Links & Auctions

And I thought things were looking weird last week ... gosh. As you can, please support your local independent, used, and antiquarian booksellers in any way that they need it right now (check their websites and social media for details). Support your local public and academic libraries by strongly encouraging them (if they haven't already) to close for now and carry on their missions remotely. Trust me, there is plenty we librarians can be doing, even without being in close proximity to the books in our collections.

Speaking of which, I should have thought of this sooner, too, but if it's even the tiniest bit of help to anyone (student, teacher, professor, librarian, bookseller), the list of my library is online, and if I have a book that you need to consult for reference, need a citation from, &c., just say the word and I'll be happy to get you whatever information would be useful.

- Several exhibitors at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair (all known to many of us) have tested positive for COVID-19, according to messages sent via the ABAA and ILAB this week. Please be aware of this in case it is relevant to your personal situation, and I know all readers of this blog join me in wishing our friends a speedy recovery.

- The BSA is offering the first in a series of free webinars this week, and are calling for volunteers to help with future installments and/or to assist with other timely programming.

- From my dear friends at LibraryThing, who've been working at home for years, "Work From Home Like LibraryThing Does."

- Many university presses are offering sales on books they were planning to exhibit at conferences this spring and summer; I'm sure there are others, but here are the relevant pages for JHUP and UVA Press.

- Over on the N-YHS blog, "Martha Lamb: New-York Historical Society Pioneer."

- Rebecca Rego Barry writes for CrimeReads: "Carolyn Wells, in the Library, with a Revolver." Rebecca also has a post on the FB&C blog about "Saving the Baskerville Bible."

- From Kyle Clark for the Beyond the Reading Room blog, "Unveiling the Mystery inside a Greek Manuscript Binding."

- The Culture Minister for Wales has placed a temporary export bar on a 15th-century Lewis of Caerleon manuscript to allow a UK buyer to raise the £300,000 required to keep it in the UK.

- Megan Cook and others have been crowd-compiling a spreadsheet of Digital Repositories for Book History Teaching.

- At Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, "A Dispersed Album of Illuminated Cuttings."

- A number of NYC-based philanthropic organizations have formed the "NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund to support New York City-based social services and arts and cultural organizations that have been affected by the current coronavirus public health crisis."

- More on the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments fakery from the Guardian.

- From Elizabeth DeBold and Heather Wolfe at The Collation, "A Wyncoll's Tale."

- Over on the Princeton Graphic Arts Collection blog, "Need a Project, no. 2? Chromolithography." They've also pulled together a collection of links of "Online Content for Printing History and Art History."

- More useful online resources from the Folger, too.

Upcoming Auctions

- Rare Books, Manuscripts & Relics, Forbes Collection Part I, Kerouac Estate Part II at University Archives on 25 March.

- The Birmingham Assay Office Library at Forum Auctions on 26 March.

- Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper at Forum Auctions on 27 March.

- Rare Books, Manuscripts & Ephemera at Addison & Sarova on 28 March.


Courage, friends. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Links & Reviews

Back, after a wonderful trip to Scotland and Iceland followed immediately by a move. I'm taking a break from unpacking (so, so much unpacking) to get caught up here, though I'm sure there are many things I completely lost track of while I was gone. Feel free to let me know what I missed!

- Next Friday and Saturday (6–7 April) will be the Virginia Antiquarian Book Fair, in Richmond. Do visit if you can!

- One of the bookshops I visited in Edinburgh, Golden Hare Books, is featured in the Guardian's "Browse a bookshop" column.

- Pittsburgh-area police are investigating thefts from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and request any assistance. See a PDF list of some items believed stolen. More from Michael Stillman for Rare Books Monthly and from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

- Video of the panel discussion at the New York Book Fair on women and collecting is now available via the ABAA blog.

- Quite a garage find, highlighted in the Fine Books Blog.

- From Francis Morrone in The Hopkins Review, "Bookshop Memories."

- Over at Reading Copy, an interview with Heather O'Donnell and Rebecca Romney. As a reminder, the second Honey & Wax Book Collecting Contest (open to women collectors under 30) is now accepting applications!

