- Over at The Collation, Sarah Werner shares a great case study of "how a tweet can grow into an amazing scholarly resource."
- The upcoming sale of the exploration library of Franklin Brooke-Hitching at Sotheby's is previewed in the WSJ and the Telegraph.
- From Molly Hardy at AAS, a look at the absolutely fantastic project they're working on to make the Mathew Carey account books available.
- Endrina Tay has a great essay on the Jefferson quote "I cannot live without books" on the Monticello store blog.
- The Catholicon Anglicum, a 1483 Middle English-Latin dictionary, has been purchased by the British Library for £92,500. The UK government had barred the manuscript's export following its sale to an overseas buyer at auction.
- Two photographs may have been identified as from the New York City funeral procession for Abraham Lincoln, the WaPo reports. Key words "may have been," but the case seems fairly good.
- Check this out, from Ben Pauley: Eighteenth-Century Book Tracker, a clearinghouse for information about digital facsimiles of 18th-century works.
- In the NYTimes, archaeologist Douglas Boin writes on provenance concerns raised about the recently-discovered new Sappho fragments.
- Nick Richardson blogs for the LRB on "Translating Lorem Ipsum."
- New at Princeton, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's mahogany writing desk and other objects, donated by alumnus Peter N. Heydon.
Reviews
- Steven Moore's The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800; review by Roger Boylan in Boston Review.
- Peter Stark's Astoria; review by Dennis Drabelle in the WaPo.
- Ingrid Rowland's From Pompeii; review by Dan Hofstadter in the WSJ.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Links & Reviews
- Houghton Library is hiring a three-month Wikipedian-in-Residence.
- NARA announced this week that its facility in Anchorage, AK will be closed, and "storefront" facilities in Philadelphia and Fort Worth will be consolidated into larger facilities nearby, for a savings of $1.3 million per year.
- The NYPL has received a $6 million gift from a longtime patron.
- The Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge continues its appeal to donors for the £275,000 needed to acquire some 113 negatives of photographs taken by Scott during his 1911 expedition.
- The Junto is reprising last year's fun with a new Junto March Madness bracket, this time of books on early America written since 2000. Voting begins on Monday.
- Over at Notabilia, the book-label of Nicholson's Circulating Library of Cambridge.
- SAA president Danna Bell posts at Off the Record on what seems like a perennial question: "where do archivists belong?"
- Jasper Copping writes in The Telegraph about a new biography of detective Jerome Caminada, who may have been a (partial) inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.
- Now online, Folger Digital Texts.
Reviews
- Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction; review by Philip Hoare in The Telegraph.
- David Mikics' Slow Reading in a Digital Age; review by Leah Price in the TLS.
- Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews; reviews by Dwight Garner in the NYTimes, Jonathan Rosen in the WSJ, and Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Carol Berkin's Wondrous Beauty: The Life of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte; review by Ellen McCarthy in the WaPo.
- Peter Stark's Astoria; review by Gerard Helferich in the WSJ.
- NARA announced this week that its facility in Anchorage, AK will be closed, and "storefront" facilities in Philadelphia and Fort Worth will be consolidated into larger facilities nearby, for a savings of $1.3 million per year.
- The NYPL has received a $6 million gift from a longtime patron.
- The Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge continues its appeal to donors for the £275,000 needed to acquire some 113 negatives of photographs taken by Scott during his 1911 expedition.
- The Junto is reprising last year's fun with a new Junto March Madness bracket, this time of books on early America written since 2000. Voting begins on Monday.
- Over at Notabilia, the book-label of Nicholson's Circulating Library of Cambridge.
- SAA president Danna Bell posts at Off the Record on what seems like a perennial question: "where do archivists belong?"
- Jasper Copping writes in The Telegraph about a new biography of detective Jerome Caminada, who may have been a (partial) inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.
- Now online, Folger Digital Texts.
Reviews
- Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction; review by Philip Hoare in The Telegraph.
- David Mikics' Slow Reading in a Digital Age; review by Leah Price in the TLS.
- Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews; reviews by Dwight Garner in the NYTimes, Jonathan Rosen in the WSJ, and Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Carol Berkin's Wondrous Beauty: The Life of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte; review by Ellen McCarthy in the WaPo.
- Peter Stark's Astoria; review by Gerard Helferich in the WSJ.
Sunday, March 09, 2014
Links & Reviews
- Another week, another absolutely astounding book theft story. A report by Kim Ring in the Worcester Telegram highlights the wet noodle of a sentence handed down to Joseph G. Heath of Leicester, MA, who pleaded to "sufficient facts for a guilty finding" in relation to the theft of more than 100 rare books from Becker College's Samuel May, Jr. collection (see this ABAA security blog post for more on the missing items). Heath, a janitor at the college with access to the library, had sold several of the stolen books to a Worcester bookstore, which in turn had tried to sell them to the Leicester Historical Society (this led to the original alert that the books may have been stolen from Becker). Heath also sold 24 books to a Boston bookshop $850, which have since been recovered, and attempted to sell others via Craigslist. Heath was arrested and charged in November 2012. Approximately fifty of the stolen books, worth around $15,000, plus one inscribed to (not by, as indicated in the article) Abraham Lincoln, have not yet been recovered.
Prosecutors had requested that Heath be ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution, but last week a judge ordered Heath to pay a measly $3,000 and sentenced him to three years' probation, which term could be reduced to one year if the restitution is paid. Utterly ridiculous.
- From The Collation, Erin Blake on a 17th-century print that's been pricked for transfer.
- Coming up in early April (unfortunately during the New York Book Fair) at UCLA: "Futures of Book History," which looks like it's going to be a fantastic conference!
- Over at Manuscript Road Trip, Lisa Fagin Davis on "digital fragmentology" and its uses in recreating some of the manuscripts dismembered by Otto Ege in the 1940s.
- There's a Travel Channel clip about the Ireland Shakespeare forgeries, featuring Folger Library curator Heather Wolfe.
- A 15th-century Torah volume will be sold at Christie's Paris on 30 April, and is estimated at 1-1.5 million Euros.
- The University of Rochester has received a $360,000 grant to digitize portions of the Seward Family Archive (a collection near and dear to my heart, so I'm particularly delighted to see this).
- What is considered the world's largest privately-held Holocaust archive, containing more than 20,000 books and some 500,000 documents, has been acquired by the University of Colorado Boulder.
- In Fine Books & Collections, Joel Silver writes on "Collector and Bookseller: A Vanishing Relationship?"
- Over at Harper's, historian Mary Niall Mitchell writes on a particularly amazing copy of Solomon Northrup's Twelve Years a Slave.
- Eric Caren is planning to sell his collection of some 200,000 items en bloc in a private treaty sale.
- The British Library has acquired Philip the Good's manuscript of the Mystère de la Vengeance, one of the finest illuminated manuscripts of any medieval theatrical text. The manuscript was acquired by the British government in lieu of inheritance tax.
Reviews
- Marwa Elshakry's Reading Darwin in Arabic; review by Robert Irwin in the TLS.
- Jessie Childs' God's Traitors; review by Virginia Roundling in the Telegraph.
Prosecutors had requested that Heath be ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution, but last week a judge ordered Heath to pay a measly $3,000 and sentenced him to three years' probation, which term could be reduced to one year if the restitution is paid. Utterly ridiculous.
- From The Collation, Erin Blake on a 17th-century print that's been pricked for transfer.
- Coming up in early April (unfortunately during the New York Book Fair) at UCLA: "Futures of Book History," which looks like it's going to be a fantastic conference!
- Over at Manuscript Road Trip, Lisa Fagin Davis on "digital fragmentology" and its uses in recreating some of the manuscripts dismembered by Otto Ege in the 1940s.
- There's a Travel Channel clip about the Ireland Shakespeare forgeries, featuring Folger Library curator Heather Wolfe.
- A 15th-century Torah volume will be sold at Christie's Paris on 30 April, and is estimated at 1-1.5 million Euros.
- The University of Rochester has received a $360,000 grant to digitize portions of the Seward Family Archive (a collection near and dear to my heart, so I'm particularly delighted to see this).
- What is considered the world's largest privately-held Holocaust archive, containing more than 20,000 books and some 500,000 documents, has been acquired by the University of Colorado Boulder.
- In Fine Books & Collections, Joel Silver writes on "Collector and Bookseller: A Vanishing Relationship?"
- Over at Harper's, historian Mary Niall Mitchell writes on a particularly amazing copy of Solomon Northrup's Twelve Years a Slave.
- Eric Caren is planning to sell his collection of some 200,000 items en bloc in a private treaty sale.
- The British Library has acquired Philip the Good's manuscript of the Mystère de la Vengeance, one of the finest illuminated manuscripts of any medieval theatrical text. The manuscript was acquired by the British government in lieu of inheritance tax.
Reviews
- Marwa Elshakry's Reading Darwin in Arabic; review by Robert Irwin in the TLS.
- Jessie Childs' God's Traitors; review by Virginia Roundling in the Telegraph.
Monday, March 03, 2014
Links & Reviews
- Rebecca Rego Barry writes on the Fine Books Blog about a few of the recent deaccessioning announcements, from the news that more books from the Mendham collection will be sold at Dreweatts on 20 March to the LA Law Library sale this week at Bonhams and the sale of the Indiana Historical Society's Audubons on 1 April.
- Sally McGrane writes over at the New Yorker blog about books looted by the Nazis.
- A collection of Titanic-related material, including the manuscript of a survivor's memoir and correspondence between his family and White Star Line owner J. Bruce Ismay, has been acquired by UPenn.
- An ABAA security alert on thirteen books apparently removed from a shipping case while in transit from California to Vermont.
- The Bibliographical Society has announced the recipients of its 2013-14 research grants.
