|
20.12.09.
No news today …
I'm simply too busy immediately before and after Christmas to do
anything other than run our bookshop, so no news here until January
2nd. Until then, I hope you all have a happy Christmas and a peaceful
New Year.
Add
a comment
18.12.09.
Jarndyce
aims to broaden appeal of antiquarian books
The antiquarian
market seems like a secret society, closed to anyone who isn't in
the know and in possession of a limitless budget. The bookshop Jarndyce,
opposite the British Museum, almost confirms this stereotype. For
starters, you have to ring a bell to gain entry. Yet the shop is
bustling on a weekday morning ... more
Add
a comment
Dig fails
to find poet Lorca's remains
Excavations in
southern Spain have failed to find the remains of Spanish poet Frederico
Garcia Lorca, whose 1936 killing became a symbol of a brutal civil
war, a forensic report said on Friday ... more
Add
a comment
Five go mad
as Blyton book sells for £600
A Scottish charity
shop was celebrating yesterday after selling a five shilling (25p)
copy of an Enid Blyton Famous Five mystery for almost £600 ... more
Add
a comment
"Through
Looking-Glass" first edition sells for $115,000
A first edition
of Lewis Carroll's classic book "Through the Looking-Glass, and
What Alice Found There" -- dedicated to the real life Alice who
inspired the story -- was sold at a U.S. auction for $115,000, auctioneers
said on Thursday ... more
Add
a comment
17.12.09.
Erotic
books come out of the closet
Simon Finch is
undoubtedly a maverick of the rare and antiquarian book world. Having
started out as a book trader at university, his reputation has spread
like wildfire, allowing him to break the manacles of convention
and launch his own book store bearing the slogan “Aspreys is now
trading opposite Simon Finch: Rare Books” ... more
Add
a comment
‘Supertramp’
poet’s clock to return to Newport
As the birthplace
of poet W H Davies, Newport already boasts a striking statue in
his honour - but next year a clock given to him on behalf of residents
will come back to the city ... more
Add
a comment
Put em right
on Enid Blyton
The enthusiasm
with which parents are buying books featuring old-fashioned discrimination
leaves a bad taste in the mouth ... more
Add
a comment
16.12.09.
Rare
Alice books up for auction
Several rare
early editions of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll are due to
be sold at auction in the US. One of the books belonged to 10-year-old
Alice Liddell, the Oxford don's inspiration for Alice, and is expected
to fetch up to £90,000 ... more
Add
a comment
Dickens toothpick
fetches $9,000 in New York auction
An ivory and
gold toothpick once owned by Charles Dickens has sold at auction
in New York City for $9,150 (£5,625) ... more
Add
a comment
Temple of
tomes is no tomb
Edinburgh began
its collection of books before it officially became a university.
Clement Little, a 16th-century advocate, was a keen supporter of
an educational establishment for Scotland's capital to rival the
already existing Glasgow, St Andrews and Aberdeen universities.
He donated his book collection in 1580, two years before Edinburgh
was inaugurated as a university ... more
Add
a comment
Plaintive
paper works that promise a fairy-tale ending
For most people,
fairy-tales stay firmly put on the page. But for artist Su Blackwell,
who creates whimsical, intricate paper-cut sculptures from second-hand
books, the magical, mythical folkloric creatures spill over into
everyday life ... more
Add
a comment
14.12.09.
Harold
Pinter’s library book returned after 59 years
In 1950 Harold
Pinter borrowed a first edition book by Samuel Beckett from the
Central Library in Bermondsey. There was a 59-year pause before
the library saw it again. Pinter had no intention of returning Murphy
— describing the prolonged loan as an act that he had “never regretted”
— but now the antiquarian bookseller that sold Pinter’s library
has returned the book so that he can buy it back off Southwark Council
for £2,000 and reunite it with the rest of the collection ... more
Add
a comment
War is declared
in the world of ebooks
Random House
US's letter to literary agents claiming the digital rights to its
backlist has stirred up a hornet's nest ... more
Add
a comment
Left Bank
Books to live on?
Left Bank Books,
may not close at all. Unlike similar bookstores that have recently
closed — the Oscar Wilde Bookshop is the latest example — Mr. Herzinger
said that he now planned to sign a five-year lease in the coming
weeks to move to a larger space in the neighborhood, just a few
blocks away. “There’s pride involved,” he said between sips of a
cappuccino at a nearby coffee shop. “I’m proud of that shop” ...
more
Add
a comment
Miniature
Gospel of Mark codex a forgery
The McCrone Group,
Inc. today announced their microanalytical examination of an illustrated
miniature manuscript (or codex) of the Gospel of Mark, termed the
"Archaic Mark," helped identify the manuscript as a forgery ...
more
Add
a comment
11.12.09.
