Auction Report: Travel &c. @ Sotheby's

Sotheby's London's Travel, Atlases, Maps & Natural History sale went down this morning, to the tune of £1,736,750. Full results are here.

-The archive concerning 1928 meetings between Sir Gilbert Clayton and Ibn Saud, from the British consulate at Jeddah (est. £70,000-100,000) did better than expected, making £301,250.

- The sleepers of the sale were a large engraved portolan chart of the East Indies on vellum, c. 1658. It was estimated at £20,000-30,000, but made £205,250.

- And a selection of 64 photographs of Iraq and Afghanistan (1928-1931), estimated at £3,000-4,000 - it fetched a whopping £91,250!

- William Bradford's The Arctic Regions Illustrated with Photographs taken on an Art Expedition to Greenland (est. £60,000-90,000) made £79,250.

- A set of lithographic views of Russia (1821-1824) sold for £63,650.

- John Gould's Birds of Europe (1832-1837) made £58,850.

- Joannes Janssonius' Theatrum Praecipuarum Urbium (1657), Fernandez de Enciso's Suma de Geographia (1546), Sir Thomas Smith's Voiage and Entertainment in Rushia (1605), Joseph Cartwright's aquatint views of the Ionian Islands (1821), and the 1730 map of New York did not sell.

Rodney's to Close

Rodney's Bookstore in Central Square, Cambridge has announced a 50%-off sale on all books, in preparation for the store's closing at a later date (toward the end of the summer, sounds like). Cambridge City councilor Ken Reeves "said the 698 Massachusetts Ave. site would likely become a nightclub, but [a] Rodney’s worker on Tuesday said another used bookseller might be lined up to take the space." Let's hope it's the latter!

Google to Launch E-Book Store

Well, I can't say I'm surprised to see the headlines today that Google will lauch an e-bookstore, "Google Editions," this summer.

"Google says users will be able to buy digital copies of books they discover through its book-search service. It will also allow book retailers—even independent shops—to sell Google Editions on their own sites, giving partners the bulk of the revenue. ... [U]sers of Google Editions would be able to read books from a web browser—meaning that the type of e-reader device wouldn't matter. The company also could build software to optimize reading on certain devices like an iPhone or iPad but hasn't announced any specific plans."

Lots more here.

May is Music Month @ FB&C

The May issue of Fine Books Notes is up, and it's all about music. Joel Silver writes on collecting antiquarian music, Ian McKay examines recent auction sales of musical interest, Stephen Maughan looks at Stefan Zweig's collection of music manuscripts, and editor Rebecca Rego Barry reviews the Grateful Dead exhibit at N-YHS.

No Holding Back

I may have pulled some punches this weekend when I responded to Todd Gilman's Chronicle article. But Laura at Superstarchivist holds nothing back in her own post on the topic, and for that, I applaud her.

I've also added a link to Superstarchivist on the sidebar, and subscribed via Google Reader.

Auction Report: Upcoming

I've already previewed Sotheby's 6 May sales of Travel, Atlases, Maps & Natural History, plus the Benevento Collection of Maps and Atlases, which promise to be exciting. Here are some other upcoming sales:

- Sotheby's Paris will sell Books and Manuscripts on 18 May, in 210 lots. A first edition of Thomas More's Utopia (1516) and a ten-volume set of St. Augustine's works (1528-1529) share top estimates, with each expected to sell for €200,000-300,000. A 1575 edition of Paré's works is expected to fetch €120,000-180,000, and a six-volume Janssonnius atlas (1652-1657) could make €100,000-160,000. A Vesalius De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) is estimated at €100,000-150,000. There are lots of other important books here, so make sure to browse through.

- Christie's London will sell Photobooks on 21 May, in 136 lots. Highlights are expected to include a copy of Emmet Gowin's Concerning America and Alfred Stieglitz, and Myself (1965) inscribed to the photographer's parents (£18,000-25,000); an inscribed copy of Robert Frank's The Americans (1960), with the dust jacket (£10,000-15,000); and Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Misssissippi [sic] (2002), the rare self-published true first (£6,000-8,000). Browse the lots here.

