- Next weekend: Brooklyn Antiquarian Book Fair!
- Sarah Mervosh has a report on the Pittsburgh Carnegie Library thefts for the NYTimes. The ABAA has posted an updated list of stolen materials being sought for return.
- From Cait Coker at Sammelband, "Teaching with Letterpress."
- In the London Review of Books, Mary Wellesley on making parchment.
- A great look at Louis Piette's Die Fabrikation des Papieres aus Stroh und vielen andern Substanzen (1838) from the Princeton Graphic Arts Collection blog.
- Over on the Grolier Club blog, a close look at a lovely seventeenth-century embroidered binding.
- September Rare Book Monthly articles include Bruce McKinney's remembrance of Michael R. Thompson and a Michael Stillman report on a Texas comic book theft.
- Conrad Edick Wright writes for the MHS Beehive blog about the history and future of Sibley's Harvard Graduates.
Reviews
- Nell Stevens' The Victorian and the Romantic; review by Anne Boyd Rioux in the WaPo.
- The Paston Treasure; review by Roderick Conway Morris in the TLS.
Upcoming Auction
- Literature with Books in All Fields at PBA Galleries on 6 September.
Showing posts with label MHS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MHS. Show all posts
Sunday, September 02, 2018
Sunday, June 17, 2018
Links & Reviews
- An obituary for Bill Reese ran in the 15 June NYTimes. The Beinecke Library has also posted a tribute page, as well as a podcast of Bill talking about Audubon's Birds of America which I recommend most highly.
- The Portland Audubon sold at Christie's on Thursday for $9.65 million, the second-highest auction price for a copy of Birds of America.
- In other Audubon news, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported this week that the copy of Birds of America owned by the city's Carnegie Museum of Natural History was sold last fall to a California buyer for $6 million. The sale was facilitated by ... Bill Reese.
- Elizabeth Povoledo reports for the NYTimes on the return to the Vatican of a stolen Columbus Letter. See also the press release from the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware. This is the third such restitution in two years (and the second this month).
- The ABAA has posted a "Missing in Transit" notice for a number of autograph letters and a book from Stalin's library.
- The Petau Book of Hours sold at Drouot on Saturday for the equivalent of $5 million.
- Jessica Lester Hester writes for Atlas Obscura on the use of manuscript and printed waste in bookbindings.
- As the film about the 2004 Transylvania University special collections theft arrives in theaters, BJ Gooch, the librarian the thieves assaulted, has spoken about her experience to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
- If you can, be sure to stop by the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at UVA to see the new exhibition "Eminent Miniatures."
- Another week, another Voynich Manuscript theory.
- Alex Johnson writes for the Independent about the library brought along on Scott's Discovery expedition from 1901–1904.
- Really enjoyed the news that the Massachusetts Historical Society has installed a "little free library" on the front steps.
- New from the AAS, an illustrated inventory of the Society's collection of ribbon badges.
- From Caroline Duroselle-Melish at The Collation, "Engraved to Sell."
- David McKitterick has a short post on the Cambridge University Press blog about his new book The Invention of Rare Books.
- Fleur Macdonald reports for the BBC on the ongoing analysis of the manuscripts in the library of St. Catherine's monastery in the Sinai.
- Corey Kilgannon profiles Carolyn Waters, head librarian at the New York Society Library.
Review
- Giorgio van Straten's In Search of Lost Books; review by Alberto Manguel in the TLS.
Upcoming Auctions
- Five Aristophil sales this week: Beaux-arts, œuvres et correspondances (4) at Aguttes on 18 June; Littérature, écrivains et poètes du XIXe-XXe (5) at Drouot on 19 June; Littérature, écrivains et poètes du XIXe-XXe (6) at Aguttes on 19 June; Musique, de Jean-Sébastien Bach à Boulez (7) at Ader on 20 June; Musique, de Lully à Stravinsky (8) at Aguttes on 20 June.
- Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs at Lyon & Turnbull on 19 June.
- Fine Books, Manuscripts, Atlases & Historical Photographs at Bonhams London on 20 June.
- Printed Books, Maps & Documents at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 20 June.
- Autographed Documents, Manuscripts, Books & Relics at University Archives on 20 June.
- Revolutionary & Presidential Americana from the Collection of William Wheeler III at Swann Galleries on 21 June.
- Modern Literature & First Editions at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 21 June.
- The Portland Audubon sold at Christie's on Thursday for $9.65 million, the second-highest auction price for a copy of Birds of America.
- In other Audubon news, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported this week that the copy of Birds of America owned by the city's Carnegie Museum of Natural History was sold last fall to a California buyer for $6 million. The sale was facilitated by ... Bill Reese.
- Elizabeth Povoledo reports for the NYTimes on the return to the Vatican of a stolen Columbus Letter. See also the press release from the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware. This is the third such restitution in two years (and the second this month).
- The ABAA has posted a "Missing in Transit" notice for a number of autograph letters and a book from Stalin's library.
- The Petau Book of Hours sold at Drouot on Saturday for the equivalent of $5 million.
- Jessica Lester Hester writes for Atlas Obscura on the use of manuscript and printed waste in bookbindings.
- As the film about the 2004 Transylvania University special collections theft arrives in theaters, BJ Gooch, the librarian the thieves assaulted, has spoken about her experience to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
- If you can, be sure to stop by the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at UVA to see the new exhibition "Eminent Miniatures."
- Another week, another Voynich Manuscript theory.
- Alex Johnson writes for the Independent about the library brought along on Scott's Discovery expedition from 1901–1904.
- Really enjoyed the news that the Massachusetts Historical Society has installed a "little free library" on the front steps.
- New from the AAS, an illustrated inventory of the Society's collection of ribbon badges.
- From Caroline Duroselle-Melish at The Collation, "Engraved to Sell."
- David McKitterick has a short post on the Cambridge University Press blog about his new book The Invention of Rare Books.
- Fleur Macdonald reports for the BBC on the ongoing analysis of the manuscripts in the library of St. Catherine's monastery in the Sinai.
- Corey Kilgannon profiles Carolyn Waters, head librarian at the New York Society Library.
Review
- Giorgio van Straten's In Search of Lost Books; review by Alberto Manguel in the TLS.
Upcoming Auctions
- Five Aristophil sales this week: Beaux-arts, œuvres et correspondances (4) at Aguttes on 18 June; Littérature, écrivains et poètes du XIXe-XXe (5) at Drouot on 19 June; Littérature, écrivains et poètes du XIXe-XXe (6) at Aguttes on 19 June; Musique, de Jean-Sébastien Bach à Boulez (7) at Ader on 20 June; Musique, de Lully à Stravinsky (8) at Aguttes on 20 June.
- Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs at Lyon & Turnbull on 19 June.
- Fine Books, Manuscripts, Atlases & Historical Photographs at Bonhams London on 20 June.
- Printed Books, Maps & Documents at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 20 June.
- Autographed Documents, Manuscripts, Books & Relics at University Archives on 20 June.
- Revolutionary & Presidential Americana from the Collection of William Wheeler III at Swann Galleries on 21 June.
- Modern Literature & First Editions at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 21 June.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
Links & Reviews
We lost one of the greats this week. Bill Reese was not just an extraordinary bookman and bookseller, but also an indefatigable supporter of biblio-institutions and causes. I had long been a great admirer and somewhat voracious collector of his catalogs, but I first went up and introduced myself at the 2010 Boston Book Fair, to thank him for his support of the Reese Fellowships at Rare Book School (I had been the recipient that year). Frequently thereafter we were able to chat briefly at various book fairs, something I always looked forward to (usually he shared some very funny anecdote about past book fairs). In 2016 he came and gave a wonderful Rare Book School talk, "Starting Out: My Early Days as a Rare Book Dealer." The next day he joined an RBS class, "Reference Sources for Researching Printed Americana," and talked to the students about his favorite reference sources. I had the great pleasure of sitting in on that session, and will remember it very fondly. Nobody wanted to go to coffee break at the end of that one. My deepest condolences to Bill's family and colleagues, and here's to many more years of great books and great catalogs to come from Temple Street.
There will certainly be more posts to come, but for now, see the ABAA's In Memoriam, Kurt Zimmerman's post at American Book Collecting, and Rare Book School's news post, which contains a list of his other RBS lectures.
- Along with the Portland Audubon coming up this week, Christie's will also offer a proof copy on wove paper (one of just six known) of the Stone facsimile of the Declaration of Independence.
- The National Library of Scotland's collection of early Scottish Gaelic manuscripts has been added to UNESCO's UK Memory of the World register. Sir Robert Cotton's manuscripts at the BL have also been added.
- Erin Blake writes for The Collation about a proof print from the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery.
- Mary Yacovone posts on "The Joy of Bookplates" over on the MHS blog. Also on the Beehive this week, Kate Viens explores the history and origins of the Massachusetts Historical Review.
- The BBC reports on a fascinating "hidden diary" from 1880–1 discovered written on the underside of a parquet floor of a French chateau.
Book Reviews
- Carys Davies' West; review by David Vann in the NYTimes.
- Fiona Sampson's In Search of Mary Shelley; review by Charlotte Gordon in the WaPo.
- Stuart Kells' The Library; review by Steve Donoghue in The National.
Upcoming Auctions
- Fine Books and Manuscripts at Bonhams New York on 12 June.
- Rare Books & Manuscripts at PBA Galleries on 14 June.
- The Portland Audubon, followed by Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana at Christie's New York on 14 June.