BBC
and British Library to broaden access to archives
The BBC and British
Library today signed off on a joint project to give public digital
access to their huge combined archives. The Library contains more
than 150m items, plus 1m hours of BBC TV and radio footage dating
back as far as 1922 ... more
Add
a comment
Why the best
children's books are conservative
Yesterday’s news
that Thomas the Tank Engine has been branded misogynist and Right-wing
by a Canadian academic was very much not a surprise ... more
Add
a comment
10.12.09.
Scotland's oldest book goes on display
Scotland's oldest
book, a medieval Celtic psalter with vivid illustrations in green,
red, purple and gold, will be put on public display today for the
first time in 1,000 years ... more Add a comment
Rare words 'author's fingerprint'
Analyses of classic authors' works provide a way to "linguistically fingerprint" them, researchers say ... more Add a comment
Book of Hours: Incomparable value
Margaret Hodge raises prospect of libraries expanding role beyond lending books in major reconsideration of policy ... more Add a comment
E-readers not a 'must-have' Xmas present
With just two weeks until Christmas it is unlikely people will be receiving e-readers in their stocking this year, according to research ... more Add a comment
Exhibition
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Folio Society Gallery, British Library, London, December 14 2009 – February 21 2010. It documents the poem's origins in 11th century Persia, its translation in the Victorian era and its subsequent rise to international acclaim ... more Add a comment
09.12.09.
Book returned to Ohio library after 60 years
The biography
"Napoleon" by Emil Ludwig recently arrived at Toledo's main library,
with a brief note that read: "I removed this book from your stacks
in 1949 and did not check it out. I apologize. It's an excellent
book and in good condition" ... more
Add
a comment
Rare book
trading cards on Santa's top shelf
ABAA modern firsts
specialists, Between the Covers (BTC), in association with Biblioctopus,
has created 228 trading cards of the classic, most desirable rare
books and packaged them into three sets of seventy-six cards each.
Like baseball cards, the upper panel features a great portrait,
the rear panel providing vital stats: Place, Date, Edition, Binding,
Condition, and selling Price, along with a brief description ...
more
Add
a comment
Travel book
sails to record $758,000 at Bloomsbury
A world record
for a travel book was set when Samuel de Champlain’s Les Voyages
du Sieur de Champlain Xaintongeois ... Paris: Chez Jean Berjon,
1613, sold for double the high estimate at $758,000, inclusive of
the premium. The renowned Siebert copy of this landmark of French
Americana and New World Exploration is a work whose importance is
perhaps only surpassed by its scarcity. It is a first edition in
complete and unsophisticated condition and is a pioneering work
in ethnography and the first accurate mapping of the New England
coast. The book was purchased by London book dealer Peter Harrington
... more
Add
a comment
The first
of the megabooksellers
James Lackington's
Dome of the Muses set the template for a great bookshop two centuries
ago ... more
Add
a comment
WWII veteran
to return Hitler's art book
Sixty-four years
after John Pistone brought the album home to Ohio, the 87-year-old
has learned its full significance: It's part of a series compiled
for Hitler featuring art he wanted for his "Fuhrermuseum," a planned
museum in Linz, Austria, Hitler's hometown ... more
Add
a comment
08.12.09.
What were your worst books of the decade?
It's all very
well to make lists of the decade's best books, but surely the worst
books would give future generations a truer glimpse of the noughties.
Let's name and shame ... more
Add
a comment
An historic find, surrounded by controversy
Korea: Discovery of an ancient Hangul manuscript triggers lawsuits and a police investigation ... more Add a comment
Artist’s work ‘too negative’ for University library
An exhibition to mark the reopening of one of Scotland’s most important libraries will feature a magnificent medieval Psalter, dubbed Scotland’s Book of Kells — but it will go ahead without a new, rather more minimalist work commissioned from Douglas Gordon, the Turner Prize-winning artist ... more Add a comment
Egypt demands British Museum return Rosetta Stone
Egypt’s most senior antiquities official will visit Britain tomorrow to push on with a campaign to have the Rosetta Stone returned from the British Museum to its native country ... more Add a comment
04.12.09.
