Heading up to New York tomorrow for Bibliography Week events - I hope I'll see many of you there! Meanwhile, some links and reviews:
- From Paste magazine, John Ruch writes on "The Peculiar Underworld of Rare-Book Thieves." It notes that a book on the Smiley thefts by Michael Blanding will be published this year (The Map Thief, to be published by Gotham Books).
- The Wellcome Library has released 100,000 hi-res images from its collections.
- Excellent reporter Paul Grondahl has a report in the Times Union on the New York State Library's "tough calls" about culling materials from the collections. It makes for difficult reading.
- New OED chief editor Michael Proffitt talked to the New York Times this week about the future of the dictionary.
- A pair of scholars have announced what they see as a breakthrough in the Voynich Manuscript, concluding that many of the plants and animals portrayed there may be North American species.
- The Mellon Foundation has awarded a $3 million grant to fund a "Humanities Without Walls" consortium to "create new avenues for collaborative research, teaching, and the production of scholarship in the humanities, forging and sustaining areas of inquiry that cannot be created or maintained without cross-institutional cooperation."
- From the BBC: Albrecht Durer: Printing Press Native.
- A Sotheby's report published in Chinese has defended the authenticity of a calligraphy scroll sold for $8.2 million in September (mentioned here). Chinese scholars argue that the scroll was a 19th-century reproduction.
- New York's Rizzoli Bookstore will likely have to move; the building's owners are planning to demolish the site.
- New online, the Catalogue of English Manuscripts, 1450-1700, containing descriptions of more than 37,000 manuscript texts from 237 C16-17 authors.
- From the "Bright Young Librarians" series, Trinity College's Rick Ring is profiled.
- Unclaimed material stolen by Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff is being temporarily housed at the Maryland Historical Society, the Baltimore Sun reported, until it can be identified and returned to its rightful home(s).
- The British Library will close its Preservation Advisory Centre as of the end of March.
- Material from the family archive of William Penn will be up for sale at Bonham's London on 28 January.
- The daughter of Cold Comfort Farm author Stella Gibbons has found two finished-but-unpublished novels amongst her mother's possessions.
- Mitch Fraas notes a success story in identifying a smudgy provenance stamp - there's hope!
- The New York Times ran a report last week on Pinochet's library.
- Casey Cep has a piece at The New Yorker on "The Allure of the Map."
- I'm feeling a bit removed from the whole Common Core debate, but I found Alex Kalamaroff's essay at The Millions, "The Common Core Vs. Books: When Teachers are Unable to Foster a Love of Reading in Students" very much worthwhile.
- The Strand's rare book room was highlighted in the New York Daily News.
- Over at Manuscript Road Trip, our erstwhile guides explore the career and telltale signs of the Spanish Forger.
- The existence of a secret Foreign Office archive, containing some 1.2 million files going back to the 17th century, was revealed this week.
- Two digital collections of rare books at Princeton have been expanded: the Sid Lapidus collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, and the library's annotated books.
- The BL is crowdfunding the digitization of George III's personal collection of maps and views: they're looking for £100,000.
- From Antipodean Footnotes, highlights from the woodcuts in the early Italian and French editions of the Hypnerotomachia.
- In the LA Review of Books, Johanna Drucker writes on "Pixel Dust: Illusions of Innovation in Scholarly Publishing."
- Penn State has acquired the archive of book designer Chip Kidd, while Billy Collins' papers will go to the Harry Ransom Center.
Reviews
- The History of OUP, Volume III; review by Bernard Porter in The Guardian.
- Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold's Newton and the Origin of Civilization; review by Scott Mandelbrote in the TLS.
- Bob Brier's Egyptomania; review (well, pan) by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Alan Jacobs' The Book of Common Prayer; review by Willy Maley in the THE.
- Douglas Egerton's The Wars of Reconstruction; review by Fergus Bordewich in the WSJ.
- Greg Grandin's The Empire of Necessity; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.
- Timothy Brook's Mr. Selden's Map of China and Robert Batchelor's London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549-1689; review in The Economist.
- Jacqueline Jones' A Dreadful Deceit; review by Thomas Chatterton Williams in the WSJ.
- Colin Jerolmack's The Global Pigeon; review by Jennie Erin Smith in the TLS.
- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review at BookBrowse.
Showing posts with label Barry Landau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barry Landau. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Boston Recap, and Links & Reviews
This year's Boston Book Fair certainly appeared to be a resounding success, and it was a real pleasure to have the chance to see so many friends and readers of the blog while enjoying the great variety of books on offer at the Fair. It was, of course, also a treat for me to be back in Boston and visit old stomping grounds (including the Brattle and Raven for books).
- It was on the train up to Boston that I learned that the Google Books decision had finally been handed down, and was basically a complete victory for Google on fair use grounds. Read Judge Denny Chin's decision, or read a rundown at Techdirt. Jessamyn West rounded up some excellent links on the decision as well, and there's yet another link collection here. Nathan Raab wrote for Forbes about the impact this decision, suggesting that it will further drive down the prices of used books (I'm not sure I entirely agree).
- Sotheby's will sell the Bay Psalm Book on Tuesday at 7 p.m. EST in New York. See the catalog for a full account of the sale (you'll also be able to watch the sale via that link). Jill Lepore has an op/ed in the NYTimes about the sale today. Harvard has had their copy out for display through 14 December. Richard Davies attended one of the displays of the book in Seattle, and wrote about the experience. Earlier this month James Barron previewed the sale for the NYTimes, with comments from (now former) Old South Church historian Jeff Makholm. Over at Rare Books Digest, speculation on who might buy the Bay Psalm book this week (they suggest it may well be billionaire collector Steve Green).
- In Standpoint, H.R. Woudhuysen writes about the Senate House "Folio Fiasco" and the lessons it offers for librarians. It's an excellent piece; read the whole thing.
- Barry Landau's accomplice Jason Savedoff was released from prison earlier this month, after serving a year of his sentence.
- Over at Plougshares, an interview with Leah Price in their "People of the Book" series.
- In honor of the three-hundredth anniversary of Laurence Sterne's birthday, Karen Harvey posts on the OUP blog about the manuscript history of Tristram Shandy.
- Whitney Trettien discusses her work on a prototype of a digital facsimile "edition" of a Little Gidding Harmony.
- Columbia University has acquired the archive of Granary Books.
- An 18th-century Haggadah up for auction next week could fetch up to £500,000.
- The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive was officially opened at the Library of Congress on 12 November.
- Harvard's Colonial North America project involves digitizing a great deal of manuscript material from across the Harvard library system, reports the Harvard Gazette.
- Making the rounds this weekend, a horrifying post at Tech Technologies documenting the 2010 sale and subsequent dispersal of a Book of Hours by an eBay seller who's been taking the manuscript apart and selling it piecemeal. Scott Gwara passed along a link to Erik Drigsdahl's running list of dismembered manuscripts seen on eBay in recent years.
- The NYPL has acquired Tom Wolfe's papers for $2.15 million.
- Charles Dornan Davis, best known for his role as a major forger of Texas documents, died on 30 September, Everett Wilkie reported on Ex-Libris. See Tom Taylor's book Texfake for a full account of these forgeries; there's also a 1989 New York Times Magazine piece on the events.
- Jenny Lowe posted some updates to the Girolamini theft scandal this week: the Italian culture ministry has brought the church and library complex under the regional network of cultural institutions. The ministry has also pledged €10 to restore the site. Herbert Schauer, of the Munich auction house Zisska & Schauer, was extradited to Italy earlier this month. Trials for the conspirators have been postponed yet again. And ALAI president Fabrizio Govi has called on the Italian government to release a list of the stolen books (which may not be possible given that such a list doesn't seem to exist). Govi adds: "apparently the Italian authorities are not concerned with the production of the forgeries that De Caro has disseminated throughout the antiquarian book marketplace, especially in the United States. Our worry is that, if nobody will investigate further in this field, we will never know who physically produced those forged books, how many are still circulating, and, last but not least, how they were manufactured, in order that we might be better able to recognize them in the future. The apparent disinterest in investigating this process brings up the frightening prospect that these forgeries might continue to proliferate and appear on the market long after the authorities are no longer interested in the stolen books themselves."
- To mark the publication of the three-volume History of Oxford University Press, there were a series of interesting posts by Ian Gadd on the OUP blog: "Before Caxton? Claiming Oxford as England's first printing city", "When did Oxford University Press begin?" They also posted a slideshow of OUP-related images.
- Over at Booktryst, a profile of British type-cutter Richard Austin.
- Just over a year ago I linked to a report that scholars had identified the authors of marginalia in a 1635 Mercator Atlas at the JCB as John and Virginia Ferrar. Now Ferrar Papers editor David Ransome weighs in, suggesting that the writing is not that of Virginia at all, but merely several varieties of John's own handwriting.
