Links & Auctions

This'll likely be the last post for 2021 - my very best wishes to each and every one of you for a restful and healthy holiday season. May 2022 be better for us all.

- The biggest biblio-news of the week is the acquisition of the Honresfield Library en bloc for a consortium of British libraries. The £15 million purchase price was funded by grants and donations, with half the cost given by Sir Leonard Blavatnik. More from Charlotte Higgins for the Guardian and from the BBC.

- There was far less coverage of it, but a $7 million default judgment against Dirk Obbink in federal court is also a very important story. Obbink failed to respond to allegations he had defrauded Hobby Lobby by selling $7 million worth of stolen papyrus fragments.

- From Karin Wulf at Scholarly Kitchen, "Reading About Libraries and Librarians."

- The Middle Temple Library has one last provenance mystery for us this year.

- The National Archives announced its plans for the release of the 1950 census, coming in April 2022.

- The Books and Borrowing team had a tour of Edinburgh's Signet Library.

Reviews

- David Pearson's Book Ownership in Stuart England; review by Adam Smyth in the LRB.

- Gary Goodman's The Last Bookseller; review by Timothy Francis Barry at the arts fuse.

Upcoming Auctions

- De Chateaubriand à Cioran – Raymond Queneau at Aguttes (Aristophil 45) on 20 December.

- Holy Family College Rare Book Collection (Part 1) at Eaton Hudson ends on 21 December.

- Fine Books and Ephemera at New England Book Auctions ends on 21 December.

Links & Auctions

- The Lilly Library has acquired the marvelous dictionary collection of Madeline Kripke.

- Paul Needham's Lyell Lectures continue, and are viewable here as they are delivered.

- The ABAA's Diversity Initiative is hosting a panel, "Everyone is Welcome Here: Building Better Relationships in Book Communities" on 26 October. 

- Over at Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, "Otto Ege's Armenian Lectionary Dated '1121.'"

- Heather Wolfe will be the Munby Fellow at Cambridge University Libraries for 2021–22, working on a project titled "Decoding early modern writing paper."

- On the Swann Galleries blog, Devon Eastland writes about Harvard librarian George Parker Winship.

- Carla Cevasco writes for the Collation on "Picturing Children's Food in Early Modern Europe."

- There is still time to register for the APHA conference on 22–23 October, "Impresos: Printing Across Latin American and Caribbean Cultures."

- The bat signal has gone out for a number of Mark Twain legal documents which are believed to have been acquired by the Detroit Public Library in 1966 but were not found when a researcher looked for them in 2010. Barbara Schmidt has a feature on this over on Twain Quotes.

- A First Circuit panel has ruled that a 1780 Alexander Hamilton letter to Lafayette is the clear property of the Massachusetts Archives, and the letter has now been returned. It was stolen by employee Harold Perry sometime between 1938 and 1946 and later sold. Read the full decision here.

Upcoming Auctions

- The Luzzatto High Holidays Mahzor: A Magnificent Ashkenazic Prayer Book at Sotheby's New York on 19 October.

- Travel including a single owner collection of books on mountaineering at Bloomsbury Auctions (Dreweatts) ends on 20 October.

- A third selection of 16th and 17th English Books from the Fox Pointe Manor Library at Forum Auctions on 21 October.

- Fine Literature – Bukowski, Beats & the Counterculture at PBA Galleries on 21 October.

- Literature, Social Activism, Counterculture at Second Story Books on 23 October.

Links & Auctions

- Mary Hamilton French writes for the NEDCC blog about her recent work to conserve a fifteenth-century manuscript Vitae Augustini from the BPL collections. A really excellent and beautifully illustrated walk through the process.

- News that the Honresfield Library will be sold at Sotheby's across three auctions (see the introduction to the first part, scheduled to be sold in July) prompted much coverage: see Alison Flood's piece in the Guardian and Jennifer Schuessler's in the NYT. A followup piece by Alison Flood for the Guardian reports on the immediate calls from the Brontë Society and others for the collection to be kept intact and made publicly available for research. See also Francesca Collins' post for the Museums Association.

- Stephen Hawking's Cambridge papers and personal memorabilia have been acquired for the British nation, and will be housed at the Cambridge University Library and the Science Museum.

- Hobby Lobby has sued Dirk Obbink to recover some of the $7 million reportedly paid for ancient gospel fragments which Obbink allegedly had stolen. See also the official complaint.

- The National Library of Scotland has acquired a sixteenth-century Perthshire manuscript, the "Chronicle of Foringall."

- Candida Moss has a roundup of some recent book thefts from libraries in the Daily Beast.

- Chiara Betti writes for the St John's College blog about the collection of some 750 copper plates given by Richard Rawlinson to the Bodleian Library. This is an introductory post about a new project to really study this collection for the first time, which promises to be extremely useful!

