This Week's Acquisitions

I paid a visit to the soon-to-close Rodney's in Central Square last weekend, and a few review copies arrived:

- Studies of a Booklover by Thomas Marc Parrott (Books for Libraries Press, 1967). Rodney's.

- The Letter-Journal of George Canning, 1793-1795; edited by Peter Jupp (Royal Historical Society, 1991). Rodney's.

- A Season of Youth: The American Revolution & the Historical Imagination by Michael G. Kammen (Cornell University Press, 1988). Rodney's.

- Richard Alsop, "A Hartford Wit" by Karl Pomeroy Harrington (Wesleyan University Press, 1969). Rodney's.

- New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery by Anthony Grafton (Harvard University Press, 1992). Rodney's.

- The Queen's Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Advisor to Queen Elizabeth I by Benjamin Woolley (Henry Holt, 2001). Rodney's.

- Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future by Stephen Kinzer (Times Books, 2010). Publisher.

- The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen (Viking, 2010). Publisher.

- The Book in the Renaissance by Andrew Pettegree (Yale University Press, 2010). Publisher.

- The Better of McSweeney's, Volume 2; edited by Dave Eggers (McSweeney's, 2010). MFA Shop.

- McSweeney's Issue 27; edited by Dave Eggers (McSweeney's, 2008). MFA Shop.

Dimunation on Jefferson's Library

The Bridwell Library has mounted the audio of Mark Dimunation's lecture there on 29 April, "Forged in Fire," about the LoC's reconstruction of Jefferson's library. You can listen here.

Charlottesville-Bound (Soon)

Much of the radio silence around here lately has been because I've been working my way through the reading list for the class I'll be taking at Rare Book School in a couple weeks (Printed Books to 1800: Description and Analysis, with David Whitesell). I'm more than a little excited about the class, and the readings are giving me a great opportunity to read a number of texts that I've dipped in and out of often but have never worked through systematically.

I'll head down to Charlottesville (pics from my last trip down there in June '08 are here) on 5 June. The first week there I'll be in class, and the second week I'll be working with the RBS staff on a project to be determined. It's an opportunity I'm really thrilled to have, and I look forward to sharing lots of field reports and photos.

In the meantime, I've got lots of reading to do (and I've got several other reports to write up and post, so stay tuned!).

Links & Reviews

- Laura's got a very neat post about cataloging a first edition of More's Utopia.

- There's an Australian profile of bookseller Rick Gekoski, who says he's not worried about the end of good books, but has concerns about the next generation of collectors.

- A poster at The Millions covers the Double Falsehood publication.

- Over at IHE, Scott McLemee weighs in at length on the brazen publicity campaign for Michael Bellesiles' forthcoming book 1877. Of a paragraph in the publisher's letter about the book (which he quotes), McLemee writes "These sentences have absorbed and rewarded my attention for days on end. They are a masterpiece of evasion. The paragraph is, in its way, quite impressive. Every word of it is misleading, including 'and' and 'the.'"

- Nick at Mercurius Politicus examines pelican symbology. Fascinating!

- FoggyGates has news that conservators at the Israel Museum have solved the mystery of an enigmatic forgery (or, at least, some of the mysteries about it).

- A Chronicle blog-post highlights a new study showing that the number of books in a household bears a strong correlation to a child's academic achievement. Here's the money-quote: "Thus it seems that scholarly culture, and the taste for books that it brings, flows from generation to generation largely of its own accord, little affected by education, occupational status, or other aspects of class ... Parents give their infants toy books to play with in the bath; read stories to little children at bed-time; give books as presents to older children; talk, explain, imagine, fantasize, and play with words unceasingly. Their children get a taste for all this, learn the words, master the skills, buy the books. And that pays off handsomely in schools." [h/t @librarythingtim]

- The Harry Ransom Center is digitizing its medieval and early modern manuscripts collection; you can search or browse the currently-uploaded images (more than 7,200 to date, representing just 27 of 215 documents).

- The British Library announced plans to digitize 40 million pages of its newspapers collection over the next ten years. The content will be free for BL users, and available to other users for a fee. NewsCorp's James Murdoch bashed the plan, saying that the BL shouldn't be allowed to use copyrighted materials deposited under a legal mandate for "commercial gain." [h/t @bookn3rd]

- Among the 2010 updates to the Bibliographical Society of America's BibSite is David Pearson's "English Book Owners in the Seventeenth Century" (PDF).