- The National Book Awards for 2013 were announced this week.
- Eleanor Catton talked with the NYTimes about her Booker Prize-winning novel The Luminaries.
- New from the Department of Labor: Books that Shaped Work in America.
- Mary Norris blogged about a round of literary "Jeopardy!" at the launch of Tom Nissley's endlessly interested new book A Reader's Book of Days.
Reviews
- Doris Kearns Goodwin's The Bully Pulpit; review by Michiko Kakutani in the NYTimes.
- Arlette Farge's The Allure of the Archives; review by Michael Moore in the LA Review of Books.
- Richard Holmes' Falling Upwards; review by Paul Elie in the NYTimes.
- Nicholas Basbanes' On Paper; review by Peter Lewis at Barnes & Noble Review.
- Denise Spellberg's Thomas Jefferson's Qu'ran; review by Kirk Davis Swinehart in the NYTimes.
- Graham Robb's Discovery of Middle Earth; reviews by Ian Morris in the NYTimes and Wendy Smith in the LATimes.
- Owen Matthews' Glorious Misadventures; review by William Grimes in the NYTimes.
- It was on the train up to Boston that I learned that the Google Books decision had finally been handed down, and was basically a complete victory for Google on fair use grounds. Read Judge Denny Chin's decision, or read a rundown at Techdirt. Jessamyn West rounded up some excellent links on the decision as well, and there's yet another link collection here. Nathan Raab wrote for Forbes about the impact this decision, suggesting that it will further drive down the prices of used books (I'm not sure I entirely agree).
- Sotheby's will sell the Bay Psalm Book on Tuesday at 7 p.m. EST in New York. See the catalog for a full account of the sale (you'll also be able to watch the sale via that link). Jill Lepore has an op/ed in the NYTimes about the sale today. Harvard has had their copy out for display through 14 December. Richard Davies attended one of the displays of the book in Seattle, and wrote about the experience. Earlier this month James Barron previewed the sale for the NYTimes, with comments from (now former) Old South Church historian Jeff Makholm. Over at Rare Books Digest, speculation on who might buy the Bay Psalm book this week (they suggest it may well be billionaire collector Steve Green).
- In Standpoint, H.R. Woudhuysen writes about the Senate House "Folio Fiasco" and the lessons it offers for librarians. It's an excellent piece; read the whole thing.
- Barry Landau's accomplice Jason Savedoff was released from prison earlier this month, after serving a year of his sentence.
- Over at Plougshares, an interview with Leah Price in their "People of the Book" series.
- In honor of the three-hundredth anniversary of Laurence Sterne's birthday, Karen Harvey posts on the OUP blog about the manuscript history of Tristram Shandy.
- Whitney Trettien discusses her work on a prototype of a digital facsimile "edition" of a Little Gidding Harmony.
- Columbia University has acquired the archive of Granary Books.
- An 18th-century Haggadah up for auction next week could fetch up to £500,000.
- The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive was officially opened at the Library of Congress on 12 November.
- Harvard's Colonial North America project involves digitizing a great deal of manuscript material from across the Harvard library system, reports the Harvard Gazette.
- Making the rounds this weekend, a horrifying post at Tech Technologies documenting the 2010 sale and subsequent dispersal of a Book of Hours by an eBay seller who's been taking the manuscript apart and selling it piecemeal. Scott Gwara passed along a link to Erik Drigsdahl's running list of dismembered manuscripts seen on eBay in recent years.
- The NYPL has acquired Tom Wolfe's papers for $2.15 million.
- Charles Dornan Davis, best known for his role as a major forger of Texas documents, died on 30 September, Everett Wilkie reported on Ex-Libris. See Tom Taylor's book Texfake for a full account of these forgeries; there's also a 1989 New York Times Magazine piece on the events.
- Jenny Lowe posted some updates to the Girolamini theft scandal this week: the Italian culture ministry has brought the church and library complex under the regional network of cultural institutions. The ministry has also pledged €10 to restore the site. Herbert Schauer, of the Munich auction house Zisska & Schauer, was extradited to Italy earlier this month. Trials for the conspirators have been postponed yet again. And ALAI president Fabrizio Govi has called on the Italian government to release a list of the stolen books (which may not be possible given that such a list doesn't seem to exist). Govi adds: "apparently the Italian authorities are not concerned with the production of the forgeries that De Caro has disseminated throughout the antiquarian book marketplace, especially in the United States. Our worry is that, if nobody will investigate further in this field, we will never know who physically produced those forged books, how many are still circulating, and, last but not least, how they were manufactured, in order that we might be better able to recognize them in the future. The apparent disinterest in investigating this process brings up the frightening prospect that these forgeries might continue to proliferate and appear on the market long after the authorities are no longer interested in the stolen books themselves."
- To mark the publication of the three-volume History of Oxford University Press, there were a series of interesting posts by Ian Gadd on the OUP blog: "Before Caxton? Claiming Oxford as England's first printing city", "When did Oxford University Press begin?" They also posted a slideshow of OUP-related images.
- Over at Booktryst, a profile of British type-cutter Richard Austin.
- Just over a year ago I linked to a report that scholars had identified the authors of marginalia in a 1635 Mercator Atlas at the JCB as John and Virginia Ferrar. Now Ferrar Papers editor David Ransome weighs in, suggesting that the writing is not that of Virginia at all, but merely several varieties of John's own handwriting.
- The National Book Awards for 2013 were announced this week.
- Eleanor Catton talked with the NYTimes about her Booker Prize-winning novel The Luminaries.
- New from the Department of Labor: Books that Shaped Work in America.
- Mary Norris blogged about a round of literary "Jeopardy!" at the launch of Tom Nissley's endlessly interested new book A Reader's Book of Days.
Reviews
- Doris Kearns Goodwin's The Bully Pulpit; review by Michiko Kakutani in the NYTimes.
- Arlette Farge's The Allure of the Archives; review by Michael Moore in the LA Review of Books.
- Richard Holmes' Falling Upwards; review by Paul Elie in the NYTimes.
- Nicholas Basbanes' On Paper; review by Peter Lewis at Barnes & Noble Review.
- Denise Spellberg's Thomas Jefferson's Qu'ran; review by Kirk Davis Swinehart in the NYTimes.
- Graham Robb's Discovery of Middle Earth; reviews by Ian Morris in the NYTimes and Wendy Smith in the LATimes.
- Owen Matthews' Glorious Misadventures; review by William Grimes in the NYTimes.
Sunday, June 02, 2013
Links & Reviews
Apologies for the rather lengthy post this week: I've been on the road just a bit (New York last weekend for some family time, then to Boston for a couple days, then to New York for Book Expo America (on which there is a good writeup in the NYTimes), and now in Charlottesville to kick off the Rare Book School season) so I've fallen quite behind and had accumulated lots of things to pass along. So here they all are!
- The Law Society of England and Wales is moving ahead with the sale of selected items from the Mendham Collection, which will occur (barring any last-minute action) on 5 June at Sotheby's (see the catalog). This has sparked quite a discussion about the legal, moral, and ethical implications of the Society's decision, including calls for a boycott of the sale. Watch this space for more on this as events progress this week.
- A volunteer at the Buffalo History Museum, Daniel J. Witek, 50, has been charged with the theft of letters and postcards from the Aaron Conger Goodyear collection. Witek, using the alias "Walter Payne," tried to sell the documents to Lion Heart Autographs of New York City, but Lion Heart president David Lowenherz contacted the museum. As a volunteer, BHM officials say, Witek used the name "Daniel Mountbatten-Witek." So far mail fraud is the only charge filed against Witek, but more to come on this one, I'm sure.
- The head of Library and Archives Canada resigned in mid-May over improper use of government funds, and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries has called on the prime minister to consult with the library and archives community about filling the vacancy.
- The Baltimore Sun reported this week on the gradual return of the documents stolen from various archives by Barry Landau and his accomplice. So far only about twenty percent of the recovered materials have been returned.
- Quite an interesting resolution to a longstanding standoff over one of the original copies of the Bill of Rights: the New York Public Library and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have agreed to share custody of the document for the next hundred years, at which time the settlement will be reexamined. The copy may be that which originally was sent to Pennsylvania (this is unclear); it has been at NYPL since 1896.
- Over on the Cardiff University rare books blog, a guide to manicules found in their collections.
- From Sarah Werner at The Collation: an excellent look at oddities in digital surrogates (and other topics).
- There's a good report on the PEN charity auction in the Telegraph; this saw a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone annotated by J.K. Rowling sell for a record £150,000.