- From Aaron Pratt, "Paper Pitfalls."

- Notre Dame's Hesburgh Library has acquired a rare early Civil War lithograph of Jefferson Davis metamorphosed into a donkey.

- The Princeton Graphic Arts Collection blog has a roundup of their Pandemic-Times webinars, and also a new post on "Typographic Necrology."

- From Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, "A New Leaf from the Pontigny Copy of Florus & Didymus" and "Otto Ege's 12th-Century Italian Gospel Lectionary."

- Heather Wolfe writes for The Collation, "Malicious Teaseling: Or, how a simple reference question got complicated."

- Over on the Bodleian blog, "A Pirate's Life?"

- The Franz Kafka collection held by the National Library of Israel is now online in digital form.

- From Adam Smyth at TEXT!, "Family Bibles."

- The Middle Temple Library has another provenance mystery for this month.

Upcoming Auctions

- Music: Books & Manuscripts at Sotheby's London ends on 8 June.

- Early Printing, Americana (Printed and Manuscript) at New England Book Auctions on 8 June.

- TCM Presents ... Mavericks at Bonhams Los Angeles on 8 June.

- Travel Books, Maps & Atlases at Forum Auctions on 9 June.

- Rare Books Signature Auction at Heritage Auctions on 9–10 June.

- Americana – Zamorano 80 – Travel – World History – Cartography at PBA Galleries on 10 June.

- Bibliothèque Théâtrale du Comte Emmanuel D'André – Livres at Manuscrits at Binoche et Giquello on 11 June.

- Summer Auction at Arader Galleries on 12 June.

Links & Reviews

- May's Rare Book Monthly articles include Bruce McKinney's "Inhumanity in New York," Michael Stillman running down an upcoming Supreme Court ruling which will affect the collection of out-of-state sales tax and on recidivist Irish book and art thief Andrew Shannon heading back to jail, Thibault Ehrengardt on that Mont-Saint-Michel manuscript mentioned last week, and Susan Halas on "Women in the Antiquarian Book Trade."

- Over at Notabilia, "Vestiges of a Lost Carolingian Bible Discovered at Princeton."

- Many congratulations to Kevin J. Hayes, awarded the 2018 George Washington Book Prize for George Washington: A Life in Books.

- Kare Ozment posts at Sammelband about "Teaching Manuscripts: Commonplace Books."

- Cambridge University Librarian Jessica Gardner writes for the Independent about a new exhibition, Tall Tales: Secrets of the Tower.

- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian about some recent scholarship on the sources used during the drafting of the King James Bible.

- The University of Illinois has acquired Isaac Newton's manuscript translation of the alchemical tract "Opus Galli Anonymi."

- Nadine Zimmerli writes for Uncommon Sense: "Atomic Bonds," about a library book borrowed by J. Robert Oppenheimer.

- Dan Cohen has a good writeup of the newly-launched Boston Resource Center.

- Meghan Brody posts for the Clements Library Chronicle about working with the John Louis Ligonier letter books.

- A "Jack the Ripper warning postcard" was hammered down for £22,000 at a Kent auction house.

- More notes on the "Provenance of the NYPL-Duke Bible" at Medieval Manuscripts Provenance.

- Michael Caines writes for the TLS on "Acquiring Kapital" - Marx's works on the antiquarian book market.

Reviews

- Kirk Wallace Johnson's The Feather Thief; review by Maureen Corrigan for NPR.

- Patricia O'Toole's The Moralist; review by Jennifer Szalai in the NYTimes.

- Christopher Buckley's The Judge Hunter; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

Upcoming Auctions

- Autographed Documents, Manuscripts, Photos, Books & Relics at University Archives on 8 May.

- Comics & Comic Art at Heritage Auctions from 10–12 May.

- Rare, Out-of-Print, and Used Books at the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society on 11 May.

Links & Reviews

- At Wynken de Worde, Sarah Werner on "creating a digitized facsimile wishlist," in which she calls for suggestions of early printed books that aren't yet available as open-access digital facsimiles.

- In December's Rare Book Monthly, Thibault Ehrengardt on the Aristophil aftermath, Susan Halas on "courtesy to the trade," a followup report from Michael Stillman about the auction of an early Declaration of Independence broadside ($1.8 million!), and more.

- Rebecca Romney is starting up a biblio-newsletter; I have subscribed in anticipation, and would encourage all readers of this blog to do the same.

- The Codex Amiatinus will return to Britain for an exhibition at the British Library in 2018. And the Codex Leicester will be displayed at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence from October 2018.

- The Folger's Crocodile Mystery for December is up and awaiting your guesses.

- James Mitchell writes for the National Library of Scotland blog about cataloging what looks like a very interesting collection of Venetian chapbooks.

- Penelope Lively's papers have been acquired by the British Library.

