Sunday, February 25, 2018

Links & Reviews

- From Malcolm Gay in the Boston Globe, "Turmoil Strikes the Boston Athenaeum."

- Cara Giaimo also has an "Exit Interview" with Athenaeum curator Stanley Cushing for Atlas Obscura.

- Rare Book Week in New York is approaching - lots and lots and lots going on, as usual! On the ABAA blog, some hints and tips about attending your first book fair.

- At The Collation, Elizabeth DeBold highlights a new Folger acquisition: an elaborate Restoration binding perhaps from the workshop of the Naval Binder.

- Michael Ruane writes for the WaPo about a newly resurfaced copy of the Stone facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, this one originally presented to James Madison.

- Jerry Morris has a new post at My Sentimental Library about collecting James Boswell.

- I noted last week the new census of Curtis' The North American Indian. Nate Pedersen has a short interview with Tim Greyhavens, the census coordinator, for the Fine Books Blog.

- Over on the Ransom Center blog, Elizabeth Page notes the centennial of the acquisition of the Wrenn Library.

- Antiquarian bookseller Ian Jackson died this week; there is a very nice post about his life and works at Laudator Temporis Acti.

- You can watch Sarah Werner's HRC Pforzheimer Lecture, "Early Digital Facsimiles," on the HRC's Facebook page.

- Lucy Scholes writes for the Financial Times about "the rise of the bibliomemoir."

- From Ethan Reed for the UVA Scholars' Lab blog, "Transcription is Complicated."

- New from the Beinecke Library, The Gutenberg at Beinecke, which will feature a series of essays and other content to "explore the many different meanings of the Gutenberg Bible as historical and cultural object."

- The BL has digitized and made available some 350 recordings of English folk songs made by Percy Grainger in the early years of the twentieth century.

- Trent Toone profiles Curt Bench, owner of Salt Lake City's Benchmark Books, for the Deseret News.

Review

- Rob Iliffe's Priest of Nature; review by Oliver Moody in the TLS.

Upcoming Auctions

- Illustrated & Animated: The Collections of Burningham & Blundall at Lyon and Turnbull on 28 February.

- Vintage Posters at Swann Galleries on 1 March.

- The Magic Collection of John Daniel at Potter & Potter on 3 March.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Links & Reviews

- Following the news late last year (noted here) about forged Waldseemüller world map gores, the Bavarian State Library (BSB) has announced that their copy is also a 20th-century forgery.

- The ABAA has posted a list of books stolen in transit to the California Book Fair.

- It's not often I see my little alma mater in upstate New York featured on the local news in Virginia, but it happened this week after a lock of George Washington's hair was found inside an almanac in Union College's Special Collections.

- Heather Wolfe at The Collation asks "Was Early Modern Writing Paper Expensive?"

- Jennifer Howard write for EdSurge about "What Next-Gen Digital Humanities Looks Like."

- From Alberto Manguel in the CHE, "The Magical Power of Dictionaries."

- Jessica Janecki and Lauren Reno write for The Devil's Tale about some recent work they've been doing to clarify authority and authorship records for Sojourner Truth's Narrative.

- The deadline for consideration in the first round of admissions for spring/summer 2018 Rare Book School courses is tomorrow, 19 February; submission of your application(s) by then is much encouraged.

- A census of Edward Curtis' The North American Indian is underway; please do contribute if you can.

- Dave Gary has identified some Joseph Priestley books at the American Philosophical Society, given by APS Librarian John Vaughan.

- Kelly Grovier writes for the BBC about "The Mysterious Painting that Changed How We See Colour."

- Harvard's copy of Horatio Rogers Jr.'s Private Libraries of Providence is now available for your browsing pleasure (via John Overholt).

- From the Yale Program in the History of the Book blog, Kelsey Champagne writes on a 1707 shipment of books to Jamaica. The blog, called The Census, is new, and should be added to your reading list.

- Some new research is leading to surprising findings about the Book of Kells.

- From Atlas Obscura, a profile of a professional manuscript transcriber on the Isle of Man.

- Also at Atlas Obscura, some interesting things people have found in books (other than George Washington's hair).

- Meet the newest members of the ABAA!

- Most volumes of the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution are now freely available online.

- Newly digitized are the minutes of the American Philosophical Society for 1787 to 1793.

Book Review

- Leonard Neidorf's The Transmission of Beowulf and Corinne Dale's The Natural World in the Exeter Book of Riddles; review by Susan Irvine in the TLS.

Upcoming Auctions

- Autographed Documents, Manuscripts, Books & Relics at University Archives on 21 February.

- Fine Books - Science & Medicine - Art, Illustration & Children's Literature at PBA Galleries on 22 February.

- Comics and Comic Art at Heritage Auctions from 22 to 24 February.

