Links & Reviews

- The Library of Congress has acquired the Codex Quetzalcatzin, a pre-1600 Mesoamerican codex.

- New from the wonderful Brattle Book Shop, Brattlecast, a short podcast about rare books and the business of selling them.

- Try out the Folger's new DIY First Folio site, where you can practice making your own in their virtual printing house.

- The new Magdalen College Oxford exhibition, "Fragments of Note: The Afterlives of Medieval Manuscripts" is now open - and the short video linked at the bottom of that page, "Singing the Collections," is well worth a look.

- Author Richard Adams' library will go on the block at Dominic Winter on 14 December. View the lots, or read a Guardian piece about the sale. I wish there was better cataloging on the group lots so that a full inventory of Adams' collection could be captured - if anybody reads this who is going to the preview and wants to spend a bit of them jotting down citations, I would be eternally grateful!

- Surekha Davies posts at The Collation on "Collecting the world in seventeenth-century London."

- Rebecca Rego Barry has the annual Fine Books Notes holiday roundup of books about books.

- The second installment in the Echoes from the Vault series on visualizing the St. Andrews biographical register is out.

- If you missed the Bibliography Among the Disciplines conference in October, there are 40+ hours of audio now available.

- Haven Hawley summarizes a visit to the Museum of Printing during this fall's APHA conference.

- Keith Houston writes about Thomas Jefferson's ivory notebook in a Miscellany post.

- A copy of Origin of Species annotated by Darwin is set to be sold at Christie's next month.

- Over at the Robb Report, "Harry Potter and the Ridiculous Run of Auction Records."

- From the Ransom Center magazine, a profile of translator Harriet de Ónis.

- Henry McGhie writes for the OUP blog about "The building blocks of ornithology."

Reviews

- Leslie Peirce's Empress of the East; review by Thomas Madden in the NYTimes.

- Caroline Fraser's Little House on the Prairie; review by Patricia Nelson Limerick in the NYTimes.

- Marion Rankine's Brolliology; review by Michael Lindgren in the WaPo.

Upcoming Auctions

- Livres Rares et Manuscrits at Christie's Paris on 28 November.

- Musical Manuscripts at Sotheby's London on 28 November.

- Printed Books & Manuscripts at Chiswick Auctions on 29 November.

- The Richard E. Bateman Collection on Celestial Mechanics - Science, Medicine & Technology - Rare Books & Manuscripts at PBA Galleries on 30 November.

Links & Reviews

- It was a great treat to see so many friends at last week's Bibliography Among the Disciplines conference in Philadelphia - see the #BxD17 hashtag for tweets from the meeting.

- The Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair is coming up on 10–12 November.

- From Archaeology, "The Hidden Stories of the York Gospel."

- Don't miss Aaron Pratt's new post on the HRC blog, "A baroness and her bookshelves in an English parish church."

- The Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division has released a new web portal for accessing digitized books from their collections.

- A security alert from the ABAA about some books stolen in Georgia and perhaps taken to California.

- Over on the Princeton Graphic Arts blog, a quick review of the APHA/CHAViC meeting in Worcester.

- The AP has a report on UVA's efforts to digitize books Jefferson recommended for law students.

- A John Calvin manuscript has been returned to the canton of Geneva by Sotheby's; it was found to have been stolen from the canton's archives.

- Leah Klement writes on the Huntington blog about her work with a much-used manuscript in the library's collections in "A Using Book."

- Ruth Ahnert has a report from the Folger's third Early Modern Digital Agendas gathering.

- The Folger and Wellesley co-sponsored a recent Transcribathon, which looks like grand fun!

- Over on the ABAA blog, Heather O'Donnell and Rebecca Romney offer "Notes from the 2017 Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize."

- The Bookhunter on Safari offers up some thoughts on "The Fidelity of Engravers."

Reviews

- George William Van Cleve's We Have Not a Government; review by Jack Rakove in the WaPo.

- Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci; review by Alexandra C. Kafka in the WaPo.

Upcoming Auctions

- Fine Autograph Letters and Manuscripts from a Distinguished Private Collection (Part I: Music) at Sotheby's London on 26 October.

- The Magnificent Botanical Library of D. F. Allen at Sotheby's New York on 26 October.

- Rare and Important Travel Posters at Swann Galleries on 26 October.

Links & Reviews

- Over at American Book Collecting, a transcription of an unpublished account of antiquarian bookselling in the early 1880s by Isaac Mendoza, plus some background info. Very much worth a read, and many thanks to Kurt for posting it.

- Cécilia Duminuco posts for the Cambridge University Library Special Collections Blog on "Conserving Darwin's Library and its curiosities."

- Some early illustrated editions of Robinson Crusoe are highlighted on the Princeton Graphic Arts Collection blog.

- One theft report from the ABAA to pass along.

- An urgent appeal has been launched to save John Milton's cottage.

- Benjamin Park talks to Carla Gardina Pestana about her new book The English Conquest of Jamaica at The Junto.

- The APHA blog posts a query about print industry statistics; if you can help the researcher, please do.

- Pegasus Books has published Bibliomysteries, a collection of commissioned original stories edited by Otto Penzler.

- There's a lovely "In Memoriam" post on the ABAA blog for bookseller Jack Hanrahan.

- On the LC blog, "A Different Sense of Thomas Jefferson's Library."

- Susan Halpert writes about "A Curious Manuscript" for the Houghton Library Blog.

- David Barnett writes for the Independent about the upcoming sale of the KoKo collection at Heritage Auctions.

Reviews

- Carla Gardina Pestana's The English Conquest of Jamaica; review by Casey Schmitt at The Junto.

- Rebecca Romney and J.P. Romney's Printer's Error; review by John Paul at popmatters.

- Margaret Willes' The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn; review by Frances Wilson in the Spectator.

- Walter Stahr's Stanton; review by Thomas Mallon in the NYTimes.

- Mattias Boström's From Holmes to Sherlock; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

Upcoming Auctions

- Miniature Books: The Library of a Gentleman Collector at PBA Galleries on 24 August.

- Rare Books, Manuscripts & Ephemera at Addison & Sarova on 26 August.

Links & Reviews

- Theft alert: four signed books were stolen from Bloomington, IN.

- The AHA posted a quick update on congressional budget actions taken last week regarding cultural heritage programs. It's good news so far, but we must keep the pressure on.

