philbrick's book made me want to dive right back in again. I found myself nodding emphatically on page 8, when he calls the book "too long and too digressive to be properly appreciated by a sleep-deprived adolescent, particularly in this age of digital distractions." Moby-Dick is a book which makes great demands of its readers, both in time and attention. And that's not a bad thing. I certainly wish I had more time to hunker down with books like that, and I've been making a conscious effort to do so.

Philbrick's short chapters examine various aspects of the book itself, but also the context of Melville's life as he was writing, and his own personal reading and experiences which shaped the novel (he argues, for example, that without reading the letters Melville was sending as he was working on the book, it's difficult to understand the final product). He explores Melville's use of language, and his unconventional, even unique experiments with genre, style and plot. And he's pulled out some of the best quotes from the novel, highlighting Melville's sense of humor, his ability to set a scene, and to build up a head of literary tension.

Even if you don't agree with all of Philbrick's particular interpretations of the novels events and themes, this little book will at least make you think about Melville's novel in a new light, and maybe, just maybe, you'll reach over and pluck that copy off your bookshelf and read a chapter or two. It's going to snow this afternoon ... I think I may do just that.

This Week's Acquisition

2012-01-21T07:21:00.002-05:00

Just one new arrival this week:

- The Conan Doyle Stories (Blitz Editions, 1990). A compilation volume of Conan Doyle short stories that I haven't yet read.

Audubon Sells at Christie's

2012-01-20T10:10:00.001-05:00

The Duke of Portland's copy of Audubons' Birds of America sold just now at Christie's New York for $7,922,500 (including premiums), not meeting the previous record price. Information on the buyer when it becomes available.

[Update: The buyer is now being identified as "an American collector," who bid by phone. If I find out more, I'll add it. If you bought the Birds, let me know!]

Supreme Court Rules on Public Domain

2012-01-19T06:56:00.005-05:00

While most eyes were on the anti-SOPA and PIPA protests yesterday, the Supreme Court issued an important ruling in a key copyright case, Golan v. Holder. The 6-justice majority (Ginsburg, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Sotomayor, and Kennedy) held that Congress has the power to remove works from the public domain and return them to copyright protection, which they did in a 1994 law (and thus, could do again if they felt like it). In dissent, Justices Breyer and Alito strongly disagreed, and their opinion merits a close read.

SCOTUSblog's Golan v. Holder page has links to all the relevant documents, including the opinions, a transcript of the oral argument, and all the amicus briefs, including one jointly filed by the ALA, ARL, Internet Archive, University of Michigan, and the Wikimedia Foundation which lays out in stark detail just how important this case is for the future of our understanding of copyright law in general and public domain works in particular. They've also got a very useful summary of the decision.

Coverage from the New York Times, Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Ed, Associated Press, Techdirt. The latter is a particularly good synopsis, and I agree with their conclusion that the majority opinion simply doesn't seem to take into account how copyright law operates today.

[Update: Another important piece on this, from Kevin Smith at Duke, "Losing Our Focus"]

Book Review: "Prophets of the Fourth Estate"

2012-01-19T06:12:00.004-05:00

In their Prophets of the Fourth Estate: Broadsides by Press Critics of the Progressive Era (Litwin Books, 2012), Amy Reynolds and Gary Hicks provide a close look at what progressive-era critics of the press wrote about the dangers of corporatization, consolidation, and the rise of a propaganda/public relations regime to American journalism.

The book reprints a number of editorials and essays, including journalist Charles Edward Russell's "The Keeping of a Kept Press," about the trend of advertisers calling the shots in newsrooms, and "How Business Controls News," which examines corporate "sponsorship" of the lecture circuit. An anonymous The Public editorial bemoans the loss of multiple daily newspapers in cities across the country, and NAACP head Moorfield Storey's "The Daily Press" (1922) calls out newspapers for their lurid sensationalism of unimportant stories:

"Instead of filling pages with incessant harping on some worn-out joke; ... instead of page after page devoted to sports, adorned by portraits of boys and men who are members of some team, why not educate readers to something better than sport? The facts which underlie labor unrest could be studied carefully and published, greatly to the benefit of us all. The real incidence of taxation, and how the burden can best be distributed, would interest a suffering public. What portion of our expense is waste, and where we practice undue economy, is a fertile subject, where careful study would lead to constructive suggestion. The truth on matters of real public interest, well-weighted advice, - the news that is fit to print, - are what we have a right to expect from our newspapers; and if our expectation, our reasonable demands, were met, the press would be a great power for good, and would lead the public up. To-day it is abandoning its high place, and, so far from educating the people, is too often corrupting and debasing them."

Some things never change, at least not for the better. Then as now, of course, there are journalistic outfits doing great and good work, but for every one of them, there's another whose goal seems to run in the opposite direction. The trends of corporate ownership and media consolidation have only continued, making the arguments reprinted in this volume seem just as relevant today as when they were originally published.

Reynolds and Hicks provide short contextual essays on the period covered by their book, and capsule biographies of the major players: Russell, Storey, and Oswald Garrison Villard. The essays, which provide some background on the progressive era, muckraking journalisam, and the other goings-on of the time, might have benefited from another round at the editor's desk, and a few chronological mistakes crept in (most notably on p. 117-118, where the timing of McKinley's inauguration is misstated, which leads to a cascading run of errors about the timing of the runup to the Spanish-American War).

The reprinted pieces alone would make this book well worth a read. They serve as a useful reminder that the trends we see today are nothing new (though I hasten to add that I don't believe that the journalism of earlier eras was any less sensationalistic or profit-driven than that of the Progressive era ... the corporatization and consolidation has simply allowed it to get increasingly more concentrated over time).

Book Review: "Books as History"

2012-01-16T14:01:00.003-05:00

David Pearson's Books as History (first published 2008; revised edition published by the British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2011) ought to be read by, well, everyone, frankly, but at the very least anyone with even the slightest interest in books. Most especially, perhaps, it should be required reading for those who pen breathless screeds about "the death of the book," or who simply don't understand the fact that books can be important historical artifacts, imparting lessons far more important than the text contained within them. "Books may cease to be read," Pearson writes, "but let us recognise that we may have other reasons to value them" (p. 5).

Pearson, director of the City of London's Library, Archives, and Guildhall Art Gallery, is one of the best-qualified people in the world to write a book about the importance of books as history. An expert on both bookbindings and provenance research (among other aspects of book history), he puts that knowledge to good use here, pointing out in several chapters the various ways in which a book can become, as he puts it, "a preservable object with an individual history" (p. 22), a "unique artefact in the fabric of cultural heritage, with a wealth of meaning worth preserving and interpreting" (p. 25).

Through different typographic choices, design styles, illustration techniques, &c., Pearson first examines how a single text can be changed and altered, and he shows how, do to the production processes during the hand-press period, no two books even from the same edition are likely to be identical, strictly speaking. And then he digs deeper, noting that even in cases where the text and design may be identical, all of the individual copies of a particular edition become unique objects in their own right. He uses the example of 1,000 unbound copies of an 18th-century book, all of which go to different owners, each to be bound to the purchaser's own preferences, and later to be marked up, used, and passed on to subsequent owners. Each of those copies is a unique historical object, different, however slightly, from all of its edition-mates. A case study at the end of the book examines in detail five copies of a single book, to prove the point.

In his penultimate chapter, Pearson examines the role of libraries as historical artifacts themselves: "Knowing the contents of private and institutional libraries of the past allows us to compare them with other collections of the time, and to build up wider pictures of book ownership over the centuries, looking at average sizes, changing trends in language or subject, and in the place of origin of the books. We can see which books were popular and which were not; books have survived today in very uneven ways, and ones which are very rare today may once have been much more widely read than ones which have survived in relatively large quanitities. ... Looking carefully at [historical peoples'] collections, and the physical evidence of the ways in which they treated them, helps us to better understand these various roles which books have played in history" (p. 166-7).

Looking forward, Pearson makes the very important point that "If [books'] rationale is solely textual, their obsolescence seems guaranteed; the key point is that it is not, and that we are collectively in danger of making bad decisions about what should and should not be preserved for posterity if we overlook this" (p. 21).

Books as History as a book-object also happens to be very well designed, and is thoroughly illustrated with example images that nicely complement Pearson's text. A good list of sources for further reading is included for those who find something intriguing and want to read more. It's an excellent introduction to the book history field, and a book which should, as I said at the outset, be read by anyone with even a glaning interest in the subject.

Mapping Audubon's Subscribers

2012-01-16T08:25:00.005-05:00

Since I enjoyed my first foray into mapping subscriber lists, I decided I'd have another go ... and since a copy of Audubon's Birds of America is coming up for sale later this week, that was a natural choice.

Check out the map here.

I opted to use the "final list of subscribers" - that is, the list Audubon included in the last volume of his Ornithological Biography (Edinburgh, 1839). Some others had subscribed for earlier parts of the work and are not included here; nor are those subscribers who purchased full sets following publication. The final list is separated by American subscribers (82) and European subscribers (78, since one is listed twice), for a total of 160.

For my previous map, I used different color pins to indicate the number of copies subscribed for; that wouldn't have worked in this case since most subscribers took only a single copy*, so I used the pin-colors instead to indicate the subscriber category: government body, college or university, library, learned society or museum, individual, or a royal family.

Using Waldemar Fries' The Double Elephant Folio (originally published in 1973, and reissued by Zenaida Publishing in 2006 with updates by Susanne M. Low), I was also able to track the current whereabouts of the copies where that information is known.

Notably, just twelve copies of the Birds of America appear to remain with their original owner-subscribers (others, as I mentioned above, remain with their original purchasers who were not subscribers). They are:

- Library of Congress

- State Library of Massachusetts (2010 article)

- Boston Athenaeum

- Harvard University

- American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia

- Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia

- Columbia University

- Cambridge University Library

- Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

- Christ Church Library, Oxford

- Radcliffe Science Library, Oxford

- Institute de France, Paris

As with the previous map, in many cases I didn't have precise addresses for the subscribers, so the pin-locations are approximate. If anyone has more specific information on the addresses, or other corrections, &c., I'll be more than happy to update the map. [Update: using digitized city directories, I have found reasonably good address information for most of the subscribers now] And for the full stories of these subscribers and the copies' journeys over time, do consult Fries' wonderful book.

* The French Interior Ministry did request six copies, but they only appear to have received six copies of the first volume.

Auction Report: January Sales So Far

2012-01-16T08:12:00.002-05:00

As we wait for the Audubon sale on 20 January, here's what's happened so far this month:

- Prices for the 5 January PBA Galleries Fine Books in All Fields sale are here; 336 of 460 lots sold. The first edition Leaves of Grass was the top lot, but only made $12,000 against estimates of $20,000-30,000.

- At Lyon & Turnbull's Rare Books, Maps, and Manuscripts sale, held 11 January, the top lot was a collection of 58 silver print photographs of Tibet from the 1903-4 Younghusband expedition. It made £16,000. You can get full sale results here.

- Bloomsbury held a Bibliophile sale on 12 January. Full results.

Links & Reviews

2012-01-15T08:48:00.000-05:00

- Stuart Kelly blogged for the Guardian about reading by candlelight.

- Over on the SHARP blog, Leslie Howsam asks for the "most innovative monographs in the field of book history published in the past 20 years"? It's prompted some good discussion (don't forget to read the comments).

- Lisa Jardine comments on the history of information overload in "Why didn't Harry Potter just use Google?"

- A new Biblio-tumblr from Brooke Palmieri, BIBLIOGUERILLA. I've also added a link on the sidebar.

- In a followup blog post to her recent piece on Matt Kirschenbaum's project on the history of word processing, Jennifer Schuessler reports that authors have been coming out of the woodwork to stake their claims.

- Paul Collins points out the 1850s Philadelphia magazine "Bizarre" (sample contents here).

- The BBC reports on the annual cleaning of the chained library at Hereford Cathedral.

- From The Collation, a wonderful idea of allowing readers who've taken reference images of Folger materials to pool them in a Flickr group. Other institutions where reference photography is allowed: this is a step worth exploring at the very least!

- Over at Echoes from the Vault, some very nice inky fingerprints in a 1473 book.

- Some nifty resources on the English book trade, tweeted by @mercpol recently: The English Provincial Book Trade Before 1850 and The London Booktrades: A Biographical and Documentary Resource.

- The Poe Foundation of Boston has released three finalists for a Poe-related public art installation in Boston, and have set up a website soliciting comments on the designs.

- In the Washington Post, Raymond M. Lane looks at the connections between Poe and Dickens.

- A fascinating discussion sprang up on ExLibris this week, about whether ebook collections should be allowed as entries into book collecting contests. Nate Pedersen summarized the issues in a Fine Books Blog post.

- Seven wonderful booksellers have collaborated on a collective catalog of items available at the upcoming San Francisco and Pasadena fairs.

- Over at Notes for Bibliophiles, Jordan Goffin highlights some recent work on whaleship reading.

- In the Telegraph, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst writes about the new BBC adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood (airing in the US in April). And, for more on Dickens, Christopher Hitchens' posthumous Vanity Fair piece, "Charles Dickens's Inner Child," is a must-read.

Reviews

- Elizabeth Dowling Taylor's A Slave in the White House; review by Jonathan Yardley in theWashington Post.

- Cullen Murphy's God's Jury; review by Edward Peters in the Washington Post.

- P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley; review by Kenneth Turan in the LATimes.

This Week's Acquisitions

2012-01-14T07:45:00.003-05:00

A crop of remainders from Edward R. Hamilton arrived this week, plus some interesting review copies and Clarissa, of which some of us are doing a group-read this year on LT.

- Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life by Natalie Dykstra (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). Publisher.

- Redcoats and Rebels: The American Revolution Through British Eyes by Christopher Hibbert (W.W. Norton, 2002). Edward R. Hamilton.

- Lost Land of the Dodo: The Ecological History of Mauritius, Reunion, and Rodrigues by Anthony Cheke and Julian Hume (Yale University Press, 2008). Edward R. Hamilton.

- Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer--and the Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets by Jo Marchant (Da Capo Press, 2009). Edward R. Hamilton.

- Victorians and the Prehistoric: Tracks to a Lost World by Michael Freeman (Yale University Press, 2004). Edward R. Hamilton.

- The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500-Year-Old Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark by Tudor Parfitt (HarperOne, 2009). Edward R. Hamilton.

- The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels by Janet Soskice (Knopf, 2009). Edward R. Hamilton.

- The Philosophers' Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding by Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott (Yale University Press, 2009). Edward R. Hamilton.

- Prophets of the Fourth Estate: Broadsides by Press Critics of the Progressive Era by Amy Reynolds and Gary Hicks (Litwin Books, 2012). Publisher.

- Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson (Penguin, 1986). Amazon.

- Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik (Del Rey, 2007). Amazon.

- That Is All by John Hodgman (Dutton, 2011). Amazon.

- The Solitary House by Lynn Shepherd (Delacorte, 2012). Publisher.

- A Printing History of Everyman's Library 1906-1982 by Terry Seymour (Author House, 2011). Publisher.

Audubon at Christie's on 20 January

2012-01-12T08:52:00.004-05:00

On January 20 at Christie's New York, a complete (and quite lovely) set of Audubon's Birds of America is up for sale, with an estimate of $7-10 million. The set has a decent chance of surpassing the $11.5 million record price paid for the last complete Birds at auction, sold at Sotheby's sale of Lord Hesketh's library in December 2010.

The Birds is the Duke of Portland's copy; Waldemar Fries suggests that the set was bound for the 5th Duke of Portland, William John Cavendish Cavendish-Scott-Bentick (after being acquired by either the 5th Duke himself or his father). The Christie's catalog description reads "Presumably purchased sometime after 1838 as a bound complete set" by the 4th Duke (with a qualifying note later in the description). Whichever duke first acquired it, the set has been in the family's library at Welbeck Abbey in North Nottinghamshire since the middle part of the 19th century.

Tom Lecky from Christie's appeared on a Bloomberg radio program to discuss the sale; you can listen here (mp3 file).

Just 13 copies of the Birds remain in private hands; when the hammer comes down on this sale, will this copy still be among them? Stay tuned.

Book Review: "Pfitz"

2012-01-12T05:52:00.002-05:00

Andrew Crumey's Pfitz (Picador, 1997) may run to just 164 pages, but if you're not paying close enough attention as you read even one, beware. A postmodernist meta-romp, featuring stories within stories within stories, a whole series of narrators, and a very playful conception of "time," the novel is by fits (no pun intended) and starts delightful, bizarre, and frustrating (not necessarily in that order).

The best part is the very first chapter, outlining Crumey's framing device: an 18th-century European principality, vaguely Germanic, where the prince has opted to spend all his (and his people's) time, wealth, and energy in the creation of a fictional city. Maps will be drawn showing every aspect of the city from the streets to the buildings to the locations of its citizens; those citizens will be given minutely-detailed biographies, and if the are found to have written books, those books will be written, and placed within the exquistely-engineered Library, a Borgesian wonder-place paired with an even-more-wonderful Museum (see p. 15-16 for some absolutely wonderful descriptions of how these two great edifices would be designed).

A massive bureaucracy is, naturally, required for the undertaking of such a project, and our main protagonist, Schenck, is a minor functionary in the Cartography Division, responsible for the creation of some of the many maps of the fictional city (his project, when we meet him, is to chart the functioning of the fictional city's storm drains during downpours). But Schenck is distracted by an alluring redhead up in Biography, and in trying to please her, he quickly finds that with each layer of meta-fiction, the set lines of chronology, authorship and narrative begin to get very fluid indeed.

While I was frustrated at times over just what the book was trying to be, I very much enjoyed Crumey's descriptions in certain parts of the book: the opening chapter alone makes the book worth a read.

Review: "Charles Dickens: A Life"

2012-01-08T15:11:00.000-05:00

Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life (Penguin, 2011) was certainly well timed, appearing just a few months before the bicentennial of Dickens' birth on 7 February. It's a doorstop of a book (at 488 pages including the notes), but thankfully it's also a very good read; Tomalin tells the author's story without sparing any of the gory details (and there are plenty of them to be told).

From her opening chapters on Dickens' family background, Tomalin makes clear just how hard Dickens pushed himself to be successful, working almost maniacally at times on his various writing projects, with other endeavours (public readings, philanthropic efforts, &c.) never far from the front burner.