- Molly Schwartzburg posted a very interesting account of 18th-19th century cicada emergences as documented in 1824 by "J.S."
- The NYRB looks back on fifty years of book advertisements in its pages. At BEA this week I picked up a copy of the facsimile edition of the first NYRB issue they'd printed up for the anniversary, which makes for a very neat browse.
- Stephen Brumwell has been awarded the 2013 George Washington Book Prize for his forthcoming book George Washington: First Warrior.
- Two men have been sentenced in Denmark for the theft of more than 1,000 World War II documents from the Danish National Archives between 2009 and this year. The pair received jail terms of 24 and 21 months. Some documents were reportedly sold before they could be recovered.
- The great printer/designer Kim Merker died on 28 April; an obituary ran in the New York Times this week.
- From the new Mapping Books blog (link added on the sidebar), Mitch Fraas explores from a wide-angle view some of the things he's found in examining the "unique at Penn" ESTC books, and takes a look at the geographical distribution of the first edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
- Vince Golden writes on the AAS blog about the recent acquisition of a volume of the National Magazine, purchased in honor of Marcus McCorison.
- The June AE Monthly is up; it includes an interview with Joel Silver, the new director of the Lilly Library.
- At the Public Domain Review, Christine Jones explores the early English translations of Charles Perrault's fairy tales.
- Heather Cole offered up a post on the anthropodermic binding at Houghton Library.
- John Van Horne, director of the Library Company of Philadelphia, has announced that he will retire in May 2014.
- From Erin Blake, the first in a series of posts about proof prints, covering trial proofs and progress proofs.
- Speaking at the Hay Festival of Literature, Matthew Haley of Bonhams told his audience that the loss of secondhand bookshops is a dangerous trend, but that "book towns" stand a real chance of successfully navigating the current rough waters.
- Jerry Morris at My Sentimental Library has posted some images and thoughts on the possibility that a book in his library may have belonged to John Hancock. We've emailed extensively about this and frankly I'm just not sure, but it makes for quite a good mystery!
- Also retiring is the chief librarian of the D.C. library system, Ginnie Cooper, profiled recently in the Washington Post.
- In a 1895 letter, Rudyard Kipling writes to an unknown correspondent that he may have "helped himself promiscuously" in drawing from other sources when he penned The Jungle Book.
- On the Houghton Library blog, a wonderful example of how collaborative scholarship is making some great things happen these days.
- The Junto folks have launched a podcast.
- From Nathan Raab at Forbes, a (very) brief survey of the history of the written word.
- The oldest known complete Torah scroll has been identified in the library of the University of Bologna; the twelfth-century manuscript had previously been miscataloged as dating from the seventeenth century.
- From the University of Glasgow rare books blog, a look at the use of false title pages in a 1670 octavo edition of Spinoza. And in other Spinoza-news, some good old-fashioned bibliographical detective work has resulted in the identification of Spinoza's printer.
- The Spring 2013 Common-place is out, and as usual is well worth a thorough read.
- Newly updated from the Society of Early Americanists: recent publications of interest to the field.
- I had a chance to read through the summer issue of the Journal of the Early Republic, and recommend it highly. Most of the articles draw on the A New Nation Votes project (AAS and Tufts), which is also a great way to wile away some time, I should note.
- At JCB Books Speak, Kenneth Ward reports on a very exciting new acquisition of a variant edition of Vetancurt's Arte de la lengua Mexicana (1673). There are some lingering mysteries around these two editions, so go check out the post and see if you can help!
- From Goran Proot at The Collation, a look at all ten Folger copies of the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Duplicates? I think not!
- Over on The Appendix blog, a guest post from Ox and Pigeon editor Jason Curran.
- The Antiques Trade Digest reported recently on a few cases of the U.K. National Archives taking action to keep public records from being sold at auction.
- Felicity Henderson has a post on the Royal Society's blog about the group's early collections of curiosities.
- The John Rylands Library's Centre for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care will be digitizing the extensive archival collection of the papers of John Henry Cardinal Newman. They've started a blog to chronicle the project.
- On the OUP blog, Robert McNamee writes on the "marginalization" of Alexander Pope, both as a Catholic and for his physical deformity, and Pat Rogers offers up an essay on Pope's wordplay and writing technique.
- There's a short writeup in the Washington Post by Ron Charles on recent goings-on there, including an exhibit hall renovation and a particularly important copy of Shakespeare's works currently on display.
- From Princeton: the manuscript and annotated galleys of The Great Gatsby have been digitized.
Reviews
- Victor S. Navasky's The Art of Controversy; review by Deborah Solomon in the NYTimes.
- Peter Carlson's Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy; review by Tony Horwitz in the WaPo.
- Allen Guelzo's Gettysburg; review by Thomas Donnelly in the WSJ.
- J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fall of Arthur; review by Elizabeth Hand in the LATimes.
- David Scott's Leviathan; review by Brendan Simms in the Telegraph.
- E.O. Wilson's Letters to a Young Scientist; review by Bill Streever in the NYTimes.
- Philip Gura's Truth's Ragged Edge; review by Michael Gorra in the WSJ.
- Charlie Lovett's The Bookman's Tale; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at Fine Books Blog.
- Khaled Hosseini's And the Mountains Echoed; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.
- Joel Harrington's The Faithful Executioner; review by Daniel Stashower in the WaPo.
- The Law Society of England and Wales is moving ahead with the sale of selected items from the Mendham Collection, which will occur (barring any last-minute action) on 5 June at Sotheby's (see the catalog). This has sparked quite a discussion about the legal, moral, and ethical implications of the Society's decision, including calls for a boycott of the sale. Watch this space for more on this as events progress this week.
- A volunteer at the Buffalo History Museum, Daniel J. Witek, 50, has been charged with the theft of letters and postcards from the Aaron Conger Goodyear collection. Witek, using the alias "Walter Payne," tried to sell the documents to Lion Heart Autographs of New York City, but Lion Heart president David Lowenherz contacted the museum. As a volunteer, BHM officials say, Witek used the name "Daniel Mountbatten-Witek." So far mail fraud is the only charge filed against Witek, but more to come on this one, I'm sure.
- The head of Library and Archives Canada resigned in mid-May over improper use of government funds, and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries has called on the prime minister to consult with the library and archives community about filling the vacancy.
- The Baltimore Sun reported this week on the gradual return of the documents stolen from various archives by Barry Landau and his accomplice. So far only about twenty percent of the recovered materials have been returned.
- Quite an interesting resolution to a longstanding standoff over one of the original copies of the Bill of Rights: the New York Public Library and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have agreed to share custody of the document for the next hundred years, at which time the settlement will be reexamined. The copy may be that which originally was sent to Pennsylvania (this is unclear); it has been at NYPL since 1896.
- Over on the Cardiff University rare books blog, a guide to manicules found in their collections.
- From Sarah Werner at The Collation: an excellent look at oddities in digital surrogates (and other topics).
- There's a good report on the PEN charity auction in the Telegraph; this saw a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone annotated by J.K. Rowling sell for a record £150,000.
- Molly Schwartzburg posted a very interesting account of 18th-19th century cicada emergences as documented in 1824 by "J.S."
- The NYRB looks back on fifty years of book advertisements in its pages. At BEA this week I picked up a copy of the facsimile edition of the first NYRB issue they'd printed up for the anniversary, which makes for a very neat browse.
- Stephen Brumwell has been awarded the 2013 George Washington Book Prize for his forthcoming book George Washington: First Warrior.
- Two men have been sentenced in Denmark for the theft of more than 1,000 World War II documents from the Danish National Archives between 2009 and this year. The pair received jail terms of 24 and 21 months. Some documents were reportedly sold before they could be recovered.
- The great printer/designer Kim Merker died on 28 April; an obituary ran in the New York Times this week.
- From the new Mapping Books blog (link added on the sidebar), Mitch Fraas explores from a wide-angle view some of the things he's found in examining the "unique at Penn" ESTC books, and takes a look at the geographical distribution of the first edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
- Vince Golden writes on the AAS blog about the recent acquisition of a volume of the National Magazine, purchased in honor of Marcus McCorison.
- The June AE Monthly is up; it includes an interview with Joel Silver, the new director of the Lilly Library.
- At the Public Domain Review, Christine Jones explores the early English translations of Charles Perrault's fairy tales.
- Heather Cole offered up a post on the anthropodermic binding at Houghton Library.
- John Van Horne, director of the Library Company of Philadelphia, has announced that he will retire in May 2014.
- From Erin Blake, the first in a series of posts about proof prints, covering trial proofs and progress proofs.
- Speaking at the Hay Festival of Literature, Matthew Haley of Bonhams told his audience that the loss of secondhand bookshops is a dangerous trend, but that "book towns" stand a real chance of successfully navigating the current rough waters.