There will certainly be more posts to come, but for now, see the ABAA's In Memoriam, Kurt Zimmerman's post at American Book Collecting, and Rare Book School's news post, which contains a list of his other RBS lectures.
- Along with the Portland Audubon coming up this week, Christie's will also offer a proof copy on wove paper (one of just six known) of the Stone facsimile of the Declaration of Independence.
- The National Library of Scotland's collection of early Scottish Gaelic manuscripts has been added to UNESCO's UK Memory of the World register. Sir Robert Cotton's manuscripts at the BL have also been added.
- Erin Blake writes for The Collation about a proof print from the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery.
- Mary Yacovone posts on "The Joy of Bookplates" over on the MHS blog. Also on the Beehive this week, Kate Viens explores the history and origins of the Massachusetts Historical Review.
- The BBC reports on a fascinating "hidden diary" from 1880–1 discovered written on the underside of a parquet floor of a French chateau.
Book Reviews
- Carys Davies' West; review by David Vann in the NYTimes.
- Fiona Sampson's In Search of Mary Shelley; review by Charlotte Gordon in the WaPo.
- Stuart Kells' The Library; review by Steve Donoghue in The National.
Upcoming Auctions
- Fine Books and Manuscripts at Bonhams New York on 12 June.
- Rare Books & Manuscripts at PBA Galleries on 14 June.
- The Portland Audubon, followed by Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana at Christie's New York on 14 June.
Sunday, July 16, 2017
Links & Reviews
- A very happy anniversary to Tavistock Books, celebrating twenty years on Saturday! They've posted a Q&A with Vic Zoschak to mark the occasion.
- From Scientific American, "Peering beneath the Surface of Ancient Manuscripts."
- A €10 million redevelopment plan has been announced by the National Library of Ireland.
- Roger Gaskell and Erin Schreiner write about the new replica 18th-century rolling press at Rare Book School at JHIBlog.
- From Aaron Pratt at Cultural Compass (the HRC blog), "Instructions for reading aloud in the Gutenberg Bible."
- The Watkinson Library at Trinity College has acquired the personal library of Trinity alumnus Charles Hayden Proctor, kept intact since Proctor's death in 1890.
- Nate Pedersen talks to Edwin D. Rose for the FB&C "Bright Young Collectors" series.
- ABAA posted an alert about a missing book in San Francisco.
- Willamette Week highlights The Brautigan Library.
- The MHS has acquired Col. Robert Gould Shaw's Civil War sword, which recently turned up in a Shaw family home.
- At the Peter Harrington blog, "The Book Huntresses: Women Bibliophiles."
- Katy Lasdow talks to Alea Henle for the Junto's "Where Historians Work" series.
- There's a fascinating update on the Discovering Lost Manuscripts Project at the University of St. Andrews.
- A new exhibition at Marsh's Library highlights the stories of books stolen from the library since its founding.
- Biblio and Rare Book Hub are partnering to allow Hub subscribers to sell directly through the site using Biblio's search and e-commerce systems.
- Sarah Hovde posts at The Collation about some tricky Shakespearean "novelettes."
- Book collector Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell is featured as the ONDB "Life of the Week."
- Over at Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, Caleb Crain offers "A Longitudinal study of self-presentation on the interwebs."
- Biographer Kenneth Silverman died this week; see the NYTimes obituary.
- The ABAA blog reposts Richard Norman's "History of Vellum and Parchment."
- Book collector John Mellman has posted a "History and Personal Assessment" of the Harper Torchbooks series at Publishing History.
- I've begun playing around with Tropy, a new software program for research photo management from CHNM. Still in beta, but it looks really promising so far! [h/t Mitch Fraas]
Book Reviews
- The Card Catalog; review by Michael Lindgren in the WaPo.
- Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home; review by Amy Bloom in the NYTimes.
- Helen Kelly's Jane Austen: The Secret Radical; review by John Sutherland in the NYTimes.
- Fred Kaplan's Lincoln and the Abolitionists; review by Manisha Sinha in the WaPo.
Upcoming Auctions
- Printed Books, Maps & Documents at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 19 July.
- Children's & Illustrated Books at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 20 July.
- Space Exploration at Sotheby's New York on 20 July.
- From Scientific American, "Peering beneath the Surface of Ancient Manuscripts."
- A €10 million redevelopment plan has been announced by the National Library of Ireland.
- Roger Gaskell and Erin Schreiner write about the new replica 18th-century rolling press at Rare Book School at JHIBlog.
- From Aaron Pratt at Cultural Compass (the HRC blog), "Instructions for reading aloud in the Gutenberg Bible."
- The Watkinson Library at Trinity College has acquired the personal library of Trinity alumnus Charles Hayden Proctor, kept intact since Proctor's death in 1890.
- Nate Pedersen talks to Edwin D. Rose for the FB&C "Bright Young Collectors" series.
- ABAA posted an alert about a missing book in San Francisco.
- Willamette Week highlights The Brautigan Library.
- The MHS has acquired Col. Robert Gould Shaw's Civil War sword, which recently turned up in a Shaw family home.
- At the Peter Harrington blog, "The Book Huntresses: Women Bibliophiles."
- Katy Lasdow talks to Alea Henle for the Junto's "Where Historians Work" series.
- There's a fascinating update on the Discovering Lost Manuscripts Project at the University of St. Andrews.
- A new exhibition at Marsh's Library highlights the stories of books stolen from the library since its founding.
- Biblio and Rare Book Hub are partnering to allow Hub subscribers to sell directly through the site using Biblio's search and e-commerce systems.
- Sarah Hovde posts at The Collation about some tricky Shakespearean "novelettes."
- Book collector Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell is featured as the ONDB "Life of the Week."
- Over at Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, Caleb Crain offers "A Longitudinal study of self-presentation on the interwebs."
- Biographer Kenneth Silverman died this week; see the NYTimes obituary.
- The ABAA blog reposts Richard Norman's "History of Vellum and Parchment."
- Book collector John Mellman has posted a "History and Personal Assessment" of the Harper Torchbooks series at Publishing History.
- I've begun playing around with Tropy, a new software program for research photo management from CHNM. Still in beta, but it looks really promising so far! [h/t Mitch Fraas]
Book Reviews
- The Card Catalog; review by Michael Lindgren in the WaPo.
- Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home; review by Amy Bloom in the NYTimes.
- Helen Kelly's Jane Austen: The Secret Radical; review by John Sutherland in the NYTimes.
- Fred Kaplan's Lincoln and the Abolitionists; review by Manisha Sinha in the WaPo.
Upcoming Auctions
- Printed Books, Maps & Documents at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 19 July.
- Children's & Illustrated Books at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 20 July.
- Space Exploration at Sotheby's New York on 20 July.
Sunday, July 02, 2017
Links & Reviews
- Catherine Allgor has been appointed the next president of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
- David Whitesell posts at Notes from Under Grounds about a major new acquisition.
- The Junto has a Q&A with David Gary of the American Philosophical Society as part of their "Where Historians Work" series.
- Tess Goodman writes for JHIBlog on "The Idea of the Souvenir: Mauchline Ware."
- Common-place has a new issue up, with thirteen emerging scholars introducing pre-1800 American texts.
- Also at JHIBlog, Yitzchak Schwartz has a review of this year's Manfred R. Lehman Workshop on the History of the Hebrew Book in "Towards a History of Hebrew Book Collecting."
- There's a great deal in the July Rare Book Monthly: Bruce McKinney on quite an interesting Revolutionary War collection, Thibaut Ehrengardt on an "untouched collection" in Belgium, and Eric Caren on the 15 June Christie's sale of important items from his collection.
- Over at Past is Present, "The Practice of Everyday Cataloging: 'Blacks as Authors' and the Early American Bibliographic Record."
- Mary Beard's "Learning to be a librarian" made me laugh out loud at least twice.
- Paul Grondahl reports on a recent eBay find of an Albany County judicial ledger; the story has a connection to the Daniel Lorello archives thefts from several years ago.
- The Sion College Library Provenance Project has been relaunched.
- APHA is now "accepting short articles on lesser known aspects of the history of printing and related arts and crafts, including calligraphy, typefounding, typography, papermaking, bookbinding, illustration, and publishing" for publication on the APHA website.
Reviews
- Charlie English's The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu; review by William Dalrymple in the Guardian.
- Sarah Williams' Damnable Practises; review by Penelope Gouk at H-Net Reviews.
- Ronald White's American Ulysses; review by Chris Fobare at H-Net Reviews.
Upcoming Auctions
- Western & Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures at Drewatts & Bloomsbury on 6 July.
- Fine Books & Manuscripts at Potter & Potter on 8 July.
- David Whitesell posts at Notes from Under Grounds about a major new acquisition.
- The Junto has a Q&A with David Gary of the American Philosophical Society as part of their "Where Historians Work" series.
- Tess Goodman writes for JHIBlog on "The Idea of the Souvenir: Mauchline Ware."
- Common-place has a new issue up, with thirteen emerging scholars introducing pre-1800 American texts.
- Also at JHIBlog, Yitzchak Schwartz has a review of this year's Manfred R. Lehman Workshop on the History of the Hebrew Book in "Towards a History of Hebrew Book Collecting."
- There's a great deal in the July Rare Book Monthly: Bruce McKinney on quite an interesting Revolutionary War collection, Thibaut Ehrengardt on an "untouched collection" in Belgium, and Eric Caren on the 15 June Christie's sale of important items from his collection.
- Over at Past is Present, "The Practice of Everyday Cataloging: 'Blacks as Authors' and the Early American Bibliographic Record."
