- Starting on Friday, 9 April, Spring Break for Booklovers, on Getman's Virtual.
- Amanda Bartlett writes for SFGATE on Brian Cassidy's recent identification of a previously unknown early typed draft of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." See also Alison Flood's piece in the Guardian.
- From the BL's Medieval Manuscripts blog, "Easter Sunday in the Sherborne Missal" and "Alas, poor Hamlet."
- A conversation between Jason Dean and Nick Wilding about the Linda Hall Library's copy of Sidereus Nuncius is now available on Vimeo.
- Over on the Rylands Blog, "Photographing the Simon Papers," walking through the process of digitizing a collection of complex bound volumes and "A Passover Haggadah Painted by an Englishman?"
- More from Jennifer Schuessler on the recent questions about the Deuteronomy fragments in "A Biblical Mystery and a Reporting Odyssey."
- Also from the Rylands orbit, Kirat Sagoo looks back at the Guardian's San Serriffe prank.
- From the Getty, Julie Jaskol and antiquities curator Kenneth Lapatin talk through the process of confirming a forged gemstone.
- The Princeton Graphic Arts Collection blog highlights a binding by Parisian binder Madeleine Gras.
- From the OUP blog, "New discoveries about John Shakespeare."
- The Grolier Club has been given a book from FDR's library.
- Over at American Book Collecting, "Nettie Lee Benson on the Development of Special Collections."
- At Books and Borrowing, "A Painted Library Parthenon for the Athens of the North."
Reviews
- Megan Rosenbloom's Dark Archives; review by Christine Jacobsen in the LARB.
- Michael Blanding's North by Shakespeare; review by Stephen Donoghue in the CSM.
I finally had a chance to sit down this weekend with Kurt Zimmerman's new collection of biblio-essays, Rare Book Hunting, and enjoyed it immensely. It is a delightful account of Kurt's adventures with books, from his time in the auction business to his visits with booksellers and of course some excellent stories about great biblio-finds. Some of his bibliographical association copies are the stuff that makes anyone who enjoys such things simultaneously so happy they exist and also so jealous that somebody else got to them first!
Particularly valuable is Kurt's "Auction House Adventures," his memoir of working at San Francisco auction house (then) Butterfield & Butterfield. As he notes in the short introductory note, accounts about life in the book auction world are far rarer than they should be, so having his story between two covers is a very important addition to the genre.
Kurt's tales all make clear the most important part of book collecting: the people, past and present. His "A Book I Shouldn't Have Had Yet" (another version of which is on his blog) is profoundly moving, and his stories of Texas bookselling greats Dorothy Sloan and Larry McMurtry, both of whom died in March, are timely indeed. I cannot wait to return to a time when we are able to have a great crowd of biblio-humans in a big room again: if nothing else, we need the opportunity for Kurt to find more great books and tell more great stories!
Upcoming Auctions
- Livres Anciens du XVIe au XIXe Siècle at ALDE on 7 April.
- Printed Books & Manuscripts, Autographs & Documents, Maps & Prints, The Bookbindery of Faith Shannon at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 7–8 April.
- Early Printed Books at Swann Galleries on 8 April.