- From the Bright Young Librarians series, Steven Galbraith from RIT.
- A rare Lord Nelson letter was withdrawn from auction this week, its current owners having decided not to sell for the time being.
- Samuel Beckett manuscripts and the working library of Beckett scholar Stanley Gontarski have been acquired by Trinity College, Dublin.
- In the TLS, Donald Nichol looks back at 300 years of The Rape of the Lock.
- Joanne Freeman's American Revolution course lectures are available on YouTube.
- Jerry Morris at My Sentimental Library highlights some of the books in his reference library.
Reviews
- David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation; review by Drew Gilpin Faut in the NYRB.
- C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures; review by Alan Jacobs in Books & Culture.
- Lisa Gitelman's Paper Knowledge; review by Colin Higgins in THE.
- Marjorie Swann's edition of Walton's The Compleat Angler; review by Ruth Scurr in the TLS.
- Sally McGrane writes over at the New Yorker blog about books looted by the Nazis.
- A collection of Titanic-related material, including the manuscript of a survivor's memoir and correspondence between his family and White Star Line owner J. Bruce Ismay, has been acquired by UPenn.
- An ABAA security alert on thirteen books apparently removed from a shipping case while in transit from California to Vermont.
- The Bibliographical Society has announced the recipients of its 2013-14 research grants.
- From the Bright Young Librarians series, Steven Galbraith from RIT.
- A rare Lord Nelson letter was withdrawn from auction this week, its current owners having decided not to sell for the time being.
- Samuel Beckett manuscripts and the working library of Beckett scholar Stanley Gontarski have been acquired by Trinity College, Dublin.
- In the TLS, Donald Nichol looks back at 300 years of The Rape of the Lock.
- Joanne Freeman's American Revolution course lectures are available on YouTube.
- Jerry Morris at My Sentimental Library highlights some of the books in his reference library.
Reviews
- David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation; review by Drew Gilpin Faut in the NYRB.
- C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures; review by Alan Jacobs in Books & Culture.
- Lisa Gitelman's Paper Knowledge; review by Colin Higgins in THE.
- Marjorie Swann's edition of Walton's The Compleat Angler; review by Ruth Scurr in the TLS.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Links & Reviews
- That theft case from Vermont I mentioned last week took a surprising turn: Patrick J. Rooney, the accused thief, was found dead in his apartment; the death is being considered a suicide.
- There's a new website to highlight all the good things happening in New York City in early April: rarebookweek.org.
- From the BL's Medieval Manuscripts blog, "Hidden Away," a post on manuscript fragments recently found in the binding of a John Evelyn commonplace book.
- This morning's CBS Sunday Morning highlighted (with video) what may be the last newspaper in America being printed with linotype.
- Ruth Graham has a lengthy piece in the Boston Globe about the lure of the Voynich Manuscript for scholars, outlining some of the recently-unveiled theories (here's another one) and the skepticism which has greeted them.
- Over at The Collation, Heather Wolfe on some early images of family trees, drawn from preparations for an upcoming Folger exhibition.
- From Princeton, a writeup of the recent 100th birthday celebration for William Scheide.
- At Manuscript Road Trip this week, a rundown of three medieval manuscripts stolen from Connecticut College in the 1950s, and still missing.
- Also in the Boston Globe, a profile of the Boston Athenaeum's conservation efforts.
- This year's nominees for the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year have been announced.
Reviews
- Timothy Brook's Mr. Selden's Map of China; review by Rana Mitter in the Telegraph.
- Lawrence Buell's The Dream of the Great American Novel; review by Michael Kimmage in TNR.
- Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction; review by Michael S. Roth in the WaPo.
- There's a new website to highlight all the good things happening in New York City in early April: rarebookweek.org.
- From the BL's Medieval Manuscripts blog, "Hidden Away," a post on manuscript fragments recently found in the binding of a John Evelyn commonplace book.
- This morning's CBS Sunday Morning highlighted (with video) what may be the last newspaper in America being printed with linotype.
- Ruth Graham has a lengthy piece in the Boston Globe about the lure of the Voynich Manuscript for scholars, outlining some of the recently-unveiled theories (here's another one) and the skepticism which has greeted them.
- Over at The Collation, Heather Wolfe on some early images of family trees, drawn from preparations for an upcoming Folger exhibition.
- From Princeton, a writeup of the recent 100th birthday celebration for William Scheide.
- At Manuscript Road Trip this week, a rundown of three medieval manuscripts stolen from Connecticut College in the 1950s, and still missing.
- Also in the Boston Globe, a profile of the Boston Athenaeum's conservation efforts.
- This year's nominees for the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year have been announced.
Reviews
- Timothy Brook's Mr. Selden's Map of China; review by Rana Mitter in the Telegraph.
- Lawrence Buell's The Dream of the Great American Novel; review by Michael Kimmage in TNR.
- Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction; review by Michael S. Roth in the WaPo.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Links & Reviews
- A new theft case out of Vermont: Patrick J. Rooney, 55, of Colchester pleaded not guilty last month to charges that he stole a page from a 1791 volume of early Vermont records from Burlington's Fletcher Free Library and tried to sell it to UVM's Bailey-Howe Library. Following that discovery an investigation revealed that UVM had previously purchased other material from Rooney, including a volume of Chittenden County Road Commissioner records from 1828-1831 which UVM purchased in May 2013 for $625. Last week Rooney was charged with additional counts relating to the newly-discovered thefts, and he failed to appear for his arraignment on Thursday. Court records revealed that Rooney was linked to prior library thefts in 2001, 1994, and 1991. There's a photo of Rooney here, and the Burlington Police Department has posted a list of documents which may be linked. I'll keep an eye on this, but will appreciate any information others have on this story as well.
- Newly-released, the third volume of Galileo's O: A Galileo Forgery. It's available for pre-order on Amazon, but the text is also available online here as PDFs, which is absolutely fantastic to see.
- From David Whitesell on the UVA Special Collections blog Notes from Under Grounds, an excellent post on book (or manuscript) breaking for pleasure or profit.
- The finalists for the George Washington Book Prize have been announced: Alan Taylor's The Internal Enemy, Jeff Pasley's The First Presidential Contest, and Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy's The Men Who Lost America. The winner will be announced in May.
- Over in the LATimes, Carolyn Kellogg's "Younger book dealers are diving into the antiquarian trade" is a good read.
- Some excellent news for ESTC: UC Riverside has received a $405,000 Mellon grant to fund upgrades and the addition of collaborative features to ESTC.
- On the AAS blog, Molly O'Hagan Hardy on Evans-TCP and some of its potential uses.
- Richard Ovenden has been appointed Bodley's Librarian. Delightful news!
- Author Naomi Novik recently testified to Congress about copyright and fair use. Her arguments are well worth a read.
- Alexis Coe at Buzzfeed has posted her list of eight book folks "killing it online." All folks you should be paying attention to, for sure.
- New from the College Art Association, a report which suggests we're all probably under-using fair use.
- A new exhibit at the Yale Law Library focuses on the use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging to bring out details on early bindings.
- On the APHA blog, Irene Tichenor on the centenary of the death of Theodore Low De Vinne, which will be marked by a Grolier Club exhibition.
- In the New Yorker, George Packer writes on Amazon and its overall impact on the book world.
- The University of Southern California has been awarded a five-year, $1.9 million Mellon grant to support graduate-level training in digital scholarship.
- Steven Koblik, president of the Huntington Library, has announced that he will retire in 2015.
- Seth Parry asks at The Junto, "Are we all book historians now?"
- Over at Open Culture, Josh Jones on the de Caro Galileo forgeries.
- At The Collation, Heather Wolfe on an excellent example of early modern English writing paper.
- Also at The Collation, Goran Proot on the uses of V and U in 17th-century Flemish book titles, and Sarah Werner on transcription style for early modern texts.
- The folks at the Guardian books blog want to know how many books you read at once.
- A fire in some adjacent disused water towers threatened the British National Archives buildings at Kew, but the flames were extinguished quickly.
- OCLC Research issued a report titled "Does Every Research Library Need a Digital Humanities Center?" Dot Porter responds with "What if we do, in fact, know best?"
Reviews
- Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction; reviews by Al Gore in the NYTimes and Robert Darwall in the WSJ.
- David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation; reviews by James Oakes in the WaPo Eric Foner in The Nation.
- Rachel Shelden's The Washington Brotherhood; review by Robert Mitchell in the WaPo.
- Tom Zoellner's Train; reviews by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo and Hector Tobar in the LATimes.
- Joshua Zeitz's Lincoln's Boys; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.
- Timothy Brook's Mr. Selden's Map of China; review by Lisa Jardine in the Financial Times.
- Newly-released, the third volume of Galileo's O: A Galileo Forgery. It's available for pre-order on Amazon, but the text is also available online here as PDFs, which is absolutely fantastic to see.
- From David Whitesell on the UVA Special Collections blog Notes from Under Grounds, an excellent post on book (or manuscript) breaking for pleasure or profit.
- The finalists for the George Washington Book Prize have been announced: Alan Taylor's The Internal Enemy, Jeff Pasley's The First Presidential Contest, and Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy's The Men Who Lost America. The winner will be announced in May.
- Over in the LATimes, Carolyn Kellogg's "Younger book dealers are diving into the antiquarian trade" is a good read.
- Some excellent news for ESTC: UC Riverside has received a $405,000 Mellon grant to fund upgrades and the addition of collaborative features to ESTC.
- On the AAS blog, Molly O'Hagan Hardy on Evans-TCP and some of its potential uses.
- Richard Ovenden has been appointed Bodley's Librarian. Delightful news!
- Author Naomi Novik recently testified to Congress about copyright and fair use. Her arguments are well worth a read.
