- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
Shelf:Life
Shelf:Life - Links to what's new in the world of old, rare, and collectable books, insights into book collecting, the news stories that matter, and occasional comments by TheBookGuide. Archived Stories.
28.02.15.
John Aubrey and our golden age of life writing
John Aubrey's Brief Lives invented biography - it sought the 'naked and plain truth' about its subjects. But how to tell the story of his own life? ... more Add a comment
Second 'lost' Sherlock story found
Another book containing the 'lost' Sherlock Holmes story has been discovered in Selkirk, bearing the signature 'Arthur Conan Doyle' ... more Add a comment
Diagram Prize
A book about the evolution of genitals has been shortlisted for this year's Diagram Prize for the oddest book title of the past year ... more Add a comment
Looted 400-year-old books from Italy turn up in California
Two antique books dating to at least the 17th century that were looted from Italy have turned up in California -- a relief for the Italian government, which will get the rare tomes back, and a surprise for the San Francisco buyer, who was unaware they were stolen ... more Add a comment
26.02.15.
Bookseller offers rarity that inspired Charlotte Bronte
A rare first edition of Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds belonging to Frances Currer, the woman believed to have inspired Charlotte Brontes pseudonym of Currer Bell, has come to light ... more Add a comment
Gordon College's bid to auction books creates uproar
When a wealthy family bequeathed a collection of rare Bibles and Shakespeare folios to Gordon College in 1922, it came with a catch: the works had to remain intact and with the school ... more Add a comment
Is Adolf Hitler's book too dangerous for the general public?
Old copies of the offending tome are kept in a secure 'poison cabinet,' a literary danger zone in the dark recesses of the vast Bavarian State Library. A team of experts vets every request to see one, keeping the toxic text away from the prying eyes of the idly curious or those who might seek to exalt it ... more Add a comment
Is 1,300-word yarn a lost Conan Doyle?
A mystery that might have intrigued the great detective himself has unfolded in Scotland with the discovery of a previously unknown Sherlock Holmes story. Is it or is it not by Arthur Conan Doyle? ... more Add a comment
The crack of the spine
Why do we find wear and tear in books so comforting? ... more Add a comment
24.02.15.
Alan turing's hidden manuscript set to reap millions
Interested in more than a movie about Alan Turing's life? An unpublished notebook, containing 56 handwritten pages by Turing, is scheduled for auction on April 13th. Cassandra Hatton, Bonhams' specialist on the history of science, sits down with Bloomberg's Pimm Fox to discuss the auction ... more Add a comment
Isis burns 8000 rare books and manuscripts in Mosul
While the world was watching the Academy Awards ceremony, the people of Mosul were watching a different show. They were horrified to see ISIS members burn the Mosul public library. Among the many thousands of books it housed, more than 8,000 rare old books and manuscripts were burned ... more Add a comment
20.02.15.
One man's obsession with rediscovering a lost typeface
Designer Robert Green first encountered the Doves Press type at art college but it was in 2010 that he began an interest which, he says, became an "obsession" ... more Add a comment
19.02.15.
Frank Sinatra driver's licence up for auction
From Willie Nelson's pigtails to John Lennon's tooth, not all rock memorabilia directly relates to music. Online auction house Paddle8 has listed Frank Sinatra's 1944 driver's licence and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's credit card among items in its Legendary: Memorabilia from Rock Gods to Pop Stars auction ... more Add a comment
Prince of Wales' 1919 love letter doubles reserve price
The 1919 letter written by Edward VIII to his married mistress Freda Dudley Ward sold for £1,100 at Reeman Dansie auction house in Colchester, Essex ... more Add a comment
BT blasted for banning phonebox book shelf
BT bosses have ordered residents to remove a book shelf they put inside a red telephone box - branding it a health and safety hazard. People living near the phone box, which is one of the last ones still active, put a small wooden shelf up on the existing ledge so residents could swap and share books ... more Add a comment
Why our comic-book heroes deserve to be celebrated
The long history, abundant diversity and visionary quality of comics produced in the English-speaking world are too rarely appreciated by mainstream critics ... more Add a comment
J-Lo sparks quest to find 'first editions' of The Iliad
A scene in Jennifer Lopez's new film in which her character is given a supposed first edition of The Iliad has prompted viewers to attempt to find their own first edition of an epic poem composed at least 2,000 years before the invention of the printing press ... more Add a comment
Electrician who stole priceless manuscript gets 10 years
Jose Manuel Fernandez Castineiras, the former electrician of the Santiago de Compostela cathedral in Galicia, in northern Spain, has been given a 10-year prison sentence for stealing the Codex Calixtinus, a priceless 12th-century illuminated manuscript from one of the church's chambers, El Mundo reports ... more Add a comment
How to buy rare books the right way
Though Yadalam had been an avid book buyer since he was 10, he stumbled across a book at the Bangalore Club library in 2004, which opened up a world he never knew existed ... more Add a comment
13.02.15.
American Pie manuscript 'to fetch $1.5m' at auction
Singer-songwriter Don McLean is to auction the original notes from his 1971 classic and promises all will be revealed about enigmatic song ... more Add a comment
The Bookplate Society auction
During February 2015 the Society is running its second online auction. There is a huge selection of British, American and Continental European bookplates on offer, largely from the estate of our former honorary member Brian Schofield. In accordance with our aim to widen interest in the study of bookplates, this sale is open to non-members. ... more Add a comment
12.02.15.
