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29.06.10.
Saint-Exupéry
commemorated by Google doodle
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
French author and aviator best-known for his book The Little Prince,
is celebrated by Google doodle – he would be 110 today ... more
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Owzat? Wisdens
net charity thousands
Editions of the
first four Wisden Cricketers' Almanacks that were left in a 99 pence
pile in a charity shop sold at auction on Tuesday for more than
8,000 pounds (12,000 dollars) ... more
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To Killjoy
‘Mockingbird’
Today’s idea:
“It’s time to stop pretending that ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is some
kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American
literature,” a critic says ... more
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The lives
of the poor in Eighteenth-century London
Hundreds of thousands
of eighteenth-century Londoners will be brought to life by a unique
online resource, which will be made available to the public from
today (28 June 2010). London Lives (www.londonlives.org) provides
access to the largest set of handwritten manuscripts ever posted
on the internet ... more
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28.06.10.
Marilyn
Monroe chest X-rays fetch $45,000
A set of three
X-rays of Marilyn Monroe's chest taken during a 1954 hospital visit
have sold for $45,000 (£29,900) in Las Vegas ... more
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24.06.10.
Lackluster
bidding for Steinbeck's NYC archive
An auction of
a trove of author John Steinbeck's letters, manuscripts and photographs
from his New York City apartment produced lackluster bidding on
Wednesday, with half of the items failing to sell or fetching prices
below their pre-sale estimates ... more
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23.06.10.
'Tome
raider' jailed again for stealing antique books
A Cambridge graduate
who stole more than £1m worth of rare books during his career as
a professional book thief was today found guilty of stealing £40,000's
worth of books from a celebrated library ... more
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Descartes
letter heads home to France
Letter stolen
by notorious 19th-century book thief Guglielmo Libri had been gathering
dust in a US college library ... more
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William Faulkner
collection auctioned in NYC
A rare collection
of signed William Faulkner books and personal items, including one
of his most acclaimed novels, "Light in August," sold at auction
Tuesday for $833,246. The collection of 90 items was nearly a complete
representation of Faulkner's work, said the auction house, Christie's
... more
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Lost Indian
grammar manuscript rediscovered
A lost manuscript,
one of the earliest by a missionary to detail the ancient Indian
language of Old Sanskrit, has been rediscovered in an Italian library,
the University of Potsdam in Germany said Monday ... more
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German taxi
driver to auction off rare Hitler papers
Anonymous driver
inherited the documents from his father, who purchased them at the
beginning of the 1970s in a Nuremberg flea market ... more
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$100 million
'national treasure' found at flea market
A true copy of
the original handwritten 1776 Declaration of Independence rescued
from obscurity by Tom Lingenfelter of Bucks County, Pennsylvania
is to be offered for sale at a yet undetermined venue. Lingenfelter,
a former Counter-intelligence Special Agent and President of the
Heritage Collectors' Society, purchased the Declaration at a Bucks
County flea market 20 years ago ... more
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22.06.10.
Raymond
Scott trial continues ...
A librarian has
described how his heart sank when he realised an ancient Shakespeare
first edition he'd been asked to authenticate was a priceless relic
stolen a decade earlier ... more
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18.06.10.
Jobless
man 'mutilated' stolen Shakespeare folio
Raymond Scott
tore the binding and boards from the 1623 book - described as the
most important in the English language - before claiming to have
discovered it in Cuba ... more
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Ernest Hemingway's
first-ever book sells for $21,600
The first and
only edition of Ernest Hemingway's first-ever book was the star
lot at Swann Auction Galleries' Art, Books, Literature, Maps & Atlases
and Graphics auction, yesterday (June 17) ... more
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Mark Twain
handwritten tribute sells for $242,500
A 64-page tribute
handwritten by Mark Twain to his daughter after she died aged 24
has sold at Sotheby's in New York for $242,500 (£164,000) ... more
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John Steinbeck's
apartment archive to be auctioned
John Steinbeck
kept his California roots close when writing such masterpieces as
"The Grapes of Wrath" and "East of Eden," but the Nobel Prize winner
also loved New York and made it his home for much of his life. Now,
a trove of his personal letters, manuscripts and photographs from
his sunny three-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side,
where he lived until his death in 1968, is being offered at Bloomsbury
Auctions in New York on June 23 ... more
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16.06.10.