- Jerry Morris at My Sentimental Library has posted some images and thoughts on the possibility that a book in his library may have belonged to John Hancock. We've emailed extensively about this and frankly I'm just not sure, but it makes for quite a good mystery!
- Also retiring is the chief librarian of the D.C. library system, Ginnie Cooper, profiled recently in the Washington Post.
- In a 1895 letter, Rudyard Kipling writes to an unknown correspondent that he may have "helped himself promiscuously" in drawing from other sources when he penned The Jungle Book.
- On the Houghton Library blog, a wonderful example of how collaborative scholarship is making some great things happen these days.
- The Junto folks have launched a podcast.
- From Nathan Raab at Forbes, a (very) brief survey of the history of the written word.
- The oldest known complete Torah scroll has been identified in the library of the University of Bologna; the twelfth-century manuscript had previously been miscataloged as dating from the seventeenth century.
- From the University of Glasgow rare books blog, a look at the use of false title pages in a 1670 octavo edition of Spinoza. And in other Spinoza-news, some good old-fashioned bibliographical detective work has resulted in the identification of Spinoza's printer.
- The Spring 2013 Common-place is out, and as usual is well worth a thorough read.
- Newly updated from the Society of Early Americanists: recent publications of interest to the field.
- I had a chance to read through the summer issue of the Journal of the Early Republic, and recommend it highly. Most of the articles draw on the A New Nation Votes project (AAS and Tufts), which is also a great way to wile away some time, I should note.
- At JCB Books Speak, Kenneth Ward reports on a very exciting new acquisition of a variant edition of Vetancurt's Arte de la lengua Mexicana (1673). There are some lingering mysteries around these two editions, so go check out the post and see if you can help!
- From Goran Proot at The Collation, a look at all ten Folger copies of the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Duplicates? I think not!
- Over on The Appendix blog, a guest post from Ox and Pigeon editor Jason Curran.
- The Antiques Trade Digest reported recently on a few cases of the U.K. National Archives taking action to keep public records from being sold at auction.
- Felicity Henderson has a post on the Royal Society's blog about the group's early collections of curiosities.
- The John Rylands Library's Centre for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care will be digitizing the extensive archival collection of the papers of John Henry Cardinal Newman. They've started a blog to chronicle the project.
- On the OUP blog, Robert McNamee writes on the "marginalization" of Alexander Pope, both as a Catholic and for his physical deformity, and Pat Rogers offers up an essay on Pope's wordplay and writing technique.
- There's a short writeup in the Washington Post by Ron Charles on recent goings-on there, including an exhibit hall renovation and a particularly important copy of Shakespeare's works currently on display.
- From Princeton: the manuscript and annotated galleys of The Great Gatsby have been digitized.
Reviews
- Victor S. Navasky's The Art of Controversy; review by Deborah Solomon in the NYTimes.
- Peter Carlson's Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy; review by Tony Horwitz in the WaPo.
- Allen Guelzo's Gettysburg; review by Thomas Donnelly in the WSJ.
- J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fall of Arthur; review by Elizabeth Hand in the LATimes.
- David Scott's Leviathan; review by Brendan Simms in the Telegraph.
- E.O. Wilson's Letters to a Young Scientist; review by Bill Streever in the NYTimes.
- Philip Gura's Truth's Ragged Edge; review by Michael Gorra in the WSJ.
- Charlie Lovett's The Bookman's Tale; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at Fine Books Blog.
- Khaled Hosseini's And the Mountains Echoed; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.
- Joel Harrington's The Faithful Executioner; review by Daniel Stashower in the WaPo.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Links & Reviews
Apologies for the lack of a links & reviews post last weekend; I was traveling back from the SEA meeting in Savannah, and by the time I got home was too sleepy to get started on this. So consider this week's a double-feature (and I'll have more to say on SEA soon, too). If you want one perspective on Savannah in the meantime, as well as a link to the Twitter archive, see Rachel Herrmann's post over at The Junto.
- New: Manuscripts Online, a nifty search engine for written and early print culture in Britain through 1500.
- Another neat new resource: Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, on "reassembling the early modern social network."
- In a must-read post, Heather Wolfe takes a close look at a manuscript diary from the Folger collections and realizes that perhaps the authorial attribution of the diary had been mistaken at some point. Some great detective work here.
- A new Audubon exhibit (really the first installment of three) is now open at the New-York Historical Society. It was reviewed by Edward Rothstein in the NYTimes this week, and featured in the BBC Magazine.
- Some really great news this week: Dan Cohen has been named the executive director of the Digital Public Library of America. They couldn't have made a better choice. Dan posted about his decision to move to the DPLA here.
- An early Charlotte Brontë manuscript poem will go under the hammer at Bonhams on 10 April, and could fetch £40,000-45,000.
- John Palfrey writes in Library Journal about the importance of the first sale doctrine and how the digital shift has led to new, knotty issues in that area.
- If you'll be in Cambridge this summer, there's going to be what looks like a tremendously-interesting conference to celebrate the centenary of A.N.L. Munby, "'Floreat Bibliomania' - Great Collectors and their Grand Designs."
- The ABAA security blog has posted a list of books stolen from Lost Horizons Bookstore in Santa Barbara, CA.
- NARA hosted a presentation this week on the Landau-Savedoff thefts, which you can watch here (and I do recommend watching it if you can; it's well worth it).
- David Rubenstein has donated $10 million to the new Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mt. Vernon.
- Over at the Fine Books Blog, Zhenya Dzhavgova writes about the awesome efforts by booksellers and others to help out Blue Jacket Books in Xenia, OH, much-damaged by a burst water pipe.
- The Toronto Star reports today on what appears to be a severe reduction in acquisitions by Library and Archives Canada. Warning: includes some absolutely ridiculous statements by the head of LAC.
- Eric White has posted at CERL an introduction to and database of C15 print runs.
- Quite a strange story over a signed first edition of The Great Gatsby on offer by bookseller James Robert Cahill: William M. Hitchcock, son of the man to whom Fitzgerald signed the copy of the book, claims that the book was stolen from his home. The book was purchased by Cahill at a Bonhams auction in 2010 (lot description) for $61,000. The FBI reportedly investigated the case in 2012 but closed the case last month.
- Over on the Queens' Old Library Books Blog, a post by Lindsey Askin on Roger Ascham's marginalia.
- Erin Blake highlights a neat new Folger acquisition, one of ten theater "super-scrapbooks" that got away at the original sale, when the Folgers' agent bought the other nine.
- Newly-digitized at Houghton Library, a fascinating 1620s "gospel harmony," known as the Little Gidding Harmony.
- From the T Magazine blog, a profile of the very cool Monkey's Paw bookshop in Toronto (definitely on my list of places to visit someday!).
- In Slate, Matt Kirschenbaum offers a new preview of his forthcoming book Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing.
- Mark Hartsell guest-blogs on the LOC blog about scholars using Thomas Jefferson's books in the reading room.
- A lawsuit was filed this week by a Sherlock Holmes scholar, alleging that the detective is in the public domain and that the estate should not be able to continue to collect licensing fees.
- LATimes book critic David Ulin's essay "The weight of books" makes for essential reading for those of us with, um, many books.
- Over at the Religion in American History blog, Michael Altman offers up "Reading About the 'Hindoos' with John Adams," where he muses about John Adams' marginalia in Priestley's A Comparison of the Institutes of Moses with that of the Hindoos and Other Ancient Nations (scanned here).
- Via the Princeton Rare Books blog, a new study of the Kelmscott Chaucer copies at Princeton, by Robert J. Milevski.
- It was difficult to miss that photo of cat prints on a manuscript document which made the rounds recently. Emir O. Filipović, who took the original image, wrote about the experience over at The Appendix.
Reviews
- Susan Jacoby's The Great Agnostic; review by Jennifer Michael Hect in the NYTimes.
- Sandra Day O'Connor's Out of Order; review by Joan Biskupic in the WaPo.
- David D. Hall's Cultures of Print; review by David Gary at Function Follows Forme.
- Ernest Freeberg's Age of Edison; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.
- Andrew Pettegree's The Book in the Renaissance; review by David Gary at Function Follows Forme.
- Jonathon Keats' Forged; review by Catherine Schofield Sezgin at the ARCA blog.
- Jim Crace's Harvest; review by Philip Womack in The Telegraph.
- New: Manuscripts Online, a nifty search engine for written and early print culture in Britain through 1500.
- Another neat new resource: Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, on "reassembling the early modern social network."
- In a must-read post, Heather Wolfe takes a close look at a manuscript diary from the Folger collections and realizes that perhaps the authorial attribution of the diary had been mistaken at some point. Some great detective work here.