- John Hodgman gets the "By the Book" treatment in the NYTimes.

- Sara Sauers has another APHA panel review, on "Transatlantic Connections."

- Over at Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, "Louise Ege, Book-Breaker."

Reviews

- Allan Young and Patrick Scott's The Kilmarnock Burns: A Census; review by Michael Stillman for Rare Book Monthly.

- Jorge Carrión's Bookshops: A Reader's History; review by Alan Riding in the NYTimes.

- Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney's The Collector of Lives; review by Deborah Solomon in the NYTimes.

- Kevin Young's Bunk; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- David E. Fishman's The Book Smugglers and Michele K. Troy's Strange Bird; review by Anna Katharina Schaffner in the TLS.

Upcoming Auctions

- Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts Including Americana at Christie's New York on 5 December.

- Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts and Continental and Russian Books at Sotheby's London on 5 December.

- Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books at Swann Galleries on 5 December.

- Fine Books and Manuscripts at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers on 6 December.

- Western and Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures at Bloomsbury on 6 December.

- History of Science and Technology at Bonhams New York on 6 December.

- Voices of the 20th Century at Bonhams New York on 6 December.

- Russian America & Polar Exploration: Highlights from the Martin Greene Library at Christie's New York on 7 December.

Links & Reviews

- Two theft notices from the ABAA: a Thomas Jefferson autograph note and a 1610 folio volume, A Display of Heraldry.

- NEH Chairman William Adams resigned from his post last week. The agency is targeted for elimination under the president's FY18 budget (call your representatives). See their FAQ on where things go from here.

- On the proposed budget cuts (which reach far beyond NEH), see Bethany Nowviskie's post to a Digital Library Federation list.

- Alcoholics Anonymous has filed suit for the return of the printers' copy of the organization's "Big Book," scheduled to be sold at auction on 8 June by Profiles in History. The annotated typescript was previously sold at auction in 2004 and 2007.

- Honey & Wax Booksellers have announced a new book-collecting prize open to women book collectors in the U.S. under 30 years old.

- Aaron Pratt has been appointed the new Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center.

- Carla Giaimo writes for Atlas Obscura on "The Lost Typefaces of W.A. Dwiggins."

- Rob Rulon-Miller provides an overview of this summer's Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar.

- Elizabeth Savage posted a new update to her census of early modern frisket sheets (project homepage) and has a post at The Conveyor about a recent related find.

- Rare Book School's summer lecture schedule is out.

-Book curses on the BL's medieval manuscripts blog.

- Kate Mitas has begun a series on archival cataloging for booksellers.

- A new exhibition at the National Library of New Zealand, He Tohu, highlights three important founding documents in the country's history.

- From James Ascher on the UVA Scholars' Lab blog, "Visualizing Paper Evidence Using Digital Reproductions."

- At Echoes from the Vault, a look at some interesting finds from the St Andrews Burgh records.

- Mary Bendel-Simso talked to The Academic Minute about her work using digital newspaper archives to find early American detective fiction.

- At Notes from Under Grounds, Nora Benedict Frye posts about her current UVA Special Collections exhibition on Borges and bibliography.

- Rebecca Mead reports on the recent identification of a "lost" Edith Wharton play.

- Will Gore writes for the Spectator on "Why rare books are thriving in the digital age."

- Danuta Kean reports for the Guardian about Peter Steinberg and Gail Crowther's recent identification of unpublished Sylvia Plath poems found by examining a sheet of carbon paper in Plath's papers at the Lilly Library.

- Miranda Cooper writes for Tablet Magazine about "500 Years of Treasures from Oxford," an exhibition now on display at the Center for Jewish History.

- Tom Hyry highlights the current Houghton Library exhibition, "Open House 75: Houghton Staff Select."

- A few early bookplates from Princeton's collections are featured on the Graphic Arts blog.

- At Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, notes on an NYPL breviary fragment.

- Abbie Weinberg marked the 400th birthday of Elias Ashmole with a Collation post.

- Thirty-three books stolen from Jewish communities were donated to the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Warsaw last week.

Book Reviews

- Charlie English's The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu; review by Justin Marozzi in the Spectator.

- Holger Hoock's Scars of Independence; review by Jane Kamensky in the NYTimes.

- James Barron's The One-Cent Magenta; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at the Fine Books Blog.

- John Grisham's Camino Island; review by Jocelyn McClurg in USA Today (apparently it's about rare book and manuscript collecting ... )

- Beth Underdown's The Witchfinder's Sister; review by Helen Castor in the NYTimes.

- Rüdiger Safranski's Goethe: Life as a Work of Art; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- Stephen Fry's new audiobook edition of the Sherlock Holmes stories; review by Simon Callow in the NYTimes.

Upcoming Auctions

- The Richard Beagle Collection of Angling and Sporting Books, Part I on 1 June at PBA Galleries.

