- Paper fragments found inside a cannon recovered from the wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge (Blackbeard's ship) have been identified as coming from a copy of Edward Cooke's Voyage to the South Sea (1712).
- Michael Winship's keynote from this fall's APHA conference, "Good, But Not So Fast or Cheap," is now available on the APHA blog.
- January Rare Book Monthly articles include Michael Stillman's overview of the top 500 auction prices for 2017, and Bruce McKinney on buying an obscure Munsell imprint.
- Registration for the Scientific Illustration Renaissance to the Digital Age Symposium on 15 March at the Library of Congress is now open. This looks like a great program.
- Rebecca Rego Barry notes at the Fine Books Blog the deaths of three booksellers this week: the Strand's Fred Bass, Charlie Cox, and Louis Collins. They will be much missed. More about Louis from the Seattle Review of Books; I had the great pleasure of meeting him at the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair in 2016, and I'm very glad that I did.
- More on Fred Bass from Tom Vanderbilt on the NYRB blog and Tom Verlaine in the NYTimes.
- For the New Yorker, Paul Collins takes a look at a 1968 conference and associated book which looked ahead to 2018.
- Three major CLIR-Mellon Hidden Collection grants will allow the Penn Libraries to digitize Islamic manuscripts, the Marian Anderson archive, and records of early Philadelphia religious congregations.
- WBUR aired a remembrance of Harvard Law Library curator David Ferris this week.
- The University of British Columbia has acquired a copy (in fact, the only known copy) of the first edition of The Vancouver Weekly Herald and North Pacific News, believed to be the first item printed in the city of Vancouver.
- Urvashi Chakravarty surveys apprenticeship indentures at the Folger for The Collation.
- I missed this in December, but the BBC reports on recent work using digital tools to read Sonderkommando evidence buried at Auschwitz and discovered in the 1980s during excavations there.
- In the Harvard alumni magazine, a profile of Columba Stewart, executive director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library.
- Another one I missed in December (sorry!): Russell Maret on his weeks as the inaugural printer-in-residence at the Bodleian Libraries.
- The Association of European Printing Museums has launched a new map of printing museums, which looks to be quite handy. [via the Princeton Graphic Arts blog]
- Aaron Pratt writes for the HRC magazine about interactive designs (volvelles, &c.) in early printed books.
- Over at Making Manuscripts in the Medieval and Early Modern World, "Revealing the Secrets of an Early Coptic Manuscript." More on this project from Nicholas Wade in the NYTimes.
- Another good one in the Guardian books podcast: Stephen Fry on Saki's excellent "Sredni Vashtar."
Reviews
- Fiona Simpson's In Search of Mary Shelley; review by Rachel Cooke in the Guardian.
- Pradeep Sebastian's The Book Hunters of Katpadi; review by Rajdeep Bains in the Tribune. I'm looking forward to this one.
- Brenda Maddox's Reading the Rocks; review by Timothy R. Smith in the WaPo.
- Noah Feldman's The Three Lives of James Madison; review by Pamela Newkirk in the WaPo.
- Helen Smith's An Uncommon Reader; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
Upcoming Auctions
- Fine Literature & Fine Books - Poetry from the Collection of Larry Rafferty - Miniature Books at PBA Galleries on 11 January.
- Rare, Out-of-Print and Used Books at the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society on 12 January.
Showing posts with label Paul Collins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Collins. Show all posts
Sunday, January 07, 2018
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Links & Reviews
- Max Kutner reports for Smithsonian about a new "rapid-capture" digitization process being used at the National Museum of American History.
- Andrea Cawelti blogs about an 1842 music score printed on (very!) glossy paper she found while cataloging a collection of social dance scores at the Houghton Library.
- Goucher College is raising funds to mount an open-access digital surrogate of the 1816 Philadelphia edition of Jane Austen's Emma and "add contextual materials to create an interactive online experience centered on this exceptional edition." See the project website for more.
- UVA professor Karen Parshall volunteered to process an archival collection and has blogged about the experience for Notes from Under Grounds.
- Jennifer Schuessler reports for the NYTimes on the archival find that prompted Eric Foner's forthcoming book, Gateway to Freedom.
- From Heather Wolfe at The Collation, a nifty early modern color guide found in a manuscript heraldic miscellany.
- The surviving children of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are squabbling over ownership of the civil rights leader's personal Bible and Nobel Peace Prize medal. The NYTimes ran a long piece on the dispute this week, and MSNBC has a followup after the judge declined to issue a ruling this week. A trial could begin as early as 16 February.
- The Harvard Library staff news covers James Capobianco's recent Harvard Libraries staff talk about the history of Harvard call numbers. James' slides are also available.
- Paul Collins talked to Nate Pedersen for a Fine Books & Collections interview about his Duel with the Devil (and offers some hope for us Collins Library fans that perhaps more volumes might be forthcoming!)
- The anonymous Edinburgh book sculptor talked with BBC Scotland about her work.
- At the Hakluyt Society blog, Claire Jowett offers a progress report on her efforts to produce a new scholarly edition of Hakluyt's Principal Navigation.
- The annual conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand will be held 26-27 November 2015, and will focus on "Bibliographical Innovation and the Legacy of Aldus Manutius." They are currently inviting paper proposals for the conference.
- The Boston Globe highlights the BPL's Digital Commonwealth initiative, which assists public libraries with digitization efforts.
- Christopher Cook's note in The Library on a 1650 book order from an Oxford bookseller's wife is now available online.
Reviews
- Phyllis Lee Levin's The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams; review by Steve Donoghue in the Washington Post.
- James Morrow's Galápagos Regained; review by Ron Charles in the Washington Post.
- Eric Nelson's The Royalist Revolution; review by Michael Hattem at The Junto.
- Andrea Cawelti blogs about an 1842 music score printed on (very!) glossy paper she found while cataloging a collection of social dance scores at the Houghton Library.
- Goucher College is raising funds to mount an open-access digital surrogate of the 1816 Philadelphia edition of Jane Austen's Emma and "add contextual materials to create an interactive online experience centered on this exceptional edition." See the project website for more.
- UVA professor Karen Parshall volunteered to process an archival collection and has blogged about the experience for Notes from Under Grounds.
- Jennifer Schuessler reports for the NYTimes on the archival find that prompted Eric Foner's forthcoming book, Gateway to Freedom.
- From Heather Wolfe at The Collation, a nifty early modern color guide found in a manuscript heraldic miscellany.
- The surviving children of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are squabbling over ownership of the civil rights leader's personal Bible and Nobel Peace Prize medal. The NYTimes ran a long piece on the dispute this week, and MSNBC has a followup after the judge declined to issue a ruling this week. A trial could begin as early as 16 February.
- The Harvard Library staff news covers James Capobianco's recent Harvard Libraries staff talk about the history of Harvard call numbers. James' slides are also available.
- Paul Collins talked to Nate Pedersen for a Fine Books & Collections interview about his Duel with the Devil (and offers some hope for us Collins Library fans that perhaps more volumes might be forthcoming!)
- The anonymous Edinburgh book sculptor talked with BBC Scotland about her work.