- The National Library of New Zealand has received a collection of twenty important books printed between 1472 and 1512.

- From the Princeton Graphic Arts collection blog, "How much did a wood engraving cost in 1862?"

- The Library of Congress is running a webinar series highlighting the Mesoamerican manuscripts in their collections.

- A bookseller has been convicted of stealing a signed copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from Hatchards in December. He was recognized by staff since he had sold items to the shop in the past.

- The University of Edinburgh has acquired a much-annotated copy of Ben Jonson's works, after the UK government instituted an export ban.

- From the University of Rochester, "The myth—and memorabilia—of Seward's Folly."

- Blake Morrison asks in the Guardian, "should an author's dying wishes be obeyed?"

- From the BL's Medieval Manuscripts blog, "Cracking a medieval code."

- At The Binder's Ticket, "Bookplates or book labels?"

- Daniel Richter posts for the Huntington Library blog on "John Ogilby's English Restoration Fantasy."

- A bit on Isaiah Thomas' library (now on LibraryThing) from yours truly as Past is Present.

- Isabel Planton is featured in the FB&C "Bright Young Librarians" series. Ditto Rebecca Baumann.

- Katarzyna Lecky writes for The Collation on "The Strange and Practical Beauty of Small-Format Herbals."

- Rich Rennicks has posted a number of links to coverage of this year's New York Antiquarian Book Fair. The NYTimes focused on fashion.

- Rebecca Romney covers book curses for Mental Floss.

- Kurt Zimmerman notes the publication of John R. Payne's Great Catalogues by Master Booksellers.

- The Guardian reported on the sale of various Sylvia Plath items at Bonhams last month. Peter Steinberg has a full rundown of the auction, and some additional analysis.

- The April Rare Book Monthly includes Bruce McKinney's "Enigma, Seeking a Eureka," about a tantalizing French manuscript (do help with that if you can!).

- At Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, another fascinating provenance hunt, this time with some cuttings from the collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

- From Adam Schachter, "Adventures of an Absent-Minded Treasure Hunter."

- The Guardian highlights some of the great Tolkien material on show as part of the major Bodleian exhibition.

- I missed the Clements Library post about "Battle Estrays" in February, so I'm grateful to J.L. Bell for noting it as he digs into one of the examples cited.

Reviews

- Lucy Mangan's Bookworm; review by Kathryn Hughes in the Guardian.

- Julia Miller's Meeting by Accident; review by Barbara Adams Hebard for BookArtsWeb.

- Jo Nesbø's Hogarth Shakespeare Macbeth; review by Alexander Larman in the Guardian.

- Daniel Kalder's The Infernal Library; review by Ernest Hilbert is in the WaPo.

Upcoming Auctions

- Antique Scientific Instruments, Globes and Cameras at Dorotheum on 4 April.

- Fine & Rare Books at PBA Galleries on 5 April.

- Entertainment Memorabilia at Potter & Potter on 7 April.

Big News!

Links and reviews for this week are coming soon, but before I get to that, I have some exciting personal news to share: as of 1 September, I'm headed down to Charlottesville, VA to take up a new position as Director of Communications and Outreach at Rare Book School. I am impatient to get there and embrace the opportunities and challenges that await, and thrilled to be joining Charlottesville's vibrant biblio-community. I've loved spending the summers there for the last few years, and I'm looking forward to being there year-round and helping to further the mission of RBS.

It's all happened fairly quickly: this week I finalized arrangements for an apartment, and at the moment I'm spending most of my time boxing up my books in preparation for the big move. I've filled 70 of U-Haul's "book boxes" (12"x12"x12") so far, with lots more books to go. Wish me luck!

All this means that there's a job opening at LibraryThing, and I'd certainly encourage interested readers to apply if you like. It's a very fun company to work for and to be involved with, and while I will be switching roles, I will certainly continue to be an active LibraryThing member as well as the coordinator of the Legacy Libraries project there (I think I'll probably have rather more time to devote to those things again, in fact).