- Arader Galleries Summer 2017 Sale on 3 June.

- Books and Ephemera at National Book Auctions on 3 June.

Links & Reviews

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

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

- Brenda Cronin profiles Glenn Horowitz for the WSJ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

Upcoming Auctions

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

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

Links & Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Lorraine Berry writes for the Guardian on bibliomania.

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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

Upcoming Auctions

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

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

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

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

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

Links & Reviews

One last roundup for 2016:

- David Barnett writes for the Independent about the enduring power of M.R. James' ghost stories.

- French publisher Le Seuil has threatened to sue the Van Gogh Museum over questions of the authenticity of several recently published Van Gogh sketches.

- A great post from Dan Hinchen at The Beehive about the wonderful things you can find when answering a reference question.

- The AAS has posted images from their Bien edition of Audubon's Birds.

- Over at Echoes from the Vault, Keelan Overton reports on her recent research on the St. Andrews Qu'ran.

- Kate De Rycker guest-posts at The Collation about her work preparing an edition of the works of Thomas Nashe.

- Rebecca Onion surveys five great digital history projects of 2016.

- Erik Kwakkel has been appointed Scaliger professor at the University of Leiden.

- The first batch of Kafka papers from the estate of Max Brod have arrived at the National Library of Israel.

- Michael Melgaard surveys the used and rare bookshops of Toronto.

- Scholars are concerned about the preservation of an extensive rare book collection at a soon-to-be-closed abbey in Altomuenster, Germany.

- PBA Galleries will offer stock from antiquarian bookseller Edwin V. Glaser in a 12 January sale.

- The January Crocodile mystery post is up at The Collation.

- I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, but pass it along: The Book As ...

- Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, died this week at the age of 96. NYTimes obituary.

- Leah Dobrinska has a "defense of marginalia" at The New Antiquarian.

- Lisa Fagin Davis posts about "training the next generation of fragmentologists" at Manuscript Road Trip. Speaking of which, Leiden University student Éloïse Ruby posts for the KB's blog about analyzing fragments from the KB collections.

Reviews

- Julia Baird's Victoria the Queen; review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.

- Matthew Rubery's The Untold Story of the Talking Book; review by Dennis Duncan in the TLS.

Links & Reviews

Another busy week in the world of books!

- The Irish Times reported this week that the Jesuit Order in Ireland will sell "thousands" of rare books from its collections at Sotheby's London next summer. Some additional books and manuscripts have been deposited at the National Library of Ireland on long-term loan.

- A copy of Isaac Newton's Principia set a new auction record for a scientific book this week, selling for $3.7 at Christie's New York.

- The ISTC is now live at its new home.

- The Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand has issued a call for papers for their 2017 conference, "Connecting the Colonies: Empires and Networks in the History of the Book."

- A remarkable collection of rare books and manuscripts has been bequeathed to Trinity College, Cambridge by Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe.

- The British Library has acquired nine copper plates used to print diagrams and maps in several East India Company publications in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The plates were previously in the possession of a scrap metal dealer.

- Xinyi Ye has posted a video profile of Boston's Brattle Book Shop (one of my very favorite places, it must be said).

- The Fine Press Book Association seeks an editor for their journal, Parenthesis.

- There's a new Common-place out; it includes a Q&A with Carla Mulford about her recent literary biography of Benjamin Franklin, and John Garcia on print culture and popular history during the Mexican War, among other interesting pieces.

- Video of Matthew Kirschenbaum's 2016 Fales Lecture, "Bookish Media," is now available online.

- Bookbinder Michael Chrisman has been sentenced to twenty-one months in jail after defrauding a business partner; Chrisman had promised to bind seventy facsimile Gutenberg Bibles, but instead sent false invoices and used the funds for personal expenses. Chrisman was also ordered to pay some $483,000 in restitution.

- Registration is now open for the "Bibliography Among the Disciplines" conference in October 2017.

- The University of Michigan Special Collections have completed an eight-year project to digitize Islamic manuscripts from the collections.

- AbeBooks have posted their top sales of 2016.

- Mark Boonshoft writes for the NYPL blog about literary politics in 1790s New York City.

- Caroline Duroselle-Melish posts about sophistications in the First Folio over at The Collation, while Elizabeth DeBold explores explores "The Mysterious Case of Folger First Folio 33."

Reviews

- Joanne Limburg's A Want of Kindness; review by Katharine Grant in the NYTimes.

- Matthew Rubery's The Untold Story of the Talking Book; review by Kevin Canfield in the WaPo.

- Boston's "Beyond Words" exhibition; review by Jane Whitehead at West 86th.

- Caroline Winterer's American Enlightenments; review by Benjamin Park at Professor Park's Blog.

No Upcoming Auctions

Happy holidays, good cheer, and good books to one and all!

