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28.11.08.
Spike Milligan has last laugh
Spike Milligan
knew a thing or two about auctions. He once wrote: “With hand signals/
Or polite cough/ He bid twenty-five million/ For a Vincent Van Gogh/
For that sort of money/ I’d chop my ear off.” When that poem – complete
with hand-drawn ear – was included in an auction of the late comedian’s
personal effects yesterday it may not have fetched such stratospheric
figures, but it did manage £2,500, more than ten times what the
auctioneer, Bonhams, was expecting ... more
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Holy smoke,
Batman! Are you dead?
For almost 70
years, he's seen off every "baddie" fate has thrown at him, from
The Joker and Mr Freeze, to Catwoman and The Riddler. But now Batman's
alter ego, Bruce Wayne, seems to have finally met his match: a middle-aged
comic book writer from Glasgow ... more
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Rare fragment
of early copy of Gospel goes on sale
An unusually
large fragment from possibly the oldest copy of part of the Gospel
of John will go on sale next month, when the torn piece of papyrus
with Greek writing is expected to fetch up to 300,000 pounds ($460,000)
... more
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Eleanor Rigby
document fetches $177,000
A 97-year-old
document that contains clues to the identity of Eleanor Rigby, the
subject of one of the Beatles' best-loved songs, sold for 115,000
pounds ($177,000) at auction on Thursday. The total fell well short
of high estimates of around 500,000 pounds for the piece of Beatles
memorabilia ... more
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New £10.5m
archive centre taking shape
The Highlands
Archive Centre in the Bught at Inverness reached a milestone of
its own yesterday when the building’s roof was completed. The £10.5million
centre will eventually house the Highland’s archive collection,
which dates back to the 15th century ... more
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26.11.08.
UK book trade split on Google's publishing plans
The prospect
of the $125m deal which American publishers and authors have struck
with Google coming to Europe is sending shockwaves through the industry.
While publishers and authors are broadly supportive, booksellers
fear the deal could drive them out of business ... more
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Rachel Johnson
'honoured' to win Bad Sex award
The air turned
blue yesterday evening as Tory mayor Boris Johnson's novelist sister
Rachel Johnson beat Labour's notorious spin doctor Alastair Campbell
to take this year's Bad Sex in Fiction award ... more
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Robinson
Crusoe collection opened
Emory’s Manuscript
Archives and Rare Book Library (MARBL) celebrated the opening of
its collection of 699 editions of Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson
Crusoe on Thursday. The collection contains rare editions dating
back to the 18th century and up to the 21st century, including a
rare first edition ... more
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25.11.08.
Witchcraft trial book could fetch £76,000
A rare book giving
an account of Paisley’s most notorious witchcraft trial is expected
to sell for £76,000 at a glitzy New York auction house. The Paisley
“witches” were executed over 300 years ago and the 17th-century
tome tells the tale of the case of Christian Shaw, who accused six
people of “bewitching” her ... more
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Bond for
sale
A first British
edition of Ian Flemings You Only Live Twice, inscribed by the author
to the inspiration of his famous spy character James Bond, is to
go under the hammer at auction in Los Angeles on 11 December ...
more
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Euro digital
library 'a success story'
The long-awaited
European digital library Europeana will be back "bigger and better"
by mid-December said the European Commission’s information society
spokesman Martin Selmayr. The site was officially launched last
Thursday (20th November) but you had to be quick off the mark to
learn anything from it: within hours the site had to be closed after
its on-line servers proved unable to cope with the volume of demand
... more
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Nelson's
food for the fight revealed
As well as worrying
about tactics in the battle of Trafalgar and being outnumbered by
his adversaries, a newly discovered letter from 1805 shows Norfolk-born
hero Horatio Nelson was also concerned about how many raisins his
sailors should be eating a day ... more
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24.11.08.
Weighing in at 81lbs, Celtic tome is a heavy read
A new book to
be published to celebrate one of Scotland's leading football clubs
next month weighs in at an astonishing 37kg (81lbs). The Celtic
Opus is the latest in a series of high-quality, limited edition
collectors' books aimed at fans with deep pockets. It's not only
the weight that is eye-watering – the price of the least expensive
version is £1,700 ... more
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Philip Pullman
attacks 'philistine' school
A secondary school
will become a "byword for philistinism and ignorance" if it presses
ahead with a plan that will effectively close its library, the best-selling
author Philip Pullman has warned ... more
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Discounting
failing booksellers
UK booksellers
are locked in a damaging "vicious circle" of discounting, and are
making fewer profits and seeing less growth than their counterparts
overseas. Those were the main conclusions from the Bookseller Association's
Benchmarking Study ... more
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France's
official stash of erotica goes on display
Psst! Wanna see
some dirty books and pictures? France's official hoard of erotica
and pornography, lovingly assembled by the Bibliothque Nationale
over a period of 170 years, will be thrown open to the startled
eyes of the public for the first time this week ... more
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Aubrey Beardsley
illustration sets new world record
At Skinner's
recent Fine Books & Manuscripts auction, which took place on Sunday,
November 16th, Beardsley's The Climax (lot 139) fetched $213,300
including buyer's premium, well over its $15/20,000 estimate. It
sailed past the previous record for a Beardsley drawing of $159,600.
