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28.04.11.
Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray published
Over
120 years after it was condemned as 'vulgar' and 'unclean', an uncensored
version of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is published
by Harvard University Press ... more Add
a comment
Shahnameh
manuscripts on display at Berlin museum
A collection
of 50 manuscripts and folios of the Shahnameh, the celebrated work
of the Persian epic poet Ferdowsi (935-1020), has been put on display
in an exhibition at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin ... more Add
a comment
Jordanian
police recover 7 ancient manuscripts
Jordan's
archaeology chief says security police have recovered seven ancient
manuscripts from local smugglers ... more Add
a comment
26.04.11.
Peter Howard, owner of Serendipity Books, dies
Peter
B. Howard, the owner and founder of Berkeley's Serendipity Books,
was known worldwide for his knowledge and collection of rare books.
But he was equally renowned for his cluttered store and eccentric
ways ... more Add
a comment
Amazon seller
lists book at $23,698,655.93 -- plus shipping
This
unthinkable sticker price for "The Making of a Fly" on Amazon.com
was spotted on April 18 by Michael Eisen, an evolutionary biologist
and blogger. The market-blind book listing was not the result of
uncontrollable demand for Peter Lawrence's "classic work in developmental
biology," Eisen writes. Instead, it appears it was sparked by a
robot price war ... more Add
a comment
Bids Soar
for Rare Comic Book
WhatSellsBest.com,
a website tracking rare items selling on eBay, is reporting bids
have reached $30,000 on day five of a seven day auction, for a rare
Spider-Man comic book ... more Add
a comment
Why is SF
so sneered at?
In recent
years the question of why the literary mainstream continues to marginalize
and ignore writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy has become a live
issue, perhaps most eloquently demonstrated by the furious reaction
to the BBC’s shabby and offhand treatment of the genres in its World
Book Night program, The Books We Really Read ... more Add
a comment
Last typewriter
factory closes
It's
an invention that revolutionised the way we work, becoming an essential
piece of office equipment for the best part of a century. But after
years of sterling service, that bane for secretaries has reached
the end of the line ... more Add
a comment
22.04.11.
All change at the ABA
The ABA
(Antiquarian Booksellers' Association) has
a new website
and
as the result of the first contested election
in its 105 year history, a new President and Vice President. Incoming
President Laurence Worms (of Ash
Rare Books) says that he is "delighted to have secured
a clear mandate for change." Add a comment
Poet's gift
to lover fetches $15,000
A book
of poems inscribed by WB Yeats to his “first lover” was sold for
$15,000 (€10,400) at an auction in New York ... more Add
a comment
Author plans surgery to look like Shakespeare
A high-profile Chinese author is planning to spend more than $150,000 on plastic surgery to make himself look like William Shakespeare ... more Add a comment
19.04.11.
Comic book stash valued at $1M
Erupting
in the kitchen of the modest north Minneapolis home, the fire that
killed a retired bus driver spared a treasure worth more than $1
million. Stacked high and deep in a spare bedroom that escaped the
flames and water hoses last July, the thousands of comic books Gary
Dahlberg had spent a lifetime collecting remained just as he had
kept them, carefully cataloged and perfectly preserved ... more Add
a comment
The death
of the book
Pity
the book. It’s dead again. Last I checked, Googling “death of the
book” produced 11.8 million matches. The day before it was 11.6
milion. It’s getting unseemly. Books were once such handsome things.
Suddenly they seem clunky, heavy, almost fleshy in their gross materiality.
Their pages grow brittle. Their ink fades. Their spines collapse.
They are so pitiful, they might as well be human ... more Add
a comment
18.04.11.
Yeats's gift of book to 'first lover' goes under hammer
A book
inscribed by WB Yeats to a woman he would later call his “first
lover and long-time friend” is to be sold at auction in New York
later this week ... more Add
a comment
BBC attacked
by authors for 'sneering tone' in book show
85 authors,
including Iain Banks and Michael Moorcock, sign protest letter to
director general of the BBC over coverage of 'genre fiction' ...
more Add
a comment
13.04.11.
Zadie Smith loses library battle
The author
Zadie Smith's campaign to save a north-west London library opened
by Mark Twain in 1900 has ended in failure after Brent council voted
in favour of closing half the libraries in the borough ... more Add
a comment
Thousands of Catholic books pulped
Thousands of copies of a new book about the Catholic Church's teachings will have to be pulped after a translation error suggested that the Vatican had radically changed its views on contraception ... more Add a comment
Berlin library returns books stolen by Nazis
Berlin's state library on Wednesday handed back 13 books stolen by the Nazis to the Jewish community as the German government pledged to redouble its efforts to return plundered cultural treasures ... more Add a comment
'Heavy book buyers avoiding bookshops'
Bricks and mortar bookshops in the United States face a grim future, with the heaviest book buyers choosing to buy digitally, delegates at London Book Fair were told ... more Add a comment
12.04.11.
A comic relief
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's . . . Nicolas Cage's long-missing Superman comic! A rare and valuable Superman comic book, reported stolen 11 years ago by the actor, surfaced -- by "divine providence" -- in an abandoned storage unit in Los Angeles ... more Add a comment
Most Americans opposed to banning books
Banning or censoring books has been debated for years. A new Harris Poll shows, however, that a majority of Americans think no books should be banned completely (56%) while fewer than one in five say there are books which should be banned (18%); a quarter are not at all sure (26%) ... more Add a comment
Appraisal event turns up Nuremberg Chronicle
"Usually at these kind of things you are mostly being polite to people and disapointing them," said Sanders. "A gentleman walked in and said I've got a really important book here and I'm sitting there rolling my eyes and thinking, 'yeah, sure you do.' And then he opens it up and it's a Nuremberg Chronicle from 1494" ... more Add a comment
09.04.11.