Tomalin focuses on Dickens' working habits, his travels, his personal relationships and his finances; but there's also room here to discuss the writings, from what inspired them to their public reception. The book is positively packed with details: a double-edged sword, since they're fascinating but also a bit much at times. Still, I was surprised that there wasn't more here about Dickens' relationships with his publishers and his illustrators, and I would have enjoyed more details of his 1868 American trip.

A major theme of Tomalin's biography is Dickens' complicated family dynamic, and the author minces no words about his shabby treatment of his wife Catherine, from whom he ended up separating rather messily. Tomalin, whose previous books include a biography of Nelly Ternan, Dickens' late-life paramour, explores that relationship thorougly, suggesting that the couple had a son and that Dickens might have suffered his final, fatal attack not at his Gad's Hill home, but at Nelly Ternan's residence. And she plumbs the depths of Dickens' dealings with his children, which in a great many instances seem nothing but, well, cruel.

As any good biography should do, this made me want to read more of Dickens' own works, particularly his American Notes (about his 1842 visit to the United States). I think I'll make that the book I read in February to mark his birthday. And if you're looking for a good rundown of the man's life and works, I certainly recommend Tomalin's volume for your consideration.

Links & Reviews

2012-01-08T09:32:00.001-05:00

- Over at "Cardiff Book History," Rhys Tranter interviews Robert Darnton about the future of books.

- New feature at the Houghton Library blog, "You've Got Mail," kicks off with a letter from Samuel Johnson to Hester Thrale.

- The Guardian covers that strange case of forged Ibsen works that I've mentioned here before.

- Don't miss "The Public Practice of History in and for a Digital Age," new AHA president William Cronon's first Perspectives on History column.

- The University of Georgia's new special collections building is now open for business.

- Vin Carretta's recent talk at the Mass Historical Society about his new Phillis Wheatley bio is now online. And this week, I added a Phillis Wheatley Legacy Library to LibraryThing.

- A must-read post at Typefoundry, "Type held in the hand."

- Johann Froben's publications are highlighted at The Private Library.

- Ian Maxted writes on the Baring-Gould library, with images of bookplates and inscriptions.

- Jennifer Howard expertly covers recently scholarship on the King James Bible.

- In the NYTimes, Anne Trubek explores "Why Authors Tweet."

Reviews

- Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery; review by Sinclair McKay in the Telegraph.

- Dava Sobel's A More Perfect Heaven; review by San Kean in the NYTimes.

This Week's Acquisitions

2012-01-07T08:33:00.002-05:00

- The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick O'Brian (W.W. Norton, 1992). Green Hand.

- Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill (W.W. Norton, 2008). Book Depository (via LT's SantaThing)

- The Narrative of John Smith by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (British Library, 2011). Book Depository (via LT's SantaThing)

- From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680-1760 by Ned C. Landsman (Cornell University Press, 2000). Amazon.

- Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik (Del Rey, 2006). Amazon.

- Black Powder War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey, 2006). Amazon.

Book Review: "The Narrative of John Smith"

2012-01-05T06:59:00.000-05:00

Arthur Conan Doyle's first novel, written in 1883 and lost in the mail on its way to the publisher (the uncompleted text we have was rewritten from memory), The Narrative of John Smith was first published in 2010 by the British Library, which acquired the manuscript in 2004. The edition was edited and introduced by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Rachel Foss, who provide a very good background essay and a series of explanatory annotations to show how ideas, concepts and even specific turns of phrase first deployed here find their way into Conan Doyle's later, better-known writings.

The narrative itself is less than exciting; a middle-aged man, confined to his room for a week by gout, engages in a series of ruminations and descriptions: he provides a minute tour of his room and its furnishings, muses on the neighbors across the street and those who share his building, and discourses (mostly with himself, but occasionally with his visiting doctor) on all manner of topics. Not a whole lot happens, and the fragmentary nature of the rewritten text prevents much narrative flow from getting underway. Not to mention, of course, the fact that the novel remains unfinished.

But, there are diamonds in this rough: the style that those of us who enjoy Conan Doyle's stories know and love shines through in more than a few places. Some of those I noted particularly:

- describing the lot of a young writer: "The articles which I sent forth came back to me at times with a rapidity and accuracy which spoke well for our postal arrangements. If they had been paper boomerangs they could not have returned more infallibly to their unhappy dispatcher" (p. 29)

- on books: "There should be a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Books. I hate to see the poor patient things knocked about and disfigured. A book is a mummifed soul embalmed in morocco leather and printer's ink instead of cerecloths and unguents. It is the concentrated essence of a man. Poor Horatius Flaccus has turned to an impalpable power by this time, but there is his very sprit stuck like a fly in amber, in that brown-backed volume in the corner. A line of books should make a man subdued and reverent. If he cannot learn to treat them with becoming decency he should be forced" (p. 19)

- a tour round his flat: "And then the knick-knacks! Those are the things which give the individuality to a room - the flotsam and jetsam which a man picks up carelessly at first, but which soon drift into his heart. If it conduces to comfort to have these little keepsakes of the past before one's eyes, then what matter how inelegant they may chance to be!" (p. 17)

Certainly worth reading for the insight it offers into the author's early style. But make sure to read the notes as you go along; they're a key part of the work, and the editors have done a fine job with them.

Auction Preview: January Sales

2012-01-04T10:10:00.002-05:00

January's a fairly quiet auction month overall, but there's certainly the potential for a really big sale price, at Christie's New York on 20 January.

- PBA Galleries sells Fine Books in All Fields on 5 January, in 460 lots. A first edition Leaves of Grass rates the top estimate, at $20,000-30,000.

- Edinburgh's Lyon & Turnbull will sell Rare Books, Maps, and Manuscripts on 11 January, in 456 lots.

- Bloomsbury hosts a Bibliophile sale on 12 January, in 398 lots.

- On 19 January, PBA Galleries sells Americana & Californiana, Cartography, and Clipper Ship Cards. No preview yet available.

- Christie's has just one book sale this month, on 20 January ... but it's a doozy: the Duke of Portland's copy of Audubon's Birds of America (est. $7-10 million). I'll have a complete preview of the sale in a few days.

- There will be at least a few books and manuscripts in the 22 January Bonhams sale.

- Swann Galleries holds a "Shelf Sale" on 26 January.

Book Review: "On Conan Doyle"

2012-01-02T15:18:00.003-05:00

Michael Dirda's On Conan Doyle: or, the The Whole Art of Storytelling (Princeton University Press, 2011) is a lovely little collection of musings on Conan Doyle's life and works, and also a look at the author's own experiences reading Conan Doyle as well as taking part in the activities of the famous Baker Street Irregulars.

While there's plenty here for the Sherlock Holmes fan, Dirda also discusses Conan Doyle's other works, including the wonderful Professor Challenger stories, the stories of the macabre, and the non-fiction, including Through the Magic Door and some of the writings on spiritualism.

It's always interesting to read about another person's first memories and experiences with Conan Doyle. Dirda vividly recalls his first ventures into the Sherlock Holmes canon, which I don't, but I definitely remember the first time I read The Lost World (my original copy, which is still around somewhere, though much-read now, was a terrible Wal-Mart paperback edition with a lurid orange "99¢" blob printed right on the cover). And I'm pretty sure I wore out my local library's copy of Round the Fire Stories. While the Holmes stories are great, I enjoy some of the other short stories even more, and Dirda's book, as an introduction to the whole range of Conan Doyle's works, is most welcome.

Links & Reviews

2012-01-02T08:14:00.005-05:00

- Perhaps my favorite piece of the week, John Crace's great takedown of year-end booklists.

- The January AE Monthly includes the Top 500 Book Auction Prices for 2011, a prediction for 2012's top price, and more.

- Woody Guthrie's archives have been purchased by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, which plans to open a Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa by the end of 2012.

- Over at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie, Lew Jaffe examines a silver bookplate.

- Rebecca Rego Barry has posted her very tempting winter reading list on the Fine Books Blog.

- While I take great issue with the phrase "cult of the physical book," Trevor Butterworth's Forbes article is still worth a read.

- The traveling panel show about John Adams' library, now in Long Island, gets a writeup in the NYTimes.

- In New Scientist, Paul Collins writes on the delightful trend of Victorian poet-scientists.

Review

- John M. Barry's Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul; review by Joyce Chaplin in the NYTimes.

Literary Anniversaries 2012

2012-01-01T07:38:00.002-05:00

Like last year, I'll highlight a few of the notable anniversaries coming up in 2012:

50 years ago (1962):

- David Foster Wallace born, 21 February

- Chuck Palahniuk born, 21 February.

- Tracy Chevalier born, 19 October.

- Vita Sackville-West dies, 2 June.

- William Faulkner dies, 6 July.

- Hermann Hesse dies, 9 August.

- E.E. Cummings dies, 3 September.

- Karen Blixen dies, 7 September.

- Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes published.

- Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange published.

- Ian Fleming's The Spy Who Loved Me published.

- Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time published.

- Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest published.

- Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire published.

- Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools published.

- Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy published.

- Rachel Carson's Silent Spring published.

- Ad-man Martin Speckter invents the interrobang ‽

100 years ago (1912):

- Barbara Tuchman born, 30 January.

- Lawrence Durrell born, 27 February.

- John Cheever born, 27 May.

- Jorge Amado born, 10 August.

- Bram Stoker dies, 20 April.

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World published.

- Thomas Mann's Death in Venice published.

150 years ago (1862):

- Edith Wharton born, 24 January.

- M.R. James born, 1 August.

- Henry David Thoreau dies, 6 May.

- Victor Hugo's Les Misérables published.

200 years ago (1812):

- Charles Dickens born, 7 February.

- Robert Browning born, 7 May.

- Edward Lear born, 12 May.

- Initial volume of Grimms' Fairy Tales published.

- Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage published.

- Johann David Wyss' The Swiss Family Robinson published.

- American Antiquarian Society founded.

250 years ago (1762):

- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu dies, 21 August.

- Oliver Goldsmith's The Citizen of the World published.

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Émile and Du Contrat Social published.

- Tobias Smollett's The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves published.

- "Ossian's" Fingal published.

- Lords Kames' Elements of Criticism published.

300 years ago (1712):

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau born, 28 June.

- Andrew Foulis born.

- Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock published.

350 years ago (1662):

- Richard Bentley born, 27 January.

- Matthew Henry born, 18 October.

- John Trenchard born.

- Blaise Pascal dies, 19 August.

- Michael Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom published.

400 years ago (1612):

- Samuel Butler born, December 4.

- Anne Bradstreet born (~1612).

- Ben Jonson's Love Restored published.

- Cervantes' Don Quixote translated into English by Thomas Shelton.

450 years ago (1562):

- Lope de Vega born, 25 November.

500 years ago (1512):

- Gerardus Mercator born, 5 March.

- Amerigo Vespucci dies, 22 February.

550 years ago (1462):

- Johannes Trithemius born, 1 February.

- Jodocus Badius, Flemish printer, born.

What'd I miss? Let me know!

2011 Farewells

2011-12-31T16:25:00.003-05:00

The biblio-universe lost more than a few men and women of great importance this year. I'm sure I've missed some, so please feel free to add them in comments, or email me and I'll gladly update the post.

- Bella Jozef, d. January. Brazilian literary scholar. Guardian Obit.

- Dick King-Smith, d. 4 January. British childrens' book author. Guardian Obit.

- Flo Gibson, d. 7 January. Audiobook reader extraordinaire. NYTimes Obit.

- Ruth Cavin, d. 9 January. Editor, publisher. Boston Globe Obit.

- John Gross, d. 10 January. Literary scholar; TLS editor. Guardian Obit.

- Joe Gores, d. 10 January. Mystery writer. NYTimes Obit.

- Sun Axelsson, d. 14 January. Swedish poet, novelist. SvD Obit.

- Romulus Linney, d. 15 January. Playwright. NYTimes Obit.

- Wilfrid Sheed, d. 19 January. Novelist; memoirist. NYTimes Obit.

- Reynolds Price, d. 20 January. Novelist. NYTimes Obit.

- F.A. Nettelbeck, d. 20 January. Poet. Obit.

- R.F. Langley, d. 26 January. Poet; diarist. Guardian Obit.

- Diana Norman (aka Ariana Franklin), d. 27 January. Journalist; novelist. Guardian Obit.

- Brian Jacques, d. 5 February. Childrens' author. NYTimes Obit.

- Margaret K. McElderry, d. 14 February. Childrens' book editor. NYTimes Obit.

- Perry Moore, d. 17 February. Young adult novelist; movie producer. NYTimes Obit.

- Jay Landesman, d. 20 February. Beat writer; editor. NYTimes Obit.

- Manny Fried, d. 25 February. Playwright. Buffalo News Obit.

- Hazel Rowley, d. 1 March. Biographer. NYTimes Obit.

- May Cutler, d. 3 March. Canadian author and publisher. Star Obit.

- Steven Kroll, d. 8 March. Childrens' author. NYTimes Obit.

- Gabriel Laderman, d. 10 March. Artist; bibliophile. NYTimes Obit.

- Raymond Garlick, d. 19 March. Poet; critic. Independent Obit.

- Diana Wynne-Jones, d. 26 March. Children's author. Guardian Obit.

- H.R.F. Keating, d. 27 March. Crime writer. Guardian Obit.

- Peter B. Howard, d. 31 March. Antiquarian bookseller. Berkleyside Obit.

- Craig Thomas, d. 4 April. Welsh Novelist. WalesOnline Obit.

- Arthur Marx, d. 14 April. Writer; playwright. LATimes Obit.

- Gonzalo Rojas, d. 25 April. Chilean poet. Telegraph Obit.

- Joanna Russ, d. 29 April. Science fiction writer. Locus Online Obit.

- Ernesto Sabato, d. 30 April. Argentine novelist/essayist. Independent Obit.

- Kate Swift, d. 7 May. Writer. NYTimes Obit.

- Newton Thornburg, d. 9 May. Novelist. Independent Obit.

- Trevor Howard-Hill, d. 1 June. Bibliographer. Independent Obit.

- Lilian Jackson Braun, d. 4 June. Mystery writer. NYTimes Obit.

- Jorge Semprún, d. 7 June. Spanish novelist/screenwriter. NYTimes Obit.

- Patrick Leigh Fermor, d. 10 June. British travel writer. NYTimes Obit.

- Iain Blair (Emma Blair), d. 3 July. Scottish romance novelist. Telegraph Obit.

- Geraint Bowen, d. 16 July. Welsh post. Independent Obit.

- Hilary Evans, d. 27 July. Author; illustration librarian. Guardian Obit.

- L.A. Banks, d. 2 August. Novelist.

- Price Berkley, d. 21 August. Founder/publisher of Theatrical Index. NYTimes Obit.

- Sue Allen, d. 25 August. Rare Book School faculty member; expert on American publisher's bindings. Ex-Libris announcement.

- Ruth Thomas, d. 25 August. British novelist. Guardian Obit.

- Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, d. 26 August. Novelist. NYTimes Obit.

- William B. Todd, d. 27 August. Bibliophile/bibliographer. Austin American-Statesman Obit.

- Michael Hart, d. 6 September. Project Gutenberg founder. NYTimes Obit.

- Richard Landon, d. 5 October. Director of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. University of Toronto Obit.

- Milded Savage, d. 7 October. Novelist. NYTimes Obit.

- Stanley Mitchell, d. 16 October. Translator. Independent Obit.

- Morris Philipson, d. 3 November. Director of Chicago University Press. NYTimes Obit.

- Les Daniels, d. 5 November. Comic book historian. NYTimes Obit.

- Barbara Grier, d. 10 November. Publisher. NYTimes Obit.

- Ruth Stone, d. 19 November. Poet. NYTimes Obit.

- Anne McCaffrey, d. 21 November. Science-fiction novelist. NYTimes Obit.

- Christa Wolf, d. 1 December. German writer.

- Christopher Logue, d. 2 December. Poet. Economist Obit.

- Russell Hoban, d. 13 December. Novelist; childrens' book author. Guardian Obit.

- George Whitman, d. 14 December. Founder of Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co. NYTimes Obit.

- Christopher Hitchens, d. 15 December. Writer; commentator. NYTimes Obit.

- Emmett L. Bennett, Jr., d 15 December. Classicist who deciphered Linear B. NYTimes Obit.

- Vaclav Havel, d. 18 December. Czech playwright. AP Obit.

- Simms Taback, d 25 Decemer. Children's book illustrator. NYTimes Obit.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-12-31T07:38:00.002-05:00

A few Christmas gifts this week, plus a couple other new arrivals:

- On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling by Michael Dirda (Princeton University Press, 2011). Gift.

- Room by Emma Donoghue (Back Bay Books, 2011). Gift.

- The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72 by Molly Peacock (Bloomsbury, 2011). Gift.

- His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik (Del Rey, 2006). Powells.

- Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea by Morgan Callan Rogers (Viking, 2012). Publisher.

Year-End Reading Report 2011

2011-12-30T15:21:00.001-05:00

Another year of reading slips away, and on to 2012!

I read 111 books in 2011, for an average of one every 3.3 days. Given that I started a new job, moved house, and wasn't reading maniacally as an awards judge like last year, I rate this year's as a fairly good effort. Of course the books continue to come in faster than I can read them, but there's nothing for that, I'm afraid. Normally I'd wait until tomorrow afternoon to post this, but I've resolved not to start a book book today and use the rest of 2011 to read some of the various piled-up periodicals, so I think I'm safe in putting this out a bit early.

Of this year's reading, just 31 titles were published before 2011 (see my resolution below), with 80 titles published this year (a full 72% of the total). The titles broke down into 66 fiction and 45 non-fiction books (59% fiction, 41% non-fiction).

One of this winter's goals is to finally get all the books in order on the shelves again; they've settled in nicely, but it would certainly be handy to know where to look when I'm on the hunt for something.

And now, my top ten fiction and non-fiction reads for 2011 (in no particular order within the lists):

Fiction

- The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips (Random House, 2011). Review.

- Pym by Mat Johnson (Spiegel & Grau, 2011). Review.

- The Technologists by Matthew Pearl (Random House, 2012). Review.