- At the Hakluyt Society blog, Claire Jowett offers a progress report on her efforts to produce a new scholarly edition of Hakluyt's Principal Navigation.
- The annual conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand will be held 26-27 November 2015, and will focus on "Bibliographical Innovation and the Legacy of Aldus Manutius." They are currently inviting paper proposals for the conference.
- The Boston Globe highlights the BPL's Digital Commonwealth initiative, which assists public libraries with digitization efforts.
- Christopher Cook's note in The Library on a 1650 book order from an Oxford bookseller's wife is now available online.
Reviews
- Phyllis Lee Levin's The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams; review by Steve Donoghue in the Washington Post.
- James Morrow's Galápagos Regained; review by Ron Charles in the Washington Post.
- Eric Nelson's The Royalist Revolution; review by Michael Hattem at The Junto.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Links & Reviews
- Some pretty big news reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer: some 10,000 Maurice Sendak items long housed at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia will return to the Sendak estate, since the author chose not to leave the material to the library in his will. A museum and study center at Sendak's home in Ridgefield, CT is planned. The Rosenbach will receive Sendak's collection of rare books and correspondence, as well as a $2 million bequest.
- There's a piece in the Harvard Gazette about the early Audubon drawings at Harvard.
- The Cambridge University Library has succeeded in raising £1.1 million to secure the Codex Zacynthius, thanks to a £500,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
- New from Ikea, "BookBook."
- A foundation run by Warren Buffett's son Howard has purchased an archive of Rosa Parks-related items, including artifacts, photographs, and more. The material will be on a ten-year loan to the Library of Congress.
- The Church History Library in Salt Lake City is displaying early Mormon documents and books publicly for the first time.
- BYU Libraries have put out a pretty amusing video about book preservation (runs about eight minutes).
- Paul Collins talked to the LA Review of Books about his new book Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Life.
- Also from Paul Collins, "How to Pitch a Magazine (in 1888)" in The New Yorker.
- Christopher de Hamel is the new Senior Vice-President at Les Enluminures.
- Turkish filmmaker Oguz Uygur has created a lovely short film about paper marbling.
- Rizzoli Bookstore will reopen next year at 1133 Broadway, near Madison Square Park.
- The Summer 2014 issue of Common-place is out, and as usual it's full of goodies, including Erik Beck's "Finding a Lost Election" and a roundtable discussion on Sacvan Bercovitch's The American Jeremiad.
- Yale's Beinecke Library has acquired the papers of author/illustrator Mo Willems.
- There's an IndieGoGo campaign to install a climate control system at historic home of Edna St. Vincent Milay, to preserve the poet's personal library.
- Over at The American Literary Blog, a
- J.S. Makkos writes for The Atlantic about rescuing some 30,000 old New Orleans newspapers.
- Meredith Mann surveys printers' marks in the NYPL Rare Books Division.
- Alan Jacobs writes about David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks over at The New Atlantis.
- Also from Alan Jacobs, a short piece on the very obnoxious Answers.com for their massively annoying "Tweet your question to an expert" thing.
- Simon Beattie posted on the ABAA blog this week, "In Search of 'Rare Books.'"
- The University of Michigan has acquired the archive of political activist Tom Hayden.
- There's a new short video up about Boston's Brattle Book Shop.
- There's a crowd-funding campaign afoot raise £520,000 for the purchase of William Blake's cottage on the Sussex coast.
- A book bound by the Restoration binder known as the "Naval Binder" has been found at Houghton Library.
- From Adam Hooks at Anchora, "Monumental Shakespeare."
- Over at This is Money, Brian Lake of Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers (and president of the ABA) discusses Dickens collecting and its ongoing appeal.
- There's a quick rundown of the Miniature Book Society's Boston conclave at the Oak Knoll Biblio-Blog.
- And speaking of miniature books, a Conan Doyle story written for Queen Mary's dolls' house is to be published this fall by Walker & Company.
- Over at The Collation, some tips from Erin Blake on how to get and use raw data from the Folger's OPAC.
- Caroline O'Donovan writes for The Baffler about Boston's designation of a Literary Cultural District.
- Now available from the BSA via Bibsite, "British Book Auction Catalogues, 1801–1900," by Lenore Corel and edited by Annette Fern.
- A large collection of books on the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, has been donated to the Cornell University Library by alumnus Steven Chernys.
- Also now available for purchase is Ann Jordan's Laeuchli's A Bibliographical Catalog of William Blackstone (William S. Hein & Co., Inc., $149).
- A piece I wrote for the most recent FB&C about book thefts is up on their website.
- The Free Library of Philadelphia has received a grant of $25 million over three years from the William Penn Foundation to pay for renovation of the Central Library and several branch libraries.
- Doris Lessing has left 3,000 books from her collection to the Harare City Library.
- Iain Watts posts on the Royal Society's The Repository blog about the diary of Sir Charles Blagden, which sounds like a remarkably interesting source (alas, Blagden had execrable handwriting) for British science from the 1780s through the 1820s. Watts calls for an online annotated transcription of the diary, which motion I'll very happily second.
- Australian businessman and art collector Kerry Stokes has been announced as the buyer of the Rothschild Prayerbook. Reports here and here (with video), via Antipodean Footnotes.
- The SEA has updated the list of current and forthcoming books on early American topics.
- A book at Juniata College purportedly bound in human skin has been demystified: it's bound in sheepskin.
- The longlist for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize has been announced.
- From Jamelle Bouie at Slate, "A Few Helpful Rules for Reviewing Books About Slavery."
Reviews
- Philip Gould's Writing the Rebellion; review by Edward M. Griffin at Common-place.
- Diane Ackerman's The Human Age; review by Rob Nixon in the NYTimes.
- Norman Thomas di Giovanni's Georgie & Elsa; review by Lorna Scott Fox in the TLS.
- Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist; review by Wendy Smith in the WaPo.
- David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks; review by Miriam Barnum in the Harvard Crimson.
- Joanna Scott's De Potter's Grand Tour; review by John Vernon in the NYTimes.
- Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told; reviews by Hector Tobar in the LATimes and Jonathan Wilson at The Junto.
- Jeff VanderMeer's Acceptance; review by Scott Hutchins in the NYTimes.
- There's a piece in the Harvard Gazette about the early Audubon drawings at Harvard.
- The Cambridge University Library has succeeded in raising £1.1 million to secure the Codex Zacynthius, thanks to a £500,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
- New from Ikea, "BookBook."
- A foundation run by Warren Buffett's son Howard has purchased an archive of Rosa Parks-related items, including artifacts, photographs, and more. The material will be on a ten-year loan to the Library of Congress.
- The Church History Library in Salt Lake City is displaying early Mormon documents and books publicly for the first time.
- BYU Libraries have put out a pretty amusing video about book preservation (runs about eight minutes).
- Paul Collins talked to the LA Review of Books about his new book Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Life.
- Also from Paul Collins, "How to Pitch a Magazine (in 1888)" in The New Yorker.
- Christopher de Hamel is the new Senior Vice-President at Les Enluminures.
- Turkish filmmaker Oguz Uygur has created a lovely short film about paper marbling.
- Rizzoli Bookstore will reopen next year at 1133 Broadway, near Madison Square Park.
