16 Friday Mar 2012
Posted in Exhibitions, Libraries, Rare Books
You can visit this virtual exhibition of “The Body in the Library” at the Monash University Library
The jig-saw puzzle murder / by Walter F. Eberhardt. (Covent Garden : Puzzle Books, [1933])
Source: Monash University Library
13 Tuesday Dec 2011
Posted in Antiquarian Books, Book History, Books, Exhibitions, Libraries, Literature
From Pen to Print: The Handwriting Behind the Book is an exhibition that features handwritten letters, notes, postcards, and other manuscripts that reveal personal, private, and otherwise veiled aspects of the production of books. Putting authors’ manuscript materials on display alongside their print books, the exhibition reveals the passions, obsessions, lofty dreams, and gritty realizations triggered by the writing and publishing process. These materials capture the relationships between 19th- and 20th-century American authors, editors, and readers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Alice Cary, Rufus Griswold, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Anne Warren Weston, Sarah Grimke, Angelina Grimke, Charles Folsom, and Robert Frost. These writers’ correspondence and notes, paired with rare, early editions of the books discussed therein, bring many fascinating facets of composition and publishing to light, notably the working relationships between authors and their editors and the interactions between authors and their readers. The exhibit also offers such curiosities as digitally enlarged signatures and passages from autographs, cross-hatched letters, and a selection of author portraits.
This exhibition is the result of an innovative, ongoing partnership between UMass-Boston’s English M.A. Program and the Boston Public Library. UMass-Boston students take a semester-long course in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Room, engaging in hands-on research that generates a student-curated exhibit. This exhibition presents the results of a seminar that focused on the scholarly transcription and annotating of handwritten texts. Previous years’ topics have included books from colonial Boston, Shakespeare, public poetry, and the origins of the British novel.
The exhibition is free and open to the general public. It is located in the Rare Books Exhibition Room on the third floor of the Boston Public Library’s McKim Building, and is open M, T, W, F – 9am – 5pm; Th – 11am – 7pm. The exhibition runs through March 30, 2012.
12 Sunday Sep 2010
Posted in Antiquarian Books, Book History, Books, Libraries, News
The Library of Congress has made available 24 videos in its History Channel series Fascinating Finds in Three Minutes – you can view them either on YouTube or ItunesU. Here is an example in this “A Tale of Two Books” - the story of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau and their gift books and inscriptions to each other:
Visit:
09 Thursday Sep 2010
Posted in Bookplates, Books, Libraries, News
The University of Delaware announces its new online digital collection of the William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection:
[Charles Dickens Bookplate]
Reverend William Augustus Brewer was an avid bookplate collector. His wife, Augusta LaMotte Brewer, bequeathed his collection to the University of Delaware Library after her husband’s death. The William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection comprises 12,680 printed bookplates dating mainly from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The collection includes bookplates from the libraries of John Carter Brown, Lewis Carroll, Samuel L. Clemens, Calvin Coolidge, Charles Dickens, Walt Disney, Edward Gibbon, Alexander Hamilton, Harry Houdini, Samuel Pepys, Howard Pyle, Paul Revere, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Alfred Stieglitz and William Butler Yeats, as well as many others. The designers of the bookplates include Thomas Bewick, Edward Burne-Jones, Kate Greenaway, William Hogarth, Howard Pyle, Rudolf Ruzicka, and James A. M. Whistler. Subjects illustrated in the bookplates are varied, inclucing birds, death’s heads, medicine, music, rebuses, and portraits of historical and literary figures.
The William Augustus Brewer Digital Bookplate Collection currently contains 3,040 of these bookplates, with the remaining 10,000 to be added in 2011.
[Text and image from the website]
07 Monday Jun 2010
Tags
A great use for the famed British phone box!
“A traditional red phone box has been recycled into one of the country’s smallest lending libraries – stocking 100 books.
Villagers from Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset can use the library around the clock, selecting books, DVDs and CDs.