- A new Audubon exhibit (really the first installment of three) is now open at the New-York Historical Society. It was reviewed by Edward Rothstein in the NYTimes this week, and featured in the BBC Magazine.
- Some really great news this week: Dan Cohen has been named the executive director of the Digital Public Library of America. They couldn't have made a better choice. Dan posted about his decision to move to the DPLA here.
- An early Charlotte Brontë manuscript poem will go under the hammer at Bonhams on 10 April, and could fetch £40,000-45,000.
- John Palfrey writes in Library Journal about the importance of the first sale doctrine and how the digital shift has led to new, knotty issues in that area.
- If you'll be in Cambridge this summer, there's going to be what looks like a tremendously-interesting conference to celebrate the centenary of A.N.L. Munby, "'Floreat Bibliomania' - Great Collectors and their Grand Designs."
- The ABAA security blog has posted a list of books stolen from Lost Horizons Bookstore in Santa Barbara, CA.
- NARA hosted a presentation this week on the Landau-Savedoff thefts, which you can watch here (and I do recommend watching it if you can; it's well worth it).
- David Rubenstein has donated $10 million to the new Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mt. Vernon.
- Over at the Fine Books Blog, Zhenya Dzhavgova writes about the awesome efforts by booksellers and others to help out Blue Jacket Books in Xenia, OH, much-damaged by a burst water pipe.
- The Toronto Star reports today on what appears to be a severe reduction in acquisitions by Library and Archives Canada. Warning: includes some absolutely ridiculous statements by the head of LAC.
- Eric White has posted at CERL an introduction to and database of C15 print runs.
- Quite a strange story over a signed first edition of The Great Gatsby on offer by bookseller James Robert Cahill: William M. Hitchcock, son of the man to whom Fitzgerald signed the copy of the book, claims that the book was stolen from his home. The book was purchased by Cahill at a Bonhams auction in 2010 (lot description) for $61,000. The FBI reportedly investigated the case in 2012 but closed the case last month.
- Over on the Queens' Old Library Books Blog, a post by Lindsey Askin on Roger Ascham's marginalia.
- Erin Blake highlights a neat new Folger acquisition, one of ten theater "super-scrapbooks" that got away at the original sale, when the Folgers' agent bought the other nine.
- Newly-digitized at Houghton Library, a fascinating 1620s "gospel harmony," known as the Little Gidding Harmony.
- From the T Magazine blog, a profile of the very cool Monkey's Paw bookshop in Toronto (definitely on my list of places to visit someday!).
- In Slate, Matt Kirschenbaum offers a new preview of his forthcoming book Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing.
- Mark Hartsell guest-blogs on the LOC blog about scholars using Thomas Jefferson's books in the reading room.
- A lawsuit was filed this week by a Sherlock Holmes scholar, alleging that the detective is in the public domain and that the estate should not be able to continue to collect licensing fees.
- LATimes book critic David Ulin's essay "The weight of books" makes for essential reading for those of us with, um, many books.
- Over at the Religion in American History blog, Michael Altman offers up "Reading About the 'Hindoos' with John Adams," where he muses about John Adams' marginalia in Priestley's A Comparison of the Institutes of Moses with that of the Hindoos and Other Ancient Nations (scanned here).
- Via the Princeton Rare Books blog, a new study of the Kelmscott Chaucer copies at Princeton, by Robert J. Milevski.
- It was difficult to miss that photo of cat prints on a manuscript document which made the rounds recently. Emir O. Filipović, who took the original image, wrote about the experience over at The Appendix.
Reviews
- Susan Jacoby's The Great Agnostic; review by Jennifer Michael Hect in the NYTimes.
- Sandra Day O'Connor's Out of Order; review by Joan Biskupic in the WaPo.
- David D. Hall's Cultures of Print; review by David Gary at Function Follows Forme.
- Ernest Freeberg's Age of Edison; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.
- Andrew Pettegree's The Book in the Renaissance; review by David Gary at Function Follows Forme.
- Jonathon Keats' Forged; review by Catherine Schofield Sezgin at the ARCA blog.
- Jim Crace's Harvest; review by Philip Womack in The Telegraph.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Ruminations, Links, & Reviews
I've just now realized that with all the hustle and bustle of the Boston Book Fair last weekend that I didn't manage to get links & reviews posted then, so I'm way behind (hence, this will be a long post).
First, a few thoughts on this year's Boston Book Weekend. The Book Fair seemed as well attended as any over the past few years, with a steady, diverse crowd throughout the weekend and what seemed to be a good deal of buying going on. As always, it was great fun to walk the aisles and chat with dealers about their new and exciting books, and to have a chance to catch up with old friends and make some new ones, too. The "shadow show" on Saturday was also well attended, with a good selection of dealers and an impressive variety of material up for grabs.
Now that the fair, the Thanksgiving holiday, and a couple big writing deadlines are behind me, I should be able to get back to a more regular posting schedule here, with any luck at all. Fingers crossed.
- The Hartford Courant reports that the first batch of items stolen from the Connecticut Historical Society by Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff have been returned. In related news, Savedoff was sentenced recently to a year in prison. I've heard that other institutions have also begun taking receipt of their recovered materials as well.
- Todd Andrlik's new book Reporting the Revolutionary War is profiled in the WSJ.
- In the November issue of College & Research Libraries there's an article by Todd Samuelson, Laura Sare, and Catherine Coker, "Unusual Suspects: The Case of Insider Theft in Research Libraries and Special Collections." Worth reading, though some of the methodology seems a bit odd.
- The British Library announced this week that they're making more than 35,000 digital images from their illuminated manuscripts collection available under a public domain mark.
- The only known extant presentation copy of Emma will be on the block at Sotheby's on 12 December. This copy, inscribed to Austen's friend Anne Sharp, was last sold in March 2010 to a British collector for £325,000 (after being purchased at Bonhams in 2008 for £180,000). Sotheby's has placed a £150,000-200,000 estimate on the book this time.
- Over at The Little Professor, Miriam Burstein comments on how she's found herself using e-books. I nodded along as I read, because on just about every point I feel the same way. And in the Washington Post, Ron Charles reflects on his first attempt to write a book review after having read the book solely on his Kindle. Over at Slate, Andrew Piper offers up his thoughts on reading as physical experience.
- The Appendix blog has launched, and as expected it's already filling up with some fascinating posts. Read them all here.
- A couple recent articles on some neat cryptographic breakthroughs make for interesting reading: the first was in the 24 October New York Times, and the second in Wired on 16 November.
- Now available in public beta, juxta commons, an online collation tool. I got to work with this a bit over the summer at UVA, and it's really quite fascinating to use.
- A private collector of Revolutionary-era materials was the winning bidder on all 27 lots of material from the Muhlenberg family at Freeman's auction house on 16 November, so the collection will be kept intact.
- Karin Wulf has been named the next director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.
- Not too long after news broke that he'd been hired at the bookstore of the New York State Military Museum, Daniel Lorello (convicted of thefts from the State Archives) was fired.
- The DPLA has posted some "Key Takeaways" from an October meeting in Chicago.
- David Wagner summarizes the continuing dustup over Henry Weincek's new book about Jefferson, Master of the Mountain.
- Evolutionary biologist Blair Hedges is back at the books again: this time he's analyzed wormholes in woodblock illustrations to explore historical distribution of wood-boring beetle species.
Reviews
- John A. Jenkins' The Partisan; review by Adam Cohen in the NYTimes.
- Amy Greenberg's A Wicked War; review by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
- Michael Slater's The Great Charles Dickens Scandal; review by Simon Callow in The Guardian.
- Daniel Swift's Shakespeare's Common Prayers; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Sheila Hale's Titian; review by Nicholas Delbanco in the LATimes.
- Philip Gura's The American Antiquarian Society, 1812-2012; review by Michael Ryan in C&RL.
- Robert Sullivan's My American Revolution; review by Sam Roberts in the NYTimes. I picked this one up in a bookstore a while back, thinking it might be interesting, but put it back on the shelf immediately when I got page 7, where Sullivan calls Boston's Freedom Trail the "Liberty Trail." Shudder.
First, a few thoughts on this year's Boston Book Weekend. The Book Fair seemed as well attended as any over the past few years, with a steady, diverse crowd throughout the weekend and what seemed to be a good deal of buying going on. As always, it was great fun to walk the aisles and chat with dealers about their new and exciting books, and to have a chance to catch up with old friends and make some new ones, too. The "shadow show" on Saturday was also well attended, with a good selection of dealers and an impressive variety of material up for grabs.
Now that the fair, the Thanksgiving holiday, and a couple big writing deadlines are behind me, I should be able to get back to a more regular posting schedule here, with any luck at all. Fingers crossed.