So, that's the news from here. More updates from the packing/moving front as warranted.

Big News!

Some exciting personal news before I head off for holiday travels (wish us clear roads, please!): as of 3 January I'll be starting work at LibraryThing, working on a whole range of great projects, including the Early Reviewers program, State of the Thing, LibraryThing for Publishers, LibraryThing for Authors, the LT Facebook and Twitter feeds, and everything else involving member projects and outreach, as Tim notes in the announcement. I'll also continue to manage the Legacy Libraries and Libraries of Early America projects, and will be working to coordinate with the rare book/special collections community on new features and other ways we can work together (so if anybody has any thoughts, please don't hesitate to let me know!)

I'm very much looking forward to the new opportunities and challenges, and am excited to get started there in 2011. If you'll be at ALA Midwinter, make sure to stop by the LT booth and say hi!

Links & Reviews

- Rob LoPresti, the librarian-hero of the James Brubaker case, talks about his role in the investigation with the Western Front.

- Amherst College president Anthony Marx has been named the new president of the New York Public Library.

- In the WSJ, Allison Hoover Bartlett offers up her choices for the five best books about book collecting.

- An audio interview with Michael Winship about collecting books published by Ticknor and Fields.

- Robert Darnton has a short essay up at NYRB, "A Library Without Walls" (about the creation of a National Digital Library). It's a good piece, as Darnton's tend to be - I hope it actually starts something!

- Via John Overholt, excellent news that the sale catalog of (part of) Boswell's library has been digitized.

- From Sarah at Wynken de Worde, more thoughts on reading e-books.

- Over at Lux Mentis, Ian's got a video tour of his booth at the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair for those of us not lucky enough to be in attendance.

- A look at a huge (~24,000 items) collection of bookseller labels. Very neat.

- Michael Russem passes along a fascinating video that made the rounds last week: "How Ink is Made."

Reviews

- David Wootton's Galileo; review by Manjit Kumar in the Telegraph.

- Simon Winchester's Atlantic; review by Philip Hoare in the Telegraph.

- Bill Bryson's At Home; review by Dominique Browning in the NYTimes.

- Several new books on the Tea Party, including those by Kate Zernike and Jill Lepore; review by Alan Brinkley in the NYTimes.

The State of Things

There look to be a whole slew of interesting auctions coming up in late October-early November, so I'll be working up a preview post for those this weekend (making this a preview-preview, I guess).

In the meantime, some updates:

I'm continuing to add to the Signers of the Declaration of Independence wiki as new source material is found; this week I've updated the North Carolina delegates based on copies of their wills, and I've gotten some good leads on ways to get the probate files for the six delegates who died in Philadelphia (and whose probate files seem to be stuck in some sort of bureaucratic morass). Hopefully those leads will pan out and I'll have some new information on those shortly. About eighty titles from the library of one of those delegates, Francis Hopkinson, are at the University of Pennsylvania library, and I've been in touch with librarians there about additional materials on his book collection that might be extant.

On Monday I went down to Providence to look at the estate inventory of Stephen Hopkins in the City Archives. That was quite the experience, but when all was said and done the inventory contains a short list of books, which I'll be adding to LT shortly (hopefully today or over the weekend).

While I was in Providence I took the opportunity and visited the John Carter Brown Library, where I got to hold in my hands Richard Mather's copy of the Bay Psalm Book (online here) and a (thus-far unidentified) partial book containing shorthand annotations (and lots of them) by Roger Williams. They've also got an Internet Archive scanning station set up there, and are scanning a range of their printed books and manuscripts (including collections of imprints related to Haiti, Argentina, and Peru). I really like how their scans look, with full color and the actual page edges showing (example).

And of course I couldn't leave the city without visiting a bookstore, so I went to Cellar Stories and browsed around there (for not nearly as long as I would have liked). I'll have to go again and plan to spend half a day in their stacks, I think.

All those things, combined with making plans for the upcoming research trip to Bermuda and being hip-deep in the wonderfulness that is the second volume of the History of the Book in America are why things have been fairly quiet around here. Stay tuned for auction previews and hopefully more Signers news shortly.

