New Issue of "The Avid Collector"

Abebooks just sent out the fall issue of its "Avid Collector" newsletter, which features "the toughest question in the book collecting world", a very interesting interview with dealer Priscilla Juvelis, some more questions and answers from booksellers, and profiles of two LibraryThing/Abebooks users (one of whom happens to be yours truly). And more! So check it out, and if you're not already an Avid Collector subscriber, you can sign up here.

Brits Hopping Mad at Smiley Sentence

The Times reports that British Library officials are displeased with the 42-month/$1.9 million fine sentenced slapped on E. Forbes Smiley. Scholarship and collections director Clive Field told the paper "In the library’s view, a term of imprisonment of 42 months - equivalent to around 12 days for each of the 98 maps Smiley admitted to stealing - and financial restitution of £1 million, do not adequately reflect the seriousness of the offences. Nor do they represent a commensurate punishment of Smiley for his serial thefts, or a serious deterrent to other would-be thieves of cultural property. It will go down in criminal and library history as one of the largest, most prolonged, premeditated and systematic of all thefts from libraries, and with no mitigating circumstances."

Can't help but agree.

Smiley Gets 42 Months in Federal Sentence

In today's federal sentencing hearing, map thief E. Forbes Smiley was handed a prison term of 42 months, according to the Hartford Courant. "U.S. District Judge Janet Arterton said she wanted to send a message to deter other would-be art and book thieves. The judge also ordered Smiley to pay $1.9 million to the map dealers and collectors who unwittingly bought the stolen goods." A report in the Boston Globe suggests that the $1.9 million figure may be subject to change.

Smiley spoke briefly during today's court appearance, saying in part "Your honor, I have hurt many people. I stole very valuable research materials from institutions that made it their business to provide those materials to the public for valuable research. I am deeply ashamed of having done that. I cannot imagine the pain and the anger that I made them suffer."

Federal sentencing guidelines had indicated that Smiley's sentence should have numbered from 57 and 71 months, so the judge's ruling dipped well below the minimum there. That's unfortunate.

Book Review: "Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage"

Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage is what might be referred to as a microbiography: author Richard Holmes offers full portraits of neither title character, but rather an examination of the short period when the lives of Samuel Johnson - lexicographer, author, poet, and biographical subject extraordinaire - and Richard Savage - poet, rogue, and murderer - converged for a time. Savage, Johnson's first biographical subject himself, made Johnson's acquaintance soon after that young provincial arrived in London, and their companionship lasted for just about two years, until Savage departed for "retirement" in Wales.

Holmes has little to go on: while it's known that Johnson and Savage knew each other, "there are no authenticated letters between the two men, no mention of each other in private journals, not even a single surviving account from an eyewitness of seeing the two men in each other's company." And yet he's done quite a lot with what few scraps of evidence that do exist, creating an interesting web of narrative around a skeleton of knowable facts. While I am afraid that his speculatory meanderings (particularly in the realm of psychology) get the better of him at times (I felt the same about Greenblatt's recent biography of Shakespeare), Holmes generally at least informs the reader of his upcoming leaps, which is comforting if not exculpatory.

As the author notes, the Johnson we meet cavorting with Savage is not the frumpy but majestic old fellow that Boswell has left us, but a young, desperate man out to make his way in the world, captivated by this strange, conflicted, down-and-out poet. It's another side to Johnson that is interesting to find, even within Holmes' imperfect framework.

Banned Books Week

I almost forgot! It's the 25th annual Banned Books Week. The ALA site has lots of goodies, including a history of banned books and challenges, statistics on banned books, and all sorts of kitsch for sale. They note in a press release that the Harry Potter series tops the list of "most-challenged books in the 21st century."

Google has set up an "Explore Banned Books" page, where you can check out forty-two oft-banned titles via GoogleReader.

And over at LibraryThing, they're running a "Banned Books Bookpile" photo contest.

After you've checked out all those links, go celebrate your freedom to read.

Smiley's Day in Court (1 of 2)

Map thief E. Forbes Smiley's federal sentencing is scheduled for today, and the Bangor News has a good pre-sentencing wrapup of the case. I'll have information on the sentence up as soon as I get it. His state sentencing date is now October 13.

Book Review: "Patriotic Treason"

John Brown must be a tricky subject for any biographer. In Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America, Evan Carton (professor of English and director of the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin) has created a visionary Brown, whose "'madness' and 'treason' remain necessary" even today. Because Brown's "vision" was rooted in what Carton sees (and Brown saw) as the lessons of Scripture (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) and the Declaration of Independence (all men are created equal), Carton excuses his attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry and his calls for a violent slave as the actions of a man ahead of his time, seeking to fulfill American ideals of social justice and equality that remain elusive to this day.

