"Unabashed bibliophiles, English literature buffs and lovers of Elizabethan tragicomedy unhurried in their campus meanderings should make a beeline for the Bancroft Library, where they’ll discover a display of rare printed works by William Shakespeare."
"In honor of Charles Dickens 200th birthday on Feb. 7, the Mortimer Rare Book Room has collected many original publications and put them on display."
"Among the books stored in a back room on the third floor is a tiny, original manuscript by Charlotte Brontë, who is most famous for her book "Jane Eyre." The 179-year-old manuscript, which contains two short stories, has been miraculously preserved through diligent care."
"The School of English at Bangor University will be celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) on Tuesday 7 February by showing two rarely seen early film adaptations of his works."
"Today marks the opening of the “Remembering Shakespeare” exhibit at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and with it, the unification of books, prints and documents chronicling the Bard’s lasting impression on the world and on Yale."
"Strange as it might sound, the dead bird and accompanying year-long Dickens program at the Free Library probably provide the perfect means for the American culture vulture to celebrate not only Dickens’s 200th birthday on Feb. 7, but also the little-known yet astonishing impact of Grip on American letters and popular culture to this day."
"A visiting professor at West Virginia University has discovered a 16th-century erotic poem—written by a Catholic noblewoman to the condemned Protestant tutor of Edward VI—hidden inside an edition of works by Chaucer..."
"The story was only printed in 300 copies in 1933 in New York, and this copy is numbered 175, visir.is reports."
"Penn State faculty research about Ernest Hemingway spanning nearly six decades has resulted in both the first scholarly work published about the author and, this fall, the series debut of his only remaining unpublished work -- his letters."
"The original manuscripts of Filipino national hero Dr. Jose Rizal's satirical novels — Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo — have a new home: the Northern Illinois University (NIU) in Chicago in the United States."
"Hosted at the Felder Avenue museum -- the only museum in the world dedicated to the Fitzgerald's -- the celebration included food, fun, a silent auction, a room filled with surprises, musical entertainment, and of course, the time-honored tradition of guests arriving in 1920s-era attire."
"Two years after Shaw’s visit, the Home Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici (Il-Gross), moved an Anti-Sedition Law in Parliament, which was approved, and on May 18, 1933, sent police to the residences of prominent Labour Party supporters to look in all rooms for any seditious literature."
"More than 130 years after it was started, Robert Louis Stevenson’s abandoned first novel has been found, completed and poised to be published for the first time."
" An archive of material pertaining to the famous counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb – including a pair of original hand-drawn personal greeting cards and a 13-page sketchbook – sold for $16,950 at a multi-estate sale held March 4-6 by Philip Weiss Auctions."
"When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Syracuse University alum William Safire died in 2009, he left behind more than a legacy of New York Times columns and books about language. He left stacks upon stacks of personal papers, most of which have yet to be catalogued. This summer, that job will begin at Syracuse University's E.S. Bird Library."
"The 400th Anniversary Edition of the KJV which CBS produced in collaboration with the Bible Society in Britain also celebrates the impressive contributions which it made to the English culture and language. It includes an impressive collection of phrases from the KJV which have found their way into common English use; my brother’s keeper, in the twinkling of an eye, no shadow of turning."
"A greetings card bearing New Years wishes from James Joyce, written 70 years ago is being offered for sale at €4,950 ($6,628)."
"A sheet of Bob Dylan's handwritten lyrics to The Times They Are A-Changin' was the highlight of a New York auction of rare books and manuscripts, with the folk anthem lyrics earning more than $400,000 US."
"Australian writers Tom Keneally, Frank Moorhouse and Janette Turner Hospital are among 70 people who have contributed to Found in Fryer, which details 100 of the rare and valuable holdings of the library and the stories behind these items."
"Bostonians with a sense of history are likely to be familiar with abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Less commonly remembered, though no less significant to the movement, are Weymouth’s Weston sisters, who formed the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society to rally for what members called 'the righteous cause.’'"
"As part of its initiative to revive the literary works of pre-Independence era by publishing rare books written in Hindi and Urdu languages, the Hindustani Academy has decided to publish a rare book on the legendary king Raja Bhoj along with a series of other manuscripts."
"West Virginia University celebrated the life of well-known 20th century writer Isaac Asimov by showcasing a collection of his works Tuesday."
"The vellum-bound book was given by Barrie to his close friend and society beauty, Lady Diana Cooper (nee Manners) and is signed 'To Diana Manners, from her friend, J.M. Barrie, Christmas 1911.'"
"Nearly 100 years later it is now set to fetch £18,000 to £20,000 at Sotheby's in London on October 28."
"The first edition copy of Emily Bronte's masterpiece, first published in three volumes in 1847, was owned by the Rev John Nathaniel Micklethwait, who lived at Coltishall Hall and later inherited Taverham Hall."
"Alvernia University has been named the official repository of scholarly archives of the John Updike Society."
"This weekend Alvernia is hosting the first international conference of the group, dedicated to the study and promotion of the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author's work."
"Barely legible notes scrawled by Katherine Mansfield are expected to fetch close to $100,000 at auction."
"In May 1918, New Zealand-born writer Mansfield was suffering from the tuberculosis that was to kill her, and travelled from London to Cornwall to recuperate."
"More than 40 original illustrations from the classic children’s book Charlotte’s Web – including the iconic cover art – from the estate of legendary illustrator Garth Williams, will be part of Heritage Auctions’ Oct. 15 Illustration Art Auction, taking place at the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, 2 East 79th Street."
"Graham Greene went on record once to say that if hadn’t been a writer, he would like to have owned and run a secondhand bookshop. He was a keen (and pretty sharp) book collector. He followed the bespoke trade journal The Book Collector carefully."
"Opening September 17, the exhibition at The Morgan Library and Museum coincides with the 175th birth anniversary of Twain''s birth and includes more than 120 rare books, letters, notebooks, diaries, photographs, and drawings associated with the author''s life and work."
"In 1988 Wilma Stockenström’s poem (in book format), entitled Skoenlapperheuwel, Skoenlappervrou and illustrated by Judith Mason, was sent to the printer and there went missing. Now 22 years later 30 copies of this rare book have been found in Johannesburg, and will be unveiled during the Mail & Guardian’s Literary Festival on 4 September 2010."
"Dunedin could become the first city in New Zealand - and just the fifth in the world - to be named a Unesco city of literature."
"In total, the letters are one of the best sets of correspondence from the reclusive author ever likely to come to market - especially as he pressed correspondents to destroy his letters."
"They will appear in Sotheby's auction of Rare Books and Manuscripts tomorrow (June 18) in New York, alongside John Lennon lyrics and letters by René Magritte, with an estimate of $100,000-150,000."
" A dust-covered box in one of the 126-year-old building’s former jail cells was filled with old scrapbooks."
"As Hines leafed through the brittle pages earlier this month, he came upon a letter from 1826 that addressed the burial of John Adams and his wife, Abigail, in First Parish Church across the street from City Hall."
"The book signed by the author has supposedly been brought by a British collector. In a 2008 auction, Jonkers Rare Books in Oxfordshire paid 180,000 pounds for it."
"An original signed copy of Jane Austen’s classic novel Emma has been sold by a Henley bookshop for £325,000. Jonkers Rare Books, of Hart Street, sold the only known presentation copy to a British collector. "
"The most expensive is a long letter from author Herman Melville - estimated at $60,000-80,000 - to his publisher, promising a more readable work after a recent commercial failure. The letter hints at a forthcoming work, Moby Dick."
"As the literary world waits to find out what, if anything, J.D. Salinger wrote in his New Hampshire hideaway, fans of the reclusive author can satisfy their longing for new works by reading five of his unpublished stories that can only be found in Princeton."
"Books on Mahatma Gandhi are an endangered lot in his own hermitage, the Sabarmati ashram in Ahmedabad. Over a hundred books on the Mahatma and some of his photographs were consigned to a fire last week after termites feasted on them."
"Nearly seven decades ago, a public library in a small provincial town in India surprised famous English writer William Somerset Maugham with its immense collection of books and quality of service rendered to a society yearning for knowledge."
"The Eaton Collection at the University of California, Riverside acquired a rare, first American edition in January, becoming one of only 25 repositories in the world to own a copy. The purchase was made possible with a $10,000 grant from the B.H. Breslauer Foundation."
"The University of Pennsylvania is home to papers documenting the literary career and life of rabbi-turned-author Chaim (KHYM') Potok."
"The Syrian Public Publishing Authority recently published a book by a local heritage researcher, Khaled Tabah, that tracks the Arab manuscript from its early rise, until its spread in Levant countries."
"The extensive collection of Strawberry Hill house’s former resident Horace Walpole is to go on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum. "
"The vintage edition of the classic novel by P.E.I.-born author Lucy Maud Montgomery, first printed in April 1908 by the Boston publishing house L.C. Page, is expected to fetch up to $25,000 U.S. at Sotheby's Dec. 11 sale of rare books and manuscripts."
"The postcard is among the thousands of pieces of mail that have been meticulously catalogued as scholars at Penn State, working from cramped offices and in conjunction with colleagues across the country and the world, gear up for publication of the complete correspondence of a man widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the history of American letters."
" For Surjit Hans, a well known Punjabi litterateur and retired professor of history, reading Shakespeare in English was not very easy. So he translated the Bard's plays into Punjabi."
"Valued at just under $2 million and consisting of 72 books published between 1479 and 1731, among them several printings of Shakespeare's works, the collection is the largest gift ever given to the rare book library, which was built in 1926 and is located in Los Angeles' historic West Adams District."
"Outside of a Dog is a "bibliomemoir" by a former Warwick University lecturer turned rare book dealer and broadcaster (most recently in his Lost, Stolen or Shredded Radio 4 series) - but it is more accessible than that sounds."
"A Hangeul copy of an ancient Chinese book that contains the notes of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) scholar Kim Si-seup has been discovered."
"Houghton is considered Harvard's primary rare book and manuscript library, boasting collections of about half a million rare books and an estimated 10 million manuscripts, Morris said in a telephone interview. It probably is best known for collections of 19th-century American literature, including the personal papers of New England authors such as Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson..."
"Considered by experts as quite possibly "the most expensive piece of Twentieth Century printed paper in book collecting," the dust jacket is an exceptionally rare find, which clearly contributed to the book far surpassing its estimate of $80/120,000 and ultimately fetching $180,000 — a world record price for any Gatsby."
"Finding an unpublished manuscript by the celebrated black poet Langston Hughes was the equivalent of a rookie hitting a grand slam for El Paso independent publisher Maceo C. Dailey Jr."
"It was sitting neglected at a second-hand bookshop, but now a rare first edition Harry Potter book is expected to conjure up thousands of pounds when it casts a spell on eager bidders at an auction in Norwich."
"A collection of 200 letters from WA’s first surveyor-general, John Septimus Roe, became one of the most expensive archives of early Australian history to be sold at auction when it was bought for $300,000 yesterday."
"This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Burns. To commemorate this literary landmark, the Rare Books and Special Collections Department of the University of South Carolina's Thomas Cooper Library in Columbia has mounted a special exhibition of highlights from the G. Ross Roy Collection of Robert Burns and Scottish Poetry."
"Once the exhibit closes, Jutzi will be back at work with the rare books, preparing them for scholars coming to study at the Huntington. Rothschild will be involved with some of the many events celebrating Johnson around the world, including a speaking engagement at a symposium at Pembroke College in England, where Johnson was a student."
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"Dozens of people return overdue books to the Boston Public Library every day. Probably only one person, however, has ever walked in holding a book that had been missing for 80 years. Please salute Julie Geissler, the New Hampshire resident who stunned library staff members by showing up unannounced one day in 2001 to return a rare first-edition copy of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” one of the most famous books ever written."
"To mark the 150th anniversary of Doyle’s birth, dozens of scholars from around the world gathered at Houghton Library May 7-9 for the symposium, titled 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: A Sesquicentennial Assessment,' which featured speakers including Andrew Lycett, Dan Posnansky, Leslie Klinger, and Giles Constable, as well as the screening of several Sherlock Holmes films, presented by the Harvard Film Archive."
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"The rare book collection devoted to Willa Cather and other revered authors was recently dedicated at an Allegany College of Maryland event that also celebrated the life of Janet Cook, the late professor of English who started the effort."
"Two shabby looking volumes which were recently found in a skip in France have turned out to belong to Lord Byron and Shelley. The rare books, believed to belong to the Canadian collector, Beccles Willson, who settled in France and died there in 1947, were spotted in the skip in the south of France."
"An archive of the works of Scotland's national poet Edwin Morgan was being officially opened at the Scottish Poetry Library off the Royal Mile today."
"The collection includes rare books and pamphlets, as well as Morgan's old typewriter and a bottle of absinthe. And the poet himself was due to celebrate his 89th birthday by attending the event."
"The exhibit honors gifts of rare books to the library by James R. and Mary M. Patton of Tucson, Ariz., and Snowmass, Colo. Besides 30 Joyce items, the exhibit will feature works by poets Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and James Dickey—all gifts from the Pattons."