Links & Reviews

- From Jason Rhody, "How to Fight for Federal Support of Cultural Research and Why It Matters."

- Another round of sales from Pierre Bergé's library was held in Paris on 8–9 November, resulting in total sales of €4.8 million. A Flaubert travel diary attracted much pre-sale attention, including coverage in the Guardian (it sold for nearly €540,000).

- November's Rare Book Monthly articles include a profile of map dealer Barry Ruderman, a tribute to Bob Fleck, and a report on the guilty verdict in Michael Danaher's trial for the murder of bookseller Adrian Greenwood. More on the latter from the BBC.

- Wayne Wiegand writes for Inside Higher Ed about how contemporary LIS "research" has shortchanged libraries.

- Some important job searches: AAS is hiring an Associate Librarian, UVA seeks an Associate University Librarian for Special Collections & Archives, and the BPL is looking for a Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarian.

- Newly launched, EMoBookTrade, which looks quite interesting indeed.

- A task force at MIT has issued a preliminary "Future of Libraries" report, which "contains general recommendations intended to develop 'a global library for a global university,' while strengthening the library system’s relationship with the local academic community and public sphere."

- Vic Zoschak looks back at this year's Boston Book Fair.

- The ABAA's Women in Bookselling Initiative launched in Boston during the fair.

- Rick Russack offers a review of the events around the book fair for Antiques and the Arts Weekly.

- The University of Chicago has digitized 68 Biblical manuscripts from the Edgar J. Goodspeed Manuscript Collection.

- Several major US and UK institutions have agreed to cooperate in the digitization of the papers of George III.

- Watch a talk by Tom Mole, "Scott in Stone: The Scott Monument in the Victorian Pantheon," delivered to the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club.

- A first edition of the first Harry Potter book sold for £35,000 this week.

- Based on some fairly tangled legal reasoning, a Connecticut judge ordered that 252 disputed books from Maurice Sendak's estate will go to the author's estate, with another 88 going to the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Both sides may appeal. More coverage from Smithsonian and the NYTimes.

- Author Philip Roth is donating his 4,000-volume library to the Newark Public Library.

- Damage to a nearby building from a massive earthquake has closed the National Library of New Zealand for the time being.

- Tom Brokaw's papers and archive will go to the University of Iowa.

- At The Taper, Brandon Butler posts about the recent goings-on at the Copyright Office.

- The Portland Press Herald interviews Don Lindgren of Rabelais.

- One of 145 manuscripts stolen in 1985 from the Biblioteca Passerini-Landi in Piacenza was recovered after being spotted for sale online. More than half of the other manuscripts have also been recovered over the years. More from the BBC.

- Book scout Martin Stone has died. More from Bookride.

- Chicago's Lutheran School of Theology has returned a 9th-century New Testament to the Greek Orthodox Church.

- From Stephanie Kingsley in Perspectives, a "quick study" on book history.

- Rob Koehler writes for the JHIBlog on novel-reading in the early republic.

- Watch a time-lapse video of 52,000 books being reshelved in the NYPL's Rose Main Reading Room.

- Seven volumes missing from the London Library since the 1950s were recently returned after being found during an estate appraisal.

- The Watkinson Library has acquired an 1839 Audubon letter to Robert Havell.

- Stephanie Jamieson writes for the NLS blog about identifying platinotype photographs.

- Bookseller Ken Karmiole has given $100,000 to the Book Club of California to endow a lecture series in the history of the book trade in California and the West.

- Éditions des Saints Pères is publishing a limited facsimile edition of the manuscript of Jane Eyre, with illustrations by Edmund Garrett.

- Gregory Schneider reports for the WaPo about the State Library of Virginia's efforts to collect and scan Civil War documents from family collections across the commonwealth. Wonderful story.

- The director of Moscow's Library of Ukrainian Literature has been put on trial for "inciting ethnic hatred against Russians" (i.e. "disseminating banned literature classed as extremist"). Natalia Sharina is also charged with embezzling library funds; she maintains that all charges are politically motivated.

- The OUP blog features an essay by New Oxford Shakespeare editor Gary Taylor on Shakespeare's collaborators.

- National Geographic reports on Robert Berlo's important collection of more than 12,000 road maps.

- The second part of Gordon Hollis' "Book Collecting in the United States" series is up on the ABAA blog. Part One.

- Joel Fry, curator at Bartram's Garden, is seeking information on copies of the first edition of John Bartram's Travels (Philadelphia, 1791) for an ongoing census.

- The DPLA's Archival Description Working Group has released a new whitepaper on aggregating and representing archival collections.

- One of the most amusing library blog posts in a long time: "A Raven Named Sir Nevermore?"

Reviews

- The Morgan Library's Charlotte Brontë exhibition; review by Francine Prose in the NYRB.

- Anne Trubek's The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting; review by Lucy Ferriss at Lingua Franca.

