31.10.06.
The
English Short Title Catalogue available online
Founded in 1976 as an Anglo-American
cooperative project, work began on it at the British Library in 1977. Professor
Henry L. Snyder, now at UCR, inaugurated the American counterpart in 1978.
The
English Short Title Catalogue is an essential resource for historians, literature
scholars, and even genealogy hobbyists. It provides bibliographic records for
all surviving letter press material in the British Isles and North America before
1801, held by the British Library and over 2000 other institutions worldwide ...
more Add
a comment
30.10.06.
Author
Nadine Gordimer attacked
Former Booker winner and winner of the Nobel Prize
for literature, Nadine Gordimer, has been attacked at her home in South Africa
... more Add
a comment On
the road less traveled
While independent bookstores are gradually disappearing,
Richard Beards has found a formula that works for him. Since April of 1994, when
not teaching in Philadelphia, he devotes his time to the Bookplace, close to his
Kirkwood home ... more Add
a comment Special
collections
Does it matter where an author's papers are kept, wonders Brenda
Maddox ... more Add
a comment War
of words erupts over sale of ancient texts
Plans by a Geneva museum to
sell two ancient manuscripts for millions of dollars have drawn consternation
from scholars around the world. They fear the sale of the papyri, which date back
to the 2nd century, could precipitate the break-up of a unique collection of around
50 texts held by the Bodmer Foundation ... more Add
a comment
26.10.06.
Judge
shows leniency to remorseful book thief
A library assistant who stole ancient
and rare books worth £175,000 to sell on the internet walked free from court today.
Norman Buckley, 44, took more than 455 ancient books, posters and other documents
while working at Manchester's central library. He was sentenced today to 65 weeks
imprisonment, suspended for two years, and told to perform 250 hours of community
service ... more Add
a comment Coleridge
heirlooms auctioned off
An auction of the contents of a house which belonged
to the family of Samuel Taylor Coleridge raised nearly £1.5m ... more Add
a comment Beam
me up Scotty - and misquote me for better effect
Some of history's most
famous one-liners are about to be exposed as inventions by other writers with
plenty of time to hone their prose. Hundreds of pithy remarks from "Let them eat
cake" to "Elementary, my dear Watson", turn out to be adaptations of comments
that were more clumsy or more boring - or which were never said by those thought
to have coined them ... more Add
a comment Public
to vote for Carnegie of Carnegies
The public is to be given the chance
to vote on the "Carnegie of Carnegies", their favourite winner of the children's
book award from the past 70 years, as part of the prize's anniversary celebrations.
Fans of children's illustration can vote in a separate poll of Greenaway medal
winners, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year ... more Add
a comment
25.10.06.
Author's
project is preservation
There are a lot of things Charles Frazier would
like to preserve in his home state of North Carolina, but right now there are
two in particular on his mind: independent bookstores and the Cherokee language
... more Add
a comment Row
over 'tyrant' Menzies library book
A principal is resisting calls from
a Liberal senator to remove a book from his school's library which labels former
Australian prime minister Sir Robert Menzies a tyrant ... more Add
a comment "Unpublishable"
book set to launch
A book turned down by American publishers for its content
is about to be published in Canada and distributed throughout North America. Bodies
and Souls: The Century Project presents a chronological series of nude photographic
portraits of 98 women from the moment of birth to nearly a hundred years of age.
The photographs are accompanied by statements, usually written by the women themselves,
and often very moving ... more Add
a comment Trial
for woman charged in theft of Glenn Gould items
A New York jury was asked
Monday to convict a college professor on charges of stealing thousands of dollars
worth of items once owned by the late classical pianist Glenn Gould. When Barbara
Moore was arrested in May, prosecutors said she had stolen photographs, books,
compositions, audio and video recordings, letters and other writings and items
such as hats and gloves that Gould's estate donated or sold to the Ottawa library
... more Add
a comment
24.10.06.
University
of Minnesota acquires Robert Bly’s archive
The University of Minnesota
Libraries have purchased the manuscripts, correspondence and personal papers of
one of the world’s greatest living writers -- acclaimed American poet Robert Bly
... more Add
a comment State
library unveils new high-tech rare books room
Pennsylvania's collection
of invaluable and irreplaceable books and periodicals will be better protected
for future generations now that the State Library is able to store them in a newly
designed, high-tech rare collections library ... more Add
a comment At
war with himself
Sensitive observer or imperialist war-monger? Griff Rhys
Jones on the two faces of Rudyard Kipling ... more Add
a comment Restoring
life to Audubon prints
Conservator Anna Krain sprinkles what looks like
grated Parmesan cheese on a 19th-century print of winter wrens and rock wrens.