In his afterword, Carton writes that many people with whom he had casual conversations in the course of writing this book believed Brown was black, and that many others thought he was crazy ("mentally unbalanced, a religious fanatic, a violent sociopath, or all three"). He takes previous biographers to task for their judgements of Brown, and adds "The historical misconception of Brown as a madman and the popular misconception of him as a black man, proceed from a common source: the stunted moral imagination and the incomplete embrace of democratic principles of the society that shapes the conventional assumptions of its historians and its ordinary citizens alike."

Well, I can't speak for the people who thought Brown was black, but as for the conclusion that he was more than a little bit off his rocker in one way or the other, that's frankly hard to escape. Brown refused to listen to wise counsel from, well, just about everyone that his foolhardy raid on Harpers Ferry was sure to be a disaster. He drew up a bizarre "Provisional Constitution and Ordinance for the People of the United States", which he intended to promulgate after his show of force. His religious fundamentalism and marytr complex are well known and documented, even by Carton. Sure, with the benefit of hindsight and our twenty-first century ideas, Brown's actions can seem less fanatical (or rather, more justifiable, perhaps) than they were in 1859 ... but I am hard pressed to think that we today would view a similar action in a positive light (in fact, such an action today would almost certainly be considered terrorism, whatever its object).

For its flawed interpretation, Carton's book is still a fairly good outline of Brown's life, particularly for the Bloody Kansas period. I would have liked more on the Harpers Ferry conspiracy, particularly on the involvement of key Northern abolitionist figures, but on the whole the biographical work was well done (aside from Carton's habit of adding dialogue and sketching in unknown details, which I found unnecessary). Of course, the perennial footnote problem was present here; while some quotes were sourced, they were not indicated in the text.

This new account of John Brown's life and activities, while interesting and an intriguing read, was just a bit too admiring for my taste.

Making BI Interesting at Williams

Instructing first-year college students on the resources their library offers is one of the toughest jobs college librarians face - tough in that the students think they don't need it, while the librarians know they do. At Williams College this year (as last), the library staff got creative, and it seems to have paid off. Well done!

An Ode to the Secondhand Book

Columnist Karen Turner has some thoughts on the used-book climate in Montpelior, Vermont ... and on one special book she found there. Well worth a read. (h/t Bibliophile Bullpen)

Early Carolina Documents Discovered

The Scotsman reports that several important documents pertaining to the early history of the Carolina colonies have been found in the archives at Aberdeen University, Scotland. The papers, which include the first known map of Charles Towne (first permanent English settlement in what would become the Carolinas), were among a collection belonging to James Fraser, who tutored one of Charles II's illegitimate sons in the 1660s.

Fraser's cousin Jean Boyd sent along the manuscript description of Charles Towne after a visit there; the document is believed to date from about 1691, twenty years or so after the establishment of the settlement.

"It includes a description of Native Americans, plants, wildlife, the price of goods and the local cuisine. The map shows a handful of streets, two forts and houses scattered in the woods.

Historians spent months translating the French script, which describes the rivers being full of fish, with birds, including pelicans and kingfishers. The creeks, he says, are full of crocodiles, some 22ft long.

He also recounts trade with Native Americans involving swapping skins of bears, racoons, otters and foxes for guns, lead and gunpowder, knives, rum and tobacco."

A fascinating find!

Government Makes Smiley Sentencing Recommendation

In court papers filed this week, federal prosecutors urged Judge Janet Arterton to sentence confessed map thief E. Forbes Smiley based on the standard sentencing guidelines. Smiley's attorney has urged a lighter sentence, while counsel for the victim libraries have called for a longer prison term. Under the guidelines, Smiley should be sentenced to jail for between 57 and 71 months, a pay a fine ranging between $10,000 and $100,000.

U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor's sentencing recommendation says in part "The government joins the victim institutions in condemning the defendant's reprehensible conduct in the theft of 98 antique maps, six of which will likely never be recovered and a number of the remaining maps altered from their original condition. The government also calls for punishment on behalf of the victim dealers who Smiley defrauded by selling them stolen maps and who have suffered severe financial and institutional harm."

O'Connor's pleading argues that while Smiley's cooperation should be taken into account, "that cooperation, along with a number of other grounds advanced by Mr. Reeve, was not enough to warrant a sentence more lenient than the guidelines." Like Reeve, however, O'Connor argues against the BL's memorandum in favor of a longer sentence than the guidelines provide.

Smiley's current federal sentencing date is Wednesday, September 27.

More on the Adams Marginalia Exhibit

The Boston Globe today runs a nice profile of the John Adams marginalia exhibit at the BPL, which I posted on earlier this month. I haven't gotten there yet, but I intend to go see the exhibit as soon as I can.

