Sunday, October 29, 2017

Links & Reviews

- Forgot this last week so I'm putting it right at the top: there's a new issue of Common-place up, which is excellent as usual - I want to particularly point out Paul Erickson's piece "The Business of Building Books" and the "To Our Readers" note, which invites comments about the role and future direction of the journal.

- The New-York Historical Society will open a new gallery devoted to Audubon's Birds of America this fall.

- Joe Adelman asks at The Junto, "Did Hamilton Write Too Much For His Own Good?"

- Over at Echoes from the Vault, Caroline Douglas reports on her work researching women in the early history of photography.

- The Boston Public Library has announced a partnership with the Internet Archive to catalog and digitize a large portion of the library's Sound Archives Collection.

- Sarah Laskow has an interesting piece in Atlas Obscura about the "oldest" item in each of twelve libraries.

- The Louvre has launched a crowdfunding campaign to purchase a François I Book of Hours, after a British export ban was allowed to expire.

- From Science News, a debate over the dating of a manuscript which might contain the earliest known use of a zero.

- The National Library of Scotland blog highlights their current exhibition on the 500th anniversary of the beginnings of the Reformation. Ditto the Huntington Library.

- Richard Higgins writes for the WaPo on Luther as publishing phenom.

- Simon Beattie's turned up an absolutely wonderful little publication for his Boston Book Fair list - see his post "Fun and games in the British Museum Reading Room."

- Alexandra Alter reports for the NYTimes on a small collection of Harper Lee letters offered at auction; they sold for $12,500.

- Vittoria Traverso writes for Atlas Obscura about the travels of the Luneborch Prayer Book.

- Proposals for the 2018 RBMS conference program are due on 10 November.

- Mentioned this when it was in beta but the main release of a new photo-management program Tropy is now available for download; I'm looking forward to trying this out.

- On the APHA blog, Pam Barrie summarizes a panel at the group's recent conference: "Printing Conflict: The Civil War."

- At Boston1775, J.L. Bell comments on "False Anniversaries for Equiano and Wheatley."

Reviews

- Alan Jacobs' How To Think; review by Dan Cohen on his eponymous blog.

- Richard Beadle's Henry Bradshaw and the Foundations of Codicology; review by James Freeman on the Cambridge University Library Special Collections blog.

- Christopher de Hamel's Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts; reviews by Helen Hazen for The American Scholar and Michael Dirda in the WaPo.

- Christopher Frayling's Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years; review by Zoë Lescaze in the NYTimes.

- Naomi Alderman's The Power; review by Bridget Read in Vogue.

- John Hodgman's Vacationland; review by Charles Thaxton in the WaPo.

- Ed Ayers' The Thin Light of Freedom; review by James Oakes in the WaPo.

- Eric Metaxas' Martin Luther and Brad Gregory's Rebel in the Ranks; review by Andrew Pettegree in the WaPo.

- Philip Pullman's Daemon Voices and The Book of Dust; review by Michael Saler in the TLS.

Upcoming Auctions

- Livres at Manuscrits at Sotheby's Paris on 30 October.

- Important Instruments of Science & Technology at Bonhams London on 31 October.

- The Library of a European Gentleman at Sotheby's London on 2 November.

- Illustrated Books - Childrens' Books - Books in All Fields at PBA Galleries on 2 November.