- Mt. Vernon has responded to the non-news that Washington apparently didn't return a book to the New York Society Library in 1789 by offering a replacement copy of the book (Vattel's Law of Nations).

Reviews

- Nick Bunker's Making Haste from Babylon: review by Russell Shorto in the NYTimes.

- Daisy Hay's Young Romantics: reviews by Richard Eder in the Globe; Lesley McDowell in The Scotsman.

- Ellen Horan's 31 Bond Street: review by Clare Clark in the WaPo.

George Canning Visits the Irelands

Whenever I come across a British diary covering the 1790s I like to check and see if by chance the writer mentions seeing the "Shakespeare Papers," the forgeries made by William-Henry Ireland and exhibited by his father Samuel. Today I found The Letter Journal of George Canning, 1793-1795, a journal written by a young MP. Canning (1770-1827) would in later years serve as Foreign Secretary (1807-1809, 1822-1827) and Prime Minister (for 119 days in 1827, the shortest term of any UK PM). But in the 1790s he was a newly-minted Tory representative for the rotten borough of Newtown, Isle of Wight.

On 28 March 1795, Canning writes: "Saturday morning - Leigh [his uncle Rev. William Leigh] and Frere [John Hookham Frere, Canning's friend from Eton] and his father breakfasted with me, and we went together to see the Shakespear manuscripts at Mr. Ireland's in Norfolk Street, and we all agreed, I think, in believing so much as we did see to be genuine. What they prove, or whether they prove anything as to the genuineness of the new Play (Vortigson [i.e. Vortigern]) which Mr. I. asserts to have been discovered at the same time and in the same place with these papers, but which he does not shew - is another question. Vortigson, we understand, is not to be published until it has first been produced upon the stage."

This is very interesting for several reasons, not the least of which is the implicit uncertainty about the authenticity of the manuscripts. Also, the visit taking place on a Saturday morning is noteworthy: in the Prospectus for the printed edition of the papers, dated 4 March 1795, Samuel Ireland invites visitors "on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, between the hours of twelve and three." Clearly being an MP had its perks!

With many thanks to Aaron Pratt (@prattrarebooks), who kindly checked on ECCO for me, I can report that Canning and his companions are not listed among the subscribers to the folio edition of the Shakespeare papers, published early in 1796 (I only have the octavo edition, which doesn't contain the subscriber list). It's too bad we don't have Canning's journal for the year after his visit to Norfolk Street - it would be fascinating to know if he attended the first (and only) staging of Vortigern on 2 April 1796.

This Week's Acquisitions

- From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492-1969 by Eric Williams (Vintage, 1984). Raven.

- The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony by James Deetz and Patricia Scott Deetz (Anchor, 2001). Raven.

- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (Harper, 2003). Raven.

- Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World by Timothy Brook (Bloomsbury, 2007). Raven.

- The Creature in the Map: A Journey to El Dorado by Charles Nicholl (University of Chicago Press, 1997). Raven.

- More Letters from the American Farmer: An Edition of the Essays in English Left Unpublished by Crevecoeur; edited by Dennis D. Moore (University of Georgia Press, 1995). Amazon.

New LEA Libraries Added

I've added a few new (small) Libraries of Early America collections from the VA/MD probate inventories:

- William Triplett (1732-1802), landowner and friend of George Washington.

- Peter Presley Thornton (1750-1780), who served in the House of Burgesses 1772-1774, in the Virginia conventions of 1775, as colonel of a minute-man regiment 1775-1777, and as an aide-de-camp to Washington from 1777 probably until his death. Thornton's second wife was Elizabeth Carter, granddaughter of Landon Carter.

- Capt. John Belfield (1725-1801), commander of a troop of Light Continental Dragoons during the Revolution.

- Sarah Young Ball (~1682-1742), widow of Capt. Richard Ball, and holder of his lands following his death in 1726. A very small collection (Bible, prayer book, and Allestree's Whole Duty of Man).

- William Eilbeck (~1700-1764), among the wealthiest men in Charles County, MD at the time of his death. This collection is somewhat undercounted, since 70 titles are not itemized.