"A rare book which belonged to Robert Burns has been discovered as volunteers packed up books from Burns Cottage Museum, Alloway."
"The UCLA Library has acquired the literary papers of the Los Angeles novelist, short-story writer and screenwriter John Fante (1909–83). The collection contains his manuscripts for books, short stories and screenplays; personal letters; business records, including book contracts; and memorabilia."
"Next to the National Library of the Philippines, the library with a significant number of manuscripts by or to Jose Rizal is the Lopez Memorial Museum. Aside from the magnificent Filipiniana collection that grew out of a core of rare books assembled by Eugenio Lopez Sr. from dealers in Europe and the United States, the Lopez Museum has art galleries, a modest conservation laboratory and newspaper files where one can reconstruct Philippine history before martial law in 1972."
"Ten years after he stopped creating his famous Peanuts comic strip, and nine years after his death, Charles Schulz is still attracting attention. California-based autograph, rare book and Hollywood memorabilia dealer Nate Sanders is amazed at the attention an original Peanuts comic strip -- hand-drawn and signed by Schulz -- is drawing to his auction house, and believes the one-of-a-kind piece could draw record-breaking bids late this month when his current auction closes. "
"A soft-cover copy of the first Harry Potter book sold for $19,120 in a rare books auction in Dallas, the auction company said Sunday."
"Throughout the month, Ellis Library is featuring an exhibition on rare books and collections acquired for display in the main colonnade. The exhibit traces the history of evolutionary thought and philosophy from ancient to modern times. Works by Darwin, along with other influential scientists and philosophers including John Herschel and Charles Lyell are on display."
"The assumed cost of the book is around $300 million. “'t was £30,000 pounds when it was found in Madras Observatory,' said A Vagishwari, consultant librarian in IIA. The IIA library is bringing out a detailed report about the book to observe the 400 years of the book and to celebrate International Year of Astronomy."
"Dallas, Texas -- Despite the gloomy economy, bidding for a softcover copy of the first Harry Potter book already is at a record $15,000 with more than a week remaining in a rare books auction online and in Dallas, Texas, March 6 and 7. It is one of only 200 such copies issued by the London publisher, Bloomsbury."
"British women writers tackled a wide range of subjects with their pens in the 18th and 19th centuries, from animal rights and feminism to children's stories and science fiction. A new exhibition at the Old Capitol Museum offers a glimpse into the lives and work of 10 of these extraordinary authors through an unusual connective lens: Mother Nature."
"British women writers tackled a wide range of subjects with their pens in the 18th and 19th centuries, from animal rights and feminism to children's stories and science fiction. A new exhibition at the Old Capitol Museum offers a glimpse into the lives and work of 10 of these extraordinary authors through an unusual connective lens: Mother Nature."
"At a time when books can be written and distributed to millions by high-speed computer, there is no earthly reason why anyone would need to spend $5.5 million to create an illuminated manuscript of the Catholic Bible, featuring calligraphy applied by hand on calfskin parchment and other bookmaking methods dating back to the Middle Ages."
"Kristen Nyitray, the university's head of Special Collections and University Archives, bid $48,000 to beat out several other potential buyers during an auction yesterday at Christie's in Manhattan. With the 20 percent commission for Christie's, the total price comes to $57,600."
"Called "An Evening of Honor for Abraham Lincoln," the free event will feature keynote speaker Matt Holland, assistant professor in the department of political science at Brigham Young University. The audience will also hear excerpts from Lincoln's speeches given by local mayors, commissioners and Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, live music from the Civil War era, Lincoln's favorite cake and a display of $1 million worth of rare original documents either signed by or written by Lincoln himself."
"His stories showcase powerful, bloodthirsty villains and dauntless good guys, including four-time hero Cotton Malone, rare-book dealer and international operative. (Berry has a fifth Cotton Malone book coming up, 'The Paris Vendetta,' which he promises will 'shake up' the world he’s created.)"
"He favors big ideas, spanning decades and continents, from Antarctica to Asia. He calls it 'commercial fiction' and, in his typically frank manner, doesn’t try to act as if there’s anything wrong with that."
"He was a roommate to poet Max Jacob, met art critic Guillaume Apollinaire and, most crucially, befriended Gertrude Stein, the modernist American expat who would become a patron and subject for years to come. At Stein's weekly salon, he interacted with other painters developing Cubist art who often would use letters and blocks of type in their collage-like works."
"Picasso would try his hand at writing himself – coming up with hundreds of poems as well as a couple of plays, taking part in a number of book projects involving illustration and art."
"In honor of Edgar Allan Poe's 200th birthday, the Library of Virginia, in partnership with Richmond, VA's Poe Museum, is preparing an exhibition on Poe's life and works. The centerpiece of the exhibition will be the Poe Family Bible, a rarely-seen artifact in the Poe Museum's collections. The exhibition will open July 18, 2009. "
"We rarely see homeless men, business men and school girls gathering for a drink. But this past Saturday, over a hundred people mingled on the main floor of the Central Library, raised Dixie cups of 7-Up, and sang “Happy Birthday” to Edgar Allan Poe. On Saturday afternoon, the Free Library marked the beginning of Philadelphia’s bicentennial commemoration of the author’s life. "
"Last night, Thursday 6 November 2008, at an event at the New York General Consul, Sir Alan Collin's residence, private collector, John Wolfson, pledged his priceless collection of early play texts, including Shakespeare quarto and folio editions to Shakespeare's Globe, London."
"Looking at the illustrations and notations, mostly about plants, it’s hard to imagine that this serene and beautiful exhibit shows the beginning of a war of beliefs — evolution versus creationism — that rages to this day. It’s a revolution that began in an English garden with seeds sown in the imagination of a man viewing garden islands off the Pacific coast of South America. Who could have guessed? "
"A RARE book by the Roman philosopher Cicero, which lay undiscovered in the Law Library at the King's Inns in Dublin, was shown to the media yesterday."
"On Old Age - De Senectute, published in 1535, remained hidden for 200 years after it was rebound in the Law Library with another Cicero text, On Duty, and was not subsequently identified on the joint binding or in the hand-written library catalogue."
"An original “Peanuts” Sunday page, rendered in pen and ink in May 1953 by the late comic illustrator Charles Schulz, soared to $67,800 at a multi-estate sale held Sept. 13-14 by Philip Weiss Auctions. The eight-panel strip showed Charlie Brown and Snoopy playing fetch."
"The collection of more than 100 unpublished letters, notes and telegrams — written primarily to his parents and favorite sister Madelaine ( "Sunny" ) Hemingway and postmarked from such places as Milan, Key West, Pamplona, Bimini and Cuba — spans 40 years of Hemingway's life, commented William Joyce, head of Penn State’s Special Collections Library, 'The acquisition of family letters of Ernest Hemingway shows us a side of him that the public rarely saw — a devoted and dutiful son and an affectionate and attentive brother. It shows the multifaceted relationships he had with all his family members, and deepens and enriches our understanding of Hemingway’s family ties.'"
"CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. — A 1921 poem by William Carlos Williams has been published, along with its story, by Southeast Missouri State University."
"Dylan Thomas’s marriage was notoriously tempestuous, blighted by drunken brawls and mutual infidelity until the poet drank himself to death at the age of 39. "
"Matthew Pearl is the author of The Dante Club, a literary thriller about a group of 19th-century Harvard scholars secretly working on a translation of The Divine Comedy who are forced out of hiding by a series of gruesome murders modelled on Dante's Inferno."
"A stolen copy of the First Folio, the first known collection of William Shakespeare's plays, turned up last week in DC when a rare-book enthusiast took it to the Folger Shakespeare Library. In a case of no good deed goes unpunished, the British man is being considered a suspect in the 1998 robbery of the document from Durham University in England. "
"The recovery in Washington, D. C., of a stolen first folio of Shakespeare plays has spurred the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library to bring out its copy of the same volume, printed in 1623 and one of only 228 still in existence."
"The museum owned by Lincoln National Corp. was scheduled to close at the end of June so that the items it once thought would attract larger crowds can be displayed where more people will see them during the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial celebration next year."
"The lock had been fashioned into a weeping willow, a symbol of mourning or resurrection, according to Dominic Winter Auctioneers of Cirencester, Glos., where the sale took place."
"Brooks, an Australian who won the Pulitzer Prize for her earlier novel, March, came on the story of the Sarajevo Haggedah – a collection of Jewish biblical stories – when she was a foreign correspondent covering the aftermath of the war in Bosnia. Its heroine is Australian rare books expert Hanna Heath, who is offered the job of analysing and conserving the famed Jewish volume and in doing so becomes determined to unlock its history."
"During his career, Gould wrote 300 consecutive essays for Natural History, the monthly magazine of the American Museum of Natural History, and more than 20 books, many of them bestsellers. He also assembled what he believed was a definitive library of the history of early paleontology, said Rhonda Shearer, Gould's widow."
"ATLANTA — A legal battle over prized documents purportedly belonging to Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell has blown over but the final resting place of the disputed papers is still a secret."
"The legal sparring involving the cache — apparently discovered in a file cabinet decades after they were written — was settled in January but no one will say where the trove of documents is now."
"In addition to faculty members who helped revolutionize dance (Merce Cunningham), music (John Cage), the fine arts (Robert Motherwell) and architecture (Water Gropius), Black Mountain nurtured some of the nation's most innovative poets, including Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan and Jonathan Williams. Its legendary journal, the Black Mountain Review, showcased experimental writing that helped change how people looked at literature and the world."
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"CARBONDALE — John LaPine, owner of Printers Row Fine & Rare Books in Chicago, will present a copy of the first book of poetry published by an African American to David Carlson, dean of Library Affairs, at noon Friday, April 11, in a brief ceremony at Morris Library. "
"One week after Lincoln Foundation officials announced the imminent closing of the museum, the board announced the appointment of a committee to discuss the issues surrounding the decision and determine what is best for the collection and for Fort Wayne, said Mike Westfall, Friends of the Lincoln Museum board president, in a statement."
"If Bennett and his colleague, Geoff Smith, head of OSU's Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, have their way, more folks -- academics and laymen alike -- will get a chance to know Burroughs through an ambitious new series of books being published by the Ohio State University Press."
"Much of the Lincoln Museum’s extensive collection – a treasure trove for historians that includes 18,000 books and 350 documents signed by Lincoln, among other rarities – will be digitized or sent to other museums around the country, possibly making it more difficult for researchers to access them all."
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"During his mid-30s, French poet Paul Éluard underwent a personal crisis when his wife left him for a young, up-and-coming painter by the name of Salvador Dali. "
"What happened then is a mix ture of myth and legend."
"ATLANTA, Georgia -- A legal battle over prized documents purportedly belonging to 'Gone With the Wind' author Margaret Mitchell has blown over, but the final resting place of the disputed papers is still a secret."
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"A Canadian antiquarian is set to auction a remarkable set of letters written by Queen Victoria in which the grief-stricken monarch confides her deep sorrow over the death of John Brown, the Scottish royal aide whose close relationship with the widowed Queen sparked rumours of a romance in the 19th century and inspired the hit film Mrs. Brown in the 1990s."
"Next year, Darwin will be 200, and 2009 will also mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.'"
"The Natural History Museum in New York City is exhibiting the most comprehensive ever on Darwin's life and work. 'Darwin' includes more than 400 artifacts, specimens and documents. "
"A first edition copy of "The Great Gatsby" inscribed with a note from F. Scott Fitzgerald to T.S. Eliot was one of three rare books donated to the John Hay Library by Daniel Siegel '57 in December."
"LONDON - Got 48 hours to explore the literary haunts of London? The British capital is a treasure trove of pubs, museums and hotels steeped in booklore. Reuters correspondents with a mix of local knowledge give tips on how to spend a short stay."
"Emory’s Manuscript, Archives and Rare Books Library (MARBL) is sifting through more than 120 boxes of journals, correspondence, photos and other materials from renowned author Alice Walker that arrived at Emory on Dec. 20 after a many-year search for a library to house them."
"In 2002, Owen won first prize in an international calligraphy competition in Osimo, Italy. Her handmade books have been featured in numerous book art exhibits and her work has been collected by the Library of Congress, Harvard University, Yale University and by other museums, libraries and private collectors. She is represented by Joshua Heller Rare Books in Washington, DC. "
"Got 48 hours to explore the literary haunts of London? The British capital is a treasure trove of pubs, museums and hotels steeped in booklore. Reuters correspondents with a mix of local knowledge give tips on how to spend a short stay."
"'The O’Neill Festival at Ten,' 10 nights of free readings, screenings and musical events featuring Zoe Caldwell, Charles Durning, Brian Murray, Natasha Richardson, Marian Seldes and KT Sullivan, will take place at the Provincetown Playhouse on Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village..."
"'People of the Book' opens right after the Bosnian war. It's 1996, and the Haggadah has just turned up in a bank vault, where it was hidden by a Muslim librarian who rescued the codex under heavy shelling. Australian rare-book expert Hanna Heath has been given the job of analyzing and conserving the book, 'a lavishly illuminated Hebrew manuscript made at a time when Jewish belief was firmly against illustrations of any kind.'"