- Mary Beard's "Learning to be a librarian" made me laugh out loud at least twice.
- Paul Grondahl reports on a recent eBay find of an Albany County judicial ledger; the story has a connection to the Daniel Lorello archives thefts from several years ago.
- The Sion College Library Provenance Project has been relaunched.
- APHA is now "accepting short articles on lesser known aspects of the history of printing and related arts and crafts, including calligraphy, typefounding, typography, papermaking, bookbinding, illustration, and publishing" for publication on the APHA website.
Reviews
- Charlie English's The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu; review by William Dalrymple in the Guardian.
- Sarah Williams' Damnable Practises; review by Penelope Gouk at H-Net Reviews.
- Ronald White's American Ulysses; review by Chris Fobare at H-Net Reviews.
Upcoming Auctions
- Western & Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures at Drewatts & Bloomsbury on 6 July.
- Fine Books & Manuscripts at Potter & Potter on 8 July.
Monday, February 15, 2016
Links & Reviews
- It's not often that vellum makes headlines anymore, but it has recently done so: after an announcement last week that the British government had determined that the practice of printing laws on vellum would be ended in April (which got coverage in the NYTimes) word today that the decision may be reversed, with the Cabinet Office offering to pick up the £80,000 annual tab.
- DCRM(C)—that is, Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Cartographic)—for all your map-cataloging needs, is now available as a free PDF.
- Over at The Culture-ist, Ryan Bradley goes on a bookstore tour of Boston.
- From Cabinet, Geoff Manaugh writes on the 2003 case of a book thief who snuck into the locked library of a monastery using a long-forgotten secret passage he found on a floor plan. More from Atlas Obscura.
- Audio recordings of Anthony Grafton's Sandars Lectures, delivered in January, are now available.
- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian about a recent translation of early textbooks used to teach Latin to Greek speakers.
- At the Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog, Liz Ott with the first in a series on their current Wordsworth exhibition (which sounds like it must be fantastic, given the great new collection!).
- At JHIBlog, Brooke Palmieri writes on John Dee's library and the current exhibition on same at the Royal College of Physicians.
- Alison Booth has been appointed academic director of the Scholars' Lab at UVA.
- Hampshire College has received a $1.2 million Mellon grant to "reinvent" the college's library.
- Laura Massey at Alembic Rare Books has posted a primer on "How to start collecting rare books."
Reviews
- "The Private Jefferson" exhibition at the Massachusetts Historical Society; review by Mark Feeney in the Boston Globe.
- Brian Copenhaver's The Book of Magic; review by Diane Purkiss in the TLS.
- DCRM(C)—that is, Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Cartographic)—for all your map-cataloging needs, is now available as a free PDF.
- Over at The Culture-ist, Ryan Bradley goes on a bookstore tour of Boston.
- From Cabinet, Geoff Manaugh writes on the 2003 case of a book thief who snuck into the locked library of a monastery using a long-forgotten secret passage he found on a floor plan. More from Atlas Obscura.
- Audio recordings of Anthony Grafton's Sandars Lectures, delivered in January, are now available.
- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian about a recent translation of early textbooks used to teach Latin to Greek speakers.
- At the Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog, Liz Ott with the first in a series on their current Wordsworth exhibition (which sounds like it must be fantastic, given the great new collection!).
- At JHIBlog, Brooke Palmieri writes on John Dee's library and the current exhibition on same at the Royal College of Physicians.
- Alison Booth has been appointed academic director of the Scholars' Lab at UVA.
- Hampshire College has received a $1.2 million Mellon grant to "reinvent" the college's library.
- Laura Massey at Alembic Rare Books has posted a primer on "How to start collecting rare books."
Reviews
- "The Private Jefferson" exhibition at the Massachusetts Historical Society; review by Mark Feeney in the Boston Globe.
- Brian Copenhaver's The Book of Magic; review by Diane Purkiss in the TLS.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Links & Reviews
- The Massachusetts Historical Society marks the 225th anniversary of its establishment today. May it ever prosper!
- An employee of the National Library of Ireland will face trial over the theft of more than two hundred books from the library's collections. John Nulty has not yet entered a plea. Nulty is accused stealing the books "on various dates from 2004 to 2013."
- A lawsuit to determine rightful ownership of rare bibles and Franklin & Hall Work Book No. 2 continues to move forward: a judge this week determined that the New York Public Library's claim to the books is not barred by the statute of limitations. Read the full decision. For a plain-English report on this update, see Liam O'Brien's post on the Melville House blog.
- New from the Folger et al: Shakespeare Documented, "the largest and most authoritative collection of primary-source materials" documenting Shakespeare's life.
- Sarah Werner has posted a trio of her recent pieces, all of which are very much worth a read.
- Applications for the Justin Winsor Library History Essay Award are due by 16 February. Information here.
- From Jennifer Howard, "The Year of Opening Up the Library."
- It's being billed as a plus, but locals are none too pleased about it: the Silver Buckle Press and its collections will be relocated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries to the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum.
- For the Washington Post, Sarah Kershaw reports on the efforts to save Malian manuscripts from Islamic extremists.
- Part III of the Collation writeup of the Folger's acquisitions at the Pirie sale, covering the manuscripts, is now posted.
- E.C. Schroeder has been reappointed to a second term as director of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and associate university librarian at Yale.
Book Reviews
- Eleanor Fitzsimons' Wilde's Women; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Deborah Lutz's Relics of Death in Victorian Literature and Culture and The Brontë Cabinet; review by Samantha Ellis in the TLS.
- Christopher Buckley's The Relic Master; review by Aram Bakshian, Jr. in the Washington Times.
- An employee of the National Library of Ireland will face trial over the theft of more than two hundred books from the library's collections. John Nulty has not yet entered a plea. Nulty is accused stealing the books "on various dates from 2004 to 2013."
- A lawsuit to determine rightful ownership of rare bibles and Franklin & Hall Work Book No. 2 continues to move forward: a judge this week determined that the New York Public Library's claim to the books is not barred by the statute of limitations. Read the full decision. For a plain-English report on this update, see Liam O'Brien's post on the Melville House blog.
- New from the Folger et al: Shakespeare Documented, "the largest and most authoritative collection of primary-source materials" documenting Shakespeare's life.
- Sarah Werner has posted a trio of her recent pieces, all of which are very much worth a read.
- Applications for the Justin Winsor Library History Essay Award are due by 16 February. Information here.
- From Jennifer Howard, "The Year of Opening Up the Library."
- It's being billed as a plus, but locals are none too pleased about it: the Silver Buckle Press and its collections will be relocated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries to the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum.
- For the Washington Post, Sarah Kershaw reports on the efforts to save Malian manuscripts from Islamic extremists.
- Part III of the Collation writeup of the Folger's acquisitions at the Pirie sale, covering the manuscripts, is now posted.
- E.C. Schroeder has been reappointed to a second term as director of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and associate university librarian at Yale.
Book Reviews
- Eleanor Fitzsimons' Wilde's Women; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Deborah Lutz's Relics of Death in Victorian Literature and Culture and The Brontë Cabinet; review by Samantha Ellis in the TLS.
- Christopher Buckley's The Relic Master; review by Aram Bakshian, Jr. in the Washington Times.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Links & Reviews
- According to a Daily Sabah report, two manuscripts stolen from a library in Turkey in 2000 were returned after a doctoral student determined that the manuscripts had made their way to the Schoenberg collection at Penn.
- In The Atlantic, Henry Grabar covers the Smithsonian's use of 3-d printing technology to replicate artifacts.
- The New York Public Library has posted an update on the status of the Rose Main Reading Room: continuing asbestos removal and work on the reading room ceiling will keep the room closed until early 2017. They say they hope to be able to open the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room by the fall of 2016.
- From Eric Kwakkel, an overview of medieval book-theft-prevention techniques.
- A copy of the 1599 Oxford edition of Richard de Bury's Philobiblon will go on the block Tuesday at Sotheby's London. Presale estimates are £5,000–7,000.
- Over at the New Yorker's Culture Desk, Brown professor Elias Muhanna writes about "Hacking the Humanities."
- The New Mexico Commission of Public Records has issued a "warning" that the sale of state public records online is illegal, though they say they know of no recent cases of such sales.
- A German court has ruled that the descendants of Joseph Goebbels are to be paid royalties for quotations from Goebbels' diaries published in a biography by Peter Longerich. The publishers say they will appeal the ruling.
- MHS Librarian Peter Drummey is profiled by Bloomberg News' Tom Moroney.
- John Fea talks to Carla Mulford about her new book Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire.
- Simon Beattie highlights the first edition of the first library classification system published in Russia, devised for the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg and published in 1809.
- It's a little simplistic, but Michael Rosenwald has a piece in the Washington Post about the "prints to digital" shift in public libraries.
- Andrew Albanese, writing for Publishers Weekly, asks whether the nomination of the next Librarian of Congress could spark a political battle.
- E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan have been released as e-books by HarperCollins, and the publisher has launched a trailer for the e-version of Charlotte's Web. It's a cute trailer, mostly, though I was struck by the taglines at the end: "A timeless classic for the digital generation" and "Rediscover the magic with your kids." The trailer rather undercuts that second message, showing a young girl sitting alone (well, nearly; her dog is present) on her bed, staring at her tablet, while her mom stands silently in the doorway before walking away with a smile on her face. I'm not sure why this bothered me as much as it did: maybe it's just because I grew up hearing and then reading Charlotte's Web myself (and later reading it out loud to two cousins over a vacation week), but I found that shot profoundly sad: go, read with her, mom! (Not to mention the fact that I've always found the book itself perfectly magical enough, without any bells or whistles.)
