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26.02.10.
Durham
man denies theft of Shakespeare first edition
Raymond Scott
was originally arrested in June 2008 on suspicion of taking the
folio from Durham University in 1998. He appeared at Newcastle Crown
Court on Friday to deny three charges of theft, handling stolen
goods and removing criminal property. He was released on conditional
bail and the case was adjourned until May ... more
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Man denies
stealing antique books
William Jacques,
40, is accused of stealing 13 volumes of Nouvelle Iconographies
des Camellias from the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Library.
Jacques was arrested on Christmas Day and will go on trial in the
week of Tuesday May 4 at London's Southwark Crown Court ... more
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Comic showing
Batman's debut sells for $1m
A comic showing
the debut of superhero Batman has been sold for more than $1m (£655,000)
at an auction in Dallas ... more
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25.02.10.
Hunt
for the Codex Cardona
A retired UC
Davis history professor turns detective, attempts to solve mystery
of a missing Mexican treasure ... more
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Descartes
letter found
It was the Great
Train Robbery of French intellectual life: thousands of treasured
documents that vanished from the Institut de France in the mid-1800s,
stolen by an Italian mathematician. Among them were 72 letters by
René Descartes, the founding genius of modern philosophy and analytic
geometry ... more
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Library leak
damages rare artefacts
The Chester Beatty
Library in Dublin Castle has launched an investigation into how
rare artefacts were damaged by a new air conditioning system, which
was designed to protect them ... more
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24.02.10.
Forget
the frat party, there's book collecting to be done
While some college
students are perfecting their beer pong, the Antiquarian Booksellers’
Assn. of America, the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies,
the Center for the Book and the Rare Books and Special Collections
Division at the Library of Congress are teaming up to tempt them
into the field of rare book collecting ... more
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£4 million
for Casanova's uncensored diaries
For centuries
they exerted the same knee-trembling pull on collectors and curators
as their rakishly charming author had on the women of 18th-century
Europe. But the international battle to pull off the ultimate literary
conquest ended in Paris when the French national library announced
it had acquired the original manuscripts of Giacomo Casanova's memoirs
... more
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23.02.10.
First
Superman comic sells for $1m
A rare copy of
the first comic book to feature Superman sold for $1m (£640,000)
yesterday, smashing the previous record for a comic ... more
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Thousands
of authors opt out of Google book settlement
Some 6,500 writers,
from Thomas Pynchon to Jeffrey Archer, have opted out of Google's
controversial plan to digitise millions of books ... more
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Collector
has 700 copies of the same book
A rare book dealer
in Auburn has collected about 700 copies of the same book, "Two
Years Before the Mast" ... more
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The joys
of bookshop browsing
Searching real
shelves is the most satisfying way to find literary treasures –
but can it survive the rise of Amazon and ebooks? ... more
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15.02.10.
The
Bookmark Collectors Virtual Convention
On 20,21 February
the first Bookmark Collectors Virtual Convention will bring together
bookmark collectors from around the world to share their collections,
experiences, techniques, and ideas ... more
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12.02.10.
Batman
tops Superman's rare comic book record
The bidding at
Heritage Auctions for a comic that marks the first appearance of
Batman has already reached a total of $418,250 including buyer's
premium and the auction is still two weeks way ... more
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Lovers live
on in library's Victorian valentines
A permanent collection
of temporary items. That's one way to sum up what libraries and
archives call "ephemera." As a seasonally appropriate example, think
about Valentine's Day cards. They range from the intricate and flowery
to the crude and humorous. They can be costly confections carefully
constructed, or cheaply churned-out chaff ... more
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09.02.10.
Writing
off the UK's last palaeographer
The decision
by a London university to axe the UK's only chair in palaeography
has been met by outrage from the world's most eminent classicists.
John Crace on why the study of ancient writings matters – and why
history will be lost without it ... more
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08.02.10.