"ATLANTA -- Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker is placing her literary archive at Emory University's library."
"The author of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning 'The Color Purple,' 'By the Light of My Father's Smile' and other works visits Emory every couple of years for readings and meetings with faculty members."
"A book of fairy tales created, handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling sold for £1.95 million at auction on Thursday."
"GENEVA, N.Y - A rare first edition of the Book of Mormon once owned by a Utah newspaper music critic fetched $97,900 at auction. "
"SALT LAKE CITY - A first-edition Book of Mormon - the foundation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - is set for auction this week and could fetch nearly $100,000. "
The Rosenbach Museum & Library is celebrating the work of Maurice Sendak with an expansion of its gallery space and 'Really Rosie,' a new show exploring the children's book author's collaboration with singer-songwriter Carole King."
"A first edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, number 349 of 1,000 published, was discovered by volunteers Jennifer Jones and Noelle Williamson at the small Pepper Street charity shop amongst a bag of second-hand books."
"Since the 1997 release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (the book was retitled Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone when it was released in the US), the series has proven to be one of the most popular in history. It's reported that as of April 2007, the series had sold more than 325 million copies and had been translated into more than 60 different languages. The first five books have been made into blockbuster films, with the sixth set to begin filming later this year."
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"The exhibit, which will feature authors such as William Blake, Lord Byron and John Keats, will make its debut at the library at 6 p.m. today and remain showcased until the end of the December."
"From 1928 to 1943, Paul S. Powers churned out 12,000-word novelettes and short stories — at a penny-and-a-half per word — for Wild West Weekly, which specialized in the genre known as pulp Westerns."
"An undisclosed phone bidder paid a New York auction house $180,000 Wednesday for an 1896 volume of Geoffrey Chaucer's work."
'The Kelmscott Chaucer,' a pigskin-bound collection of works by the "Canterbury Tales" author is rare, with only 48 copies known to exist."
"A number of pets graced the Dickens household over the years, including all manner of dogs, cats and ponies. But Charles' favorite pets were his two ravens, both known as Grip."
"SYRACUSE, New York (AP) — A 177-year-old first edition of the Book of Mormon found in a home near Palmyra - the birthplace of the Mormon religion - will be put up for bid next week at an upstate New York estate auction."
"Following the auction of the Archimedes Palimpsest, the anonymous buyer entrusted the manuscript to the care of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore for conservation and study. RIT’s second chance to work on the document came in 2000, when Johnston, Easton and Knox, then at Xerox Corp., became part of an international team of scholars, conservators and scientists invested in the recovery of the overwritten document."
" The auction will feature the Pamela and Richard M. Estes Collection
comprised of fine bindings and illustrated books dating from the 15th to
20th centuries. Most notable in the collection is The Kelmscott Chaucer,
one of only 48 surviving copies. With type and decorative borders designed
by William Morris, one of the greatest English designers of the 19th
century, the book is expected to fetch upward of $100,000."
"Paradise, purgatory, and hell (frozen over) make a dramatic appearance in a major new exhibition, ‘Dante Rediscovered: From Blake To Rodin’, at the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere."
"Southeast Missouri State University's manuscript by prize-winning poet William Carlos Williams is no longer unpublished. "
"This summer the respected international literary journal The Paris Review included a copy of the poem, 'About a Little Girl,' in its summer edition. "
"New Haven, Conn. — Yale University will host an international conference on October 20 and 21 celebrating the life and work of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. "
"The conference, “Poetics and Politics in Yehuda Amichai’s World,” is free and open to the public."
"An exhibition of books authored by Charles Darwin will be on display in the Lenhardt Library located in the Regenstein Center at the Chicago Botanic Garden through Sunday, October 28, 2007. This exhibit presents the background for his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection—one of the most influential books in the field of natural sciences."
"Janet Frame's niece fears that more original manuscripts, as well as private letters, by the award-winning author could be put on the open market after a rare script was sold for $13,000. "
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"A Dutch foundation received a 17th century Dutch translation of 'Antiquities of the Jews' by first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus."
"'Antiquities of the Jews' covers Jewish history through the Roman conquest of ancient Judea, when the Diaspora began."
"There are fears an original Janet Frame manuscript could end up in private hands, out of public view, when it is auctioned in Wellington this week."
"A manual Royal typewriter that once belonged to Ernest Hemingway, made around 1940 and still in its well-worn leather carrying case, sold for $2,750 at a multi-estate sale held June 24th by Four Seasons Auction Gallery in Atlanta."
"The 1897 copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula was found during a house clearance in Great Smeaton, near Northallerton."
"Three decades after her death in 1976, Dame Agatha Christie remains one of the best-selling fiction writers of all time. It is estimated that, beginning with the publication in 1920 of her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, over 2 billion copies of her books, printed in dozens of languages, have been sold around the globe."
" New Delhi - The scheduled auction of a letter written by Mahatma Gandhi, believed to be his last before his assassination, has ruffled feathers in the Indian government, media reports said Wednesday."
"The FBI has recovered the long-lost manuscript of Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Good Earth," after the daughter of one of the author's former secretaries tried to put it up for auction."
"The 400-page manuscript turned up earlier this month at the Samuel T. Freeman & Co. auction house in Philadelphia..."
"Leather books and handwritten letters by Rudyard Kipling filled the glass cases at Yale's rare books library. Richards, 61, a real estate lawyer in New York, had spent the last quarter of his life hunting down all things Kipling. Now, for his 40th reunion, he was giving it all to Yale: first-edition copies of "The Just So Stories" plus tea sets, posters and cigar boxes decorated with the British writer's face."
"Thirty-eight items of documentary heritage of exceptional value have just been added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, bringing the total number of inscriptions since 1997 to 158."
"A student is expected to make up to £15,000 when he sells his rare first-edition copy of the first Harry Potter book to help pay his way through university. "
"Only 500 copies were made in first run."
"Significant portions of the working manuscripts and notebooks of four well-known books, including "The Prophet," by Kahlil Gibran have been donated to the Princeton University Library."
"Four items that were given as presents by literary giant Ernest Hemingway to George T. Northen – the grandson of former Georgia Governor William J. Northen, who served two terms, from 1890-1894 – will be sold at auction on Sunday, June 24..."
"Entering his eighth decade, Larry McMurtry has under his belt 29 novels, five collections of essays, several screenplays, and, recently, a few short histories, not to mention his vast journalistic output. Raised up in a ranching family near Archer City, Texas, he has become one of his generation's more prolific men of letters."
"For 50 years, the old box of documents collected dust in the West Hollywood garage of Twyla Martin. She knew it had something to do with author John Steinbeck, with whom Martin's husband worked briefly in the 1950s."
"There was no cake. There were no candles. There was just a bunch of middle-aged men standing around in the back room of the library at the New York Botanical Garden yesterday, talking about the birthday boy and sex."
"COLUMBIA, S.C. --The University of South Carolina got a $3 million endowment from the estate of the late Edward S. Hallman to buy more materials and maintain its Ernest Hemingway collection."
"The Newberry Library and the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies have acquired a 15th Century printing of a work by Nicolaus of Lyra."
"Charles Sorenson didn’t find '50 Years in the Saddle' by accident last month. He’d gone to Buffalo in search of the book — a memoir Ricketts had written about his life as a rancher in northeastern Wyoming."
"His wife had spotted the book in a advertisement announcing the auction. He’d planned to buy the book for his brother as a present."
"KARACHI: Sindh Archives has received all 72 volumes of Syed Shamsul Hasan’s historic collection from the National Documentation Center (NDC), Islamabad while documents regarding the Sindh Governor’s Report between the period of 1937 to 1947 has also begun in consignments."
"NORTH HILLS - Writer Joel Eisenberg was poring over some crumbling manuscripts at 3 a.m. when the bombshell hit. "
"He realized the handwritten scrawl swimming before his eyes was none other than the missing draft of "Sweet Thursday" by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. "
"McAleese made these remarks at Emory on Monday after a private tour of the Manuscript, Archive and Rare Book Library (MARBL), which the University says houses the finest collection of Irish literature outside of Ireland."
"The MARBL collection includes the papers of Nobel laureate poet Seamus Heaney, and poets Thomas Kinsella and Medbh McGuckian. The library also holds the literary archive of Irish novelist Edna O'Brien."
"The college's H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies recently purchased a copy of 'Congrégation sur l’élection éternelle de Dieu.'"
"The book was printed in Geneva in 1562 by Vincent Bres and only five libraries in Europe are known to own it and none in the United States."
"ATLANTA --After two decades of waiting, Emory University is unsealing its collection of hundreds of letters between author Flannery O'Connor and one of her longtime friends."
"The Wordsworth Trust has acquired a rare manuscript by William Wordsworth showing how the celebrated Romantic poet made continuous amendments to his work. "
"The first edition copy of the poem The White Doe of Rylstone is covered in revisions in the handwriting of the poet’s wife Mary Wordsworth. "
"A rare manuscript of one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's final Sherlock Holmes stories is expected to fetch a £250,000 at auction. "
"The handwritten copy of The Adventure of the Three Gables goes under the hammer at Sotheby's New York in June."
"Readers will appreciate that for his new novel The Book of Air and Shadows, marine biologist and former Carter speechwriter (?!) Michael Gruber chose a doozy of a McGuffin: the discovery of some 16th century papers that could just point to the existence of a completely unknown play by one William Shakespeare, the exclusive publishing rights to which would be worth many millions of dollars. Not a bad choice, as this device allows the author both a perfect gambit for indulging in both the imparting of some generalized Shakespeare scholarship as well as shootouts with Russian mobsters. "
"The obvious contemporary precedent for the resurgence of the small magazine is Dave Eggers's McSweeney's which in the Nineties became a beacon for writers weary of the limited possibilities of the mainstream press."
"A letter by Goethe is just one of approximately 100 literary letters housed in a Mason City Public Library collection established during the 1950s by family of Gen. Hanford MacNider."
"The collection represents a Who’s Who of American and European authors, a mix of letters and autographs of the famous and not so famous."
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"The first-prize winner receives the 2007 James Joyce "Nancy Duffy Award," a rare book donated by Geoffrey Hoefer, of New York City, in memory of Holocaust survivor Rosi Moses-Scheuer."
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"At number 26, Piazza di Spagna, at the base of the Spanish Steps, in a little red house also known as Casina Rossa, Keats spent the last months of his life. The house in Rome was acquired by the Keats and Shelley Association in 1907 and has been converted into a museum dedicated to the poets of the Romantic Age."
"'By 2021, I predict, you will be able to buy the same RAM stick with 32 terabytes,' said Michael Hart, founder of the nonprofit Project. "That means every word in every major library in the world - you could carry them all around your neck or on your key chain.'"
"GUWAHATI, Feb 25 – The National Mission for Manuscripts, Department of Culture, Government of India, has proclaimed two valuable and rare manuscripts, Chitra Bhagabata and Ratnamala Vyakaran, written on sanchipat and preserved at the KK Handiqui Library of Gauhati University as ‘Vijnananidhi: Manuscript Treasure of India’. Manuscripts declared as Vijnananidhi are selected for their outstanding value to the whole of humanity and for their contribution to Indian life or to the development of Indian thought or the preservation of its culture. The Mission seeks to pay homage to the landmarks in Indian intellectual history by identifying manuscripts with unique heritage value and designating these as ‘Vijnananidhi.’ "
'The first editions of classic children’s books are often very collectible,' said Scott Laming, spokesperson for AbeBooks.com. 'They usually end up battered and beaten so any first editions that survive in good condition become highly sought-after by collectors. The Cat in the Hat is a prime example of how a book’s value can soar because good copies are scare.'
"As the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) celebrates its fourth anniversary, Uttar Pradesh too has become a part of it. Some of the rare manuscripts in the state, which were so far preserved in the private and institutional collections, are being conserved for a national database now. "
"Administrators and faculty officially welcomed award-winning author Salman Rushdie to campus on Tuesday at a press conference and reception where the writer practically bared all. "
"It was the first time the author, who will serve a five-year appointment at Emory, saw his works archived, and the experience, Rushdie said, 'was a bit like undressing in public.'"
"More than 60 works of the best bookbinders and book artists in America will be on display at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts as part of the Guild of Book Workers' 100th Anniversary Exhibition starting today. "
"The exhibit, co-hosted by the Book Arts Program at the J. Willard Marriott Library and the UMFA, is touring across the country and features three unique books by Utah artists."
"Namgyal Institute: A must visit in Gangtok, the Namgyal Institute was built in the year 1958 to promote research in Mahayan Buddhism and Tibetan language and traditions. Built in a traditional style, this institute has world's largest collections of books and rare manuscripts on Mahayan Buddhism, in addition to the works of art and silk embroidered Tankhas."
"GREENSBORO, NC – Greensboro book collector Richard Levy has loaned his Paul Laurence Dunbar collection to The University of North Carolina at Greensboro for an exhibit in Jackson Library during Black History Month."
"Dunbar (1872-1906) was one of the first African-American poets to garner national critical acclaim. The exhibit – “‘Sunshine and Shadow:’ Poems and Fiction of Paul Laurence Dunbar from the Collection of Richard Levy” – will be on display Feb. 1-March 7 in the Hodges Reading Room."