- Alexis Coe at Buzzfeed has posted her list of eight book folks "killing it online." All folks you should be paying attention to, for sure.
- New from the College Art Association, a report which suggests we're all probably under-using fair use.
- A new exhibit at the Yale Law Library focuses on the use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging to bring out details on early bindings.
- On the APHA blog, Irene Tichenor on the centenary of the death of Theodore Low De Vinne, which will be marked by a Grolier Club exhibition.
- In the New Yorker, George Packer writes on Amazon and its overall impact on the book world.
- The University of Southern California has been awarded a five-year, $1.9 million Mellon grant to support graduate-level training in digital scholarship.
- Steven Koblik, president of the Huntington Library, has announced that he will retire in 2015.
- Seth Parry asks at The Junto, "Are we all book historians now?"
- Over at Open Culture, Josh Jones on the de Caro Galileo forgeries.
- At The Collation, Heather Wolfe on an excellent example of early modern English writing paper.
- Also at The Collation, Goran Proot on the uses of V and U in 17th-century Flemish book titles, and Sarah Werner on transcription style for early modern texts.
- The folks at the Guardian books blog want to know how many books you read at once.
- A fire in some adjacent disused water towers threatened the British National Archives buildings at Kew, but the flames were extinguished quickly.
- OCLC Research issued a report titled "Does Every Research Library Need a Digital Humanities Center?" Dot Porter responds with "What if we do, in fact, know best?"
Reviews
- Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction; reviews by Al Gore in the NYTimes and Robert Darwall in the WSJ.
- David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation; reviews by James Oakes in the WaPo Eric Foner in The Nation.
- Rachel Shelden's The Washington Brotherhood; review by Robert Mitchell in the WaPo.
- Tom Zoellner's Train; reviews by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo and Hector Tobar in the LATimes.
- Joshua Zeitz's Lincoln's Boys; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.
- Timothy Brook's Mr. Selden's Map of China; review by Lisa Jardine in the Financial Times.
Sunday, February 02, 2014
Links & Reviews
Lots of updates this week:
- The BSA, Caxton Club, and the University of Wisconsin Libraries are hosting a symposium on 26 April, "Bibliography, Collections, and the History of Science." Speakers will include Michael Shank on stop-press corrections in early modern astronomy, Florence Hsia on Bodleian Librarian Thomas Hyde, and Nick Wilding on the Galileo forgeries. Worth noting: Richard Lan will speak during the afternoon session.
- New at The Appendix, a fascinating index to the published articles. If you're not already reading this great publication, you should remedy that right away.
- The University of Missouri has discovered that some 600,000 books in an offsite storage facility have been damaged by mold. More here from Jennifer Howard at The Chronicle.
- Aaron Brunmeier recaps the recent Liverpool conference on Libraries in the Atlantic World.
- On 5 March, Bonhams will sell books from the collections of the Los Angeles County Law Library.
- The Robert Livingston/Richard Henry Lee draft petition to the British people written in July 1775 sold for a whopping $912,500.
- Andrew Scrimgeour, dean of libraries at Drew University, writes on marginalia in the NYTimes.
- At The Appendix, Benjamin Breen highlights a sorcery manual (now online via the Wellcome Library).
- Over at Student Science, a look at the high-tech efforts being made to hunt for palimpsests in the texts housed at St. Catherine's monastery in Egypt.
- A manuscript leaf, one of a number stolen from the Archdiocese of Turin in 1990, has been returned to Italy.
- The Vatican Library and four Japanese historical institutions will work together to inventory, catalog, and digitize the Marega Papers, an archive of some 10,000 documents related to the persecution of Christians in Japan during the 17th-19th centuries.
- The BL has uploaded more than 15,000 images of Persian manuscripts from its collections.
- BookFinder.com has released its annual list of most-searched-for out-of-print books at BookFinder.
- Your must-read of the week is Sarah Werner's "It's History, Not a Viral Feed," about those annoying context-less photo-sharing Twitter accounts.
- The Boston Globe profiled Lisa Fagin Davis about the stories she's been telling over at the Manuscript Road Trip blog.
- The BSA, Caxton Club, and the University of Wisconsin Libraries are hosting a symposium on 26 April, "Bibliography, Collections, and the History of Science." Speakers will include Michael Shank on stop-press corrections in early modern astronomy, Florence Hsia on Bodleian Librarian Thomas Hyde, and Nick Wilding on the Galileo forgeries. Worth noting: Richard Lan will speak during the afternoon session.
- New at The Appendix, a fascinating index to the published articles. If you're not already reading this great publication, you should remedy that right away.
- The University of Missouri has discovered that some 600,000 books in an offsite storage facility have been damaged by mold. More here from Jennifer Howard at The Chronicle.
- Aaron Brunmeier recaps the recent Liverpool conference on Libraries in the Atlantic World.
- On 5 March, Bonhams will sell books from the collections of the Los Angeles County Law Library.
- The Robert Livingston/Richard Henry Lee draft petition to the British people written in July 1775 sold for a whopping $912,500.
- Andrew Scrimgeour, dean of libraries at Drew University, writes on marginalia in the NYTimes.
- At The Appendix, Benjamin Breen highlights a sorcery manual (now online via the Wellcome Library).
- Over at Student Science, a look at the high-tech efforts being made to hunt for palimpsests in the texts housed at St. Catherine's monastery in Egypt.
- A manuscript leaf, one of a number stolen from the Archdiocese of Turin in 1990, has been returned to Italy.
- The Vatican Library and four Japanese historical institutions will work together to inventory, catalog, and digitize the Marega Papers, an archive of some 10,000 documents related to the persecution of Christians in Japan during the 17th-19th centuries.
- The BL has uploaded more than 15,000 images of Persian manuscripts from its collections.
- BookFinder.com has released its annual list of most-searched-for out-of-print books at BookFinder.
- Your must-read of the week is Sarah Werner's "It's History, Not a Viral Feed," about those annoying context-less photo-sharing Twitter accounts.
- The Boston Globe profiled Lisa Fagin Davis about the stories she's been telling over at the Manuscript Road Trip blog.
- I'm delighted to see that the New York Society Library has completed their cataloging of the John Sharp Collection. See their blog posts on the collection here and here.
- A guest post by Thijs Porck at medievalfragments, about scribal abuse in the middle ages.
- At The Junto, Roy Rogers explains his new shelving system for his personal library. Which reminds me, I meant to share the one I came up with for my own. Someday!
- A couple security alerts from the ABAA this week, mostly involving fraudulent credit card transactions. See the full reports here and here. The books are well described, so if you've seen them or recognize them, contact the ABAA Security Committee.
- UVA English professor Brad Pasanek is interviewed for the Ploughshares "People of the Book" series.
- A guest post by Thijs Porck at medievalfragments, about scribal abuse in the middle ages.
- At The Junto, Roy Rogers explains his new shelving system for his personal library. Which reminds me, I meant to share the one I came up with for my own. Someday!
- A couple security alerts from the ABAA this week, mostly involving fraudulent credit card transactions. See the full reports here and here. The books are well described, so if you've seen them or recognize them, contact the ABAA Security Committee.
- UVA English professor Brad Pasanek is interviewed for the Ploughshares "People of the Book" series.
- At medievalfragments, Irene Daly notes M.R. James' work as a scholar of manuscripts and how that played into his ghost stories.
Reviews
- Valerie Martin's The Ghost of the Mary Celeste; review by John Vernon in the NYTimes.
- Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation; review by Lydia Millet in the LATimes.
- Douglas Egerton's Wars of Reconstruction; review by Eric Foner in the NYTimes.
- Greg Grandin's The Empire of Necessity; review by Alan Taylor in the WaPo.
- David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation; review by John Stauffer in the WSJ.
- Randy Sparks' Where the Negroes are Masters; review by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
- Alan Jacob's The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography; review by Matthew Mason at Fare Forward.
- Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation; review by Lydia Millet in the LATimes.
- Douglas Egerton's Wars of Reconstruction; review by Eric Foner in the NYTimes.
- Greg Grandin's The Empire of Necessity; review by Alan Taylor in the WaPo.
- David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation; review by John Stauffer in the WSJ.
- Randy Sparks' Where the Negroes are Masters; review by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
- Alan Jacob's The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography; review by Matthew Mason at Fare Forward.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Links & Reviews
Heading up to New York tomorrow for Bibliography Week events - I hope I'll see many of you there! Meanwhile, some links and reviews:
- From Paste magazine, John Ruch writes on "The Peculiar Underworld of Rare-Book Thieves." It notes that a book on the Smiley thefts by Michael Blanding will be published this year (The Map Thief, to be published by Gotham Books).
- The Wellcome Library has released 100,000 hi-res images from its collections.
- Excellent reporter Paul Grondahl has a report in the Times Union on the New York State Library's "tough calls" about culling materials from the collections. It makes for difficult reading.
- New OED chief editor Michael Proffitt talked to the New York Times this week about the future of the dictionary.
- A pair of scholars have announced what they see as a breakthrough in the Voynich Manuscript, concluding that many of the plants and animals portrayed there may be North American species.
- The Mellon Foundation has awarded a $3 million grant to fund a "Humanities Without Walls" consortium to "create new avenues for collaborative research, teaching, and the production of scholarship in the humanities, forging and sustaining areas of inquiry that cannot be created or maintained without cross-institutional cooperation."
- From the BBC: Albrecht Durer: Printing Press Native.
- A Sotheby's report published in Chinese has defended the authenticity of a calligraphy scroll sold for $8.2 million in September (mentioned here). Chinese scholars argue that the scroll was a 19th-century reproduction.
- New York's Rizzoli Bookstore will likely have to move; the building's owners are planning to demolish the site.