- The Summer 2014 issue of Common-place is out, and as usual it's full of goodies, including Erik Beck's "Finding a Lost Election" and a roundtable discussion on Sacvan Bercovitch's The American Jeremiad.
- Yale's Beinecke Library has acquired the papers of author/illustrator Mo Willems.
- There's an IndieGoGo campaign to install a climate control system at historic home of Edna St. Vincent Milay, to preserve the poet's personal library.
- Over at The American Literary Blog, a
- J.S. Makkos writes for The Atlantic about rescuing some 30,000 old New Orleans newspapers.
- Meredith Mann surveys printers' marks in the NYPL Rare Books Division.
- Alan Jacobs writes about David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks over at The New Atlantis.
- Also from Alan Jacobs, a short piece on the very obnoxious Answers.com for their massively annoying "Tweet your question to an expert" thing.
- Simon Beattie posted on the ABAA blog this week, "In Search of 'Rare Books.'"
- The University of Michigan has acquired the archive of political activist Tom Hayden.
- There's a new short video up about Boston's Brattle Book Shop.
- There's a crowd-funding campaign afoot raise £520,000 for the purchase of William Blake's cottage on the Sussex coast.
- A book bound by the Restoration binder known as the "Naval Binder" has been found at Houghton Library.
- From Adam Hooks at Anchora, "Monumental Shakespeare."
- Over at This is Money, Brian Lake of Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers (and president of the ABA) discusses Dickens collecting and its ongoing appeal.
- There's a quick rundown of the Miniature Book Society's Boston conclave at the Oak Knoll Biblio-Blog.
- And speaking of miniature books, a Conan Doyle story written for Queen Mary's dolls' house is to be published this fall by Walker & Company.
- Over at The Collation, some tips from Erin Blake on how to get and use raw data from the Folger's OPAC.
- Caroline O'Donovan writes for The Baffler about Boston's designation of a Literary Cultural District.
- Now available from the BSA via Bibsite, "British Book Auction Catalogues, 1801–1900," by Lenore Corel and edited by Annette Fern.
- A large collection of books on the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, has been donated to the Cornell University Library by alumnus Steven Chernys.
- Also now available for purchase is Ann Jordan's Laeuchli's A Bibliographical Catalog of William Blackstone (William S. Hein & Co., Inc., $149).
- A piece I wrote for the most recent FB&C about book thefts is up on their website.
- The Free Library of Philadelphia has received a grant of $25 million over three years from the William Penn Foundation to pay for renovation of the Central Library and several branch libraries.
- Doris Lessing has left 3,000 books from her collection to the Harare City Library.
- Iain Watts posts on the Royal Society's The Repository blog about the diary of Sir Charles Blagden, which sounds like a remarkably interesting source (alas, Blagden had execrable handwriting) for British science from the 1780s through the 1820s. Watts calls for an online annotated transcription of the diary, which motion I'll very happily second.
- Australian businessman and art collector Kerry Stokes has been announced as the buyer of the Rothschild Prayerbook. Reports here and here (with video), via Antipodean Footnotes.
- The SEA has updated the list of current and forthcoming books on early American topics.
- A book at Juniata College purportedly bound in human skin has been demystified: it's bound in sheepskin.
- The longlist for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize has been announced.
- From Jamelle Bouie at Slate, "A Few Helpful Rules for Reviewing Books About Slavery."
Reviews
- Philip Gould's Writing the Rebellion; review by Edward M. Griffin at Common-place.
- Diane Ackerman's The Human Age; review by Rob Nixon in the NYTimes.
- Norman Thomas di Giovanni's Georgie & Elsa; review by Lorna Scott Fox in the TLS.
- Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist; review by Wendy Smith in the WaPo.
- David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks; review by Miriam Barnum in the Harvard Crimson.
- Joanna Scott's De Potter's Grand Tour; review by John Vernon in the NYTimes.
- Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told; reviews by Hector Tobar in the LATimes and Jonathan Wilson at The Junto.
- Jeff VanderMeer's Acceptance; review by Scott Hutchins in the NYTimes.
Friday, November 01, 2013
Links & Reviews
One of these days I will catch up and get back to a regular schedule ...
- There was an appeal hearing this week in the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust case; Kenneth Crews of Columbia attended and has posted his notes.
- From the BBC, a "Living Online" report from the Folger Shakespeare Library on its digitization plans and strategies.
- Our friend George Psalmanazar is profiled by Benjamin Breen in The Appendix (drawn from his JEMH article here).
- There's a new CLIR report, Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories. Naturally the report is web-only, but it's available for free download here.
- The Albion iron hand press used by William Morris to print the Kelmscott Chaucer will be sold at Christie's New York on 6 December, with an estimate of $100,000-150,000.
- Dan De Simone has been announced as the next Eric Weinmann Librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
- Newly digitized at Penn, a 1785 mss. inventory of Nicola Rossi's collection of early printed books and manuscripts. See also the later printed version [via Mitch Fraas].
- At the Centre for Material Texts blog, Jason Scott-Warren writes about his hunt for the 850 books of Elizabethan reader William Neile.
- Paul Collins' next book will be Blood & Ivy: The True Story of Money, Murder & the Trial That Shocked Harvard, about the Parkman-Webster murder. It'll be published by Norton and out in 2016.
- The DPLA has announced a million-dollar grant program from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to train public librarians in digitization, metadata creation, and digital technologies.
- Joseph Thomas recently wrote a fascinating piece for Slate on why his biography of Shel Silverstein may never see print.
- At Forbes, Tim Worstall on how Barnes & Noble is suddenly Amazon's biggest roadblock when it comes to getting the books they're publishing in front of readers.
- Nick Basbanes talked about his new book On Paper with Britannica editor Gregory McNamee, with Publishers Weekly's Michael M. Jones (here), and on the Diane Rehm Show (here).
- Nigel Beale has posted an interview with Bill Reese on collecting and selling books.
- In The New Yorker, Annette Gordon-Reed discusses the new "12 Years a Slave" movie and slave narratives as historical evidence.
- A Chicago man who discovered papers related to Richard T. Greener (the first black graduate of Harvard) told a Chicago newspaper that he would "roast and burn" the papers if Harvard didn't offer more money for them.
- The Getty Research Institute has released another 5,400 artwork images into its Open Content Program (bringing the total up to 10,000+).
- The Guardian is running a series of essays on "The 100 Best Novels," which so far have been very much worth reading.
- SHARP seeks editors for Book History.
- Peter Kirwan, an editor for a new volume titled Collaborative Plays by William Shakespeare & Others, writes very cogently about what the volume is designed to do and present.
- Houghton Library curator John Overholt recently appeared on the "You're the Expert" podcast, which makes for highly entertaining listening.
- Robert Darnton discussed "the future of books" with Memphis Flyer reporter Leonard Gill.
- New at Houghton, Kepler's Ad Rerum Coelestium Amatores Universos, the rarest of Kepler's works (just four copies are known).
- APHA has launched a blog on its new homepage. Recommended (even if it does not, at the moment, appear to be RSS-able, which is a bummer, and on which I will be happy to be corrected if someone can send me the feed URL Update: feed is at http://printinghistory.org/feed/).