"Montana plays an unlikely starring role in a major literary discovery that promises to electrify 19th-century Romantic scholars around the globe and profoundly change the course of Romantic literature studies."
"At the heart of the excitement is James McKusick, dean of the University of Montana's Davidson Honors College, who after a 36-year hunt has helped sleuth out what is believed to be a previously unknown work of the great British poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge."
"At the heart of the excitement is James McKusick, dean of the University of Montana's Davidson Honors College, who after a 36-year hunt has helped sleuth out what is believed to be a previously unknown work of the great British poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Even more tantalizing, the work is a substantial partial verse translation of Goethe's landmark tragic play, “Faust,” written in 1808."
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"ATLANTA -- Emory University's Robert W. Woodruff Library is now home to love letters between a former British poet laureate and his mistress."
"The letters have been added to the Ted Hughes literary archive at Emory, which the library acquired in 1997."
"The Dublin Writers' Museum is one of the legacies from the Irish capital's year as European City of Culture in 1991. Inside the splendidly restored Georgian townhouse are books, letters, photographs, and memorabilia that bring Dublin's literary heroes to life. At times, it's a bit like exploring the Irish national attic. "
"The pages of a medieval prayer text also contain words of ancient Greek engineer Archimedes. It takes high-tech imaging to read between the lines. "
"The National Library of Ireland has acquired a huge collection of printed and ephemeral items by and about literary giant Samuel Beckett. "
"The 800 strong collection was built by the late book collector and Enitharmon Press founder Alan Clodd and contains more than 200 items personally signed by the writer."
" A rare copy of Danish philosopher Soeren Kierkegaard's famed book 'Either/Or' was auctioned off Tuesday for 170,000 kroner (euro22,800; US$30,200) to a European book collector, an auction house said."
"Fine Gael is examining the sale of a manuscript of James Joyce’s novel, Finnegan’s Wake, to the National Library by a former consultant to the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism."
"Tikari (Bihar), Dec 15: A rare manuscript inscribed in golden letters by the 18th century Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, has been stolen from a school in Bihar. "
"The manuscript titled 'Gulistan' (Nation) in Persian language was in the custody of the Tikari Raj High School, which is about 35 kilometers from Gaya."
"The news from Harvard Square had rare-book collectors aflutter: Two manuscripts by the renowned Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges had vanished and were presumed stolen in an international literary heist worth $950,000."
"Just days after a guitar owned by George Harrison fetched a debutante's ransom, a lyric sheet for "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," hand-written by Paul McCartney brought in $192 thousand..."
"Part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until after World War I ... the city center brims with century-old Habsburg-era buildings..."
"East of the square is the unlikely twofer Teleki Museum/ Bolyai Library. The library includes numerous rare books, including one by Benjamin Franklin."
"BALTIMORE — An ambitious international project to decipher 1,000-year-old moldy pages is yielding new clues about ancient Greece as seen through the eyes of Hyperides, an important Athenian orator and politician from the fourth century B.C. "
"Edward Curtis was probably slightly mad when he began photographing the 'vanishing Indians' of North America in 1906." ...
" Today, each of the 20 volumes from the original sets sells for between $7,500 and $23,000, so a complete set is worth between $150,000 and $450,000."
"Pyle in 1903 was commissioned by the Bibliophile Society of Boston to illustrate 'The Bibliomaniac; or, Book-Madness,' by Thomas Frognall Dibden. 'Richard de Bury' was one of five paintings Pyle produced for the book."
"Cunningham moved to Dublin 27 years ago, and opened the first Dublin incarnation of Cathach in Market Arcade. But 18 years ago Cunningham moved his shop a few blocks to its current location -- just down the street from Davy Byrne's pub, where Leopold Bloom had a glass of burgundy and a gorgonzola sandwich in 'Ulysses.'"
"A book archived for decades in the cluttered basement of the Metuchen Library has been identified as one of the most important science reference volumes of William Shakespeare's time -- a book the Bard of Avon himself may have consulted for his plays."
"'It's an astonishing discovery,' said Karen Reeds, a science and medical historian."
"On Tuesday, Nov. 7, award-winning mystery writer Laura Lippman will be at Bryn Mawr to talk about her fiction, her reporter-turned-detective Tess Monaghan, and her own work as a reporter in Baltimore before she began writing novels. Lippman's talk, to take place in Carpenter 21 at 4:30 p.m., is associated with the exhibition Pointing Fingers: Women, Sin, Crime, and Guilt, which is currently on view in the Rare Book Room in Canaday Library."
"Sussex-based Rediscovery Books (http://www.rediscoverybooks.com) is publishing high quality reproductions of rare books from the library of the Royal Geographical Society. The joint project will breathe new life into spectacular accounts of the expeditions and campaigns that forged the British Empire. "
"A rare letter from Catherine of Aragon, beseeching the Holy Roman Emperor to convince Pope Clement VII to uphold her marriage to Henry VIII is expected to bring up to $150,000 when it is sold at auction in America."
"The letter, dated February 8 1534, is part of 31 manuscripts from a private collection, which will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York, on December 11. "
"Celebrated contemporary author, Salman Rushdie, will join the faculty of Emory University as Distinguished Writer in Residence and place his archive at Emory's Woodruff Library. "
"This is Rushdie's first extended relationship with a university. His position as Distinguished Writer in Residence is a five-year appointment in the English Department, beginning in the spring of 2007. During each of these five years he will be teaching for at least four weeks, lead a graduate seminar, participate in undergraduate classes, advise students, engage in symposia and deliver a public lecture. "
"Calligraphers are a genteel crowd, so the bidding war that developed over one of Sister Grace Taylor’s now-out-of-print and collectible calligraphy books was very polite last weekend. "
"Nonetheless, Sister Josephine Schultz and Patty Sackinger of Mount Angel were pleased to see their faith in Taylor’s work well supported years after her death. "
"DE PERE — A rare-book exhibit of "Collecting the Confessions: Editions of St. Augustine's Confessions" will celebrate the opening of the new Center for Norbertine Studies from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday in the Godschalx Gallery in the Carol and Robert Bush Art Center at St. Norbert College. The event is free and open to the public. "
"A University of Virginia graduate student, poking through a box of uncatalogued material at the school’s library, has found an unpublished poem by Robert Frost."
"The poem, 'War Thoughts at Home,' was handwritten by Frost in a copy of 'North of Boston,' his second collection of poetry. The poem is signed by Frost and dated January 1918."
"By reopening the museum, Brian McCartin, president of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, hopes to re-energize the society and national interest in Paine, the author of "Common Sense," an influential 1776 pamphlet that argued for the Colonies' independence from England."
"George Ramsden collected the 2,600-volume personal library of Edith Wharton over a period of 20 years but agreed to sell it the author's estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, for £1.5m last January.
The rare book dealer, of Settrington – who was named honorary curator of the collection – spent a week arranging the books on the shelves of her former home before meeting Laura Bush, the First Lady of the United States of America, at a special ceremony."
"A batch of purported business correspondence belonging to "Gone With the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell is now the prize in a legal battle."
"No one who has seen the documents is talking, and the Atlanta History Center, which is holding them until a judge decides who they belong to, won't say for certain if they are authentic, though the centre suggests in court papers it believes they are."
"Athenaeus by the Seventeenth Century English writer Ben Jonson, with his signature and writings in the margins, sold for $5,775 at a three-day estate sale conducted by Philip Weiss Auctions this summer."
"'This book would have been valuable without Jonson's signature, but the fact that it was signed and had notations in the margins made it extremely desirable to collectors,' said Philip Weiss, owner. 'It was a standout lot in a sale that saw more than 2,000 items change hands over the course of a long but happy weekend.'"
"Robert J. Wickenheiser, the former president of St. Bonaventure University, is selling his extensive collection of works of English poet John Milton to the University of South Carolina for $1 million. "
"Wickenheiser, a Milton scholar, has spent much of his life putting together his 6,000-volume collection, considered one of the finest of its kind in North America. "
"The buyer, Simon Finch Rare Books of London, paid £2,808,000 (about $5.1 million) for the copy, one of 219 known extant out of 719 printed. Only 19 copies are said to be in private hands worldwide. Nine copies are "missing," including two stolen from English universities."
"The 408-page book, created by lexicographer and writer Noah Webster, does not look like a modern dictionary. The book is only about 6½ inches tall and four inches wide, the type is small, there are no illustrations, and most of the 37,000 definitions take up no more than a line of type. "
"Still, John M. Morse, the president and publisher of Merriam-Webster in Springfield, said Webster viewed the dictionary as a way to educate, unify and inspire Americans in the early years of the republic. "
"Justin Schiller loves his original wild thing: a watercolor by Maurice Sendak, the children's book writer and illustrator behind 'Where The Wild Things Are.'"
"In fact, Justin has a number of Sendak items and he also collects rare books. But now he's looking to part with this painting in exchange for, of all things, a piece of New York City real estate."
"Just what kind of a house would suit a former printer’s devil, reporter, and riverboat pilot; a world traveler and recently married, widely published author? Well, Samuel Clemens, best known as Mark Twain, once wrote, “Supposing is good, but finding out is better.” With that in mind, we set off to re-visit the Mark Twain House in Hartford, and to explore, for the first time, the new Mark Twain Museum located on-site. From the Monroe Public Library, where we stopped to pick up a Cultural Pass, the Twain complex is approximately an hour away.
"
"An exceptionally rare book illustrated by Lakeland author Beatrix Potter has been sold for £18,000 at Sotheby’s – three times the expected price."
"Fewer than ten copies of the book, A Happy Pair by Frederic Weatherly are thought to still be in existence."
"In 1809 the controversial naval officer Sir Home Popham invited Peter Finnerty, a radical Irish journalist and supporter of the United Irishmen, to join him on the British expedition to the Scheldt: its object was to attack Antwerp, then held by the French. Although Flushing fell, a large number of troops succumbed to a form of malaria on the island of Walcheren and the expedition ended in disaster with the deaths of around 4,000 men."
"A MINT condition book of William Shakespeare’s plays was sold for £2.8million yesterday. "
"The First Folio, still in its 17th century calf leather binding, was printed in 1623, seven years after the Bard died, and contains 36 plays."
" IT has been described as the "most important book in English literature" and could fetch more than £3.5m when it is auctioned this week."
"The First Folio edition of Shakespeare 's plays dating from 1623 is being offered for sale at Sotheby's in London."
"John Dunning draws on his experiences as a worker on the California horse-racing circuit and as an expert on rare and collectible books to give the reader another fast-paced, informative and intriguing look at both fields."
"Former homicide detective Cliff Janeway left his bookshop in Denver to appraise a library of rare books, a crucial part of the will of Harold Ray Geiger, a wealthy industrialist and horseman who had died the previous month. Janeway seldom did appraisal work, but the lure of seeing a vast collection of rare first editions owned by a horseman enticed him to drive to the estate in Idaho. While he rarely left the shop in the care of his partner, Erin, he sometimes did leave to recover stolen books or to unravel a delicate book mystery. This time he finds himself drawn to the Idaho job to indulge his two loves – books and horses."
"The finest private collection of Samuel Beckett's work is to be sold by the family of an eccentric bibliophile who devoted much of his life to cultivating a friendship with the reclusive playwright."
"Beckett's fiercely guarded privacy means that signed copies of work by the author of Waiting for Godot are hard to come by."
"Yesterday, Una got her wish. She and her mother, buried in England since their death in the 1870s, were reinterred in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, next to Nathaniel."
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" King's speeches and sermons, along with some 10,000 other manuscripts, books and handwritten notes, go on view today at Sotheby's International in New York. The entire collection will be sold at auction on June 30, in one lot, and is estimated to fetch as much as $30 million."
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"The world's largest Charles Darwin book collection has been bought by the Natural History Museum for nearly £1m."
"The Kohler Darwin Collection includes almost everything the naturalist published from 1829 onwards."
"Antiquarians Chris and Michele Kohler amassed about 3,500 items, filling four rooms in their house, over 20 years."
"A set of 94 scholarly articles by Albert Einstein sold for $42,000 US at auction yesterday, with the proceeds going to benefit the left-leaning Working Families Party."
"Einstein saved copies of the articles, published from 1901 to 1925, and gave them to his son, Albert Hans Einstein, according to Christie's auction house, which sold the papers as one lot."
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"It seems hard to imagine now that the Bard is as much a part of British history as Beefeaters and Dickens, but seven years after his death the actors of Shakespeare's company feared he would be forgotten.
So they put together the first printed versions of his complete plays – which fresh off the press in 1623 changed hands for £1. Now a copy has arrived on loan to York University, valued at £2.5m.
It is one of two historical literary texts loaned anonymously to the university's library and archives department, making them available to researchers for the first time in more than 40 years."
It's "Shakespeare's Coffee - A Different Read on Books".
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" The life of Galileo -- astronomer, musician, Renaissance man -- is the subject of a new musical work."
"Composer Glenn McClure created the hour-long oratorio "The Starry Messenger" after reading Galileo's Daughter, a book by science writer Dava Sobel that drew upon Galileo's correspondence with one of his two daughters."