Links & Reviews

- This coming Thursday, 29 September, the Ticknor Society will host author Katherine Wolff for a talk, "Boston's Early Bibliophiles and Their Athenaeum." Info here.

- From today's Globe, an interesting piece on slavery in the American north, including comments on several recent books.

- Houghton Library launched a new special collections request system this week.

- There's a new issue up of "Republics of Letters" (in fact it's been out for a while, but I just noticed. Sorry about that).

- A new blog from the ABAA. I've added a sidebar link.

- SHARP has started a LibraryThing account, where they'll be listing books of interest to members.

- Ron Chernow, writing in the Times, comments on the Tea Party's attempt to claim the imprimatur of the founding generation.

- Browse through the CUNY Digital Humanities Guide when you've got some time; there's some amazing stuff there.

- More than forty of Garth Williams' original illustrations for Charlotte's Web (including the image used for the cover) will be sold at Heritage Auction's 15 October sale.

- In today's Globe, an interview with John Hodgman - not surprisingly, much of it is about books.

- Google Books staffers want you to report books that come up in GBS searches that should be full-view, but aren't. And it actually looks like they're being fairly responsive. This probably would have been more useful several years ago, but maybe better late than never?

- The BBC's documentary on Raymond Scott will be aired in the US by Smithsonian Networks.

- Many headlines this week about a bawdy poem supposedly by John Milton - but, funnily enough, the actual scholars working on the project pretty much reject the idea that Milton had anything to do with it.

- Big news from Zotero this week as they officially announced Zotero Everywhere (which promises to be awesome).

- Oak Knoll Fest XVI: Celebrating the Book Arts, Artists' Books and Fine Press Printing will be held 1-3 October. Info here.

- The New England Archivists will meet on 5-6 November in Keene, NH (theme: Looking Inward/Looking Outward: Changing Roles and Expectations in Archival Settings). Info here.

Reviews

- Eric Jay Dolin's Fur, Fortune, and Empire; review by Kirk Davis Swinehart in the WaPo.

- Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life; review by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker.

Signers' Libraries Wiki

To keep track of my research into the libraries of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence I've put everything I've found so far into an LT wiki, with links to the libraries I've already added, plus the relevant bits from the wills/inventories of others (or various notes/&c.). As you'll see there are some hefty gaps, mainly because I've still got lots of stones to turn (ahem, the entire North Carolina delegation ...).

Today's additions were the notes on Arthur Middleton (with many thanks to the South Carolina Room at the Charleston County Public Library) and James Smith (definitely the Signer who wins the Most Generic Name award; many thanks to the York County PA probate court archivists for their assistance).

Any citations, suggestions, &c. welcome, of course!

CT/NH Signers' Libraries

I spent some more quality time with probate records this morning checking for the libraries of the Connecticut and New Hampshire Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Here's what I found:

Connecticut

- William Williams (Windham District Probate, 1811). No mention of books.

- Samuel Huntington (Norwich District Probate; Will dated 28 June 1794; Inventory dated 5 February 1796). Wills to his nephew Samuel "my library." Inventory contains listings for "5 Geographical Maps" - value £1; "Library" - value £120.

- Oliver Wolcott. No probate file recorded, so a few more stones to turn over for him.

- Roger Sherman (New Haven District Probate; Inventory dated 16 September 1793). Devotes almost two full pages to books, so this one will get the full LEA treatment soon.

New Hampshire

- Matthew Thornton (Hillsborough County Probate; Inventory dated 27 July 1803). Inventory lists "A number of books," valued at $20 (total value of inventory $12,269.57).

- William Whipple (Rockingham County Probate; Inventory dated 15 November 1786). Total inventory value £928/9/6. No mention of books.

- Josiah Bartlett (Rockingham County Probate; Will dated 25 February 1795). In his will, Bartlett writes "My printed books on law Physick & Surgery I give to my son Ezra, all my other printed books I order to be equally divided among all my Children that shall be living at my decease."