- There's a new (and quite nice) version of the USTC site. More from Jim Hinck here.
- From Mitch Fraas at Mapping Books, an early look at mapping library markings from looted books.
- Denise Spellberg talked to NPR recently about her book Thomas Jefferson's Qu'ran.
- Keith Houston, whose book Shady Characters I enjoyed very much this fall, has announced that he's now at work on The Book: A Cover to Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time (to be published by Norton in 2015).
- At Medieval Fragments, a few treasure bindings to feast your eyes upon.
- The University of Melbourne has purchased the literary archives of Germaine Greer for ~$3 million, with proceeds going to rainforest restoration efforts.
- New at AAS, the only(?) issue of The Franklin, an early Washington periodical flop.
- From Jordan Goffin at Notes for Bibliophiles, an excellent reminder that, as he writes, "rare materials require the use of all five senses."
- Rebecca Rego Barry highlights the publication of An Inspiration to All Who Enter: Fifty Works from Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale University Press).
- The University of Illinois has acquired the literary archives of Gwendolyn Brooks.
- At Manuscript Road Trip, a consideration of Otto Ege and his biblioclasm.
- Irene O'Daly writes on images of medieval scribes at work over at Medieval Fragments.
- From the Bright Young Librarians series, Meghan Constantinou of the Grolier Club and Jordan Goffin of the Providence Public Library.
- Over at Typefoundry, James Mosley explores the history of @.
- New at Exeter Working Papers in Book History, a series of posts outlining the library contents of Sabine Baring-Gould.
- There was an appeal hearing this week in the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust case; Kenneth Crews of Columbia attended and has posted his notes.
- From the BBC, a "Living Online" report from the Folger Shakespeare Library on its digitization plans and strategies.
- Our friend George Psalmanazar is profiled by Benjamin Breen in The Appendix (drawn from his JEMH article here).
- There's a new CLIR report, Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories. Naturally the report is web-only, but it's available for free download here.
- The Albion iron hand press used by William Morris to print the Kelmscott Chaucer will be sold at Christie's New York on 6 December, with an estimate of $100,000-150,000.
- Dan De Simone has been announced as the next Eric Weinmann Librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
- Newly digitized at Penn, a 1785 mss. inventory of Nicola Rossi's collection of early printed books and manuscripts. See also the later printed version [via Mitch Fraas].
- At the Centre for Material Texts blog, Jason Scott-Warren writes about his hunt for the 850 books of Elizabethan reader William Neile.
- Paul Collins' next book will be Blood & Ivy: The True Story of Money, Murder & the Trial That Shocked Harvard, about the Parkman-Webster murder. It'll be published by Norton and out in 2016.
- The DPLA has announced a million-dollar grant program from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to train public librarians in digitization, metadata creation, and digital technologies.
- Joseph Thomas recently wrote a fascinating piece for Slate on why his biography of Shel Silverstein may never see print.
- At Forbes, Tim Worstall on how Barnes & Noble is suddenly Amazon's biggest roadblock when it comes to getting the books they're publishing in front of readers.
- Nick Basbanes talked about his new book On Paper with Britannica editor Gregory McNamee, with Publishers Weekly's Michael M. Jones (here), and on the Diane Rehm Show (here).
- Nigel Beale has posted an interview with Bill Reese on collecting and selling books.
- In The New Yorker, Annette Gordon-Reed discusses the new "12 Years a Slave" movie and slave narratives as historical evidence.
- A Chicago man who discovered papers related to Richard T. Greener (the first black graduate of Harvard) told a Chicago newspaper that he would "roast and burn" the papers if Harvard didn't offer more money for them.
- The Getty Research Institute has released another 5,400 artwork images into its Open Content Program (bringing the total up to 10,000+).
- The Guardian is running a series of essays on "The 100 Best Novels," which so far have been very much worth reading.
- SHARP seeks editors for Book History.
- Peter Kirwan, an editor for a new volume titled Collaborative Plays by William Shakespeare & Others, writes very cogently about what the volume is designed to do and present.
- Houghton Library curator John Overholt recently appeared on the "You're the Expert" podcast, which makes for highly entertaining listening.
- Robert Darnton discussed "the future of books" with Memphis Flyer reporter Leonard Gill.
- New at Houghton, Kepler's Ad Rerum Coelestium Amatores Universos, the rarest of Kepler's works (just four copies are known).
- APHA has launched a blog on its new homepage. Recommended (
- There's a new (and quite nice) version of the USTC site. More from Jim Hinck here.
- From Mitch Fraas at Mapping Books, an early look at mapping library markings from looted books.
- Denise Spellberg talked to NPR recently about her book Thomas Jefferson's Qu'ran.
- Keith Houston, whose book Shady Characters I enjoyed very much this fall, has announced that he's now at work on The Book: A Cover to Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time (to be published by Norton in 2015).
- At Medieval Fragments, a few treasure bindings to feast your eyes upon.
- The University of Melbourne has purchased the literary archives of Germaine Greer for ~$3 million, with proceeds going to rainforest restoration efforts.
- New at AAS, the only(?) issue of The Franklin, an early Washington periodical flop.
- From Jordan Goffin at Notes for Bibliophiles, an excellent reminder that, as he writes, "rare materials require the use of all five senses."
- Rebecca Rego Barry highlights the publication of An Inspiration to All Who Enter: Fifty Works from Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale University Press).
- The University of Illinois has acquired the literary archives of Gwendolyn Brooks.
- At Manuscript Road Trip, a consideration of Otto Ege and his biblioclasm.
- Irene O'Daly writes on images of medieval scribes at work over at Medieval Fragments.
- From the Bright Young Librarians series, Meghan Constantinou of the Grolier Club and Jordan Goffin of the Providence Public Library.
- Over at Typefoundry, James Mosley explores the history of @.
- New at Exeter Working Papers in Book History, a series of posts outlining the library contents of Sabine Baring-Gould.
- Jennifer Schuessler covered the launch of the Emily Dickinson Archive, including a look at the continuing tensions between Amherst and Harvard over the Dickinson materials in their collections. More on that from Sarah Schweitzer in the Boston Globe.
- McGill University has launched an exhibit to display select items from the J. Patrick Lee Collection of Voltaire, newly acquired by the university library.
- At Booktryst, a look at the manuscript of George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation, going on the block at Christie's on 14 November.
- In The New Yorker, Paul Collins examines what may be some early Poe works through the lens of computer-based textual analysis.
- Reading Copy asked booksellers Bill Reese and Allen Stypeck for their predictions about the Bay Psalm Book sale on 26 November. In a later post, Richard Davies asks "Who Will Buy the Bay Psalm Book?"
- At Booktryst, a look at the manuscript of George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation, going on the block at Christie's on 14 November.
- In The New Yorker, Paul Collins examines what may be some early Poe works through the lens of computer-based textual analysis.
- Reading Copy asked booksellers Bill Reese and Allen Stypeck for their predictions about the Bay Psalm Book sale on 26 November. In a later post, Richard Davies asks "Who Will Buy the Bay Psalm Book?"