- A Study in Sherlock, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger (Bantam, 2011). Review.

- His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik (Del Rey, 2006). Review.

- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Quirk, 2011). Review.

- The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht (Random House, 2011). Review.

- The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown (Putnam, 2011). Review.

- Scorch City by Toby Ball (St. Martin's, 2011). Review.

- The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011). Review.

Non-Fiction

- Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World by Maya Jasanoff (Knopf, 2011). Review.

- Edward Bancroft: Scientist, Author, Spy by Thomas J. Schaeper (Yale University Press, 2011). Review.

- The Story of Charlotte's Web: E.B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic by Michael Sims (Walker & Company, 2011). Review.

- Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend by Susan Orlean (Simon & Schuster, 2011). Review.

- The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins (Crown, 2011). Review.

- Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics by Jeff Greenfield (Putnam, 2011). Review.

- Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage by Vincent Carretta (University of Georgia Press, 2011). Review.

- Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearence of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer by David Roberts (Broadway, 2011). Review.

- Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 2011). Review.

- Books: A Living History by Martyn Lyons (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011). Review.

Special mention, since it doesn't really fit into a category as such, goes to A Dodo at Oxford, edited by Philip Atkins and Michael Johnson (Oxgarth Press, 2010). Review.

Simply from the number of their publications in my top-ten lists, Random House is the clear winner of my Publisher of the Year nod, but I'll also give Yale University Press special mention again this year, along with Bloomsbury. Kudos to all three for their fantastic titles.

My reading resolution for 2012, since I spent so much time reading brand-new books in 2011, is to go back and play some serious catch-up.

Happy New Year, and may your 2012 be filled with good health, good fortune, and good books!

Previous year's reports: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006.

Book-shopping on Christmas Eve

2011-12-30T12:53:00.004-05:00

During a last-minute, impromptu visit to Carlson & Turner on Christmas Eve I picked up a couple examples of early American printing for the Rare Book School collection. One of them, an edition of Sallust printed at New York in 1817 (it's missing the title page, but a look at WorldCat and Google Books confirms it as the 1817, one of several editions published in NYC (or at Novi-Eboraci, as it is given in the imprint) by James Eastburn.

I bought it for the nice little book label on the front pastedown, for D.C. printers and booksellers Davis & Force (that's William A. Davis, formerly of New York, and Peter Force, who would later edit American Archives.) Only when I looked more closely at it later did I see the very cute use of the "D.C." in the label to make "December 24th 1829" (or possibly 1825). So, it looks a bit like someone else had been doing a little Christmas Eve book-shopping!

Book Review: "His Majesty's Dragon"

2011-12-30T09:04:00.003-05:00

Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon (Del Rey, 2006) was one of the most-ordered books for LibraryThing's SantaThing program this year, and when I mentioned that I hadn't heard of it, a chorus of fans urged me to give it a read. I'm glad I did: what fun! Novik's created a fascinating alternative history where dragons thrive and are deployed as massive and effective combat units.

When Captain Will Laurence of the Royal Navy and his crew capture a French frigate, little do they know that stowed beneath the decks is an extremely valuable, and ready-to-hatch dragon egg. Laurence's life changes in an instant when the dragon, Temeraire, emerges from his shell, and the unlikely pair find themselves called upon to serve king and country against Bonaparte's French forces (which utilize a whole host of their own dragons, of course).

Novik's talents at building a richly-textured world, complete with historical and scientific background on dragon-breeding and a complex Aerial Corps culture, are prodigious. And Temeraire - well, if you can make it through this book without wanting to spend an afternoon conversing with this fictional dragon ... what a character.

Sort of like the Aubrey-Maturin books, but with dragons. Certainly good fun, and a wonderful way to lose a few hours. I've already sent for the next two books in the series.

Book Review: "Republic of Words"

2011-12-28T08:14:00.003-05:00

Susan Goodman's Republic of Words: The Atlantic Monthly and Its Writers, 1857-1925 (University Press of New England, 2011) is an unconventional history of a magazine. "From the beginning," Goodman writes, "The Atlantic's authority rested on its contributors: the poets, novelists, essayists, political figures, scientists, geologists, explorers, social scientists, and their fellow writers in multiple fields, new and old" (xi). Most chapters focus on a particular episode of an Atlantic writer's career which was connected in some way to the magazine's story and "speaks in its way about the magazine's self-made responsibilities and the writer's sense of an underlying national consciousness" (xi).

Goodman focuses on the period from 1857 through 1925, from the beginning through the post-WWI era when the magazine found itself facing new rivals and a changing audience. A short final chapter looks beyond the 1920s to the big changes faced by the magazine since then, including the move from its original Boston home to Washington, D.C. in 2005.

The book's chapters may focus on seemingly small episodes in the life of the Atlantic, but Goodman also manages to create an overarching narrative of a publication changing over time, not just with the shifting preferences and tastes of successive editors, but also in response to the political, literary, scientific, and social climate of the day (even if in some cases it did take a while to catch up). It certainly helps to have such an intriguing stable of writers to choose from: among those profiled here are Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry James, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Robert Frost, W.E.B DuBois, and Amy Lowell (just to scratch the surface).

Among the most interesting chapters are those on the contretemps stirred up by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1869 when she insinuated that Lord Byron had slept with his half-sister, the debates between Louis Agassiz and Asa Gray over scientific theory, and on Mark Twain's unintentional (and poorly-received) "roast" of the magazine's founders at a dinner celebrating John Greenleaf Whittier's 70th birthday.

A few small errors have crept into the text (the author of Wild Animals I Have Known was Ernest Thompson Seton, not Thomas Seton, for example), but they do little to undermine this fascinating look at a publication which has survived through thick and thin, trying as ever to "be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea" (6).

Links & Reviews

2011-12-26T07:29:00.000-05:00

- In yesterday's NYTimes, Jennifer Schuessler covers Matt Kirschenbaum's research on the history of word processing (to be published in 2013 as "Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing").

- From the 14 December New Republic, a profile of accused document thief Barry Landau. Some new details here, including that some 2,000 items seized from Landau's apartment are now believed to have been stolen.

- A number of rare books and manuscripts were destroyed when the Institute of Egypt building was burned during protests. Police have already arrested one man for trying to sell manuscripts stolen from the library.

- There are a couple good pieces relating to print history in the year-end Economist, including a profile of Albrecht Dürer as entrepeneur and "How Luther Went Viral."

- John Overholt reports that a volume of proceedings from the fantastic 2009 conference on Samuel Johnson has now been published as Johnson After Three Centuries: New Light on Texts and Contexts (Harvard University Press). Five papers from the conference are included, as well as a bibliography of research on the Dictionary published between 1955 and 2009 (compiled by Jack Lynch).

- In an 8-part YouTube series, Michael Suarez talks about Oxford Scholarly Editions Online. Part 1 begins here.

- From Echoes from the Vault, a fantastic manicule from the incunabula collection of Archbishop William Schreves.

- In the Guardian, Wayne Gooderham writes about interesting inscriptions he's discovered in secondhand books.

- Writing in the NYTimes, Marilynne Robinson discusses the influence of the Bible on literature.

- New from the Internet Archive, a live status board showing recently-scanned books.

- From The Age newspaper, an interesting story about carbon-dating some elm leaves found in a 1540 Great Bible.

- David Weinberger talked to the CBC about ShelfLife and LibraryCloud, two projects of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab.

- Over at the Collation, a look at "reduce, reuse, recycle" in early modern books. If you're not already reading this great new blog, start immediately.

- Michael Sims talked to NPR about his recently-edited The Dead Witness: A Connoiseuer's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories.

- Randall Stross writes in the NYTimes about the state of the "tug-of-war" between publishers and librarians over e-book purchases.

- The Fine Books Blog's "Bright Young Things" series continues, with Nate Pedersen interviewing David Eilenberger of Eilenberger Rare Books.

Reviews

- Jonathan Israel's Democratic Enlightenment; review by Darrin M. McMahon in the NYTimes.

- Anthony Horowitz's The House of Silk (and other Holmesian novels and t.v./film adaptations); review by D.J. Taylor in the WSJ.

- Stella Tillyard's Tides of War; review by Charles McGrath in the NYTimes.

- Grolier Club exhibition "Printing for Kingdom, Empire & Republic: Treasures from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale"; review by David Dunlap in the NYTimes.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-12-24T08:45:00.002-05:00

The books of the week:

- Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin (Penguin, 2011). Publisher.

- In the Words of Women: The Revolutionary War and the Birth of the Nation, 1765-1799; edited by Louise V. North, Janet M. Wedge, and Landa M. Freeman (Lexington Books, 2011). Editor.

- Marks in Books, Illustrated and Explained by Roger E. Stoddard (Houghton Library, 1985). Brattle Bookshop [with many thanks to the eagle-eyed Bill Johnston]

- Arcadia by Lauren Groff (Voice, 2012). Publisher.

- The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward O. Wilson (Liveright, 2012). Publisher.

Book Review: "Books: A Living History"

2011-12-19T06:08:00.004-05:00

All too often, books like Books: A Living History are bedeviled by bad writing, bad design, bad illustrations, or some combination of the three. I'm extremely pleased to say that this is very much an exception to that trend. Published by the J. Paul Getty Museum in the U.S. (Thames & Hudson in the U.K.), Books: A Living History combines an excellent, lively text by historian of the book Martyn Lyons with spared-no-expense design and illustrations.

Lyons' text is a good, broad overview of book history from the beginning to the present, broken into short chapters and sections for easy browsing. While anyone interested in the topic will want to see more of their particular hobbyhorse (provenance and personal libraries in my case), there's a bit here for all, with essays on the origins of writing and printing, monastic libraries, print in the Islamic world, scientific printing, copyright, romance novels, modern publishing, &c. &c.

The text is greatly enhanced by the presence of a vast number of beautifully-reproduced illustrations, many of which were new to me (these are not, blessedly, the same stock images that have been appearing in every illustrated history of the book for eons). And the designers have done a great job integrating the text and the illustrations into a very nice physical object; I'm sorry, but no e-reader would do this book justice. From the eye-catching jacket design to the accessible prose, this is a book sure to appeal to any bibliophile.

Book Review: "The Odd Clauses"

2011-12-19T05:51:00.003-05:00

Boston University law professor Jay Wexler's new book The Odd Clauses: Understanding the Constitution through Ten of its Most Curious Provisions (Beacon Press) is an amusing romp through constitutional provisions that most of us probably don't think about very much (if we've heard of them at all). Wexler opens his book by offering up the analogy of the Constitution as a zoo, noting that if "the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth amendments were a lion, a giraffe, and a panda bear, respectively, then this book is about the Constitution's shrews, wombats, and bat-eared foxes" (ix).

For each of his ten chapters, Wexler examines the "odd clause" in question and draws out the larger constitutional principle at stake (using the titles of nobility clauses to discuss federalism, for example, and the incompatability clause to talk about separation of powers). He also usually discusses any relevant jurisprudence or debates that have sprung around the clause in question, and often spins out some hypothetical scenario in which the clause could one day be front page news (say if Ron Paul were to get his way and the government began issuing letters of marque and reprisal to private companies so that they could hunt pirates off Somalia).

While the zoo analogy does wear a bit over the course of the book, and Wexler's style of humorous asides may not be to every taste, I certainly learned something from this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in a quirky overview of American constitutionalism.

Links & Reviews

2011-12-18T08:19:00.000-05:00

- Don't miss the short YouTube video taken at last month's Boston Book Fair!

- Sotheby's London had planned to include an extensive archive of Naguib Mahfouz material in their Thursday sale, but an outcry from Mahfouz family members and others forced them to pull the lot.

- The Telegraph reports on the sale of that unpublished Charlotte Brontë miniature manuscript, which went to Paris' Musée des Lettres et Manucrits even though the Brontë Parsonage Museum had pulled together a £600,000 bid.

- Rare books and manuscripts were reportedly damaged when the historic Institute of Egypt building near Cairo caught fire during protests yesterday. The culture minister called the fire "a catastrophe for science."

- I'm very much looking forward to listening to the panels and keynotes from the "Humanities in a Digital Age" symposium, held at UVA this fall. The talks are now available as podcasts.

- At The Collation, Heather Wolfe has a great post about "manuscript reunions."

- The Vatican Library has announced that it will be scanning 80,000 of its manuscripts.

- Cambridge University has digitized a notebook written by Isaac Newton while at Trinity College in the 1660s. Also see Cory Doctorow's BoingBoing post about copyright claims.

- Matthew Reisz wrote about digital humanities in the THE this week.

- An important new article from the Electronic British Library Journal, "The Library Catalogues of Sir Hans Sloane: Their Authors, Organization, and Functions" by Amy Blakeway [PDF].

Reviews

- Kate Chisholm's Wits & Wives: Dr. Johnnson in the Company of Women; review by Ophelia Field in the Telegraph.

- Anthony Horowitz's The House of Silk; review at The Little Professor.

- P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley; review by Liesl Schillinger in the NYTimes.

- David O. Stewart's American Emperor; review by Joyce Appleby in the Washington Post.

- Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery; review by Nick Owchar in the LATimes.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-12-17T08:20:00.004-05:00

Another good hodgepodge of a week:

- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1906). Green Hand.

- The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett (Corgi Books, 1986). Green Hand.

- Jack Maggs by Peter Carey (Knopf, 1998). Green Hand.

- Treason's Harbour by Patrick O'Brian (W.W. Norton, 1992). Longfellow Books.

- The Far Side of the World by Patrick O'Brian (W.W. Norton, 1992). Longfellow Books.

- This is Not the End of the Book: A Conversation Curated by Jean-Philippe De Tonnac by Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière (Harvill Secker, 2011). Amazon (secondhand).

- The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend by Thomas Malory; retold by Peter Ackroyd (Viking, 2011). Publisher.

- Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer by Wesley Stace (Picador, 2011). Amazon.

- Books: A Living History by Martyn Lyons (Getty, 2011). Publisher.

- Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books; edited by Leah Price (Yale University Press, 2011). Publisher.

Auction Report: December Sales

2011-12-15T14:24:00.000-05:00

It's been quite a fortnight for Sotheby's book auctions!

- The 6 December Western and Oriental Manuscripts at Sotheby's London brought in a total of £987,900. Lot 45, Walter Hilton's Scala perfectionis, which I pointed out in my preview as having some some wonderfully gruesome penwork illustrations, ended up being the top seller, fetching £181,250. A 12th-century manuscript of Isidore of Seville's Etymologies also did well, selling for £109,250. Several Books of Hours also far surpassed pre-sale estimates. Ludolf of Saxony's Vita Christi, which had rated the top estimate, failed to sell.

- Swann's Maps, Atlases, Natural History and Historical Prints on 8 December saw a 1775 Fry map of Virginia take the top spot, making $28,800.

- Sotheby's New York's Fine Books & Manuscripts sale on 13 December was the whopper of the month, bringing in a total of $7,406,138. The original Apple Computer contract ended up claiming the top price, at $1,594,500, while the George Washington letter from the Bennington Museum's collection sold for $362,500. Hans Bellmer's Les Jeux de la poupée (1949) fetched $302,500 (much more than the $30,000-50,000 estimate). A fragment of a ~1456-58 Gutenberg edition of Donatus' Ars minor reached the same price. Top among the Chandler lots was a copy of The Big Sleep inscribed to his first wife; it sold for $254,500. The notebook of Rabindranath Tagore made $170,500. Watch the winter issue of Fine Books & Collections for my rundown of this sale.

- The first edition of Graham Greene's Rumour at Nightfall was indeed the top seller at Bloomsbury's 14-15 December Books, Manuscripts, Maps, and Works on Paper sale. It made £17,000.

- The English Literature, History, Private Press, Children's Books & Illustrations today at Sotheby's London brought in £1,741,938. The unpublished Charlotte Brontë miniature manuscript did even better than expected, selling for £690,850 (reportedly to a French museum). The first edition set of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey also did well, fetching £157,250. A 1536 "Mole Bible" sold for £91,250. The Second Folio does not appear to have have a buyer.

- The Bonhams Fine Books and Manuscripts and PBA Galleries Americana, Travel, and Cartography sales are currently underway. I'll add highlights should events warrant.

Book Review: "The Ghost Map"

2011-12-14T18:48:00.000-05:00

Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic, and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (2006) examines the infamous 1854 London cholera epidemic and how Dr. John Snow's persistent efforts to prove the disease's water-borne nature led to the creation of his well-known map showing that the Broad Street pump was at the epicenter of the outbreak.

But the book's much more than an account of Snow's efforts and his map. Though those are at the center, Johnson uses them as a lens through which to examine everything from a history of cholera to sewer development to urbanization to the danger of nuclear terrorism. While all of the wide-ranging tangents aren't as interesting or as useful as others, for the most part the book makes for a good read.

The most interesting part to me, though, was the central account of Snow's original analysis of the epidemic (and his earlier work with other outbreaks), and the reception of his hypothesis by the local and scientific communities. Because of the importance of the map to the book, I was very surprised that Johnson doesn't include a good reproduction of it; seems like that would have been a no-brainer. Even without it, though, the argument about the importance of Snow's efforts is a good one.

Mapping Subscriber Lists: Examples and Potential

2011-12-13T16:04:00.005-05:00

Back in October (in fact two months ago today), Simran Thadani tweeted¹ a preliminary Google Map she'd created of some of the subscribers to one of George Bickham's books (Penmanship in its Utmost Beauty and Extent, 1731). I thought it was a brilliant idea, and decided to try one of my own.

I've long been fascinated by the subscriber list in Thomas Prince's 1736 A Chronological History of New-England In the Form of Annals² (which you can read online, via the Internet Archive). The list, which takes up a full twenty pages in the book, comprises some 736 names, including 28 who had died between the time they subscribed and when the book was published.³An 1852 New England Historical & Genealogical Register article reprinting the list noted that the subscribers "may be justly regarded as the principal Literati of New England, who flourished about the beginning of the last century."

Starting with the list, off I went; you can see the resulting map here.⁴ The different pin colors represent the number of copies subscribed for: of those subscribing for more than a single copy, 87 took six copies, 57 took two, 24 took three, 11 took twelve, 3 took four, and 1 subscriber requested a whopping twenty-four copies.⁵In most cases the subscriber's town was also listed; in almost all cases where the town wasn't listed the subscriber proved to be from Boston.