But these crumbs are pure white vinyl eraser. Under Krain's gentle massage, they
pull the top layer of dirt from this historic artwork in the Maryland State Law
Library's collection of original Birds of America prints by wildlife illustrator
John James Audubon ... more Add
a comment
23.10.06.
WWI
letters from the front auctioned
A collection of cartoons, letters and
a journal written on the front lines by a Canadian soldier during the First World
War sold Thursday to a Toronto dealer for $5,500. The rare letters with first-hand
accounts of war experiences were all but forgotten for 80 years before turning
up in an estate sale in a Kingston auction house ... more Add
a comment Ghostwriters
scare up six-figure deals for memoirs
This month's Bookseller magazine
has revealed that of the 10 bestselling non-fiction books so far this year, half
were written by so-called ghosts. Mark McCrum, ghostwriter of Robbie Williams'
autobiography Somebody Someday earned a £200,000 advance, plus a share of the
profits. The sum dwarfs the £20,000 to £25,000 a talented literary novelist can
earn in advance of publication ... more Add
a comment Native
American scrolls headed home
Native American scrolls, written on birch
bark in an ancient language, have been turned over to a Minnesota tribe. Ray and
Joyce Cloutier had kept the scrolls for decades after they were handed down in
Ray's family. A spokeswoman for a Chippewa tribe says the scrolls deal with religion,
but will have to be studied by tribal elders in an effort to decipher them ...
more Add
a comment Pastor
and wife charged with stealing Bibles
Browsing through eBay, the church
member saw a nice antique, leather-bound set of Bibles that looked oddly familiar,
just like the ones that went missing about a year ago from First United Church
of Christ in Royersford, Montgomery County ... more Add
a comment
22.10.06.
Travel
writer Newby dies aged 86
Travel writer Eric Newby, whose works included
A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush, has died at the age of 86. Newby began travelling
after World War II with a climbing expedition in Afghanistan, which formed the
basis of his best-known book ... more Add
a comment
20.10.06.
Antiquarian
bookshop celibrates 40 years
Duncan Allsop modestly claims to be "fairly
well read" having been an antiquarian bookseller in the UK town of Warwick for
the past 40 years, an anniversary he and his wife Veronica celebrated this week
... more Add
a comment 'Irish
history collection donated to Mayo library
The Jackie Clarke Collection
spans nearly 400 years of Irish history and contains over 22,000 items: rare books,
manuscripts, legal papers, pamphlets, handbills, newspapers, autograph books,
news sheets, circulars, reports, letters, periodicals, cartoons, maps, minute
books, thesis, articles and proclamations.
It was
put together during the lifetime of Ballina man, Jackie Clarke, an ordinary man
with an extraordinary passion for history ... more Add
a comment Rare
book donated to charity shop
The anonymous donation was made to an Exeter
Oxfam shop in July, but has only just been valued at £4,500. "Sinai & Palestine"
by Francis Frith is a collection of 37 photographic prints of the Holy Land taken
by the photographer in 1862 ... more Add
a comment Darwin's
entire works go online
The collection brings Darwin's breathtaking range
of writing together for the first time, with 50,000 pages of searchable text,
and tens of thousands of images, many from previously unpublished manuscripts,
together with notebooks, diaries and original publications such as The Origin
of Species, The Voyage of the Beagle (the Journal of Researches) and The Descent
of Man ... more Add
a comment
18.10.06.
'The
Devil's trying to kill me'
A former vicar and best-selling author believes
the Devil is trying to kill him after a bizarre succession of events almost cost
him his life. Graham Taylor, whose Shadowmancer novels have been likened to the
Harry Potter books, believes God protected him when the Devil tried to take his
life three times ... more Add
a comment
Graham
Taylor isn't a very good writer but is a very good self-publicist. A lot of people
in Scarborough are pretty fed up with his sudden fame and wealth as they know
what he was like beforehand. - Pierce. Books
that make your library look impressive
An elegant rolling ladder and a
narrow catwalk provide access to 13,000 books whose rich hues, exquisite bindings
and gilt lettering give off an aura of wealth and sophistication. The homeowners,
a wealthy businessman and his wife, will never read any of them.
These
decorative books were selected by an interior designer solely for their aesthetic
appeal, and most of them are written in French. They are arranged on the shelves
not by author or topic, but by color and size ... more Add
a comment Historic
letter telling of WW1 football match found
A poignant letter written by
an unknown soldier about the World War I truce of Christmas Day 1914 is to be
sold at auction. In a vivid description, the private tells his mother about the
festive game of football played between German and British troops in the icy mud
of No Man's Land ... more Add
a comment
17.10.06.
