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29.04.08.
New, a pop-up book (shop)
Bookshop owner Andrew Ball was struck by figures that showed only
18% of Australians would ever venture into a shop such as his, so
he devised a way to take such shops to the remaining 82% ... more
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Find of Sun
King's secret diaries too good to be true
It is hard to research history's bit-players - by their peripheral
nature they leave little behind. But for her biography of Louis
XIV's mistress author Veronica Buckley hit upon a startling, apparently
unmined source: the secret diaries of the Sun King himself ... more
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‘Inquiry
report on stolen Quran unattended for years’
While the police in Srinagar are still clueless about the theft
four years ago of a rare copy of the Quran bearing Mughal Emperor
Aurangazeb’s seal, an official of the state archives department
has claimed inaction for years over his inquiry report ... more
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28.04.08.
Last Nabokov work to be published
The son of late Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov has defended the
decision to publish the novelist's final work - against his father's
last wishes ... more
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Austen novel
'to sell for £50,000'
An inscribed presentation copy of a first edition of Emma by Jane
Austen could fetch £50,000 when it goes to auction in London ...
more
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Stolen Maps
Database Launched
The Missing and Stolen Maps Database, supported by the International
Antiquarian Mapsellers Association (IAMA) is now live. First announced
back in February, the database was designed by a large group of
librarians, map collectors, dealers, and others ... more
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The Book
And Word ‘Herder’
Author and bookshop owner Larry McMurtry receives the LAPL Literary
Award ... more
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25.04.08.
50 best cult books
Cult books include some of the most cringemaking collections of
bilge ever collected between hard covers. But they also include
many of the key texts of modern feminism; some of the best journalism
and memoirs; some of the most entrancing and original novels in
the canon ... more
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The Morgan's
'Medieval Hunt'
Sometimes, the upkeep of artwork has serendipitous side benefits.
At the Morgan Library, the temporary unbinding of the manuscript
"Le Livre de la Chasse" for conservation purposes has occasioned
a unique treat: an installation displaying most of its 87 remarkable
miniatures. Produced around 1407 by unknown scribes and illuminators,
the Morgan manuscript illustrates the hunting treatise written by
Gaston Phoebus for his friend and fellow hunter Philip the Bold,
Duke of Burgundy ... more
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Anonymity:
A Secret History Of English Literature
The whys and wherefores of anonymous publishing throughout the history
of English literature ... more
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Historians
call for Mein Kampf reprint
One of the great publishing taboos of modern Germany is beginning
to buckle: historians are pressing the authorities to bring out
a new edition of Adolf Hitler’s poisonously anti-Semitic manifesto,
Mein Kampf ... more
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23.04.08.
The future of books resides in their past
Google can digitize all books, but it can't replace the physical
connection we get from a 14th century tome ... more
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Self-published
memoir shortlisted for prize
For the first time, a self-published author has made it onto the
shortlist for the prestigious PEN/Ackerley prize for memoir and
autobiography. Jane Haynes's Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am?
is an unflinching journal of her life a psychotherapist, revealing
as much about the author as her patients ... more
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Record prices
at Swann Galleries
On April 3, Swann Auction Galleries offered a selection of fine
books spanning the centuries. The auction's top lot, Athenaeus,
Deipnosophistarum , first edition, Venice, 1514, attained a record
$192,000 ... more
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Will power:
the original Shakespeare texts
On the Bard's 444th birthday, the actors Simon Russell Beale and
Emma Fielding get their hands on a priceless First Folio ... more
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22.04.08.
Alain Bittar
Alain Bittar says his bookshop in Geneva is a reflection of his
own personality: a bridge between the Arab world and Europe ...
more
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Iran displays
Sheikh Bahaei manuscripts
Malek National Museum puts on display exquisite manuscripts of works
by Sheikh Bahaei, the prominent scholar of the Safavid era ... more
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Online trailblazers
set the pace to go digital
The British Library's historic newspapers archive is one of a handful
of pioneering digitisation projects that is setting an example to
others ... more
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Martin Parr
polarises the world of photography
Is he a sharp-witted genius whose pictures paint a satirical and
revealing portrait of British life? Or a sneering misanthrope on
the make? Our correspondent gets to grips with the ageing enfant
terrible of contemporary photography ... more
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21.04.08.
A vast archive of printed ephemera digitised
Approximately 65,000 items from the John Johnson Collection of Printed
Ephemera, housed in the Bodleian Library, have so far been catalogued,
conserved and digitized in collaboration with an electronic publisher
called ProQuest ... more
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The Mapping
of Ukraine
The Mapping of Ukraine: European Cartography and Maps of Early Modern
Ukraine, 1550-1799, includes 42 original maps published by European
mapmakers over a 250-year period. A majority of the maps in the
exhibition are from the Museum's Marie Halun Bloch Collection, which
consists of 52 maps bequeathed to the Museum by the Ukrainian American
writer of children's books upon her death in 1998 ... more
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Manga Shakespeare
A British publisher has scored a hit with manga comic book versions
of Shakespeare's classic plays -- and this week unveiled plans for
more ... more
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18.04.08.