.
- As a good antidote to the above, may I suggest Meghan Cox Gurdon's "The Great Gift of Reading Aloud"?
Reviews
- Leona Francombe's The Sage of Waterloo; review by Laline Paull in the NYTimes.
- Hugh Aldersey-Williams' In Search of Sir Thomas Browne; review by Spencer Lenfield in Slate.
- Noah Charney's The Art of Forgery; review by Adrian Higgins in the WaPo.
- Natasha Pulley's The Watchmaker of Filigree Street; review by Amal El-Mohtar in the LATimes.
- In The Atlantic, Henry Grabar covers the Smithsonian's use of 3-d printing technology to replicate artifacts.
- The New York Public Library has posted an update on the status of the Rose Main Reading Room: continuing asbestos removal and work on the reading room ceiling will keep the room closed until early 2017. They say they hope to be able to open the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room by the fall of 2016.
- From Eric Kwakkel, an overview of medieval book-theft-prevention techniques.
- A copy of the 1599 Oxford edition of Richard de Bury's Philobiblon will go on the block Tuesday at Sotheby's London. Presale estimates are £5,000–7,000.
- Over at the New Yorker's Culture Desk, Brown professor Elias Muhanna writes about "Hacking the Humanities."
- The New Mexico Commission of Public Records has issued a "warning" that the sale of state public records online is illegal, though they say they know of no recent cases of such sales.
- A German court has ruled that the descendants of Joseph Goebbels are to be paid royalties for quotations from Goebbels' diaries published in a biography by Peter Longerich. The publishers say they will appeal the ruling.
- MHS Librarian Peter Drummey is profiled by Bloomberg News' Tom Moroney.
- John Fea talks to Carla Mulford about her new book Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire.
- Simon Beattie highlights the first edition of the first library classification system published in Russia, devised for the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg and published in 1809.
- It's a little simplistic, but Michael Rosenwald has a piece in the Washington Post about the "prints to digital" shift in public libraries.
- Andrew Albanese, writing for Publishers Weekly, asks whether the nomination of the next Librarian of Congress could spark a political battle.
- E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan have been released as e-books by HarperCollins, and the publisher has launched a trailer for the e-version of Charlotte's Web. It's a cute trailer, mostly, though I was struck by the taglines at the end: "A timeless classic for the digital generation" and "Rediscover the magic with your kids." The trailer rather undercuts that second message, showing a young girl sitting alone (well, nearly; her dog is present) on her bed, staring at her tablet, while her mom stands silently in the doorway before walking away with a smile on her face. I'm not sure why this bothered me as much as it did: maybe it's just because I grew up hearing and then reading Charlotte's Web myself (and later reading it out loud to two cousins over a vacation week), but I found that shot profoundly sad: go, read with her, mom! (Not to mention the fact that I've always found the book itself perfectly magical enough, without any bells or whistles.)
.
- As a good antidote to the above, may I suggest Meghan Cox Gurdon's "The Great Gift of Reading Aloud"?
Reviews
- Leona Francombe's The Sage of Waterloo; review by Laline Paull in the NYTimes.
- Hugh Aldersey-Williams' In Search of Sir Thomas Browne; review by Spencer Lenfield in Slate.
- Noah Charney's The Art of Forgery; review by Adrian Higgins in the WaPo.
- Natasha Pulley's The Watchmaker of Filigree Street; review by Amal El-Mohtar in the LATimes.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Links & Reviews
Okay, one last gigantic links roundup and then with any luck at all I'll be back to a (slightly-more) regular schedule. I'm back at home now after the summer at Rare Book School, which was wonderful but very busy (hence the lack of posts). I had the great pleasure of taking Jan Storm van Leeuwen's Introduction to the History of Bookbinding course this year, and enjoyed the experience immensely (add it to your list, if it's not on there already). But that was just one of many highlights of the summer.
- Speaking of Rare Book School, Rebecca Rego Barry's "Letter from Rare Book School" is a must-read.
- One of the other students from my RBS class, James Capobianco, has begun posting images of neat bindings from the Houghton collections here.
- Gregory S. Girolami, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois, is conducting a census of the first edition of Robert Boyle's Sceptical Chymist (1661), and is looking for information on extant copies. Contact details are listed on Girolamni's website (and I've written often, I am a huge proponent of book censuses, so I encourage you to help if you can).
- The excellent Community Libraries project has issued a call for papers for three two-day colloquia in 2014 and 2015, which I suspect many readers will be interested in. Please do take a look and distribute widely.
- Via Mitch Fraas, a list of the books Lincoln checked out of the Library of Congress while president.
- Over at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie, Lew Jaffe explores the question of just what is the earliest American bookplate?
- An absolutely stupendous discovery was made this summer in the collections of Houghton Library: cataloger Karen Nipps found eight original 1767 subscription sheets signed by some 650 Bostonians pledging support of a boycott of British goods in response to the Townshend Acts. J.L. Bell comments on the find here.
- The FBI has posted images of 28 rare books and maps stolen by E. Forbes Smiley and not yet returned to their owners. Do you know where these belong?
- There was a well-worth-reading Reed Johnson piece on the Voynich Manuscript in the New Yorker back in July. Paul Romaine's response to the article shouldn't be missed, either. Johnson talked to NPR about the manuscript as well.
- Stephen Moss of The Guardian talked with Arnold (A.D.) Harvey, the man responsible for creating a fictitious meeting between Dickens and Dostoyevsky that was accepted as fact for years (exposed by Eric Naiman in the TLS in April). Fascinating article.
- The criminal conspiracy trial of Marino Massimo de Caro and his co-conspirators has been delayed until October.
- The ABAA blog noted the discovery of a Pearl Buck manuscript novel in a Texas storage locker.
- Ann Blair's 31 January talk at Columbia, "Methods of Collaboration Among Early Modern Humanists," is now available on YouTube.
- The Harry Ransom Center has acquired the McSweeney's archive.
- The John Carter Brown Library has uploaded its 5000th book to the Internet Archive (theirs is one of the best uses of the Archive I've seen).
- Pop star Kelly Clarkson was the winning bidder on the Jane Austen ring which sold last year at auction for better than £150,000, but the British government is seeking to stop the ring's removal from the country. UK buyers have until 30 September to raise the funds to match Clarkson's bid.
- Information on recent thefts of maps, posted on Ex-Libris in July: "The Chicago Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating the theft of historical topographical maps from various educational institutions. The maps are mostly from Central and Eastern Europe, including: Poland, Germany, Austria, and western Russia and their scales vary between 1:25,000 to 1:100,000. The maps are considered to be Interwar, meaning they were published between 1919 and 1939. Of particular interest are maps published by the Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny Instytut (Poland). The investigation has also revealed the theft of 19th century Austro-Hungarian topographical maps. The thefts have occurred as far back as 2008 and as recently as the spring of 2013. The FBI would like to identify as many victims as possible, and would like to interview individuals who may have been in contact with the individual or individuals responsible for these thefts. If you have information or believe your institution may have been the victim of a similar theft, please contact Special Agent Luigi Mondini at 312 829-5526 or luigi.mondini@ic.fbi.gov."
- Two books stolen from the National Library of Sweden by former librarian Anders Burius were returned to the library in late July, after the Baltimore dealer who purchased them at a German auction in 2008 bought them back from the clients to whom he had subsequently sold them.
- The investigation into the 2007 murder of book collector Rolland Comstock remains open, investigators say, even after the recent death of Comstock's ex-wife, found liable for his death in a civil suit. Greene County, MO sheriff Jim Arnott said that charges are still forthcoming related to the case.
- The Onion recently ran an obituary for print.
- From the Cambridge Incunabula Project blog, some unidentified provenance marks discovered in English incunables.
- Mount Vernon and the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington purchased the eight volumes from George Washington's library up for sale in June.
- Richard Luscombe reported for the Guardian on the sale of the Harrisburg collection of memorabilia. Normally I'd be completely appalled at a sale like this, but in this particular case, it seems to have been acquired haphazardly and without much thought, so better for the material to find more appropriate homes.
- Over on the Royal Society's blog, Rebecca Easey writes on the "crossroads between science and art," scientific illustration.
- The winners of the 2013 National Collegiate Book Collecting contest have been announced. Congratulations to all!
- From Matthew Green at the Public Domain Review, "The Lost World of the London Coffeehouse."
- There are Q&As with new Folger Director of Digital Access Eric Johnson and Research and Outreach Librarian Melanie Dyer at The Collation. And at Wynken de Worde, Sarah Werner discusses her new role as the Folger's Digital Media Strategist, which sounds tremendously exciting and awesome.
- A Poe manuscript sold for $300,000 at a small Rhode Island auction on 30 July.
- Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell takes a look at Alexander Gilles' editing of his copy of Isaac Watts' Psalms and edited out the British bits.
- John K. Hale, co-editor of a new edition of Milton's De Doctrina Christiana, reflects on the experience for the OSEO blog.
- At Mapping Books, Mitch Fraas posts about his research into print/book circulation between late 18th-century India and Europe, with some great visualizations. In a separate post, Mitch maps the current locations of 15-century books, with some very surprising results.
- The Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog has a new URL: http://library.law.yale.edu/blogs/rare-books.
- Back in July, the NYTimes covered (somewhat anecdotally, by necessity) Amazon's price-shifting practices.