- New online, the Catalogue of English Manuscripts, 1450-1700, containing descriptions of more than 37,000 manuscript texts from 237 C16-17 authors.
- From the "Bright Young Librarians" series, Trinity College's Rick Ring is profiled.
- Unclaimed material stolen by Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff is being temporarily housed at the Maryland Historical Society, the Baltimore Sun reported, until it can be identified and returned to its rightful home(s).
- The British Library will close its Preservation Advisory Centre as of the end of March.
- Material from the family archive of William Penn will be up for sale at Bonham's London on 28 January.
- The daughter of Cold Comfort Farm author Stella Gibbons has found two finished-but-unpublished novels amongst her mother's possessions.
- Mitch Fraas notes a success story in identifying a smudgy provenance stamp - there's hope!
- The New York Times ran a report last week on Pinochet's library.
- Casey Cep has a piece at The New Yorker on "The Allure of the Map."
- I'm feeling a bit removed from the whole Common Core debate, but I found Alex Kalamaroff's essay at The Millions, "The Common Core Vs. Books: When Teachers are Unable to Foster a Love of Reading in Students" very much worthwhile.
- The Strand's rare book room was highlighted in the New York Daily News.
- Over at Manuscript Road Trip, our erstwhile guides explore the career and telltale signs of the Spanish Forger.
- The existence of a secret Foreign Office archive, containing some 1.2 million files going back to the 17th century, was revealed this week.
- Two digital collections of rare books at Princeton have been expanded: the Sid Lapidus collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, and the library's annotated books.
- The BL is crowdfunding the digitization of George III's personal collection of maps and views: they're looking for £100,000.
- From Antipodean Footnotes, highlights from the woodcuts in the early Italian and French editions of the Hypnerotomachia.
- In the LA Review of Books, Johanna Drucker writes on "Pixel Dust: Illusions of Innovation in Scholarly Publishing."
- Penn State has acquired the archive of book designer Chip Kidd, while Billy Collins' papers will go to the Harry Ransom Center.
Reviews
- The History of OUP, Volume III; review by Bernard Porter in The Guardian.
- Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold's Newton and the Origin of Civilization; review by Scott Mandelbrote in the TLS.
- Bob Brier's Egyptomania; review (well, pan) by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Alan Jacobs' The Book of Common Prayer; review by Willy Maley in the THE.
- Douglas Egerton's The Wars of Reconstruction; review by Fergus Bordewich in the WSJ.
- Greg Grandin's The Empire of Necessity; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.
- Timothy Brook's Mr. Selden's Map of China and Robert Batchelor's London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549-1689; review in The Economist.
- Jacqueline Jones' A Dreadful Deceit; review by Thomas Chatterton Williams in the WSJ.
- Colin Jerolmack's The Global Pigeon; review by Jennie Erin Smith in the TLS.
- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review at BookBrowse.
- From Paste magazine, John Ruch writes on "The Peculiar Underworld of Rare-Book Thieves." It notes that a book on the Smiley thefts by Michael Blanding will be published this year (The Map Thief, to be published by Gotham Books).
- The Wellcome Library has released 100,000 hi-res images from its collections.
- Excellent reporter Paul Grondahl has a report in the Times Union on the New York State Library's "tough calls" about culling materials from the collections. It makes for difficult reading.
- New OED chief editor Michael Proffitt talked to the New York Times this week about the future of the dictionary.
- A pair of scholars have announced what they see as a breakthrough in the Voynich Manuscript, concluding that many of the plants and animals portrayed there may be North American species.
- The Mellon Foundation has awarded a $3 million grant to fund a "Humanities Without Walls" consortium to "create new avenues for collaborative research, teaching, and the production of scholarship in the humanities, forging and sustaining areas of inquiry that cannot be created or maintained without cross-institutional cooperation."
- From the BBC: Albrecht Durer: Printing Press Native.
- A Sotheby's report published in Chinese has defended the authenticity of a calligraphy scroll sold for $8.2 million in September (mentioned here). Chinese scholars argue that the scroll was a 19th-century reproduction.
- New York's Rizzoli Bookstore will likely have to move; the building's owners are planning to demolish the site.
- New online, the Catalogue of English Manuscripts, 1450-1700, containing descriptions of more than 37,000 manuscript texts from 237 C16-17 authors.
- From the "Bright Young Librarians" series, Trinity College's Rick Ring is profiled.
- Unclaimed material stolen by Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff is being temporarily housed at the Maryland Historical Society, the Baltimore Sun reported, until it can be identified and returned to its rightful home(s).
- The British Library will close its Preservation Advisory Centre as of the end of March.
- Material from the family archive of William Penn will be up for sale at Bonham's London on 28 January.
- The daughter of Cold Comfort Farm author Stella Gibbons has found two finished-but-unpublished novels amongst her mother's possessions.
- Mitch Fraas notes a success story in identifying a smudgy provenance stamp - there's hope!
- The New York Times ran a report last week on Pinochet's library.
- Casey Cep has a piece at The New Yorker on "The Allure of the Map."
- I'm feeling a bit removed from the whole Common Core debate, but I found Alex Kalamaroff's essay at The Millions, "The Common Core Vs. Books: When Teachers are Unable to Foster a Love of Reading in Students" very much worthwhile.
- The Strand's rare book room was highlighted in the New York Daily News.
- Over at Manuscript Road Trip, our erstwhile guides explore the career and telltale signs of the Spanish Forger.
- The existence of a secret Foreign Office archive, containing some 1.2 million files going back to the 17th century, was revealed this week.
- Two digital collections of rare books at Princeton have been expanded: the Sid Lapidus collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, and the library's annotated books.
- The BL is crowdfunding the digitization of George III's personal collection of maps and views: they're looking for £100,000.
- From Antipodean Footnotes, highlights from the woodcuts in the early Italian and French editions of the Hypnerotomachia.
- In the LA Review of Books, Johanna Drucker writes on "Pixel Dust: Illusions of Innovation in Scholarly Publishing."
- Penn State has acquired the archive of book designer Chip Kidd, while Billy Collins' papers will go to the Harry Ransom Center.
Reviews
- The History of OUP, Volume III; review by Bernard Porter in The Guardian.
- Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold's Newton and the Origin of Civilization; review by Scott Mandelbrote in the TLS.
- Bob Brier's Egyptomania; review (well, pan) by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Alan Jacobs' The Book of Common Prayer; review by Willy Maley in the THE.
- Douglas Egerton's The Wars of Reconstruction; review by Fergus Bordewich in the WSJ.
- Greg Grandin's The Empire of Necessity; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.
- Timothy Brook's Mr. Selden's Map of China and Robert Batchelor's London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549-1689; review in The Economist.
- Jacqueline Jones' A Dreadful Deceit; review by Thomas Chatterton Williams in the WSJ.
- Colin Jerolmack's The Global Pigeon; review by Jennie Erin Smith in the TLS.
- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review at BookBrowse.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Links & Reviews
- Over at The Millions, Travis McDade on Rare Book Crime Capers: Forgery, Theft, Murder and the Holy Grail of American Printing. McDade concentrates on Hofmann's forgery of the Oath of a Freeman and its intersection with other instances of rare book crime.
- Ben Mauk posted on the New Yorker blog about Elaine Treharne's recent work on medieval manuscripts being dismantled and sold on eBay. It includes comments from dealer Philip Pirages, who said "I have to admit that selling individual leaves encourages book breaking to some extent. From time to time I feel it would be better if I didn't do this."
- The latest issue of Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, with the theme "What is the History of (Electronic) Books?" is now freely available on the BSC's website.
- For your amusement, Dusty Archive Kitten Deaths, a new Tumblr highlighting (and let's be frank, shaming) archival/library cliches and the journalists who perpetuate them.
- At Unique at Penn, some neat and elusive pieces of print found on the pastedowns of a manuscript commonplace book.
- From BibliOdyssey, monograms and ciphers.
- The Wellcome Library recently acquired a remarkable 15th-century folding almanac in a silk binding. Lots of pictures and context here.
- There was quite a dustup last week over the apparent destruction of a series of Franklin County, NC records found in the courthouse basement. In the end most of the records appeared to have been destroyed pursuant to regular retention schedules (see the response from the NC Office of Archives and History, as well as a public letter to the same effect).
Reviews
- Hugh Wilford's America's Great Game; review by Tony Perry in the LATimes.
- Richard Drake's The Education of an Anti-Imperialist; review by Lewis Gould in the WSJ.
- Ben Mauk posted on the New Yorker blog about Elaine Treharne's recent work on medieval manuscripts being dismantled and sold on eBay. It includes comments from dealer Philip Pirages, who said "I have to admit that selling individual leaves encourages book breaking to some extent. From time to time I feel it would be better if I didn't do this."
- The latest issue of Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, with the theme "What is the History of (Electronic) Books?" is now freely available on the BSC's website.
- For your amusement, Dusty Archive Kitten Deaths, a new Tumblr highlighting (and let's be frank, shaming) archival/library cliches and the journalists who perpetuate them.
- At Unique at Penn, some neat and elusive pieces of print found on the pastedowns of a manuscript commonplace book.
- From BibliOdyssey, monograms and ciphers.
- The Wellcome Library recently acquired a remarkable 15th-century folding almanac in a silk binding. Lots of pictures and context here.
- There was quite a dustup last week over the apparent destruction of a series of Franklin County, NC records found in the courthouse basement. In the end most of the records appeared to have been destroyed pursuant to regular retention schedules (see the response from the NC Office of Archives and History, as well as a public letter to the same effect).
Reviews
- Hugh Wilford's America's Great Game; review by Tony Perry in the LATimes.
- Richard Drake's The Education of an Anti-Imperialist; review by Lewis Gould in the WSJ.