Beeman Wins George Washington Book Prize

Richard Beeman has been awarded the George Washington Book Prize for Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (Random House, 2009). The award of $50,000 is the nation's largest literary award for early American history.

Other finalists were R.B. Bernstein's The Founding Fathers Reconsidered and Edith Gelles' Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage.

The award is sponsored by Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and Mt. Vernon.

Book Review: "The Age of Wonder"

Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon, 2009) is a detailed history of the age of British science from the 1770s through the 1820s. Through profiles of Sir Joseph Banks, William and Caroline Herschel, Sir Humphry Davy, Mungo Park, and the pioneering balloonists (among others), Holmes vividly captures the important connections between science, religion, and the arts which shaped the scientific debates of the era (shades of Wilson's Consilience), and the debaters themselves (I learned here of Davy's accomplishments in writing poetry, for example).

Age of Wonder, which has won all manner of awards, was a good read, but I can't remember a book that took me so long to get through, or felt so much like work to do so. Perhaps another sweep by the editors could have eliminated some of the repetitive aspects of the narrative that started to bother me, or might at least have brought more coherence to the text (it is, essentially, three separate biographical treatments - of Banks, the Herschels, and Davy - interspersed with digressions on other topics).

Overall I'm conflicted about the book. I wanted to like it more than I did.

Major Art Heist in Paris

Not books, but still, wow:

Reports this morning that there's been a pretty large-scale theft of art from the Paris Museum of Modern Art: the works taken were "Le Pigeon aux Petits Pois" by Picasso; "La Pastorale" by Matisse; "L'Olivier Près de l'Estaque" by Braque; "La Femme a l'Eventail" by Modigliani, and "Nature Morte aux Chandeliers" by Fernand Léger.

The stolen works are estimated to be worth the equivalent of $620 million (more like $120 million).

More from the BBC.

Auction Report: Sotheby's Paris

The Books and Manuscripts sale at Sotheby's Paris today (previewed here) brought in €3,278,375 (full results here). Highlights:

- The first edition of Thomas More's Utopia (1516) and the ten-volume set of St. Augustine's works (1528-1529) shared top estimates of €200,000-300,000, and they share the top prices realized - each made €324,750.

- In a surprise, Marshal Vauban's own copy of his 1707 book Project d'une Dixme Royale, with his autograph notes, did much better than expected, fetching €252,750 over estimates of €60,000-90,000.

- A Charles Baudelaire letter made €192,750.

- The six-volume Janssonnius atlas (1652-1657) made €174,750.

- A collection of letters between Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant fetched €168,750.

- A Simone de Beauvoir manuscript of Les Mandarins sold for €132,750, as did the Vesalius De Humani Corporis Fabrica and the 1575 edition of Paré's works.

Links & Reviews

- If you read one thing today (well, other than this post), make it Ron Rosenbaum's Slate takedown of Arden Shakespeare's decision to put Double Falsehood into the "canon."

- Ian updates Bookride's list of 20 sites for book collectors.

- The Spring Lapham's Quarterly has a handy chart: Friends, Lovers, and Family, connecting (among others) Lord Byron and Kevin Bacon.

- New AAS Assistant Reference Librarian Tracey Kry posts some first impressions on their blog. Oh, complicated shelving systems!

- In the Guardian, a preview of Bill Bryson's next book, At Home.

- Jack Rakove was on NPR this week to talk about his new book Revolutionaries; there's also an excerpt.

- I'd been wondering about this. The judge assigned to the Google Books Settlement was recently promoted to the Second Circuit; Publisher's Weekly suggested on Friday that Denny Chin might still rule on the proposed settlement, instead of passing it off to another judge.

- Via Salon, a promo-video for Brontë sister action figures.

Reviews

- Allan Massie's The Royal Stuarts: review by Noel Malcolm in the Telegraph.

- Jonathan Israel's A Revolution of the Mind (and others): review by Samuel Moyn in The Nation.

- Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder: review by Paula Findlen in The Nation.

- The Oxford Book of Parodies (edited by John Gross): review by Kevin Jackson in the Sunday Times.

- Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat: review by Jennet Conant in the NYTimes.

- Steven Moore's The Novel: An Alternative History: review by Denis Donoghue in the WSJ.

- Robert Alter's Pen of Iron: reviews by Mark Noll in Books & Culture and Adam Kirsch in TNR.