- The Hartford Courant reports that the first batch of items stolen from the Connecticut Historical Society by Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff have been returned. In related news, Savedoff was sentenced recently to a year in prison. I've heard that other institutions have also begun taking receipt of their recovered materials as well.
- Todd Andrlik's new book Reporting the Revolutionary War is profiled in the WSJ.
- In the November issue of College & Research Libraries there's an article by Todd Samuelson, Laura Sare, and Catherine Coker, "Unusual Suspects: The Case of Insider Theft in Research Libraries and Special Collections." Worth reading, though some of the methodology seems a bit odd.
- The British Library announced this week that they're making more than 35,000 digital images from their illuminated manuscripts collection available under a public domain mark.
- The only known extant presentation copy of Emma will be on the block at Sotheby's on 12 December. This copy, inscribed to Austen's friend Anne Sharp, was last sold in March 2010 to a British collector for £325,000 (after being purchased at Bonhams in 2008 for £180,000). Sotheby's has placed a £150,000-200,000 estimate on the book this time.
- Over at The Little Professor, Miriam Burstein comments on how she's found herself using e-books. I nodded along as I read, because on just about every point I feel the same way. And in the Washington Post, Ron Charles reflects on his first attempt to write a book review after having read the book solely on his Kindle. Over at Slate, Andrew Piper offers up his thoughts on reading as physical experience.
- The Appendix blog has launched, and as expected it's already filling up with some fascinating posts. Read them all here.
- A couple recent articles on some neat cryptographic breakthroughs make for interesting reading: the first was in the 24 October New York Times, and the second in Wired on 16 November.
- Now available in public beta, juxta commons, an online collation tool. I got to work with this a bit over the summer at UVA, and it's really quite fascinating to use.
- A private collector of Revolutionary-era materials was the winning bidder on all 27 lots of material from the Muhlenberg family at Freeman's auction house on 16 November, so the collection will be kept intact.
- Karin Wulf has been named the next director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.
- Not too long after news broke that he'd been hired at the bookstore of the New York State Military Museum, Daniel Lorello (convicted of thefts from the State Archives) was fired.
- The DPLA has posted some "Key Takeaways" from an October meeting in Chicago.
- David Wagner summarizes the continuing dustup over Henry Weincek's new book about Jefferson, Master of the Mountain.
- Evolutionary biologist Blair Hedges is back at the books again: this time he's analyzed wormholes in woodblock illustrations to explore historical distribution of wood-boring beetle species.
Reviews
- John A. Jenkins' The Partisan; review by Adam Cohen in the NYTimes.
- Amy Greenberg's A Wicked War; review by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
- Michael Slater's The Great Charles Dickens Scandal; review by Simon Callow in The Guardian.
- Daniel Swift's Shakespeare's Common Prayers; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Sheila Hale's Titian; review by Nicholas Delbanco in the LATimes.
- Philip Gura's The American Antiquarian Society, 1812-2012; review by Michael Ryan in C&RL.
- Robert Sullivan's My American Revolution; review by Sam Roberts in the NYTimes. I picked this one up in a bookstore a while back, thinking it might be interesting, but put it back on the shelf immediately when I got page 7, where Sullivan calls Boston's Freedom Trail the "Liberty Trail." Shudder.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Links & Reviews
- New from WMQ, an article by Wilson Kimnach and Kenneth Minkema on Jonathan Edwards' study, and an online exhibit to accompany it. And yes, I do want one of those lazy susan reading tables.
- ILAB has posted a great interview with their new president, Tom Congalton. Read the whole thing.
- Rare Book School's 2013 schedule is up!
- "60 Minutes" ran a segment on the Barry Landau thefts recently. Travis McDade posted on the OUP blog about a specific aspect of the report: the custom-made suit jackets Landau used to smuggled documents out of libraries (part of a long tradition of such things, as he notes).
- Peter Harrington announced this week that the presentation copy of Frankenstein to Lord Byron has been sold to a UK collector for an undisclosed sum, with the understanding that the book will be made available for future exhibitions and viewings.
- Telegraph reporter Leah Hyslop talked to the owner of Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company
- The ABA has responded to the conviction of serial forger Allan Formhalls, noting that an online guide to Formahalls' forgeries is planned.
- From the ABAA Security blog, a report of significant thefts from the Samuel May, Jr. library at Becker College.
- Robin Sloan talked to The Millions this week about his new book, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (which I'm reading at the moment, and enjoying immensely).
- Rare book dealer John Fior purchased an Alice in Wonderland themed chess board in 2011; turns out the board was illustrated by John Tenniel himself. Now 150 exact replicas of the board have been made: they'll sell for £3,500 apiece.
- The transcript of the Supreme Court argument in the recent copyright case Kirtsaeng v. Wiley is now available [PDF].
- Over at The Collation, Heather Wolfe profiles a remarkable compilation volume from the Folger's collections.
- Mark Davies at BYU has built a really useful interface for Google Books corpus searching.
- Garrett Scott at Bibliophagist highlights some books "written" from beyond the grave.
- An excerpt from Ian Sansom's new book Paper: An Elegy appeared in the Guardian on Friday.
- Mark Grimsley posted this week on the uses and misuses of counterfactual history.
- Christine Frost has posted an overview of the Radcliffe Take Note conference. Jennifer Schuesller reported on the conference for the New York Times, too.
- The Morbid Anatomy Anthology kickstarter proposal, which I mentioned a couple weeks ago and was very happy to back, has better than tripled its goal, with almost a month left to go. Awesome news.
- From Notabilia, a nice example of 18th-century circulating library wrappers.
- A couple good new posts from Caleb Crain at Steamboats are Ruining Everything: "The Future of Books and Copyright" and "Those People Were a Kind of Solution."
Reviews
- Jill Lepore's The Story of America; review by Rachel Shteir at TNR.
- Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at Fine Books Blog.
- W. Jeffrey Bolster's The Mortal Sea; review by Michael Kenney in the Boston Globe.
- Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power; review by Joyce Appleby in the WaPo.
- ILAB has posted a great interview with their new president, Tom Congalton. Read the whole thing.
- Rare Book School's 2013 schedule is up!
- "60 Minutes" ran a segment on the Barry Landau thefts recently. Travis McDade posted on the OUP blog about a specific aspect of the report: the custom-made suit jackets Landau used to smuggled documents out of libraries (part of a long tradition of such things, as he notes).
- Peter Harrington announced this week that the presentation copy of Frankenstein to Lord Byron has been sold to a UK collector for an undisclosed sum, with the understanding that the book will be made available for future exhibitions and viewings.
- Telegraph reporter Leah Hyslop talked to the owner of Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company
- The ABA has responded to the conviction of serial forger Allan Formhalls, noting that an online guide to Formahalls' forgeries is planned.
- From the ABAA Security blog, a report of significant thefts from the Samuel May, Jr. library at Becker College.
- Robin Sloan talked to The Millions this week about his new book, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (which I'm reading at the moment, and enjoying immensely).
- Rare book dealer John Fior purchased an Alice in Wonderland themed chess board in 2011; turns out the board was illustrated by John Tenniel himself. Now 150 exact replicas of the board have been made: they'll sell for £3,500 apiece.
- The transcript of the Supreme Court argument in the recent copyright case Kirtsaeng v. Wiley is now available [PDF].
- Over at The Collation, Heather Wolfe profiles a remarkable compilation volume from the Folger's collections.
- Mark Davies at BYU has built a really useful interface for Google Books corpus searching.
- Garrett Scott at Bibliophagist highlights some books "written" from beyond the grave.
- An excerpt from Ian Sansom's new book Paper: An Elegy appeared in the Guardian on Friday.
- Mark Grimsley posted this week on the uses and misuses of counterfactual history.
- Christine Frost has posted an overview of the Radcliffe Take Note conference. Jennifer Schuesller reported on the conference for the New York Times, too.
- The Morbid Anatomy Anthology kickstarter proposal, which I mentioned a couple weeks ago and was very happy to back, has better than tripled its goal, with almost a month left to go. Awesome news.
- From Notabilia, a nice example of 18th-century circulating library wrappers.
- A couple good new posts from Caleb Crain at Steamboats are Ruining Everything: "The Future of Books and Copyright" and "Those People Were a Kind of Solution."
Reviews
- Jill Lepore's The Story of America; review by Rachel Shteir at TNR.
- Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at Fine Books Blog.
- W. Jeffrey Bolster's The Mortal Sea; review by Michael Kenney in the Boston Globe.
- Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power; review by Joyce Appleby in the WaPo.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Links & Reviews
- An incredibly cool discovery at the John Carter Brown Library: extensive marginal notations in a 1635 Mercator Atlas have been found to be those of John and Virginia Ferrar, and comprise an early version The reformed Virginian silk-worm (published in 1655). Read the full report, and check out some very good illustrations.