- The David and Janice Frent Collection of Political & Presidential Americana, Part 2 at Heritage Auctions on 24 February.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Links & Reviews

- New from Johanna Drucker and colleagues at UCLA, History of the Book, which looks like it will be a tremendously useful resource.

- Simon Beattie offers a "Beginner's Guide" to decorated book papers on the ABAA blog.

- Lorraine Berry writes for the Guardian about our fascination with lost books.

- A full article has now been published in Review of English Studies on the recent identification of a Donne manuscript in the collections of Westminster Abbey.

- At American Book Collecting, "Samuel Hand and the First American Edition of De Bury's Philobiblon."

- Erin Schreiner's in Atlas Obscura with a piece looking at the New York Society Library's circulation records over time.

- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian about a potential new source for some of Shakespeare's plays, identified using plagiarism-detection software. See also Michael Blanding's piece in the NYTimes.

- The Huntington Library has acquired an interesting Darwin family photo album.

- Keith Houston has a Miscellany post on French language rules and naming regulations.

- Ed Simon offers a 350th-anniversary Paradise Lost reading list at The Millions.

- The BL's Medieval Manuscripts blog highlights Æthelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, and another post examines the carpet pages in the Lindisfarne Gospels.

- Alexander Zawacki writes for Atlas Obscura about a book of arsenic-filled wallpaper samples and how various libraries have dealt with it.

- Pradeep Sebastian has a Q&A with the Heavenly Monkey blog about his The Bookhunters of Katpadi.

- The Friends of Dard Hunter and APHA have issued a call for proposals for their joint conference, to be held in October in Iowa City: "Matrices: The Social Life of Paper, Print, and Art."

- Another call for papers to note, this one for a January 2019 conference in Nijmegen, "Private libraries and private library inventories, 1665–1830: Locating, studying and understanding sources, in Europe and beyond."

- Business Insider visits a Venice bookshop with a somewhat unconventional method keeping its books dry.

- Over on the Clements Library blog, "The Ins and Outs of Cataloguing Atlases."

Reviews

- Jon Stubbs' Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel; review by PD Smith in the Guardian.

- Serinity Young's Women Who Fly; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

Upcoming Auctions

- Unreserved Printed Books including books from The Alan & Joan Tucker Collection at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 14 February.

- Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs at Lyon & Turnbull on 14 February.

- Collection d'un Bibliophile: Livres & Manuscrits Précieux, 1478–1977 at Binoche et Giquello on 14 February.

- Libri, Manoscritti e Autografi at Pandolfini on 14 February.

- Icons & Images: Photographs & Photobooks at Swann Galleries on 15 February.

- Political Memorabilia including the Daniel Schofield Collection at Eldreds on 16 February.

Sunday, February 04, 2018

Links & Reviews

- The BPL has launched a crowdsourced transcription project for their collection of anti-slavery manuscripts.

- Two cultural thefts to report: the ARCA blog notes that CCTV footage was enough for authorities to quickly apprehend the man responsible for vandalism and theft at the Route 66 Museum, but more than 1,500 items remain missing after they were stolen from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust's storage facility.

- Aaron Pratt talks to Sarah Werner about early digital facsimiles for the Ransom Center's magazine in advance of Sarah's Pforzheimer lecture at the HRC later this month.

- David Pearson will deliver the Lyell Lectures in April, on Book Ownership in Stuart England. Sign up here for free tickets.

- New blog to watch: Sammelband: A Book History Pedagogy Blog, from Cait Coker and Kate Ozment.

- Alison Flood writes for the Guardian about the Tremulous Hand, highlighting the BL's newly released Discovering Literature: Medieval site. See the BL's announcement post, too.

- From Justin Tonra at RTÉ, "A short story about bookshelves."

- The ABAA has posted an "In Memoriam" page for bookseller William Dailey, who died suddenly last month.

- Michael Thompson and Boreas Fine Art are featured in Evanston Magazine.

- Smithsonian highlights a book bound in lab-grown jellyfish leather ...

- The Trinity College Dublin blog features their Gutenberg Bible fragment.

- An American bidder won a 13th-century illuminated Bible sold at auction in New Zealand this week.

Reviews

- Charles C. Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet; review by Fred Pearce in the WaPo.

- Mark Purcell's The Country House Library; review by Adrian Higgins in the WaPo.

- Several recent Jane Eyre studies; review by Kathryn Hughes in the TLS.

- Pradeep Sebastian's The Book Hunters of Katpadi; review by Ashwin Ahmad in DNAIndia.

Upcoming Auctions

- Travel & Exploration at Bonhams London on 7 February.

- The Collection of Avis & Eugene Robinson at Skinner, Inc. on 9 February.

- Rare Books & Manuscripts at PBA Galleries on 11 February (in Pasadena).

- Fine Books at Manuscripts at Bonhams on 11 February (in Pasadena).