- I almost can't believe that it's been more than four years now since John Quincy Adams started tweeting. The MHS blog has a look back. Thanks to Nancy Heywood and all the others at MHS who have kept the project going!
- Historian Edmund S. Morgan died in early July at the age of 97. The NYTimes ran a thorough obituary. The Junto ran a weeklong roundtable discussion on Morgan's life and legacy.
- From Res Obscura, a beginner's guide to reading early modern texts.
- The British Library has announced plans to bring together all four surviving original copies of the Magna Carta in 2015, to mark the charter's 800th anniversary.
- The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada are now (save the last three years) freely available online.
- William Blake's cottage in Felpham, West Sussex, is for sale.
- Some interesting background on the linguistic unmasking of J.K. Rowling as Robert Galbraith, the author of The Cuckoo's Calling: WSJ blog, Language Log (Patrick Juola).
- In the Boston Globe this weekend, Christine Woodside writes about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane's intentional crafting of the Little House books to enhance a libertarian political philosophy.
Reviews
- Anthony Pagden's The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters; review by Noel Malcolm in the Telegraph.
- Scott Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia; review by Alex von Tunzelmann in the NYTimes.
- Royce Prouty's Stoker's Manuscript; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at Fine Books Blog.
- Robert Wilson's Matthew Brady; reviews by Caleb Crain in the NYTimes; Dwight Garner in the NYTimes.
- Boris Kachka's Hothouse; review by Heller McAlpin in the LATimes.
- Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season; review by Helen Brown in the Telegraph.
- Travis McDade's Thieves of Book Row; review by Stephen J. Gertz at Booktryst.
- Brenda Wineapple's Ecstatic Nation; reviews by Scott Martelle in the LATimes; David Reynolds in the NYTimes.
- Caleb Crain's Necessary Errors; review by Aaron Hamburger in the NYTimes.
- Speaking of Rare Book School, Rebecca Rego Barry's "Letter from Rare Book School" is a must-read.
- One of the other students from my RBS class, James Capobianco, has begun posting images of neat bindings from the Houghton collections here.
- Gregory S. Girolami, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois, is conducting a census of the first edition of Robert Boyle's Sceptical Chymist (1661), and is looking for information on extant copies. Contact details are listed on Girolamni's website (and I've written often, I am a huge proponent of book censuses, so I encourage you to help if you can).
- The excellent Community Libraries project has issued a call for papers for three two-day colloquia in 2014 and 2015, which I suspect many readers will be interested in. Please do take a look and distribute widely.
- Via Mitch Fraas, a list of the books Lincoln checked out of the Library of Congress while president.
- Over at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie, Lew Jaffe explores the question of just what is the earliest American bookplate?
- An absolutely stupendous discovery was made this summer in the collections of Houghton Library: cataloger Karen Nipps found eight original 1767 subscription sheets signed by some 650 Bostonians pledging support of a boycott of British goods in response to the Townshend Acts. J.L. Bell comments on the find here.
- The FBI has posted images of 28 rare books and maps stolen by E. Forbes Smiley and not yet returned to their owners. Do you know where these belong?
- There was a well-worth-reading Reed Johnson piece on the Voynich Manuscript in the New Yorker back in July. Paul Romaine's response to the article shouldn't be missed, either. Johnson talked to NPR about the manuscript as well.
- Stephen Moss of The Guardian talked with Arnold (A.D.) Harvey, the man responsible for creating a fictitious meeting between Dickens and Dostoyevsky that was accepted as fact for years (exposed by Eric Naiman in the TLS in April). Fascinating article.
- The criminal conspiracy trial of Marino Massimo de Caro and his co-conspirators has been delayed until October.
- The ABAA blog noted the discovery of a Pearl Buck manuscript novel in a Texas storage locker.
- Ann Blair's 31 January talk at Columbia, "Methods of Collaboration Among Early Modern Humanists," is now available on YouTube.
- The Harry Ransom Center has acquired the McSweeney's archive.
- The John Carter Brown Library has uploaded its 5000th book to the Internet Archive (theirs is one of the best uses of the Archive I've seen).
- Pop star Kelly Clarkson was the winning bidder on the Jane Austen ring which sold last year at auction for better than £150,000, but the British government is seeking to stop the ring's removal from the country. UK buyers have until 30 September to raise the funds to match Clarkson's bid.
- Information on recent thefts of maps, posted on Ex-Libris in July: "The Chicago Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating the theft of historical topographical maps from various educational institutions. The maps are mostly from Central and Eastern Europe, including: Poland, Germany, Austria, and western Russia and their scales vary between 1:25,000 to 1:100,000. The maps are considered to be Interwar, meaning they were published between 1919 and 1939. Of particular interest are maps published by the Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny Instytut (Poland). The investigation has also revealed the theft of 19th century Austro-Hungarian topographical maps. The thefts have occurred as far back as 2008 and as recently as the spring of 2013. The FBI would like to identify as many victims as possible, and would like to interview individuals who may have been in contact with the individual or individuals responsible for these thefts. If you have information or believe your institution may have been the victim of a similar theft, please contact Special Agent Luigi Mondini at 312 829-5526 or luigi.mondini@ic.fbi.gov."
- Two books stolen from the National Library of Sweden by former librarian Anders Burius were returned to the library in late July, after the Baltimore dealer who purchased them at a German auction in 2008 bought them back from the clients to whom he had subsequently sold them.
- The investigation into the 2007 murder of book collector Rolland Comstock remains open, investigators say, even after the recent death of Comstock's ex-wife, found liable for his death in a civil suit. Greene County, MO sheriff Jim Arnott said that charges are still forthcoming related to the case.
- The Onion recently ran an obituary for print.
- From the Cambridge Incunabula Project blog, some unidentified provenance marks discovered in English incunables.
- Mount Vernon and the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington purchased the eight volumes from George Washington's library up for sale in June.
- Richard Luscombe reported for the Guardian on the sale of the Harrisburg collection of memorabilia. Normally I'd be completely appalled at a sale like this, but in this particular case, it seems to have been acquired haphazardly and without much thought, so better for the material to find more appropriate homes.
- Over on the Royal Society's blog, Rebecca Easey writes on the "crossroads between science and art," scientific illustration.
- The winners of the 2013 National Collegiate Book Collecting contest have been announced. Congratulations to all!
- From Matthew Green at the Public Domain Review, "The Lost World of the London Coffeehouse."
- There are Q&As with new Folger Director of Digital Access Eric Johnson and Research and Outreach Librarian Melanie Dyer at The Collation. And at Wynken de Worde, Sarah Werner discusses her new role as the Folger's Digital Media Strategist, which sounds tremendously exciting and awesome.
- A Poe manuscript sold for $300,000 at a small Rhode Island auction on 30 July.
- Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell takes a look at Alexander Gilles' editing of his copy of Isaac Watts' Psalms and edited out the British bits.
- John K. Hale, co-editor of a new edition of Milton's De Doctrina Christiana, reflects on the experience for the OSEO blog.
- At Mapping Books, Mitch Fraas posts about his research into print/book circulation between late 18th-century India and Europe, with some great visualizations. In a separate post, Mitch maps the current locations of 15-century books, with some very surprising results.
- The Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog has a new URL: http://library.law.yale.edu/blogs/rare-books.
- Back in July, the NYTimes covered (somewhat anecdotally, by necessity) Amazon's price-shifting practices.
- I almost can't believe that it's been more than four years now since John Quincy Adams started tweeting. The MHS blog has a look back. Thanks to Nancy Heywood and all the others at MHS who have kept the project going!
- Historian Edmund S. Morgan died in early July at the age of 97. The NYTimes ran a thorough obituary. The Junto ran a weeklong roundtable discussion on Morgan's life and legacy.
- From Res Obscura, a beginner's guide to reading early modern texts.
- The British Library has announced plans to bring together all four surviving original copies of the Magna Carta in 2015, to mark the charter's 800th anniversary.
- The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada are now (save the last three years) freely available online.
- William Blake's cottage in Felpham, West Sussex, is for sale.
- Some interesting background on the linguistic unmasking of J.K. Rowling as Robert Galbraith, the author of The Cuckoo's Calling: WSJ blog, Language Log (Patrick Juola).
- In the Boston Globe this weekend, Christine Woodside writes about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane's intentional crafting of the Little House books to enhance a libertarian political philosophy.
Reviews
- Anthony Pagden's The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters; review by Noel Malcolm in the Telegraph.
- Scott Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia; review by Alex von Tunzelmann in the NYTimes.
- Royce Prouty's Stoker's Manuscript; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at Fine Books Blog.
- Robert Wilson's Matthew Brady; reviews by Caleb Crain in the NYTimes; Dwight Garner in the NYTimes.
- Boris Kachka's Hothouse; review by Heller McAlpin in the LATimes.
- Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season; review by Helen Brown in the Telegraph.
- Travis McDade's Thieves of Book Row; review by Stephen J. Gertz at Booktryst.
- Brenda Wineapple's Ecstatic Nation; reviews by Scott Martelle in the LATimes; David Reynolds in the NYTimes.
- Caleb Crain's Necessary Errors; review by Aaron Hamburger in the NYTimes.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Links & Reviews
Apologies for the radio silence and the once-again epic roundup post of links and reviews. I've been down the delightful Rare Book School rabbit-hole for the last couple weeks, far too busy to manage to keep up with things here. But I've been saving up links and here they all are, before Google Reader goes away:
- Petrina Jackson from UVA Special Collections posted on their blog about the Rare Book School season there, which is great fun. (And yes, you can even see the back of my head in the final picture).