This Week's Acquisitions

Nothing new arrived this week (I know, it's as much as surprise to me as it is to you!).

New Biblio-Blogs

Some blog birth announcements to report ('tis the season, apparently!):

- The Binder's Ticket - from Vernon Wiering at Wiering Books.

- Booktryst - by Stephen Gertz, Nancy Mattoon, and Cokie Anderson.

- Recto|Verso - by Arthur Fournier at F.A. Bernett Books.

Links added to the sidebar.

New Bellesiles Book Coming

Michael Bellesiles' new book, 1877: America's Year of Living Violently, will be published by The New Press in August. There's a HNN piece on the book, which focuses on the (somewhat surprising) publicity campaign that's been launched by the publisher. And the news has garnered some attention over at The Volokh Conspiracy, with essays by Volokh and Jim Lindgren.

Here's betting that 1877 will be among the most closely-read and most-reviewed books this year ...

Horror Stories from a Historical Society

Joan Mazzolini's Plain Dealer story on the trials and tribulations of the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland was published in early March, but I missed it then, so I'm passing it along now. It's frightening. Really frightening, especially for those of us who work in the non-profit historical society world in economic times like those we face today.

The Potential of Google Editions

Robert McGarvey has some thoughts on how the recent news that Google will be entering the e-book market with Google Editions. He says it's possible that this move may transform the ideas of digital rights management and book purchasing.

The whole piece is interesting, but I found one statement particularly interesting. McGarvey quotes media consultant Brian O'Leary, who says "Amazon is good at selling us books when we look for books, but Google may be positioning itself to sell us books when we are not looking for a book, just for information on a topic. But when a book is the best source of information, Google appears to want to position itself to sell it to us."

Links & Reviews

- There's a new blog on the block, courtesy of Laura at bookn3rd - The Cataloguer's Desk, which Laura and other staff at Peter Harrington will be contributing to. Their first post, on William Moon's letter system for the blind, is delightful. They've also begun a Twitter feed. I've added a link on the sidebar to the blog, and subscribed to the feeds.

- In the Globe today, a Q&A with BPL president Amy Ryan.

- Book Patrol notes that Salem OR's Tea Party Bookshop will be changing its name, after many misunderstandings.

- Paul Collins, reprising a theme, comments on the news that Verizon wants to do away with white page phone books in NYC.

- Environmental writer Roger Deakin's archive will go to the University of East Anglia, the Guardian reports.

- A new watermarks site is up.

- About 200 rare books were damaged at Knoxville's Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection this week when the air conditioner malfunctioned. The books have been frozen and will be conserved by Don Etherington in NC.

- A collection of 700+ Edward Gorey items has been donated to Columbia by architectural historian Andrew Alpern.

- Writing in the NYTimes, Michael Kimmelman makes the case that Britain should keep the Elgin Marbles.

Reviews

- Daisy Hay's Young Romantics: review by Miranda Seymour in the Telegraph.

- Marla Miller's Betsy Ross and the Making of America: review by Laurel Thacher Ulrich in the NYTimes.

- Nick Bunker's Making Haste to Babylon: review by John Demos in the WaPo.

This Week's Acquisitions

More for the Bermuda project arrived this week:

- Providence Island, 1630-1641: The Other Puritan Colony by Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Cambridge University Press, 1995). Amazon (used).

- The Literary Career of Nathaniel Tucker, 1750-1807 by Lewis Gaston Leary (AMS Press, 1970). Amazon (used).

- Isle of Devils: Bermuda under the Somers Island Company, 1609-1685 by Jean de Chantal Kennedy (Collins, 1971). Powell's.

Auction Report: Benevento Collection @ Sotheby's

The afternoon session at Sotheby's London was the Benevento Collection: Important Maps and Atlases, in 71 lots. Full results are here; the sale brought in a total of £1,347,912. Highlights:

- The expected top seller did end up on top of the heap: a 12-volume mixed-edition set of Blaeu's Atlas Major (1662-1681), housed in a special cabinet constructed by Milan's Colombo Mobili, was expected to make £180,000-200,000; it sold for £289,250.

- The Forlani maps of North America (1565) and the world (1570) each made £121,250.

- A copy of Coronelli's Navi o vascelli, galee, galeazze, galeoni (1697), a very rare collection of ship portraits, sold for £75,650.