- Preview tickets for this year's Brooklyn Antiquarian Book Fair (8–10 September) are now available; this year proceeds from the preview will benefit the Rare Book School Scholarship fund.

- The Princeton Graphic Arts Collection blog highlights a new edition of Swift's A Modest Proposal.

- From the same blog, a short piece about William Earl Dodge and the preservation of some of Audubon's bird plates.

- Susan Falciani profiles book thief James Richard Shinn for Atlas Obscura.

- A new "fused imaging" technique developed at Northwestern University may be useful for reading fragments hidden inside bookbindings.

- Over at Lux Mentis, Booksellers, Ian Kahn posts about an absolutely awesome new acquisition: a record player, albums, and technical specs from the Library of Congress' Talking Books project. He's shared lots of pictures too - have a look!

- Erin Blake writes about her time at Rare Book School at The Collation: "I learned to read Secretary Hand!!!! (And so can you)"

- Janice Hansen writes for the Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog about a recent find in the stacks.

- Duke has acquired a volume from Thomas Jefferson's library that also happened to be owned later by William Howard Taft.

- Ian Sansom rereads Jane Austen for the TLS.

Reviews

- Robert Thake's A Publishing History of a Prohibited Best-Seller; review by David Coward in the TLS.

- Francis Spufford's Golden Hill; review by Karen Heller in the WaPo.

- Adam Begley's The Great Nadar; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

Upcoming Auctions

- Fine Literature & Fine Books at PBA Galleries on 27 July.

- Rare Books and Works on Paper at Bloomsbury on 27 July.

Links & Reviews

- From the new issue of Common-place, a great piece by Endrina Tay on the sale of Jefferson's library to Congress in 1815.

- New York City police have released photos of a suspect in the theft of two books from PRPH Books back in April.

- Daniel Akst reports for the WSJ about an MIT/Georgia Tech research effort to use electromagnetic waves (terahertz radiation) to "read" stacked pages: the technique could potentially have uses in analyzing ancient manuscripts, &c.

- Leah Grandy writes for Borealia about the increasing need for training in basic cursive paleography.

- NYPL's Rose Main Reading Room will reopen on 5 October after being closed for more than two years for repairs and restoration.

- Carla Hayden was sworn in this week as Librarian of Congress. You can watch the ceremony here via C-SPAN. Nicholas Fandos reported for the NYTimes on Hayden's remarks at the event, and read an interview Hayden gave to USA Today.

Reviews

- John Dickerson's Whistlestop; review by Molly Ball in the NYTimes. The podcast is excellent, and I'm looking forward to reading the book.

- Richard Kluger's Indelible Ink; review by Bill Keller in the NYTimes.

- Keith Houston's The Book; review by Clea Simon in the Boston Globe.

- Robert Gottlieb's Avid Reader; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- Mary Sarah Bilder's Madison's Hand; review by Stuart Leibiger in Common-place.

- Boston's joint "Beyond Words" exhibition of illuminated manuscripts; review by Barrymore Laurence Scherer in the WSJ.

Links & Reviews

- Stephen Tabor writes for Verso, the Huntington's blog, about a tremendously interesting and exciting new acquisition.

- Rachel Beattie writes for the National Library of Scotland blog about sleuthing out correspondent names in the James Murray Archive.

- James Dawson covers "Mistaikes in Books" over at Rare Books Digest.

- Toronto bookseller David Mason is profiled in the Toronto Star, with a focus on his efforts (thus far unsuccessful) to solve a 1993 theft from his shop. Among the material stolen was a small archive relating to a 1929 boxing match between Ernest Hemingway and Morley Callaghan (for which F. Scott Fitzgerald acted as timekeeper).

- Steven Overly reports for the WaPo about the Vatican's digitization of one of the earliest manuscript versions of Virgil's Georgics and Aeneid, known as the "Virgilius Vaticanus."

- Keith Houston has posted a new miscellany of punctuation-related news at Shady Characters.

- The Boston Globe covered worries about the fate of Boston University's Editorial Institute this week.

- Over at Inciting Sparks, Tess Goodman has a new post, "Pics or It Didn't Happen: On the Objectivity of Photographs."

- Rabia Barkatulla writes for The Bookseller about the challenges inherent in digitizing Arabic books and manuscripts.

- A Thomas Jefferson letter discovered in a family's attic is being offered for $325,000 by the Raab Collection.

- Registration for this fall's APHA conference at the Huntington Library is now open. The theme is "The Black Art & Printers' Devils: The Magic, Mysticism, and Wonders of Printing History."

- More on Heather Wolfe's recent Shakespeare discoveries at Beyond Shakespeare.

- Melbourne's Rare Book Week is coming up from 14–24 July. Check out the full schedule - lots of great events going on!

- Nick Basbanes talked to novelist Matthew Pearl for Fine Books & Collections.

- London's Feminist Library faces eviction after a rent hike.

- Some excellent news from Portland, Maine, where a new independent bookshop will open in the fall.

- Excavation work for the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia has turned up a bunch of printing type.

- A Bible given by Charlotte Brontë to her friend Ellen Nussey will be sold at Sotheby's London this week.

- The London Library was profiled in Londonist.

- Tokyo's Jinbocho, which houses some 160 used and rare bookshops, sounds like a browser's dream!

- Several drawings by Beatrix Potter were found at Melford Hall in Suffolk during conservation works on books from the house library.

Reviews

- Ben H. Winters' Underground Airlines; review by Jennifer Forbus in the CSM.

- Pamela Haag's The Gunning of America; review by Stephen Wertheim in the TLS.

- Stephen Orgel's The Reader in the Book; review by Dustin Illingworth in the LARB.

Links & Reviews

- It's not often that vellum makes headlines anymore, but it has recently done so: after an announcement last week that the British government had determined that the practice of printing laws on vellum would be ended in April (which got coverage in the NYTimes) word today that the decision may be reversed, with the Cabinet Office offering to pick up the £80,000 annual tab.

- DCRM(C)—that is, Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Cartographic)—for all your map-cataloging needs, is now available as a free PDF.

- Over at The Culture-ist, Ryan Bradley goes on a bookstore tour of Boston.

- From Cabinet, Geoff Manaugh writes on the 2003 case of a book thief who snuck into the locked library of a monastery using a long-forgotten secret passage he found on a floor plan. More from Atlas Obscura.