I attempted to locate Boston subscribers within the city using newspaper databases and other sources (an overlay of the 1722 Bonner map also proved very useful); for those not yet located to a specific street I've placed the pins on Boston Common for now. When I get a chance, I'll spend some time with the Thwing Index of early Boston residents, and if readers can more precisely locate any of the subscribers I'll be more than happy to update the map.

The map probably would have been quite enough, but as I mapped I began adding short annotations for each subscriber. Beginning in 1852 and for several decades thereafter, the NEHGR printed a sporadic series of "Brief Memoirs and Notices of Prince's Subscribers," and I started using these and another partial set of annotations from 1910. I quickly realized that the NEHGR annotations were too idiosyncratic to be useful, and the 1910 annotations were frequently simply wrong on the identifications or the facts. At that point I probably ought to have just stuck with the map, but in for a penny, in for a pound, right?

For each of the subscribers I could identify, I included what information I could find on their birth and death dates, education, occupation, family connections, &c.⁶ The Colonial Collegians database (accessed through NEHGS) proved extremely useful, since a significant number of the subscribers were Harvard graduates (a much smaller number graduated from Yale). I also may go through the records of extant copies of the book and see how many I can trace back to original subscribers, so that information can be added as well.

As I worked, I was thinking about the possibilities of all this, and I began to imagine a digital Atlas of Subscription Printing, combining GIS visualizations of a body of subscription lists with a layered database allowing filtering by demographic factors, publication data (location, date, &c.) occupation, education level, subscriptions to other books, relationships between subscribers and between subscribers and authors, &c. Wouldn't that be something?!

Comments, feedback, suggestions, thoughts always appreciated!

¹ Alas, I cannot link to the tweet, since it is locked.

²Full title: "A Chronological History of New-England In the Form of Annals: Being a summary and exact Account of the most material Transactions and Occurrences relating to this country, in the Order of Time wherein they happened, from the Discovery by Capt. Gosnold in 1602, to the Arrival of Governor Belcher, in 1730. With an Introduction, Containing a brief Epitome of the most remarkable Transactions and Events Abroad, from the Creation: Including the connected Line of Time, the Succession of Patriarchs and Sovereigns of the most famous Kingdoms & Empires, the gradual Discoveries of America, and the Progress of the Reformation to the Discovery of New-England."

³ On the final page of the subscription list is the notice "Our Subscription being begun in 1728, and several of the Subscribers being since deceased, who are marked with a [*] This may notify the Relatives of such deceased Persons, that if they incline to take up the Books subscribed for, they may do it, provided they come or send for them in a short time."

⁴ Google Maps annoyingly doesn't allow maps with more than 200 points to be displayed on a single page, so the regular view of the map (here) shows four pages and won't display all the points at once. If anybody knows a workaround for this, I'd be more than a little glad to know of it.

⁵ Many of the multi-copy subscriptions were probably for resale. The 24-copy subscriber was Jonathan Whitney of Wrentham, MA. Just one of the subscribers was a woman, Lydia Draper of Boston (for two copies); she was the widow of printer Richard Draper.

⁶ I'm sure I made mistakes, and there are still a few subscribers I didn't identify conclusively. If you've got information, please do send it along, I'd love to include it.

Links & Reviews

2011-12-11T09:55:00.000-05:00

- The December Fine Books Notes is up, with lots of good things as usual.

- Paul Collins writes in Slate about what happened to the Mary Celeste even after she was discovered floating around without her crew.

- Knute Young, wanted in a string of book thefts in the Oakland/Berkeley area, was arrested this week.

- The mysterious Copiale Cipher has been cracked; computer analysis earlier this year revealed it to be a "detailed description of a ritual from a secret society that apparently had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology."

- Don't miss Steve Ferguson's great post about an 18th-century librarian's "Collat. & perfect." inscriptions.

- At the Collation, more on Impos[i]tor, the Folger's very cool digital imposition tool, and, more to the point, some excellent advice for developers of digital humanities projects.

- One of the editors alerted me to In the Words of Women, a new blog highlighting American women writing between 1765 and 1799.

- From Jordan Goffin at Notes for Bibliophiles, "What's a special collections library for?"

- At Anchora, Adam Hooks continues his "Faking Shakespeare" series with a look at William Henry Ireland's draft play about Louis XVI.

- I'm not sure whether this is new or not, but the BL's bookbindings database makes for a good browse.

- From the Boston Globe, a report on a BPL-led program to digitize "records and documents of cultural institutions" across Massachusetts.

- Jane Austen biographer Paula Byrne says she's found a new portrait of Austen, the Telegraph reports.

Reviews

- The New-York Historical Society's exhibit Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn; review by Alan Singer at HNN. [h/t Boston 1775]

- Michael Popek's Forgotten Bookmarks; review by Rebecca Rego Barry in Fine Books Notes.

- Colin Woodard's American Nations; review/discussion by J.L. Bell at Boston 1775.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-12-10T07:55:00.003-05:00

Bit of a hodgepodge this week: publisher sales mostly, with a review copy or two:

- The Rector and the Rogue by W.A. Swanberg (Collins Library, 2011). Publisher.

- Read Hard: Five Years of Great Writing from The Believer; edited by Ed Park and Heidi Julavits (McSweeney's, 2009). Publisher.

- The Odd Clauses: Understanding the Constitution Through Ten of Its Most Curious Provisions by Jay Wexler (Beacon Press, 2011). Publisher.

- God's Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Industry and Irregular Commerce of the Abbé Migne by R. Howard Bloch (University of Chicago Press, 1995). Publisher.

- A General History of Quadrupeds: The Figures Engraved on Wood by Thomas Bewick (University of Chicago Press, 2009). Publisher.

- Image in Print: Book Illustration in Late Medieval England and its Sources by Martha W. Driver (British Library, 2004). Publisher.

- A Continental Shelf: Books across Europe from Ptolemy to Don Quixote (Bodleian Library, 2005). Publisher.

- Terra Incognita: Mapping the Antipodes before 1600 by Alfred Hiatt (University of Chicago Press, 2008). Publisher.

Book Review: "The Murder Room"

2011-12-09T06:07:00.002-05:00

Michael Capuzzo's The Murder Room (2010) is one of those books that's at once fascinating and frustrating. Its subject is the Vidocq Society, a real-life conclave of the top forensic scientists and criminal profilers from around the world who meet once a month to discuss (and attempt, usually successfully, to solve) a particularly cold and nasty murder case. The club's founding trio: forensic artist Frank Bender, profiler extraordinaire Richard Walter, and FBI/Customs agent Bill Fleisher, make for excellent subjects. And the crimes they help solve are chilling, horrifying things.

The ingredients are there, and the book is in many ways very satisfying. The look inside the investigative process is captivating, and the stories of how some of the crimes ended up being solved were absolutely remarkable. Capuzzo has structured the book in such a way, though, that it often feels rather repetitive. Each of the major Vidocq Society cases that he profiles is told in several short chapters, but the chapters are non-sequential, with bits of other cases and storylines in between. This keeps any narrative flow from developing, and also means that the author repeats himself frequently, to bring the reader up to speed on ground that he'd already covered in previous chapters. The chapters also bounce around from decade to decade, which certainly didn't help.

I liked the book; I think with some reworking it could be much, much better.

Links & Reviews

2011-12-04T09:44:00.000-05:00

So many link-worthy things this week!

- A major forgery case is unfolding in Norway, where collector and film director Geir Ove Kvalheim has been indicted for forging documents in the hands of Knut Hamsun and Henrik Ibsen, among others. Among the pieces Kvalheim is accused of forging are notations by Hansum in a 1943 pocket almanac, and an entirely new play by Ibsen. The investigation has been going on since 2008, when suspicions were first raised about documents sold for Kvalheim by the Oslo bookshop Norlis and purchased by several institutions, including the National Library.

- Umberto Eco talked at the Toronto Public Library about his new novel The Prague Cemetery, and the video's on YouTube: Part One; Part Two. Along with a great discussion of the book, Eco talks about his favorite Disney rides, voicemail, his library, and reading Batman.

- The Charleston Library Society has announced a multi-year cataloging and conservation effort.

- Authorship, a new open-access journal, released its first issue.

- John Palfrey's recent talk "A Future for Libraries," is now available online.

- A major new British Library newspaper database went online this week.

- New (or at least new to me) from the Image Permanance Institute: Graphics Atlas.

- There's a great "Landmarks in Book History: The Future of the Discipline" lecture series on tap in London this winter.

- Scott Sherman's The Nation piece "Upheaval at the New York Public Library" is a must-read.

- UVA book conservator Eliza Gilligan talks about researching and restoring a copy of Hooke's Micrographia.

- The Casanova exhibit at the BNF is reviewed in the NYTimes.

- The December AE Monthly is out; it includes a look at the Library of America along with several pieces on book auctions, &c.

- From The Public Domain Review, a look at the fascinating book The Mysteries of Nature and Art.

- Oscar Wilde's tomb in Paris now has a new glass barrier, to stop people from kissing the stone.

- Yale announced this week that the Voynich Manuscript is now available online.

- Brown University has purchased a rare copy of the first European book on Chinese medicine, Philippe Charvys' 1671 text Les secrets de le medecine des Chinois.

- Adam Gopnik writes in The New Yorker about fantasy writing for young adult readers, taking the old line about Tolkien as "our Ossian" and extending it to other writers (Paolini as Chatterton, for example).

- At Echoes from the Vault, a profile of 17th-century book collector William Guild.

- A new exhibit at Boston College, The Golden Age of Massachusetts Law Publishing. See also the BC newspaper story about the display.

- The National Library of Wales has come under fire for accepting papers and a £300,000 bequest from Louis Feutren, who reportedly collaborated with the Nazis.

- From BibliOdyssey, toucans!

- Over at Fine Books Blog, the "Bright Young Things" series continues as Nate Pedersen interviews Jonathan Smalter of Yesterday's Muse.

- Sam Weller's Bookstore will be moving in January, and opening under a new name: Weller Book Works.

- Julie Bosman writes in the NYTimes about publishers designing books with "special effects" (i.e. nice paper, jackets, &c.) as a pushback against e-books.

Reviews

- Tim Jeal's Explorers of the Nile; review by Diana Preston in the Washington Post.

- David Gilmour's The Pursuit of Italy; review by Brooke Allen in the NYTimes.

- Rosamond Bartlett's Tolstoy: A Russian Life; review by Thomas L. Jeffers in the Washington Post.

- Peter Ackroyd's The Death of King Arthur; review by Christopher Benfey in the NYTimes.

What the Future of Libraries Looked Like in 1961

2011-12-03T09:34:00.001-05:00

Last month I had the great honor to give a talk marking the fiftieth anniversary of Schaffer Library at Union College, my alma mater.

When I got to campus on the morning of the talk, I asked if there happened to be a copy of the remarks delivered at the original dedication of the library building, in April 1961. Sure enough, in the archives there was a printed copy of the dedicatory speech, delivered by Edward G. Freehafer, then director of the New York Public Library. It was titled "Libraries and the Future," and once I read it (fairly gleefully, I admit) I knew I had some very useful rewriting to do.

Among the "great problems" Freehafer saw confronting the library of the future was "making information accessible," a refrain that will not be unfamiliar to anyone involved with the inner workings of a library. He said:

"The familiar card catalog, which lists the library's holdings by author, title, and subject, is part of that undertaking. There are also the many indexes which make known the contents of journals and periodicals. These are two important – and I sometimes think not properly appreciated – efforts to bring information under control. But as the years go by, each of them adding its contribution to the vast storehouse of information, we have begun to wonder if conventional methods of cataloging and indexing are adequate. In a push-button age, can we not store this knowledge in such a way that information on a given subject becomes available at the twist of a dial? There are those who believe that, with the advent of the computer, this should be possible.

You may have seen a recent newspaper account of a lecture given at MIT* in which a Dartmouth professor, a mathematician, proposed a huge national research library that scholars would consult by a long distance dial system. According to the professor, the basic components of such a system are within reach of present technology and could be put into operation in twenty years at a cost of about a billion dollars. Six hundred and forty-five ordinary book pages would be stored on about one square inch of tape. Library users would not borrow books in the ordinary sense but, after dialing, would receive, by cable, copies of what has been stored on tape. The professor also predicts that this central library would be combined eventually with a computer-based system for searching the literature of a subject so that a doctor, for example, could have, within a matter of minutes, everything that had been written on the side effects of tranquilizers."

My favorite bit was Freehafer's concluding riff about the potential of computers: "We must pursue energetically our efforts to solve the information problem, and the computer gives promise as the most likely answer. It will no doubt be perfectly happy to work twenty-four hours a day, and if properly programmed, may never stop for a coffee break or learn how to ask for a promotion. It will answer our specific questions more rapidly than ever before possible. But I doubt that it will ever be able to browse – or accidentally stumble across something new and exciting."

Freehafer's talk provided a very useful set of bookends for the talk I'd written, in which I discussed several of the projects I've been involved in that were designed to "enhance the bibliosphere" by building meaningful connections between the readers of the past and the readers of the present.

In many ways, I suggested at the conclusion of the discussion, Freehafer's future has come to meet us. But, at the same time, the library world continues to grapple with some of the fundamental questions he posed, and if I had to guess, I'd say that we're likely to do so far into the future.

* The lecture Freehafer mentions was "Library for 2000 AD," a talk at MIT's 100th anniversary celebration earlier in 1961 by Dartmouth mathematician John G. Kemeny, the co-developer of BASIC and later president of Dartmouth. The talk was published in a 1962 book Computers and the World of the Future).

Auction Preview: December Sales

2011-12-03T07:35:00.000-05:00

- PBA Galleries sold Fine Books on 1 December; results are here.

- Also on 1 December, Swann sold Americana and Ocean Liner Memorabilia. Sharing the top sale price of $24,000 were a collection of Joseph Dwight papers from King George's War, and a copy of the first newspaper printing of the Bill of Rights.

- At Sotheby's London on 6 December, a strikingly beautiful sale of Western and Oriental Manuscripts, in 56 lots. A 15th-century Spanish manuscript on vellum of Ludolf of Saxony's Vita Christi, in a contemporary binding, rates the top estimate, £80,000-100,000. Also see Lot 45, Walter Hilton's Scala perfectionis, with some gruesome penwork illustrations.

- Bloomsbury has a Bibliophile Sale on 8 December, in 611 lots.

- Swann sells Maps, Atlases, Natural History and Historical Prints on 8 December, in 373 lots (the very first of which is a beautiful Blaeu map of Bermuda).

- On 13 December, Sotheby's New York sells Fine Books & Manuscripts in 352 lots. Most of the attention is going to the collection of Raymond Chandler manuscripts, first editions, and association copies and to the original Apple Computer contract (est. $100,000-150,000), but the sale's certainly got a little something for everyone's tastes (if, perhaps, not everyone's wallet). The top estimate ($300,000-500,000) goes to a George Washington letter, perhaps a retained copy of the note he sent to the House of Representatives thanking its members for their congratulatory message to him upon his inauguration. The letter comes from the collections of the Bennington Museum. A previously unknown notebook of Rabindranath Tagore could fetch $150,000-250,000, and a set of Henry Popple's America septentionalis (1733-34) from the collections of the Ishpeming, MI Carnegie Public Library rates a $100,000-150,000 estimate (as we see the trend of institutions selling off important pieces continue). The sale also includes more documents from the James S. Copley library. Watch the winter issue of Fine Books & Collections for my rundown of this sale.

- At Bloomsbury on 14-15 December, Books, Manuscripts, Maps, and Works on Paper, in 982 lots. A first edition of Graham Greene's Rumour at Nightfall rates the top estimate, £10,000-15,000.

- Bonhams sells Fine Books and Manuscripts on 15 December in New York City, in 290 lots. Fore-edge paintings, original illustrations by Maurice Sendak, and a small collection of documents relating to a Revolutionary War P.O.W. are among the highlights.

- Also on 15 December, PBA Galleries holds a sale of Americana, Travel, and Cartography, in 314 lots. The top estimate, $6,000-9,000, goes to a 32-volume set, Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites and published at Cleveland 1904-07.

- Sotheby's London has English Literature, History, Private Press, Children's Books & Illustrations on 15 December, in 162 lots. The big kahuna here is the unpublished Charlotte Brontë miniature manuscript, estimated at £200,000-300,000 (and coming from the collection of T.J. Wise). A first edition set of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey rates the next-highest estimate, at £70,000-100,000. A Second Folio (missing leaves A1 and A2) is estimated at £45,000-60,000.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-12-03T06:25:00.002-05:00

Here's what arrived this week:

- The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead by Heather Pringle (Theia, 2001). Longfellow Books.

- McSweeney's Issue 7; edited by Dave Eggers (McSweeney's, 2011). Amazon. Just four McSweeney's issues left to find before my set is complete ...

- The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett (Harper, 2001). Amazon.

- Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York by Richard Zacks (Doubleday, 2012). Publisher.

Auction Report: Recent Highlights

2011-12-01T11:21:00.003-05:00

For a recap of sales earlier in the month, see this post.

- At the Christie's London sale of Valuable Printed Books and Manuscripts on 23 November 68 of 83 lots sold, for a total of £1,959,825. The first edition Vesalius took the top spot, fetching £265,250. A 14th-century manuscript of English verse texts sold for £205,250. Maria Sibylla Merian's Der rupsen begin (1713-1717) made £193,250, and the New York "second folio" edition of Audubon's Birds of America fetched £121,250. Pedro de Medina's Arte de navegar (1545) failed to sell.

- Results for the 23 November Bonhams London sale of Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs, including the Property of the late Michael Silverman are here. The top lot was an album of 170 photographs by the early amateur photographer Thomas Honywood, which sold for £58,850.

- Just 292 of the 442 lots at Christie's London's 28 November sale of Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts including a selection from the Malcolm S. Forbes Jr. Churchill Collection and Photobooks from the Calle Collection found buyers. Alexander II's copy of Pushkin's works was the highest-selling lot, fetching £126,050. Quite a tremendous leap down to the next lot: a fragmentary leaf from a 10th-century Coptic bible made £21,250. The 17th-century English manuscript of recipes and remedies that I liked sold for £3,000.