Bookdealer
Fortnightly
In July we reported the launch by John Debbage of Bookdealer
Fortnightly. A book trade magazine in the tradition of the now defunct
Bookdealer, it carries "wants" and "for sale" ads,
as well as a limited amount of editorial. The first four copies were distributed
free, and John is pleased to announce that sufficient subscribers have signed
up to enable its continued publication. Subscriptions cost £30.55 for 26
issues and you can get further details by calling John on 01603 488015. Add
a comment American
Broadsides and Ephemera database
American
Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I, 1760-1900 is a full-color digital database
based on the American Antiquarian Society's collection of American broadsides
and ephemera. The database contains approximately 15,000 searchable facsimile
images of broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900, as well as 15,000 items of
ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900 ... more Add
a comment Charges
against book dealer thrown out
A
Christchurch second-hand book dealer has been cleared of all 301 charges of receiving
stolen property, laid as part of the police's Operation Pukapuka investigation
into a theft ring targeting rare and valuable books at libraries, universities,
and museums ... more Add
a comment Actor
Morrissey to sell Dylan pub
Actor
Neil Morrissey is selling a pub that was a haunt of poet Dylan Thomas, less than
three years after he paid £670,000 for it at auction ... more Add
a comment
16.10.06.
The
unfortunate end of Lemony Snicket
For
all the gales of laughter, you would not have known that it was the most unfortunate
event of all - a farewell to Lemony Snicket. The last in the Series. The End ...
more Add
a comment Christie's
most famous mystery solved at last
The
solution to the darkest of all Agatha Christie mysteries may be at hand. What
lay behind her extraordinary 11-day disappearance in 1926? Several plausible theories
have competed for favour over the years, but biographer Andrew Norman believes
he is the first to find one that satisfies every element of the case ... more Add
a comment Map
thief gets five years
E.
Forbes Smiley III will serve the time concurrent with the 3 1/2-year federal sentence
he is scheduled to start on January 4. His attorney, Richard Reeve, said Smiley
probably will spend about three years in prison if he behaves while behind bars
... more Add
a comment Thefts
rock literary world
The
last prosecution from an Australian police investigation into a criminal group
of book thieves targeting libraries and museums has wrapped up, leaving a sadder
and wiser literary community ... more Add
a comment
13.10.06.
Read
between the lines
The
only justification I can think of for buying a book online is if you can't get
it from your local bookseller and in my experience, that's rare. Otherwise, don't
do it. You're feeding the corporate beast at the expense of the little guy.
And
you know what? You're probably a little guy, too, even if you think you're a big
guy. Most of us in this world are little guys. And consumer technology is making
us smaller all the time ... more Add
a comment Pamuk's
Nobel divides Turkey
Twenty-four
hours after Orhan Pamuk became the first ever Turkish writer to win the Nobel
prize, reactions in Turkey are strangely mixed ... more Add
a comment Not
reading but drowning
As
any bibliophile knows, once you have refused to throw away your first copy of
Mrs Dalloway, it is a life of pain, sacrifice and storage issues ... more Add
a comment Mad
about books
What
lies on the table between us in an East Brisbane accounting office is exactly
the kind of thing that inspires book lust ... more Add
a comment
12.10.06.
Shop
online? There's a novel idea
A
forest of sites has sprung up selling second-hand books in vast quantities. These
include the ubiquitous Amazon.com and others such as Alibris and Bookfinder.com,
but the category killer is Abebooks ... more Add
a comment
Weren't
we told that the advent of television would herald the end of the cinema? OK -
for a time,many cinemas closed down, but there is now a great revival of multi-screen
emporia catering for those people who realise that TV does not equal cinema. Likewise,
with the advent of the computer, we were promised the 'paperless office'. We all
know how wrong that was!
In
the old days, if you wanted a specific book, you may well have gone to the local
bookshop, but the chance of them actually having it in stock was pretty small;
the bookseller would have had to initiate a search for the title, which could
take months, even years.
Nowadays, if a customer wants
a book, his local bookseller can find a copy usually instantly courtesy of the
much-maligned internet. So the secondhand bookshop has become even more of a place
to find that elusive book - quite apart from the fact that the experience of browsing
a secondhand bookshop is quite different from browsing the net (just like the
cinema is quite different from the TV).
And let's
not forget, that only a small percentage of the population is willing or able
to use the internet for themselves to find, let alone buy, things. I think the
figure for those who actually have access to the internet is about 50% - but of
those I would guess that less than 10% are happy using it. The secondhand bookshop
has a long future ahead of it. - David Siddons.
