- 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.
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Links & Reviews
Another Boston Book Fair in the books (my thirteenth, I realized). Still—and I suspect, always—my favorite fair. Chilly this year, but that didn't stop people from coming out for the main fair or the very busy shadow show. There wasn't time enough to pack in everything I wanted to do in Boston this trip ... I'll just have to go back soon!
- Princeton has acquired a 1483 Horace which happened to contain as binding waste a leaf from a previously unknown ~1457 edition of Donatus' Ars minor (printed with the same type used for the Gutenberg Bible).
- Ian Jackson, Nick Aretakis, and Ben Kinmont have issued a very nice biography of bookseller Bernard Rosenthal.
- Molly Hardy has a really useful update on various projects linking printing trade prosopographies.
- UVA Today highlights some recent work on the SNAC Cooperative (Social Networks and Archival Context).
- Mike Widener's new exhibition at the Yale Law School's Lillian Goldman Law Library, "Around the World with Law's Picture Books," is featured in the New Haven Independent.
- Nora Benedict is featured in the FB&C "Bright Young Collectors" series.
- The BL has launched a new crowdsourced transcription project for its historical playbills collection.
- A quiz about books? You bet! I hadn't heard of Nemo's Almanac before, but editor Ian Patterson's piece in the Guardian had me intrigued right away. Anybody collecting these?
- An annotated copy of Ben Jonson's Workes has been placed under a UK export ban until at least February, to see if a domestic buyer can be found.
- Daniel Witek, a one-time volunteer at the Buffalo History Museum, has been sentenced to six months time served and a $2,100 restitution payment for the theft of documents from the museum, which he then attempted to sell.
- Michael Greshko writes for National Geographic about the possibility of biblical forgeries lurking in the collections of the new Museum of the Bible.
- At Clements Library Chronicles, an attempt to locate some Revolutionary War trunks used to transport the Thomas Gage papers.
- Elizabeth Savage posts on the Leiden Special Collections blog about a frisket sheet fragment recently found during conservation at Leiden University.
- Houghton Library undergraduate fellow Mario Menendez talks about his work on a fictional biography of William Henry Ireland.
- A series of what could be 300 auctions to sell the Aristophil collection will begin on 20 December at Drouot.
- Another great APHA panel review by Paul Gough on "Illustrating Typography and Typos," which featured papers by Lynne Farrington, Vince Golden, and Michael Russem.
- The Princeton Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a great piece by two 18th-century woman printmakers, Isabella Piccini and Angela Baroni.
- A 1659 Blaeu map showing Australia has gone on display at the National Library of Australia.
- William & Mary's Swem Library has received by donation the Civil War diary of a Union soldier captured and held prisoner at the college.
- Ben Breen asks at Res Obscura, "What Did 17th-Century Food Taste Like?"
- At Echoes from the Vault, the first in a series on "Visualising the Biographical Register of the University of St. Andrews."
- AAS student page Emily Isakson gives a brief overview of forgery-related material in the AAS collections.
Reviews
- Martin Puchner's The Written Word, Matthew Kirschenbaum's Track Changes, and Thomas Mullaney's The Chinese Typewriter; review by Thomas Hale in the Financial Times.
- Kevin Young's Bunk; reviews by Jonathan Lethem in the NYTimes and Colin Dickey in the LATimes.
- John Crowley's Ka; reviews by Michael Dirda in the WaPo and Elizabeth Hand in the LATimes.
Upcoming Auction
- Library of M. R*** at Pierre Bergé on 22 November.
- Princeton has acquired a 1483 Horace which happened to contain as binding waste a leaf from a previously unknown ~1457 edition of Donatus' Ars minor (printed with the same type used for the Gutenberg Bible).
- Ian Jackson, Nick Aretakis, and Ben Kinmont have issued a very nice biography of bookseller Bernard Rosenthal.
- Molly Hardy has a really useful update on various projects linking printing trade prosopographies.
- UVA Today highlights some recent work on the SNAC Cooperative (Social Networks and Archival Context).