- Full results for the Bonhams Oxford sale of Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Photographs are here. Top lot was a first edition of Casino Royale, which fetched £13,500.

- Bloomsbury sold Important Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper on 29 November, in 527 lots. Results are here. The top lot was an Aitken Bible, selling for £105,000.

- At the Christie's Paris Importants livres anciens, livres d'artistes et manuscrits sale on 29 November, 231 of 306 lots sold, for a total of £1,409,875. The 1540 Jean Girard Bible sold for €85,000 but was not the top lot: a Paul Verlaine letter far surpassed estimates, selling for €121,000. The set of Nikolai Koutepov's works on Russian hunting did not sell.

- The month closed with a bang! Sotheby's London sold Music and Continental Books and Manuscripts on 30 November, with 118 of 180 lots selling for a total of £3,317,725. The first edition of Copernicus' De revolutionibus (1543) sold for £825,250, while Schumann's manuscript of Szenen Aus Goethes "Faust" fetched £713,250. Three other lots did better than £100,000.

December preview coming soon.

Book Recommendation: "Phillis Wheatley"

2011-11-30T14:47:00.004-05:00

Since the author was a long-term research fellow at MHS while I worked there, and I am acknowledged in the book, I won't call this a review, but simply a recommendation. Vincent Carretta's Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage (University of Georgia Press, 2011) is a thorough, cautious, and absolutely indispensable new study of Wheatley's life and works, and you should read it.

By carefully re-examining the known documentary record and uncovering more than a few entirely new sources during the course of his research, Carretta has written the most complete biography of Wheatley to date, one I think is unlikely to be surpassed (barring the emergence of some significant new evidence in the future, anyway). He successfully "busts" many of the myths that have sprung up around Wheatley, and ably locates her within the dual contexts of the overall transatlantic literary culture of the 1770s and the nascent trend of publications by people of African descent in the Anglo-American world.

Carretta's explication of Wheatley's connections in and around Boston during the 1760s and early 1770s makes for fascinating reading, as does his chapter on her trip to London in 1773. He carefully mines her correspondence and writings for details of who she met, the sights she saw, the books she purchased, and how the trip affected not only the publication of her Poems but also her own legal status.

While much of Wheatley's post-manumission life remains nebulous given the lack of available documents, Carretta has done a great service by recreating those years to the extent possible. His research has revealed a great deal more about Phillis' husband John Peters than was previously known, and his discussion of Wheatley's married life (and what that meant for her public career) is most enlightening.

The useful notes and full bibliography (which together cover more than fifty pages) are vital parts of the book, and I'm glad (though not surprised, in this case) to see such complete documentation of the research process.

Highly recommended.

Links & Reviews

2011-11-27T08:15:00.000-05:00

- The Universal Short Title Catalogue launched this week: Brook Palmieri has a good introduction (and recap of the launch conference) in an 8vo post.

- Here's a new one: a woman is suing bookseller Ken Lopez because he noted in a book description that a copy of Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road was inscribed to her by the author.

- Last week I noted John Plotz's Slate essay about the "What Middletown Read" database; Anne Trubek weighs in this week in the New York Times with a fantastic essay on what the database can tell us.

- From the Telegraph, a profile of retired professional quarterback Pat McInally's Winnie the Pooh collection, now for sale via Peter Harrington.

- A small "magazine" produced by Charlotte Brontë at around age 14 will be sold at Christie's next month. The book was discussed this week on NPR's "Morning Edition."

- Andrew McKie's "Bibliophilia for Beginners" in the WSJ is quite a decent book-collecting primer.

- Don't miss Garrett Scott's post on antiquarian bookselling, "The anatomy of a melancholy trade," inspired in part by Lorne Blair's "And So It Begins "(which you should also read if you haven't yet done so).

- The manuscript of Casanova's memoirs is currently on display at the Paris' Bibliothèque Nationale for the first time. The BnF acquired the manuscript last year for more than 7 million Euros. More from Bloomberg news.

- Anchora's "Faking Shakespeare" series continues with a post on the William Henry Ireland forgeries.

- The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired the book of hours produced for François I (1539-40) by the Master of François de Rohan which sold at Christie's as part of the Arcana Collection in July for £337,250. The buyer then was Galerie Les Enluminures, and they've put a digital version of the book online.

- The Israeli paper Ma'ariv reports that an investigation has revealed more than 400 items missing from the collections of the National Library of Israel, including Einstein and Chagall letters, Kafka manuscripts, and poems by Chaim Nachman Bialik. A rough translation of the original Hebrew article is posted here.

Reviews

- Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles; review by Ed Larkin in Common-place.

- Garry Wills' Verdi's Shakespeare and Rome and Rhetoric; review by John Simon in the NYTimes.

- Hugh Nissenson's The Pilgrim; review by Ron Charles in the Washington Post.

- Robert Massie's Catherine the Great; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.

Book Review: "The Prague Cemetery"

2011-11-26T10:07:00.003-05:00

Umberto Eco's latest novel, The Prague Cemetery (translated into English by Richard Dixon and published in America by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) is decidedly not for the easily offended. It's a brilliant examination of 19th-century conspiracies and the prejudice and hatred which brought them into being. Eco examines, contextualizes and offers up a fictional (but entirely plausible) explanation for a wide range of historical conspiracies, from the Dreyfuss Affair to the composition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the unification of Italy and the Franco-Prussian War. Think of this as the conspiracy that ties all the rest together.

The book's main character is Simone Simonini, a thoroughly loathsome fellow. A forger by trade, he's employed by the secret police departments of various countries to create documents and arrage sting operations that will ensare whoever happens to be the enemy at that particular moment. Many chapters are presented as entries from Simonini's diary; these alternate with sections written (and printed in a different font) by Abbé Dalla Piccola, a priest who seems to be able to recall portions of Simonini's life and career that he himself has forgotten. The two may or may not be the same person (you'll have to read the book to find out for yourself just what their relationship truly is). And an omniscient narrator occasionally breaks in to move the narrative foward a bit when the diary trails off or becomes (these chapters are printed in a third font, which is quite helpful).

Eco writes that the only fictional character in the book is Simonini himself; most of the rest of those here were real people who did pretty much what Eco has them do in the book. Only someone with as wide a literary reach as Eco would be able to pull off a book like this, with its broad overview of European history, politics, economics, religion and literary culture all wrapped up into a single character's life story. The period illustrations (most from his own collection) added throughout the text do much to enhance the text. Simonini's rapturous ravings about food were delightful to read; even though the man's a true piece of work, he can still wax rhapsodic about a good meal.

Hate is a powerful thing, and Eco has represented some of its many manifestations expertly. Not a light-hearted book, or one likely to give you good dreams, but a novel that will make you think, told by one of the smartest storytellers of our time.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-11-26T06:34:00.002-05:00

These books arrived this week, though they're actually all from the visit to Raven during the Boston Book Fair weekend:

- The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts; 4 v. (Peter Smith, 1962). Raven.

- Spain, Europe and the Wider World 1500-1800 by John H. Elliott (Yale University Press, 2009). Raven.

- The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve (OUP, 2008), Raven.

- The Italian by Ann Radcliffe (OUP, 2008), Raven.

Book Review: "The House of Silk"

2011-11-21T16:55:00.002-05:00

If you're a Sherlock Holmes fan, it's time to add Anthony Horowitz's new Holmes novel The House of Silk (Mulholland Books, 2011) to your reading list. It's no easy thing to take on the task of creating a new Sherlock Holmes novel, and I was a little worried that Horowitz wouldn't be up to the challenge. I'm pleased to say that I was wrong; he's written a story that does Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle proud.

Framed by Watson as a long-hidden manuscript which couldn't be published during the lifetime of anyone involved, this is as dark a mystery as any of the canonical stories. Filled with references to other Holmes adventures (I had great fun playing spot-the-allusion as I read) and capturing the voice and power of the original stories in a way that few other of the pastiches I read have done, The House of Silk is thoroughly enjoyable.

There are some regrettable typos and other errors scattered throughout, but they're no reason not to read this book. I think you'll be glad you did.

Links & Reviews

2011-11-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

- Last weekend's Boston Book Fair was declared a "great success" by the ABAA, and judging by the level of activity on the floor things certainly seemed to go quite well. I always enjoy seeing old friends and meeting new ones over the three days of the fair, and this year combining it with our LibraryThing meetup worked quite well (though after the fair and six bookstore visits in one day, I was pretty exhausted!).

- New blogs: Notabilia, from Princeton: "An in-progress registry of provenance, bindings, annotations, and other evidence for book history from the rare book collections at Princeton." And SCRC Behind the Scenes, from the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse. Links added to the sidebar.

- Don't miss Leah Price's NYTimes essay from last weekend, "The Subconscious Shelf."

- Very exciting news that the Universal Short-Title Catalogue plans to launch on 22 November! At launch the database will contain bibliographic information on some 355,000 editions published in Europe before 1601.

- From the Wesleyan Special Collections blog, a good example of traditional scholarship and modern technology coming together to resolve a bibliographic puzzle.

- At The Collation, Sarah Werner takes a closer look at the books on display in the beautiful header photo used on the blog.

- John Plotz writes in Slate about the "What Middletown Read" database.

- Fine Books Blog continues its Bright Young Things series, interviewing Matthew and Adrienne Raptis of Raptis Rare Books.

- Adam Gopnik's got a great piece in this week's New Yorker about turkeys, honor, and the American idea.

- The Faking Shakespeare series continues at Anchora with a look at the theory that Francis Bacon wrote not just the works of Shakespeare, but also those of Edmund Spenser.

- The Grolier Club has released a preliminary schedule for Bibliography Week 2012.

- Winners of this year's National Book Awards were announced.

Reviews

- Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery; review by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in the NYTimes.

- Robert Massie's Catherine the Great; reviews by Kathryn Harrison in the NYTimes and Kathy Lally in the Washington Post.

- Hugh Nissenson's The Pilgrim; review by Maureen Corrigan on NPR.

- Anthony Horowitz's The House of Silk; review by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post.

- David Pearson's Books at History; review by Nigel Beale at Nota Bene Books.

- Colin Woodard's American Nations; review by Alec MacGillis in the Washington Post.

Auction Report: November Highlights and Previews

2011-11-19T07:31:00.000-05:00

Results

- Full results for the 2-3 November Art + Object auction of the Pycroft Collection of Rare New Zealand, Australian and Pacific Books [PDF] are here [PDF]. The sale brought in a total of NZ$546,060, with 596 of 632 lots selling. Highlights at Antipodean Footnotes.

- At the 3 November PBA Galleries Travel, Natural History, Medicine and Cartography sale, just 137 of 239 lots sold. The top lot was a copy of Aurel Stein's Innermost Asia (1928), which fetched $14,400.

- On 9 November at the Sotheby's Paris Livres et Manuscrits sale, 170 of 241 lots sold (full results here), for a total of €3,484,102. Top billing was shared by La Prose du Transsibérien of Blaise Cendrars and Sonia Delaunay (1913) and a 1595 edition of Montaigne's Essais. Both lots sold for €288,750 (the Montaigne much surpassing its €80,000-120,000 estimate). The collection of 126 Revolutionary decrees and the 1475 Augsburg Bible did not sell.

- The same day's Livres Précieux de la Bibliothèque d'un Amateur sale brought in €1,338,103, with 117 of 131 lots selling. Full results here. The set of Buffon was indeed the high seller, fetching €264,750.

- At the Skinner Fine Books & Manuscripts sale, held 13 November, the top seller was, as expected, the holographic copy of the joint Congressional resolution proposing the 13th Amendment, which sold for $225,150. The Abraham Lincoln letter to Massachusetts Governor John Andrew fetched $24,885. You can pull up full results here.

- At the Christie's New York sale of Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts on 15 November, 162 of 211 lots sold, for a total of $2,771,687. The Thomas Jefferson letter to Mathew Carey was the top lot, at $218,500. John Speed's The Threatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611-12) did well, selling for $194,500. The two leaves from George Washington's draft (and undelivered) first inaugural address fetched $182,500. Darwin's Origin made $134,500, while Roberts & Croly's The Holy Land sold for $122,500. The two Gironcourt manuscript maps, the 16th-century composite atlas, Hemingway's typewriter, and the John Adams letter failed to sell.

- At Sotheby's London's 15 November sale of Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History, 134 of 203 lots sold, for a total of £2,246,400. Full results here. The Linnaeus Tripe photographs of Burma (1855) sold for £241,250, and another Tripe set, photographs of Mysore, India (1854) made £181,250. Braun and Hogenberg's Civitates Orbis Terrarum fetched £151,250, while The 1566 Cimerlinus world map sold for £145,250.

- At the 17 November, Rare Books and Manuscripts sale at PBA Galleries, 122 of 229 lots found homes. The 1613 folio King James Bible was the top seller, reaching $33,000. A 1933 monograph on Chinese bronzes made $30,000.

Previews

- Christie's London sells Valuable Printed Books and Manuscripts on 23 November, in 83 lots. Pedro de Medina's Arte de navegar (1545) is estimated at £200,000-300,000, and a first edition Vesalius could fetch £120,000-160,000. The New York "second folio" edition of Audubon's Birds of America rates a £100,000-150,000 estimate, as does Maria Sibylla Merian's Der rupsen begin (1713-1717).

- Also on 23 November, Bonhams London has Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs, including the Property of the late Michael Silverman, in 577 lots.

- Christie's London will sell Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts including a selection from the Malcolm S. Forbes Jr. Churchill Collection and Photobooks from the Calle Collection on 28 November, in 442 lots. Everything from papyrus fragments to photo books to Alexander II's own copy of Pushkin's works in this sale! I think my favorite might be a 17th-century English manuscript of recipes and remedies.

- On 29 November, Bonhams Oxford will sell Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Photographs, in 778 lots.

- Bloomsbury sells Important Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper on 29 November, in 527 lots.

- Christie's Paris sells Importants livres anciens, livres d'artistes et manuscrits on 29 November, in 306 lots. The top estimate, €70,000-100,000, is shared by a 1540 Jean Girard Bible and a set of Nikolai Koutepov's works on Russian hunting (1896-1911).

- Sotheby's London sells Music and Continental Books and Manuscripts on 30 November, in 180 lots. Schumann's manuscript of Szenen Aus Goethes "Faust" rates the top estimate, at £700,000-800,000. A first edition of Copernicus' De revolutionibus (1543) is estimated at £500,000-700,000.

This Week's Acquisitions (and Last)

2011-11-19T05:42:00.002-05:00

Missed a week as I was in Boston, so here are some recent new arrivals (including one bunch of the books from my first visit to the Boston shops in six months ...)

- New England Life in the Eighteenth Century: Representative Biographies from Sibley's Harvard Graduates by Clifford Kenyon Shipton (Harvard University Press, 1995). Amazon (used).

- From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón (Telegram Books, 2011). Publisher.

- Book History (Volume 14); edited by Ezra Greenspan and Jonathan Rose (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). SHARP.

- Republic of Words: The Atlantic Monthly and Its Writers, 1857-1925 by Susan Goodman (University Press of New England, 2011). Publisher.

- The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Novel by Anthony Horowitz (Mulholland Books, 2011). Publisher.

- The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (Random House, 2011). Publisher.

- The Foresters, an American Tale: Being a Sequel to the History of John Bull the Clothier. In a Series of Letters to a Friend by Jeremy Belknap (Printed at Boston: By I. Thomas and E.T. Andrews, [Proprietors of the Work.] Sold by them, J. White, D. West, and E. Larkin, in Boston; by Thomas, Son & Thomas, in Worcester; by Thomas, Andrews & Butler, in Baltimore; and by Thomas, Andrews & Penniman, in Albany - Nov. 1796). My Boston Book Fair purchase, from John Hendsey.

- The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (Houghton Mifflin, 2011). Amazon.

- The Diary of Joseph Farington - Volume II: January 1795 - August 1796; edited by Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre (Yale University Press, 1978). ABE.

- The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Michael Capuzzo (Gotham Books, 2011). Longfellow Books.

- The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth by Richard Conniff (W.W. Norton, 2011). Brattle.

- The Nesting Season: Cuckoos, Cuckolds, and the Invention of Monogamy by Bernd Heinrich (HUP, 2011). Brattle.

- In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson (Crown, 2011). Brattle.

- Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation by Kariann Akemi Yokota (OUP, 2011). Brattle.

- Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism by Maurice Jackson (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Brattle.

- Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline by Anthony Grafton and Daniel Rosenberg (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). Brattle.

Links & Reviews

2011-11-13T09:28:00.001-05:00

I've probably missed lots of good links this week since I've been on the road; I'll catch up and get them into next weekend's post!

- Ken Jenning's Slate slideshow, "A History of Map Monsters" is well worth a look.

- Kathleen Lynch writes about Guy Fawkes as "British folk hero" (or, more appropriately, not that at all), and a 2005 Folger symposium on the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot.

- Bonhams is opening a D.C. office.

- Also at The Collation this week, Nadia Sadler highlights a new finding guide to the E. Williams Watermark collection. I really like the discussion of some of the many factors that come into play when processing a collection like this. Great stuff!

- Dava Sobel talked on NPR about her new book A More Perfect Heaven.

- From the FT, six writers and their libraries.

- From the Library History Buff Blog, a look at a literal "battle of the books" at Dartmouth College (with a link to a digital version of a history of Dartmouth's library, too).

- Really neat exhibition from the Dunedin Public Library: Signs & Symbols; Decoding Medieval and Renaissance Iconography.

- A new exhibition, at the British Library highlights manuscripts and books collected by Britain's medieval monarchs.

Reviews

- Eric Rasmussen's The Shakespeare Thefts; review at Bookride.

- Adam Nicolson's The Gentry; review by Andrew Lycett in the Telegraph.

Off to Boston!

2011-11-11T06:16:00.003-05:00

After a much too brief visit to my old stomping grounds, Union College (where I was very honored to give a talk last night to mark the 50th anniversary of the college's Schaffer Library*) I'm off to Boston this morning for the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair, which opens tonight at 5 p.m. and runs through the weekend. As always there are a whole bunch of other good bibliophilic events going on around Boston over the weekend: activities at the fair, the smaller book, print & ephemera fair, the Skinner auction on Sunday, &c. &c.