Fun With Maps

There's a cool little feature in on the Globe website today (if you can find it for all the Aquapocalypse madness), "Redrawing New England." It features several different proposed changes to the traditional map of New England, including the new states of "Acadia," "New Connecticut" (now known as Vermont) and "Boston." Neat stuff.

Links & Reviews

- I was at the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair on Friday night and Saturday morning - crowds weren't the thronging hordes one likes to see at these smaller fairs, but there was certainly some buying going on. It was great to see some really amazing offerings and chat with the dealers.

- Paul Razzell at the FPBA notes a 6 May illustrated lecture at the BPL celebrating four decades of books from publisher David R. Godine.

- The May AE Monthly is out, for your edification and/or amusement.

- J.L. Bell has some questions about a new Thomas Paine controversy.

- A new exhibit at Yale of recycled manuscripts used in bindings - great stuff!

- Over at Literary Fraud & Folly, news of a new book that claims to answer the question of who wrote The Diary of a Public Man, an anonymous piece on the political leadup to the Civil War.

- Paul Collins has switched over to blogging at The Literary Detective, so change your bookmarks and RSS feeds accordingly. He's got a good post this week on a very odd campaign strategy in the CA gov's race.

Reviews

- Alberto Manguel's A Reader on Reading: review by Ian Sansom in the Guardian.

- Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America: review by Ron Charles in the WaPo.

- Hugh Raffles' Insectopedia: review by Philip Hoare in the NYTimes.

- Leo Damrosch's Tocqueville's Discovery of America: review by Sam Coale in the Providence Journal.

- James Shapiro's Contested Will: review by Jeremy McCarter in the NYTimes.

- E.O. Wilson's Anthill: review by Etelka Lehoczky in the LATimes.

- Evan Thomas' The War Lovers: review by James McGrath Morris in the WaPo.

- Sy Montgomery's Birdology: review by David Gessner in the WaPo.

- Daisy Hay's Young Romantics: review by James MacConnachie in the Sunday Times.

- Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ: review by David Plotz in Slate.

A Gentle Rejoinder

This Chronicle article by Todd Gilman on what he describes as a "not-so-pleasant encounter" at a special collections library is already making the rounds on the relevant listservs, as it should. But after reading it, and thinking a bit about it, I feel compelled to offer a few words in response.

What bothers me about this is that he seems to have simply expected to be able to wander in and browse the shelves of "the largest private collection of Handel memorabilia" (he does not name the library, but clues from the article reveal it to be the Foundling Museum). He'd seen an ad for the museum in a concert brochure; the ad mentioned the library collection, so he went to check it out. Fair enough. But when he was asked if he had an appointment, or if he'd consulted the online catalog (and he had not done so), the librarian seems to have given him something of a brush-off.

I looked at the museum's website this morning. On the page for the George Coke Handel Research Library, it reads, quite clearly, "In addition to the public exhibition room, open during normal Museum hours, The Gerald Coke Handel Research Library is open Wednesday-Friday for research purposes by appointment."

Let me just reiterate that. "Research purposes by appointment."

This is not to defend overzealous librarians who would wall off their collections from the public. I'm not a fan of them, and I do my darnedest to make sure anyone who comes to the institution where I work leaves having seen what they want to see. But, especially in these post-Bland, post-Blumberg, post-Smiley days, special collections libraries do, and must, have policies in place to protect the materials they hold (including providing access to collections on microfilm, setting hours, and even requesting appointments, depending on the situation). Mr. Gilman, as a librarian himself, ought to be aware of that.

This Week's Acquisitions

Here's what's new this week:

- American Machiavelli: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy by John Lamberton Harper (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Raven.

- The Haunted Doll's House and Other Ghost Stories by M. R. James (Penguin, 2006). Raven.

- Seeds of Discontent: The Deep Roots of the American Revolution, 1650-1750 by J. Revell Carr (Walker & Company, 2008). Raven.