- Something not to be missed: Leah Price's essay "Books on Books," at the great site Public Books.
- New from Meredith Neuman at Clark University, Sermon Notebooks Online.
- Library and Archives Canada purchased the Sherbrooke Collection of War of 1812 documents at auction in London for $573,000.
- A new study suggests that the Voynich Manuscript may actually contain meaningful text, but skeptics remain unconvinced.
- Jerry Morris has posted about the process of cataloging (and recataloging) the library of James Boswell (on LibraryThing).
- Jennifer Lowe pointed out this week some new information on the de Caro thefts in Italy: recent police raids on bookshops in Florence, Rome, Milan, and Turin resulted in the recovery of more stolen books.
- A proof copy of the first bifolium from the Kelmscott Chaucer was up for grabs last week at PBA Galleries, but went unsold.
- Hathi Trust and the DPLA have announced a partnership, which will make some 3.5 million public-domain books available through the DPLA site.
- A Sternean mystery (the date of the original publication of the first volumes of Tristram Shandy) has been solved at last.
- The BL acquired several lots at the sale of the Mendham Collection.
- Yale's recent acquisition of the Anthony Taussig collection of legal books and manuscripts is highlighted in the NYTimes.
- New work on William Henry Ireland? Yes, please! Heather Wolfe and Arnold Hunt report on Shakespeare's personal library as curated by Ireland in his forgeries.
- In the LATimes Jacket Copy blog, Hector Tobar reports on Matthew Haley's recent comments about the state of the book trade in the digital age.
- Founders Online launched earlier this month, and there was a report on this in the Washington Post. J.L. Bell has a quick note on this here, including fears for the long-term health of the NHPRC.
- A copy of the first newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence sold this week at Robert Siegel Auction Galleries for $632,500, the largest sum ever paid for a historic newspaper. More on this here. The buyer was David Rubenstein.
- German authorities have recovered more than 15,000 books stolen from libraries (including the Bad Arolsen library) by a former official in the Hessian Ministry of Science. Some 2,000 books remain to be returned to their owners.
- On the Princeton Graphic Arts blog, Julie Mellby gives some love to the twenty-one artists who designed engravings for Baskerville's 1773 edition of Orlando Furioso.
- Nate Pedersen interviewed Joseph Felcone about his Printing in New Jersey 1754-1800: A Descriptive Bibliography.
- The National Archives will open a new David M. Rubenstein Gallery and Visitor Orientation Plaza this fall.
- Starting on 15 July, Guernsey's will be holding a seven-day sale of the Harrisburg Collection, some 8,000 items purchased by a former mayor with an eye toward creating a number of museums around the city.
- Ralph Gardner recently visited the Grolier Club and wrote about his trip in the WSJ.
- Four volumes of a copy of Don Quixote once owned by Thomas Jefferson failed to sell this week at a Virginia auction.
- All the libraries and museums in the United States, mapped. [h/t Tom Scheinfeldt]
- From the BBC Magazine, a report on early fashionista Mattheus Schwarz.
- Several books were reported stolen from Wentworth & Leggett Rare Books in North Carolina. See the full list and full contact information here.
- Peter Steinberg writes on the MHS' Beehive blog about some great detective work he's been doing to identify and reconnect pamphlets removed from Harbottle Dorr's newspaper volumes.
- Over at Booktryst, Stephen Gertz highlights a nice association copy of Common Sense which sold for $545,000 at a Sotheby's auction earlier this month. More on the sale over at Jacket Copy. At the same sale, seven books from George Washington's library fetched $1.2 million.
- The John Carter Brown Library is making its own publications freely available online.
- There's a really excellent guest post at The Collation about an annotated copy of The Roaring Girl.
- Also at The Collation, Erin Blake offers up part two of her series on proof prints.
- I was very pleased to see J.L. Bell's excellent response piece Paul Revere and the Sociologists.
- Another installment in the Anchora series on leaf books, this one focusing on a particularly annotated leaf from the Coverdale Bible.
- From the Appendix blog, a look at a 1680 sex manual that even made Pepys blush.
- Turkish media reports indicate several smugglers have been detained in Ankara with manuscripts stolen from Syrian repositories and illegally removed from the country to be sold on the black market.
- James Schmidt comments on Anthony Pagden's The Enlightnment and Why It Still Matters.
- Book collector Tom Johnson is profiled in the Springfield, MO News-Leader. Johnson's library, accumulated over three generations, is now the heart of the nonprofit Johnson Library and Museum, affiliated with Missouri State University.
- From the Houghton Library blog, Leslie Morris reports on the return of a volume from the library of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, gone missing from the Widener stacks at some point.
- Book Patrol notes the Morgan Library's publication of a new facsimile edition of the Van Damme Hours.
- At Medieval Fragments, David Ganz remembers master palaeographer Malcolm Parkes.
Reviews
- Nat Philbrick's Bunker Hill and Richard Beeman's Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor; review by Joyce Chaplin in the NYTimes.
- Neil Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane; review by Benjamin Percy in the NYTimes.
- Colum McCann's TransAtlantic; review by Erica Wagner in the NYTimes.
- Paul Collins' Duel with the Devil; review by Mark Schone in the LATimes.
- Joseph Ellis' Revolutionary Summer; reviews by Andrew Cayton in the NYTimes and Kirk Davis Swinehart in the WSJ.
- Travis McDade's Thieves of Book Row; review by Carolyn Kellogg in the LATimes.
- J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fall of Arthur; review by Andrew O'Hehir in the NYTimes.
- Allen Guelzo's Gettysburg; reviews by David Blight in the NYTimes and Ernest Furgurson in the WaPo.
- Petrina Jackson from UVA Special Collections posted on their blog about the Rare Book School season there, which is great fun. (And yes, you can even see the back of my head in the final picture).
- Something not to be missed: Leah Price's essay "Books on Books," at the great site Public Books.
- New from Meredith Neuman at Clark University, Sermon Notebooks Online.
- Library and Archives Canada purchased the Sherbrooke Collection of War of 1812 documents at auction in London for $573,000.
- A new study suggests that the Voynich Manuscript may actually contain meaningful text, but skeptics remain unconvinced.
- Jerry Morris has posted about the process of cataloging (and recataloging) the library of James Boswell (on LibraryThing).
- Jennifer Lowe pointed out this week some new information on the de Caro thefts in Italy: recent police raids on bookshops in Florence, Rome, Milan, and Turin resulted in the recovery of more stolen books.
- A proof copy of the first bifolium from the Kelmscott Chaucer was up for grabs last week at PBA Galleries, but went unsold.
- Hathi Trust and the DPLA have announced a partnership, which will make some 3.5 million public-domain books available through the DPLA site.
- A Sternean mystery (the date of the original publication of the first volumes of Tristram Shandy) has been solved at last.
- The BL acquired several lots at the sale of the Mendham Collection.
- Yale's recent acquisition of the Anthony Taussig collection of legal books and manuscripts is highlighted in the NYTimes.
- New work on William Henry Ireland? Yes, please! Heather Wolfe and Arnold Hunt report on Shakespeare's personal library as curated by Ireland in his forgeries.
- In the LATimes Jacket Copy blog, Hector Tobar reports on Matthew Haley's recent comments about the state of the book trade in the digital age.
- Founders Online launched earlier this month, and there was a report on this in the Washington Post. J.L. Bell has a quick note on this here, including fears for the long-term health of the NHPRC.
- A copy of the first newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence sold this week at Robert Siegel Auction Galleries for $632,500, the largest sum ever paid for a historic newspaper. More on this here. The buyer was David Rubenstein.
- German authorities have recovered more than 15,000 books stolen from libraries (including the Bad Arolsen library) by a former official in the Hessian Ministry of Science. Some 2,000 books remain to be returned to their owners.
- On the Princeton Graphic Arts blog, Julie Mellby gives some love to the twenty-one artists who designed engravings for Baskerville's 1773 edition of Orlando Furioso.
- Nate Pedersen interviewed Joseph Felcone about his Printing in New Jersey 1754-1800: A Descriptive Bibliography.
- The National Archives will open a new David M. Rubenstein Gallery and Visitor Orientation Plaza this fall.
- Starting on 15 July, Guernsey's will be holding a seven-day sale of the Harrisburg Collection, some 8,000 items purchased by a former mayor with an eye toward creating a number of museums around the city.
- Ralph Gardner recently visited the Grolier Club and wrote about his trip in the WSJ.
- Four volumes of a copy of Don Quixote once owned by Thomas Jefferson failed to sell this week at a Virginia auction.
- All the libraries and museums in the United States, mapped. [h/t Tom Scheinfeldt]
- From the BBC Magazine, a report on early fashionista Mattheus Schwarz.
- Several books were reported stolen from Wentworth & Leggett Rare Books in North Carolina. See the full list and full contact information here.
- Peter Steinberg writes on the MHS' Beehive blog about some great detective work he's been doing to identify and reconnect pamphlets removed from Harbottle Dorr's newspaper volumes.
- Over at Booktryst, Stephen Gertz highlights a nice association copy of Common Sense which sold for $545,000 at a Sotheby's auction earlier this month. More on the sale over at Jacket Copy. At the same sale, seven books from George Washington's library fetched $1.2 million.
- The John Carter Brown Library is making its own publications freely available online.
- There's a really excellent guest post at The Collation about an annotated copy of The Roaring Girl.