I'll be at the fair tonight; tomorrow we're having a big LibraryThing meetup, a whole day of book-shopping, eating, and of course a visit to the fair as well. If you're in town, feel free to join us for that too, if you like! Then Sunday I'll be back at the fair for a shift at the RBMS table.

I'm giving another talk on Tuesday afternoon to a Harvard library group, so I'll be in Boston/Cambridge until then, getting some research done and paying visits. And then I will be headed back to Portland, probably exhausted enough to sleep for a week or two!

I hope to see many of you this weekend during the festivities!

*More about the talk after I get through the next few days, I promise.

Book Review: "A Study in Sherlock"

2011-11-07T16:31:00.003-05:00

A new collection of Sherlock Holmes-inspired short stories edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, A Study in Sherlock (Bantam, 2011) makes for terrific reading. While as with most collections (and most pastiches), some are better than others, on the whole the pieces in this volume are of very high quality.

The stories vary widely, ranging from retellings of canonical Holmes tales from different perspectives, entirely new adventures featuring Holmes and Watson (including one in which he assists in the assassination of President McKinley), modern-day mysteries inspired by Holmes (or Holmesiana), and even a story from the perspective of Mrs. Hudson, Holmes' landlady at 221B Baker Street.

I particularly liked Alan Bradley's "You'd Better Go In Disguise," Tony Broadbent's "As to 'An Exact Knowledge of London'," Lee Child's "The Bone-headed League," Neil Gaiman's "The Case of Death and Honey," and Charles Todd's "The Case that Holmes Lost."

A great book to spend a nice autumn weekend with, I found. It'll remind you of all the best parts of the Holmes stories, and make you want to read and enjoy them all over again.

Links & Reviews

2011-11-06T09:32:00.000-05:00

- Steve Ferguson points out some very useful Flickr sites for provenance research.

- Houghton Library has announced the acquisition of a spectacular collection of 16th-century annotated books.

- Jacob Bernstein covers the Barry Landau story for The Daily Beast.

- Paul Collins writes a history of prank calling in defunct.

- The November Fine Books Notes is out: it includes my review of Eric Rasmussen's The Shakespeare Thefts, Ian McKay's writeup of the English Bibliophile sale, &c.

- A lawsuit by the Armenian Orthodox Church against the J. Paul Getty Museum has been allowed to continue. The church is demanding the return of pages from the Zeyt'un Gospels, purchased by the Getty in 1994.

- The David Livingstone Spectral Imaging Project has unveiled a digital edition of Livingstone's 1871 field journal.

- The Library Company is now making podcasts of its events available through iTunes.

- Also out this week, the November AE Monthly.

- Robert Darnton has a new NYRB piece on the DPLA; I haven't gotten to read the full version yet, but will probably comment further once I've done so.

- New from the Folger, Impos[i]tor, a nifty new imposition simulator.

- From the AAS blog, a list of books published recently which draw upon their collections.

- At The Awl, Jenny Hendrix has an essay about the legacy of Sherlock Holmes: "Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Impudent Scholars."

- New blog: American Book Collecting, by Kurt Zimmerman. I've added a sidebar link.

- Oxford University Press has launched their always-great holiday sale.

- The Fine Books Blog "Bright Young Things" series continues with Kent Tschanz of Ken Sanders Rare Books.

- On NPR this weekend, Neil McGregor talked about his book A History of the World in 100 Objects, and Robert Massie discussed his new biography of Catherine the Great.

Reviews

- Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery; review by Arthur Sabatini in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

- Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's Becoming Dickens; review by David Gates in the NYTimes.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-11-05T07:34:00.000-04:00

A couple new books I couldn't wait any longer for, plus some intriguing forthcoming titles from the folks at Quirk Books:

- Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage by Vincent Carretta (University of Georgia Press, 2011). Amazon. Vin was working on this book as a long-term fellow at MHS when I was there, so I'm super-excited to see it!

- The Things Things Say by Jonathan Lamb (Princeton University Press, 2011). Amazon.

- Taft 2012 by Jason Heller (Quirk Books, 2012). Publisher.

- Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests That History Forgot by Joseph Cummins (Quirk Books, 2012). Publisher.

- The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story by Theodora Goss (Quirk Books, 2012). Publisher. Printed in an accordion binding.

Book Review: "Destiny of the Republic"

2011-11-01T17:52:00.003-04:00

I was a big fan of Candice Millard's The River of Doubt, I'm pleased to report that her new book, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President (Doubleday, 2011) is just as good. Millard has crafted a detailed and very readable account of Charles Guiteau's attack on President James Garfield in 1881, as well as of the tense months following the shooting as Garfield languished before finally dying.

Millard concentrates on Garfield himself, as well as Guiteau (framing his actions within the context of his very troubled life), Garfield's self-appointed chief doctor, Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss (yes, that was his name) and Alexander Graham Bell. What? Alexander Graham Bell, you say? Indeed, the inventor of the telephone played an important role in the attempted treatment of the wounded president (and, as you'll read, probably would have played a larger role if not for the aforementioned Dr. Bliss).

While I knew the basic outline of the Garfield assassination story before (that he was shot but lived for a while afterward), Millard does a great job of putting that period in context, explaining what was going on in the country at the time and how various folks reacted to the events. And she outlines in sometimes sickening detail how the medical "treatments" administered by Garfield's doctors did more harm than good, without a doubt hastening and probably even causing his death.

The book also cogently explains the serious rifts within the Republican party which led to Garfield's surprise nomination in 1880 (Millard's account of the convention alone would make this book worth a read) and to the intrapartisan strife and rivalries which plagued his short presidency (and which contributed in no small way to Guiteau's actions).

Highly recommended. Good popular history at its best.

Auction Preview: November Sales

2011-11-01T06:20:00.000-04:00

- Art + Object auctions in Auckland will sell the Pycroft Collection of Rare New Zealand, Australian and Pacific Books [PDF] on 2-3 November, in 632 lots. Highlights include a complete set of Cook's Voyages (est. NZ$18,000-30,000) and other major Pacific travel accounts.

- PBA Galleries sells Travel, Natural History, Medicine and Cartography on 3 November, in 239 lots.

- Doyle New York sells Books, Photographs and Prints on 7 November, in 560 lots. They preview the sale here.

- On 9 November at Sotheby's Paris, Livres et Manuscrits, in 241 lots. The top lot is a collection of 126 Revolutionary decrees, dated 3 November 1789 through 12 September 1790, from the collection of Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. The collection is estimated at €300,000-500,000. A 1475 Augsburg Bible rates a €220,000-320,000 estimate. One section of the sale will be devoted to a selection of lots relating to the "history of science and ideas," which features some notable items. In the evening, Sotheby's will also sell Livres Précieux de la Bibliothèque d'un Amateur, in 131 lots. Lots of sets and fine bindings here, but also a set of Buffon estimated at €80,000-100,000.

- Books will be included in the Sporting sale at Bonhams Edinburgh on 10 November.

- Also on 10 November, Bloomsbury sells Asia: Books, Maps, Prints and Posters, in 447 lots.

- Skinner's annual Boston sale of Fine Books & Manuscripts will be held on 13 November, in 940 lots. Highlights include a holographic copy of the joint Congressional resolution proposing the 13th Amendment (estimated at $200,000-300,000), an Abraham Lincoln letter to Massachusetts Governor John Andrew ($30,000-50,000), &c.

- At Christie's New York on 15 November, Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts, in 211 lots. Eight lots are estimated to fetch more than $100,000: the top estimate goes to a very rare manuscript map made by Frenchman Charles Augustus de Gironcourt, showing the deployment of Hessian troops around New York during the Revolutionary War. It's estimated at $1,000,000-1,500,000. A second Gironcourt manuscript map, of Charleston, is estimated at $100,000-150,000.

A 16th-century composite atlas of (mostly) Italian maps could fetch $300,000-400,000, while a particularly interesting Thomas Jefferson letter (to Mathew Carey, waiving copyright of his manual of congressional procedure), is estimated at $200,000-300,000). Two leaves from George Washington's draft (and undelivered) first inaugural address (the manuscript of which was divided up by Jared Sparks) rates a $150,000-200,000 estimate. A copy of Roberts & Croly's The Holy Land is estimated at $100,000-150,000, while a John Adams letter (in which he complains about Washington-worship, &c.) and a presentation copy of Darwin's Origin are both estimated at $80,000-120,000. Lots of other interesting things here too, including Hemingway's typewriter ($30,000-50,000), a second edition Hyperotomachia ($20,000-30,000) and more.

- Also on 15 November, Sotheby's London sells Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History, in 203 lots. A set of 134 Linnaeus Tripe photographs of Burma (1855) is estimated at £200,000-300,000, while a 1566 Cimerlinus world map could fetch £100,000-150,000.

- On 17 November, Rare Books and Manuscripts at PBA Galleries, in 229 lots. A 1613 folio King James Bible rates the top estimate, $30,000-40,000.

- Christie's London Valuable Printed Books and Manuscripts on 23 November, in 83 lots. Pedro de Medina's Arte de navegar (1545) is estimated at £200,000-300,000, and a first edition Vesalius could fetch £120,000-160,000. The New York "second folio" edition of Audubon's Birds of America rates a £100,000-150,000 estimate, as does Maria Sibylla Merian's Der rupsen begin (1713-1717).

- Also on 23 November, Bonhams London has Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Historical Photographs, including the Property of the late Michael Silverman, in 577 lots.

- On 29 November, Bonhams Oxford will sell Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Photographs, in 778 lots.

- Later in the month: Bloomsbury sells Important Books and Manuscripts on 24 November; Christie's London will sell Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts including a selection from the Malcolm S. Forbes Jr. Churchill Collection and Photobooks from the Calle Collection on 28 November, and Importants livres anciens, livres d'artistes et manuscrits at Paris on 29 November. Sotheby's London sells Music and Continental Books and Manuscripts on 30 November.

Book Review: "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"

2011-10-30T14:05:00.002-04:00

Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk Books, 2011) is definitely one of the most, well, peculiar books I've read in a while. It's also one of the best stories I've read all year. Combining a fantastical, creepy plot with actual vintage photographs that he's integrated into the text, Riggs' dark tale should appeal to a wide range of readers.

Teen Jacob Portman thinks his grandfather's implausible stories about his stay at a children's home on a remote Welsh island were just stories, but when he travels to the island with his father, he finds that there was much more to his grandfather's life story than he could have ever guessed.

I don't want to give too much more of the plot away than that - read the book! It's a marvelous debut, and I will await Riggs' next book with much anticipation.

Links & Reviews

2011-10-30T08:02:00.000-04:00

- From the Baltimore Sun, which continues to do a very decent job covering the Landau library thefts, a profile of NARA's Art Recovery Team and its inspector general, Paul Brachfeld.

- Ron Charles weighs in on this week's discussion of "Anonymous" the so-called (and idiotic) "authorship controversy" with a great essay in the Washington Post.

- Laura Massey has a great post about how early debates over Shakespeare's authorship (and the belief that Francis Bacon had hidden ciphered messages in the printed plays) led to the rise of modern cryptography.

- Over at Anchora, Adam Hooks has started a series on Shakespeare fakes with a look at the various editions (pirated, faked, forged) of Shakespeare's poems.

- The "Bright Young Things" series on the Fine Books Blog continues with an interview of the duo behind B&B Rare Books.

- A collection being called the "last great private library in New Zealand" (that of naturalist Arthur Pycroft, who died in 1971) will be sold at auction this week.

- From Nick at Mercurius Politicus, a fascinating meditation on the material aspects of signatures.

- A volume of Stafford County, VA court records for the years 1749-1755 has been voluntarily returned to Virginia by the Jersey City Free Public Library, where the book was recently found. It had been taken during the Civil War by a Union soldier. The volume's contents will be made available for researchers at the Library of Virginia.

- The ABAA Security blog has posted a list of a collection recently discovered to be stolen. If I get more information on the circumstances, I'll be sure to post.

- Anthony Horowitz, the author of the new Sherlock Holmes story The House of Silk (the first to be approved by the Conan Doyle estate) writes in the Telegraph about the enduring Holmes legacy, and about his experiences in writing a Holmes mystery.

Reviews

- Richard Brookhiser's James Madison; reviews by Richard Beeman in the NYTimes and Jack Rakove in TNR.

- Denise Gigante's The Keats Brothers; review by Lesley McDowell in the Independent.

- Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's Becoming Dickens; review by Frances Wilson in the Telegraph.

- David Bellos' Is That a Fish in Your Ear?; review by Adam Thirlwell in the NYTimes.

- Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising; review by Kevin Boyle in the NYTimes.

Landau Accomplice Pleads Guilty

2011-10-30T06:39:00.003-04:00

Accused document thief Barry Landau's "assistant," Jason Savedoff, 24, entered a guilty plea on Thursday to charges of theft of major artwork and conspiracy to commit theft of major artwork. Savedoff admits that beginning in December 2010, he and Landau "compiled lists of historical and famous figures, often noting the market value of documents signed by those figures, and Savedoff identified collections with valuable documents that they could target, according to the plea. They used different routines to distract librarians and would stash documents inside sport jackets and overcoats that had been altered to add large hidden pockets."

The AP reports that following successful thefts, "Landau would fill out a checklist noting from where the document was taken, whether inventory marks had been removed and whether catalogue cards or other “finding aids” had been removed to further conceal the theft. The pair would avoid documents that had been copied onto microfilm because of the risk of detection."

Savedoff faces up to fifteen years in prison when he's sentenced in February.

Landau's attorney, stupefyingly, said that he wasn't surprised by Savedoff's plea, arguing that Landau had no idea Savedoff was storing stolen goods in Landau's apartment (where thousands of documents were found during searches). "[Landau's] disappointed that Jason Savedoff appears to be shifting his illegal acts toward Barry," the attorney said. Good luck with that strategy.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-10-29T07:17:00.002-04:00

Here's what came in the mail this week:

- Best Little Stories from the American Revolution C. Brian Kelly and Ingrid Smyer (Cumberland House, 2011). Publisher.

- Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard (Doubleday, 2011). Publisher.

Book Review: "Finding Everett Ruess"

2011-10-24T16:36:00.003-04:00

Since reading Jon Krakauer's chapter on him in Into the Wild I've been intrigued by Everett Ruess, a young hiker who disappeared in the wilds of southeastern Utah in the fall/winter of 1934. Now David Roberts has given us a full-scale account of Ruess' life and legend in Finding Everett Ruess (Broadway, 2011). This book may be 380 pages long, but I read it over the course of a single afternoon, almost in one continuous sitting.

Like Krakauer's Christopher McCandless, whose story bears a whole series of uncanny resemblances with Ruess', this was a young man in search of something he never quite managed to find; Ruess was a smart, talented person with a gift for writing and art (his block prints are used at the heads of each chapter, and Roberts quotes a length from his letters, diaries, essays and poems).

What's different about Ruess' story is that his disappearance has remained unsolved. Was he murdered by local cattle rustlers? Did he fall to his death while hiking? Or did he simply head off into parts unknown, never to be heard from again? Roberts explores Ruess' four long hikes through the Southwest, but concentrates on the final journey and on its aftermath: the decades-long search for Ruess, his family's quest to come to grips with what happened, and on the discovery of a gravesite high in the mountains believed for a time to be Ruess' final resting place (subsequent DNA analysis later ruled out the possibility).

Roberts has been interested in Ruess' story for a long time, and the depth of this interest and his research into the young man is clear. It's a fascinating, unnerving, and deeply thought-provoking work. I recommend it.

Book Review: "A More Perfect Heaven"

2011-10-23T12:32:00.002-04:00

Dava Sobel has moved back in time a bit with A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernius Revolutionized the Cosmos (Walker & Company, 2011), taking her readers out of Galilean Italy and into Copernican Poland. She's also done something rather unconventional with this book, inserting a two-act play, "And the Sun Stood Still" into the middle of the historical narrative.

The play attempts to capture the interaction between Copernicus and Johann Joachim Rheticus as the younger Rheticus persuades Copernicus to finish his manuscript and publish the astronomical discoveries he's made. When I first started reading, I was skeptical of how this imaginative but necessarily conjectural endeavor would work ... thankfully Sobel's a writer with enough talent to pull it off, although I'm thankful that her editor persuaded her to add the contextual material.

By bracketing the play with narrative chapters outlining Copernicus' life and career up to the arrival of Rheticus, and then of his decline following Rheticus' departure (along with the publication history of De revolutionibus and an examination of its reception), Sobel manages to add heft to the dramatic interlude at the center of the book, while still granting her own fictional creation pride of place.

Links & Reviews

2011-10-23T09:25:00.000-04:00

- The new issue of Common-place is out, filled with great articles and reviews as usual.

- There was a big meeting of the Digital Public Library of America this week, with the announcement of $5 million in additional funding. Key takeaways from Dan Cohen and Amanda French.

- The Yale Law Library has released a Flickr gallery of bookplates.

- Over at Antipodean Footnotes, a look at ownership notations in a copy of a 1476 edition of Legenda aurea sanctorum.

- A new exhibit on the Archimedes Codex is reviewed by Edward Rothstein for the NYTimes.

- From the Fine Books Blog, some trailers for upcoming films based (however loosely) on literature.

- A private notebook used by Bram Stoker in the 1870s has been discovered in the Isle of Wight, and will be published next year.

- From the Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory, a short video of Robert Darnton discussing the future of books and libraries.

- Ben Breen at Res Obscua covers trompe-l'oeil illustration.

- In Wired, Robert McMillan writes about "Hamlet's BlackBerry," the "table" (featuring quotes by the Folger's Heather Wolfe).

- From the Union College newspaper (which I once edited), a look at the College's Special Collections.

- Also from Heather Wolfe, a post at The Collation about dating a Thomas Cromwell letter.

Reviews

- Kimberly Cutter's The Maid; review by Sarah Towers in the NYTimes.

- Charles Mann's 1493; review by Toby Green in the Independent.

- Nathaniel Philbrick's Why Read Moby-Dick?; review by Kathryn Harrison in the NYTimes.

- Martin Hopkinson's Ex Libris; review by Raquel Laneri for Forbes.

- Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin; review by Jennifer Schuessler in the NYTimes.

- Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising; review by David Reynolds in the WSJ.

Book Review: "The Twelfth Enchantment"

2011-10-22T10:17:00.000-04:00

David Liss' latest novel is The Twelfth Enchantment (Random House, 2011), something of a departure from his usual historical fiction in that it presumes the existence of magical forces in Regency England (sort of like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell). Lucy Derrick, a young woman with lots of spunk but not much money, being forced into a marriage she doesn't want, suddenly discovers that not only is she very skilled at harnessing magical forces, but also that she's destined to play a role in a very important fight between the forces of good and evil.

More than anything else I found myself wanting more backstory. The plot is well paced and Liss has packed in enough twists and turns to keep things interesting, but I kept finding myself curious about one thing or another and wishing for more explanation. The secret book that Lucy must reassemble, the overall state of magical knowledge in England, the motivations of some of the major players: I wanted more explanation, more of the rich detail that Liss is so good at providing.

Featuring appearances (I won't say cameos since they're fairly substantive) by such real figures as Lord Byron, William Blake, and Spencer Perceval, Liss' novel takes the Luddite movement and puts it into a larger (more fantastical) context. It was a fun, escapist, read, but I just wish Liss had been able to tie up a few of the loose ends more tightly.

Auction Report: Recent Sales

2011-10-22T09:23:00.000-04:00

- At Swann's 17 October Early Printed, Medical and Scientific Books sale, the top seller was a copy of Cristobal de Morales' Missarum Liber Primus (1546), which fetched $33,600.

- Full results for the sale of The Robert H. and Donna L. Jackson Collection Part I: 19th Century Literature on 18 October are here. All told, 142 of the 251 lots sold, and a world record was set for Trollope when the rare complete copy of Trollope's Ralph the Heir in parts sold for $88,900. The first edition Middlemarch in parts made $56,250, while the complete set of Pickwick Papers in parts was bid up to $31,250.

The autograph manuscript leaf of The Pickwick Papers and first edition David Copperfield in parts didn't sell, nor did Audubon's Quadrupeds in the original parts or George Eliot's brother's copy of her Scenes of Clerical Life.

- At Sotheby's The Library of an English Bibliophile, Part II sale on 18 October, 104 of the 155 lots sold, for a total of $2,607,976. Reserves seemed quite high; of the eight lots estimated at more than $100,000 just three sold: the Third Folio made $542,500; the first printing of Poe's Tales (1845) sold for $314,500, and the first issue Leaves of Grass fetched $230,500. A first edition in English of Newton's Principia (1729) sold for $110,500.

Bidding on some of the unsold lots got quite high: the First Folio reached $550,000, the first edition of Joyce's Ulysses was bid up to $420,000, and the first printing of The Great Gatsby was also up in the six-figures but passed.

- Results for the 18 October Bloomsbury sale of Books from the Library of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors are here; 164 of 171 lots sold. As expected, the top seller was Johannes Kip's Nouveau Theatre de Grand Bretagne (1713-1728), in three volumes, which sold for £42,000.

- PBA Galleries sold Nevada, California & Americana: The Library of Clint Maish, with additions, on 20 October. Full results are here. The top seller was a copy of JFK's Profiles in Courage, inscribed to Pamela Harriman, which fetched $6,000.

November preview coming soon.

This Week's Acquisitions (and Last)

2011-10-22T08:50:00.002-04:00

Some recent arrivals:

- The Explorer's Code by Kitty Pilgrim (Scribner, 2011). Publisher.

- 1812: The Navy's War by George C. Daughan (Basic Books, 2011). Publisher.

- The Books of the Pilgrims by Lawrence D. Geller and Peter J. Gomes (Garland, 1975). The Americanist (via ABE)

- A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos by Dava Sobel (Bloomsbury, 2011). Publisher.

- The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies by Matthew Parker (Bloomsbury, 2011). Publisher.

- A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon; edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger (Bantam, 2011). Publisher.

Links & Reviews

2011-10-17T09:30:00.000-04:00

Delayed links and reviews for this week, since I was away for the weekend (my sister got married!)

- Fine Books Blog starts a new series of short interviews with young booksellers by profiling Teri Osborn of William Reese Company.

- Jen Howard covers last week's ARL annual meeting.

- An important post from Dan Gregory on the Between the Covers blog, "The Closing of the American Bookstore."

- David Twiston Davies writes in the Telegraph about his decision to sell his book collection at auction.

- James Shapiro has an essay in the NYTimes about "Anonymous," Roland Emmerich's soon-to-open movie about the Shakespeare "authorship controversy."

- From Steve Ferguson at Princeton, Digitizing the Lapidus Collection, announcing digital versions of more than 150 books and pamphlets on liberty and the American Revolution.

- Nigel Farndale writes in the Telegraph about bookshelf-browsing and "showing-off" books.

- Missed from last weekend (and a must-read): Alexandra Horowitz asks in the NYTimes "Will the E-Book Kill the Footnote?"

- Jen Howard writes for the CHE on authors' fears about what happens when their goes online.

- The Digital Public Library of America's website is now live.

- From the NYTimes, a look at how Amazon's now cutting out publishers and working directly with authors.

- Candice Millard talked to NPR about her new book Destiny of the Republic.

- Over at The Collation, Carrie Smith covers the great Tonson/Walker dispute over Shakespeare copyrights.

Reviews

- Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve; review by Troy Jollimore for CSM.

- Dava Sobel's To Make a More Perfect Heaven; reviews by Helen Brown for the Telegraph and Mike Brown for the Washington Post.

- Three recent books on books in 18th-century Britain; review by Richard Sher at Reviews in History.

- Lawrence Wechsler's Uncanny Valley; review by David Ulin in the LATimes.

- Denise Gigante's The Keats Brothers; review by Christopher Benfey in the NYTimes.

- Jon Paul Stevens' Five Chiefs; review by Jim Newton in the LATimes.

Book Review: "Catherine the Great"

2011-10-13T17:53:00.003-04:00

Robert Massie's written yet another winner with Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (Random House, 2011) a thorough but lively account of the empress' long life and career.

Massie's prodigious knowledge of Russian history serves him well here, but it's his ability to tell a good story that makes this book. He's able to blend healthy doses of diplomatic and military history with the larger-than-life personal tale of a powerful woman who rises to rule one of the largest countries on earth.

The most interesting sections for me were those concerning the bloodless coup that brought Catherine to power, her long-running correspondence with various Enlightenment figures, like Diderot and d'Alembert, and the fascinating samples from her correspondence and memoirs.

Clocking in at almost 600 pages this is, like most of Massie's previous works, not an insubstantial read. But he's paced it well, and I had a difficult time putting it down once I got started. With the minor criticism that the last few chapters felt a bit too rushed, this is by any measure a very well done biography.

Auction Report: PBA, Bloomsbury, Bonhams

2011-10-11T08:33:00.003-04:00

- Results of the 6 October Fine Literature & Books in All Fields sale PBA Galleries are here.

The first edition Leaves of Grass failed to sell; the top lot ended up being the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which sold for $22,800. That Jessie Bayes illuminated manuscript of two Shelley poems fetched $18,000.

- Bloomsbury's 6 October Bibliophile Sale results are here.

- The results of Bonhams Fine Books and Manuscripts sale, held on 10 October, are here; some big(gish) prices in this one! The top seller proved to be a special, hand-colored copy of la Fontaine's Fables (1755-1759) produced for Louis XV; it sold for $122,500. The first edition of McKenney and Hall made $92,500, while the copy of A Noble Fragment with the original Gutenberg Bible leaf fetched $56,250 (as did the Nuremberg Chronicle). The second edition of William Wood's New Englands Prospect (1635) sold for $31,250.

The 1776 John Adams letter to William Cooper about the construction of Navy vessels and the suite of Robert Furber's 1730 Twelve Months of Flowers failed to sell.

Book Review: "James Madison"

2011-10-09T17:00:00.003-04:00

He may be the "Father of the Constitution," but we haven't seen nearly as many James Madison biographies published in the "founders chic" era of the past decade as we have for some of his contemporaries (perhaps his time is coming, as we get into the bicentennial of "Mr. Madison's War," but we'll see). Rick Brookhiser has taken a whack at it with James Madison (Basic Books, 2011), which joins his previous biographies of Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and the Adamses.

Short (just 250 pages), sparsely cited, and drawn from a wide range of outdated texts and recent trade publications (only a handful of recent scholarly publications are cited, and the ongoing Papers of James Madison project is, shockingly, not among them), Brookhiser's book breaks no new ground. It skims the surface of Madison's life, but rarely penetrates into any particular aspect of the man's career or personality. His personal relationships are barely mentioned, while his professional relationships (with Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Monroe, et al.) are treated at only slightly greater depth.

Brookhiser's main point seems to be that we should see Madison as the father of modern politics, and he's correct to examine the man's role in the first party struggle of the 1790s (and to look closely and Madison's careful political strategizing throughout his career). But if you know anything about Madison at all, you'll probably come away from this book wanting more than you got. It felt to me like I was reading an abridged version of something that would have been better in a more complete original form.

The book was also marred for me by several errors, including, on the first page of the first chapter, the statement that Edmund Pendleton signed the Declaration of Independence; he did not. And the Federalist presidential candidate in 1804 and 1808 was Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, not Coatesworth.

Useful perhaps to whet a reader's appetite for Madison or as a very basic introduction to his political career. But if you're looking for the man, look elsewhere.

Links & Reviews

2011-10-09T09:33:00.001-04:00

- Former NARA curator Leslie Waffen entered a guilty plea this week, admitting that he stole nearly 1,000 early recordings from the National Archives, selling some on eBay (going as far back as 2001). Sentencing won't occur until next March.

- In today's Washington Post, a review of the Folger Library's "Manifold Greatness" exhibit, marking the 400th anniversary of the KJV.

- The October Fine Books Notes is out!

- Sarah Werner had a great post this week about women printers in early modern England.

- Over at 8vo, Brooke Palmieri highlights a wonderfully curious 1610 pamphlet, Rowland Vaughan's Most Approved and Long experienced Water-Workes.

- Erin Blake, writing at The Collation, examines the (wrong) assumption that copperplate illustrations indicate a higher-quality publication.

- Candice Millard talks to the CSM about her new book, Destiny of the Republic.

- From the Society of Early Americanists, recent and forthcoming publications of interest to early American historians.

Reviews

- Sylvia Nasar's The Grand Pursuit; review by Justin Fox in the NYTimes.

- Ken Jennings' Maphead; review by John J. Miller in the WSJ.

- Lawrence Wechsler's The Uncanny Valley; review by David Ulin in the LATimes.

- Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life; reviews by Tom Sperlinger in the Independent and Judith Flanders in the Telegraph.

Book Review: "The Pilgrim"

2011-10-09T07:48:00.002-04:00

Hugh Nissenson's The Pilgrim (Sourcebooks Landmark, 2011) is the tale of one Charles Wentworth—not the picareseque Charles Wentworth of the 1770 novel, but an earlier Charles Wentworth, whose struggles with himself, his fellow man, and God are chronicled here in the form of a "written confession."

Nissenson's Wentworth, the son of a Puritan minister, has practically seen it all even before he signs on to occupany Thomas Weston's expedition to Wessagusset in 1622: he's only in his early twenties then, but has already witnessed the (often gruesome) deaths of many of those close to him. And that's before he tries to live through a Massaschusetts winter with a bunch of ill-prepared, ill-provisioned adventurers.

While he's taken some liberties with the Wessagusset story, Nissenson's fictional account certainly could be a worse retelling of the ill-fated colonial endeavor. Wentworth's humanity comes through well in the way he recounts his own history, and I liked how Nissenson put his narrator's "scrivener's habit" of list-making to effective use.

Overall, I liked this well-researched and clearly-written novel.

Scott Sentenced to Probation, Community Service

2011-10-08T07:32:00.003-04:00

William Scott, who admitted in January that he stole some 30 letters from the Drew University United Methodist Archives Center while working there as an undergraduate, has been sentenced to three years' probation and 300 hours of community service "by working with underprivileged people." The judge ordered Scott to write a letter to the court each month "describing the progress of his life," and to write letters of apology to 72 character witnesses.

Drew University has also reached a separate, civil settlement with Scott, who paid $7,500 in restitution for the stolen documents (all but one of which have been recovered).

Extremely unfortunate result, but not a particularly surprising one. While I have my doubts that letter-writing and community service are a severe enough punishment for what this guy did, hope springs eternal that he really has learned from the experience. Time will tell.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-10-08T07:30:00.002-04:00

Two arrivals this week:

- William Bradford's Books: Of Plimmoth Plantation and the Printed Word by Douglas Anderson (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). Amazon (used).

- Fabulous Finds: How Expert Appraiser Lee Drexler Sold Wall Street's Charging Bull, Found Hidden Treasures and Mingled with the Rich & Famous by J. Lee Drexler (Linden Publishing, 2011). Publisher.

Book Review: "Maphead"

2011-10-07T06:14:00.003-04:00

In his new book Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks (Scribner, 2011), Ken Jennings plots an often hilarious and always enlightening route through the past, present, and perhaps even the future of geographical and cartographical pursuits. A mix of research, reporting, and personal anecdotes (along the lines of what Nick Basbanes did for books in A Gentle Madness, or Bill Bryson's done with a whole host of subjects), Maphead makes for a tremendously good read.

Jennings begins with a short history of cartophilia, using his younger self as a case study but reaching far back into history to explain many peoples' love for and attraction to maps and the information they record. He talks to educators about geographical ignorance and its prevalence today (and about how over-reliance on GPS navigation isn't helping matters any in that department), and visits the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress. He profiles collectors, dealers, and thieves, meets hyper-travellers who try to visit every country on each (or the highest point in every state, or every Starbucks location ...), and dreamers who spend decades creating fictional worlds and everything that comes with them.

In a particularly timely section given the recent kerfuffle over Rick Perry's hunting camp, Jennings provides a litany of odd or outdated place names, pronuciations, and long-running cartographic errors, and visits the National Geography Bee. He meets the founders of geocaching (and tries out the activity for himself), and the engineers at Google who built and maintain Google Earth. It's quite a bit to pack into 250 pages, but Jennings manages to do it extremely well; he covers a great deal of ground, but does so thoroughly (and there are notes in the back if you want more detail, plus some very entertaining explanatory footnotes).

Jennings' sense of humor is a bit on the corny side, and he likes to throw in laugh lines at every possible opportunity; most of these rated a smile or a chuckle, but I definitely cracked up more than a few times, too. Oh, and you may find that you want a good atlas (or at least Google Maps) nearby while you read - there were several points where I just had to see what he was explaining.

Whether you're a "maphead" or not, I have no doubt that you'd both learn from and get a kick out of this book; I know I did.

Union's First Library Online

2011-10-06T14:49:00.003-04:00

Last weekend I worked on finishing up a LibraryThing Legacy Library catalog for the first library of Union College: this one's near and dear to my heart; I went to Union, and spent the year after I graduated working in the special collections there. During that year I helped work on this collection, and quite literally turned every single page of the almost 800 volumes in the collection, noting down marginalia &c.

The library was the subject of my 2007 masters' thesis at Simmons, part of which was published in 2008 ... and ever since then I've been thinking about how the collection needed to come to LT. Now, in advance of a talk I'll be giving at Union later in the fall, here it is at last!

One of the really neat things about this library (purchased 1795-1799) is that more than half of the original copies still exist, as does almost all the "paperwork" surrounding the acquisition of the books. So we know where the books came from, how much they cost, and in many cases how they were used (a good example is the original set of Shakespeare's works, which contains a wonderful amount of marginalia left by generations of students).

One of my favorite marginal notations appears in William Russell's The History of America, published in 1778: where the text reads "it is now in the bosom of fate, whether France or Great Britain shall give law to America," a student has added in ink: "And is now concluded to be neither."

I've added a bunch of images of the books and marginalia to the gallery, and enhanced the catalog by adding a whole bunch of collections to note the original sources of the books, &c. Enjoy!

Book Review: "Codex 632"

2011-10-02T11:19:00.002-04:00

José Rodrigues dos Santos' Codex 632: The Secret of Christopher Columbus (Harper, 2009) is one of the many post-Da Vinci Code "bibliothrillers," novels involving some secret text that, discovered and interpreted correctly, would solve some major historical question (or lead to great riches for its discoverer). The books usually involve an unlikely academic in the starring role, and tend to include some family or romantic drama/subplot alongside the intellectual quest.

Codex 632 fits comfortably within the genre: while there's little thriller-style action here (no car chases, no gunfights, rarely even a word spoke in anger), there's certainly a great deal of deciphering ancient texts, long expository paragraphs, and jetting around the world to put together the pieces of the puzzle.

In this case, the puzzle is the "true identity" of Christopher Columbus: Portuguese scholar Thomas Noronha is hired by an American historical foundation to complete the research of a recently-expired scholar who they'd contracted with to examine the historical records of the discovery of Brazil, but whose research led him in a much different direction. Noronha must solve the professor's hidden codes and messages in order to uncover just what it was that his predecessor had been on the trail of.

While the family/romantic subplots came off as a bit clumsy, overall this was one of the more intriguing books I've read of the type. Based on an unconventional reading of the historical record, it makes for a fun thought experiment, and quite a decent story.

Links & Reviews

2011-10-02T08:32:00.000-04:00

- A truly mysterious book in the John Carter Brown Library, which may (or may not) contain Roger Williams' shorthand annotations and has thus far eluded bibliographic identification, will soon be online in a digital edition. The original copy is the centerpiece of a JCB exhibit this fall, "A Key into a 17th-Century Mystery: Investigating Roger Williams’ Shorthand." The book is really a wonder: I took a crack at it myself a year or so ago, but having it online in full will allow for a much more rigorous investigation (and, with any luck at all, a breakthrough).

- Leonardo da Vinci expert Martin Kemp claims to have definitively identified a portrait on vellum (sold by Christie's in 1998 for little more than £11,000 as a 19th-century pastiche) as an original Leonardo. He's even reportedly found the book from which the portrait was removed.

- From Inside Higher Ed this week, "The Promise of Digital Humanities."

- Jill Lepore writes about Noah Webster's efforts to edit the King James Bible.