High times for Pooh, Babar & Co
Forget those first editions. Collectors of classic children's books like Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" have started paying a premium for something even rarer: The books' original watercolor or ink illustrations ... more Add a comment
Roald Dahl stories to be on millions of cereal boxes
Excerpts from Roald Dahl books will appear on tens of millions of cereal boxes over the next few weeks as part of an ambitious attempt to encourage more children to read ... more Add a comment
Use books to enhance your decor
Sometimes, you really can judge a book by its cover. Gerald Smith, the Washington based designer behind GL Smith Associates, offers the following tips for incorporating your favourite volumes into your home decor ... more Add a comment
08.04.11.
Bloomsbury Auctions blame cashflow problems
I’m obliged to John Newland for alerting me to an item in the money section of last Saturday’s Times newspaper. Laura Whateley in her ‘Troubleshooter’ column contacted Bloomsbury Auctions on behalf of Caroline Walker, who complained that the auction house had lost books consigned by her cousin and had failed to pay for those they had sold five months earlier.
At this point I would normally just link to their website page, and leave you read the article and draw your own conclusions. However, The Times is part of Murdock's new pay-to-view empire and if you want to take a peek, it will cost you a quid – here’s the URL:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/money/article2970023.ece
For those of you unwilling to spend a pound, I’ll summarise. At the time Caroline Walker contacted Laura Whateley, her cousin was owed more than 7K for books Bloomsbury Auctions had sold last October. They had also lost a seven-book lot, and an unsold lot from the sale has still to be accounted for.
Bloomsbury Auctions response to Laura Whateley’s questions was to copy her into an email to Caroline, blaming cashflow problems caused by restructuring. The e-mail added: “I am conscious that Bloomsbury have fallen well short of the level of service your cousin should expect from us. We are experiencing short-term difficulties which will be resolved within the next few weeks. We rely very much on our reputation and are grateful that you have not yet let this escalate into damaging national press coverage.”
Bloomsbury Auctions has now agreed to repay the proceeds in two cheques, including £300 for the lost books, but still no mention of the missing unsold ones.
Laura Whately goes on in her article to castigate Bloomsbury Auctions for its behaviour – but you really will have to pay a pound to read it. Add a comment
Your recent article about Bloomsbury Auctions is interesting. Unfortunately I have also had recent bad experience at Bloomsbury. Being a regular Bloomsbury bidder I am very disappointed that they mis transcribed my bid for a lot last week (see email trial below), despite me clearly giving it to them in writing and having the figure confirmed. To make matters worse, they offered to put me in touch with the successful bidder, who bid substantially less than me, to do some kind of deal. They managed to lose business for themselves, the seller, and me. Their reply misses the point that when a bid is received and confirmed in writing, they have, I believe, some kind of responsibility to see it through, and should do more than just apologise. Ever since Dreweatts got involved this business seems to be going downhill from the customers perspective. Auctions have to be built on trust and I can’t trust a house that misallocates written bids. I am extremely lucky this wasn’t a rare lot – it could so easily have been. - Philip Butterworth 19.04.11.
07.04.11.
'The Best Book Fair in the World'
A few years ago, Andy Rooney of CBS “60 Minutes” attended the New York Antiquarian Book Fair and declared it “The best book fair in the world.” Like the rare treasures in the exhibition, this event only becomes better and more valuable over time. Sponsored by the prestigious Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, the 51st Annual New York Antiquarian Book Fair, from April 8 to 10, 2011, promises to be the finest yet ... more Add a comment
Cultural heart beats again on Baghdad bookseller street
"We have a saying: Cairo writes. Beirut prints. Baghdad reads," says Abdul-Wahab Mizher al-Radi, proprietor of the House of Scientific Books, one of countless bookshops crammed along Baghdad's Mutanabi Street ... more Add a comment
Lost Dr Seuss stories to be published
Seven rarely-seen Dr Seuss stories from the 50s, which were tracked down by a Massachusetts dentist, will finally be published in book form this autumn ... more Add a comment
A connoisseur and his treasures
A famous connoisseur, charismatic teacher and voracious collector of Indian and Islamic art, Stuart Cary Welch died three years ago, aged 80. This week, as 164 lots from his Islamic collection were auctioned at Sotheby’s, London was crackling with talk of this American patrician and his fabled eye ... more Add a comment
Rare, obscure, modern
David Stang came to Ars Libri from the Fogg Museum of Art at Harvard University in 1978. The field of modern art in the rare book world was relatively new then. It "really began," says Stang, "with a series of auctions in Switzerland in the late 1950s and late 1960s ... more Add a comment
04.04.11.
Lost Terence Rattigan letters bought for £22
The British Library has acquired four unpublished letters written by Sir Terence Rattigan towards the end of his life, when, despite the extreme pain of his terminal illness, he felt driven to finish his last play. A junior curator saw them in an antiquarian bookshop and bought them for £22 – a snip, given their worth, as a link to one of the 20th century's most celebrated and popular playwrights ... more Add a comment
Scalpels, quills and no pain relief
One of the earliest books in English detailing the science of cosmetic surgery for noses has been unearthed at a house clearance ... more Add a comment
AbeBooks warns customers about data breach
Victoria-based AbeBooks, the Internet book dealer, is warning customers of a data breach in which e-mail addresses may have been exposed ... more Add a comment
Milton bound in murderer's skin
The Westcountry Studies Library is to display a book of poems by British author John Milton, which is bound in the skin of a hanged murderer ... more Add a comment
Franz Kafka letters jointly purchased
More than 100 letters and postcards sent by Franz Kafka to his favourite sister Ottla have been jointly purchased by Oxford's Bodleian library and a rival institution in Germany ... more Add a comment
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