- Audio recordings of Anthony Grafton's Sandars Lectures, delivered in January, are now available.

- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian about a recent translation of early textbooks used to teach Latin to Greek speakers.

- At the Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog, Liz Ott with the first in a series on their current Wordsworth exhibition (which sounds like it must be fantastic, given the great new collection!).

- At JHIBlog, Brooke Palmieri writes on John Dee's library and the current exhibition on same at the Royal College of Physicians.

- Alison Booth has been appointed academic director of the Scholars' Lab at UVA.

- Hampshire College has received a $1.2 million Mellon grant to "reinvent" the college's library.

- Laura Massey at Alembic Rare Books has posted a primer on "How to start collecting rare books."

Reviews

- "The Private Jefferson" exhibition at the Massachusetts Historical Society; review by Mark Feeney in the Boston Globe.

- Brian Copenhaver's The Book of Magic; review by Diane Purkiss in the TLS.

Links & Reviews

- Angelique Chrisafis reports for the Guardian about a remarkable legal battle in France over the manuscript of Chateaubriand's memoirs. Lawyer Pascal Dufour faces trial this week for "aggravated breach of trust" for attempting to sell the manuscript, which has been kept under lock and key since 1847, passed down through generations of notaries. Dufour claimed ownership of the ten volume memoir and tried to consign it for sale in 2012, but the state prosecutor maintains that Dufour can't sell it and that it should be returned to the author's heirs (who, apparently, may include Dufour's wife!). Meanwhile, Chateaubriand's will mandates that all copies by burnt without being read ... so there's that. Quite a story.

- In the New Yorker, Tim Wu asks "What ever happened to Google Books?"

- An early and unpublished Stravinsky work, "Funeral Song," has been located at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

- The AAS has acquired a copy of the first authorized American edition of Martin Chuzzlewit, in seven parts with their original wrappers.

- Bernard A. Barton, Jr. has been appointed CIO at the Library of Congress.

- Nick Basbanes writes in Humanities about Philip Kelley's efforts to publish the works of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

- Rare books from the collection of W.A. Cadbury (son of a co-founder of the chocolate company) will be sold at a Mellors & Kirk auction this week.

- From David Levy, an inside look at the XML schema he's using for his bibliography of the works of Edmond Hoyle.

- Michael Daly writes for The Daily Beast about the process of returning Jefferson's manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence to the NYPL from the British Library, where it was on display as part of the Magna Carta exhibition.

- Over on the Houghton Library Tumblr, an animated look at progressive proofs of a color image from Alice in Wonderland.

- There's a roundup of recent rare book catalogs at The New Antiquarian.

- Oak Knoll Press announced the creation of a new editorial board (list here).

- Pierre Bergé talked to WWD about the upcoming sale of books from his collection.

- From Christopher Minty at The Junto, "Finding Its Way: Gordon Wood and the William and Mary Quarterly."

- David Finkelstein has posted a Storify of the tweets from the Cultures of Communication conference in Edinburgh.

- The AHA has released guidelines for evaluation of digital scholarship.

- Lyrics written by Tupac Shakur while in jail are to be sold at Sotheby's Rock & Pop sale; they've rated an estimate of £30,000–50,000.

- Also up for sale, the manuscript of Wagner's "wedding march," available from the website Moments in Time for £2.3 million.

- John Palfrey will chair the search committee for the next BPL president.

- Dan Gillmor, writing for Slate, urges the appointment of Brewster Kahle as the next Librarian of Congress.

- The BPL highlights five recently-digitized rare books, including a 1613 title with "mourning pages."

- A new train line in Scotland is aimed (at least in part) at literary tourists interested in the scenes of Sir Walter Scott.

- At Fast Company, Tina Amirtha explores "The Trouble With Digitizing History."

- Open Culture highlights the digitized theater ephemera from the collections of the NYPL.

- Lew Jaffe's new post at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie concerns the disposal of bookplate collections.

- CLIR has issued a new report, "Changing and Expanding Libraries," by Amy Chen, Sarah Pickle, and Heather Waldroup.

- Thanks to an increase in funding, the NYPL will expand hours and hire more than 100 new staff members.

Reviews

- Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies; reviews by Robin Black in the NYTimes, Ron Charles in the WaPo, and Edan Lepucki in the LATimes.

- Irwin Gellman's The President and the Apprentice; review by Timothy Naftali in the NYTimes.

- M.L. West's The Making of the Odyssey; review by Peter Green in the TLS.

Links & Reviews

- The Times (UK, subscription required) reported this week that newly-released phone taps "have exposed how Marcello Dell'Utri, a senator and old friend of Berlusconi, received books from Marino Massimo De Caro. ... In one phone conversation with De Caro in 2012, Dell'Utri says one book he wants is so valuable, it will come with 'truffles on it'." Dell'Utri was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2014 for ties to the Sicilian mafia; he has maintained that he did not know the books he was receiving from De Caro were stolen. The texts of the phone taps were originally reported in La repubblica.

- The British Library has turned down an archive of material related to the Taliban, with librarians saying that housing the collection could violate anti-terrorism statutes, which prohibit the collection "of material which could be used by a person committing or preparing for an act of terrorism" as well as the "circulation of terrorist publications."

- This year's National Book Festival commemorates the 200th anniversary of the sale of Jefferson's books to the nation to rebuild the destroyed Library of Congress. In the Washington Post, Mark Dimunation presents a few of Jefferson's favorite titles.

- As part of the processing of Toni Morrison's literary archive, staff at Princeton have been working to recover files from 5.25" floppy disks. Elena Colon-Marrero outlines the process used.

- From Damian Fleming, a list of free digitized manuscripts containing Old English.

- Kazuo Ishiguro's literary archive has been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center for just over $1 million.

- At The Collation, Erin Blake shows how Hamnet is one big data set, and offers some advice on parsing exported MARC data.

- Rare Book School is now accepting applications for scholarships and the IMLS-RBS Fellowships.

- Michael Beckerman reports for the NYTimes about the discovery of missing parts of Adam Michna's 1653 musical work "The Czech Lute," found in a Franciscan library in Slany, near Prague.

- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian on the sale of two James Joyce letters, which fetched more than $24,000 at RR Auction in Boston.

- At Early Modern Online Bibliography, Eleanor Shevlin discusses and reviews ArchBook, an open-access collection of essays "about specific design features in the history of the book."