Sunday, January 05, 2014
Links & Reviews
- Sarah Werner, writing at Snarkmarket about the ongoing "death of the book" silliness, highlights one of my favorite books of recent years, A Dodo at Oxford, and argues that "any opposition between print and digital is, today, ridiculous." Read the whole post.
- The Al Sa'eh library in Tripoli, Lebanon, which housed some 80,000 books and manuscripts, was destroyed by fire this week, after false rumors that the owner, a Greek Orthodox priest, had written an article insulting Islam.
- Some nasty news out of Canada this week, where it has been revealed that important archival materials held at various environmental libraries around the country ordered closed by the government are being haphazardly destroyed or dispersed.
- In this month's Smithsonian, Joshua Hammer writes on "The Race to Save Mali's Priceless Artifacts."
- The Authors Guild will appeal Judge Denny Chin's ruling in the Google Books case, Publishers Weekly reports.
- The January AE Monthly is out, containing their annual list of the top 500 auction prices for 2013, among a selection of other interesting pieces.
- The Higgins Armory Museum of Worcester, MA has closed after 82 years.
- A cache of some 20,000 Japanese books, including some by woodblock master Hokusai has been authenticated at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts after research by a scholarly team from 2010 through 2012. The collection was donated by Ernest Fenollosa in the early 20th century.
- Lucy Hughes-Hallett's Telegraph piece "Why Villette is better than Jane Eyre" will likely be of interest to many readers.
- A draft of a 1775 plea for reconciliation to the British people written by Robert R. Livington was found last summer in the attic of New York's Morris-Jumel Mansion museum. The museum will sell the document at Keno Auctions on 26 January.
- The Free Library of Philadelphia's acquisition of the Rosenbach Museum and Library is now complete.
- From Marina Warner in the NYRB, "Maps and Monsters," a short essay and gallery.
- A Celtic brooch dating from the 8th or 9th century has been found in British Museum storage; it had been hidden in a "lump of organic material" excavated from a Viking burial site in Norway and acquired by the BM in 1891.
Reviews
- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review by Christine Rosen in the Wilson Quarterly.
- Brian Dillon's Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing; review by James Delbourgo in the Chronicle Review.
- Catherine Bailey's The Secret Rooms; review by Kirk David Swinehart in the NYTimes.
- Jane Ridley's The Playboy Prince; review by Joanna Scutts in the WaPo.
- The Al Sa'eh library in Tripoli, Lebanon, which housed some 80,000 books and manuscripts, was destroyed by fire this week, after false rumors that the owner, a Greek Orthodox priest, had written an article insulting Islam.
- Some nasty news out of Canada this week, where it has been revealed that important archival materials held at various environmental libraries around the country ordered closed by the government are being haphazardly destroyed or dispersed.
- In this month's Smithsonian, Joshua Hammer writes on "The Race to Save Mali's Priceless Artifacts."
- The Authors Guild will appeal Judge Denny Chin's ruling in the Google Books case, Publishers Weekly reports.
- The January AE Monthly is out, containing their annual list of the top 500 auction prices for 2013, among a selection of other interesting pieces.
- The Higgins Armory Museum of Worcester, MA has closed after 82 years.
- A cache of some 20,000 Japanese books, including some by woodblock master Hokusai has been authenticated at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts after research by a scholarly team from 2010 through 2012. The collection was donated by Ernest Fenollosa in the early 20th century.
- Lucy Hughes-Hallett's Telegraph piece "Why Villette is better than Jane Eyre" will likely be of interest to many readers.
- A draft of a 1775 plea for reconciliation to the British people written by Robert R. Livington was found last summer in the attic of New York's Morris-Jumel Mansion museum. The museum will sell the document at Keno Auctions on 26 January.
- The Free Library of Philadelphia's acquisition of the Rosenbach Museum and Library is now complete.
- From Marina Warner in the NYRB, "Maps and Monsters," a short essay and gallery.
- A Celtic brooch dating from the 8th or 9th century has been found in British Museum storage; it had been hidden in a "lump of organic material" excavated from a Viking burial site in Norway and acquired by the BM in 1891.
Reviews
- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review by Christine Rosen in the Wilson Quarterly.
- Brian Dillon's Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing; review by James Delbourgo in the Chronicle Review.
- Catherine Bailey's The Secret Rooms; review by Kirk David Swinehart in the NYTimes.
- Jane Ridley's The Playboy Prince; review by Joanna Scutts in the WaPo.
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Literary Anniversaries 2014
Some literary anniversaries coming up in 2014. Obviously not an exhaustive list!
50 years ago (1964):
- Bret Easton Ellis born, 7 March.
- Elizabeth Kostova born, 26 December.
- T.H. White dies, 17 January.
- Rachel Carson dies, 14 April.
- Flannery O'Connor dies, 3 August.
- Ian Fleming dies, 12 August.
- Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory published.
- Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang published.
- Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree published.
100 years ago (1914):
- William S. Burroughs born, 5 February.
- Ralph Ellison born, 1 March.
- Octavio Paz born, 31 March.
- Bernard Malamud born, 26 April.
- Dylan Thomas born, 27 October.
- Patrick O'Brian born, 12 December.
- James Joyce's Dubliners published.
150 years ago (1864):
- Nathaniel Hawthorne dies, 19 May.
- Walter Savage Landor dies, 17 September.
- J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas and Wylder's Hand published.
- Jules Verne's A Journey to the Center of the Earth published.
200 years ago (1814):
- J. Sheridan Le Fanu born, 28 August.
- William Wells Brown born, 6 November.
- Marquis de Sade dies, 2 December.
- Walter Scott's Waverley published.
- Lord Byron's The Corsair published.
- Jane Austen's Mansfield Park published.
250 years ago (1764):
- Ann Radcliffe born, 9 July.
- Robert Dodsley dies, 23 September.
- Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto published.
- George Psalmanazar's Memoirs published.
- Cesare Beccaria's Of Crimes and Punishments published.
300 years ago (1714):
- William Shenstone born, 13 November.
- Scriblerus Club founded.
- Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees published in book form.
350 years ago (1664):
- Matthew Prior born, 21 July.
- John Evelyn's Sylva published in book form.
400 years ago (1614):
- Isaac Casaubon dies, 1 July.
450 years ago (1564):
- Galileo Galilei born, 15 February.
- Christopher Marlowe born, February (bap. 26 February).
- William Shakespeare born, April (bap. 26 April).
- John Calvin dies, 27 May.
- Andreas Vesalius dies, 15 October.
- First datable printed work in Russian printed, 1 March.
500 years ago (1514):
- Georg Joachim Rheticus born, 16 February.
- Andreas Vesalius born, 31 December.
- Hartmann Schedel dies, 28 November.
- Albrecht Dürer engraves Melencolia I and St. Jerome in His Study.
50 years ago (1964):
- Bret Easton Ellis born, 7 March.
- Elizabeth Kostova born, 26 December.
- T.H. White dies, 17 January.
- Rachel Carson dies, 14 April.
- Flannery O'Connor dies, 3 August.
- Ian Fleming dies, 12 August.
- Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory published.
- Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang published.
- Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree published.
100 years ago (1914):
- William S. Burroughs born, 5 February.
- Ralph Ellison born, 1 March.
- Octavio Paz born, 31 March.
- Bernard Malamud born, 26 April.
- Dylan Thomas born, 27 October.
- Patrick O'Brian born, 12 December.
- James Joyce's Dubliners published.
150 years ago (1864):
- Nathaniel Hawthorne dies, 19 May.
- Walter Savage Landor dies, 17 September.
- J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas and Wylder's Hand published.
- Jules Verne's A Journey to the Center of the Earth published.
200 years ago (1814):
- J. Sheridan Le Fanu born, 28 August.
- William Wells Brown born, 6 November.
- Marquis de Sade dies, 2 December.
- Walter Scott's Waverley published.
- Lord Byron's The Corsair published.
- Jane Austen's Mansfield Park published.
250 years ago (1764):
- Ann Radcliffe born, 9 July.
- Robert Dodsley dies, 23 September.
- Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto published.
- George Psalmanazar's Memoirs published.
- Cesare Beccaria's Of Crimes and Punishments published.
300 years ago (1714):
- William Shenstone born, 13 November.
- Scriblerus Club founded.
- Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees published in book form.
350 years ago (1664):
- Matthew Prior born, 21 July.
- John Evelyn's Sylva published in book form.
400 years ago (1614):
- Isaac Casaubon dies, 1 July.
450 years ago (1564):
- Galileo Galilei born, 15 February.
- Christopher Marlowe born, February (bap. 26 February).
- William Shakespeare born, April (bap. 26 April).
- John Calvin dies, 27 May.
- Andreas Vesalius dies, 15 October.
- First datable printed work in Russian printed, 1 March.
500 years ago (1514):
- Georg Joachim Rheticus born, 16 February.
- Andreas Vesalius born, 31 December.
- Hartmann Schedel dies, 28 November.
- Albrecht Dürer engraves Melencolia I and St. Jerome in His Study.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Year-End Reading Report 2013
This was quite a busy year for me: in the winter I worked on getting my books organized in Portland, only to find that I ended up packing them all up in August for the move to Charlottesville, where I then had the pleasure of unpacking and shelving them again (this time putting them in order as I did so). I ended the year by clearing out a whole bunch of boxes of books from my mom's house in New York last week and taking lots of volumes I didn't need anymore to some local libraries so they can find their way into the hands of new readers.
Like last year, I joined the 75 Books Challenge for 2013 group at LibraryThing (see my group thread), and the gentle competition, general stats-geekiness, and whimsy of that whole process proved entertaining as ever. I'll probably do the same next year.