I definitely want to do a little more work on Wolcott and Bartlett to see if we can't suss out any more about their libraries, and I've got lots of work now to do on Sherman. Any further advices or thoughts (on any of these or others) are always appreciated, of course!

A Watchmaker-Polymath's Books

This morning I've finished adding books to the LibraryThing catalog of the books of Richard Cranch (1726-1811), the brother-in-law of John Adams (he was married to Abigail's sister Mary) and longtime friend of Robert Treat Paine (whose library I wrote about a couple weeks ago).

Cranch, born in Kingsbridge, Devonshire, moved to Massachusetts in 1746. He took up business as a card-maker, and later became one of the best-known watch repairmen in the Boston area. Cranch's interests varied widely (as you can see from the tag cloud for his books), extending far beyond horology and watch-making to encompass religious prophecy, the nature of the Antichrist, geography and navigation, history, languages (at least seven languages are represented in his collection) and classical literature

The library also reflects Cranch's interests in politics and government, in which he played an active role, serving two terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1779-1783) and a term in the State Senate (1785-1787). He held the office of Justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Suffolk County from 1779 through 1793, along with several local offices at various times. Cranch was also a delegate to the Massachusetts convention to ratify the federal constitution, where he supported ratification.

Cranch was a supporter of the Harvard library, and the college granted him an honorary M.A. degree in 1780, placing him with the class of 1744. He was a founding member of the Massachusetts Charitable Society, and the Massachusetts Society for Propogating the Gospel in North America (in its 1787 iteration). He sat as a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, but declined membership in the Massachusetts Historical Society (he did donate a book to the Society's library, where it remains).

Thanks to the recent discovery* of a detailed inventory of Cranch's library taken by his grandson Richard Cranch Norton in January 1812 (in the Jacob Norton Papers at MHS), we can nearly reconstruct how the books were housed by Cranch: in two seven-shelf bookcases, with folio and quarto volumes on the lower shelves and books of smaller formats above (but not in much discernible order otherwise). Richard Cranch Norton also noted in his list which books he wished to purchase, and which books his father, Rev. Jacob Norton, had in his possession.

Another body of books from Cranch's library (including many legal titles) was given to his son William in 1797 after William's books had been seized by creditors. And there are various titles scattered here and there (as usual). But I fully expect to be adding more, as they appear in correspondence or in institutional holdings.

Interestingly, when I first glanced through the inventory of Cranch's books, I got an immediate impression of similarity between it and Robert Treat Paine's. So I wasn't all that surprised to find that the two collections are, both in terms of weighted and raw entries, extremely similar (see the "Members With Your Books" box on the left sidebar).

And now, on to the next!

*By Robert Mussey, who is working on a biography of Cranch and his family. I owe him huge thanks for collaborating with me on this project, and for his continued discoveries of books mentioned in family correspondence and notes.

Mob-Legacy-Project Today

As our first monthly mob-catalog of a Legacy Library, we're tackling the 1905 collection of the U.S.S. California today (until noon on Thursday). Three hours in, we're up to about 730 books (not bad at all!). More info in Tim's post, and if you want to jump in and help, sign up here!

[Update, 4 March: Along with the California's library, members jumped in overnight and cataloged the collection of the H.M.S. Beagle too!]

Shepard Library Complete

With the addition of 41 titles from Princeton University last night (the ones which started the ball rolling thanks to the eagle-eye of Steve Ferguson), the Thomas Shepard Library in LibraryThing is complete to date (see this post for background on the project). We've currently identified 160 titles belonging to the Thomas Shepards, and we suspect there are still more out there. So keep an eye out for that "TS" stamp/brand on the top edge, and please let us know if you find any examples!

Links & Reviews

- The e-book price wars went nuclear this weekend as a feud between mega-publisher Macmillan and Amazon resulted in Amazon temporarily pulling all Macmillan titles. More at GalleyCat, and some excellent analysis of this from Caleb Crain.