- Jessamyn West has posted about her discussions with the White House personnel office about what the next Librarian of Congress should be able to bring to the table.

- Tim Cassedy writes in the LA Review of Books about the new app OMBY, "a game that you win by unscrambling Moby Dick, a few words at a time."

- The Library of Congress and Levenger Press are publishing Mapping the West with Lewis and Clark, examining "the critical role that maps played in Jefferson's vision of a formidable republic that would no longer be eclipsed by European empires."

- Items from the Kerry Stokes Collection, including the Rothschild Prayerbook, will be on display at the University of Melbourne's Ian Potter Museum until 15 November. A lecture series accompanies the exhibition.

- In Humanities, Steve Moyer reports on the use of spectral imaging and reflectance transformation imaging on the Jubliees palimpsest.

- Ancestry.com and Gannett Newspapers are collaborating to digitize the full archives of some 80 daily newspapers.

- Elizabeth Ott highlights an utterly fantastic new acquisition at UNC Chapel Hill: an 18th-century perspective "peep show" of a printer's shop at work.

- The British Library will loan the Codex Sinaiticus to the British Museum for an exhibition exploring religion in Egypt after the pharaohs.

- In the Deccan Herald, Pradeep Sebastian explores the fascination with biblio-theft, highlighting a few recent cases.

- Michelle Tay writes for Blouin Artinfo about Sotheby's auction of selections from Pierre Bergé's collection of rare books, which will begin with a sale in December.

- A long-sought Nazi "gold train" may have been located in southwestern Poland after a death-bed confession. The armored train is believed to have been carrying weapons, gold, art, and possibly Nazi archives. Authorities are urging treasure-hunters to stay away, as they fear that the hidden train may be booby-trapped.

- Satellite images reveal the extent of the destruction being wrought on the ancient city of Palmyra by ISIS.

Reviews

- The Butterflies of North America: Titian Peale's Lost Manuscript; review by Dana Jennings in the NYTimes. The manuscript, left unfinished when Peale died in 1885, is being published by the American Museum of Natural History.

- Rosemarie Ostler's Founding Grammars; review by Barbara Spindel in the CSM.

- Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake; review by Jennifer Maloney in the WSJ. This one sounds fascinating ...

Two Young Bibliophiles Visit Monticello

Two hundred years ago today, on 4 February 1815, two young Massachusetts bibliophiles arrived at Monticello to visit Thomas Jefferson. George Ticknor and Francis Calley Gray spent the better part of three days with Jefferson, and much of that time was spent viewing Jefferson's books, which would shortly make their way to Washington to reconstitute the Library of Congress. Both Ticknor and Gray wrote about the experience (Ticknor in a letter to his father, Gray in his journal), and Ticknor would go on to engage in a lengthy correspondence with Jefferson through the rest of the former president's life. I'm working on editing a small collection of their letters for the Ticknor Society (the Boston bibliophilic society named for Ticknor and his daughter Anna), and since I've already made preliminary transcriptions of the two accounts of the visit to Monticello, I thought I'd post them here to mark the bicentennial of their visit. 

I should note, too, that John Adams's letter of introduction to Jefferson on Ticknor's behalf is one of my favorites: it contains the great line "As you are all Heluones Librorum [gluttons for books] I think you ought to have a sympathy for each other."

George Ticknor to Elisha Ticknor, 7 February 1815

Charlottesville, February 7, 1815.

We left Charlottesville on Saturday morning, the 4th of February, for Mr. Jefferson's. He lives, you know, on a mountain, which he has named Monticello, and which, perhaps, you do not know, is a synonym for Carter's mountain. The ascent of this steep, savage hill, was as pensive and slow as Satan's ascent to Paradise. We were obliged to wind two-thirds round its sides before we reached the artificial lawn on which the house stands; and, when we had arrived there, we were about six hundred feet, I understand, above the stream which flows at its foot. It is an abrupt mountain. The fine growth of ancient forest-trees conceals its sides and shades part of its summit. The prospect is admirable. ... The lawn on the top, as I hinted, was artificially formed by cutting down the peak of the height. In its centre, and facing the south-east, Mr. Jefferson has placed his house, which is of brick, two stories high in the wings, with a piazza in front of a receding centre. It is built, I suppose, in the French style. You enter, by a glass folding-door, into a hall, which reminds you of Fielding's "Man of the Mountain," by the strange furniture of its walls. On one side hang the hand and horns of an elk, a deer, and a buffalo; another is covered with curiosities which Lewis and Clarke found in their wild and perilous expedition. On the third, among many other striking matters, was the head of a mammoth, or, as Cuvier calls it, a mastodon, containing the only os frontis, Mr. Jefferson tells me, that has yet been found. On the fourth side, in odd union with a fine painting of the Repentance of St. Peter, is an Indian map on leather, of the southern waters of the Missouri, and an Indian representation of a bloody battle, handed down in their traditions.

Through this hall—or rather museum—we passed to the dining-room, and sent our letters to Mr. Jefferson, who was of course in his study. Here again we found ourselves surrounded with paintings that seemed good.

We had hardly time to glance at the pictures before Mr. Jefferson entered; and if I was astonished to find Mr. Madison short and somewhat awkward, I was doubly astonished to find Mr. Jefferson, whom I had always supposed to be a short man, more than six feet high, with dignity in his appearance, and ease and graciousness in his manners. ... He rang, and sent to Charlottesville for our baggage, and, as dinner approached, took us to the drawing-room,—a large and rather elegant room, twenty or thirty feet high,—which, with the hall I have described, composed the whole centre of the house, from top to bottom. The floor of this room is tessellated. It is formed of alternate diamonds of cherry and beech, and kept polished as highly as if it were of fine mahogany.

Here are the best pictures of the collection. Over the fireplace is the Laughing and Weeping Philosophers, diving the world between them; on its right, the earliest navigators to America,—Columbus, Americus Vespuccius, Magellan, etc.,—copied, Mr. Jefferson said, from originals in the Florence Gallery. Farther round, Mr. Madison in the plain, Quaker-like dress of his youth, Lafayette in his Revolutionary uniform, and Franklin in the dress in which we always see him. There were other pictures, and a copy of Raphael's Transfiguration.