- Also at The Collation, Erin Blake offers up part two of her series on proof prints.
- I was very pleased to see J.L. Bell's excellent response piece Paul Revere and the Sociologists.
- Another installment in the Anchora series on leaf books, this one focusing on a particularly annotated leaf from the Coverdale Bible.
- From the Appendix blog, a look at a 1680 sex manual that even made Pepys blush.
- Turkish media reports indicate several smugglers have been detained in Ankara with manuscripts stolen from Syrian repositories and illegally removed from the country to be sold on the black market.
- James Schmidt comments on Anthony Pagden's The Enlightnment and Why It Still Matters.
- Book collector Tom Johnson is profiled in the Springfield, MO News-Leader. Johnson's library, accumulated over three generations, is now the heart of the nonprofit Johnson Library and Museum, affiliated with Missouri State University.
- From the Houghton Library blog, Leslie Morris reports on the return of a volume from the library of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, gone missing from the Widener stacks at some point.
- Book Patrol notes the Morgan Library's publication of a new facsimile edition of the Van Damme Hours.
- At Medieval Fragments, David Ganz remembers master palaeographer Malcolm Parkes.
Reviews
- Nat Philbrick's Bunker Hill and Richard Beeman's Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor; review by Joyce Chaplin in the NYTimes.
- Neil Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane; review by Benjamin Percy in the NYTimes.
- Colum McCann's TransAtlantic; review by Erica Wagner in the NYTimes.
- Paul Collins' Duel with the Devil; review by Mark Schone in the LATimes.
- Joseph Ellis' Revolutionary Summer; reviews by Andrew Cayton in the NYTimes and Kirk Davis Swinehart in the WSJ.
- Travis McDade's Thieves of Book Row; review by Carolyn Kellogg in the LATimes.
- J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fall of Arthur; review by Andrew O'Hehir in the NYTimes.
- Allen Guelzo's Gettysburg; reviews by David Blight in the NYTimes and Ernest Furgurson in the WaPo.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Auction Report: July Sales & Preview
Let me begin by noting that I'm very pleased by the new version of the Sotheby's website. Much smoother. July's a fairly quiet month (in fact yesterday was the key auction day), but here's what's up.
- Sotheby's Paris sold Comics on 4 July; the sale brought in a total of 645,224 EUR. The top lot was a Tintin strip, which fetched 234,740 EUR.
- Bloomsbury held a Bibliophile Sale on 4-5 July: results are here.
- PBA Galleries sold Fine Literature with Books in All Fields on 5 July; the top lot was an original Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript sonnet, which sold for $9,600.
- Sotheby's London had quite a day on 10 July, with three separate sales. The first was "The History of Script: Sixty Important Manuscript Leaves from the Schøyen Collection," which brought £2,590,200. Most lots did quite well, with the top price going to the Adler Papyri (£457,250).
At the Western Manuscripts & Miniatures sale, the total was £1,262,725. The top lot was the Welsh medieval manuscript "The Laws of Hywel Dda," sold by the Massachusetts Historical Society. It fetched £541,250 and was purchased by the National Library of Wales (which end result, at least, makes me very happy). I had not seen the catalog text for this, but am surprised that the provenance note does not make clear that this was at MHS at least before 1830, when it is referred to in the Proceedings.
And the third Sotheby's sale, English Literature, History, Children's Books and Illustrations, brought in £1,595,175. The highest price went to a turquoise and gold ring which once belonged to Jane Austen: it sold for £152,450 (well above the £20,000-30,000 estimate). A copy of Shakespeare's Fourth Folio fetched £127,250, and a Kelmscott Chaucer sold for £73,250. A first edition of Jane Eyre went for £67,250.
- At Bloomsbury on 19 July, Printed Books including Modern First Editions, in 579 lots.
- Also on 19 June, PBA Galleries sells Fine Americana, Travel & Exploration, with Ephemera & Manuscript Material, in 411 lots. A matched set of Audubon's Birds and Quadrupeds in octavo rates the top estimate, at $60,000-90,000.
- Sotheby's Paris sold Comics on 4 July; the sale brought in a total of 645,224 EUR. The top lot was a Tintin strip, which fetched 234,740 EUR.
- Bloomsbury held a Bibliophile Sale on 4-5 July: results are here.
- PBA Galleries sold Fine Literature with Books in All Fields on 5 July; the top lot was an original Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript sonnet, which sold for $9,600.
- Sotheby's London had quite a day on 10 July, with three separate sales. The first was "The History of Script: Sixty Important Manuscript Leaves from the Schøyen Collection," which brought £2,590,200. Most lots did quite well, with the top price going to the Adler Papyri (£457,250).
At the Western Manuscripts & Miniatures sale, the total was £1,262,725. The top lot was the Welsh medieval manuscript "The Laws of Hywel Dda," sold by the Massachusetts Historical Society. It fetched £541,250 and was purchased by the National Library of Wales (which end result, at least, makes me very happy). I had not seen the catalog text for this, but am surprised that the provenance note does not make clear that this was at MHS at least before 1830, when it is referred to in the Proceedings.
And the third Sotheby's sale, English Literature, History, Children's Books and Illustrations, brought in £1,595,175. The highest price went to a turquoise and gold ring which once belonged to Jane Austen: it sold for £152,450 (well above the £20,000-30,000 estimate). A copy of Shakespeare's Fourth Folio fetched £127,250, and a Kelmscott Chaucer sold for £73,250. A first edition of Jane Eyre went for £67,250.
- At Bloomsbury on 19 July, Printed Books including Modern First Editions, in 579 lots.
- Also on 19 June, PBA Galleries sells Fine Americana, Travel & Exploration, with Ephemera & Manuscript Material, in 411 lots. A matched set of Audubon's Birds and Quadrupeds in octavo rates the top estimate, at $60,000-90,000.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Robert Treat Paine's Books
I've just completed another Library of Early America, this the collection of Robert Treat Paine (1731-1814). Probably best known today as a signer of the Declaration of Independence (the tenth one whose library we've now reconstructed), Paine also was at various times a school teacher, a merchant (he made a whaling voyage to Greenland), an army chaplain during the Seven Years' War, and an important legal official in Massachusetts (serving as Attorney General from 1777-1790, and as a justice on the Supreme Judicial Court from 1790 through 1804).
Paine's library is documented in a manuscript "Catalogue of Books beloging to Robt. Treat Paine," with the Robert Treat Paine papers at MHS. Paine started his catalog in 1768, organizing the books by format (folio, quarto, octavo, &c.). He added to the list as he acquired new titles, and then reorganized the catalog in 1805, supplementing the organization with the addition of some "subject headings" (Law, Theology &c., History, Physiology & Philology, and Poetry & Belles Lettres).
An interesting feature of the library catalog is a list at the end of "books lent and to whom," revealing that Paine frequently loaned titles to various friends and relations (and almost always got them back, too). An interesting example is William Law's A serious call to a devout and holy life, which Paine loaned to "Miss Sally Cobb" (who would in 1770 become his wife) and to her mother, "Mrs. Cobb." Another is James Garton's Practical gardener, borrowed by General William Hull. The notes on loans are included with each applicable record.
On to the next! On deck is completing the catalog of Richard Cranch (the brother-in-law of John Adams, and a longtime friend of Robert Treat Paine, to whom Paine loaned a few books). Then it'll be on to David Cobb's library (Paine's brother-in-law) and Thomas Paine (his father). That is, unless some other library crops up and distracts me (as they are wont to do).
Paine's library is documented in a manuscript "Catalogue of Books beloging to Robt. Treat Paine," with the Robert Treat Paine papers at MHS. Paine started his catalog in 1768, organizing the books by format (folio, quarto, octavo, &c.). He added to the list as he acquired new titles, and then reorganized the catalog in 1805, supplementing the organization with the addition of some "subject headings" (Law, Theology &c., History, Physiology & Philology, and Poetry & Belles Lettres).
An interesting feature of the library catalog is a list at the end of "books lent and to whom," revealing that Paine frequently loaned titles to various friends and relations (and almost always got them back, too). An interesting example is William Law's A serious call to a devout and holy life, which Paine loaned to "Miss Sally Cobb" (who would in 1770 become his wife) and to her mother, "Mrs. Cobb." Another is James Garton's Practical gardener, borrowed by General William Hull. The notes on loans are included with each applicable record.
On to the next! On deck is completing the catalog of Richard Cranch (the brother-in-law of John Adams, and a longtime friend of Robert Treat Paine, to whom Paine loaned a few books). Then it'll be on to David Cobb's library (Paine's brother-in-law) and Thomas Paine (his father). That is, unless some other library crops up and distracts me (as they are wont to do).
[Update: 25 July 2010 - I've added 156 more titles, after stumbling across a section of pamphlets from RTP's library in the 1850 book catalog of his grandson, Charles Cushing Paine].
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Thomas Shepard Libraries (Part 2)
The second installment of the Thomas Shepard biblio-sleuthing saga is up at The Beehive. Here, a look at the MHS books from the Thomas Shepard libraries, with some additional notes on holdings in other institutions.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Book Review: "Lives Shaped by the American Revolution"
Jeannine Falino's Lives Shaped by the American Revolution: Portraits of a Boston Family (Harvard University Art Museums, 2005) highlights a collection of twelve family portraits which ended up in the possession of Catherine Coolidge Lastavica (some have now been given by her to various museums).