- Mike Widener's new exhibition at the Yale Law School's Lillian Goldman Law Library, "Around the World with Law's Picture Books," is featured in the New Haven Independent.
- Nora Benedict is featured in the FB&C "Bright Young Collectors" series.
- The BL has launched a new crowdsourced transcription project for its historical playbills collection.
- A quiz about books? You bet! I hadn't heard of Nemo's Almanac before, but editor Ian Patterson's piece in the Guardian had me intrigued right away. Anybody collecting these?
- An annotated copy of Ben Jonson's Workes has been placed under a UK export ban until at least February, to see if a domestic buyer can be found.
- Daniel Witek, a one-time volunteer at the Buffalo History Museum, has been sentenced to six months time served and a $2,100 restitution payment for the theft of documents from the museum, which he then attempted to sell.
- Michael Greshko writes for National Geographic about the possibility of biblical forgeries lurking in the collections of the new Museum of the Bible.
- At Clements Library Chronicles, an attempt to locate some Revolutionary War trunks used to transport the Thomas Gage papers.
- Elizabeth Savage posts on the Leiden Special Collections blog about a frisket sheet fragment recently found during conservation at Leiden University.
- Houghton Library undergraduate fellow Mario Menendez talks about his work on a fictional biography of William Henry Ireland.
- A series of what could be 300 auctions to sell the Aristophil collection will begin on 20 December at Drouot.
- Another great APHA panel review by Paul Gough on "Illustrating Typography and Typos," which featured papers by Lynne Farrington, Vince Golden, and Michael Russem.
- The Princeton Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a great piece by two 18th-century woman printmakers, Isabella Piccini and Angela Baroni.
- A 1659 Blaeu map showing Australia has gone on display at the National Library of Australia.
- William & Mary's Swem Library has received by donation the Civil War diary of a Union soldier captured and held prisoner at the college.
- Ben Breen asks at Res Obscura, "What Did 17th-Century Food Taste Like?"
- At Echoes from the Vault, the first in a series on "Visualising the Biographical Register of the University of St. Andrews."
- AAS student page Emily Isakson gives a brief overview of forgery-related material in the AAS collections.
Reviews
- Martin Puchner's The Written Word, Matthew Kirschenbaum's Track Changes, and Thomas Mullaney's The Chinese Typewriter; review by Thomas Hale in the Financial Times.
- Kevin Young's Bunk; reviews by Jonathan Lethem in the NYTimes and Colin Dickey in the LATimes.
- John Crowley's Ka; reviews by Michael Dirda in the WaPo and Elizabeth Hand in the LATimes.
Upcoming Auction
- Library of M. R*** at Pierre Bergé on 22 November.
Sunday, November 05, 2017
Links & Reviews
- Rebecca Romney has "13 Secrets of Rare Book Dealers" for Mental Floss.
- Noah Sheola's got a great post up on the Houghton blog about the importance of good cataloging.
- The November Rare Book Monthly includes Marc Sena Carrel on "Exiting the Bookseller Business," Michael Stillman on an upcoming auction of an early Declaration of Independence broadside, and a Bruce McKinney note about bookseller William Reese being honored by the AAS this week with the Christopher Columbus Baldwin medal (a well-deserved honor, to be sure).
- Hewlett-Packard's extensive archives were destroyed in the recent California wildfires.
- Cynthia Zarin writes for the New Yorker about "The Original Master of Ghost Stories" (M.R. James, of course).
- The manuscript of John Donne's "Courtier's Library" has been identified in the Westminster Abbey archives.
- Kurt Zimmerman is on "The Hunt for Early American Women Bibliographers" at American Book Collecting.
- MITH has launched Books.Files, a Mellon-funded project to "assess the potential for the archival collection and scholarly study of digital assets associated with today’s trade publishing and bookmaking."
- The Folger has launched Miranda, a new platform for the library's digital content. See the blog post for lots of good background.
- Tim Carmody writes for Kottke.org about "Card catalogs and the secret history of modernity."