Amsterdam: literature's capital city
On April 23, World Book and Copyright Day, Amsterdam will be officially
inaugurated as World Book Capital 2008. The ensuing year-long programme
of events centres around an 'open book' theme, a reminder that Amsterdam's
infamous tolerance doesn't just equate to legal coffeeshops and
brothels - rather, it was vital in the city's development as a refuge
for the written word ... more
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17.04.08.
Online archive shows how Darwin's ideas evolved
About 90,000 pages of manuscripts, field notes, photographs and
sketches connected with Charles Darwin are being placed online,
where they can be viewed free. Among the gems are his first formulation
of the theory of natural selection, his first written doubts that
species were fixed and touching correspondence from his wife on
religious faith ... more
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Bond makes
an exhibition of himself... once again
James Bond fans will be stirred, if not shaken, by the Imperial
War Museum's latest exhibition. For Your Eyes Only, which opens
tomorrow, shows to what extent the adventures of agent 007 were
based on the life of his creator, Ian Fleming, in the writer's centenary
year ... more
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Blood On
Paper: The Art Of The Book
This bold display of work ranges from Matisse to Rauschenberg to
Hirst. It includes great surprises, such as the saturated totemic
prints of abstract Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida. There isn’t
an overriding theme but the curators have selected works which demonstrate
great craftsmanship, which is appropriately so very V&A ... more
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16.04.08.
Irish independence proclamation sells for record price
An original version of Ireland's Proclamation of Independence, printed
as part of the country's 1916 rebellion against British rule, sold
for a record 360,000 euros ($570,000) at auction in Dublin ... more
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Judge urges
settlement in Harry Potter guide lawsuit
U.S. District Judge Robert Patterson Jr. said the copyright infringement
case was a legal close call, involving unresolved areas of American
law, and was almost certain to end in years of appeals ... more
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BBC wins
battle over Dalek book
A BBC book about Doctor Who's legendary foes the Daleks has been
cleared of infringing copyright in London. The case was brought
by publishers JHP, who printed four books with stories by Dalek
creator Terry Nation in the 60s ... more
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15.04.08.
In the beginning was the bestseller
Is this the world's finest bookshop? Jonathan Glancey on a new life
for an old church ... more
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'Sniffing'
technology for old books
A pioneering project to chemically "sniff" books could determine
a tome's state of health and help protect valuable volumes from
decay, scientists have revealed ... more
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The Archimedes
Codex unpeeled
This is about an ancient book called The Archimedes Codex, bought
for $2.2 million in October, 1998, at an auction in New York City
by an anonymous collector who sent it to the Walters Art Museum,
here to be restored, conserved, and probed for its content. It was
thought to contain mathematical theses conceived by the genius of
Syracuse (287-212 BC), whose name it bears, ideas not found anywhere
else in the world ... more
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Thief rips
pages from rare books
A thief posed as a student to steal centuries-old documents about
the origins of the Catholic church in Scotland worth thousands of
pounds ... more
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12.04.08.
Re-created library speaks volumes about Jefferson
For the past decade, a small group of rare book experts has sought
to re-create Jefferson's library, scouring antiquarian book collections
on two continents to acquire thousands of volumes. The entire collection
of more than 6,000 volumes -- some originals and some replacements
-- will go on display today at the Library of Congress, looking
much as it would have 200 years ago ... more
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Thinking
about book collecting?
Well so is Kristen Ogden. Her piece over at the
Kenyon Review blog, "Antiquarian Book Collector Wanna-be", gives us a worthy peek
into the process ... more
Add a comment Abebooks
buys US bookseller host
Online second-hand bookseller AbeBooks.com has
bought Chrislands, a US-based business that builds, hosts and maintains online
bookstores. The sum paid was not disclosed. It is AbeBooks' fourth acquisition
in the past four years ... more
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10.04.08.
Lawsuit ends Arbus auction
A lawyer for the owner of a group of rare,
early prints by the photographer Diane Arbus said on Wednesday that the auction
house Phillips de Pury canceled the sale because of concerns about a recent lawsuit
filed by a man who claims he was duped out of the prints ... more
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biopic to headline Edinburgh film festival
The Edge of Love, a film about
the life and loves of the poet Dylan Thomas, has been selected as the opening
night gala for this year's Edinburgh international film festival. It is directed
by John Maybury and stars Keira Knightley, Matthew Rhys and Sienna Miller ...
more
Add a comment 'Middle
Ages’ manuscript fetches EUR 300,000
The handwritten Book of Hours dating
from around 1460 had generated a great deal of interest from foreign and domestic
collectors. The manuscript was discovered during a valuation day at the auction
house. The owner, who inherited the book, had found it in his attic ... more
Add a comment Islamic
manuscript sells for record price
A Koran dated to the middle of the seventh
century was sold for nearly 2.5 million pounds (3.1 million euros, 4.9 million
dollars) on Tuesday, a world record price for an Islamic manuscript at auction
... more
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08.04.08.