"Also available are Updike's 1972 degree from Salem State College and his 1970 degree from Emerson College. Curiously missing, at least at this shop, is Updike's 1992 honorary degree from his alma mater, Harvard."
"Thom VanHorn, the shop owner, said he bought seven of Updike's degrees about a year ago from another rare-books dealer and has sold three of them."
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" The pick of the literati came from all over the world – the US, the UK, Germany, Norway, Mexico, Japan, China, France, Canada, Nigeria, Cameroun, Cote d’ Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Ghana, Togo, Benin, South Africa, Mali, Senegal, Zimbabwe, the Caribbean and beyond to brainstorm on African literature. They were either students of African literature, scholars, writers and journalists or culture afficionados. Traces of nostalgic afterglow trailed the ending."
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" Sotheby's reportedly brought from London the most important book in English literature: "The First Folio" of Shakespeare's plays. This was presented in the weekend in Beijing and will be exhibited in Hong Kong from Thursday to Saturday."
"The last time Leonard Cohen papers came to the University of Toronto's treasure trove of words and paper, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, it was 1968. The Fisher purchased 14 boxes worth of drawings, newspaper clippings and drafts, ranging from Cohen's first, unpublished novel, The Ballet of Lepers, to the manuscript for his 1967 novel Beautiful Losers. "We didn't pay much, maybe four digits, but enough to give Leonard a year on the island of Hydra," says Richard Landon, director of the Fisher."
"Halifax researchers are studying a rare medieval manuscript from the 1500s in preparation for a choral performance of the work in 2007."
"Dalhousie University music professor Jennifer Bain is doing painstaking work over the piece of choral music which comes originally from a Cistercian abbey outside of Brussels."
"I n 1992 Pope John Paul II issued a formal apology on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church for its persecution and trial 359 years earlier of Galileo Galilei for arguing, convincingly and scientifically, that the Earth went around the sun. Among the more than 10,000 volumes in the rare book collection at Linda Hall Library is the book published in 1632 that brought Galileo house arrest until his death in 1642: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems."
" I cannot think of a single municipality here which would involve itself in such an ambitious, world-class project! Dublin honours its writers, painters and intellectuals, like no other city."
"In the beautifully laid-out park surroundings the historic St Patrick’s cathedral, Dublin’s Millenium celebrations were commemorated with monuments created in memory of 12 extraordinary Irish writers, including Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, WB Yeats, James Joyce and, of course, Samuel Beckett. "
"One of those first-edition "folios" from 1623, which could fetch between $4 million and $6 million at an upcoming auction, is in Chicago this week, including Monday night's stop at the Newberry Library."
"'If you're interested in Shakespeare, this is the big one,' said University of Illinois-Chicago art history professor Clark Hulse. "
"SHE was the head of the ReJoyce festival in 2004, but it was Laura Barnes herself who had cause to rejoice after selling a cache of James Joyce manuscripts to the Irish state for €1.2m."
"The American academic, who bought the material from a Parisian book store about a year before reselling it to the National Library, refuses to say how much she made. But she insists that, despite her previous links to the library, where she has acted as a consultant, the deal was “kosher beyond kosher” and she did not have privileged information. "
"'AVTAAR CHARITRA Geeta' penned by Narhar Das is an exclusive manuscript which is being conserved by the Allahabad Museum. Written by Narhar Das, the manuscript is illustrated with 33 coloured photographs and has 629 pages."
"The bulky book is an exhaustive source of the details of avtaars of Lord Vishnu."
"'Narhar Das is said to be the person in whose 'ashram' Tulsi Das stayed for some time during the period of his learning,' said RC Mishra, manuscript in-charge."
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"Welty wrote all of her works in the home, including her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Optimist's Daughter." In 1986 Welty decided that she wanted to leave the home to the state as a tribute to her family, who encouraged her to be an avid reader."
"The Eudora Welty House literary museum has been in development since 2003, and the house was designated a national historic landmark in October 2004, just three years after Welty's death. This designation helped increase funding for restoration and preservation of the house."
"That's fine with a small group of connoisseurs who love old travel guides and are willing to pay dearly for them. Lucinda Boyle, a vintage guidebook expert for Bernard J Shapero Rare Books in London, said an 1830s edition of Baedeker's guide to northern Germany recently sold for about $7,000."
"Not long ago, I found an 1880 edition of Murray's two-volume handbook on Egypt at the Librairie Ulysse on the Île St. Louis in Paris and briefly considered buying it for about $700. Catherine Domain, the shop's owner, actually used it for a trip to Egypt. 'It tells what people were seeing and thinking at the time. It's like taking a trip within a trip,'she said."
" The appearance of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1998 helped publicize the work of the Edith Wharton Restoration, which less than a year later received a $2.9 million federal grant for restoration of the author's country home, The Mount. Yesterday, first lady Laura Bush was in Lenox to mark a defining moment in The Mount's recent history, the return of the author's library from England."
"Rare documents marking the rise and fall of Oscar Wilde and unpublished John Betjeman poetry have been donated to Leeds University thanks to a man who was so impressed by the help he received there."
"The latest literary treasures were made possible thanks to benefactors Geoffrey and Fay Elliott, whose support will be celebrated today, when a reading room is named after them."
"Their association with Leeds began when Mr Elliott used the university's library for research. He was so pleased with the expert help he received from Russian archivist Richard Davies that the couple decided to give their collection of about 200 rare books, manuscripts and letters to the university."
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"In 1644 Roger Williams, original theorist of the separation of church and state, traveled to London to print his classic call for religious toleration, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution. Parliament ordered copies of the book burned, but Williams saved some and brought them back to Rhode Island."
"This August, when Phoebe Simpson, a librarian at the Rhode Island Historical Society, opened some other historical writings on a shelf with rare books, she discovered one of the few 1644 editions of Bloudy Tenent that remain (only five other copies of this edition are known to exist). 'I just broke out in goose bumps," Simpson said in an interview. "It was the pure excitement of touching something that Roger Williams touched.'"
"BRANDED scandalous and obscene when originally published, a first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses has sold for more than £20,000 at a Salisbury auction house."
"The book, sold by Woolley & Wallis, was found at the bottom of a box of bric-a-brac that had been taken to the company by a local family."
"More than 200 rare books linked to the author Bram Stoker have been handed over to Dublin City Library."
"The collection includes copies of books on vampires and Transylvanian history likely to have been used by Stoker for his classic novel, 'Dracula'. "
"Lost for almost 1,700 years, an ancient Coptic text that tells a very different story of Judas and his relationship with Jesus moldered in a Hicksville bank safe deposit box for 16 years. The "Gospel of Judas," unveiled publicly Thursday, could be one of the most important texts in history, claiming that Judas was acting on Jesus' request when he handed Jesus over to the authorities."
" The ideal candidate to see Michael Winterbottom's wonderfully dry making-of-a-movie spoof Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story would be a Brit or anglophile who's plugged into movies and/or showbiz."
"The worst would be any bibliophile who regards Laurence Sterne's 18th-century novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, as a sacrosanct work of literature. "
"Judas Iscariot, long reviled as history's quintessential betrayer, was actually the best friend of Jesus and turned him over to authorities only because Jesus asked him to, according to the gospel of Judas, a long-lost document revealed Thursday by the National Geographic Society."
"A RARE first edition of James Joyce’s classic novel Ulysses is set to make thousands of pounds after being discovered in a cardboard box full of bric-a-brac at a house in Wiltshire."
"The Dublin-born writer’s classic masterpiece turned up at a home in the cathedral city of Salisbury while the owners were having a clear-out."
"A rare book of Shakespeare's plays, considered to be one of the most important in British literature, is to be auctioned at Sotheby's in London."
"The complete first folio of the playwright's work had a print run of approximately 750 in 1623."
"No, says Neal Turtell , the National Gallery of Art's executive librarian, there is no shocking message hidden inside the 497-year-old book that he has unsheathed from its protective case and laid before me."
"Yes, it's the only book known to be illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci . Yes, Washington has a special connection with Leonardo. ("We have the only da Vinci in the Western Hemisphere," says Neal, referring to the gallery's circa 1474 painting "Ginevra de' Benci.") And, yes, da Vinci is red hot right now, what with that Dan Brown book."
"Donning a necktie adorned with books like the ones he's been collecting most of his life, UD benefactor and bibliophile Robert Wilson told those attending the opening of the Morris Library's Ezra Pound exhibit that his talk will be the 'culmination of a half-century engagement with the most important poet of the 20th Century.;"
"'Ezra Pound in His Time and Beyond: The Influence of Ezra Pound on 20th-Century Poetry,' now on view in the Special Collections Exhibition Gallery, also pays tribute to Wilson as a bookseller, bibliographer and collector."
"This Passover, reproductions of a well-known illuminated manuscript are going on sale -- for $1,350 apiece."
"The Sarajevo Haggadah should be ready just before Passover, Bosnian Jewish leader Jakob Finci told JTA. 'We are printing a limited edition of just 613 copies -- the number of the mitzvot.'"
"The Sarajevo Haggadah has long been a symbol of Jewish presence -- and survival -- in the Balkans."
" Carbon dating tests of rare manuscripts dubbed the 'Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism' have confirmed the priceless texts are from the first and fifth centuries AD, and could be the missing link in Buddhist history, a group of Australian scientists have reported."
"The tests were carried out on two out of three international collections, the Senior and Schøyen collections which are owned by private individuals. The third is owned by the British Library."
"DANVILLE, KY—"Isaac Newton and the Scientific Revolution," an exhibition of books from the collection of Dr. and Mrs. Ted Steinbock, is on display at the Grace Doherty Library on the Centre College campus. The exhibit, the first for the Thomas A. Spragens Rare Book Room, is in commemoration of the coming retirement of professor John Ward, vice president and academic dean. After an opening reception last Thursday, March 2, it runs through the end of the semester."
"When the Gospel of Judas first surfaced in Geneva in 1983, scholars wondered if the mysterious text could trigger a reappraisal of history's most infamous traitor."
"They never found out, however, because they couldn't afford the $3 million price tag on this second-century gnostic tale. Instead, the fragile pages vanished into private hands and set off on a 23-year, intercontinental journey through fist-pounding negotiations and even periods, reportedly, stuffed inside a Greek beauty's purse."
"Now, at long last, the world is about to see the contents. The National Geographic Society last week reported it will publish a translation this spring, when "The Da Vinci Code" film is sure to rekindle interest in gnostic artifacts."
" A big chunk of the late writer's past -- fact or fiction -- will soon be available at the New York Public Library, thanks to a couple from the Cleveland area who collect rare books."
"The New York library will announce today that it has purchased, from Bob and Donna Jackson of Shaker Heights, one of the largest collections of Burroughsiana. "
"A letter written by William Faulkner complaining to his agent about being conned into a screenwriting contract with Warner Bros. sold for almost $18,000."
"The letter, estimated to sell for between $2,500 and $3,500 fetched more than expected, said Catherine Williamson of Bonhams & Butterfields."
" To get a better sense of the task at hand, I decided to consult the original scrapbooks, one of which was in the Visitor’s Center at Monticello, where I first came across Golden’s book. Tourists visited the center every day and viewed this newspaper scrapbook from behind plexiglass. The secret was in plain sight. When I tried to take photographs of the volume, however, I was discouraged, which only whetted my desire to get a letter of permission to consult the original. The other volume, in the rare book room at Alderman library on the campus of University of Virginia, was more readily accessible, but had also been ignored. And this had occurred at Jefferson’s own university, where a life-sized statue looks down on the students who assemble in the academical village he designed."
"Rare books, notes, photos and letters — including John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics to “A Day in the Life” — will be available for public viewing starting today, before being sold to the highest bidder in the coming weeks.>
"The 300 items offered by auction house Bonhams & Butterfields are diverse and span hundreds of years of history. Early Judaica from 1705 shares space with a 1950s to-do list from Marilyn Monroe and notebook pages on which Albert Einstein used pencil to explore the unified field theory."
"The Lennon lyrics are expected to bring $2 million or more, according to Martin Gammon, a book and manuscript expert at Bonhams & Butterfields"
"Dunbar's parents, Joshua and Matilda, had been slaves in Kentucky. His father escaped slavery and served in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War. Paul was born June 27, 1872, in a house on Howard Street in East Dayton. His parents separated in 1874."
"A copy of Dunbar's modest first book of poems, the 1892 Oak and Ivy, today could bring $5,000 to $6,000, rare-book dealer Don Leet said. The young poet paid for the first edition and probably could afford only 300 copies."
" That's where Duke University's Trent Collection of Whitman manuscripts and books comes in, along with the Walt Whitman Archive, a free online compendium developed by a university consortium that includes Duke."
"The core of the Trent Collection was given by Duke family scion Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans and her first husband, Dr. Josiah Trent, and has been augmented by Duke since then."