- CNET takes a look at the iBooks program Apple debuted this week as part of the forthcoming iPad. I have to say I'm pretty pleased with what I've seen of this so far, and particularly keen on the fact that it uses the EPUB standard (which should allow, for example, scanned books from the Internet Archive and other digitization projects to be accessed easily). And via LISNews, NYT Tech-blog posts suggesting why the iPad will or won't kill the Kindle.

- Everyone and their brother's already mentioned this week that the "world's largest book" is going on display at the British Library, so I simply pass it along.

- Some acquisitions: the Macroom Library in Cork, Ireland has been given a signed first edition of Ulysses; the Huntington Library has purchased 35 Dickens letters from the collection of New York dealer Charles Apfelbaum and his wife. And the Yale Daily News profiles the university's acquisitions librarians.

- LibraryThing unveiled "Library Anywhere" this week - a mobile library catalog, complete with published prices.

- Paul Collins points out an article exploring the "Perpetual Loose-Leaf Encylopedia."

Book Reviews

- Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America: reviews by Tom Shippey in the TLS; by John Preston in the Telegraph.

- Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves: review by Judith Flanders in the Telegraph.

- Woody Holton's Abigail Adams: review by John J. Monaghan, Jr., in the Providence Journal.

- Seeing Further, edited by Bill Bryson: review by Lisa Jardine in the Independent.

- Adrian John's Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates: review by Caleb Crain in The National.

- Michael Kranish's Flight from Monticello: review by Robert K. Landers in the WSJ.

Shepard Library Updates

The latest on the Thomas Shepard book-sleuthing project:

- A third post from Steve Ferguson at Princeton giving the census as of 28 January (we've now identified more than 100 Shepard titles at various libraries, plus some other untraced ones). Steve also comments here on inscriptions and notational marks, text summaries inserted in the books, shorthand marks, and some other outstanding questions.

- A third post from me at The Beehive, outlining a new MHS find in an interleaved almanac used as a diary by Thomas Shepard III: a list of books received by him from the estate of his friend Daniel Russell, who died of smallpox in early 1678/9. Two of those books have now been located at Princeton.

- And I've begun a Thomas Shepard library catalog at LibraryThing as part of the Libraries of Early America series. That includes most of the books we know of so far, with the notable exception of the Princeton holdings (which will be added shortly). We're also set to track down another series of Shepard books (the exact number isn't clear yet) that are probably in the Thomas Prince collection now at the Boston Public Library. We know from the current Prince copy of one book that he had previously owned the Shepard copy but acquired a better one, and it seems that he owned at least one more as well (two other known Shepard books, one at MHS and one at AAS, are also signed by Prince).

LT Meetup in Boston on Saturday

If you're in town for ALA Midwinter this weekend, be sure to stop by the LibraryThing Meetup at the Green Dragon on Saturday, 5:30-8. Come talk books, libraries, Legacy Libraries - and have some food, too!

Alexander Hamilton's Library

I've just completed work on Alexander Hamilton's library in LibraryThing - it's now available here. This is one of the most tricky of the Libraries of Early America collections, for reasons I'll try to explain here.

So far as scholars have discovered, no catalog or inventory of Hamilton's library exists. In fact, the most complete document relating to his collection is a letter he sent to Richard Varick on 16 June 1795, requesting ten law books he had loaned and wanted back.

A collection of Hamilton books was deposited at Columbia University in 1955 by Alexander Hamilton III, and were donated to the university by his widow in 1973. Many of those books were probably in Alexander Hamilton's collection, but there is reason to believe that at least a portion of them were added after his death in 1804. Those books published prior to 1804 have been included in his LT library, with the vital caveat that there is a chance they may not have belonged to AH.

Beyond the Columbia collection, I scoured the twenty-seven volume set of The Papers of Alexander Hamilton and the five volumes of The Legal Papers of Alexander Hamilton (both Columbia University Press) and was able to add another segment of the library: those books sent to AH by various authors, those he cited in his published essays and letters, and those few we have record of his purchasing from booksellers. Following this, I added additional titles based on a list created by the editors of his legal papers based on his citations. And I found a few titles scattered here and there in various institutions, plus some in auction/dealer catalogs. All those taken together comprise the 315 titles in his LT catalog.