The craziness of the year notwithstanding, I read 161 books in 2013, for an average of one every 2.3 days. Total page count was 50,366 (but of course that doesn't include all the magazines and journals and assorted articles, &c. &c. I'm not quite so mad as to try and tabulate all those too). The titles broke down into 84 fiction and 73 non-fiction books (plus 4 which defy such categorization). I read 67 hardcovers, 54 paperbacks, 37 ARCs, and 3 e-books. For a full breakdown of my 2013 reading stats, see Message 59 here).
This year I continued my resolution to try and read at least slightly fewer books published in the current year, and I managed that once again: 2013 publications made up just 40% of this year's total, but the majority of books read (58%) were still published since 2010, so I'll maintain the same resolution for next year and try to continue reading more not-so-recent titles.
And now, my favorite five fiction and non-fiction reads for 2013 (in no particular order within the lists):
Fiction
Justice Hall by Laurie R. King (Bantam, 2009). Review.
The Golem and the Jinni by Helen Wecker (Harper Perennial, 2013). Review.
TransAtlantic by Colum McCann (Random House, 2013). Review.
All the Names by José Saramago (Houghton Mifflin, 2000). Review.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin). Reread (for the umpteenth time).
Non-Fiction
The Secret Rooms by Catherine Bailey (Penguin, 2013). Review.
The Mortal Sea by W. Jeffrey Bolster (Harvard University Press, 2012). Review.
The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle by Ava Chamberlain (NYU Press, 2012). Review.
If Kennedy Lived by Jeff Greenfield (Putnam, 2013). Review.
Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man by Walter Stahr (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Review.
Happy New Year to you all!
Previous year's reports: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006.
Like last year, I joined the 75 Books Challenge for 2013 group at LibraryThing (see my group thread), and the gentle competition, general stats-geekiness, and whimsy of that whole process proved entertaining as ever. I'll probably do the same next year.
The craziness of the year notwithstanding, I read 161 books in 2013, for an average of one every 2.3 days. Total page count was 50,366 (but of course that doesn't include all the magazines and journals and assorted articles, &c. &c. I'm not quite so mad as to try and tabulate all those too). The titles broke down into 84 fiction and 73 non-fiction books (plus 4 which defy such categorization). I read 67 hardcovers, 54 paperbacks, 37 ARCs, and 3 e-books. For a full breakdown of my 2013 reading stats, see Message 59 here).
This year I continued my resolution to try and read at least slightly fewer books published in the current year, and I managed that once again: 2013 publications made up just 40% of this year's total, but the majority of books read (58%) were still published since 2010, so I'll maintain the same resolution for next year and try to continue reading more not-so-recent titles.
And now, my favorite five fiction and non-fiction reads for 2013 (in no particular order within the lists):
Fiction
Justice Hall by Laurie R. King (Bantam, 2009). Review.
The Golem and the Jinni by Helen Wecker (Harper Perennial, 2013). Review.
TransAtlantic by Colum McCann (Random House, 2013). Review.
All the Names by José Saramago (Houghton Mifflin, 2000). Review.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin). Reread (for the umpteenth time).
Non-Fiction
The Secret Rooms by Catherine Bailey (Penguin, 2013). Review.
The Mortal Sea by W. Jeffrey Bolster (Harvard University Press, 2012). Review.
The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle by Ava Chamberlain (NYU Press, 2012). Review.
If Kennedy Lived by Jeff Greenfield (Putnam, 2013). Review.
Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man by Walter Stahr (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Review.
Happy New Year to you all!
Previous year's reports: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006.
Year-End Links & Reviews
I hope you've all had lovely and restful holidays, filled with good books and good cheer. I'm back in Charlottesville now after a trip home upstate New York, and am spending the last days of 2013 tidying up and trying to close out the year on an organized note. Here are some end-of-year links and reviews for your enjoyment:
- Rachel Donado reported on the political aspects of the Girolamini thefts scandal in the NYTimes on 22 December, focusing on former Italian senator Marcello Dell'Utri.
- An American judge has ruled that Sherlock Holmes (or at least anything featured in any Holmes stories published prior to 1 January 1923) is no longer protected by U.S. copyright law. Read the full opinion.
- New in the "Bright Young Librarians" series, Colleen Theisen of the University of Iowa.
- To mark the centenary of A.N.L. Munby's birth (which occurred on 25 December), the Cambridge Incunabula Project blog noted some of the many donations of incunabula and other rare materials Munby donated to the Cambridge libraries during his lifetime.
- Photographic negatives from the 1914-17 Shackleton Antarctic expedition were recently found by a New Zealand team. See the photos.
- In The Guardian, writers comment on their favorite ghost stories.
- Art historians in China have concluded that a calligraphic scroll sold by Sotheby's as the work of Su Shi (1037-1101) is, rather, a 19th-century fake. The work sold for $8.2 million in September. Sotheby's says it stands by its attribution, but will investigate.
- Over on the Houghton blog, a look at the first book published in Antarctica, Aurora Australis.
- From October, but new to me (via Sarah Werner and John Overholt), from the MSU Provenance blog, "What Counts as Provenance Evidence?"
Reviews
- William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays; review by Gary Taylor in the Washington Post.
- Kevin Peraino's Lincoln in the World; review by Stephen Budiansky in the Washington Post.
- William Seale's The Imperial Season; review by Fergus Bordewich in the WSJ.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Book Review: "The Secret Rooms"
Yet another reason why I don't settle on my top books of the year until the very last minute: I've just finished Catherine Bailey's The Secret Rooms: A True Story of a Haunted Castle, a Plotting Duchess & a Family Secret (Penguin, 2013), and it will certainly end up making the list of my favorite books for this year.
Bailey was given access to the family archives of the Dukes of Rutland, held at Belvoir Castle, the family seat. The archives had been basically locked up in their rooms from the time of the death of the 9th Duke in 1940 until the early part of this century, and Bailey was one of the first historians permitted access. She'd intended to write quite a different book, one about the experiences of the men of Belvoir and the surrounding estates during World War I, but when she began exploring the archives she found the story she tells here, and determined to recount that instead. We should be very glad she did.
The 9th Duke spent the final years of his life closeted away in the rooms where the archives were kept, and in fact even died there, on a small couch, surrounded by the family papers. When Bailey began her search, she quickly found that the 9th Duke's motives had not been entirely pure of heart: he had created three very precise, but very thorough, gaps in the archival record by removing all the correspondence and papers for those date ranges. Bailey set out to discover just what happened during those periods, and that hunt forms the basic structure for the book. What she finds is a tale of real family drama and somewhat shocking behavior on the part of a good number of people.
I had a terrible time putting this down once I started reading. Bailey's account of her efforts to puzzle out the events of those three mysterious periods makes for riveting reading, and it's really a pleasure to dig into her own research process and methods ... not to mention all the fascinating things she manages to learn. I'm not going to share any of those here: go off and read the book.
This is not, I admit, a perfect book. The title and subtitle are slightly overdrawn (except for the "plotting duchess and a family secret" part), and not only do some questions remain unanswered, but there are also certain points that just prove unsatisfying or anticlimactic. But on the whole, I found this a tremendously interesting book, and recommend it highly.
Bailey was given access to the family archives of the Dukes of Rutland, held at Belvoir Castle, the family seat. The archives had been basically locked up in their rooms from the time of the death of the 9th Duke in 1940 until the early part of this century, and Bailey was one of the first historians permitted access. She'd intended to write quite a different book, one about the experiences of the men of Belvoir and the surrounding estates during World War I, but when she began exploring the archives she found the story she tells here, and determined to recount that instead. We should be very glad she did.
The 9th Duke spent the final years of his life closeted away in the rooms where the archives were kept, and in fact even died there, on a small couch, surrounded by the family papers. When Bailey began her search, she quickly found that the 9th Duke's motives had not been entirely pure of heart: he had created three very precise, but very thorough, gaps in the archival record by removing all the correspondence and papers for those date ranges. Bailey set out to discover just what happened during those periods, and that hunt forms the basic structure for the book. What she finds is a tale of real family drama and somewhat shocking behavior on the part of a good number of people.
I had a terrible time putting this down once I started reading. Bailey's account of her efforts to puzzle out the events of those three mysterious periods makes for riveting reading, and it's really a pleasure to dig into her own research process and methods ... not to mention all the fascinating things she manages to learn. I'm not going to share any of those here: go off and read the book.
This is not, I admit, a perfect book. The title and subtitle are slightly overdrawn (except for the "plotting duchess and a family secret" part), and not only do some questions remain unanswered, but there are also certain points that just prove unsatisfying or anticlimactic. But on the whole, I found this a tremendously interesting book, and recommend it highly.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Links & Reviews
- The Indiana Historical Society will sell its copy of Audubon's Birds of America in April at Sotheby's. Their copy of Audubon's Quadrupeds will also be sold. Waldemar Fries' census reports that this copy of Birds was originally purchased by the York Subscription Library, possibly directly from Audubon himself. By January 1896 it had been purchased by William W. Borden for his wife, Emma, and it later was in the collections of the Borden Institute, a private school in Indiana. The Indiana Historical Society purchased it in 1933 for $4,000. Plate II in this copy contains the incorrect caption "Black Billed Cuckoo - Coccyzus Erythrophthalmus." Indiana Historical Society president John Herbst said that the copies "both had a lot of use before the society purchased them," and said that the Society would use the proceeds to fund purchases of Indiana-related materials.
- The New York Court of Appeals has reversed a lower-court ruling that would have forced auction houses to disclose the identity of consignors.
- In The Economist, an account of Cobden-Sanderson's destruction of the Doves Press type, and about designer Robert Green's attempts to digitally reconstruct it (the results of which you can now download).
- I've added a new blog to the sidebar: David J. Gary's American History Librarian. I expect this will be one most of you will want to follow too.
- "Shelfie"-madness hit Twitter this week, and it was great fun. More from Jacket Copy, or check out the Twitter hashtag.