- Frances Wilson's Guilty Thing; review by John Sutherland in the NYTimes.

- David Skal's Something in the Blood; review by Jason Zinoman in the NYTimes.

- John Crowley's new edition of The Chemical Wedding by Christian Rosencreutz: A Romance in Eight Days by Johann Valentin Andreae; review by Peter Bebergal for the New Yorker's Page-Turner blog.

- John Simpson's The Word Detective and John McWhorter's Words on the Move; review by Lynne Truss in the NYTimes.

- Colin Dickey's Ghostland; review by Rachel Monroe in the LARB.

Links & Reviews

- Rebecca Rego Barry writes for the Guardian about a bird book which once belonged to the "Birdman of Alcatraz" which will go on the auction block at Christie's in September (as part of their "Out of the Ordinary" sale, which always contains some fantastic things).

- María Palacio posts for the Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project about working with an 1836 manuscript library catalog of a Jesuit seminar in Missouri.

- A new report on digitizing orphan works is now available via Harvard's DASH portal.

- At meh.com, a history of intentionally blank pages, featuring Sarah Werner, Joe Howley, and others.

- The very long legal battle over Franz Kafka's manuscripts has ended, with Israel's supreme court ruling that Max Brod's heirs must turn over the manuscripts to the National Library of Israel.

- Last week I linked to a report that a box of rare comics had been stolen from the Tampa Bay Comic Con. The Tampa Bay Times updated this week that the dealer, Rick Whitelock, received a phone call on Monday from an anonymous man saying he had accidentally packed up the box with his materials from the show and would return them, but refusing to give his name or contact information. All's well that end's well, though: on Wednesday, the box arrived.

- Tom Kiser of Vivarium Books is profiled as part of the FB&C "Bright Young Booksellers" series.

- Peter Harrington staff have chosen their favorite items from the firm's Summer Catalogue.

- Paul Dingman posts at The Collation about how the transcriptions submitted as part of the Early Modern Manuscripts Online project will be aggregated and verified.

- The Harry Ransom Center is seeking a Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Printed Books and Manuscripts.

- Elaine Long posts on the Shakespeare's World blog about finding references to paper used in early modern cooking.

- Nearly 400 books donated to an English village after an American plane crashed there during WWII have been removed from the village library and destroyed.

Reviews

- Carols M. N. Eire's Reformations; reviewed by Michael Massing in the NYTimes.

- Winifred Gallagher's How the Post Office Shaped America; review by Emily Cataneo in the CSM.

- Richard Zacks' Chasing the Last Laugh; review by Debra Bruno in the WaPo.

Links & Reviews

The 4th Annual Virginia Antiquarian Book Fair was held this Friday and Saturday at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. If you have a chance to get to this one next year, give it a try: the venue is quite nice, admission is free, and there were some really interesting books and ephemera to be had.

- Rick Ring has edited a selection of Lawrence C. Wroth's "Notes for Bibliophiles" column and the volume is now available from Scott Vile's Ascensius Press.

- Over at medievalbooks, a look at the evolution of several forms of medieval scripts, including an image of a ~1450 advertising sheet for different types of script.

- Folger conservator Austin Planncurley writes for The Collation about creating a replica of John Wilkes Booth's diary for the current Folger exhibit, America's Shakespeare.

- The May Rare Book Monthly is out, with Bruce McKinney's report on the New York Book Fair and an open letter from McKinney to the president/executive producer of the Armory, a piece by Michael Stillman on the ongoing dispute over Maurice Sendak's estate, and a report on a comics book heist in Macon, Georgia.

- The Kislak Center at Penn has issued a call for papers for a March 2017 interdisciplinary conference, "To the Ends of the Earth."

- Jonathan Kearns has posted his look back at the New York shadow shows.

- The Shakespeare's Beehive authors were interviewed for "CBS Sunday Morning" last weekend. The interview also includes comments from Heather Wolfe and Michael Witmore of the Folger, and the news that Koppelman and Wechsler have loaned the volume to the Folger for study.

- Manuscript Road Trip heads to Newfoundland this week to survey the manuscripts at Memorial University in St. John's.

- Liam Moloney writes for the WSJ on the recent renovations to the Vatican's Gallery of Maps.

- The New York Library for the Performing Arts has digitized its collection of Shakespeare prompt-books.

- A new electronic catalog of 15th-century printed books is now available.

- Harvard's Weissman Preservation Center is highlighted in the Harvard Gazette.

- Peter Harrington is exhibiting (and selling) a remarkable collection of Alice in Wonderland-related rare books. Boudicca Fox-Leonard reports for the Telegraph.

- Library of Congress catalogers write about 18th-century medley prints for the Picture This blog.

- British Library conservator Flavio Marzo reports on some 2005 work he did on the 1603 Montaigne volume which is thought to contain a Shakespeare signature.