We conversed on various subjects until dinner-time, and at dinner were introduced to the grown members of his family. These are his only remaining child, Mrs. Randolph, her husband, Colonel Randolph, and the two oldest of their unmarried children, Thomas Jefferson and Ellen; and I assure you I have seldom met a pleasanter party.

The evening passed away pleasantly in general conversation, of which Mr. Jefferson was necessarily the leader. I shall probably surprise you by saying that, in conversation, he reminded me of Dr. Freeman. He has the same discursive manner and love of paradox, with the same appearance of sobriety and cool reason. He seems equally fond of American antiquities, and especially the antiquities of his native State, and talks of them with freedom and, I suppose, accuracy. He has, too, the appearance of that fairness and simplicity which Dr. Freeman has; and, if the parallel holds no further here, they will again meet on the ground of their love of old books and young society.

On Sunday morning, after breakfast, Mr. Jefferson asked me into his library, and there I spent the forenoon of that day as I had that of yesterday. This collection of books, now so much talked about, consists of about seven thousand volumes, contained in a suite of fine rooms, and is arranged in the catalogue, and on the shelves, according to the divisions and subdivisions of human learning by Lord Bacon. In so short a time I could not, of course, estimate its value, even if I had been competent to do so.

Perhaps the most curious single specimen—or, at least, the most characteristic of the man and expressive of his hatred of royalty—was a collection which he had bound up in six volumes, and lettered "The Book of Kings," consisting of the "Mémoires de la Princesse de Bareith," two volumes; "Les Mémoires de la Comtesse de la Motte," two volumes; the "Trial of the Duke of York," one volume; and "The Book," one volume. These documents of regal scandal seemed to be favourites with the philosopher, who pointed them out to me with a satisfaction somewhat inconsistent with the measured gravity he claims in relation to such subjects generally.

On Monday morning I spent a couple of hours with him in his study. He gave me there an account of the manner in which he passed the portion of his time in Europe which he could rescue from public business; told me that while he was in France he had formed a plan of going to Italy, Sicily, and Greece, and that he should have executed it if he had not left Europe in the full conviction that he should immediately return there, and find a better opportunity. He spoke of my intention to go, and, without my even hinting any purpose to ask him for letters, told me that he was now seventy-two years old, and that most of his friends and correspondents in Europe had died in the course of the twenty-seven years since he left France, but that he would gladly furnish me with the means of becoming acquainted with some of the remainder, if I would give him a month's notice, and regretted that their number was so reduced.

The afternoon and evening passed as on the two days previous; for everything is done with such regularity, that when you know how one day is filled, I suppose you know how it is with the others. At eight o'clock the first bell is rung in the great hall, and at nine the second summons you to the breakfast room, where you find everything ready. After breakfast every one goes, as inclination leads him, to his chamber, the drawing-room, or the library. The children retire to their school-room with their mother, Mr. Jefferson rides to his mils on the Rivanna, and returns at about twelve. At half-past three the great bell rings, and those who are disposed resort to the drawing-room, and the rest go to the dining-room at the second call of the bell, which is at four o'clock. The dinner was always choice, and served in the French style; but no wine was set on the table till the cloth was removed. The ladies sat until about six, then retired, but returned with the tea-tray a little before seven, and spent the evening with the gentlemen; which was always pleasant, for they are obviously accustomed to join in the conversation, however high the topic may be. At about half-past ten, which seemed to be their usual hour of retiring, I went to my chamber, found there a fire, candle, and a servant in waiting to receive my orders for the morning, and in the morning was waked by his return to build the fire.

To-day, Tuesday, we told Mr. Jefferson that we should leave Monticello in the afternoon. He seemed much surprised, and said as much as politeness would permit on the badness of the roads and the prospect of bad weather, to induce us to remain longer. It was evident, I thought, that they had calculated on our staying a week. At dinner, Mr. Jefferson again urged us to stay, not in an oppressive way, but with kind politeness; and when the horses were at the door, asked if he should not send them away; but, as he found us resolved on going, he bade us farewell in the heartiest style of Southern hospitality, after thrice reminding me that I must write to him for letters to his friends in Europe. I came away almost regretting that the coach returned so soon, and thinking, with General Hamilton, that he was a perfect gentleman in his own house.

Two little incidents which occurred while we were at Monticello should not be passed by. The night before we left, young Randolph came up late from Charlottesville and brought the astounding news that the English had been defeated before New Orleans by General Jackson. Mr. Jefferson had made up his mind that the city would fall, and told me that the English would hold it permanently—or for some time—by a force of Sepoys from the East Indies. He had gone to bed, like the rest of us; but of course his grandson went to his chamber with the paper containing the news. But the old philosopher refused to open his door, saying he could wait till the morning; and when we met at breakfast I found he had not yet seen it.

One morning, when he came back from his ride, he told Mr. Randolph, very quietly, that the dam had been carried away the night before. From his manner, I supposed it an affair of small consequence, but at Charlottesville, on my way to Richmond, I found the country ringing with it. Mr. Jefferson's great dam was gone, and it would cost $30,000 to rebuild it.

There is a breathing of national philosophy in Mr. Jefferson,—in his dress, his house, his conversation. His setness, for instance, in wearing very sharp-toed shoes, corduroy small-clothes, and red plush waistcoat, which have been laughed at till he might perhaps wisely have dismissed them.

So, though he told me he thought Charron, "De la Sagesse," the best treatise on moral philosophy ever written, and an obscure Review of Montesquieu, by Dupont de Nemours, the best political work that had been printed for fifty years,—though he talked very freely of the natural impossibility that one generation should bind another to pay a public debt, and of the expediency of vesting all the legislative authority of a State in one branch, and the executive authority in another, and leaving them to govern it by joint discretion,—I considered such opinions simply as curious indicia of an extraordinary character.

Francis Calley Gray Journal, February 1815

[...] On Saturday [4 February] it rained & at twelve o'clock we went from our tavern in a hack to Monticello, three miles east of Charlottesville on the same road we had passed on the day before. Our road passed between Monticello & the S.W. mountain which is much higher & along whose side runs the narrow path which led us between these hills to the gate on the S.E. side of Monticello. The sides of both these hills & the valley between them are covered with a noble forest of oaks in all stages of growth & of decay. Their trunks straight & tall put forth no branches till they reach a height almost equal to the summits of our loftiest trees in New England. Those which were rooted in the valley, in the richest soil overtopped many which sprung from spots far above them on the side of the mountain. The forest had evidently been abandoned to nature; some of the trees were decaying from age, some were blasted, some uprooted by the wind & some appeared even to have been twisted from their trunks by the violence of a hurricane. They rendered the approach to the house even at this season of the year extremely grand & imposing. On reaching the house we found no bell nor knocker & entering through the hall in the parlour, saw a gentleman (Col. Randolph), who took our letters to Mr. Jefferson.