- Cambridge University plans to raise £1.1 million to purchase the Codex Zacynthius, a ~6th-century palimpsest containing the Gospel of Luke. The manuscript has been on deposit at Cambridge since 1984.
- Eric Kwakkel asks, and then tries to answer, the age-old question "What is the oldest book in the world?"
- Over at the Oak Knoll blog, Bob Fleck writes about the Kelmscott/Goudy press, which sold this month to RIT.
- The BBC Magazine covers the Girolamini thefts; the article doesn't contain much new information, but there are several new photos of the looted library and damaged books.
- Also from the BBC Magazine, a look at the ongoing effort to recover and read the burned scrolls of Herculaneum.
- From Notabilia, a copy of Ben Franklin's Experiments and observations on electricity, inscribed to his sister Jane Mecom.
- At the Incunabula Project blog, Liam Sims covers a truly curious and fascinating list found in an early Belgian incunable in the Cambridge collections.
- Lew Jaffe posted an image of a particularly interesting bookplate this week, that of silversmith James Pérot, who lived for a time in Bermuda.
- Keren Levy highlighted one of my very favorite books, Watership Down, over at the Guardian this week.
Reviews
- Simon Winchester's The Men Who United the States; review by Sarah Wheeler in the Telegraph.
- James MacGregor Burns' Fire and Light; review by Eric Herschtal at The Junto.
- Bob Brier's Egyptomania; review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.
- Beau Riffenbaugh's Pinkerton's Great Detective; review by Ben Macintyre in the NYTimes.
- The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; review by George Packer in the NYTimes.
- Jo Baker's Longbourn; review by Diane Johnson in the NYTimes.
- The New York Court of Appeals has reversed a lower-court ruling that would have forced auction houses to disclose the identity of consignors.
- In The Economist, an account of Cobden-Sanderson's destruction of the Doves Press type, and about designer Robert Green's attempts to digitally reconstruct it (the results of which you can now download).
- I've added a new blog to the sidebar: David J. Gary's American History Librarian. I expect this will be one most of you will want to follow too.
- "Shelfie"-madness hit Twitter this week, and it was great fun. More from Jacket Copy, or check out the Twitter hashtag.
- Cambridge University plans to raise £1.1 million to purchase the Codex Zacynthius, a ~6th-century palimpsest containing the Gospel of Luke. The manuscript has been on deposit at Cambridge since 1984.
- Eric Kwakkel asks, and then tries to answer, the age-old question "What is the oldest book in the world?"
- Over at the Oak Knoll blog, Bob Fleck writes about the Kelmscott/Goudy press, which sold this month to RIT.
- The BBC Magazine covers the Girolamini thefts; the article doesn't contain much new information, but there are several new photos of the looted library and damaged books.
- Also from the BBC Magazine, a look at the ongoing effort to recover and read the burned scrolls of Herculaneum.
- From Notabilia, a copy of Ben Franklin's Experiments and observations on electricity, inscribed to his sister Jane Mecom.
- At the Incunabula Project blog, Liam Sims covers a truly curious and fascinating list found in an early Belgian incunable in the Cambridge collections.
- Lew Jaffe posted an image of a particularly interesting bookplate this week, that of silversmith James Pérot, who lived for a time in Bermuda.
- Keren Levy highlighted one of my very favorite books, Watership Down, over at the Guardian this week.
Reviews
- Simon Winchester's The Men Who United the States; review by Sarah Wheeler in the Telegraph.
- James MacGregor Burns' Fire and Light; review by Eric Herschtal at The Junto.
- Bob Brier's Egyptomania; review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.
- Beau Riffenbaugh's Pinkerton's Great Detective; review by Ben Macintyre in the NYTimes.
- The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; review by George Packer in the NYTimes.
- Jo Baker's Longbourn; review by Diane Johnson in the NYTimes.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Links & Reviews
- Your must-read article of the week (and I mean that) is Nicholas Schmidle's "A Very Rare Book" in the 16 December New Yorker. Schmidle's written an excellent summary of the forged Galileo Sidereus Nuncius (and other titles) and of de Caro's thefts from the Girolamini and other libraries. He also spent three days with de Caro and got him to confess a great deal about how the forgeries were made. The article's behind the New Yorker paywall, so if you don't subscribe you'll have to go find a copy, but trust me, it's worth it.
- Some nasty, nasty news out of Turkey this week, where reports suggest that as much as 140 tons of books and magazines were sold by the National Library of Turkey to wastepaper dealers for extremely low prices. The Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister said "We have detected some criminal and corrupted practices over many works in the National Library," and pledged a crackdown.
- An inquiry into the death of book thief Raymond Scott has concluded that he killed himself, the BBC reports. Further reporting in the Durham Times adds that Scott had been removed from suicide watch two weeks prior. Scott "suffered two wounds to the neck and razor blades were found in his right hand," the Times notes.
- The University of Pennsylvania seeks a CLIR postdoctoral fellow in data curation to work with the Penn Provenance Project and other related projects. Looks like a good gig!
- The Kelmscott/Goudy Albion iron hand press which sold at Christie's last week was purchased by Bromer Booksellers on behalf of RIT's Cary Graphic Arts Collection, with the support of the Brooks Bower family. Curator Steven Galbraith said that the press will be used as a working press at RIT, which is excellent news. See the full RIT press release.
- Alan Jacobs covers the rise of JSTOR (and its ilk) and why educators (and their students) shouldn't fall into the trap of relying on this sort of site.
- The British Library released a million images from scanned books in its collections this week, to the delight of the internet. More from Benjamin Breen at The Appendix.
- The seventeenth part of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources was published this week, completing a project begun in 1913.
- Random House has acquired the rights to publish what is believed to be the first prison memoir of an African-American, Austin Reed's "The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict, or the Inmate of a Gloomy Prison." Julie Bosman reported on the manuscript earlier this week.
- Mitch Fraas talked with the LC blog The Signal about his use of Viewshare as a tool to visualize library book markings and other useful things.
- Richard S. Newman has been appointed the next director of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Newman will take up the reins at the LCP in June.
- The National Library of Wales has digitized the 13th-century Book of Aneirin, the last of the four Ancient Books of Wales to be presented online.
- James W.P. Campbell and Will Pryce share some photos from their new book The Library: A World History over at The Atlantic.
- In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jen Howard reports on the status of the DPLA seven months after its official launch.
Reviews
- Diane Setterfield's Bellman and Black; review by Yvonne Zipp in the WaPo.
- Bart van Es' Shakespeare in Company; review by Charles Nicholl in the TLS.
- Richard Holmes' Falling Upwards; review by Daniel Stashower in the WaPo.
- John Ferling's Jefferson and Hamilton; review by Carl Berkin in the WaPo.
- Joyce Appleby's Shores of Knowledge; review by Marcia Bartusiak in the WaPo.
- Some nasty, nasty news out of Turkey this week, where reports suggest that as much as 140 tons of books and magazines were sold by the National Library of Turkey to wastepaper dealers for extremely low prices. The Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister said "We have detected some criminal and corrupted practices over many works in the National Library," and pledged a crackdown.
- An inquiry into the death of book thief Raymond Scott has concluded that he killed himself, the BBC reports. Further reporting in the Durham Times adds that Scott had been removed from suicide watch two weeks prior. Scott "suffered two wounds to the neck and razor blades were found in his right hand," the Times notes.
- The University of Pennsylvania seeks a CLIR postdoctoral fellow in data curation to work with the Penn Provenance Project and other related projects. Looks like a good gig!
- The Kelmscott/Goudy Albion iron hand press which sold at Christie's last week was purchased by Bromer Booksellers on behalf of RIT's Cary Graphic Arts Collection, with the support of the Brooks Bower family. Curator Steven Galbraith said that the press will be used as a working press at RIT, which is excellent news. See the full RIT press release.
- Alan Jacobs covers the rise of JSTOR (and its ilk) and why educators (and their students) shouldn't fall into the trap of relying on this sort of site.
- The British Library released a million images from scanned books in its collections this week, to the delight of the internet. More from Benjamin Breen at The Appendix.
- The seventeenth part of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources was published this week, completing a project begun in 1913.
- Random House has acquired the rights to publish what is believed to be the first prison memoir of an African-American, Austin Reed's "The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict, or the Inmate of a Gloomy Prison." Julie Bosman reported on the manuscript earlier this week.
- Mitch Fraas talked with the LC blog The Signal about his use of Viewshare as a tool to visualize library book markings and other useful things.
- Richard S. Newman has been appointed the next director of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Newman will take up the reins at the LCP in June.
- The National Library of Wales has digitized the 13th-century Book of Aneirin, the last of the four Ancient Books of Wales to be presented online.
- James W.P. Campbell and Will Pryce share some photos from their new book The Library: A World History over at The Atlantic.
- In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jen Howard reports on the status of the DPLA seven months after its official launch.
Reviews
- Diane Setterfield's Bellman and Black; review by Yvonne Zipp in the WaPo.
- Bart van Es' Shakespeare in Company; review by Charles Nicholl in the TLS.
- Richard Holmes' Falling Upwards; review by Daniel Stashower in the WaPo.
- John Ferling's Jefferson and Hamilton; review by Carl Berkin in the WaPo.
- Joyce Appleby's Shores of Knowledge; review by Marcia Bartusiak in the WaPo.
Sunday, December 08, 2013
Links & Reviews
- I had the great pleasure of attending the Authenticity of Print Materials symposium at the Library of Congress this week, and I've posted a brief(ish) report on the symposium over at the Fine Books Blog. It was a thoroughly remarkable day, and it was a real delight to be able to catch up with so many friends and to hear an excellent series of talks on the symposium's theme.