Photo
New York
"This
is a very contemporary fair," said Stephen Cohen, the Los Angeles photo dealer
who began his career trading in books and now oversees an empire of photo fairs
in four cities (the San Francisco fair is in hiatus, but a new Photo Miami, with
50 dealers, opens in December ... more Add
a comment Take
a leaf out of David’s bookshop
An
independent bookshop is celebrating after beating the big boys to scoop a top
prize at a national awards ceremony. David's Bookshop in Eastcheap, Letchworth
GC, won the marketing campaign of the year category at the Bookseller Retail Awards,
fighting off competition from large chains including Blackwell's, Borders, Ottakar's
and W H Smith ... more Add
a comment The
real Lady Chatterley
A
cache of unpublished letters from the novelist Virginia Woolf and scores of first
editions inscribed by leading writers and poets of the early 20th century has
emerged in the contents of the library of Lady Ottoline Morrell, the society hostess
who became one of the most flamboyant, loved and mocked associates of the Bloomsbury
group ... more Add
a comment Rare
book found in Hartland dump
In
1934, the great surrealist photographer Man Ray published a book, Photographies
1920-1934, in Paris. But it didn't sell, and never went into a second printing.
Over time, though, it was acclaimed as one of the great photography books of all
time. It has been reprinted a couple of times, but the original French edition
is exceptionally rare, and very, very expensive. Guess where one was just found?
At the Hartland landfill in Saanich ... more Add
a comment
08.10.06.
No
News today...
TheBookGuide is away for a few days but he and the news
will return on October 12th.
07.10.06.
Bibliomaniac
Ken Sanders leads his life by the book
Ken
Sanders is not merely a book lover. His devotion runs deeper than that. No, Sanders
has full-fledged bibliomania. The bookstore owner exhibits all the classic symptoms
of the disorder listed by Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia: buying "multiple
copies of the same book and [the] accumulation of books beyond possible capacity
of use" ... more Add
a comment
A passion for rare books inspires a journey into past
Next
week, the rare books that stake out the journey through knowledge of a 21st-century
Renaissance man will draw the world's bibliophiles to Sotheby's Parisian auction
room on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The sale of Fred Feinsilber's collection
on Wednesday and Thursday will be much more than an art market event. It highlights
the impact that modern art and thinking have had on book collecting ... more Add
a comment 700-year-old
Hindu manuscript restored
Two
Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) scientists -- P.R. Mukund and Roger Easton
- have successfully restored a 700-year-old Hindu philosophy palm-leaf manuscript
with the help of modern imaging technologies ... more Add
a comment Library
lacks means to repair old tomes
Deep
within the labyrinthine shelves, stacks, and corridors of the Boston Public Library
in Copley Square is a small room that the staff calls the ``book hospital." It's
a place where spines are replaced, broken parts are mended, and aging is reversed.
It's also a place with a staggering waiting list: a 16th-century Hebrew scroll
written on animal skin parchment, badly damaged bindings on John James Audubon's
famous 1841 miniature ``Birds of America," and a book of New England algae specimens
from 1857 ... more Add
a comment
06.10.06.
Vintage
gay literature on exhibit
The
University of Saskatchewan Library hosts a public reception today, to launch an
exhibition of vintage gay, lesbian and transgender pulp literature dating back
to the 1950s and 1960s ... more Add
a comment Book
sales get a lift from Google scan plan
Publishers
are starting to report an uptick in sales from Google Inc.'s online program that
lets readers peek inside books, two years after the launch of its controversial
plan to digitally scan everything in print ... more Add
a comment Frankfurt
Book Fair smells of gunpowder
A
collection of poems by an outlawed separatist guerrilla leader from Assam that
has got rave reviews is one of the highlights of the ongoing Frankfurt Book Fair
... more Add
a comment Science
Museum breaks up rare collections
The
Science Museum is relocating its prestigious library to Wiltshire in the wake
of a financial crisis that led to fears that it might lose the unique collection
altogether ... more Add
a comment Salman
Rushdie to join Emory
Novelist
Salman Rushdie will join the faculty of Emory University and donate his archive
to the institution, Emory officials announced Friday. Rushdie's five-year appointment
as a distinguished writer in residence in the English Department begins in the
spring of 2007 ... more Add
a comment
05.10.06.