Users simply stock it with a book they have read, swapping it for one they have not.
“It’s really taken off. The books are constantly changing,” said parish councillor Bob Dolby.
He added: “It is completely full at the moment with books. Anyone is free to come and take a book and leave one that you have already read.
“This facility has turned a piece of street furniture into a community service in constant use.”
A resident dreamed up the idea when the village lost its phone box and mobile library in quick succession.
Westbury-sub-Mendip Parish Council bought the phone box from BT in a national scheme for a token £1.
BT has received 770 applications for communities to ‘adopt a kiosk’, and so far 350 boxes have been handed over to parish councils.
Phone boxes have been turned into art installations, a shower and even a public toilet.”
[Source: BBC News]
12 Monday Oct 2009
Posted in Books, Decorative Bindings, Libraries, News
The Boston Public Library is hosting “Bound for Success: Designer Bookbinders International Bookbinding Exhibition”, showcasing a selection of the entries in the 2009 competition:
The 117 bindings on display [first exhibited at the Bodleian Library] show remarkable ingenuity, technical skill, and sophistication. With its impressive range of cultural and geographical differences in the contemporary art of bookbinding, this exhibition offers a fascinating and beautiful overview of the work of 21st-century designer binders.
[from the BPL website]
The exhibition catalogue, Bound for Success: Catalogue for Designer Bookbinders International Competition 2009, which presents nearly 400 of the contemporary bindings entered, is available for purchase at the University of Chicago Press and through Amazon.com.
The exhibit runs through December 13, 2009 at the Boston Public Library. Exhibition dates:
12 June – 1 August 2009 Bodleian Library, Oxford
18 September – 13 December 2009 Boston Public Library
12 February – 6 March 2010 Bonhams & Butterfields, San Francisco
19 May – 31 July 2010 The Grolier Club of New York
For more information, see the Designer Bookbinders website and click here for information on the 2009 international competition.
23 Saturday May 2009
Posted in Antiquarian Books, Authors, Jane Austen, Libraries, Literature, News
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)—one of the greatest moralists, poets, biographers, critics, essayists, and correspondents of all time—so dominated literary and intellectual life in the last half of the 18th century that the era is frequently referred to as the “Age of Johnson.” As a conversationalist and writer he was so insightful and adept in the use of language that only Shakespeare and the Bible are quoted more often.
Samuel Johnson: Literary Giant of the 18th Century, a new exhibition opening May 23 and continuing through Sept. 21 in the West Hall of the Library, tells the story of Johnson’s life and achievements through a display of rare books, manuscripts, and portraits drawn from The Huntington’s holdings and from the Loren and Frances Rothschild Collection. The exhibition is curated by noted Johnson scholar O. M. “Skip” Brack, professor emeritus of English at Arizona State University.
[from the Huntingon Library Website - see for more information on the exhibit]
[title page of Johnson's Dictionary from the Vassar Library website]
Further Reading:
Johnson Portrait by Reynolds
22 Wednesday Apr 2009
Posted in Antiquarian Books, Book History, Decorative Bindings, Libraries
See this online exhibition at the Boston Public Library:
On the Edge – the Hidden Art of Fore-Edge Book Painting
This website highlights a special collection of more than 200 high-resolution images of fore-edge paintings housed in the Rare Books Department of the Boston Public Library. Includes articles on the history of fore-edge painting by Anne Bromer and Martin Frost, and an essay on the BPL collection by Muriel Figenbaum.
[and for a look at contemporary fore-edge painting, click on this link to Martin Frost's website]
20 Friday Mar 2009
Posted in Antiquarian Books, Book History, Libraries
The History Channel has linked up with the Library of Congress by issuing short video documentaries on the “hidden treasures” housed by the Library. The current video is about a copy Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and how it literally saved a man’s life in the First World War.
You can view this video on “The Book that Saved a Life” at the History Channel’s website.
Other videos available for viewing are: [found on "This Week's Hidden Treasure" page]