- Ron Charles highlights the launch of the new Shelley-Godwin Archive. More here from the NYTimes.
Reviews
- Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries; review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.
- Alan Jacobs' The Book of Common Prayer; review by Adam Shields at Bookwi.se.
- Alan Jacobs' The Book of Common Prayer; review by Adam Shields at Bookwi.se.
- A. Scott Berg's Wilson; review by Hector Tobar in the LATimes.
- Miles Hollingworth's St. Augustine of Hippo; review by Cole Moreton in the Telegraph.
- Miles Hollingworth's St. Augustine of Hippo; review by Cole Moreton in the Telegraph.
- James WP Campbell's The Library: A World History; review by Clive Aslet in the Telegraph.
- Jeff Greenfield's If Kennedy Lived; reviews by H.W. Brands in the WaPo and John Timpane in the Philly Inquirer.
- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review by Helen Gallagher in the New York Journal of Books.
- Jill Lepore's Book of Ages; review by Mary Beth Norton in the NYTimes.
- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review by Helen Gallagher in the New York Journal of Books.
- Jill Lepore's Book of Ages; review by Mary Beth Norton in the NYTimes.
- Richard A. Serrano's Last of the Blue and Gray; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Links & Reviews
- The 51st New York Antiquarian Book Fair concludes today. The first dispatches from the floor indicate a very successful show so far!
- Profiles of LBJ biographer Robert Caro ran in both Esquire and the New York Times. Both are fascinating (and count me as one of those waiting very impatiently for May 1, when the next volume of Caro's work appears).
- The FB&C "Bright Young Things" series continued this week with a profile of Andrew Gaub of Bruce McKittrick Rare Books.
- Paul Collins writes in Slate about the history of threats to end Saturday mail delivery, and why that's probably just the beginning.
- If you haven't been following Caleb Crain's posts about the planned NYPL renovations, get reading.
- In other NYPL news, a $500,000 grant from The Polonsky Foundation will fund the digitization of documents from the Thomas Addis Emmet collection of American manuscripts.
- UC Riverside will mark the acquisition of its 3 millionth volume this week; Terry Belanger will give the keynote talk at the 18 April celebration.
- At Anchora this week, Adam G. Hooks notes some of the ongoing Shakespeare-related events at Yale this spring, and muses about the importance of one item in particular.
- Suzanne Fischer reported this week on the ongoing effort at Brown University to decipher Roger Williams' shorthand in an unidentified theological volume. Follow along with the process at the JCB Books Speak blog.
- Over at the AAS' blog, Past is Present, Caroline Sloat provides a history of the Society's seal. [For another "seal story," see my 2009 Beehive post about the MHS' device].
- From Salon, Alexander Zaitchik's "Amazon's $1 million secret" is entirely worth reading.
- Book designer Chip Kidd's TED talk on book design is very funny, but he's also got some important things to say about what the process of design means for the book as physical object (and what we lose with ebooks). [h/t Dave Gary]
- Harvard hosted a "strategic conversation" on the integration of libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) - the Harvard Gazette has a writeup.
- Florike Egmond's post on "re-discovering" Gessner's animal drawings made the rounds this week, but for those who might have missed it, I add it here too.
- JK Rowling announced this week that her first non-Harry Potter book will be out this fall. It'll be titled The Casual Vacancy, which prompted a fantastic tweet from J.L. Bell.
Reviews
- Peter Carey's The Chemistry of Tears; review by Catherine Taylor in the Telegraph.
- Stanley Corngold's new translation of Goethe's The Sufferings of Young Werther; review by J.M. Coetzee in the NYRB.
- Lyndsay Faye's The Gods of Gotham; review by Ross King in the Washington Post.
- Richard Fortey's Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms; review by Dwight Garner in the NYTimes.
- E.O. Wilson's The Social Conquest of Earth; review by Colin Woodard in the Washington Post.
- I hesitate to even mention this book lest I accidentally get it any attention whatsoever, but David Barton's The Jefferson Lies is reviewed by Allen Pell Crawford in the Wall Street Journal.
- Profiles of LBJ biographer Robert Caro ran in both Esquire and the New York Times. Both are fascinating (and count me as one of those waiting very impatiently for May 1, when the next volume of Caro's work appears).
- The FB&C "Bright Young Things" series continued this week with a profile of Andrew Gaub of Bruce McKittrick Rare Books.
- Paul Collins writes in Slate about the history of threats to end Saturday mail delivery, and why that's probably just the beginning.
- If you haven't been following Caleb Crain's posts about the planned NYPL renovations, get reading.
- In other NYPL news, a $500,000 grant from The Polonsky Foundation will fund the digitization of documents from the Thomas Addis Emmet collection of American manuscripts.
- UC Riverside will mark the acquisition of its 3 millionth volume this week; Terry Belanger will give the keynote talk at the 18 April celebration.
- At Anchora this week, Adam G. Hooks notes some of the ongoing Shakespeare-related events at Yale this spring, and muses about the importance of one item in particular.
- Suzanne Fischer reported this week on the ongoing effort at Brown University to decipher Roger Williams' shorthand in an unidentified theological volume. Follow along with the process at the JCB Books Speak blog.
- Over at the AAS' blog, Past is Present, Caroline Sloat provides a history of the Society's seal. [For another "seal story," see my 2009 Beehive post about the MHS' device].
- From Salon, Alexander Zaitchik's "Amazon's $1 million secret" is entirely worth reading.
- Book designer Chip Kidd's TED talk on book design is very funny, but he's also got some important things to say about what the process of design means for the book as physical object (and what we lose with ebooks). [h/t Dave Gary]
- Harvard hosted a "strategic conversation" on the integration of libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) - the Harvard Gazette has a writeup.
- Florike Egmond's post on "re-discovering" Gessner's animal drawings made the rounds this week, but for those who might have missed it, I add it here too.
- JK Rowling announced this week that her first non-Harry Potter book will be out this fall. It'll be titled The Casual Vacancy, which prompted a fantastic tweet from J.L. Bell.
Reviews
- Peter Carey's The Chemistry of Tears; review by Catherine Taylor in the Telegraph.
- Stanley Corngold's new translation of Goethe's The Sufferings of Young Werther; review by J.M. Coetzee in the NYRB.
- Lyndsay Faye's The Gods of Gotham; review by Ross King in the Washington Post.
- Richard Fortey's Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms; review by Dwight Garner in the NYTimes.
- E.O. Wilson's The Social Conquest of Earth; review by Colin Woodard in the Washington Post.
- I hesitate to even mention this book lest I accidentally get it any attention whatsoever, but David Barton's The Jefferson Lies is reviewed by Allen Pell Crawford in the Wall Street Journal.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Links & Reviews
- New from the Folger, Shakespeare's Sisters: Voices of English and European Woman Writers, 1500-1700. The exhibit was reviewed in the NYTimes this week by Edward Rothstein.
- Tom Scheinfeldt's "Nobody cares about the library" is a must-read post of the week.
- From the really delightful Public Domain Review, Claire Preston examines Thomas Browne's Musaeum Clausum in "Lost Libraries."
- Brian Cassidy's new catalogue (his sixth) is now online [PDF].