Mr. Jefferson soon made his appearance. He is quite tall, 6 feet, one or two inches, face streaked & speckled with red, light gray eyes, white hair, dressed in shoes of very thin soft leather with pointed toes and heels ascending in a peak behind, with very short quarters, grey worsted stockings, corduroy small clothes, blue waistcoat & coat, of stiff thick cloth made of the wool of his own merinoes & badly manufactured, the buttons of his coat & small clothes of horn, & an under waistcoat flannel bound with red velvet — His figure bony, long and with broad shoulders, a true Virginian. He begged he might put up our carriage, send for our baggage & keep us with him some time. We assented & he left the room to give the necessary directions, sending as we requested the carriage back to Charlottesville. On looking round the room in which we sat the first thing which attracted our attention was the state of the chairs. They had leather bottoms stuffed with hair, but the bottoms were completely worn through & the hair sticking out in all directions; on the mantel-piece which was large & of marble were many books of all kinds: Livy, Orosius, Edinburg Review, 1 vol. of Edgeworth's Moral Tales, &c. &c. There were many miserable prints & some fine pictures hung round the room, among them two plans for the completion of the Capitol at Washington, one of them very elegant. A harpsichord stood in one corner of the room. There were four double windows from the wall to the floor of fine large glass & a recess in one side of the apartment. This was the breakfasting room. After half an hour's conversation with Mr. Jeff. & Col. Randolph, we were invited into the parlour where a fire was just kindled & a servant occupied in substituting a wooden pannel for a square of glass, which had been broken in one of the folding doors opening on the lawn. Mr. J. had procured the glass for his house in Bohemia, where the price is so much the square foot whatever be the size of the glass purchased, and these panes were so large that, unable to replace the square in this part of the country, he had been obliged to send to Boston to have some glass made of sufficient size to replace that broken, & this had not yet been received.

We passed the whole forenoon, which was rainy, in conversation with Mr. Jeff and Mr. Randolph & at 4 o'clock toddy was brought us, which neither of us took, and which was never handed again, & we were ushered back into the breakfast room to dinner, where we were introduced to Mrs. Randolph, Miss Randolph, & Mr. T. J. Randolph. The rest of the family were Mrs. Marks, a sister of Mr. Jefferson & 2 other daughters of Col. Randolph. The drinking cups were of silver marked G. W. to T. J.— the table liquors were beer & cider & after dinner wine. In the same room we took tea & at ten in the evening retired. Fires were lighted in our bedrooms and again in the morning before we rose — the beds were all in recesses.

At 15 minutes after 8, we heard the first breakfast bell & at 9, the second, whose sound assembled us in the breakfast room. We sat an hour after breakfast chatting with the ladies & then adjourned to the parlour. Mr. Jefferson gave us the catalogue of his books to examine & soon after conducted us to his library, & passed an hour there in pointing out to us its principal treasures. His collection of ancient classics was complete as to the authors, but very careless in the editions. They were generally interleaved with the best English Translations. The Ancient English authors are also all here & some very rare editions of them: a black letter Chaucer and the first of Milton's Paradise Lost, divided into ten books, were the most remarkable. A considerable number of books valuable to the Biblical critic were here, & various ancient editions of all the genuine & apocryphal books, Erasmus' edition, &c. Many of the most valuable works on the civil and maritime law & on diplomacy, together with a complete collection of the laws of the different states, those of Virginia in manuscript, & all the old elementary writers & reporters of England formed the legal library. The ancient and most distinguished modern historians render this department nearly complete, & the histories & descriptions of the Kingdoms of Asia were remarkably numerous. Rapin was here in French, though very rare in that language. Mr. Jeff. said that after all it was still the best history of England, for Hume's tory principles are to him insupportable. The best mode of counteracting their effect is, he thinks, to publish an edition of Hume expunging all those reflections & reasonings whose influence is so injurious. This has been attempted by Baxter, but he has injured the work by making other material abridgments. D'Avila was there in Italian, in Mr. J's opinion, one of the most entertaining books he ever read. I was surprised to find here two little volumes on Chronology by Count Potocki of St. Petersburg. Mr. J. has also a fine collection of Saxon & mœso Gothic books, among them Alfred's translations of Orosius and Boethius—& shewed us some attempts he had made at facilitating the study of this language. He thought the singularity of the letters one of the greatest difficulties & proposed publishing the Saxon books in four columns, the first to contain the Saxon, the second the same in Roman characters, the third a strictly verbal translation & the fourth a free one. Mr. J. said the French Dict^y of Trévoux was better than that of the Academy, thought Charron's "de la Sagesse" an excellent work & brought us a commentary & review on Montesquieu published by Duane the translator from the French M.S. which he called the best book on politics which had been published for a century & agreed with its author in his opinion of Montesquieu.

Of all branches of learning however that relating to the History of North & South America is the most perfectly displayed in this library. The collection on this subject is without a question the most valuable in the world. Here are the works of all the Spanish travellers in America & the great work of De Brie in which he has collected latin translations of the smaller works published by the earliest visitors of America whose original publications are now lost. It is finely printed & adorned with many plates. Here also is a copy of the letters of Fernando Cortes in Spanish, one of a small edition, & the copy retained by the Editor the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo for himself, but given by him to the American Consul for Mr. Jefferson. This work contains the official letters of Cortes to his court, his maps of the country & plates representing the dress, armour & other contents of the treasury of the Mexican Sovereigns. We saw here also some beautiful modern M.S.S., one of [a] work which had been suppressed in France, most of the Greek Romances. — Mr. Jeff took us from his library into his bed chamber where, on a table before the fire, stood a polygraph with which he said he always wrote.