- If you missed it this week, be sure to read Jennifer Schuessler's report on Robin Sloan's recent visit to the Grolier Club. Sloan's new book Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is on my Hurricane Sandy reading list.
- The LA Public Library recently acquired a large collection of maps found in a cottage slated to be torn down. Kudos to the real estate agent who called the library rather than just pitching the collection into a dumpster.
- Nate Pedersen recently interviewed bookseller Garrett Scott for FB&C.
- eBay seller Allan Formhals was found guilty this week of eight counts of fraud, as well as two counts of possessing articles for use in fraud, for forging signatures in books he later sold (more than a hundred books he hadn't yet sold have been seized). Formhals will be sentenced on 21 December.
- Coming up on "60 Minutes" tonight, a segment on recent thefts from the National Archives, and the steps taken to investigate them.
- A new Kickstarter project (the first one I've backed, in fact) from Colin Dickey and the Morbid Anatomy Library has been launched: the end result will be a published volume of essays and artwork drawn from the Morbid Anatomy Presents series.
- The personal papers of Robert S. McNamara fetched more than $1 million at auction this week.
- Something of a surprise ruling in New York, where a panel of judges on the Supreme Court's Appellate Division ruled that auction houses must reveal the names of consignors. Christie's has joined the local auctioneer who was party to the original of the lawsuit in an appeal of the decision.
- From the BL, a look at some owls as portrayed in medieval manuscripts.
- In the FB&C "Bright Young Things" series, an interview with Jonathan Kearns of Adrian Harrington (and Bibliodeviancy)
- Simon Garfield, whose new book On the Map comes out soon, picks his top ten books with maps for The Guardian.
- Abby Lang has a very good post at the Rare Book Cataloging at Penn blog on a volume of manuscript and printed items related to book thief Guglielmo Libri.
- Rosalie Osman's short animated film "Bibliomania" has been making the rounds; it's well worth a watch. The main character is named Thomas Philips (and bears a passing resemblance to the original bibliomaniac Sir Thomas Phillipps himself).
- From the Washington Post, a look at the Government Printing Office as it transitions to the digital age.
- An interesting find at the Treasury Department: a previously-unknown transcript of the 1944 Bretton Woods conference was found there; additional copies were later determined to be at the National Archives and the library of the IMF.
- Lots of folks have highlighted a new report from Pew suggesting that people under 30 are "more likely than older adults to do reading of any sort ...". The findings are worth a look, but I wish they'd use some criterion other than having read a single book in the last year. See the CSM report for more.
- There's a fun excerpt from Joe Queenen's forthcoming One for the Books in the WSJ this week.
- The Roxburghe Club has announced the publication of a bicentennial history of the club, written by Nicolas Barker.
Reviews
- J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy; review by Amanda Foreman in the NYTimes.
- Timothy Egan's Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher; review by Deborah Solomon in the NYTimes.
- Kate Summerscale's Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace; review at The Little Professor.
- If you missed it this week, be sure to read Jennifer Schuessler's report on Robin Sloan's recent visit to the Grolier Club. Sloan's new book Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is on my Hurricane Sandy reading list.
- The LA Public Library recently acquired a large collection of maps found in a cottage slated to be torn down. Kudos to the real estate agent who called the library rather than just pitching the collection into a dumpster.
- Nate Pedersen recently interviewed bookseller Garrett Scott for FB&C.
- eBay seller Allan Formhals was found guilty this week of eight counts of fraud, as well as two counts of possessing articles for use in fraud, for forging signatures in books he later sold (more than a hundred books he hadn't yet sold have been seized). Formhals will be sentenced on 21 December.
- Coming up on "60 Minutes" tonight, a segment on recent thefts from the National Archives, and the steps taken to investigate them.
- A new Kickstarter project (the first one I've backed, in fact) from Colin Dickey and the Morbid Anatomy Library has been launched: the end result will be a published volume of essays and artwork drawn from the Morbid Anatomy Presents series.
- The personal papers of Robert S. McNamara fetched more than $1 million at auction this week.
- Something of a surprise ruling in New York, where a panel of judges on the Supreme Court's Appellate Division ruled that auction houses must reveal the names of consignors. Christie's has joined the local auctioneer who was party to the original of the lawsuit in an appeal of the decision.
- From the BL, a look at some owls as portrayed in medieval manuscripts.
- In the FB&C "Bright Young Things" series, an interview with Jonathan Kearns of Adrian Harrington (and Bibliodeviancy)
- Simon Garfield, whose new book On the Map comes out soon, picks his top ten books with maps for The Guardian.
- Abby Lang has a very good post at the Rare Book Cataloging at Penn blog on a volume of manuscript and printed items related to book thief Guglielmo Libri.
- Rosalie Osman's short animated film "Bibliomania" has been making the rounds; it's well worth a watch. The main character is named Thomas Philips (and bears a passing resemblance to the original bibliomaniac Sir Thomas Phillipps himself).
- From the Washington Post, a look at the Government Printing Office as it transitions to the digital age.
- An interesting find at the Treasury Department: a previously-unknown transcript of the 1944 Bretton Woods conference was found there; additional copies were later determined to be at the National Archives and the library of the IMF.
- Lots of folks have highlighted a new report from Pew suggesting that people under 30 are "more likely than older adults to do reading of any sort ...". The findings are worth a look, but I wish they'd use some criterion other than having read a single book in the last year. See the CSM report for more.
- There's a fun excerpt from Joe Queenen's forthcoming One for the Books in the WSJ this week.
- The Roxburghe Club has announced the publication of a bicentennial history of the club, written by Nicolas Barker.
Reviews
- J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy; review by Amanda Foreman in the NYTimes.
- Timothy Egan's Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher; review by Deborah Solomon in the NYTimes.
- Kate Summerscale's Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace; review at The Little Professor.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Links & Reviews
- The big news this week comes out of Georgia, with an announcement that as of 1 November, the Georgia Archives will be closed to the public, open by appointment only. Georgia's Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, said in a statement "To my knowledge, Georgia will be the only state in the country that will not have a central location in which the public can visit to research and review the historical records of their government and state. The staff that currently works to catalog, restore, and provide reference to the state of Georgia’s permanent historical records will be reduced. The employees that will be let go through this process are assets to the state of Georgia and will be missed." Kemp has said he will urge the legislature to restore funding for the Archives in a January session.
Joe Adelman has posted at Publick Occurrences about what this closure will mean for researchers. More than 8,000 people have already signed a petition opposing the closure of the Archives. Jackie Dooley reports at Off the Record that the SAA is planning an official response to the announcement.
- As promised, more on that incredible copy of Frankenstein inscribed to Lord Byron from Peter Harrington, including a video.
- Paul Tankard writes in the TLS about Mary Fairburn's illustrations for The Lord of the Rings.
- A rare, 40-volume Song dynasty encyclopedia is currently on display at the Taipei Book Fair. A Chinese publishing house recently purchased the text for $33 million.
- Elvis Presley's Bible sold for £59,000 this week at Omega Auctions in Cheshire. The buyer has been described as an American man based in Britain.
- More than fifty documents stolen from the University of Vermont's Special Collections by convicted archives thief Barry Landau were returned this week.
- Nicholson Baker is the subject of this weekend's NYTimes "By the Book" interview.
- In Lapham's Quarterly, Michael Dirda's "Beyond the Fields We Know" is an enjoyable reminder of early 20th-century ghost stories, and calls on readers to "honor the marvelous as well as the matter of fact! It is time we paid more attention to metaphysical fiction, whether labeled fantasy, supernatural thriller, or spiritual psychodrama."
- Staff at Cardiff University highlight their copy of Hooke's Micrographia (with images).
- Goran Proot teaches us how to take bibliographic fingerprints in a Collation post.
- Houghton Library notes the acquisition of an inscribed copy of Roger E. Stoddard's new bibliography, A Bibliographical Description of Books and Pamphlets of American Verse Printed from 1610 to 1820.
- Over at ArchBook, a look at "Swift's Parodic Paratexts." [h/t John Overholt]
Reviews
- Walter Stahr's Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man; review by Michael Burlingame in the WSJ.
- Jeff Greenfield's forthcoming e-book When Gore Beat Bush; review by Barton Swaim in the WSJ.
Joe Adelman has posted at Publick Occurrences about what this closure will mean for researchers. More than 8,000 people have already signed a petition opposing the closure of the Archives. Jackie Dooley reports at Off the Record that the SAA is planning an official response to the announcement.
- As promised, more on that incredible copy of Frankenstein inscribed to Lord Byron from Peter Harrington, including a video.