A second Beardsley illustration fared almost as well; A Platonic
Lament (lot 138) sold for $142,200 including buyer's premium, significantly
surpassing estimate expectations of $15/20,000 ... more
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21.11.08.
Sentencing postponed
Farhad Hakimzadeh,
60, who admitted using a scalpel to remove selected pages from priceless
volumes in the British Library, was due to be sentenced at Wood
Green Crown Court in London today, but the hearing has now been
adjourned to January 16 next year ... more
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Japan embarrassed
over PM's love of comic books
Japanese Prime
Minister Taro Aso's very public penchant for comic books is an "embarrassment",
according to Oscar-winning director Hayao Miyazaki ... more
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Bid to save
earliest English language opera score
Oxford’s Bodleian
collection has until January 6 2009 to raise the £85,000 asking
price for Erismena, after the government placed a bar on the manuscript
being sold to overseas collectors due to its “outstanding significance
for the study of the history of music in the UK” ... more
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Gone but
not forgotten
It is described
as the "birth certificate of Scotland" and contains the earliest
surviving record of the country's existence. But it is held in France.
Now a campaign has been launched to have the 1,000-year-old Chronicles
of the Kings of Alba to be returned to Scotland ... more
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20.11.08.
1850s photograph fetches £185k
The daguerreotype
image by Baron Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros was part of a collection
belonging to antiquarian bookseller André Jammes and his wife, Marie-Therese,
who began collecting photographs in 1955 ... more
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Alibris celebrates
10-year anniversary
Alibris, the
independently owned and operated online global marketplace for new,
rare, and used books, CDs, and DVDs, announced their 10-year anniversary
with a celebration of past milestones and a look ahead to succeeding
over the next 10 years ... more
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Nabokov's
final literary striptease
In an exclusive
interview, the son of novelist Vladimir Nabokov tells Newsnight
why he is defying his father's wishes to posthumously publish the
controversial writer's final novel ... more
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Early Americana
collection nets $2.3 million at auction
Jay T. Snider's
collection of early Americana, much of it relating to Philadelphia,
fetched $2.3 million at an auction ending yesterday in New York.
Though the rare books, manuscripts, maps and prints were expected
to garner $3 million, Anais Borja, a representative of Bloomsbury
Auctions, said the gallery was pleased with the result ... more
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Tintin author's
nephew to auction sketches, letters
The nephew of
Herge, author of the comic-book boy reporter Tintin, will auction
off some of his uncle's sketches, photos and letters in Paris on
Friday, a Belgian newspaper reported ... more
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Thief cut
pages from rare British Library books
A multi-millionaire
businessman is facing jail for stealing hundreds of pages from rare
ancient books worth £500,000 to store in his personal book collection
... more
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18.11.08.
Noddy returning for 60th birthday
A new Noddy book
is to be written by Enid Blyton's granddaughter to mark the character's
60th birthday ... more
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Preliminary
approval to Google's publisher settlement
U.S. District
Judge John Sprizzo in New York on Monday issued the order tentatively
approving the deal and scheduled a hearing for June 11, 2009, when
he will further consider the pact's fairness. Google has said the
settlement, announced Oct. 28, will enable it to make millions of
books searchable and printable online ... more
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Ancient book
has lots of bite
Smoking was deemed
to be bad for the teeth as far back as 200 years ago, according
to a rare, centuries-old book going under the hammer in Derby ...
more
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Rare book
found in Northside library
A DCU professor
has found a rare book dating back to the 1500s which lay hidden
in a Northside library until now. Prior the find, it was thought
that there were only ten copies of the ‘On Old Age - De Senectute’,
which was published in 1535 by the Roman philosopher Cicero ...
more
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14.11.08.
Christian group forces reading to be scrapped
A poetry reading
at a Cardiff bookshop was abruptly cancelled last night after a
religious pressure group vowed to disrupt the event if it went ahead
... more
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'Lad's mag'
for the 17th century
The 17th century
equivalent of a 'lads' mag' has been discovered, giving advice for
better conduct for young men ... more
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New museum
features letters by famous prisoners
A new museum
of historical manuscripts has opened with an exhibit of letters
Gandhi, Napoleon, presidential assassins and other famous inmates
wrote from prison. "Letters from the Pen" -- as in penitentiary
-- debuted with Tuesday's opening of The Karpeles Manuscript Library
Museum in a former church in Fort Wayne ... more
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Dead Parrot
sketch ancestor found
An ancestor of
Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot comedy sketch has been found in
a joke book dating back to Greece in the 4th Century ... more
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Harry Potter
is favourite library book ... to pinch
Books worth s223million
were stolen from Scotland's libraries last year - with Harry Potter
top of the vanishing list. Figures show that in the past year, 36,792
books were not returned to Scots libraries - 5476 more than the
year before ... more
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Rare and
unusual medical books to be auctioned
PBA Galleries
in San Francisco will be hosting an auction selling off the medical
and science library of Dr Gerald I. Sugarman. The good doctor must
have been a bit of a quirk, judging by the morbid oddities and strange
selections in the collection ... more
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10.11.08.