Mr. Jefferson took his accustomed ride before dinner & on his return told us that the ice was crowded & thick on the banks of the Rivanna & had carried away 30 feet of his mill-dam; this was all he said on the subject, & from his manner I supposed his loss was probably about one or two hundred dollars, but on our ride back to Richmond we heard it everywhere spoken of as a serious loss & the countrymen, some of them, even estimated it at $30,000. This to be sure must [have been] a most wonderful miscalculation, but no doubt the loss was serious.

---

Ticknor's letter is published in The Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor. Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1876. I:34-37. Gray's journal is published in Francis Calley Gray, Thomas Jefferson in 1814: Being an account of a visit to Monticello, Virginia (ed. Henry S. Rowe and T. Jefferson Coolidge, Jr.). Boston: The Club of Odd Volumes, 1924, pp. 65-74. Also published in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series 8:232-236. The manuscript of Gray's journal is at Duke University.

Links & Reviews

- Over at The Collation, Sarah Werner shares a great case study of "how a tweet can grow into an amazing scholarly resource."

- The upcoming sale of the exploration library of Franklin Brooke-Hitching at Sotheby's is previewed in the WSJ and the Telegraph.

- From Molly Hardy at AAS, a look at the absolutely fantastic project they're working on to make the Mathew Carey account books available.

- Endrina Tay has a great essay on the Jefferson quote "I cannot live without books" on the Monticello store blog.

- The Catholicon Anglicum, a 1483 Middle English-Latin dictionary, has been purchased by the British Library for £92,500. The UK government had barred the manuscript's export following its sale to an overseas buyer at auction.

- Two photographs may have been identified as from the New York City funeral procession for Abraham Lincoln, the WaPo reports. Key words "may have been," but the case seems fairly good.

- Check this out, from Ben Pauley: Eighteenth-Century Book Tracker, a clearinghouse for information about digital facsimiles of 18th-century works.

- In the NYTimes, archaeologist Douglas Boin writes on provenance concerns raised about the recently-discovered new Sappho fragments.

- Nick Richardson blogs for the LRB on "Translating Lorem Ipsum."

- New at Princeton, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's mahogany writing desk and other objects, donated by alumnus Peter N. Heydon.

Reviews

- Steven Moore's The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800; review by Roger Boylan in Boston Review.

- Peter Stark's Astoria; review by Dennis Drabelle in the WaPo.

- Ingrid Rowland's From Pompeii; review by Dan Hofstadter in the WSJ.

Links & Reviews

- I had the great pleasure of attending the Authenticity of Print Materials symposium at the Library of Congress this week, and I've posted a brief(ish) report on the symposium over at the Fine Books Blog. It was a thoroughly remarkable day, and it was a real delight to be able to catch up with so many friends and to hear an excellent series of talks on the symposium's theme.

- One of the key elements of the LC symposium was a presentation by Nick Wilding and Paul Needham on the Martayan Lan Sidereus Nuncius, now known to be a forgery. There was quite a good NYTimes article on this last week, and a piece by Nicholas Schmidle on the same topic will be in this week's New Yorker.

- Mitch Fraas reports at the Fine Books Blog about the dispersal of the John Gilson Howell collection of printed and manuscript bibles, long owned by the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA.

- Nick Basbanes has an op/ed in this weekend's LATimes, "A paperless society? Not so fast."

- Heather Wolfe has posted on the news that the Folger has received a three-year IMLS grant to fund the creation of EMMO (Early Modern Manuscripts Online), a searchable online database of Folger manuscript transcriptions from 1500-1700.

- From Literary Tourist, an audio interview with Alberto Manguel about his favorite libraries and bookstores.

- As previously reported, the Bay Psalm Book sold at Sotheby's on 26 November for a total of $14.2 million. Some coverage on the sale from NPR, The Telegraph, LATimes, BBC, Boston Globe.

- Over at the ARCA blog, excerpts from WGBH Boston interviews with Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley and FBI special agent Jeff Kelley. Kelley told reporter Emily Rooney that they essentially know who carried out the theft, and that he believes that the artworks are all still in existence. The FBI and the Gardner have launched a new public effort to recover the art. Hawley told Rooney that immediately following the 1990 theft there were a series of additional threats and extortion attempts against the Museum.

- A major collaborative digitization project between the Bodleian Libraries and the Vatican Library which now live. The project was funded by a $3.2 million grant from the Polonsky Foundation. Coverage from the NYTimes, NPR.

- Travis McDade covers the trend of book and manuscript thieves defending themselves by maintaining that they found the material in the trash.

- Early and un-reprinted works by P.G. Wodehouse have been identified in the archive of Leeds newspaper The Globe and Traveller.

- Seems like we get one of these articles every six months or so, but here's another: author Patricia Cornwell claims to have uncovered new evidence that Jack the Ripper was artist Walter Sickert.

- Over at The Junto this week, a roundtable on the legacy of historian Pauline Maier.

- Booktryst highlighted a copy of the true first edition of Jefferson's Notes which sold for a healthy $269,000 at Christie's this week.

- That Christie's sale brought in a whopping total of $6,743,750, a good chunk of which came from a lavish presentation copy of Newton's Principia to James II, which made $2,517,000 (over estimates of $400,000-600,000). William Morris' Albion Press sold for $233,000. More on the press in the NYTimes.

- Jill Lepore spoke with Joy Horowitz at the LA Review of Books about her new book The Book of Ages.

- The Boston Public Library's Johnson Building will receive a $16 million renovation, the Boston Globe reported this week.

- Former Apple exec Glen Miranker, a fanatic collector of Holmesiana, is profiled in Forbes.

- While in DC this week I also had the tremendous pleasure of enjoying a behind-the-scenes tour at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which is just as exciting as you might think it would be. Among the paintings we saw was "The Infant Shakespeare Attended by Nature and the Passions," or "The Baby Jesus Shakespeare," which Erin Blake blogged about this week at The Collation.

- From Antipodean Footnotes, a profile of a very neat book now in the University of Melbourne Special Collections: a copy of Malcolm Flemyng's An Introduction to Physiology which traveled around the world with Captain Cook on his 1768-71 voyage.

- Jennifer Howard reported for The Chronicle this week that academics who have posted their articles on the social site academia.edu began receiving takedown notices from Elsevir.

- One of the "my year in books" lists that I look most forward to every year is that of Miriam Burstein at The Little Professor. She's posted it here.

- Historian Michael Kammen has died. Read the obituary in the New York Times.

- Rebecca Rego Barry has posted a year-end bookish roundup too, which probably includes a few good additions to your holiday shopping lists.