Book Review: "Financial Founding Fathers"

Economics professor Robert E. Wright and independent scholar David J. Cowen have teamed up to produce Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich (just out from the University of Chicago Press). Loosely modeled on Joseph Ellis' Founding Brothers, Wright and Cowen's book is a collection of short biographical profiles which highlight nine men for their important roles in the formation of the American financial infrastructure during the first decades of the Republic.

Some of the subjects here are household names (Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson); others aren't but probably should be (Albert Gallatin, Robert Morris). All were instrumental at their own times in getting America's economy through the Revolution, out of the post-Revolutionary doldrums and then on a firm footing through the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Wright and Cowen argue, successfully in my view, that Gallatin's decision to utilize Hamilton's system rather than dismantling it was an important (and wise) choice, and make the interesting argument that perhaps Jackson's decision to nix the renewal of the Second Bank is not as repugnant to Hamilton's vision as many have assumed.

I must quibble, as I often do, with the lack of proper references here; while each chapter gets a short bibliographical essay, there are no citations, and only "the most important, most available sources that aided our story" are mentioned at all. This is most unfortunate, particularly with a book like this which offers so many jumping-off points for additional scholarship.

One other thing really bothered me about this book, and that was the way the authors titled their chapters. Hamilton is "The Creator," Tench Coxe "The Judas," Gallatin "The Savior." Stephen Girard is canonised as "The Saint," Robert Morris slapped as the "Fallen Angel." In their introduction (unsurprisingly called "In the Beginning") Wright and Cowen note that they "have linked a 'religious' motif to each of our financial founding fathers. The motifs play homage to the very old notion that there might be a higher power at work guiding the nation and also clarify each character's role in our story." This contrivance is unnecessary and hokey; the book would have been better without it.

Nonetheless, a readable introduction to American economic history and some its greatest founding characters.

Colgate University's Special Collections Profiled

The Oneida Daily Dispatch has an interesting look at Colgate University's Special Collections department, highlighting their Shakespeare First Folio which will go on display next year for the first time in recent memory. The copy was donated to the library by a member of the Colgate family in 1942, and was purchased at auction a few years earlier for $7,500 (remember, the Williams copy sold at Sotheby's in July for nearly $5.2 million).

After discussing the Colgate First Folio, the article recounts some of the most interesting First Folio anecdotes and stories, including the theft of the Bishop Cosin Library (Durham University) copy in 1998 and the loss of the Griswold copy with the sinking of the Arctic in 1854. It also discusses the locations of many of the c. 147 extant copies.

New Tolkien Book in April

You've probably all read about this already, but since I forgot to blog it yesterday, Houghton Mifflin announced this week that they'll be the American publisher for a new JRR Tolkien epic, The Children of Húrin, to be released in April of 2007. The work, which Tolkien never completed, was written on and off from 1918 through the author's death in 1973.

Tolkien's son Christopher has "reconstructed and edited" the manuscripts into a coherent product, saying "It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the Children of Hurin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence, and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions, if this could be done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left some parts of it."

The Children of Húrin "has been referred to and extracted in other Tolkien work," and reportedly has characters and themes similar to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

More from GalleyCat, NYT

Smiley Requests Leniency; Sentencing Postponed

The Yale Daily News reports that E. Forbes Smiley's sentencing on state charges in the map thefts case has been postponed until October 13. "Officials from the New Haven Superior Court Clerk's Office said they were not aware of the reason for the delay." His federal sentencing date is currently scheduled for September 27.

In other news, Smiley has requested leniency in sentencing on the heels of a British Library request for a longer prison sentence than prosecutors have agreed to accept. Kim Martineau of the Hartford Courant writes that Smiley's attorney "argued in legal papers Tuesday that the judge should take into account his broad cooperation and years of volunteer work at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. He asked US District Judge Janet Arterton for no more than three years in prison at his sentencing next week."

Meanwhile, Smiley has - within the last few weeks - miraculously "remembered" two more maps that he stole, "throw[ing] fuel on the libraries' fears that he has more secrets to share." I'll say it certainly does that!

Robert Goldman, representing the BL, said of Smiley's argument that his cooperation should be taken into account "It's like asking us to thank the murderer who dismembered the body then returned the body parts."

Another Massive-Scale Library Thief

A 22-year old student library assistant at Texas Tech has been indicted for the theft of more than $75,000 worth of library books which he sold to an online textbook buyer, the AP reports, drawing on an earlier article in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (h/t Vic at Tavistock Books). Johnathan Nunley used a late-night circ desk shift to pilfer more than 1,000 newly-arrived library items and arranged to ship them to McKenzie Books (cash4books.net).

Nunley removed pages from the books which contained library identification marks, and tried to hide other identifiers using magic marker. He had received almost $15,000 for those books that he stole-and-sold.