Blow £20,000 on rare original Gone With The Wind
A rare original version of the script for timeless classic film Gone With The Wind, signed by more than 20 members of the cast, is up for auction... and is expected to fetch at least £20,000 ... more Add a comment
Expert cracks mystery of historic manuscript
A 150-year old manual for Buddhist monks in Burma - written on the leaves of a palm tree - was found tucked away in a council archive ... more Add a comment
The wonderful botanical drawings of Helga Crouch
Helga Crouch is one of those special people who have turned everyday living into an art form. As a botanical artist of considerable repute she has recorded the flora and fauna of her surroundings in a series of paintings, so we can all share in its bounties ... more Add a comment
Latin-Americana library sells for $1.2 million
A number of items in the Latin-Americana library of Dr. W. Michael Mathes - offered by Swann Auction Galleries on November 6, 2014, in New York City - made the Bay Psalm Book look like a Johnny-come-lately. While the metrical psalter, issued in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640, was the first book printed in Britain's North American colonies, it was not - not by a long shot - the first one printed in the New World ... more Add a comment
Big Foot Aficionado?
A First-edition 1896 tome, the first mention of creature in book form, one of the quirkiest items at 40th annual Washington Antiquarian Book Fair ... more Add a comment
Bavaria returns stolen books
A total of 543 historical works - primarily from the 16th and 17th centuries - plundered from Italian libraries are returning home. The total value of the books is estimated at 2.5 million euros ($2.8 million). The books were seized from a Munich auction house in 2012. Munich's Public Prosecutor's Office then ruled the works should be handed over to the Italian judiciary, scheduled to be returned on Friday ... more Add a comment
9.02.15.
Magna Carta edition found in Sandwich archive scrapbook
An early edition of Magna Carta has been found in a Victorian scrapbook during a search of a council's archives ... more Add a comment
A library for the mad?
A fascinating look inside the Wellcome Library in this week's LONDONIST podcast ... more Add a comment
7.02.15.
Recovering the Doves Type
In 1916, the Doves Type was seemingly lost forever after it was thrown into the River Thames. Almost 100 years later, and after spending three years making a digital version, designer Robert Green has recovered 150 pieces from their watery grave ... more Add a comment
Maps that shaped the world
Bursting with information and often incredibly beautiful - maps do more than just showing you where you are, or where you might be going. Here we tell the stories behind some fascinating examples ... more Add a comment
The handmade tale
Commonplace reading matter may be increasingly reduced to pixels on a digital device, but the book as an art form still has its fans. In particular - as an antidote perhaps to the growing preponderance of technology - more and more people seem to consider handmade books worthy of conversation and collection. That is the message that will be delivered by CODEX 2015, a biennial four-day book fair and symposium that is about to take place in the San Francisco Bay area ... more Add a comment
Inflame her to venery with wanton kisses
A first edition of the 17th-century bestseller Aristotle's Masterpiece goes under the hammer this weekend. But just how enlightened was this Enlightenment sex manual? ... more Add a comment
6.02.15.
A pop-up from the past
Two centuries before Robert Sabuda began thrilling readers with bold feats of paper engineering, there was Leopold Chimani, whose 1827 Naturgemahlde is a brilliant example of 19th century multi-dimensional illustration, and part of London bookseller Simon Beattie's California Book Fair cataloge ... more Add a comment
5.02.15.
Codebreaking materials devised by Turing discovered
During restoration work at Bletchley Park, papers which had been stuffed between the roof rafters to act as insulation were discovered and found to include unique surviving examples of Banbury Sheets. At the end of World War II all the documentary evidence connected with breaking the communication codes of the German High Command was ordered to be destroyed. However, nobody thought to investigate the roof space! ... more Add a comment
An Anti-Suffrage Children's Book From 1910
Anti-suffrage literature printed in the 1910s, as suffrage activists in the United States ramped up their campaign for enfranchisement, took a number of clever forms. Advocates like the members of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage tried to portray a desire for the franchise as foreign to women's nature ... more Add a comment
4.02.15.
'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' found
An ancient gospel has been discovered in the pages of a diminutive book dating back to the 6th century. The text, dubbed the 'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' is written in Coptic and contains oracles that would have been used to provide support and reassurance to people seeking help for problems. It is not a gospel in the traditional sense, because it doesn't predominantly teach about Christ, and its translator suggests that the discovery could rewrite the ancient definition and purpose of gospels ... more Add a comment
London’s fabled book runners
Two legends in the London Antiquarian Book Trade who continue to fascinate me are Driff and Stone, London's famous book runners. (Martin Stone has been profiled a few times, Driff less so) ... more Add a comment
A million rare documents damaged in Moscow library fire
A fire that ripped through one of Russia's largest university libraries is believed to have damaged over one million historic documents, with some describing the fire as a cultural "Chernobyl" ... more Add a comment
3.02.15.
Jane Austen family letters offer ‘deeply personal’ insight
A window into the life of Jane Austen's mother's family, the Leighs of Adlestrop, is promised by an unpublished collection of manuscripts which are set to "draw back the curtain on the formalities of society" in Regency England ... more Add a comment
Iconic Tintin comic book cover fetches incredible price
The original cover design for Tintin adventure "The Shooting Star" has been sold for $A3.63 million in a near-record for a work by the boy detective's Belgian creator Herge ... more Add a comment
A brief history of the dust jacket
As most collectors are aware, a dust jacket in fine condition can greatly enhance the value of a book. Indeed, for modern first editions, a book without the dust jacket will sell for only a fraction of the price. Once intended to be temporary and disposable protection for beautifully bound books, dust jackets have become - in some ways - more valuable than the books they protect. How and when did this change occur? ... more Add a comment