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27.01.11.
Philip
Pullman's call to defend libraries
A passionate
speech delivered by author Philip Pullman to two or three hundred
people at an Oxfordshire library campaigners' meeting earlier this
month has become a viral sensation through the influence of social
networking. The speech, posted online and read some 20,000 times
in two days, has been tweeted and retweeted, and hailed as a classic
piece of oratory ... more
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26.01.11.
Art
thief jailed for 'robbing Britain's heritage'
Two days later
Doyle targeted Forty Hall Museum, in Enfield, and made off with
six maps of Middlesex. He was caught later that day trying to sell
the antiquarian maps but the dealers saw through his claim that
the pieces belonged to a relative and he left disppointed ... more
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Celebration
of Books on the BBC in 2011
The BBC today
announces its Year of Books 2011 which will celebrate books and
matters related by inviting audiences to free their imagination
with a broad range of quality programmes ... more
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Fakes' own
place in literary history
As another fake
by the late, great Alexander "Antique" Smith is discovered, Gareth
Edwards asks whether he was the best - or worst - forger in Britain
... more
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25.01.11.
The
mystery of the Vasari archive sale
One of the art
world’s most gripping and convoluted sagas, involving the Italian
government, a mysterious Russian businessman and a Renaissance master,
has taken on a new, unexpected turn. The sale of the Arezzo-based
archive of Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) - which includes correspondence
from five Renaissance popes and the Medici rulers of Florence, as
well as 17 letters from Michelangelo—to a Russian buyer appears
to be falling apart. The move is the latest twist in a long-running
saga that began in September 2009 with the reported sale of the
Vasari documents by the then owner of the archive, the late Giovanni
Festari, to Vasilij Stepanov, of the Russian firm Ross Engineering,
part of the Ross Group, for €150m ... more
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BBC to finish
Charles Dickens's Edwin Drood
Charles Dickens's
unfinished work The Mystery Of Edwin Drood is to be given a new
ending in a major BBC adaptation ... more
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Bitter feud
over a book of Burns poems
A bitter feud
between two brothers over a book of Burns poems led to threats of
death, arson and acid attacks.Andrew Lang, 42, became enraged when
his older brother Thomas claimed the rare first edition when their
father died ... more
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Fair features
Murdoch memorabilia
Slices of literary
history from the former home of novelist Iris Murdoch went up for
sale at a book fair on Saturday ... more
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20.01.11.
44th
California International Antiquarian Book Fair
Thousands of
book lovers, buyers, browsers and sellers will come together in
San Francisco at the 44th California International Antiquarian Book
Fair from February 11th through Sunday, February 13th ... more
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Asterix author
falls foul of French taxman
French tax authorities
are demanding hundreds of thousands of euros from the co-creator
of Asterix, ruling that Albert Uderzo is a "simple illustrator"
undeserving of the tax breaks authors enjoy ... more
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17.01.11.
Twitter
support for libraries snowballs
A simple tweet
from a Shropshire ICT lecturer musing on libraries while doing her
laundry of a Sunday morning resulted in the hashtag #savelibraries
trending worldwide yesterday. "Libraries are important because ...
[fill in your answer & RT] #savelibraries", Mar Dixon tweeted. More
than 5,000 people responded spontaneously to her invitation, which
was retweeted by, among others, Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman
... more
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Fight for
Libraries
The Bookseller
has launched a campaign to oppose the "wantonly destructive cuts
to the national library service". Called Fight for Libraries, the
campaign will be centred around a Facebook site where news about
library cuts and opposition to them will be reported, and which
will also function as a hub for all news, sites and information
on the struggle against library cuts ... more
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Early Canadian
map fetches unexpected $318,000
A previously
unknown, 312-year-old map of Canada that was found rolled up and
covered in dust in the attic of a Scottish estate sold Monday at
an auction in Britain for $318,000 nearly triple the expected high-end
price of about $125,000 ... more
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15.01.11.
Library
emptied in closure fight
People in Stony
Stratford, near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, have spent the week
withdrawing their maximum allowance of books in protest against
council plans to close it as part of budget cuts. And they said
the plan had been a success, with all 16,000 books withdrawn from
the library ... more
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Haydn manuscripts
discovered
The handwritten
manuscripts were discovered in the National Library of Norway archives.
Though it is still unknown how Haydn's manuscripts ended up in Oslo,
the discovery contains dozens of arrangements that were written
toward the end of Haydn's life between 1803 and 1806 ... more
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"Comics Stripped"
During the Great
Depression, before Joe Shuster's illustration of Superman gave comics
a mainstream voice in 1938, many other cartoonists dabbled in the
creation of “dirty drawings.” This risqué artwork featured busty
women, fetishes, bondage, homosexuality and other explicit sexual
encounters. Beginning January 13, the Museum of Sex will flip through
the pages of erotic history to reveal how the comic book medium
has been used over time to depict sexual fantasy, poke fun at taboo
topics and lampoon icons of popular culture. The exhibit, aptly
named Comics Stripped, will feature drawings from the Great Depression
to the present, all which remind us of the fun, frivolity and impact
of sexual expression and innuendo on our lives ... more
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The secret
stories of book inscriptions
The bespoke dedications
found in secondhand books often open onto narratives almost as intriguing
as the books they preface ... more
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12.01.11.