However - there are still mysteries to be solved. These include:

- This snippet. Any help in tracking down the auction catalog here snippeted (which appears to be a 1972 Parke-Bernet list) would be most appreciated.

- Some books from Hamilton's law library are believed to have been given to something known as the "Irving Library Association" in the 1870s by one of Hamilton's descendants. Google searches reveal possible organizations by this name in MA (the most likely suspect, I think), KY, and TX, but unfortunately none of them seem to have left much of a trail. If you know of this group, any information would be helpful.

- We know from his letter to Varick that Hamilton signed his books ("I believe my name will be found written in any that belong to me"), so it's likely that there are more lurking out there. Additions to the LT collection would be very useful.

Many thanks in advance for any assistance on those questions, and I want to take this opportunity to offer my sincere gratitude to Jane Siegel for providing the catalog cards from Columbia that allowed this project to get off the ground!

LT Runs with DNBRD

LibraryThing's jumped on the "Do Nothing But Read Day" boat (which I mentioned here last week). I think it's great, and can't wait for Sunday. I've gone ahead and added the "DNBRD2009" tag to the books I'm intending to read that day (see them here), but will add fair warning that they may change between now and then.

Links & Reviews

- A really neat find in England: the deed separating Thomas Paine from his wife Elizabeth Ollive was discovered hanging in the West Sussex home of John Hughes; Hughes' brother found the deed in the late 1970s inside a Smollett novel removed from a shop basement. The deed sold for £11,000 at Bloomsbury on 19 November, purchased by the East Sussex records office and Lewes town council, with donations.

- Some awesome things going on at LT these days (what else is new?) where SantaThing has taken off in a really cool way this year. Also, I'm working with the LT folks to organize a day-long ConferenceThing in Boston in January to coincide with ALA's Midwinter meeting.

- From the New Zealand Book Council, an unorthodox adaptation of a book, to illustrate their tagline: Where Books Come to Life." Very cool. [h/t Jim Watts et. al]

- The Bookshop Blog offers a Viking Q&A with Jasper Fforde, whose new book Shades of Grey is set for release just after Christmas.

- The Shakespeare Quartos Archive debuted recently, with 32 copies of pre-1642 quarto editions of Hamlet available for digital comparison.

- Ian's got a larger image of the 1813 Dance of Death bound in human skin that sold at the Boston Book Fair, as well as a Boston Herald short piece on the book.

- Florence's History of Science Museum has found Galileo's two fingers and tooth, which have been missing since 1905. They'll go on display next year.

- From Library Journal, "The Battle of the Books - Again" examines that oft-discussed topic du jour, the future of libraries.

- Paul Collins notes the US release of Madeline Goold's Mr. Langshaw's Square Piano, and offers a clip of a Broadwood piano in action.

- Wordsworth's bookplace was flooded last week, The Independent reports, but the house in Cockermouth "stands battered but more or less intact amid the mud and debris left by receding floodwaters." [h/t Reading Copy]

- Robert Darnton was on "The Diane Rehm Show" this week to talk about The Case for Books and the future of books. Listen here. He's also got an NYRB essay this week, "Google and the New Digital Future" (about which more soon).

- In the NYT Magazine, Caleb Crain excoriates the practice of "camel case," (that is, where capital letters appear in the middle of the work, as in iPod, or, hem hem, the name of this blog, sorry Caleb!). He's got an online bibliographical supplement here.

- In a 12 November report [PDF], a task force on Harvard libraries concluded that the libraries must "move away from their fragmented and outmoded administrative and financial model." The system's "unwieldy governance no longer aligns well with the current needs of scholarship, where disciplinary boundaries have broken down and digital technology has created a virtual space that extends across the entire University and indeed, the entire world," the report notes. The Harvard Gazette reported that the provost has formed an "Implementation Work Group that will develop new funding and operating models for the library system."

- An excerpt from his forthcoming book The Marketplace of Ideas, Louis Menand's Harvard Magazine essay "The Ph.D. Problem" examines the question of disciplinary professionalization and its impact on scholarship and knowledge, as well as the important questions of just what Ph.D. training in the humanities today gets you.