- Another fantastic post by Sarah Werner at The Collation, "Learning from Mistakes" (on what we can glean about the production process from errors that appear in early modern printed books).
- In this week's New Yorker, Lizzie Widdicome profiles Quentin Rowan, who found himself in hot water last year over plagiarism in his novel Assassin of Secrets.
- From the John Rylands Library, First Impressions, a site designed to display the spread of print across Europe.
- An official with the German cultural ministry was found to have thousands of books stolen from libraries in his home.
- At 8vo, Brooke Palmieri calls for a revitalized Federal Writers Project (or something like it). And Brooke is also featured in the Fine Books "Bright Young Things" series this week!
- For "Weekend Edition Saturday", Jacki Lydon visited the Providence Athenaeum, one of the most fascinating and historic libraries around.
- News this morning that Maine bookstore chain Mr. Paperback will be closing all ten of its stores by April.
- Flooding from a burst pipe at the Auckland Central Library was threatening the rare book and map collections this weekend.
- Jerry Morris treats us to some images and stories about books from his extensive collection of Johnsoniana.
- Over at the AAS blog, Ashley Cataldo uses a great J. Francis Ruggles book label to highlight collections relating to printing and bookselling history.
- From Biblioguerilla, one of my very favorite printers' devices.
Reviews
- Irvin Yalom's The Spinoza Problem; review by Ron Charles in the Washington Post.
- Matthew Pearl's The Technologists; review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Book Review: "The Rector and the Rogue"
The latest installment of the Collins Library, a McSweeney's imprint edited by the inimitable Paul Collins, is The Rector and the Rogue by W.A. Swanberg, first published in 1968 and re-issued in 2011. Collins' instinct for underappreciated gems certainly hasn't failed him here: what a book!
Swanberg's book is the story of what must be one of the most elaborate practical jokes ever undertaken. The unsuspecting rector of New York's Trinity Church was the main victim; over a period of several weeks his home is inundated by a procession of tradesmen and visitors, summoned there by postcards signed by the rector, Morgan Dix. One morning it's more than 25 used-clothing dealers, come to buy Mrs. Dix's wardrobe; another it's fourteen of Dix's fellow clergymen, invited to lunch with a not-actually-visiting English bishop. Eventually Dix goes to the postal authorities and the police, and an investigation reveals that Dix is not the only victim. But the victims seem totally unconnected, and the investigators are absolutely flummoxed as to the prankster's motive (it's presumed to be extortion, but that angle proves nothing but a red herring).
A lucky break leads to the eventual discovery of the mastermind behind the scheme/performance, a curious character who seems at first glance an unlikely conspirator, but whose past record, when explored more carefully, proves anything but spotless. I'll leave it to Swanberg to explain the rest of the story, as he does it very well indeed. Suffice it to say, it wasn't the first time, or even the most serious crime.
The hoakster, E. Fairfax Williamson, had been inspired by a previous practical joker, Theodore Edward Hook, who had carried out a similar scheme against Mrs. Octavia Tottenham in 1809, sending hordes of people thronging to her Berners Street home in London on a single morning. Swanberg explores Hook's work as the precursor to Williamson's even more elaborate persecution of Dix, a most enjoyable tangent to the main story.
Swanberg's writing is lively and humorous, and Collins' afterword, which offers up a fantastic corollary to the Williamson hoax by suggesting that perhaps the joke still hasn't yielded up its last punchline, is brilliant. Highly, highly recommended.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Links & Reviews
- Stuart Kelly blogged for the Guardian about reading by candlelight.
- Over on the SHARP blog, Leslie Howsam asks for the "most innovative monographs in the field of book history published in the past 20 years"? It's prompted some good discussion (don't forget to read the comments).
- Lisa Jardine comments on the history of information overload in "Why didn't Harry Potter just use Google?"
- A new Biblio-tumblr from Brooke Palmieri, BIBLIOGUERILLA. I've also added a link on the sidebar.
- In a followup blog post to her recent piece on Matt Kirschenbaum's project on the history of word processing, Jennifer Schuessler reports that authors have been coming out of the woodwork to stake their claims.
- Paul Collins points out the 1850s Philadelphia magazine "Bizarre" (sample contents here).
- The BBC reports on the annual cleaning of the chained library at Hereford Cathedral.
- From The Collation, a wonderful idea of allowing readers who've taken reference images of Folger materials to pool them in a Flickr group. Other institutions where reference photography is allowed: this is a step worth exploring at the very least!
- Over at Echoes from the Vault, some very nice inky fingerprints in a 1473 book.
- Some nifty resources on the English book trade, tweeted by @mercpol recently: The English Provincial Book Trade Before 1850 and The London Booktrades: A Biographical and Documentary Resource.
- In the Washington Post, Raymond M. Lane looks at the connections between Poe and Dickens.
- A fascinating discussion sprang up on ExLibris this week, about whether ebook collections should be allowed as entries into book collecting contests. Nate Pedersen summarized the issues in a Fine Books Blog post.
- Seven wonderful booksellers have collaborated on a collective catalog of items available at the upcoming San Francisco and Pasadena fairs.
- Over at Notes for Bibliophiles, Jordan Goffin highlights some recent work on whaleship reading.
- In the Telegraph, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst writes about the new BBC adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood (airing in the US in April). And, for more on Dickens, Christopher Hitchens' posthumous Vanity Fair piece, "Charles Dickens's Inner Child," is a must-read.
Reviews
- Elizabeth Dowling Taylor's A Slave in the White House; review by Jonathan Yardley in theWashington Post.
- Cullen Murphy's God's Jury; review by Edward Peters in the Washington Post.
- P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley; review by Kenneth Turan in the LATimes.
Monday, January 02, 2012
Links & Reviews
- Perhaps my favorite piece of the week, John Crace's great takedown of year-end booklists.
- Woody Guthrie's archives have been purchased by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, which plans to open a Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa by the end of 2012.
- Over at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie, Lew Jaffe examines a silver bookplate.
- Rebecca Rego Barry has posted her very tempting winter reading list on the Fine Books Blog.
- While I take great issue with the phrase "cult of the physical book," Trevor Butterworth's Forbes article is still worth a read.
- The traveling panel show about John Adams' library, now in Long Island, gets a writeup in the NYTimes.
- In New Scientist, Paul Collins writes on the delightful trend of Victorian poet-scientists.
Review
- John M. Barry's Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul; review by Joyce Chaplin in the NYTimes.
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.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Links & Reviews
Sorry for the delay this week; no internet connection this morning meant I got some reading done.
- Also up, this month's Americana Exchange Monthly, which looks ahead to some of the fall's auctions, profiles Vic Zoschak's reference workshops, &c.
- Steve Ferguson's got a mustn't-miss post up about Elkanah Settle's presentation bindings.
- Ed Pettit's going to devote 2012 to reading all of Dickens' works: follow along here, or on Twitter at @ReadingDickens.
- The NYTimes covered what seems to be a diminished market for mass-market paperback editions of books.
- On NPR this week, Simon Garfield talked about his new book Just my Type.
- In the September Believer, Paul Collins writes on a very odd trend in late-50s-model Chrysler cars: hi-fi turnstables!