- One of the key elements of the LC symposium was a presentation by Nick Wilding and Paul Needham on the Martayan Lan Sidereus Nuncius, now known to be a forgery. There was quite a good NYTimes article on this last week, and a piece by Nicholas Schmidle on the same topic will be in this week's New Yorker.
- Mitch Fraas reports at the Fine Books Blog about the dispersal of the John Gilson Howell collection of printed and manuscript bibles, long owned by the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA.
- Nick Basbanes has an op/ed in this weekend's LATimes, "A paperless society? Not so fast."
- Heather Wolfe has posted on the news that the Folger has received a three-year IMLS grant to fund the creation of EMMO (Early Modern Manuscripts Online), a searchable online database of Folger manuscript transcriptions from 1500-1700.
- From Literary Tourist, an audio interview with Alberto Manguel about his favorite libraries and bookstores.
- As previously reported, the Bay Psalm Book sold at Sotheby's on 26 November for a total of $14.2 million. Some coverage on the sale from NPR, The Telegraph, LATimes, BBC, Boston Globe.
- Over at the ARCA blog, excerpts from WGBH Boston interviews with Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley and FBI special agent Jeff Kelley. Kelley told reporter Emily Rooney that they essentially know who carried out the theft, and that he believes that the artworks are all still in existence. The FBI and the Gardner have launched a new public effort to recover the art. Hawley told Rooney that immediately following the 1990 theft there were a series of additional threats and extortion attempts against the Museum.
- A major collaborative digitization project between the Bodleian Libraries and the Vatican Library which now live. The project was funded by a $3.2 million grant from the Polonsky Foundation. Coverage from the NYTimes, NPR.
- Travis McDade covers the trend of book and manuscript thieves defending themselves by maintaining that they found the material in the trash.
- Early and un-reprinted works by P.G. Wodehouse have been identified in the archive of Leeds newspaper The Globe and Traveller.
- Seems like we get one of these articles every six months or so, but here's another: author Patricia Cornwell claims to have uncovered new evidence that Jack the Ripper was artist Walter Sickert.
- Over at The Junto this week, a roundtable on the legacy of historian Pauline Maier.
- Booktryst highlighted a copy of the true first edition of Jefferson's Notes which sold for a healthy $269,000 at Christie's this week.
- That Christie's sale brought in a whopping total of $6,743,750, a good chunk of which came from a lavish presentation copy of Newton's Principia to James II, which made $2,517,000 (over estimates of $400,000-600,000). William Morris' Albion Press sold for $233,000. More on the press in the NYTimes.
- Jill Lepore spoke with Joy Horowitz at the LA Review of Books about her new book The Book of Ages.
- The Boston Public Library's Johnson Building will receive a $16 million renovation, the Boston Globe reported this week.
- Former Apple exec Glen Miranker, a fanatic collector of Holmesiana, is profiled in Forbes.
- While in DC this week I also had the tremendous pleasure of enjoying a behind-the-scenes tour at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which is just as exciting as you might think it would be. Among the paintings we saw was "The Infant Shakespeare Attended by Nature and the Passions," or "The Baby Jesus Shakespeare," which Erin Blake blogged about this week at The Collation.
- From Antipodean Footnotes, a profile of a very neat book now in the University of Melbourne Special Collections: a copy of Malcolm Flemyng's An Introduction to Physiology which traveled around the world with Captain Cook on his 1768-71 voyage.
- Jennifer Howard reported for The Chronicle this week that academics who have posted their articles on the social site academia.edu began receiving takedown notices from Elsevir.
- One of the "my year in books" lists that I look most forward to every year is that of Miriam Burstein at The Little Professor. She's posted it here.
- Historian Michael Kammen has died. Read the obituary in the New York Times.
- Rebecca Rego Barry has posted a year-end bookish roundup too, which probably includes a few good additions to your holiday shopping lists.
Reviews
- Alison Weir's Elizabeth of York; review by Roger Boylan in the NYTimes.
- Umberto Eco's The Book of Legendary Lands; review by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in The Telegraph.
- Simon Garfield's To the Letter; review by Carmela Ciuraru in the NYTimes.
- Leo Damrosch's Swift; review by Jeffrey Collins in the WSJ.
- Yuval Levin's The Great Debate; review by Jack Rakove in the Washington Post.
- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review by Philip Marchand in the National Post.
- Graham Robb's The Discovery of Middle Earth; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.
- Ronald Frame's Havisham; review by Jane Smiley in the NYTimes.
- David Igler's The Great Ocean and Gregory T. Cushman's Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World; review by David Armitage in the TLS.
- One of the key elements of the LC symposium was a presentation by Nick Wilding and Paul Needham on the Martayan Lan Sidereus Nuncius, now known to be a forgery. There was quite a good NYTimes article on this last week, and a piece by Nicholas Schmidle on the same topic will be in this week's New Yorker.
- Mitch Fraas reports at the Fine Books Blog about the dispersal of the John Gilson Howell collection of printed and manuscript bibles, long owned by the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA.
- Nick Basbanes has an op/ed in this weekend's LATimes, "A paperless society? Not so fast."
- Heather Wolfe has posted on the news that the Folger has received a three-year IMLS grant to fund the creation of EMMO (Early Modern Manuscripts Online), a searchable online database of Folger manuscript transcriptions from 1500-1700.
- From Literary Tourist, an audio interview with Alberto Manguel about his favorite libraries and bookstores.
- As previously reported, the Bay Psalm Book sold at Sotheby's on 26 November for a total of $14.2 million. Some coverage on the sale from NPR, The Telegraph, LATimes, BBC, Boston Globe.
- Over at the ARCA blog, excerpts from WGBH Boston interviews with Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley and FBI special agent Jeff Kelley. Kelley told reporter Emily Rooney that they essentially know who carried out the theft, and that he believes that the artworks are all still in existence. The FBI and the Gardner have launched a new public effort to recover the art. Hawley told Rooney that immediately following the 1990 theft there were a series of additional threats and extortion attempts against the Museum.
- A major collaborative digitization project between the Bodleian Libraries and the Vatican Library which now live. The project was funded by a $3.2 million grant from the Polonsky Foundation. Coverage from the NYTimes, NPR.
- Travis McDade covers the trend of book and manuscript thieves defending themselves by maintaining that they found the material in the trash.
- Early and un-reprinted works by P.G. Wodehouse have been identified in the archive of Leeds newspaper The Globe and Traveller.
- Seems like we get one of these articles every six months or so, but here's another: author Patricia Cornwell claims to have uncovered new evidence that Jack the Ripper was artist Walter Sickert.
- Over at The Junto this week, a roundtable on the legacy of historian Pauline Maier.
- Booktryst highlighted a copy of the true first edition of Jefferson's Notes which sold for a healthy $269,000 at Christie's this week.
- That Christie's sale brought in a whopping total of $6,743,750, a good chunk of which came from a lavish presentation copy of Newton's Principia to James II, which made $2,517,000 (over estimates of $400,000-600,000). William Morris' Albion Press sold for $233,000. More on the press in the NYTimes.
- Jill Lepore spoke with Joy Horowitz at the LA Review of Books about her new book The Book of Ages.
- The Boston Public Library's Johnson Building will receive a $16 million renovation, the Boston Globe reported this week.
- Former Apple exec Glen Miranker, a fanatic collector of Holmesiana, is profiled in Forbes.
- While in DC this week I also had the tremendous pleasure of enjoying a behind-the-scenes tour at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which is just as exciting as you might think it would be. Among the paintings we saw was "The Infant Shakespeare Attended by Nature and the Passions," or "The Baby Jesus Shakespeare," which Erin Blake blogged about this week at The Collation.
- From Antipodean Footnotes, a profile of a very neat book now in the University of Melbourne Special Collections: a copy of Malcolm Flemyng's An Introduction to Physiology which traveled around the world with Captain Cook on his 1768-71 voyage.
- Jennifer Howard reported for The Chronicle this week that academics who have posted their articles on the social site academia.edu began receiving takedown notices from Elsevir.
- One of the "my year in books" lists that I look most forward to every year is that of Miriam Burstein at The Little Professor. She's posted it here.
- Historian Michael Kammen has died. Read the obituary in the New York Times.
- Rebecca Rego Barry has posted a year-end bookish roundup too, which probably includes a few good additions to your holiday shopping lists.
Reviews
- Alison Weir's Elizabeth of York; review by Roger Boylan in the NYTimes.
- Umberto Eco's The Book of Legendary Lands; review by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in The Telegraph.
- Simon Garfield's To the Letter; review by Carmela Ciuraru in the NYTimes.
- Leo Damrosch's Swift; review by Jeffrey Collins in the WSJ.
- Yuval Levin's The Great Debate; review by Jack Rakove in the Washington Post.
- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review by Philip Marchand in the National Post.
- Graham Robb's The Discovery of Middle Earth; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.
- Ronald Frame's Havisham; review by Jane Smiley in the NYTimes.
- David Igler's The Great Ocean and Gregory T. Cushman's Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World; review by David Armitage in the TLS.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Bay Psalm Book Sells, Hammer Price $12.5 Million
The Bay Psalm Book has just sold at Sotheby's New York for a hammer price of $12.5 million, a new record price for a printed book but well below the estimate of $15-30 million.
Total price, including buyer's premium, will be $14,165,000. Sotheby's tweeted soon after the sale: "The Bay Psalm Book was purchased by philanthropist David Rubenstein + is destined for exhibitions at libraries across the US".
Previous Bay Psalm Book-related posts.
Total price, including buyer's premium, will be $14,165,000. Sotheby's tweeted soon after the sale: "The Bay Psalm Book was purchased by philanthropist David Rubenstein + is destined for exhibitions at libraries across the US".
Previous Bay Psalm Book-related posts.
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