The indictment, handed down late last month, was on a third degree felony theft charge, which can carry a term of up to ten years in prison.

Texas Tech plans to change its student employment policy in the wake of the Nunley thefts, and may implement video surveillance of the circulation area.

For shame, for shame. I hope he gets the full ten years, and I hope that as with the Smiley thefts and others, libraries realize that they must become both more vigilant and more diligent about training their staff members as to the mission of the library (Miles Harvey's The Island of Lost Maps should be required reading, I think). Also, I must reserve some blame for the bookseller, who ought to have noticed Nunley's obscuring tactics long before a thousand books had come their way.

Book Review: "Banvard's Folly"

Paul Collins (of Weekend Stubble blog-fame) offers up quite a fantastic cast of forgotten characters in his 2001 book Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity, and Rotten Luck. Collins writes in the preface that he grew curious about all the "other" people that one finds mentioned in historical documents - not the ones we know, but those we've never heard of: "... buried in these footnotes of history are brilliant, fatally flawed thinkers who rose to dizzying heights of intellect and even fame, only to come crashing down into disaster, ridicule, or just the utter silence of oblivion."

From George Psalmanazar, an eighteenth-century Dutch huckster who pretended to be from Formosa and fooled most of London for a few years (and even wrote a lengthy history of the island made up of complete nonsense) to Concord grape developer Ephriam Wales Bull and Civil War veteran A.J. Pleasonton - who was convinced that sitting under blue glass would cure what ails you - and beyond, Collins' subjects never fail to amuse, intrigue, and tickle the curiosity. As a source of short character sketches of these folks, it seems unlikely that Banvard's Folly will be surpassed anytime soon.

While there were a couple of minor errors in the book (Edgar Allan Poe's death was not caused by rabies - even if that theory has come into popularity recently - and Jefferson was not inaugurated in 1806), Collins has done his research well, and it shows. I don't hesitate at all in recommending this book; it's well worth a read.

Maryland's "Birds of America" Prints Conserved

As part of a larger preservation project, the Birds of America prints belonging to the Maryland State Law Library have recently undergone conservation treatment, the Baltimore Sun reports. The overall project ran to $854,000, of which $300,000 was used for Audubon's birds. Other aspects included an "overhaul of the rare book room and the addition of a new display case, which are to be unveiled midweek."

The work on the library's prints was done at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia, with the last batch of birds due to be returned to the library by the end of the year. This set, according to conservators, had "a hard life" - the prints were glued to fabric, severely trimmed for rebinding in 1921 (which included cutting off the names at the bottom of the prints). "Fingerprints, smudges, wrinkles, blotches, rubbed-off color, tears, even drips from beverages marred the pages." Yikes!

"Conservation efforts began with unbinding the prints from four books. It included cleaning pages with specialized solutions, bleaching the stains, flattening the paper, mending tears, painting the cracks and placing the prints in thick mats. Discolorations and creases remain, but they are less noticeable than before." A new display case will highlight two prints at a time, to be rotated each week.

During the conservation, five of the 435 plates were found to be missing, their fate unknown.

The article adds that the first librarian at the library (which was formed originally as "a repository for official, valuable and reference material for Maryland"), David Ridgely, subscribed to Audubon's work as it was being released. The total cost of the set then would have been around $1,000.

According to the paper, the first two birds to be displayed in the new cases will be of special significance to Maryland: the Baltimore oriole and the raven.

To Talk of Many Things

A few short pointers to exciting news and posts from around the book-world:

- The Independent reports that, eh, similarities have been discovered between some lyrics on Bob Dylan's new album and the writings of little-known Confederate poet Henry Timrod. Timrod biographer Walter Cisco says "It's amazing. There is no question that is where it came from. It's too much to be a coincidence. I'm just delighted that Timrod is getting some recognition." Scott Warmuth, a DJ from New Mexico, discovered the connections between Dylan and Timrod ... using the Internet (h/t Shelf Life).

- Joyce at Bibliophile Bullpen points us to some newly-digitized (and free) books on bookbinding, and also has updated the Bibilophile Bullpen Calendar, where she's listing just about every "biblio-ish event" that comes her way. This is a fabulous resource, and many thanks to Joyce for putting it together.

- A thousand-year old manuscript stolen from the Al-AwQaf library in Mosul (Iraq) more than thirty years ago has been returned. It was recovered in 2003 when a man attempted to sell it at a British auction house. The manuscript, which dates back to 1013, is worth at least £250,000. (h/t Shelf Life).

- Paul Collins highlights a few "weird books" this weekend. Incidentally, I'm reading Collin's Banvard's Folly these days and will have some thoughts on that once I finish.