From
the morgue to the gallery
For the first
time since they were created, exactly 500 years ago, Leonardo da
Vinci's Anatomical Manuscript A -- a series of over 200 drawings
that focus largely on bones and muscles -- is being presented in
its entirety at the Vancouver Art Gallery ... more
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Take your
seats for the great Station Bookswap
God bless South
West Trains. Not a phrase you'll often hear in London's leafier
southern suburbs – but without one of their seasonal delays in service
last week, I wouldn't have stumbled into the waiting room at Wimbledon
Station and discovered, joy of joys, the Station Bookswap ... more
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04.02.10.
Encyclopaedia
Britannica Irish history blunder
It was once billed
the "Patriarch of the Library" but Encyclopaedia Britannica has
proven to have a less than orthodox view of the Irish Civil War
... more
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Record number
of odd book title entries
The Bookseller's
annual Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year has drawn
a record number of submissions for the 2009 award, announced prize
organizer Horace Best on February 2. The UK trade magazine will
announce a shortlist on February 19, followed by a public vote to
determine the winner ... more
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Seventy years
a growing
The Kenny Bookshop
was founded in 1940 by Des and Maureen Kenny in the family home
in High Street but nobody envisaged that 70 years later the family
business would still be going stong and be a recognised ‘brand name’
across the globe ... more
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Grandson
of Auschwitz survivor buys Mengele's diary
The buyer, an
East Coast Jewish philanthropist who remained anonymous, paid an
undisclosed sum for the 180-page journal, which he intends to donate
to a Holocaust museum, said Bill Panagopulos of Alexander Autographs
... more
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Rare books
lost to fire at Delhi Public Library
The fire, which
according to Library officials occurred due to an electrical fault,
destroyed the entire exhibit area, including 130 rare books, some
dating back to the 17th Century ... more
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02.02.10.
Book
auction prices declined in 2009...but...
A detailed look
at book auction results for 2009 reveals that virtually every important
number was down. The most telling number - median sales price -
was down. Sell through rates were down. The ratio of items sold
above the high estimate to those sold below the low estimate was
down. The number of auctions held and number of items offered were
down. So why are we celebrating these seemingly woeful results?
The answer is that these declines, particularly in terms of median
price, were surprisingly small. We expected a much steeper decline,
but the drop in median price from 2008 to 2009 was only 2%. Compare
that to the previous year's drop of 21%. It doesn't sound so bad
after all ... more
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Diaries of
Nazi "Angel of Death" up for auction
The historical
artifacts house Alexander Autographs in Connecticut is set to cause
a stir by auctioning off the diary of Nazi "Angel of Death" Josef
Mengele, who is responsible for the deaths of at least 400,000 people.
It is expected that Nazi memorabilia collectors will push the price
of the diary upwards of $60,000 ... more
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Controversial
book and film becomes art exhibition
It was a book,
then a controversial movie and now a major new exhibition of art
inspired by the dark dystopian writings of JG Ballard and which
influenced him in turn ... more
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Grisham and
Updike among authors banned inTexan jails
Bestselling and
classic books have been banned from prisons in Texas over security,
race or sex concerns ... more
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01.02.10.
Is
this the rarest color-plate book of all?
Only one copy
has come to auction in thirty-five years. There is only one copy
in institutional holdings worldwide. So few were issued, in fact,
that the publisher didn't bother having a title page printed. Only
four copies are known to exist. This is one of them ... more
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Tolkien festival
moves after row over venue space
Fans, leading
academics and illustrators were set to meet at the Plas in Machynlleth,
Powys in August. But the Festival in the Shire has moved to Bont
Pavilion in Pontrhydyfendigaid, near Aberystwyth, Ceredigion instead
... more
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From the
Roman Codex to the iPad
How's this for
human progress? It took about 4,000 years from the invention of
writing to the Roman-era codex of bound pages replacing scrolls,
1,000 years from the codex to movable type creating printed books,
500 years from the printing press to the Internet—and only 25 years
to the launch of the iPad ... more
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