Turkey
puts yet another author on trial
A
Turkish author went on trial Thursday on charges of insulting the founder of modern
Turkey in a biography about the revered late leader's wife, amid growing calls
from the European Union to change repressive laws curbing freedom of expression
... more Add
a comment In
praise of ... Abebooks
This
week the site announced that it now has an inventory of 100m books for sale -
a 1991 first edition of A Checklist of the Vertebrate Animals of Kansas being
the hundred-millionth title ... more Add
a comment The
Frankfurt book fair discusses digital books
Every
year, the world biggest book fair in Frankfurt attracts a lot of bookworms. But
the future of the traditional paperback is unsure ... more Add
a comment Poet
puts Heaney in shade
To
win the Forward prize for poetry is a special achievement. To win against competition
from one of the most eminent names of the last 100 years, the Nobel laureate Seamus
Heaney, is, perhaps, something else ... more Add
a comment
03.10.06.
Trading
in antiquarian books
Ken
Corliss of Bartlett Street Book Store in downtown Medford, southern Oregon, talks
about his 35 years in the trade ... more Add
a comment IOBA
Standard fall edition.
The latest edition of the ever readable Independent Online Booksellers Association's
journal is now available online ... more Add
a comment This
craft isn't by the book
Antiquarian
book dealers cringe at the thought of tearing, cutting, painting, stamping, pasting,
gessoing and drawing on their revered books, but history is better preserved if,
instead of going to a landfill, an unwanted or treasured but unused book undergoes
a metamorphosis ... more Add
a comment Bob
Dylan headlines at the Morgan Library
Modern
music icon Bob Dylan's original song lyrics and other artifacts are on display
alongside original 18th century manuscripts by Mozart and Beethoven at New York's
Morgan Library. The exhibition Bob Dylan's American Journey at the Morgan spans
the early years of Dylan's career from 1956 to 1966, chronicling the evolution
of Dylan's musical style from folk balladeer to rock and roll idol ... more Add
a comment Infamous
French art thief to release memoir
One
of the most infamous European art thieves in recent history is preparing to release
a book recounting his years on the lam. Arrested in Switzerland on Nov. 20, 2001,
Breitwieser, 35, was eventually tried both in that country and in France for stealing
everything from canvases and tapestries to ivories, bronzes, books and other objects
... more Add
a comment
02.10.06.
War criminals' final notes revealed
The
final writings of 15 members of the Imperial Japanese Army executed in Singapore
as war criminals following World War II have been released. They were found at
an antiquarian book market in Tokyo by writer Hisashi Yamanaka ... more Add
a comment The
accidental surrealist
Why
haven't we heard of Mary Reynolds before, in the same breath as Anais Nin and
Djuna Barnes? Perhaps because she did not write. She bound books ... more Add
a comment
The Great
Escape: Explore the world through literature
I
know it's unusual to write a review of a book that's out of print. But I'm hoping
that this description of the 10-year-old "The Atlas of Literature" will encourage
a reprint, or even an updated edition. That's because it's an invaluable reference
for the intrepid Armchair Traveler ... more Add
a comment
The ballad
of the LongPen (TM)
Margaret
Atwood tries out her remote book-signing invention in Scotland ... more Add
a comment Peake
performance
The
fantastic, baroque imagination of Mervyn Peake expressed itself in prose and painting,
in poetry and illustration. Michael Moorcock introduces a new book and exhibition
of his work ... more Add
a comment
Really
interesting extract from the Mervyn Peake book. I have always been a great admirer
of his work both written and drawn.
I designed a dance-piece
inspired by Gormenghast when I was a Stage Design student at The Slade School
of Art in 1972. It was called 'The Room Of Roots' and for it I made a huge fabric
structure that filled a room. There were seven main roots each dyed a colour of
the rainbow, dancers from the London School of Contemporary Dance, myself and
a friends from my course at The Slade all performed within in, to a sound track
made by myself and a student from The Barlett next door. There were seven dancers
each entangled inside the roots. The audience sat amongst us as we moved around
and over them. I kind of 'choreographed' the dance piece but the dancers were
given certain freedom within the physical structure and the structure of the 'music'
(which also had voices over).
I contacted Maeve Peake
whilst planning the piece to 'get her approval' and she was gracious enough to
invite me to her home, for tea. She was very gentle and humourous, and kind. She
seemed genuinely very pleased about my performance art based on her late husband's
work and gave me a view of his studio and many drawings still there. She also
gave me a copy of her book 'A World Apart' and for several years following, I
was privileged to receive Christmas cards reproduced from illustrations from Mervyn's
books.
I would love to see the exhibition but I just
got back from London yesterday. How frustrating, I'll have to look out for the
book! - Jude Haslam.
I've been a fan since reading
the trilogy in the early 1970s, have collected most of the books, and once bought
five original watercolours of his for a fiver ... but that's another story! -
TBG. | 