- Word that the long-delayed Oxford Companion to the Book will be released in January 2010 in the UK; Amazon says March for this side of the pond.

- At Wynken de Worde, Sarah muses on the future of the book and on the 'tension' between e-books and printed books (I agree with her, and many others, that the two are not mutually exclusive).

- The "LJ Best Books 2009" list is out from Library Journal. In The Telegraph, Dominic Sandbrook offers his History books of the year; Benjamin Schwarz gives the Atlantic Books of the Year; the NYT has its 100 Notable Books of 2009 (of these, I've so far read a whopping three). Also in the Telegraph, a selection of folks pick their personal favorite book of the year, and in the TLS, a selection from their Books of the Year 2009.

Reviews

- At The Little Professor, Miriam Burstein reviews Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.

- James Baker's Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday is reviewed by Alexander Nazaryan in the Washington Post.

- John Milton Cooper Jr.'s Woodrow Wilson is reviewed by Erez Manela in the Boston Globe.

- Jill Lepore reviews Gordon Wood's An Empire of Liberty in the Washington Post. Jay Winik reviews the book in the NYTimes.

- Albert Mobilio reviews Umberto Eco's An Infinity of Lists at Bookforum.

- Ben Yagoda's Memoir: A History is reviewed by Daniel Akst in the Boston Globe. Jonathan Yardley reviews the same book in the Washington Post.

Two New Early American Libraries

I've added two new fairly small but very interesting collections to the Libraries of Early America project this weekend:

- Hannah Lee Corbin (1728-1782): one of the "Virginia Lees," the sister of Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot Lee (among the bunch of other Revolutionary-generation Lees). Hannah was well educated at her family's plantation Stratford Hall, and would become a strong advocate of increased rights for women. Like Lady Jean Skipwith, Hannah had a long widowhood (she was married to Gawin Corbin from 1748 through 1759/60, and cohabited with Dr. Richard Lingan Hall until his death in 1774), and significant amounts of money, enabling her to purchase many books for pleasure reading (a large portion of her collection is novels). Her LT library is drawn from several invoices and inventories, for which many thanks to her descendent Dr. William McCarty for bringing them to my attention.

- John Fitzpatrick (~1737-1791): a British merchant who settled at Manchac, a small trading outpost north of New Orleans in the late 1760s and lived there until his death. His library, inventoried at his death (the first I've entered where the values are given in pesos and reales), contained twenty-five books, a selection of literature, history and commercial works.

The two share four titles: Rollin's Ancient history, Smollet's Peregrine Pickle, The spectator, and Pope's Works.

Calling All Libraries: Do You Have Any Washington Books?

Since I am fairly confident this blog gets read by at least a few librarians out there, a plea: if your institution holds any books which once belonged to George Washington, would you be so kind as to let me know? Why, you ask?

I've been working for several months on the Washington library, which is now entirely entered into LT to the best of my knowledge. The most extensive bibliography of the Washington collection was published in 1897 (Appleton P.C. Griffin, , William Coolidge Lane, and Franklin Osborne Poole. A catalogue of the Washington collection in the Boston Athenæum. Boston: Boston Athenæum, 1897 - digital version here) - and while it's a great starting point, quite a few books have moved around in the intervening 110 years or so.

The locations as I know them are listed at the top of this page, and in each bibliographic record within the LT-catalog. The good folks at Mount Vernon tell me they have received many more original Washington books, and are preparing a list for me to update their holdings. But I'm sure there are hundreds more Washington titles now in institutional collections, and there's no easy way to find them (Google's come up with a few, but not many).

Additionally, and this is a quest for anybody - I'd like to know of any auction records for Washington books that are not already reflected in the LT-records (i.e. all those through 1897, plus a few more that I've found after that). Any leads, lot numbers, prices, buyers, &c. are always appreciated.

Feel free to shoot me an email (philobiblos at gmail dot com) or post a comment here, and thanks in advance for anything you can provide!