- At The Collation, Jim Kuhn's begun a series of posts on various handy Folger Library tools with an introduction; start following along!
- Lev Grossman writes in the NYT's "The Mechanic Muse" column about scrolls, codices, and e-reading.
- In case you missed it this week, check out 60 Minutes with Shakespeare, in which 60 scholars talk for a minute (or so) apiece about som aspect of Shakespeare and the "authorship controversy." And for more Shakespeare on the radio, check out Folger curator Owen Williams and editor Barbara Mowat's appearance on the Kojo Nmandi show.
I didn't see any particularly noteworthy reviews this week.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Book Review: "The Murder of the Century"
I've made no secret over the years just how much I enjoy Paul Collins' books, and his latest is no exception: The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars (Crown, 2011) is another home run. The tale of the gruesome 1897 murder of New York masseuse William Guldensuppe by his (married) paramour Augusta Nack and her paramour Martin Thorn captivated New York for months, and Collins recounts the events as they happened, drawing on the extensive coverage in New York City's newspapers, police records, and other sources.
Collins offers a wide-angle view of the Guldensuppe case, delving deeply into the crime, the investigation, and the trials of the perpetrators. By doing so, he offers the possibility of looking at the extent to which the newspapers (particularly William Randolph Hearst's Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's World) played a key role in discovering evidence (or following leads which led to its discovery), influencing public opinion, and keeping interest in the case (and their increased circulation) alive.
A brilliant recreation of all aspects of this captivating, nasty crime and its aftermath.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Links & Reviews
First, a quick note, to partially explain the fewer posts than usual lately: there's much going on, I've been busier than I usually am (and I'm usually pretty busy), and on top of all that, we're thinking about moving up to Portland (ME), so my brain has gotten well filled with the completely draining madness of apartment-hunting (which is hard enough as it is, and harder when you have accumulated as many books as I have). So bear with me - I'm sure things will settle down eventually ...
- The NYPL launched a neat new crowd-sourcing project this week, What's on the Menu? Folks can choose a menu and easily transcribe the dishes listed there (so far, more than 50,000 dishes have been transcribed). I did a few menus myself - it's rather addictive, quite fun, and entirely useful. Good stuff.
- Writing in the Chronicle, Robert Darnton offers "5 Myths about the 'Information Age'"
- Ben Ehrenreich's LA Review of Books piece "The Death of the Book" is well worth a read.
- Sarah Werner posts a fantastic binding mystery for us: a copy of John Smith's 1624 Generall historie with what appears to be George Villiers' family arms stamped atop those of James I.
- Swann posts top lots from their 22 April autograph sale.
- Happening this week at Brandeis: Steven Whitfield and Michael Gilmore will discuss the manuscript of Heller's Catch-22, donated to Brandeis by Heller himself. Details here.
- Rick Ring notes the arrival at Trinity's Watkinson Library of a special display case for their copy of Audubon's Birds of America. Having been at Union when the custom-made cases for that copy arrived, I can certainly vouch for the size of the things!
- The British Library has purchased the email archive of author Wendy Cope, paying £32,000 for some 40,000 emails.
- Paul Collins pens another letter to the editors of the OED, and tweets about a 1956 plan for heating homes through the wallpaper.
Reviews
- Arthur Phillips's The Tragedy of Arthur; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo. By far the best book review I've read in a long time.
- Eleanor Brown's The Weird Sisters; review by Tom DeHaven in the NYTimes.
- Wendy McClure's The Wilder Life; review by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
- Simon Schama's Scribble, Scribble, Scribble; review by Phillip Lopate in the NYTimes.
- Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes; review by Nicole Cammorata in the Boston Globe.
- Adams Goodheart's The Civil War Awakening; review by Debby Applegate in the NYTimes.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Links & Reviews
Happy Sunday from San Diego, where ALA Midwinter continues apace! Apologies for the abbreviated L&R this weekend; I'll catch up more next Sunday.
- Over at the Princeton Rare Books blog, Steve Ferguson writes on the dispersal of the book collection(s) of Sylvia Beach.
- Raymond Scott has now said he will launch an appeal against his conviction and sentence.
- The OED is offering a month's free trial to their online version, good through 5 February only.
- J.L. Bell notes the major mistake made this week during the symbolic reading of the Constitution by the new House of Representatives (hint: they skipped a page).
- Zotero welcomed Debbie Maron as their new Community Lead.
- In the Boston Globe, Katherine Powers takes a look at some books on the King James Bible, published 400 years ago. There's more on the KJV from Peter Ross in The Scotsman.
- Also in the Globe, Erica Noonan writes on Rob Martello's new book Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn, which looks at Paul Revere as an industrial pioneer.
- The Little Professor reviews the new movie "The King's Speech."
Reviews
- James Shapiro's Contested Will; review by David Evans in the Independent.
- A Dodo at Oxford; review by Nick at Mercurius Politicus.
- Graham Moore's The Sherlockian; review by Diane White in the Boston Globe.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Links & Reviews
- The 2011 Bibliography Week schedule is up: of particular interest is G. Thomas Tanselle's 25 January talk "A Defense of Association Copies."
- On 8-9 January 2011 the New Bedford Whaling Museum will host the 15th annual marathon reading of Moby Dick. Full info on the reading and associated events here.
- On 28 January 2011 the Eighteenth-Century Worlds Research Centre at the University of Liverpool and the Liverpool Athenaeum will co-host a free one-day conference, "Institutions of Associational Reading: New Perspectives on Library History, c. 1750-1850."
- On 28 January 2011 the Eighteenth-Century Worlds Research Centre at the University of Liverpool and the Liverpool Athenaeum will co-host a free one-day conference, "Institutions of Associational Reading: New Perspectives on Library History, c. 1750-1850."
- Much continued discussion this week about the new Google Ngram viewer. I've been adding links to my post over the last few days, so there's more there than before.
- Laura at The Cataloguer's Desk has some lovely pictures of snow around Peter Harrington Rare Books in London.
- ACRL has received a grant to digitize and make available the back issues of RBML and RBM.
- The now-recovered Durham First Folio will be on display at the university after 15 January as part of a "Treasures of Durham University" exhibit.
- A fantastic collection of cover images for booksellers' first catalogs. Speaking of which, Rick Gekoski's Guardian column "Taking stock of rare book catalogues" is this week's must-read.
- Paul Collins has a new essay in Lapham's Quarterly, about child author Barbara Follett, who eventually disappeared without a trace. It's a haunting story, well told as always by Collins.
- Nigel Beale has posted an audio interview with Roderick Cave about the Golden Cockerel Press.
- OCLC asked a judge [PDF] to dismiss the anti-trust lawsuit filed against it by SkyRiver.
- Christie's unveiled an iPad app.
- On the AAS blog, Caroline Sloat writes about why they don't have an Audubon elephant folio Birds of America. Their story is not as sad (or as disappointing) as the MHS' Audubon tale: they did have an elephant folio, but sold it in the early years of the 20th century to a dealer who broke it apart and sold the plates piecemeal. Sigh.