- The October AE Monthly is up, with a recap of Swann's Caren sale, a preview of the Bonhams Jackson sale on 18 October, &c.

- The ABAA has launched a very useful exhibitions page to highlight book-related exhibits around the U.S.

- New MacArthur "genius" Jacob Soll was interviewed on WHYY this week; well worth a listen.

- New York bookseller Donald Davis is in the news this week for successfully apprehending Andrew Hansen, 27, who's been stealing graphic novels from the NYPL and selling them to bookstores around the city.

- Over at The Cataloguer's Desk, an announcement of Peter Harrington's new glossary of rare book terms, plus the anatomy of a catalogue entry.

- From Lingua Franca, Carol Saller's post "When E-Books Need Correcting" is particularly timely this week, given the Kindle Reamde kerfuffle.

- A new exhibit highlights treasures from the Bodleian's collections; visitors are being asked to recommend which of the highlights should be on permanent display.

- The Atlantic has an interesting profile and gallery of typographer Ross MacDonald's work; he makes period-accurate literary props for movies and television shows.

Reviews

- Andrew Graham-Dixon's Caravaggio; review by Hilary Spurling in the NYTimes.

- David Liss' The Twelfth Enchantment; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at Fine Books Blog.

- Candice Millard's Destiny of the Republic; reviews by Kevin Baker in the NYTimes and Del Quentin Wilber in the Washington Post.

- Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve; review by Sarah Bakewell in the NYTimes.

- Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin; reviews by Kenneth Turan in the LATimes and David Thomson in TNR.

- Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life; review by Lesley McDowell in the Scotsman.

- Joel Silver's Dr. Rosenbach and Mr. Lilly; review by Pradeep Sebastian in The Hindu.

- Willard Sterne Randall's Ethan Allen; review by Adam Tschorn in the Philadelphia Inquirer (apologies in advance; one of the most hideously advertisement-cluttered sites I've seen in a very long time)

Auction Preview: October

2011-10-01T07:08:00.006-04:00

- On 6 October, PBA Galleries will sell Fine Literature & Books in All Fields, in 406 lots. The expected high spot is a (somewhat restored) first edition Leaves of Grass with an (unconnected) postcard written by Whitman (est. $60,000-90,000). A Jessie Bayes illuminated manuscript of two Shelley poems is estimated at $25,000-35,000, while a first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz could fetch $20,000-30,000.

- Also on 6 October, Bloomsbury holds a Bibliophile Sale, in 413 lots.

- At Bonhams on 10 October, Fine Books and Manuscripts, in 271 lots. A 1776 John Adams letter to William Cooper about the construction of Navy vessels rates a $50,000-80,000 estimate, while a first edition of McKenney and Hall is estimated at $40,000-60,000. A copy of the leaf book A Noble Fragment with the original Gutenberg Bible leaf is estimated at $30,000-50,000. Rating the same estimate is a suite of Robert Furber's 1730 Twelve Months of Flowers. A Nuremberg Chronicle could sell for $20,000-30,000. A second edition of William Wood's New Englands Prospect (1635) rates the same estimate.

- Swann has a sale of Early Printed, Medical and Scientific Books on 17 October, in 304 lots.

- Bonhams will sell The Robert H. and Donna L. Jackson Collection Part I: 19th Century Literature on 18 October, in 251 lots. Expected top sellers include an autograph manuscript leaf of The Pickwick Papers ($70,000-100,000); a rare complete copy of Trollope's Ralph the Heir in parts ($50,000-80,000); a first edition Middlemarch in parts ($50,000-70,000); complete sets of Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield in parts ($30,000-50,000); a copy of Audubon's Quadrupeds in the original parts ($45,000-55,000); and George Eliot's brother's copy of her Scenes of Clerical Life ($20,000-30,000).

- Sotheby's has just one book sale this month, but it's a whopper. The Library of an English Bibliophile, Part II (my report on Part I is here) comprises 155 lots, eight of which are estimated at more than $100,000. The Shakespeare First Folio, not surprisingly, rates the top estimate, at $600,000-700,000 (a Third Folio could fetch $350,000-400,000). A particularly lovely first edition of Joyce's Ulysses with presentation inscriptions by publisher Sylvia Beach could sell for $450,000-500,000, while a first printing of Poe's Tales (1845) rates a $200,000-250,000 estimate (The Raven and Other Poems, published the same year, is estimated at $140,000-180,000). Joyce's Dubliners could sell for $150,000-200,000. A first printing of The Great Gatsby in a second-state dust jacket is estimated at $150,000-180,000, and a first issue Leaves of Grass could reach $140,000-160,000. That's just a teaser of all the goodies in this sale, which one hopes will realize some really impressive figures (it certainly has the potential to).

- Also on 20 October, Bloomsbury sells Books from the Library of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, in 171 lots. The expected high spot is Johannes Kip's Nouveau Theatre de Grand Bretagne (1713-1728), in three volumes (est. £30,000-40,000).

- PBA Galleries will sell Nevada, California & Americana: The Library of Clint Maish, with additions, on 20 October. No preview yet available.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-10-01T07:05:00.003-04:00

- The Mayflower Reader: A Selection of Articles from The Mayflower Descendant by George Ernest Bowman (Genealogical Publishing Company, 1978). Amazon (used).

- James Madison by Richard Brookhiser (Basic Books, 2011). Publisher.

- Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings (Scribner, 2011). Publisher.

Landau Thefts & Library Security

2011-09-30T09:10:00.004-04:00

There's a very good piece in today's Wall Street Journal about the Landau/Savedoff thefts and about the continuing threat from thieves like them to the archival materials held in libraries around the world. Among the new information:

- NARA inspector general Paul Brachfeld says that as many as 2,500 of the more than 10,000 items removed from Landau's home may be stolen, and that prosecutors found several jackets in the apartment with custom-made pockets for secreting documents out of libraries. Brachfeld says that investigators are currently informing libraries which were likely hit by the duo, adding "We're going to surprise a lot of people."

- Savedoff's next court date is 27 October, and he's expected to enter a guilty plea.

- Prosecutors are now saying that the University of Vermont's library was a target of Landau's, and Jeffrey Marshall says that they're missing some 60 documents (but wouldn't say whether Landau and Savedoff visited there).

- Landau is currently under house arrest, and has requested permission to sell off artwork in order to pay his living expenses.

Under the current indictments, Landau and Savedoff could face up to 15 years each in prison. I hope they get every minute of that time, and I hope that this case will finally serve as a wakeup call to the many libraries out there who still haven't gotten the message that there are creeps like Landau and Savedoff in their reading rooms, scheming and plotting every day.

Book Review: "Rin Tin Tin"

2011-09-29T13:55:00.002-04:00

If you follow Susan Orlean on Twitter (@susanorlean), as I do, then you're aware that her new book, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend (Simon & Schuster, 2011) hits bookstores this week. It's been fascinating to watch this book work its way through the production process from the author's perspective, and because of that I feel oddly connected to it in a way I don't feel with most books (excepting those I've assisted with the research for). It's a nice feeling, and it's so exciting to see the book actually "in the wild" now, after all this time.

It's a spectacular book, simply put. As someone who's too young to have experienced even the most recent t.v. iteration of Rin Tin Tin, I probably approach this book differently from those who grew up with the television show or those who can remember the earlier films: for me it's less about connecting with a past I remember, and more about learning about something I never knew. Orlean has brought her prodigious talent for telling a good story fully to bear, and the result is, truly, unputdownable.

Orlean leaves no corner of the Rin Tin Tin story unexplored: she goes to France and locates (with some difficulty!) the small town where soldier Lee Duncan found the young pup he would name Rin Tin Tin in the waning days of World War I. She follows Duncan and his superbly-trained dog to Hollywood and describes how "Rinty" became a star. She profiles those humans who devoted their lives to the dog, and to the idea that there would always be a Rin Tin Tin: original owner/trainer Lee Duncan, his partner and successor Bert Leonard, and many other players in the story.

In telling the story, Orlean seamlessly integrates supplementary material on the history of dog breeding in general and of German shepherds in particular, of dog training and canine military units in the world wars, of early Hollywood animals and the fierce competition between their human teams for commercial success and advertising sponsorship. As much as it's the story of Rin Tin Tin, it's also the story of the American entertainment industry, from the days of the silent movie to the rise of HBO.

Orlean describes her own memories, of watching Rin Tin Tin shows and of lusting after a Rin Tin Tin toy belonging to her grandfather. And (one of my favorite aspects of her books) she offers glimpses of her research process and experiences: here, some of the most poignant scenes for me were her descriptions of how she felt as she read through the archival collections of Duncan and Lambert's papers (the latter being located in a storage locker).

A heart-touching story of devotion and persistence, told by one of the masters of contemporary American writing. Recommended very highly indeed.

Handyman Jailed for Manuscript Thefts

2011-09-27T07:39:00.003-04:00

From the Guardian today, a report that Tyrone Somers, 41, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for the theft of manuscripts from the London home of bookseller Rick Gekoski. Gekoski had reportedly hired Somers as a handyman and assigned him certain tasks to be carried out over the weekend of 23-24 July. When Gekoski returned, however, the tasks were undone and £36,000 worth of manuscript items were missing.

Somers turned himself in, returning the documents at the same time. The report indicates that Somers suffers from bipolar disorder and that he told police that "he had been advised that going to prison would solve" his psychological problems. Prosecutors say he told police that "he went into the house and for a short time he battled with these thoughts. He said he took the book of manuscripts because he knew it would extend his prison sentence."

More from the Independent, including quotes from Gekoski.

Book Review: "Ethan Allen"

2011-09-25T15:09:00.003-04:00

Willard Sterne Randall's Ethan Allen: His Life and Times (W.W. Norton, 2011) is the first full-scale biography of Allen in a generation, and that alone would make Randall's book worth a read for anyone interested in the Revolutionary period (especially someone who might by now be tired of biographies of the usual suspects).

Randall does well at telling the story of Allen's tempestuous life, from his early days in Connecticut during the Great Awakening's theological debates to his pre-Revolutionary paramilitary activities in what would become Vermont, resulting in his emergence as the leader of those in the "New Hampshire grant" area who sought release from the overlapping claims of New York and New Hampshire. The reconstruction of Allen's surprise raid on Fort Ticonderoga, and the subsequent defeat at Montreal which led to Allen being held as a British prisoner of war for almost three years are nicely done, although covered fairly quickly.

The best parts of the book for me were the sections covering Allen's captivity, followed by his years of wily machinations to obtain first Vermont's independence and then statehood, and then his few twilight years (during which he wrote a deist tract, Reason the only oracle of man, which was received very poorly indeed). Allen's early death, at age 51, robbed the young United States of a character who certainly would have played some interesting role had he lived longer.

Randall teases out the myths and legends that have sprung up around Allen's life quite well, picking through the historiographical rubble to get at the heart of the matter, and discovering valuable new pieces of evidence through new archival research. For that, and for its examination of Allen's writings, this book deserves much praise.

Unfortunately, the book, at 540 pages, runs about 150 pages too long. There are lengthy passages of digression which just don't fit; these mostly come in the opening chapters, with seven pages on Anne Hutchinson, for example. The narrative could have been greatly tightened up and the writing improved by another round of editing: too many chapter sections begin with clunky transitional phrases like "By the time ... ," and "At this juncture," and there are a few really wince-inducing lines ("The announcement of the birth of the United States at Lexington and Concord," &c.). Additional silly mistakes (e.g. the number of people killed in the Boston Massacre) and some questionable (and uncited) statements in the Great Awakening section also gave me pause.

I hope that any second edition will correct many of the errors which detract from what would otherwise be a most welcome addition to the genre.

Links & Reviews

2011-09-25T09:05:00.005-04:00

- Dan Cohen's got a very smart piece in the Atlantic about the HathiTrust/Authors Guild lawsuit; make this your must-read essay for the weekend.

- Another don't-miss is Brooke Palmieri's 8vo post about the book catalogues of E.P. Goldschmidt.

- Writing in the Chronicle, Kathleen Fitzpatrick urges young scholars to "do the risky thing" in digital humanities.

- Maurice Sendak is doing interviews about his new book, Bumble-Ardy. Globe and Mail; Fresh Air.

- Susan Orlean talked to NPR this week about her new book, Rin Tin Tin.

- Some more great stuff from The Collation this week: Sarah Werner profiles a 1565 Guyot type specimen broadside, which a marginal note suggests was used to sell Guyot's types to London printers, and (on her own blog) notes some fascinating marginalia in a copy of Gower's Confessio amantis.

- From Houghton Library, a new video on the handling of rare books and archival materials.

- John O'Connell writes in the Scotsman about the origins of Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, which began with an interesting collaboration between Conan Doyle and his friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson.

- Also on NPR this week, Stephen Greenblatt discussed The Swerve.

Reviews

- Ann Blair's Too Much to Know; review by Jacob Soll in TNR.

- Neal Stephenson's Reamde; review by Tom Bissell in the NYTimes.

- Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- Lawrence Bergreen's Columbus; review by Ian W. Toll in the NYTimes.

- Simon Garfield's Just My Type; review by Paul Shaw in Salon.

Auction Report: Results from Bloomsbury; Christie's Preview

2011-09-24T08:42:00.004-04:00

Results for Bloomsbury London's sale of The Cetus Library: Food & Drink, Agriculture, Gardening and Social History, 1543 - 1829 on 22 September are here. The top seller, at £20,000, was a lovely copy of Reginald Scot's 1584 work The Discoverie of Witchcraft. A copy of the first edition of Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery (London, 1747) sold for £13,000, and the first English edition of Rembert Dodoens' A Nievve Herbal (London, 1578), fetched £10,000.

Philip Miller's Figures of the most beautiful, useful, and uncommon plants described in the Gardener's Dictionary (London, 1755-1760) sold for £11,000, and a copy of the very rare The Court & Kitchin of Elizabeth, Commonly Called Joan Cromwell (London, 1664), containing recipes supposedly from the table of Oliver Cromwell's court, sold for £7,500 (over estimates of just £1,000-1,500).

Christie's London will sell Travel, Science and Natural History items on 27 September, in 407 lots. Lots of artifacts and artwork: the top-estimated lot is a pair of 1750 Valk table globes (est. £50,000-70,000). There's also an Enigma Machine (est. £30,000-50,000). Among the books, de la Sagra's Historica fisica, politica y natural de la Isla de Cuba (Paris, 1839-1861) is estimated at £15,000-25,000, and there are some other great 19th-century travel and natural history books on offer.

This Week's Acquisitions

2011-09-24T08:27:00.002-04:00

Here's what arrived this week:

- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (Crown, 2012). Publisher.

- American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard (Viking, 2011). Publisher.

- Columbus: The Four Voyages by Laurence Bergreen (Viking, 2011). Publisher.

- Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking, 2011). Publisher.

- George Washington's Expense Account; edited by Marvin Kitman (Grove Press, 2001). Amazon.

- McSweeney's Issue 38; edited by Dave Eggers (McSweeney's, 2011). Amazon.

Book Review: "The Revisionists"

2011-09-18T15:37:00.004-04:00

Thomas Mullen's The Revisionists (Mulholland Books, 2011) is a fast-paced, highly intellectual thriller with all sorts of interesting things to say about the intersections of the past, present and future and the ways in which individual actions and events shape history. Our main character, Zed, is an agent from the future, sent back in time to ensure that all the nasty events of our own day still happen so that the humans of the future can live in a society made perfected by learning from the mistakes of the past. That means taking out the historical agitators (hags) also sent back in time in order to keep those events from happening.

As Zed carries out his gruesome but necessary missions, Mullen draws in other characters, spinning a complicated web of betrayals, relationships and pursuits: we meet former CIA operative Leo Hastings, corporate lawyer Tasha Wilson (grieving over the loss of her soldier brother), and a young Indonesian maid being mistreated by her Korean diplomat employers. Mysterious men in dark SUVs from various intelligence agencies crop up at various points.

Complex, dark, and thought-provoking. Sometimes a bit hard to follow, but overall, quite well done. And the cover design is one of the best I've seen in a very long time.

Links & Reviews

2011-09-18T10:01:00.001-04:00

- This week's big news was a new lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild and other interest groups against HathiTrust and participating universities. Julie Bosman covered the suit for the NYTimes, and Jen Howard for the Chronicle. There were several angles to all this, one of which was HathiTrust's list of possibly orphaned works, rights-holders for some of which were quickly identified. Michigan said they would re-examine their process for including orphaned works. And Kevin Smith's open letter to one of the author identified as the rightsholder is certainly worth a read.

- Meanwhile, a status conference was held in the original Google Books lawsuit; judge Denny Chin has outlined a proposed schedule to bring the case to trial, although both sides say they continue to negotiate and hope to reach a settlement.

- Steve Ferguson's found a nifty 1872, "The Printer's Sheet of Miscellaneous Trade Receipts" - things like making fireproof paper, gilding edges of books, removing ink blotches from paper, &c.

- Over at the new Folger blog The Collation (which you should be reading if you're not already), Heather Wolfe posts on a new acquisition: a collection of deeds documenting the ownership of a Fleet Street property from 1543-1735. The deeds are notable because they offer up the precise location of Richard Tottel's printing house and provide evidence of the "evolution of this property into various other booksellers’ shops and coffeehouses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries," as Heather writes.

- Also on The Collation this week, a Q&A with new Folger director Michael Witmore.

- JSTOR released the full list [PDF] of titles from which early content is now freely available. Some great stuff here; kudos to them for releasing it.

- At Booktryst, a short profile of the English binder Roger Payne, and a look at some early Poe titles coming up for auction at Sotheby's on 20 October (along with a whole bunch of other great things; I'll have a preview up of the sale up shortly).

- Jonathan Gharraie has an essay in the Paris Review on Meryn Peake's Gormenghast books.

Reviews

- David Reynolds' Mightier than the Sword; review by Drew Gilpin Faust in TNR.

- Catherine McKinley's Indigo; review by Alice Wyllie in the Scotsman.

- David Lodge's A Man of Parts; reviews by Christopher Benfey in the NYTimes and Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- Jim Lehrer's Tension City; review by Jeff Shesol in the WaPo.

- David Roberts' Finding Everett Ruess; review by Jessica Gelt in the LATimes.