Shakespeare
theft case man mobbed
An antique dealer
accused of stealing a priceless first edition of Shakespeare's works
was mobbed as he arrived at court ... more
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Book thief
had 'shopping list' of treasures
William Jacques,
41, was caught with “a thief's shopping list” of 70 rare titles,
their shelf reference in the library, their condition and their
value on the American market, the jury was told ... more
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Comic book
rivals in court
A British comic
book author has taken a rival to court in the US, claiming that
he stole three characters that are now worth millions ... more
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500G deal
for 'book thief'
A man accused
of swiping $1 million in rare books from the collection of a late
Vanderbilt heir sold 250 titles for a total of $500,000, the dealer
who bought them said yesterday ... more
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15.06.10.
Bookshops
between hard covers
This week is
Independent Booksellers Week, celebrating the best bookshops up
and down the land, but how much do you know about their fictional
counterparts? Take the Guardian literary bookshop quiz to find out
... more
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12.06.10.
Man
accused of stealing $1M in rare books
The home-electronics
installer accused of pilfering $1 million worth of rare books from
a Fifth Avenue mansion owned by the widow of a Vanderbilt heir claimed
the precious tomes has been left to rot in the basement. Timothy
Smith, 41, faces a felony grand larceny charge for the alleged theft
from the late Carter Burden’s extensive collection of 20th century
American literature, including first-edition copies by Ernest Hemingway
and F. Scott Fitzgerald ... more
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10.06.10.
Ballard
archive saved for nation
The archive of
visionary writer JG Ballard has been acquired for the nation. The
15 large storage boxes containing manuscripts, notebooks and letters
offer an "extraordinary insight" into the novelist, said the British
Library ... more
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Sex led to
EM Forster’s end
A secret diary
reveals how losing his virginity in a gay tryst at 38 curbed the
celebrated author’s creative drive ... more
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08.06.10.
Rude
Britannia at Tate Britain, review
Ever watched
a stand-up comic die in front of an audience? That’s what Tate Britain’s
show of British comic art is like. “Rude Britannia” tries so desperately
to entertain and fails on so many levels that by the end I felt
embarrassed for the curators, who gathered together a vast amount
of interesting material, and then had no idea what to do with it
all ... more
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Ancient manuscript
found in library cellar
A library in
northern Sweden has found in its cellars a rare volume of hand-written
German legal code from the 15th century, authorities say ... more
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04.06.10.
Sony
predicts the end of the paperback
The Japanese
tech-giant suggested the paperback will be a thing of the past within
five years after analysing the rise of digital film and music. Steve
Haber, president of Sony's digital reading division, told the Telegraph:
"Within five years there will be more digital content sold than
physical content" ... more
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02.06.10.
Tintin
ban is 'like book burning'
Legal attempts
to ban Tintin in the Congo for racism are a form of "book burning",
according to lawyers acting for the estate of Hergé, the Belgian
cartoon hero's creator ... more
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Books still
furnish a room
Consumers are
buying bundles of old, worn-out, spineless books as room decor.
A new Sacramento Bee article tries to make sense of this trend.
Does it reveal the marginality of the printed word in the age of
the web and the tablet, reduced to a bundle of "text blocks"—in
the phrase of curators who focus on the evolution of bindings to
the exclusion of texts and printing? ... more
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Shakespeare,
In Love (With)
It’s nobody’s
favorite Shakespeare play. When the curtain finally drops on five
acts of murder, rape, mutilation and revenge in Titus Andronicus,
probably the first of his tragedies, you may feel mathematically
satisfied (that’s the nature of retribution), but hardly moved.But
seeing a 1594 quarto of the play—one of the earliest printed works
of Shakespeare—you can’t help but feel blown away ... more
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Church Sues
Getty Museum
An Armenian church
sued the Getty Museum in Los Angeles Superior Court, demanding the
return of 7 pages of an illuminated Bible created by "the master
illuminator T'oros Roslin" in 1256. The Western Prelacy of the Armenian
Apostolic Church of America claims the 7 pages of the "Zeyt'un Gospel"
were "lost or stolen during the Armenian Genocide" of 1915-1918
... more
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Rare books
to be taken into State care
A collection
of rare books, described by experts as the most important of its
kind in Ireland outside Dublin is being taken into State care by
the Office of Public Works ... more
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Collecting
first editions is a kind of madness
Buy beautiful
old books, not first editions, Christopher Howse says ... more
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