Charles Darwin. "The deciphering of the notebooks and letters has been an exquisite labor for many distinguished scholars over the past century, and a great deal of effort has been expended on reconstructing the chronology of these writings in search of key junctures and influential events. A whole intellectual cottage industry has sprung up to interpret Darwin's writings, to probe his psyche and to explain many curious aspects of his life (most notably why he waited more than 20 years to publish his ideas on evolution and natural selection)."
"When renowned bookseller Harry Schwartz of Milwaukee learned he was gravely ill, he selected "War and Peace" to reread. He declared, "This would be a good book to die with." Books, and the ideas they carry, are serious business to many people."
"In 'Every Book Its Reader,' Nicholas Basbanes recounts how reading influenced the lives of many of history's greatest thinkers in all fields of endeavor, from Leonardo da Vinci through Helen Keller, Thomas Edison, Malcolm X, David McCullough and many others."
" Jodhpur: Two rare manuscripts of the medieval period, belonging to the oriental research institute here, have been granted National Heritage Status, a senior official of the institute said here today."
"'Dhwanya Lok Lochan' -an important work of poetics and unpublished so far - dates back to Vikram Samvat 1204, i.e. The 15th century, and is written on paper of that period, Ori Director Fateh Krishna Kalla told reporters. "
"A RARE book dedicated by Lewis Carroll to the daughter of the Dean of Durham has been snapped up for thousands at auction.
The sought-after first-edition of Carroll's 1886 book Alice's Adventures Under Ground was given by the writer in January 1887 to Alexandra Kitchin, affectionately known as Xie.
The book was expected to fetch up to £3,000 after being put up for sale by the Duke of Gloucester to help pay his father's death duties.
But the rare volume, which was later developed into Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, was snapped up by a mystery buyer for £4,800 at Christie's on Thursday.
Xie's dad, George Kitchin, was the last dean of Durham Cathedral to govern Durham University, where he worked from 1908 until his death in 1912."
" LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - He was a man for whom the term muckraker was coined, a crusading journalist and novelist who never hesitated to expose scandal at the highest levels of government and business."
"But now the integrity of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Upton Sinclair is being questioned 38 years after his death because of the discovery of a letter he wrote in 1929."
"Quotes from the letter in recent news reports make it seem that the man who exposed the horrors of the meat-packing industry in the 1906 book "The Jungle" covered up a confession from a defense lawyer that famous anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were guilty of the murders for which they were executed. Many people thought the two were innocent and prosecuted for political reasons. "
"An appeal has been issued to find the relatives of an Ulster woman who received a letter from CS Lewis in 1944. The letter was found in a Belfast auction several years ago, but a Co Tyrone-based Lewis biographer believes it might be an entry point into a much bigger story, much like one of Lewis' magic wardrobes."
"Dr Ronnie Bresland, author of The Backward Glance: CS Lewis and Ireland, said: "Although this letter is not very significant it is every collector's dream to find a collectable letter in an old book. "It would be interesting to find the relatives of the addressee today as you never know what further stories would be unearthed." The letter was found in an old copy of the CS Lewis book The Screwtape Letters and was signed by a Jean Walker on May 22, 1944. CS Lewis addressed the letter to Miss Walker and, as the book was found in a Belfast auction, the owner thinks she probably lived in greater Belfast."
"Decades after the novelists and poets who became known as the Beat Generation inspired a literary and cultural revolution, a museum celebrating the era with rare books, photos and memorabilia opened this weekend in the city that entranced Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti."
"'I see the Beat Generation as an enlightening movement,’’ said founder Jerry Cimino, 51, who kept his collection of beat artifacts at his Monterey home while working in the computer industry. "Because they followed their dreams they changed the world.'’’
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"A lecturer from the University of Wales, Swansea, has been granted access to the unpublished archive of Ernest Hemingway's life in Cuba, the first time the material has been made available to anyone outside the country."
"Philip Melling, a reader in the department of American studies, has been given permission to study research conducted by Cuban writers and academics over the past 40 years."
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"The Special Collections Research Center at the Earl Gregg Swem Library features a wealth of material relating to African-American history. Among the holdings are 76 collections with content concerning slavery. The collections range from the well-known family papers of Tucker-Coleman, Skipwith, Tyler, Jerdone and Austin-Twyman to some little known and quite early documents from Warwick County, dating from 1700, including an indenture (1717) of “Batteran” to be a carpenter’s apprentice. The collections include 13 letters written by slaves—letters which show the struggle to keep the family together during the horrors of bondage. Also included are manuscript account books, which include not only financial records regarding slaves but occasionally record births and deaths."
"Boxes of Edwards' manuscripts - often folded and placed in 4-inch envelopes - lay dispersed throughout the stacks of Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, donated to Yale in 1901 by Edwards' descendants. However, the center had to track down many of his works in the hands of collectors as well as in repositories throughout the United States and Great Britain."
"Once the majority of those works were located, the historians began the tedious, eye-straining work of transcribing very, very small, slanted handwriting, typing the work word-for-word into a computer and, after an intense editorial review, finally posting their entries into a searchable online database. To add to the labor, Team Edwards decided to add to the website the entire 26-volume series published by Yale Press."
"This portal will open access to some of the most fascinating works of Ben Franklin within the state library," says M. Clare Zales, Pennsylvania's deputy secretary for libraries. "It provides a wonderful opportunity for students of all ages to learn about this famous American."
"A librarian at University College London has discovered a previously unknown manuscript version of a poem by Lord Byron during a routine cataloguing session. The 12-line poem was inscribed in the front of a copy of an 1810 edition of The Pleasures of Memory by Samuel Rogers, which had been given to the poet by the author."
"The "Oxford English Dictionary" is one of the greatest achievements in English literature, but it didn't happen overnight. In "Professor and the Madman," Simon Winchester delves into the mysterious history of this great text. Along the way, he highlights several of the major contributors. It's really their story..."
"Copeland, the president and chief executive of the Mount restoration project, happened to meet Christopher Tugendhat, an English lord visiting friends near the Mount in Massachusetts."
"Tugendhat, a former journalist, politician, European Union commissioner and current investment banker, is also an avid collector of rare first editions and has, he said, an almost complete collection of Wharton's works."
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"The finished volume reclaims a time before art and craft had been severed. The precision and splendour of the book-making honours co-workers in the printery, David Pidgeon and Bernie Rackham, and the binder, Nick Doslov."
"The pages that blew out of the Baghdad Library have now been made into a volume that finds its place in the rare-book shelves at the State Library of Victoria. Last year, Lyssiotis received one of its first Creative Fellowships."
"Expatriate Scots living in the United States are to be asked to help raise the £6.5m-plus shortfall in funding to buy the John Murray Archive for the National Library of Scotland. But those behind the scheme also hope literature-loving Americans of all ancestral backgrounds will contribute to the fund."
"The Murray Archive, valued at around £45m, contains more than 150,000 original manuscripts, private letters and other papers from writers including Lord Byron, Charles Darwin, Sir Walter Scott and Benjamin Disraeli."
"With Margaret Brentano—his wife and this book's editor and caption writer—Baker formed a nonprofit organization which bought more than six thousand bound volumes of various newspapers and another thousand wrapped bundles in excellent condition. The cost was approximately $150,000. The entire collection has since been given to the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library of Duke University. Transporting it to Duke from Baker's New Hampshire storage facility required five tractor-trailers."
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"There are certainly plenty of great Scottish books to choose from, but the organisers decided to help things along by producing their own initial list of one hundred titles."
"Eyebrows were raised by the inclusion of Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness, George Orwell's 1984, and even the Bible. The excuses were that Woolf's book was set in Scotland, Conrad's was published by a Scot, Orwell's was written in Scotland, and the Bible was translated by order of James VI."
"Nicholas Basbanes is the Pied Piper of bibliophiles. After A Splendor of Letters, A Gentle Madness, Patience & Fortitude and Among the Gently Mad, there is perhaps no other modern American writer who has as thoroughly explored the world of the book."
"Now, with Every Book its Reader, he rounds out his quintet with a work that rummages about for the most dedicated of the "gently disturbed," burrows into their underground caverns, and pictures them live, up close and personal, rooting for words in the wormholes of history."
"When the Mount, Edith Wharton 's Lenox mansion, opens to the public in May, the shelves in the restored library will be filled with the 2,600 volumes of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's personal library."
"Stephanie Copeland, president and executive director of the Mount, announced yesterday that the books were purchased on Monday from rare book dealer George Ramsden, owner of Stone Trough Books in Settrington, England."
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"First printed in the 1930s, “The Swimmer Manuscript” is both a valuable research source and a small window into traditional Cherokee cultural societies."
"Noksi Press, in cooperation with the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah, reissued “The Swimmer Manuscript.”"
"This year, Walt Whitman devotees and scholars are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the original 1855 edition, the concise masterpiece of just 12 poems that pushed the boundaries of social decency and of poetry itself. By rejecting the rigid structures of British meter, Whitman offered readers free-spirited bursts of consciousness that forever changed American poetry."
"'The final ‘Leaves of Grass’ is an enormous book, with which Whitman did not do himself a favor because a lot of the poetry is pure padding, purely hot air,” said biographer Justin Kaplan. “But if you go back to the original, it’s a wonderfully sparse little book, something like 96 pages of absolutely remarkable, stunning poetry.'"
"In Christie's annual rock and pop auction on November 21st, poems handwritten by Bob Dylan in 1960 sold for $78,000, setting a record for a Dylan manuscript. Among other recent high-end sales: John Lennon's scrawled lyrics for "All You Need Is Love" fetched $1 million at an auction in July"
"Majaz: Rare manuscripts of his works, including an unpublished ghazal, and photographs and other material relating to his early life in his home town of Rudauli, and then his student days in Aligarh, his progress as a poet and frustrations of his later life and resulting mental breakdowns are on display in the two-day exhibition inaugurated here today."
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"Unfortunately, it didn't work out like that. Yesterday, the ill-fated collaboration was on display at Christie's. But a 22-page manuscript containing a song with music by Beethoven and words by Burns - "Highland Harry" - was withdrawn from auction when it failed to receive the expected £450,000 bid. For the duo who might have been an early Lennon and McCartney, and for Thomson, their would-be impresario, it was a final, posthumous setback."
"A devoted collector of books and literary memorabilia, Kennedy recently received a grant to produce a DVD focusing on Sacramento's literary scene under the name The Archive Group, or TAG."
"Over the years, he has been a force in book-collecting himself, despite his impoverished lifestyle. He once owned an impressive collection of Beat Generation books, Hansen said."
"On the second floor of the Houghton Library for rare books at Harvard, a roomful of men of middle-to-elder years in business attire and a few women sip sherry from little flutes and lean to examine rare manuscripts in glass cases. They are jolly and convivial. Soon they will repair to the Harvard Faculty Club across the street for a dinner and speaker."
"Handwritten pages of Bob Dylan's student poetry have fetched a staggering $78,000 (€66,000) at a Rock & Pop Memorabilia auction in New York - the highest bid to date for the legendary singer/songwriter's material."
"Yesterday's sale at Christie's also marked the earliest Dylan memorabilia ever to go under the hammer. The rare manuscripts, which make up 16 pages, date from his student days at the University of Minnesota."
"Reed gave away almost all that he owned and earned. He devoted significant time and funds to building up a collection of rare manuscripts and books at the Dunedin Public Library, which included manuscript and printed bibles and autograph letters. The Alfred and Isabel and Marian Reed Trust was established in 1939. Among its activities, the Trust assisted various philanthropic organisations, published or subsidised the publication of dozens of religious and secular books and booklets, and donated money to a kauri park in Northland."
"The Library of Congress, which houses the second largest collection of Benjamin Franklin papers in the world, will celebrate the tercentenary of the statesman’s birth with an exhibition titled “Benjamin Franklin: In His Own Words.”
"The display features 75 items drawn from the more than 8,000 documents in the Benjamin Franklin Collection in the Library’s Manuscript Division and other Franklin manuscripts in the Thomas Jefferson and George Washington papers. Also included in the display are books from Franklin’s personal library, maps and other visual materials provided by the Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections, Geography and Map, and Prints and Photographs divisions."
"John Steinbeck may have died 37 years ago, but his legacy as a great American writer lives on — especially with regards to Stanford’s recent acquisition of his Nobel Prize gold medallion. The medallion, which was given to Steinbeck upon receipt of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, was recently donated to Stanford University Libraries.
Steinbeck, the author most famous for “The Grapes of Wrath,” was enrolled as a student at Stanford University from 1919 to 1925, although he never graduated. According to William McPheron, librarian for Special Collections, “he is certainly the most famous author associated with the University.”
"With the addition to the local building, the Center will more easily be able to house the 60,000 volumes of its research library, the largest of its type in the world, according to Kurtz; included are rare books such as all the first editions of Thomas Paine, including "The Age of Reason" and works by Ethan Allen from 1784. Recently, the Center received a shipment of boxes containing the complete library of famed performer Steve Allen, who willed his books and the papers he personally wrote to the Center, where he was a longtime member."
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"Aesop’s Village is a recreation of 17th century European country houses, built by the maker of Legoland (Germany), the Canadian designing company Forex."
"Aesop’s Fables Book Exhibit- Six ancient books published in 1694 will be on display, along with 13 books of Aesop’s Fables translated in various languages."