- The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist; edited by Andrew Oliver (Harvard University Press, 1972). Raven.

- Notes on Bermuda by Christopher Morley (Henry, Longwell & Another, 1931). Books Again, Inc., via Biblio.

- The Journal of Richard Norwood, Surveyor of Bermuda (Scholars Facsimiles, 2008). Publisher.

- The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America by Nigel Cliff (Random House, 2007). Used, via Biblio.

- The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes (Pantheon, 2009). Used, via Biblio.

- American Monster: How the Nation's First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity by Paul Semonin (NYU Press, 2000). Used, via Biblio.

- English Bookbinding Styles 1450-1800 by David Pearson (Oak Knoll, 2004). Amazon.

- American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People by T. H. Breen (Hill and Wang, 2010). Publisher.

- Frith of Bermuda, Gentleman Privateer: A Biography of Hezekiah Frith, 1763-1848 by Jean de Chantal Kennedy (Bermuda Bookstores, 1964). Omni Books, via ABE.

Book Review: "The Devil and Sherlock Holmes"

David Grann is one of the finest writers of contemporary long-form investigative journalism, and his new book The Devil and Sherlock Holmes (Doubleday, 2010) collects twelve of his previously-published essays (nine from The New Yorker, one each from The Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, and The New Republic). Grann's style makes for great reading; he takes fascinating subject matter and somehow manages to both compress and expand it into perfectly-paced segments, just right for a leisurely read.

Each of the twelve essays is completely enthralling in its own right, from the first (on the mysterious death of Sherlock Holmes scholar Richard Lancelyn Green), to the last (on Haitian death squad leader Toto Constant). Sandwiched between these are careful examinations of whether the state of Texas executed an innocent man, how the Aryan Brotherhood came to control America's prisons, and how Jim Traficant got involved with the Youngstown mob; and profiles of a scientist obsessed with finding the giant squid, baseball player Rickey Henderson, bank robber/escape artist Forrest Tucker, and the "sandhogs" who are working underneath New York to construct a new water system.

Grann's travels take him to small boats in stormy waters of the New Zealand coast, deep into the mucky depths of New York's subterranean tunnels, into prisons and small-town baseball stadiums, arson It was great fun to go along for the ride.

Boston Book Weekend!

If you're looking for something bibliophilic to do this weekend (and who isn't?!), check out the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair, sponsored by MARIAB and to be held at the BU Track & Tennis Center (100 Ashford Street in Boston).

Hours on Friday will be 5-9 p.m., and on Saturday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

You can find the list of dealers and a map to the location here.

I'll be there at least on Friday evening, and will be sure to file a report.

My Next Project

Last March, as I reported here, I spent a few days in Bermuda for the Society of Early Americanists' conference down there. In my notes posted when I got back, I wrote "I'm already thinking about research projects that might enable me to get back there sooner rather than later," and those ideas have been percolating ever since. I'm happy to report that they've finally come to a boil, and I've embarked on what will probably be a fairly long-term project, to explore the history of books and book culture in Bermuda from the earliest English settlements through end of the eighteenth century or so (say roughly 1609-1800). I'm writing about it here to make it official for myself, and to explain why I've been tossing out tidbits about early Bermuda records on Twitter and acquiring so many books related to Bermuda's history recently (just in case you were wondering).

There's not a whole lot in the literature on the topic (most of the reason I decided to explore it) - while both mainland America and the Caribbean islands have been explored (at least to some extent), Bermuda's been largely ignored ... a fault which I hope I can take at least some modest efforts to correct. Mike Jarvis' new book on Bermuda's role in the Atlantic world should spur further studies of how the island fit into the economic and cultural atmosphere of the time, and his framework and exhaustive efforts will be immensely helpful in all those attempts.