- Erik Ofgang writes about the Voynich Manuscript for Connecticut magazine, featuring lots of comments from Beinecke curator Ray Clemens.

- From the BBC magazine, Sarah Dunant on the "lost art of reading other people's handwriting."

- A new animated Watership Down adaptation is coming next year from Netflix and the BBC.

- Maybe not bookish, but still terribly cool: workers digging for water lines near Seville found 1,300 pounds of uncirculated Roman coins.

- Bibliophile Paul Ruxin died in mid-April following a tragic accident. See the Chicago Tribune obituary or Jerry Morris' reflections for the Florida Bibliophile Society. I had the great pleasure to hear a talk by Mr. Ruxin at the Boston Public Library in 2007, and enjoyed the experience tremendously. My condolences to his family and to those who knew him.

Reviews

- The exhibition on John Dee's library at the Royal College of Physicians; review by Sara Charles for Reviews in History.

- Joshua Hammer's The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu; review by Ben Macintyre in the NYTimes.

- Peter Onuf and Annette Gordon Reed's Most Blessed of the Patriarchs; review by David O. Stewart in the WaPo.

- Nicholas Guyatt's Bind Us Apart; reviews by Eric Foner in the NYTimes and Mark G. Spencer in the WSJ.

- Jack Lynch's You Could Look It Up; review by Micah Mattix in The New Criterion.

Links & Reviews

- Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare! Louis Bayard writes the Bard's obituary for the NYTimes. This week's "On the Media" is given over to him (and it's quite a good episode). Michael Pennington reflects on five decades of performing Shakespeare's plays for the TLS.

- The Shakespeare's Beehive authors respond to Adam Hooks (and others, in part).

- Sarah Laskow has a great piece at Atlas Obscura about Audubon's hoax species, created to fool Constantine Rafinesque. Sarah's piece is based on Smithsonian curator Neal Woodman's recent article in Archives of Natural History, "Pranked by Audubon: Constantine S. Rafinesque's description of John James Audubon's imaginary Kentucky mammals."

- The BL has launched a new Hebrew Manuscripts site.

- Carla Hayden appeared to breeze through her Senate confirmation hearing this week. Coverage from the Baltimore Sun, Roll Call.

- Nate Pedersen visited UVA last month and has posted a video of his tour with David Whitesell of David's exhibition on the gothic novel, "Fearsome Ink."

- The David Rumsey Map Center opened at Stanford last week.

- John Y. Cole has been appointed Library of Congress Historian, with Pam Jackson named as the new director of the Center for the Book.

- The Supreme Court denied cert this week in the Authors Guild v. Google case this week, ending that long saga once and for all (one can hope).

- Seth Gottlieb writes for the APHA blog about a recent "hand press crawl" he and some teammates took to research wooden common presses around New England. They are working this year on the design and construction of a press to be installed in RIT's Cary Graphic Arts Collection.

- Christopher Minty writes about New York printer James Rivington for The Junto.

- Anne Jarvis, currently university librarian at the University of Cambridge, will become university librarians at Princeton on 1 October.

- The Guardian has more on the dispute over the Birds' Head Haggadah, mentioned last week.

- Kayla Haveles posts at Past is Present about John Hancock's 26 April 1775 letter requesting that paper be sent to Isaiah Thomas at Worcester so that he can resume printing.

- State Library of Victoria cataloger Richard Overell writes about the process of cataloging the John Emmerson collection.

- Some 19th-century French woodblock-printed wallpaper is highlighted in the Princeton Graphic Arts Collection blog.

- Tom Teicholz writes about the Arthur Conan Doyle collection at the Toronto Reference Library for Forbes.

- At The Collation, Abbie Weinberg offers a "defense of the card catalog."

- John Schulman has a haggadah primer over at the ABAA blog.

- There's an excerpt from Chanan Tigay's The Lost Book of Moses in Tablet.

Reviews

- Joshua Hammer's The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu; reviews by David Wright in the Seattle Times and Rebecca Rego Barry at Fine Books Notes.

- David Cesarini's Disraeli: The Novel Politician; reviews by Jonathan Rosen in the NYTimes and Benjamin Balint in the WSJ.

- Chanan Tigay's The Lost Book of Moses; review by David Holahan in the CSM.

- Andrew Dickson's Worlds Elsewhere; review by Jonathan Bate in the WSJ.

Links & Reviews

- From Amanda Bevan at the British Library's blog, "Shakespeare's Will: A New Interpretation," which contains some key new findings about the document based around recent conservation work.

- Erin Blakemore writes for Smithsonian about the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest.

- From Exeter Working Papers in Book History, a detailed compilation of information about Gutenberg.

- Alix Christie writes for The Millions on the persistence of physical books.

- Dan Boudreau has a great post at Past is Present on paper marbling.