"She wrote about all these things, and how important it is that people are fed properly and that wards are properly aired and cleaned, along with simple things like washing hands.
"She talks about all of that in her book Notes on Nursing, published well over 150 years ago, but nothing much has changed nowadays. In fact if anything, it has got worse."
The memory of Miss Nightingale has been brought to life thanks to the university's School of Nursing and Midwifery, forming part of its 10th celebrations as part of the university.
The exhibition features a mixture of artefacts on loan from the Nightingale Exhibition in London, including Miss Nightingale's Bible, which has handwritten comments, as well as pieces from personal collections.
These include handwritten original letters, an original amputation set used in field hospitals and a replica of an army lamp that Florence would have used – all personal items owned Mrs MacKinnon and her brother Michael Crumplin, an archivist for the Royal College of Surgeons."
"At a celebratory ceremony, the campus gingerly offered a glimpse of scraps of Homer's "Odyssey" and other invaluable texts on ancient papyrus that were unearthed in Egypt more than a century ago but experienced a delivery delay on their way to the Berkeley campus."
"The Huntington Library holds one of the richest collections in the world of Shakespeare's writings in the original published editions. This generously illustrated volume introduces readers to Shakespeare the man, the poet, and the playwright using examples from the Huntington's quartos, folios, and other rare books. The book discusses the first, second, third, and fourth folios, gives special emphasis to the Library's collection of quarto copies of many of the plays and poems published in Shakespeare's lifetime, and addresses many other aspects of Shakespeare scholarship."
"The rare manuscripts, which make up 16 pages, date from his student days at the University of Minnesota.
A Christie's spokesperson says, "While some of the poems are rooted in his daily university life and reference his Jewish heritage with Yiddish phrases, the wit and irony pervasive in his later songwriting are already evident."
The poems are expected to fetch between $60,000"
PROVIDENCE -- The Rhode Island Historical Society has come across a rare and lucky find: a document written by the state's founder, Roger Williams.
The first edition of the 1644 writings, ''The Bloudy Tenent," were found by a librarian in August, but only recently verified as authentic. The work was found tucked inside some other historical writings on a shelf with rare books."
"To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," the University of South Carolina's Thomas Cooper Library is hosting an exhibit, through Oct. 20, that features materials from the school's Whitman collections."
"After inspiring a steady stream of books and movies for decades, a wave of exhibits, conferences and even a jazz composition set to his work have emerged in recent months to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his lifelong labor -- a collection of poems called "Leaves of Grass."
Among them is an exhibit at the New York Public Library featuring faded photographs, rare manuscripts and even a lock of Whitman's golden-brown hair. Titled "I am With You: Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' (1855-2005)" the exhibit opened earlier this month and runs through the beginning of January."
" am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "Leaves of Grass." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit & wisdom that America has yet contributed. I give you joy of your free & brave thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote those words in a letter to Whitman barely two weeks after the book was published in July 1855. He appeared, by most accounts, to be the only one who liked the book."
"In Trinity College Library, the ninth century Book of Kells has been exhibited seven days a week since 1992, with full-color, wall-size enlargements of some pages.
Someone looking over my shoulder at the great manuscript murmured that it used to be kept "where you could see it close to." That had been in the college's Long Room, the study hall used by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), Thomas Moore (1779-1852) and Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878-1957), among other luminaries."
"Though he will turn 200 this year, the words of Alexis de Tocqueville are still read and applied by modern day politicos, intellectuals and students.
In celebration of the philosopher's birthday, Yale's extensive collection of his manuscripts is now on display at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The exhibition, formally titled "Alexis de Tocqueville, Gustave de Beaumont, and the Challenge of Democracy," went on display two weeks ago in preparation for the upcoming international Alexis de Tocqueville conference commemorating the bicentennial of his birth at the end of the month."
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"Unapologetic book addicts will delight in Elinor Loredan, the book collector who claims leaving a book open face-down breaks its neck, or Mortimer Folchart, who repeatedly insists he is not the robber-hero famed in song and story people think he is, but merely a bookbinder. Of course Mo, Meggie's father, is no mere bookbinder -- or rather, there is nothing mere about being a bookbinder, a reader or a book lover in Cornelia Funke's story."
"A new exhibition commemorates the 150th anniversary of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" with a look at rare manuscripts and other materials that show Whitman's creative process as well as the enduring legacy of his work.
"I Am With You: Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855-2005)" opens today in the New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library and runs through Jan. 8."
John Connolly: "Feted as one of Britain's most admired comic writers, it wasn't until 1988, when business began to slow at his antiquarian bookshop, that he finally faced up to his calling as a novelist.
Now silver haired, jolly and just eccentric enough to be respectable, it is almost impossible to reconcile him with his latest book - a work that is at times uncomfortably dark and violent."
"As well as the museum, the building also houses a library containing rare manuscripts and books .
Boccaccio was the third of three great writers who appeared on the Italian scene during the late 13th and early 14th century and carried Italian literature to unprecedented heights. The other two were Dante and Petrarch ."
"James Hogg. Scotland: His writings, buried for more than a century and a half in scattered periodicals, song-sheets, hand-written manuscripts, and rare first editions are now coming into the public domain at modest prices. Sixteen volumes of the new edition have now been published in hardback, and eight paperbacks have followed.
Unearthing the treasures of this literary Pompei from the rubble of neglect and indifference is hard but exciting and even revolutionary work, since it is changing our views of one of Scotland's major writers rapidly and forever."
"Elizabeth Kostova takes advantage of all the vampire literature, but extends it well beyond that of any other author. She digs into the medieval world that produced Dracula, and especially the rare manuscripts, scrolls and books that relate to him.
The plot revolves around a series of unusual, ancient books that appear mysteriously in the studies of noted historians. The books are blank save for a double page illustration of a dragon and a simple map. It is supposed to lead the way to the grave of Dracula."
"A first-edition copy of F Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age novel The Great Gatsby sat in a box of unsorted volumes at a US book shop for almost two months before it was noticed, and now the bookseller hopes it will bring more than $US50,000 ($A65,000).
"If you're a serious collector, you have to have this book," Baldwin's Book Barn operator Thomas Baldwin said."
"A rare 400-year-old medical book has been found beneath the floorboards of a lawyer's home in Edinburgh.
The illustrated English-language copy of the Ten Books of Surgery is one of only 22 in known existence.
The 17th century surgical work, written by Frenchman Ambrose Paré, may have been left beneath the floor of the loft during building work in the late 1950s."
"The two small pieces of brown animal skin, inscribed in Hebrew with verses from the Book of Leviticus, are from "refugee" caves in Nachal Arugot, a canyon near the Dead Sea where Jews hid from the Romans in the second century, Eshel said in an interview."
"Three ancient scrolls — one parchment and two silver — recently have been identified as containing some of the world's earliest known verses from the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament.
The discovery of two fragments of a 2,000-year-old parchment scroll in the Judean Desert was announced last week by Israeli archaeologist Chanan Eshel of Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University."
"This year marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's so- called miracle year, when he published his most important work, including the Special Theory of Relativity. With governments, schools and museums celebrating the scientist, officials in charge of licensing Einstein's name say image rights could bring in as much as $4 million in fees."
"Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel "The Historian" is an epic vampire tale peopled by anthropologists and historians, capitalists and communists, Muslims and Christians, those who are fully alive and those who are "undead." They all have one thing in common: They love books. So much the better if the books are old with soft leather covers and crumbling pages; so much the better if these very old books contain puzzling maps and pictures of dragons."
"After giving a keynote speech this week at the American Library Association's annual convention, science fiction author Ray Bradbury joined a growing list of international writers and human rights activists in condemning the persecution of Cuba's Independent Library Project."
"Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau might seem an unlikely home for such a treasure and thousands of other artifacts of the great 20th-century American writer."
"A rare, handwritten copy of Le vaisseau d'or, a poem by Quebec's Émile Nelligan, sold for $23,000 at a Montreal auction house Wednesday night."
"Grand Valley State University has acquired the papers of internationally acclaimed writer Jim Harrison, a Michigan native."
"Harrison, an international best selling author, has been published in twenty-two languages. He is the author of five collections of novellas, including LEGENDS OF THE FALL, eight novels, ten collections of poetry, a children's book, three works of nonfiction, and his memoir, OFF TO THE SIDE."
"At 69, McMurtry splits his time between Tucson and his hometown of Archer City, Texas, where he continues to operate a sprawling bookstore, Booked Up. It has four buildings and more than 200,000 used and antiquarian books in a town of 1,850."
"The new Jerwood Center, named for the charitable foundation that pledged the first $925,000 of its $5.9 million building costs, represents a victory of architectural innovation and scholarship over those eager to keep England's Lake District free of anything but the most traditional of building designs."
"Sitting in a case in the British Library's new Hans Christian Andersen exhibition is a 19th century translation of The Green Duckling. The what duckling? Yes, this version of The Ugly Duckling must have seemed pretty incomprehensible to any Victorian children unfortunate enough to receive the mistranslated gem in their Christmas stockings. But as Kristian Jensen of the BL says: "Andersen's tales have something special that carries them through translations, adaptations and even mistranslations."
"Documents in the home have fared the best because American and Cubans have worked together since 2002 to preserve thousands of letters, manuscripts and photographs. The originals remain at the hacienda, but microfilmed copies will go to Boston's John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, which has the world's primary collection of Hemingway documents."
"One of the world's rarest books - a belligerent 42-page rant written, published and signed by Galileo in 1607 - is likely to be the star of the Antiquarian Book Fair at Olympia in London next month."
"NEW YORK - A previously unknown play by Jack Kerouac, written in the same year as his beatnik classic novel "On The Road" was published, has been discovered languishing in a warehouse more than three decades after his death. "
"That last phrase, common throughout the Beat era of the '50s and the hippie movement of the '60s, has become a bumper sticker cliché now, but perhaps that's because it's still neccesary."
"The reader who starts a Cliff Janeway mystery might expect it to be a highbrow exercise since Janeway owns a bookstore in Denver that specializes in first editions and rare volumes."
"Archimedes' amazingly advanced ideas have been lost and found several times throughout the ages. Now scientists are employing modern technology—including X-ray fluorescence at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory ( SSRL )—to completely read the Archimedes Palimpsest, the only source for at least two previously unknown treatises thought out by Archimedes in the third century B.C."
"On March 24, Conroy attended a ceremony at the Hall of Fame located in the Hargrett Rare Book Library at the University of Georgia. Others inducted were the late journalists Ralph McGill and Henry Grady. Relatives of both men were there."
"But in a victory for "progress", next month sees the official opening of a £3.1 million research centre, 100 yards from William Wordsworth's Dove Cottage at Grasmere, that will help the literary shrine transform itself into the world's leading centre for British Romanticism."
"Using non-invasive analytical techniques, a team of researchers in England say they have for the first time precisely identified the pigments used to illustrate seven Gutenberg Bibles located in Europe. The findings provide chemical data that could ultimately help preserve and restore these rare historic treasures as well as provide insights into the printing practices of early Europe, they say"
"Print version: The true bibliophile may purchase the 20-volume set for $1,500."
"The exhibition will bring together rare books and manuscripts from the British Library collection, and loans which have never before left his native Denmark, including portraits, caricatures - one of a small boy and his dog running away in horror when he became a fashionably hairstyled society figure - and paper cutouts he made to entertain children in a lifetime as a professional house guest."
"While The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been adopted by children all over the world, its roots are here in Chicago. Author L. Frank Baum wrote the classic story, which later inspired Gregory Maguire's prequel Wicked (which in turn inspired "Wicked," the touring Broadway musical opening today in Chicago) in a rambling house not far from the park where he lived with his wife and four sons from 1891 to 1910."
"An ancient document likened to something which could have been featured in best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code was being analysed at a top auction house for its significance today."
"The manuscript, believed to date from the 17th century, contains biographical details of every person in the Bible."
"Finding something to write about was never a problem with Ireland’s abundance of great writers; Irish literature was integral to Dublin’s history and tradition. From the Book of Kells in the ninth century, through the cultural movements of both the 19th and 20th centuries, Ireland produced more than two dozen writers of renown, including four Nobel prizewinners."
"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer has sold his archive of manuscripts, letters and books to the University of Texas for $2.5m (£1.3m)."
"More than 10,000 letters are in the archive alongside unpublished stories, essays and notes."
"In the province of Bizkaia, the county council will hand out 25,000 booklets with short stories by six Basque writers, as it has done in the previous seven years. This time the booklet includes stories by Juan Manuel Etxebarria, Txani Rodriguez, Jose Luis Urrutia, Jose Javier Gamboa, Iban Zaldua and Arantxa Iturbe, and they are centred on aspects related to Don Quixote."
"Piggott, Ark., a literary landmark? Believe it or not, it is. Hemingway hunted, brooded, and wrote portions of his famous novel, "A Farewell to Arms" and several short stories in the severely quaint town."
"The James Bond continuation novels by Raymond Benson are now all officially out of print, according to the author himself. The Benson novels join the other out of print 007 adventures by Kingsley Amis, John Pearson, Christopher Wood, and John Gardner. Despite performing to expecations, Ian Fleming Publications has no plans to issue reprints."