Over the last several months I've begun amassing a pretty hefty pile of books and articles on early Bermuda and its people to begin the project, and I've finally been able to start making my way through them (and making lists of those that I need to hunt up elsewhere). Not surprisingly, there is much more in the primary records (particularly those for the early period) than has been put to previous use - just this morning, for example, I found was appears to be the first record instance of book theft in Bermuda, in 1640. There are many questions I look forward to exploring, and many, many, many stones left to turn - and at the end, who knows what will emerge. Whatever it is, I'm sure there will be many twists, turns, and surprises along the way (and don't be surprised if I can't help but share with you all now and again).

This project will require at least a couple trips to Bermuda to use the collections at their archives (including, among other archival sources, the wills and inventories, which contain records of many early private libraries). I'll be spending some time writing up grant applications so that I might be able to undertake those researches, and anticipate some serious time spent immersed in detailed reads of record books (mmm!), both here and there.

Of course I'll still be attempting to keep up as lively a posting schedule as I generally have around here, and will be continuing to plug away at the Libraries of Early America (though I have not yet decided who's library to work on next - any suggestions from The List?) - you all just may be hearing a little more about Bermuda in the coming months than you have to date; I hope you don't mind.Oh, and if you need pictures by way of enticement, don't worry, I've got lots!

Book Review: "Desolation Island"

After quite a long break from them (entirely unintentional), I turned this week to Patrick O'Brian's fifth Aubrey-Maturin novel, Desolation Island. Possibly my favorite of the series so far, this one has the daring duo transporting felons to Australia, including a mysteriously alluring female spy and her erstwhile stowaway companion. Naturally, the trip's not a smooth one: an epidemic decimates the crew, a powerful Dutch ship is out for blood, and tremendous natural hazards await in the waters of the Antarctic.

A good mix of action and counter-espionage, with O'Brian's usual good characterization (after a while you can really feel the shifting moods of the crew), and another fun treatment of early natural history, with Maturin taking every possible opportunity to observe breeding albatrosses, mosses, and other zoological and botanical sights (a blue whale even makes a cameo appearance).

Links & Reviews

- Book Patrol reported this week that the FBI has been checking out bookstores in the Northwest (particularly in Vancouver) looking for wanted gangster Whitey Bulger.

- J.L. Bell notes a new Concord Museum exhibit of historical items passed down through generations of Concord families.

- On "Morning Edition" this week, a story about Anna Barbauld, a lab assistant to Joseph Priestley, who penned a poem to Priestly from the perspective a mouse he was set to experiment on the next morning.

- Steve Ferguson has some super-depressing news about the apparent dispersal of an important 19th-century business archive.

- Historian Orlando Figes fessed up this week to posting anonymous, scathing reviews of his rivals' works on Amazon.com. More in the TLS.

- Ken Auletta has an essay in this week's New Yorker on what the iPad might mean for reading and the publishing industry.

- Some more trouble for Stephen Ambrose: appears he made up more than was previously known.

- Paul Collins offers up "the most incoherent book title of 1907." Love it.

Reviews

- Alberto Manguel's A Reader on Reading: short review by Edward King in the Sunday Times.

- James Horn's A Kingdom Strange: review by Greg Schneider in the WaPo.

- Evan Thomas' The War Lovers: review by Ronald Steel in the NYTimes.

- James Shapiro's Contested Will: review by Charles Nicholl in the TLS.

- Leo Damrosch's Tocqueville in America: review by François Furstenberg in Slate.

This Week's Acquisitions

Here's what's new this week:

- Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts by D. F. McKenzie (Cambridge University Press, 1999). Brookline Booksmith.

- The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control by Ted Striphas (Columbia University Press, 2009). Publisher.

- City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York by David Henkin (Columbia University Press, 1998). Publisher.

- McSweeney's Issue 34; edited by Dave Eggers (McSweeney's, 2010). Publisher.

Auction Report: Recent Sales

Some more recent auction highlights:

- Swann Galleries sold the Penzler Collection of Espionage on 8 April. A first edition of Fleming's Casino Royale made $33,600; an inscribed copy of Moonraker sold for $50,400; and an archive of James Bond-related documents fetched $57,600.

