Sunday, July 20, 2014

Links & Reviews

- A copy of Lefevre's Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, the first book printed in English, sold for £1,082,000 at Sotheby's this week. The CSM reported on the sale.

- From Sarah Werner at The Collation, an exploration of symbols used as signature marks.

- Rebecca Romney writes on "Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Materials as Meaning."

- More on the Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe project from the CSM and The Guardian.

- In Prospect, Sarah Dry offers an excerpt of her new book The Newton Papers.

- Cambridge University has launched a new online exhibition celebrating the 500th anniversary of Vesalius' birth.

- At Yale Books, an interview with David Knight, author of Voyaging in Strange Seas.

- One of this summer's "catalog campers" at AAS, Samantha Cook, reports on her experiences working with the tremendously important Printers' File.

- The Supreme Court has refused to hear an "emergency petition" from Conan Doyle's literary heirs over a planned book by Leslie Klinger.

- Over at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie, Lew interviews bookplate artist Daniel Mitsui.

- At Notabilia, Stephen Ferguson highlights a copy of Anti-Machiavel containing extensive manuscript annotations from other versions of the text.

Reviews

- Andrew Pettegree's The Invention of News; review by Julianne Werlin in the LA Review of Books.

- Deborah Harkness' The Book of Life; review by Paula L. Woods in the LATimes.

- Lawrence Buell's The Dream of the Great American Novel; review by Sarah Graham in the TLS.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Links & Reviews

- Newly available as free PDFs, DCRM(Books) and DCRM(Serials). DCRM(Graphics) is also available in the same format.

- On the Houghton Library blog, John Overholt writes about the re-acquisition of a set of Addison's works that were acquired by Harvard in the aftermath of the 1764 fire, but later removed as duplicates.

- Patrons have emptied the shelves of a small Devon village library after planned funding cuts threatened to close the library.

- The WaPo reports on the Folger Library's ambitious plan to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 2016 by exhibiting a First Folio in every U.S. state, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

- New from USGS, Historical Topographic Map Explorer, which I'm looking forward to playing with. Read about it here.

- Rick Gekoski writes for The Guardian on "How to get ahead - or at least stay afloat - in the rare book trade."

- Elizabeth Yale writes at The Atlantic on "The Mortality of Paper."

- From Midwest Arcadia, Susan Donahue Karetsky writes on "Lairesse Meets Bidloo, or, the Case of the Absent Anatomist."

- Jennifer Schuessler reports on several efforts to document early marginalia, including the newly-Mellon-funded project Exploring the Archaeology of Reading. More from JHU here.

- Sarah Werner works on identifying a distinctive leather bookplate at The Collation.

- Over at Notabila, an incunable containing an early leather bookmark with rotating column indicator.

Reviews

- Fred Kaplan's John Quincy Adams; review by Alec Rogers in the Washington Times.

- Ben Shephard's Headhunters; review by Adam Kuper in the TLS.

- John Paul Steven's Six Amendments; review by Steven Calabresi in the WSJ.

- Michael Blanding's The Map Thief; review by Maxwell Carter in the WSJ.

Sunday, July 06, 2014

Links & Reviews

I've updated the blog list at right, removing now-dead links, indicating those that haven't been updated within the last year, and adding a few. As always, if there are blogs, &c. you think I ought to be linking to there, let me know!

- The Telegraph reports today on the 16 July sale at Christie's of a fascinating library collected by multiple generations of English bibliophiles, containing quite a few bibliographic treasures.

- A new Neatline/Omeka presentation of the Declaration of Independence by David McClure launched this week, and it's very much worth a look.

- David Rubenstein has funded a new facsimile of the 1823 Stone facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, to allow one framed copy of be displayed in each U.S. embassy. Seth Kaller, Inc. produced a 24-page booklet to accompany the facsimiles.

- The NYPL displayed a copy of the Declaration in Jefferson's hand this week, drawing more than 10,000 visitors.

- Jennifer Howard reported for the Chronicle this week on the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's preparations for a new strategic plan, to be released this summer.

- The NYTimes reported on a punctuation question that has arisen around the text of the Declaration of Independence as presented by NARA. Danielle Allen's full paper on which the article is based is here, and Joe Adelman weighed in.

- Simon Beattie reminds us other things happened during 1776, highlighting a new collection of material printed at Stargard SzczeciƄski (Poland) to document the celebrations held to welcome Catherine the Great's son, Paul, who visited the town enroute to Berlin where he was to meet a new wife.

- Michael Beschloss wrote about the 1952 transfer of the major American founding documents from the Library of Congress to the new National Archives building.

- Amazon's Jeff Grandinetti spoke to the WSJ about the company's ongoing feud with Hachette; Melville House's Alex Shephard responds.

- The Yale Digital Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson are currently available in beta form.

Reviews

- Richard W. Oram and Joseph Nicholson's Collecting, Curating, and Researching Writers' Libraries: A Handbook; review by Peter Steinberg at Sylvia Plath Info.

- Fred Kaplan's John Quincy Adams; review by Edward Cuddihy in the Buffalo News.

- Diana Scarisbrick & Benjamin Zucker's Elihu Yale; review by Martin Rubin in the Washington Times.

- Alex Beam's American Crucifixion; review by Benjamin Moser in the NYTimes.

- Michael Blanding's The Map Thief; review by Pradeep Sebastian in The Hindu.

- Danielle Allen's Our Declaration; review by Steven B. Smith in the NYTimes.