China's
International Antiquarian Book Fair
China's entry
into the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB)
in October is opening new worlds of literature and thought to readers
on the Chinese mainland and in the West, says Paul Feain, an Australian
bookseller who has come here for the International Antiquarian Book
Fair which opens today ... more
Add
a comment
All that's
old is new again
Publication on
Demand is allowing everyday readers to access rare books they could
not normally afford ... more
Add
a comment
Art v books:
a critical double standard
We don't rubbish
the Booker shortlist, or demand that it should be banned – yet we
do when it comes to the Turner prize. Why? ... more
Add
a comment
Books as
investment
I have a catalogue
of the great bookseller G. F. Sims with me on the road. It is from
1971 and could give an insight on books as an investment. If you
imagined that you had bought a dozen or so books from this catalogue
and were now selling them nearly 40 years later, what kind of return
would you be getting on your initial outlay? Bear in mind that we
have the benefit of hindsight and also that even if one had got
on the phone at 8.00 on the morning of the catalogue's first day
the books may not have been available ... more
Add
a comment
03.12.09.
New
ILAB website makes unofficial debut
The International
League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB)’s website redesign is now
live on the Internet ... more
Add
a comment
Rare 1st
Poe book could fetch record at NY auction
When a teenage
Edgar Allan Poe moved to Boston to find work in 1827, he was eager
to launch his literary career, re-establish his roots in the city
of his birth and distance himself from his foster father in Richmond,
Va. The result was his first book, "Tamerlane and Other Poems,"
virtually unnoticed when published but now one of the world's rarest
and most sought-after texts ... more
Add
a comment
Mysterious
Voynich manuscript is genuine, scientists find
An mysterious
unintelligible manuscript that has puzzled researchers for decades
has been dated to the 15th century and found to be genuine, according
to US studies that were presented Thursday by Austrian broadcaster
ORF ... more
Add
a comment
02.12.09.
Archaeologists
to dig up Shakespeare’s rubbish
A team of archaeologists
began digging on the site of Shakespeare’s last home yesterday in
a search for clues that might reveal more about his life ... more
Add
a comment
How to cook
porpoise, and other 600-year-old recipies
Even the most
adventurous celebrity chef would probably draw the line at cooking
porpoise, but according to a 600-year-old cookbook it was once on
the menu for Richard II ... more
Add
a comment
Old books
near last chapter
Today there are
only about 50 stores around the (Korean) nation that sell old and
rare books, and the number continues to dwindle ... more
Add
a comment
Anyone else
bored with books of the year?
They might have
served a useful function once, but these annual lists have been
made irrelevant by the blogosphere ... more
Add
a comment
Cathedral
city could show Gospels
There are hopes
that the city of Durham could play host to a three-month visit by
the Lindisfarne Gospels ... more
Add
a comment
Sale of George
Washington letter could set record
A signed four-page
letter from George Washington to his nephew is expected to break
sales records in one of two manuscript auctions at Christie's in
New York this week ... more
Add
a comment
Saving Africa's
precious written heritage
A drizzle of
dust and sand falls over Ahmed Saloum Boularaf's fingers as he gently
lifts the ancient, camel-skin bound manuscripts from a wooden box
and puts them on a desk in his makeshift library in a mud-brick
house close to the centre of Timbuktu. "Termites, rain and mice,"
he said in an accusing voice, brushing a few flecks of 15th Century
parchment from his jacket ... more
Add
a comment
01.12.09.
Why
shouldn't libraries sell books, asks minister
Margaret Hodge
raises prospect of libraries expanding role beyond lending books
in major reconsideration of policy ... more
Add
a comment
US author
Littell wins Bad Sex in fiction prize
A cringe-inducing
passage which compares a sexual encounter to battle with an one-eyed
mythological monster was awarded Britain's Bad Sex in Fiction Prize
... more
Add
a comment
Sir Arnold
Wesker's house for sale
Playwright Sir
Arnold Wesker is moving on from his Welsh hills hideaway, reports
Bernice Davison ... more
Add
a comment
Anne of Green
Gables expected to set auction record
One of the books
most coveted by collectors of Canadian literary history — a first
edition copy of Anne of Green Gables — is to be sold at auction
next week in New York for what could be a record price ... more
Add
a comment
No country
for old typewriters
Cormac McCarthy
has written more than a dozen novels, several screenplays, two plays,
two short stories, countless drafts, letters and more — and nearly
every one of them was tapped out on a portable Olivetti manual typewriter
he bought in a Knoxville, Tenn., pawnshop around 1963 for $50. Christie’s,
which plans to auction the machine on Friday, estimated that it
would fetch between $15,000 and $20,000 ... more
Add
a comment
Baudelaire
poems fetch record price
An original signed
copy of Charles Baudelaire's brooding romantic poems "Les Fleurs
de Mal" sold for a record 775,000 euros at an auction in Paris on
Tuesday ... more
Add
a comment
|