- Paul Tankard writes in the TLS about Mary Fairburn's illustrations for The Lord of the Rings.
- A rare, 40-volume Song dynasty encyclopedia is currently on display at the Taipei Book Fair. A Chinese publishing house recently purchased the text for $33 million.
- Elvis Presley's Bible sold for £59,000 this week at Omega Auctions in Cheshire. The buyer has been described as an American man based in Britain.
- More than fifty documents stolen from the University of Vermont's Special Collections by convicted archives thief Barry Landau were returned this week.
- Nicholson Baker is the subject of this weekend's NYTimes "By the Book" interview.
- In Lapham's Quarterly, Michael Dirda's "Beyond the Fields We Know" is an enjoyable reminder of early 20th-century ghost stories, and calls on readers to "honor the marvelous as well as the matter of fact! It is time we paid more attention to metaphysical fiction, whether labeled fantasy, supernatural thriller, or spiritual psychodrama."
- Staff at Cardiff University highlight their copy of Hooke's Micrographia (with images).
- Goran Proot teaches us how to take bibliographic fingerprints in a Collation post.
- Houghton Library notes the acquisition of an inscribed copy of Roger E. Stoddard's new bibliography, A Bibliographical Description of Books and Pamphlets of American Verse Printed from 1610 to 1820.
- Over at ArchBook, a look at "Swift's Parodic Paratexts." [h/t John Overholt]
Reviews
- Walter Stahr's Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man; review by Michael Burlingame in the WSJ.
- Jeff Greenfield's forthcoming e-book When Gore Beat Bush; review by Barton Swaim in the WSJ.
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Links & Reviews
- As we prepare for another Rare Book School week (thankfully with restored electricity!), a look back at the last session: Erin Blake, who took John Bidwell and Tim Barrett's History of European and American Papermaking class, reflects on her experiences in a post for The Collation.
- Document thief Barry Landau was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and was ordered to pay more than $46,000 in restitution. The judge also ordered Landau to keep out of "all archives and libraries" when he's released. No sentencing date has been set for Jason Savedoff, Landau's accomplice, who has also entered a guilty plea in relation to the thefts. New evidence has emerged recently of additional Landau thefts, including from the home of former Bill Clinton secretary Betty Currie. Kudos to the Baltimore Sun for their very good reporting throughout this case. More coverage here.
- Travis McDade weighed in on the Landau sentence in an OUP blog post, noting the details of Landau's sentence and the charges he'd faced, and reflecting on a full decade of archives thefts.
- Jerry Morris offers us a virtual tour of his collection of Mary Hyde-related material.
- From Julian Barnes, "My Life as a Bibliophile."
- A large collection of Robert Louis Stevenson material has been donated to the National Library of Scotland and Napier University in Edinburgh.
- An atlas stolen from the Swedish Royal Library has been recovered in New York, having been purchased by Graham Arader from Sotheby's in 2003.
- The second issue of the Journal of Digital Humanities is up!
- Two books from George III's library have been reported missing from the British Library.
- The July AE Monthly is out, and includes some must-read pieces, including Susan Halas on another round of library deaccessioning and Bruce McKinney on the George Washington book sold at auction recently.
- From J.L. Bell at Boston1775, "Buying George Washington's Books."
- The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe database is now live. More here.
- Another don't-miss post this week is Brooke Palmieri's 8vo post "An Introduction to Paper Computers."
Reviews
- Callum Roberts' The Ocean of Life; review by Mark Kurlansky in the Washington Post.
- Document thief Barry Landau was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and was ordered to pay more than $46,000 in restitution. The judge also ordered Landau to keep out of "all archives and libraries" when he's released. No sentencing date has been set for Jason Savedoff, Landau's accomplice, who has also entered a guilty plea in relation to the thefts. New evidence has emerged recently of additional Landau thefts, including from the home of former Bill Clinton secretary Betty Currie. Kudos to the Baltimore Sun for their very good reporting throughout this case. More coverage here.
- Travis McDade weighed in on the Landau sentence in an OUP blog post, noting the details of Landau's sentence and the charges he'd faced, and reflecting on a full decade of archives thefts.
- Jerry Morris offers us a virtual tour of his collection of Mary Hyde-related material.
- From Julian Barnes, "My Life as a Bibliophile."
- A large collection of Robert Louis Stevenson material has been donated to the National Library of Scotland and Napier University in Edinburgh.
- An atlas stolen from the Swedish Royal Library has been recovered in New York, having been purchased by Graham Arader from Sotheby's in 2003.
- The second issue of the Journal of Digital Humanities is up!
- Two books from George III's library have been reported missing from the British Library.
- The July AE Monthly is out, and includes some must-read pieces, including Susan Halas on another round of library deaccessioning and Bruce McKinney on the George Washington book sold at auction recently.
- From J.L. Bell at Boston1775, "Buying George Washington's Books."
- The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe database is now live. More here.
- Another don't-miss post this week is Brooke Palmieri's 8vo post "An Introduction to Paper Computers."
Reviews
- Callum Roberts' The Ocean of Life; review by Mark Kurlansky in the Washington Post.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Links & Reviews
- From the Baltimore Sun, which has been doing an exemplary job of covering the Barry Landau theft case, word that NARA investigators now believe Landau sold more stolen documents, and that they're now working with dealers to recover the materials. Paul Brachfeld, the NARA IG, told the paper that he expects new evidence against Landau to be introduced at Landau's sentencing hearing in May.
- A major acquisition for the Beinecke Library, announced this week: Yale will be the new home of the Thomas Thistlewood papers, more than 90 volumes of diaries and notebooks kept by Thistlewood about his Jamaica plantation, his reading, and his personal life.
- Garrett Scott recounts a recent book-scouting trip through the South, at Bibliophagist.
- Bethany Nowviskie has posted the text of her code4lib keynote, "Lazy Consensus."
- An English Civil War broadside "wanted poster" for the man later crowned as Charles II was sold at auction last week for £33,000; the auction house had estimated it at just £750-£1,000.
- Several folks passed along "keep reading and carry a towel," from the xoom blog. Well worth a read.
- Houghton Library has acquired one of just three known copies of Thomas Spence's 1775 work The Grand Repository of the English Language, and this one has notable provenance: it bears the ownership notations of a British officer stationed at Fort George (ME) during the later years of the Revolutionary War.
- In the Chronicle this week, Jennifer Howard reported that Google seems to be scaling back scanning at libraries, though it's not entirely clear whether this means anything other than that they've picked the low-hanging fruit at those institutions.
- Rick Ring notes a very cool new acquisition at Trinity: a copy of Thomas Nuttall's Manual of Ornithology, with notes and annotations by Philadelphia naturalist Vincent Barnard. This reminds me of the copy of Bewick's Birds I saw for sale once which had been used as a field guide (and which I'm still regretting that I didn't buy).
- Writing at the Morgan Library blog, Carolyn Vega reveals how librarians there worked to date a Sir Philip Sidney letter to Christopher Plantin based in part on the books he mentions.
- In the new Humanities magazine, Meredith Hindley writes about Gouverneur Morris' European travels in the 1790s.
- Author T.C. Boyle's papers have been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center.
- From Houghton's "You've Got Mail" series, a letter from Harry Elkins Widener from March 1912 to his friend Luther Livingston. In the letter Widener reports that he'll be returning to America on the Titanic, and reports on his book-collecting activities.
- The "Bright Young Things" series at the Fine Books Blog continues: Nate Pedersen interviews Kara McLaughlin of Little Sages this week.
Reviews
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Links & Reviews
- AP reported this week that Barry Landau may change his plea to guilty at a re-arraignment hearing on Tuesday.
- Over at the ABAA blog, they've posted the video of Michael Dirda's recent talk at the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest awards reception, "The Serendipitous Pleasures of Book Collecting."
- In the Guardian, a report on new efforts to once and for all identify the perpetrators of the infamous Piltdown hoax.
- The "You've Got Mail" feature from Houghton this week is a René Descartes letter to Marin Mersenne.
- From the Collation this week, a newly-identified Margaret Cavendish presentation copy.
- Another of the ABAA's bookseller interviews is up, this one with Bob Fleck of Oak Knoll Books.
- At Typefoundry, a new look at Jean Jannon's types.
- William Hale of the Incunabula Project posts some unidentified provenance marks from early books: can you help?
Reviews
- Toby Lester's Da Vinci's Ghost; review by Jonathan Lopez in the NYTimes.
- Cullen Murphy's God's Jury; review by Noel Malcolm in the Telegraph.
- Three recent "Downton Abbey"-related books, reviewed by Judith Newman in the NYTimes.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Links & Reviews
- 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.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Links & Reviews
- 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.
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