- Some useful (very useful) new resources from CERL: Paul Needham's Index Possessorum Incunabulorum (IPI contains "some 32,000 entries relating to the ownership of incunabula,
including personal names, institutional names, monograms, and arms") and Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI, "a new database specifically designed to record and search the material
evidence (or copy specific, post-production evidence, provenance information) of 15th-century printed books: ownership, decoration, binding, manuscript annotations, stamps, prices, etc.").
- There was much amusement in bookville this week after a story that new Red Sox outfielder Carl Crawford would be opening an antiquarian bookshop in Boston proved a (very well played) hoax. Probably.
- Fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are working to try and save the author's sometime Surrey home, Undershaw, from being turned into apartments.
- The unpublished manuscript of an unfinished Roald Dahl short story sold on eBay this week for £1,200.
- From last weekend's LATimes, Tim Rutten's column "Why Print Survives" is well worth a read.
- The now-recovered Durham First Folio will be on display at the university after 15 January as part of a "Treasures of Durham University" exhibit.
- A fantastic collection of cover images for booksellers' first catalogs. Speaking of which, Rick Gekoski's Guardian column "Taking stock of rare book catalogues" is this week's must-read.
- Paul Collins has a new essay in Lapham's Quarterly, about child author Barbara Follett, who eventually disappeared without a trace. It's a haunting story, well told as always by Collins.
- Nigel Beale has posted an audio interview with Roderick Cave about the Golden Cockerel Press.
- OCLC asked a judge [PDF] to dismiss the anti-trust lawsuit filed against it by SkyRiver.
- Christie's unveiled an iPad app.
- On the AAS blog, Caroline Sloat writes about why they don't have an Audubon elephant folio Birds of America. Their story is not as sad (or as disappointing) as the MHS' Audubon tale: they did have an elephant folio, but sold it in the early years of the 20th century to a dealer who broke it apart and sold the plates piecemeal. Sigh.
- Some useful (very useful) new resources from CERL: Paul Needham's Index Possessorum Incunabulorum (IPI contains "some 32,000 entries relating to the ownership of incunabula,
including personal names, institutional names, monograms, and arms") and Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI, "a new database specifically designed to record and search the material
evidence (or copy specific, post-production evidence, provenance information) of 15th-century printed books: ownership, decoration, binding, manuscript annotations, stamps, prices, etc.").
- There was much amusement in bookville this week after a story that new Red Sox outfielder Carl Crawford would be opening an antiquarian bookshop in Boston proved a (very well played) hoax. Probably.
- Fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are working to try and save the author's sometime Surrey home, Undershaw, from being turned into apartments.
- The unpublished manuscript of an unfinished Roald Dahl short story sold on eBay this week for £1,200.
- From last weekend's LATimes, Tim Rutten's column "Why Print Survives" is well worth a read.
Reviews
- Richard Archer's As If in an Enemy's Country; T.H. Breen's American Insurgents, American Patriots; and Ben Carp's Defiance of the Patriots; review by Caleb Crain in the New Yorker. Caleb has also posted a bibliographic essay related to the review.
- Several recent books on higher education are reviewed by Anthony Grafton in The National Interest.
- Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg's Madison and Jefferson; review by Pauline Maier in the WaPo.
- Virginia Scharff's The Women Jefferson Loved; review by Andrea Wulf in the NYTimes.
- Kathleen Kent's The Wolves of Andover; review by Liz Raftery in the Boston Globe.
- Susan Cheever's Louisa May Alcott; review by Elaine Showalter in the WaPo.
- Susan Cheever's Louisa May Alcott; review by Elaine Showalter in the WaPo.
- Pauline Maier's Ratification; review by Gordon Wood in the TNR.
- The Autobiography of Mark Twain; review by Garrison Keillor in the NYTimes. Best line: "Think twice about donating your papers to an institution of higher learning, Famous Writer: someday they may be used against you."
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Links & Reviews
- In today's Globe, Jill Lepore talks about her new book In the Whites of Their Eyes, and about the Tea Party's use of what she terms "antihistory" in their political rhetoric. There's also an interview with Lepore by Lin Fisher on the Religion in America blog.
- Bouncing off a link in last week's L&R, Mike Widener has compiled a great guide to "research opportunities" based on the Joseph White murder case.
- The NYPL's Schomburg Center has acquired a large collection of Maya Angelou's personal papers (some 343 boxes' worth).
- Powell's Books will be selling some 7,000 books from the personal library of author Anne Rice.
- If you read one of the many "wow, Jane Austen had an editor?!" articles, make it Jen Howard's in the Chronicle. And be sure to check out the underlying project, the new Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition.
- Raymond Scott, serving an 8-year prison term for handling the stolen Durham First Folio, has reportedly landed a job in the prison library.
- No word yet on what was removed from former NARA department head Leslie Waffen's home this week under the conditions of a sealed search warrant.
- Some thoughts on "Sherlock" by Miriam at The Little Professor (I've now watched the first episode twice, and look forward to the second tonight).
- Some really interesting discoveries by Ben at Res Obscura, including a fascinatingly detailed index.
- Michael Kenney notes a few recent books on Boston's literary and political history.
- The ABAA blog uncovers a very rare early Mormon text for sale on eBay.
- Of great use to me and hopefully to many others as well, the Bermuda National Library has mounted a digital collection of the island's early newspapers.
- Paul Collins finds a very unfortunate millinery mishap.
- You think this year's political campaign is nasty? Someone's made some "attack ads" from the 1800 election.
Reviews
- Several recent books on ghosts and ghost stories, including Peter Ackroyd's The English Ghost; review by Jonathan Barnes in the TLS.
- Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra; review by Buzzy Jackson in the Boston Globe.
- Lewis Hyde's Common as Air; review by Michael Hitzik in the LATimes.
- Geoffrey Wolff's The Hard Way Round; review by Nathaniel Philbrick in the NYTimes.
- Pauline Maier's Ratification; review by Rick Brookhiser in the NYTimes.
- Susan Fletcher's Corrag; review by Ron Charles in the WaPo.
- Peter Ackroyd's The Death of King Arthur; review by David Robson in the Telegraph.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Links & Reviews
- Whitney Trettien has a great post, "The Erasers & the Annotators: A Remixed Twitter Convo on Library Marginalia (and more)". I love the way she did this.
- Over at the Book Bench, Macy Halford writes on Benjamin Franklin and the early foundations of American libraries.
- A Virginia collector has donated nearly 700 Civil War photographs to the Library of Congress, the WaPo reports. A major exhibition of the photographs is planned for April 2011, and many of the images are available online.
- Author Doug Stewart talks about his The Boy Who Would be Shakespeare in the Lexington Patch.
- Via Reading Copy this week, author-scented candles (quite amusing).
- From The Millions, word that Jack Black will play the title character in a film adaptation of Gulliver's Travels. Watch the preview.
- In Slate, Paul Collins writes on the history of chain letters.
Reviews
- Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life; reviews by Andrew Cayton in the NYTimes and Andrew Roberts in the WSJ.
- Eric Foner's The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery; review by David Reynolds in the NYTimes.
- Stephen Breyer's Making Democracy Work; review by David Fontana in the WaPo.
- Daisy Hay's Young Romantics and Richard Marggraf Turley's Bright Star; review by Oliver Herford in the TLS.
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