- At The Collation, Abbie Weinberg puzzles through some scraps of an unsent Henry Folger letter found inside a 1907 auction catalog.

- The New-York Historical Society is cataloging the 12,000 small collections that comprise its American Historical Manuscript Collection, thanks to a grant from the NEH.

- From Peter Miller at the Chronicle, "A New Republic of Letters."

- Ian Spellerberg, author of Reading & Writing Accessories: A Study of Paper-Knives, Paper Folders, Letter Openers and Mythical Page Turners (Oak Knoll) is profiled in Collectors Weekly.

- New from Unique at Penn, a Victorian lady's reading journal.

- Rebecca Rego Barry talks to "The Library Cafe" about her book Rare Books Uncovered.

- Jeremy Mikula writes for the Chicago Tribune about the authorship questions surrounding that Houdini-Lovecraft typescript that resurfaced recently.

- The MSU Map Library received a package in the mail containing several maps with a note "These were taken from the MSU Library many years ago. I'm sorry."

- Kevin Smith writes about the latest ruling in the Georgia State copyright case.

- The April Rare Book Monthly is out, with the usual range of interesting articles.

- From Serge Kovaleski in the NYTimes, a peek into a new book by Robert Wittman and journalist David Kinney about the search for Alfred Rosenberg's diary.

- Adam Smith's books at the University of Edinburgh have been fully cataloged for the first time.

- Public Domain Review Press has announced a new (and quite neat-looking) edition of Lucian's Dialogues of the Gods.

- Elahe Izadi writes for the WaPo about the Newton alchemical manuscript recently acquired by the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

- A chair used by J.K. Rowling when she was writing the first two Harry Potter books sold at auction today for $394,000.

- Jennifer Schuessler writes for the NYTimes about Peter Onuf and Annette Gordon Reed's new book Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.

Reviews

- James Traub's John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit; review by Joseph J. Ellis in the NYTimes.

- Louisa Thomas' Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams; review by Joanne Freeman in the NYTimes.

- Tim Blanning's Frederick the Great; review by Steve Donoghue in the CSM.

- Elaine Showalter's The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe; review by Carol Bundy in the WaPo.

Links & Reviews

- The AAS has launched a great new web exhibit: From English to Algonquian: Early New England Translations.

- Adam Hooks has added a new post at Anchora, "Shakespeare's Beehive 2.0." Take the time and read the whole thing.

- Coming up at the Bodleian Library at the end of May, a conference on "Mesoamerican Manuscripts: New Scientific Approaches and Interpretations."

- Jennifer Schuessler reports for the NYTimes on this year's Folger First Folio Road Show, dropping in on the Folio currently visiting South Dakota.

- The Oakland Tribune has a brief update on the case of the rare books stolen from North Oakland following the California Antiquarian Book Fair in February. A reward remains unclaimed and the books remain unrecovered.

- New York's Strand Bookstore is profiled in the "Interview with a Bookstore" series.

- Adrienne Lafrance writes for the Atlantic about a new project to figure out a way to preserve and visualize historic machine-programmed theater lighting designs.

- Peter Dobrin, reporting for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has an update on the legal feud between the Maurice Sendak estate and the Rosenbach. The library has asked a Connecticut court to remove the estate's executors and compel the estate to turn over books from Sendak's collection to the Rosenbach. The new court proceedings follow a failed settlement attempt in January.

- Over at The Collation, Erin Blake writes about the Folger's current effort to systematically update call numbers to match the second edition of STC.

- Simon Beattie has turned up another fascinating biblio-curiosity: a guide for Soviet librarians on how to write catalog cards.

- John Dugdale writes for the Guardian about the recent run of "rediscovered" manuscripts, highlighting Michael Scammel's NYRB piece about Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, the original German manuscript of which was identified last year in a Zurich library.

- New from the NYPL, the Photographers' Identities Catalog, containing biographical data on more than "115,000 photographers, studios, manufacturers, dealers, and others involved in the production of photographs."

- Scholars are condemning plans by the trustees of the venerable Society of Antiquaries to reduce staff at the Society's library from 3.5 full-time positions to three part-time positions.

- Since it's making the rounds, I post this Telegraph slideshow of "the most valuable rare books in existence" only as a PSA to stay away from it, since it's chock-full of baloney.

Reviews

- Claire Harman's Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart; review by Elizabeth Toohey in the CSM.

- Abby Smith Rumsey's When We Are No More; review by Nicholas Carr in the WaPo.

- Frank Cioffi's One Day in the Life of the English Language; review by Mary Norris in the TLS.

- Piers Paul Read's Scarpia; review by Allan Massie in the WSJ.

- Iain Pears' Arcadia; review by Scott Bradfield in the NYTimes.

- Several new books on Samuel Pepys, including Kate Loveman's Samuel Pepys and His Books; review by Arnold Hunt in the TLS.