No news today ...
I'm out of the
office for a few days, so no news or updates until November 14th. Add
a comment
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07.11.08.
Rare Shakespeare texts donated to Globe theatre
A prized collection
of texts by William Shakespeare has been pledged to the Globe theatre
in London, it was announced today. The theatre has been named the
sole beneficiary of more than 450 works, bequeathed by American
collector John Wolfson ... more
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Document
found older than Dead Sea Scrolls
Archaeologists
discovered a pottery shard inscribed with Hebrew text written a
thousand years earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Cynthia Graber
reports ... more
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06.11.08.
Dealer re-arrested over stolen Shakespeare folio
A Durham Police
spokesman said: "A 51-year-old man at the centre of the inquiry
into the stolen Shakespeare folio was re-arrested today. "The move
follows the discovery of new evidence by detectives involved in
the case. The man was taken to Durham City police station where
he is likely to be questioned throughout the day" ... more
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The new print
paradigm
Halloween and
the New York print auctions came at the same time this year, and
specialists at both auction houses were looking rather haunted earlier
in the week, as they placed multiple calls to consignors and begged
them to lower their reserves another 30 percent before the sales
... more
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Lincoln re-election
speech to be auctioned in NYC
Christie's is
auctioning a handwritten copy of the 1864 speech Abraham Lincoln
delivered at the White House after being re-elected in the midst
of an unpopular Civil War that both he and his opponents believed
might cost him his job ... more
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Digital Archimedes
manuscript goes live
For the past
decade, the Archimedes Project, made up of an international team
of scholars, has worked on the conservation of the badly damaged
text. With the aid of digital imaging processing, the project has
been able to bring out parts of the palimpsest not previously legible
... more
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04.11.08.
Bound to Please
Bound to Please,
an exhibition of more than 60 beautifully bound and tooled works
from the late 17th to the mid-20th century, opens at the George
Peabody Library on Thursday, Nov. 6, and will be celebrated with
a reception at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 9. The show explores the art
of finishing, from simple adornments on vellum bindings to exquisite
gilt-tooled bindings ... more
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Rare 1535
book found at King's Inns
A rare edition
of a text by Cicero on old age, published in London almost five
hundred years ago, has been discovered at King's Inns Library, Dublin.
No other copy is known to exist in Ireland. It was produced sixteen
years before the first book of any kind was printed in Ireland ...
more
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Rare medical
documents open to the public
Rare historical
books documenting key developments in the history of medicine are
to go on show to the public. The Royal College of Physicians of
Edinburgh (RCPE) is opening its Historic Library Collection, much
of which have not previously been on public display ... more
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03.11.08.
Fairy dust and fantasy
"I don't know
what to think about magic and fairy tales. I would like to know
whether there's any evidence that bringing children up to believe
in spells and wizards and magic wands and things turning into other
things - it is unscientific, I think it is anti-scientific - whether
that has a pernicious effect I don't know." The exchange was reported
as Richard Dawkins "taking on Harry Potter", but the best-selling
author of The God Delusion feels some of the media coverage is misrepresenting
him ... more
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Google pays
small change to open every book
Is there such
a thing as a 'win-win' situation? Journalistic cynicism says no.
What the phrase usually means is that some people get more than
they deserve and others get less - but not so little that they scream
blue murder. The big puzzle about the 'ground-breaking settlement'
announced last week between Google and its legal opponents, the
Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, is whether
it really is - as all parties claim - a victory for everyone ...
more
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Poohsticks
fans club together to save the game
No event has
done more to export its simple charm than the annual World Poohsticks
Championships, held on the Thames in Oxfordshire for the past quarter
century. So there was no little alarm among poohsticks fans when
the Wallingford-based Rotary Club of Sinodun, which has loyally
kept the championships going for the past 20 years, called time
... more
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Burns treasures
make way to the city
Treasures from
the National Burns Collection are to go on show in the Capital as
part of the Homecoming Celebrations. The artefacts, including manuscripts,
printed material and artworks, are being brought together by the
National Library of Scotland for a preview of the exhibition, Zig-Zag:
the Paths of Robert Burns ... more
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Handle this
book!
“Who’s going
to be the first to jump in here?” John Pollack asks, eliciting the
reaction he usually gets when inviting freshmen to touch a 500-year-old
book — “Are we allowed to, really?” ... more
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