First book of African American poetry donated
John LaPine, owner of Printers
Row Fine & Rare Books in Chicago, will present a copy of the first book of poetry
published by an African American to David Carlson, dean of Library Affairs, at
noon Friday, April 11, in a brief ceremony at Morris Library ... more
Add a comment Rare
religious book to go on display
A "unique" religious book dating from
the 15th century has been purchased by the National Trust for public display in
Cheshire. The trust said it had bought the sole surviving copy of the Sarum Missal,
a popular version of the Mass used in pre-Reformation England, printed for William
Caxton in Paris in 1487 ... more
Add a comment Collectors
relish rare bookstore offerings
A common response among visitors to Bauman
Rare Books in the Shoppes at the Palazzo is that they have never seen another
store like it. That's not surprising since there are only two other Bauman stores
in the United States and the retailer's collection of rare and antiquarian books
and documents is among the finest in the world ... more
Add a comment Taking
women off the shelf
It was a kind of magic for Rachel Cooke when she first
picked up a Virago Modern Classic. Suddenly a whole world of fabulous, neglected
women writers - from Stevie Smith to Antonia White - opened up before her. On
the eve of the series' 30th anniversary, she traces how the imprint changed the
publishing landscape for ever ... more
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04.04.08.
The caped crusader
For comic-book fans, Fredric Wertham is the biggest
villain of all time, a real-life bad guy worse than the Joker, Lex Luthor, and
Magneto combined. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Wertham was the intellectual
spearhead of the anti-comics crusade, arguing in many articles and his 1954 best-seller,
Seduction of the Innocent, that comic books stultified the imagination of normal
kids (giving them a taste for blood and gore that would prevent them from ever
appreciating literature and fine art) and severely damaged the socially vulnerable,
contributing to juvenile delinquency ... more
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receives handwritten Bible
Pope Benedict XVI was presented Friday with
one of the limited editions of the St. John's Bible, the first known handwritten
Bible commissioned by a Benedictine monastery since the invention of the printing
press over 500 years ago ... more
Add a comment The
US Ephemera Society show delights the crowds
The popular event has become
the pinnacle of paper shows, with dealers traveling from England and Europe to
display their stock. It is also an interesting and exciting walk through history
... more
Add a comment Scotland's
oldest printed book on show
The earliest dated printed book in Scotland
goes on display in the Capital today 500 years after it was made. John Lydgate's
The Complaint of the Black Knight was printed by Chepman and Myllar on April 4,
1508, at their press in the city's Southgate, which is now the Cowgate ... more
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03.04.08.
Dickens's `Oliver Twist' Sells for a Record $229,000
A first edition of
``Oliver Twist,'' Charles Dickens's tale of a scrappy young orphan making his
way among a band of thieves in 19th-century London, sold for $229,000 at Christie's
International in New York yesterday, a record for the British novelist ... more
Add a comment Decline
of the picture book
The children's book fair in Bologna this week was
full of the bubble and squeak that such events elicit. But a serious sub-theme
lurked: how to revive picture books, those lavishly illustrated creations that
teach children to love books long before they can read them ... more
Add a comment Lincoln
letter sets auction record
Abraham Lincoln's heartfelt reply to a group
of youngsters who asked him to free America's "little slave children" has sold
for $3.4 million ... more
Add a comment Missing
library books total £57,000
More than 8,000 items are missing from libraries
in West Sussex. The latest stocktake revealed that 7,402 books, 157 audiobooks
and 600 music items have disappeared from shelves ... more
Add a comment Man
Arrested for map thefts
James Lyman Brubaker of Great Falls, Montana,
who used the E-Bay name “Montana Silver” on the website eBay, is alleged to have
stolen numerous original maps and lithographs from Western Washington University
library ... more
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01.04.08.
Cambridge University treasures make trip down under
A spectacular collection
of illuminated manuscripts from the University of Cambridge has gone on display
in Australia. The newly-opened exhibition, at the Victoria State Public Library
in Melbourne, features precious examples from the University Library, Fitzwilliam
Museum, Trinity College and Corpus Christi College ... more
Add a comment Cat
burglar strikes library
The Newman Library was robbed of some of its most
precious and prized books over the weekend by the so-called "Book Bandit." The
stealthy, ninja-like crook pilfers rare books housed in college campus libraries
and has struck 15 colleges across the nation so far ... more
Add a comment The
Mystery of the Copper Scroll
The Copper Scroll describes a hidden cache
of gold and silver buried in more than 60 locations throughout Israel. The monetary
value is close to $3 billion, but the historical value - is priceless ... more
Add a comment Gray's
Anatomy celebrates 150th anniversary
A vital work on every doctor's bookshelf,
an essential prop in any respectable medical drama (it has even given its name
to one), the text has spawned countless imitations, while its title has become
a household word. Its success is celebrated in an exhibition that opens next week,
and its intriguing history unravelled in a book to be published this September
... more
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