Thank goodness for the genealogical chart printed on the endpapers of this volume; without it the reader would have no chance at figuring out the connections between the sitters. As Jeanine Falino says in the first sentence of the text, "It is often said among art historians and genealogists who specialize in the history of colonial New England that the early settlers were all related to one another" (p. 13). The intertwined Speakman, Rowe, Inman, Linzee, Coffin and Amory families as outlined in the charts speak directly to this, and also, as Falino continues, "For those willing to look deeply into these portraits and the lives of their subjects, there is a fascinating story to be learned about American life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."
Falino's narrative briefly limns the lives and fortunes of the families whose portraits appear here, drawing on official records, genealogical accounts, family correspondence and papers (including John Rowe's diaries, the originals of which are at MHS, as are the Amory Family papers and other associated materials). Each of the twelve portraits (ranging across four generations of these families) is described in detail and reproduced in a high-quality color image.
Lastavica provides a useful preface to the book, outlining the descent of the portrait collection through her grandmother's family, and William Adair provides a short essay on the history of the frames on the portraits and their historical significance.
One of my favorite stories associated with this family is the union of Susan Amory with the great historian William Hickling Prescott, which resulted in the crossing of Amory's grandfather John Linzee's sword with that of Prescott's grandfather John Prescott (the two had been on opposing sides during the Battle of Bunker Hill). The swords hung crossed in the Prescott family home, and are now at MHS, still crossed.
A neat introduction to American art and the complications of New England genealogy.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Reading Abigail
Just a quick note on why things are so quiet around here: I'm totally absorbed in Woody Holton's new biography, Abigail Adams (Free Press, 2009). It's as good a biography as any I've ever read; a really excellent and very new interpretation of the total Abigail Adams: businesswoman, political strategist, savvy manager, mother, wife, friend, the whole shebang. It's commanded every spare moment, as a good book should. While I can't provide a full review (being acknowledged in the volume) I will say it's truly a delight to read, and its portrait will, I suspect, surprise and delight more than a few people.
Holton will be at MHS this coming Monday evening, 9 November, for the official launch of Abigail Adams. More info here; do join us if you can.
Holton will be at MHS this coming Monday evening, 9 November, for the official launch of Abigail Adams. More info here; do join us if you can.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Links & Reviews
Apologies for the delay in getting this out this week:
- At the Boston Public Library's Rare Books Room, an exhibit sponsored by the BPL and UMASS Boston has opened: "Sermons, Slavery and Scandal: The Printed Words of Early Boston, 1660-1830." The show will run through 30 September, during the regular hours of the rare books room (M-F, 9-5).
- Also at the BPL tomorrow (Tuesday), a panel discussion on the Google Books Settlement (6 p.m., Rabb Lecture Hall). Google Books Engineering Director Daniel Clancy, MIT Libraries Director Ann Wolpert and professors John Palfrey of Harvard Law School and Hal Abelson of MIT will explain and discuss the proposed settlement, and will take questions from the audience.
- From Vridar, an overview of the motives for forgery. [h/t Literary Fraud & Folly]
- Over at AuntieQuarian, the Rellas: a selection of 2008-09 Research Library awards. I'm pretty pleased that MHS won the "Best Pencils" award. We all decided we very much like the "Best Lunchtime Ritual" award as well ...
- In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Katie Haegele offers a list of summer reading for young adults.
- The semi-annual post about anthropodermic (human skin) bindings has arrived, courtesy of Carolyn Kellogg at Jacket Copy.
- Paul Collins notes his new Believer article on William Gardiner's 1832 pamphlet The Music of Nature.
Reviews
- Adam Kirsch reviews Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder for Slate.
- Kathryn Hughes reviews Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment in the Guardian.
- In the CSM, Marjorie Kehe reviews The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.
- Hobson Woodward's A Brave Vessel is reviewed by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
- Also in the Post, Michael Grunwald reviews Lynn Hudson Parsons' The Birth of Modern Politics.
- A fascinating review essay in the TLS, "Google Books or Great Books?" by Peter Green.
- At the Boston Public Library's Rare Books Room, an exhibit sponsored by the BPL and UMASS Boston has opened: "Sermons, Slavery and Scandal: The Printed Words of Early Boston, 1660-1830." The show will run through 30 September, during the regular hours of the rare books room (M-F, 9-5).
- Also at the BPL tomorrow (Tuesday), a panel discussion on the Google Books Settlement (6 p.m., Rabb Lecture Hall). Google Books Engineering Director Daniel Clancy, MIT Libraries Director Ann Wolpert and professors John Palfrey of Harvard Law School and Hal Abelson of MIT will explain and discuss the proposed settlement, and will take questions from the audience.
- From Vridar, an overview of the motives for forgery. [h/t Literary Fraud & Folly]
- Over at AuntieQuarian, the Rellas: a selection of 2008-09 Research Library awards. I'm pretty pleased that MHS won the "Best Pencils" award. We all decided we very much like the "Best Lunchtime Ritual" award as well ...
- In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Katie Haegele offers a list of summer reading for young adults.
- The semi-annual post about anthropodermic (human skin) bindings has arrived, courtesy of Carolyn Kellogg at Jacket Copy.
- Paul Collins notes his new Believer article on William Gardiner's 1832 pamphlet The Music of Nature.
Reviews
- Adam Kirsch reviews Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder for Slate.
- Kathryn Hughes reviews Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment in the Guardian.
- In the CSM, Marjorie Kehe reviews The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.
- Hobson Woodward's A Brave Vessel is reviewed by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
- Also in the Post, Michael Grunwald reviews Lynn Hudson Parsons' The Birth of Modern Politics.
- A fascinating review essay in the TLS, "Google Books or Great Books?" by Peter Green.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Book Review: "The MHS: A Bicentennial History"
[Note: Since I work there, I probably shouldn't be "reviewing" a book about the Society. But since it covers a period long before I came, I feel alright in commenting on it as a work. Consider this full disclosure.]
Every venerable organization should have a bicentennial history, and Louis Leonard Tucker's The Massachusetts Historical Society: A Bicentennial History, 1791-1991 (The Society, 1995) fills this niche ably for the MHS. Tucker provides a broad narrative survey of the first two centuries of the Society's existence, drawing on the published Proceedings and the vast unpublished organizational archives (as well as various outside books, articles, and manuscript collections). He chronicles the Society through good times and bad, recounting the changes and continuities which characterize the life of any longstanding institution.
Through biographical sketches of the principal leaders and staff members who have served the MHS over the course of its first centuries, plus anecdotes (some very humorous), and reports of organizational and financial activities, Tucker offers a (mostly) unvarnished examination of the Society's inner workings and public outreach. As an introduction to the subject, no better entry point has been published.
Useful appendices to the text list all members of the MHS from 1791 through 1991, as well as those who served in leadership and major staff capacities. This section of the book I use regularly, but until now I had not sat down and read the narrative chapters. These were worth the wait, and offered much new perspective about those who came before.
Every venerable organization should have a bicentennial history, and Louis Leonard Tucker's The Massachusetts Historical Society: A Bicentennial History, 1791-1991 (The Society, 1995) fills this niche ably for the MHS. Tucker provides a broad narrative survey of the first two centuries of the Society's existence, drawing on the published Proceedings and the vast unpublished organizational archives (as well as various outside books, articles, and manuscript collections). He chronicles the Society through good times and bad, recounting the changes and continuities which characterize the life of any longstanding institution.
Through biographical sketches of the principal leaders and staff members who have served the MHS over the course of its first centuries, plus anecdotes (some very humorous), and reports of organizational and financial activities, Tucker offers a (mostly) unvarnished examination of the Society's inner workings and public outreach. As an introduction to the subject, no better entry point has been published.
Useful appendices to the text list all members of the MHS from 1791 through 1991, as well as those who served in leadership and major staff capacities. This section of the book I use regularly, but until now I had not sat down and read the narrative chapters. These were worth the wait, and offered much new perspective about those who came before.
Friday, May 29, 2009
John Quincy Adams + Twitter?
A student who visited the MHS recently commented that JQA's "line-a-day" diaries were pretty similar to Twitter posts. Not far off, we thought! More at The Beehive.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Check out The Beehive!
I'm pleased to announce the launch of the official MHS blog, The Beehive. We went live late Friday afternoon with the first few posts. This'll be a collaborative effort between me and some colleagues, and will feature MHS news, historical notes, discussion posts, announcements and all that good stuff. I'm excited about the project, and always appreciate any suggestions, comments, &c. So stop on by, add the RSS feed to your reader, and enjoy!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
What I've Been Up To
It's been a busy week. Lots of meetings and other things, but also because I've been trying really hard to finish up a project which I'll be speaking about on Saturday at the New England Historical Association meeting in Portland, ME. That's George Wythe's library, which is now just about all into LibraryThing (here).* The reason this is interesting is because not very much at all was known about Wythe's library until fairly recently (last November or so), when a colleague from Monticello and I identified a list of books in the MHS' Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts as an inventory of Wythe's library, which was bequeathed to Jefferson. The list is now online digitally and in transcribed form, with the LT-catalog as an enhancement (complete title information, edition information where we know it, what Jefferson did with the books he received, where the remaining volumes went, &c.). Hopefully you'll be seeing more about this in other venues soon, but for now that's what I can tell you!
And if you're in Portland on Saturday morning, come by and hear the talk (info here, PDF).
*I still have a few titles and other cool data to add, including some notes on where Wythe originally got the books, &c.
And if you're in Portland on Saturday morning, come by and hear the talk (info here, PDF).
*I still have a few titles and other cool data to add, including some notes on where Wythe originally got the books, &c.
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