- The ABAA Boston Virtual Book Fair continues through the end of the day today: don't miss either the books or the associated events.
- Swann Galleries' autographs specialist Marco Tomaschett takes a deep dive into "The Voice & Hand of Frederick Douglass."
- From James Tarmy at Bloomberg, "Retail Might be Struggling, But the Rich Are Buying Rare Books."
- Cushing Memorial Library & Archives at TAMU have launched a new blog, The Cushing Collective.
- Some of the books stolen from a London warehouse in 2017 and recovered recently in Romania were returned to their owners this week.
- Eric White writes for Princeton's Notabilia blog "Mystery Solved: A Long-Lost Spanish Vocabulario (ca. 1492–93) Comes to Light at Princeton."
- Alex Johnson highlights a new crowdfunding effort to preserve the St. Bride Library for the Fine Books Blog.
- In the NYT, William J. Broad reports on a new census of Newton's Principia. As you all know I am a huge fan of book censuses, so I am delighted to see another out in the world (and if you have an uncounted copy, please do contact the researchers). See also the Caltech press release.
- A neat offering from Peter Harrington: an illustrated script for the second theatrical adaptation of The Hobbit, a 1967 school production.
- Over at Early Modern Female Book Ownership, a fascinating-looking 1655 volume of Dickson's explications of the psalms, with lots of usage marks.
- Another interesting new blog to keep an eye on, The Fate of Books, which will focus on book history in Slovenia and central Europe.
- Books & Borrowing has a very good breakdown of the different sorts of eighteenth-century libraries.
- The British Library has managed to secure funding to keep the 15th-century Lewis of Caerleon manuscript in the UK, and the BL has digitized the manuscript.
- It's all about the asterisk over at Shady Characters.
- A WWI carrier pigeon message has been found in France.
- Rugby School is selling off some of its rare books this week. More from the BBC.
- And from the Royal College of Physicians, after the recent outcry over their proposed plan to auction off rare books from their library, word that "no firm decision" has yet been made about the potential sale.
Upcoming Auctions
- Dada Data: Books and Boîtes by Marcel Duchamp and Others at Sotheby's New York ends on 16 November.