- Several more panel overviews from the recent APHA conference in "The Process of Innovation."
- A Titanic letter (one of the last known to be written on the ship) sold at auction this week for £126,000.
- Booktryst will publish a fine-press book celebrating the late Martin Stone.
- A Thomas Bewick sketchbook has been identified and purchased by Bewick collector David Bolam.
Reviews
- Alison Weir's Queens of the Conquest; review by Dan Jones in the WaPo.
- Russell Shorto's Revolution Song; review by Lynne Cheney in the NYTimes.
- Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci; review by Jennifer Senior in the NYTimes.
- Noah Feldman's The Three Lives of James Madison; review by Susan Dunn in the NYTimes.
- Gordon S. Wood's Friends Divided; review by Richard Brookhiser in the NYTimes.
Upcoming Auctions
- The Library of an English Bibliophile, Part VII at Sotheby's London on 7 November.
- Autographs at Swann Galleries on 7 November.
- Rare Books, Autographs & Maps at Doyle New York on 7 November.
- Fine Golf Books at PBA Galleries on 12 November.
- Fine Books & Manuscripts at Skinner, Inc. on 12 November.
- Travel, Atlases, Maps & Natural History at Sotheby's London on 14 November.
- 19th & 20th Century Literature at Swann Galleries on 14 November.
- Fine Books, Atlases, Manuscripts, and Photographs at Bonhams London on 15 November.
- Noah Sheola's got a great post up on the Houghton blog about the importance of good cataloging.
- The November Rare Book Monthly includes Marc Sena Carrel on "Exiting the Bookseller Business," Michael Stillman on an upcoming auction of an early Declaration of Independence broadside, and a Bruce McKinney note about bookseller William Reese being honored by the AAS this week with the Christopher Columbus Baldwin medal (a well-deserved honor, to be sure).
- Hewlett-Packard's extensive archives were destroyed in the recent California wildfires.
- Cynthia Zarin writes for the New Yorker about "The Original Master of Ghost Stories" (M.R. James, of course).
- The manuscript of John Donne's "Courtier's Library" has been identified in the Westminster Abbey archives.
- Kurt Zimmerman is on "The Hunt for Early American Women Bibliographers" at American Book Collecting.
- MITH has launched Books.Files, a Mellon-funded project to "assess the potential for the archival collection and scholarly study of digital assets associated with today’s trade publishing and bookmaking."
- The Folger has launched Miranda, a new platform for the library's digital content. See the blog post for lots of good background.
- Tim Carmody writes for Kottke.org about "Card catalogs and the secret history of modernity."
- Several more panel overviews from the recent APHA conference in "The Process of Innovation."
- A Titanic letter (one of the last known to be written on the ship) sold at auction this week for £126,000.
- Booktryst will publish a fine-press book celebrating the late Martin Stone.
- A Thomas Bewick sketchbook has been identified and purchased by Bewick collector David Bolam.
Reviews
- Alison Weir's Queens of the Conquest; review by Dan Jones in the WaPo.
- Russell Shorto's Revolution Song; review by Lynne Cheney in the NYTimes.
- Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci; review by Jennifer Senior in the NYTimes.
- Noah Feldman's The Three Lives of James Madison; review by Susan Dunn in the NYTimes.
- Gordon S. Wood's Friends Divided; review by Richard Brookhiser in the NYTimes.
Upcoming Auctions
- The Library of an English Bibliophile, Part VII at Sotheby's London on 7 November.
- Autographs at Swann Galleries on 7 November.
- Rare Books, Autographs & Maps at Doyle New York on 7 November.
- Fine Golf Books at PBA Galleries on 12 November.
- Fine Books & Manuscripts at Skinner, Inc. on 12 November.
- Travel, Atlases, Maps & Natural History at Sotheby's London on 14 November.
- 19th & 20th Century Literature at Swann Galleries on 14 November.
- Fine Books, Atlases, Manuscripts, and Photographs at Bonhams London on 15 November.
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