Drawing
a blank with Robert Crumb
Recently I found
a volume of Robert Crumb's Sketchbooks in a secondhand bookshop.
Maybe I'll buy this, I thought. Then I flicked through it and after
the umpteenth doodle inspired by his sexual obsession with chunky
girls (this one had her hand down her pants) I decided not to bother
... more
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10.01.11.
Original
Lorca Manuscript found
A Boston University
professor has discovered by chance at the Library of Congress in
Washington the first draft, written and corrected by hand, of the
Federico Garcia Lorca poem “Oficina y Denuncia” (Office and Denunciation),
included in his famed “Poet in New York” collection ... more
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Lost Dickens
manuscript revealed to be a fake
A manuscript,
recently discovered in a house in Gosport, and believed to be the
only extant copy of the hitherto unheard of Charles Dickens novel
- The Winds Of The Cauliflowered Egg - was today declared to be
'an amateurishly perpetrated con' ... more
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Rare books
are dusted down for public
Almost 2,000
rare and antique books, including the first Belfast printing of
the poems of Robert Burns, will be opened up to the public thanks
to a £50,000 lottery windfall ... more
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‘Postal charges
could cripple us’
A small business
selling rare books across the world has been hit with a double whammy
of new charges by Royal Mail ... more
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06.01.11.
Theft
of Harry Potter book denied
A 40-year-old
man accused of stealing a rare first edition of the first Harry
Potter novel denied the charge at magistrates yesterday. Kevin McGirr
told a court he did not take the signed copy of Harry Potter and
the Philosopher’s Stone, worth nearly £6,000, from a display at
an art gallery ... more
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Princely
sum sought for 'rare' book
While some collectors
have stored away copies of Witi Ihimaera's controversial and rare
novel The Trowenna Sea in the hope its value will increase, one
Australian seller is already looking to reap a return ... more
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Three more
must-see bindings
Another in Booktryst's
ongoing series of bindings to die for ... more
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Furore over
'censored' edition of Huckleberry Finn
A new edition
of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is causing controversy
because of the removal of a racially offensive word ... more
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Jewellery
stash first for secondhand bookseller
Over the years,
secondhand book-seller Mike Hamblyn has found all sorts of unusual
items in book purchases - banknotes, letters, photographs, negatives
and even a piece of bacon rind doubling as a bookmark. But on Wednesday
he encountered a first - a stash of jewellery hidden in a hollowed-out
book ... more
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04.01.11.
California:
Book now!
Featuring collections
and rare treasures from nearly 250 booksellers, the 44th International
Antiquarian Book Fair returns to San Francisco’s Concourse Exhibition
Center Feb. 11-13. In addition to book-related lectures and seminars,
this year’s fair features a music theme, including a special exhibit
of rare musical books and manuscripts dating back as far as the
1300s from the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library of the University
of California at Berkeley ... more
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Amazon realises
it is selling anti-Amazon book
Online book seller
Amazon has taken down an ebook which dishes the dirt on its best
seller ranking system. The Day the Kindle Died, detailed a six-month
investigative effort to document how it was possible to get into
Amazon's best-seller list by faking reviews, promotes inaccurate
sales ranking and bestseller lists ... more
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Encouraging
Christmas for independent booksellers
Independent booksellers
have reported an encouraging Christmas, with 41.7% saying sales
were up on 2009, according to preliminary findings in The Bookseller's
Christmas Trading Survey ... more
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Settlement
reached in Rothschild suit vs. auction house
According to
a press release issued by his attorneys, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild
has reached a settlement in his suit against Dominic Winter Book
Auctions. The amount was not revealed though the press release indicated
that Sir Evelyn was satisfied with the result. A spokesman for the
attorneys said they would not be making any comments beyond those
contained in the press release ... more
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01.01.11.
James
Joyce new year's card on sale for €4,950
The illustrated
postcard was sent by Joyce from Zurich to a friend in France on
New Year’s Eve 1940. Joyce died in the Swiss city exactly two weeks
later. The card is one of the last documents written by Joyce and
is being sold by rare books dealer Kenny’s of Galway ... more
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Kindle best-selling
gadget in Britain
Kindle, that
allows users to download and read digital copies of books and newspapers,
is the most popular product of all time on Amazon - selling an estimated
eight million in Britain and the US in 2010 ... more
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Scots favourite
Oor Wullie top-selling kids book
Oor Wullie has
beaten off hordes of teenage vampires to become the bestselling
children's book in Scotland this year. The cartoon scamp topped
a list dominated by US writer Stephanie Meyer's teen vampire books,
which have become hit movies starring Robert Pattinson. Scotland
is one of only a handful of countries this year where the trendy
vampire tales have not come out on top ... more
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Top 100 books
of all time
The top 100 books
- of all time and of the last year - is out. It shows Dan Borwn's
Da Vinci Code is the big seller of the last decade, followed closely
by JK Rowling's Harry Potter novels ... more
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How many
e-books to spare a tree?
The Kindle is
provoking furious debate among better-read American environmentalists,
writes Geoffrey Lean ... more
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