Reviews

- Alison Weir's Elizabeth of York; review by Roger Boylan in the NYTimes.

- Umberto Eco's The Book of Legendary Lands; review by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in The Telegraph.

- Simon Garfield's To the Letter; review by Carmela Ciuraru in the NYTimes.

- Leo Damrosch's Swift; review by Jeffrey Collins in the WSJ.

- Yuval Levin's The Great Debate; review by Jack Rakove in the Washington Post.

- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review by Philip Marchand in the National Post.

- Graham Robb's The Discovery of Middle Earth; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.

- Ronald Frame's Havisham; review by Jane Smiley in the NYTimes.

- David Igler's The Great Ocean and Gregory T. Cushman's Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World; review by David Armitage in the TLS.

Links & Reviews

- From Small Notes, the blog of UVA's special collections library, David Whitesell reports a reunion between long-separated fragments of a Jefferson manuscript (a ~1769 draft of rules changes for the House of Burgesses).

- The AAS has acquired an unrecorded 1812 New York edition of Aristotle's Masterpiece.

- From Heather Wolfe at The Collation, a fascinating look at handwriting instruction during the early modern period.

- Over at the Ticknor Society's blog, an overview of the books George Ticknor was borrowing from the Boston Athenaeum.

- From the BBC, a look inside the UK's last remaining carbon paper factory. [via Brycchan Carey]

- An important collection of Philip Mazzei manuscripts has been given to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

- Quite a good exploration of early Bible leaves used as paper wrappers on the Cambridge Incunabula Project blog.

- The OED appeal I mentioned last week still stands, and got some attention this week from Rachel Maddow, among others.

- A 1939 journal by W.H. Auden, thought lost, has been found and will be sold at Christie's in June.

- From Medieval Fragments, a tour of one of the last intact chained libraries, at the Church of St. Walburga in Zutphen.

- At Salon, Andrew Leonard reports on a dark side of Wikipedia (its potential to draw vindictive sock-puppetry, &c.).

- Gordon Rugg on why the Voynich Manuscript matters.

- At Notabilia, a look at the distinctive shelf-mark of Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland.

- Sarah Faragher posted this week about a fantastic find at an antique shop: a copy of the 1773 edition of Johnson's Dictionary at what sounds like an extremely good price indeed.

-  Always interesting: a step-by-step look at conservation on a 17th-century book from the Senate House collections. [via @john_overholt]

- In the TLS, Mark Davies explores a possible real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter.

Reviews

- John Taliaferro's All the Great Prizes; review by Thomas Mallon in the NYTimes.

- Dan Brown's Inferno; review by Jake Kerridge in the Telegraph.

- Marcia Coyle's The Roberts Court; review by Jeffrey Rosen in the WaPo.

Links & Reviews

- Your can't-miss post this week is Heather Wolfe's look at 17th-century filing practices.

- A fire broke out on Monday at the Walworth Town Hall building in Southwark, London, which houses the Newington Library and Cuming Museum in Southwark. There was some damage to the collections of the museum and library, but it sounds as though it could have been significantly worse.

- The Globe & Mail has published an update on the John Mark Tillman thefts case, including the little tidbit that Tillman's son Kyle, 23, also faces charges related to the thefts (obstruction of justice, possession of stolen property, and perjury). The CBC has posted a similar story, noting that the number of seized artifacts has now passed 2,000. And from the RCMP, a photo gallery of recovered items.

- They did it with menus, and now the NYPL has turned to crowdsourced transcription of playbills: head over to ensemble.nypl.org and help transcribe!

- Over at Fine Books Blog, Rebecca Rego Barry posted "Ten Reasons a Pessimist Can be Optimistic about the Future of the Book."

- Also from Canada, the Calgary Herald reports on the continuing troubles at LAC, which now include a troubling new "code of conduct" for archives staff.

- The New-York Historical Society's new Audubon exhibit is now open, and this week they also posted a very interesting piece that's also in the show: a Meiji-era woodcut depicting the episode when Audubon opens up a box of watercolors only to find they've been destroyed by rats.

- Jennifer Howard reported last week on the forthcoming edition of Willa Cather's letters. Read the whole thing, it's well worth it!

- And speaking of documentary editions, Jeff Looney of the Thomas Jefferson Papers was recently profiled in the Washington Post.

- From the Houghton blog, a neat new acquisition: a hollow-cut silhouette of Arthur Maynard Walter, one of the founders of the Boston Athenaeum. The silhouette was made by Moses Williams, one of the few known African-American silhouettists of the early 19th century.

- DPLA Director of Content Emily Gore is interviewed by Annie Schutte on the Knight Foundation blog.

- Dave Gary recently had the chance to visit and explore the library of William Seward, at his home in Auburn, NY. Not surprisingly, he found some absolutely great stuff.

- New developments in the de Caro case, too: he and fourteen accomplices have reportedly confessed to additional thefts from more libraries, including the Biblioteca dell’Osservatorio Ximeniano and the Biblioteca Scolopica San Giovannino, both in Florence.

- The Grolier Club's new exhibit on book thief Guglielmo Libri is reviewed by Eve M. Kahn in the NYTimes.

- There's a long profile of George R.R. Martin in the Telegraph.

- Others have already covered the Supreme Court's strong first-sale ruling more thoroughly than I need to, but do read Jennifer Howard's Chronicle report on the case.

- Bookseller Norman Kane (The Americanist) passed away on 23 March; he was 88. Fine Books Notes has a short notice, plus links to their profile and interview with Kane from 2011.

- A couple unpublished F. Scott Fitzgerald poems will go on the auction block this week.

- An update on a link I posted around this time last year: the 1555 copy of Vesalius containing the author's own annotations for a projected third edition is now being made available for study at the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, where it is on deposit. The library is planning an exhibition next year to mark the 500th anniversary of Vesalius' birth.

Reviews

- Steven Galbraith and Geoffrey Smith's Rare Book Librarianship; review by David Gary at Function Follows Forme.

- Joyce Carol Oates' The Accursed; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.

- Sandra Day O'Connor's Out of Order; review by Adam Liptak in the NYTimes.

- Andrea Stuart's Sugar in the Blood; review by Amy Wilentz in the NYTimes.

- Catherine Bailey's The Secret Rooms; review by Nicola Shulman in the TLS.