- At Swann's 12 April sale of Early Printed Books, the top seller was Saint Thomas Aquinas' Commentum in octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis (Venice: 1492), heavily annotated on the opening leaves. It made $9,600. A copy of the first John Baskerville edition of the KJV (1763) made $9,000.

- The 22 April Autographs sale at Swann saw an inscribed copy of Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned fetch $12,000; an autograph album of musicians and composers made $11,400, and a signed photo of Teddy Roosevelt was the high seller at $15,600.

- Christie's London sale of Travel, Science & Natural History on 22 April brought in a total of £790,050. The top seller was a colored copy of Emily Eden's lithographs, "Portraits of the Princes and Peoples of India" (1844), which made £55,250. The first edition of Darwin's Origin beat its estimate, making £27,500.

- Bloomsbury London had a Bibliophile sale on 15 April. Two lots were tied for the top spot, at £1,600. Bloomsbury New York sold Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts on 21 April, at which the top seller was a first edition of Yeats' first book, Mosada, formerly in the possession of a family member. It made $60,000. William Goldson's Observations on the Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (1793) sold for $36,000, and a 13th-century missal fetched $34,000.

Auction Report: Big Day for Dumas

Today's sale of Importants Livres Anciens, Livres d'Artistes et Manuscrits at Christie's Paris brought in €1,502,275.

The unexpected high seller was a first edition of Dumas' Le Comte de Monte-Christo (1845-1846), which made €253,000 (beating the €30,000-50,000 estimate handily).

Perrault's Histoires ou Contes du temps passé (1697), estimated at €80,000 - €120,000, made €133,000.

A Johannes Janssonius Atlas (1657-1658) fetched €97,000; the 1482 edition of Euclid made €62,200. An Aldine Aristotle and Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius (1610) with Kepler's 1611 commentary each sold for €68,200.

Champlain's Les Voyages de la nouvelle France occidentale, dicte Canada (1632) failed to sell.

News? What News?

Just about every media outlet under the sun has been reporting (most with a breathlessness approaching hysteria) on the "discovery" that George Washington borrowed two books from the New York Society Library in October 1789 and appears not to have returned them (see coverage in the New York Daily News, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, AP, Guardian, for example).

Don't get me wrong, I like to see library history in the news - but the ridiculous angle taken by most of the press coverage (the amount of the fine Washington would have to pay today) is eye-rollingly inane. Yes, I know this shouldn't surprise me, but it's still annoying.

Also, this is not new news. The ledgers containing the entries were found in 1934, and there's even a 2007 article on the NYSL's website mentioning the books (and refuting the claims in most of the media stories that all the other "famous borrowers" returned their books - John Adams doesn't appear to have returned the second volume of Kames' Elements of Criticism, either).

This is probably way too curmudgeonly - forgive me.

Book Review: "Tocqueville's Discovery of America"

Leo Damrosch's new book Tocqueville's Discovery of America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) draws on previously-unpublished sources and the last several decades of historical scholarship to illuminate the nine-month journey that ultimately resulted in the publication of Tocqueville's Democracy in America. In doing so he effectively both updates and abridges George Wilson Pierson's Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (first published by Oxford University Press in 1938 and reissued as Tocqueville in America by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1996).

While Pierson's 850-page behemoth remains the most detailed reconstruction of Tocqueville and Beaumont's trip across America, Damrosch's much more compact book will certainly prove more accessible to the general reader, and his analysis of what Tocqueville got right (and wrong) in his treatment of American society and politics is both interesting and instructive.

The trip itself cannot fail to impress - Tocqueville and Beaumont experienced much of America during their visit, even if some (mostly in the South) was seen mostly through stagecoach windows (Tocqueville long lamented not having spent enough time in that region to gain a real sense of it). From Boston to Niagara Falls to the Michigan wilderness, New Orleans, and the capital at Washington, America was observed, even if it was not entirely understood.

Damrosch's comparison of Tocqueville's reactions to things American with those of other European travelers (Marryat, Dickens, Trollope) was very useful, and throughout he keeps a good narrative pace and style. An enjoyable read.