"Not everyone has been convinced that the portrait, owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), was painted during the playwright's lifetime."
"Now National Portrait Gallery experts in London confirm it is a fake which dates back to the early 19th century."
"Although Saul Bellow resisted being classified as a Jewish writer, his literary achievement in English, to my mind, most closely resembles the achievement, in Hebrew, of the great 19th-century writer Mendele Mokher Sforim."
"MARYLEBONE'S up-and-coming authors have been discovered by a new TV series for book lovers."
"The borough's aspiring literary talents - who meet twice a month at Marylebone Library - have been filmed for the BBC's Page Turners, hosted by Newsnight presenter Jeremy Vine."
"As Shakespeare lovers prepare to celebrate the 441st
anniversary of the Great Bard’s birthday,
author Matthew Cossolotto asks: Have we been “barding” up the wrong tree all these years?"
"The media have spent so much time gnashing their teeth over the influence of political bloggers that barely anyone has noticed something equally convulsive happening in the book realm. Despite the on-going panic about a contraction in both the audience for serious literature and the amount of mainstream print coverage books receive, literary conversation is erupting all over the Internet in the form of litblogs."
"The manuscript was discovered (actually rediscovered) in 1912 by English book dealer Wilfrid Michael Voynich. It was written in cipher, or code, and done so well that the best cryptologists, including those at the CIA, have been unable to decipher it. The one thing that was finally deciphered was perhaps the key at the end of the manuscript: 'To me, Roger Bacon.'"
"WASHINGTON - The Helsinki Commission this week heard of the struggle to reclaim a piece of Jewish heritage that has been held for nearly a century by the Russian government."
"Members and friends of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the largest Jewish organizations in the United States, testified about the Schneerson collection, a compilation of rare religious books and manuscripts owned by the movement's former leaders."
"During a reception Tuesday, Bob Ahern of the international studies department yelled with conviction, "Come see the blood in the streets!" Ahern read poetry from Pablo Neruda as part of a reception that celebrated the opening of a photographic exhibit of the late Nobel Prize-winning poet."
"The songs have passed down from generation to generation without the slightest change in tune and lyrics, according to Ap Dawpel. “It is close to the heart of the Talops because it is like a priceless inheritance and has been blessed by many great Lamas,” he adds. The songs, hand written on ancient scrolls, are registered as a property of the Talo monastery."
"The Conference will be a place where you can soak up the reflections of Southern culture and history in all it’s glory, it’s shame, it’s conflicts, it’s progress. You can hear the voices of poverty, of striving and of triumph. And you can comfort yourself with stories of healing and lessons learned. But most
significantly, you will get an accurate picture of the Southern soul: black, white and beautiful mulatto."
"Hans Christian Andersen might havebeen surprised to learn that, more than a century and a half afterthey were turn out in his native Denish, his fairy tales would still be popular in China."
"They were discovered in a second-hand bookshop in Glasgow in 2001."
"The works, designed to illustrate The Grave by the Scottish poet, were thought to have been kept in one family after they were auctioned in 1836."
"The literary aspect of each story is no mere late addition. Each plot is sculpted around some interesting facts about book collecting, book selling and book publishing."
"Even if I was not a bookseller myself, I would find these novels riveting. Each of these four mysteries kept me spellbound, reading long into the night, unable to put it down until I've reached the end."
" According to Ritzau news bureau, Denmark plans to celebrate the life and works of one of its most prodigious sons from April 2 to Dec. 6 with events around the world. Most of them, however, will be centered around Copenhagen and the author's birth town of Odense."
"The rare 1640 first collected edition of William Shakespeare's Poems, selling for $25,875, despite lacking the frontispiece and five other leaves, was a highlight of PBA Galleries' recent auction of rare books and manuscripts, featuring the autograph collection of Florence S. Walter, Part I."
"Marie Kohler's Boswell's Dreams, performed at the Off-Broadway Theatre, encompasses two generations of James Boswell -- his here-and-there existence and the survival of his tell-all journals -- wrapped into one enlightening and comedic escapade."
"You can't beat a good mystery, and the Voynich Manuscript is just that. It's (probably) a medieval illuminated manuscript that's one of the most famous cryptographic puzzles ever. Going on 100 years after Wilfred Voynich found it at a Jesuit school in Italy, no one has cracked the cipher in which it was written."
"A lecturer of the University of Cambridge said on Monday that he is compiling a list of all the world’s handwritten and illustrated versions of the Shahnameh, the masterpiece of Iranian poet Ferdowsi."
"Experts from Britain, Germany, Russia, Egypt and the United States launched a four-year project to digitally reunite the fragile texts and make them available to anyone with the click of a mouse."
"Increasingly, writers, readers and publishers are turning to literature as a bridge between the estranged cultures of Western and Arab societies."
"Later in his career, Thompson wasn't shy about the public reading his correspondence. Two volumes of his letters have been published, with a third collection in the works. The issue of placing his archive is still being explored."
Scholarly wisdom has it that book sales are poor because the novel is a Western form. But Vittachi claims that fiction in any Asian vernacular sells poorly."
"The curious case of Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins remains unsolved, but there is at least one outcome of the revelation by Brandeis graduate student Holly Jackson that the Victorian novelist, long thought to be African-American, was in fact white: Kelley-Hawkins will be removed from the prestigious Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers."
"The Armenian Studies Program at Fresno State, in cooperation with the William Saroyan Society of Fresno, is co-sponsoring a panel discussion, "William Saroyan and His World" at 7:00 PM on Friday, March 11 in the Industrial Technology Building, Room 101 (corner of Barstow and Campus Drive) on the Fresno State campus."
"Drawing mainly from the Huntington's own history of science collection, the exhibit features about 70 Newton manuscripts, sketches, personal belongings and other related items. Some items are on loan from the Cambridge University Library, UCLA's Clark Library and Caltech."
"PARIS - France handed over manuscripts of Ayse Sultan, the eldest daughter of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II who ruled the Ottoman Empire between 1876 and 1909, to officials of Istanbul's Topkapi Palace at a ceremony in Paris on Saturday."
"But for nearly 20 years, book-loving tourists have been drawn to this Texas town near the Oklahoma border by author Larry McMurtry's eclectic shop, filled with hard-to-find, out-of-print and used books."
"ST. PETERSBURG -- A great-grandson of Fyodor Dostoyevsky is suing a Russian lottery for using the famed writer's image on tickets without permission, calling it particularly appalling because of the author's long addiction to gambling."
"Letters from the famous British poet Shelley found in a dusty trunk at a Norbury home are expected to fetch up to £30,000 at auction."
"Sales of Hunter S. Thompson's books, new and old, have surged since his death Sunday reports USA today."
"Australia's only Nobel laureate for literature [Patrick White] died in 1990 after 26 years in the house"
"Yesterday, nearly 80 years later, proofs of the 42-page guide annotated in the teacher's handwriting went on sale for £75,000. For it is rare and famous among collectors as Ludwig Wittgenstein's "other book" - only the second work published between hard covers in his lifetime by the thinker acknowledged as the pre-eminent genius of 20th century philosophy."
"The dilapidated birthplace of Robert Burns was saved for the nation yesterday and could now become the centrepiece of a pilgrimage trail celebrating the bard's life and literature."
"Bloomsbury Auctions is known for Modern First Editions and over the last few years has become the place to buy and sell Ian Fleming. The highlight of the Continental and English Literature and Modern First Editions sale at Bloomsbury Auctions on 24th February 2005 is the sale of the second major group of books and letters from Ian Fleming to come onto the market in the last year. The items are from the private collection of his great friend, bookseller and business partner at the Book Collector magazine, Percy Muir."
"The legend behind the writing of Jack Kerouac's On the Road is well known, if not entirely accurate. Fueled by inspiration, coffee and Benzedrine, Kerouac sat down at his typewriter and -- in one burst of creative energy -- wrote the novel that would make him the voice of his generation in just 20 days, typing it out on a single, 120-foot-long scroll."
"A confident and happy man engaging in witty banter replaces the macho hunter image of Ernest Hemingway in one of the author's last manuscripts, to be published as a novel this fall by Kent State University Press."
""I can't believe that a collector would ever consider a 'virtual' signed book as truly a signed book anyway . . . and if it is difficult to distinguish between the two, the value of the signed-in-person books might be compromised. For myself, I think the whole idea is idiotic. . . . I'd rather have the book blank than stand in line for a computer to sign it."
"The tome emerged when the Hamlet of Alhama organised a Quixote exhibition, calling on local children to bring a copy from their parents' collection."
"One child brought along an edition explaining it was a family heirloom which had belonged to an ancestor who lived in Cuba."
"A book published in China last month entitled "Xiang Meili" - American author Emily Hahn's Chinese name - looks back at the life and loves of this remarkable journalist and writer in the Shanghai of the 1930s."
"Xiang Meili was the name given to Hahn by her Chinese poet-lover, Shao Xunmei (Sinmay Zau)."
Read this news story.
(You do not need to install a language pack to read this.)
"It was one of the world’s greatest literary forgeries. The creation of "Scotland’s Homer" by schoolmaster James Macpherson helped inspire a new romantic movement throughout the western world."
"Lucien Carr, who brought together, befriended and served as muse for novelists Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs and poet Allen Ginsberg, the core of literature's Beat Generation, died Friday of cancer in Washington, D.C. He was 79."
"A collection of his poems has been seized by Russian police as part of a crack-down on "obscene" literature. The move has horrified the nation’s literati in a country where serious literature is a serious business and popular with the masses."
"Literary historians, gossips, critics and would-be biographers will just have to be patient: one of the last outsiders to have seen the legendary second volume of the letters of TS Eliot today predicts that it will never be published while his widow is still alive. "
"The book, with an estimated value of EUR 50,000 (USD 65,000), was recently uncovered in a private library in western France by rare books expert Pierre Poulain, who described the edition as a rare find."
"One of the book's chief delights is the wry humanity of Mole's employer, the wise old antiquarian book-seller Mr Carlton-Hayes."
(They usually call us "musty" instead of "wise.")
"The version of O Saw Ye My Maggie was found in the former library of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, near Melrose, bound into a printed copy of The Fornicators' Court, a risque work by Burns, of which only 10 copies were printed."
"On Sept. 3, 1786, a slim volume entitled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was published by Burns's friend, John Wilson of Kilmarnock. 612 copies printed, cross-stitched, three pence each; today -- on the very rare occasions when a copy surfaces -- it is one of the most valuable first editions in the world."
"Twenty years ago, a woman bought a stack of papers for $10 at a yard sale in Texas. The papers included part of Andrew Jackson's journal--and the 64-word missive written and signed by Edgar A. Poe."
(How to be a Literary Tourist in Tam o’ Shanter Land)
"The novel was first printed in Italy because Lawrence realised its erotic nature would cause outrage in the UK."
Or, if you are a Scottish Nationalist, you can read it in the Scotsman here.
"They say William Faulkner read it every year and former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez peruses it daily."
"The museum – if such a word can accurately describe the leaking building – is home to an impressive collection of manuscripts, including a rare copy of the Kilmarnock edition of poems."
...it's not really Earth-shattering news, but it's a great picture of Stephen and John. (It's a slow news day.)
"...bibliophiles will flip their dust covers for an extraordinary collection of classic volumes"
"Items from Jack Kerouac's original book collection and personal wardrobe are currently up for bid online."
"The fairy tales of Andersen have been translated into more than 80 languages."
"...he found a small bundle of papers in a dusty drawer."
Elbert's print shop is currently owned by Cornell Cooperative Extension.
(...it's actually Manila Online. So you're not really in Manila. You're somewhere Lost in Cyberspace.)
"...rifling through a bin of scruffy looking used paperbacks outside a bookshop on London's Charing Cross Road."
It's "one of the most remarkable literary manuscripts in existence, On the Road is a key work of American literature and marked a turning point in 20th-century culture."
The late Ted Hughes lived here until he was seven. (Americans also remembered him as the husband of American poet Sylvia Plath.)
"The first-ever public exhibition of selections from the internationally-noted George Bernard Shaw Collection of Boston College's Burns Library is on view."
"It happens periodically," Seaton says. "Somebody donates a coat that still has money in the pocket or a box of junk jewelry that has Grandma’s broach in it."
"Jewish community leaders said they are ecstatic. Gary Krupp, a Jewish man from Long Island who was knighted by the Pope in 2000, made the loan happen."
It's the 90th birthday of John Hope Franklin, a leading historian in the field of African-American history, American race relations and Southern regional history.
Welsh Library Buys Dylan Thomas Archive
"'The National Library of Wales is delighted to have acquired for the nation this important and little-known group of papers from the Dylan Thomas Estate', said Dr Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, head of the Library's Manuscripts Unit."
Hemingway's Son Had a Sex-Change Operation
Greg Hemingway became Gloria Hemingway.
The House where Hemingway Committed Suicide: Will it Become a Research Library?
His widow wanted the property to become a library and nature preserve.
Novelist Louis Auchincloss: Book Collector
"One wall in his living room is covered with old books, including all of his own in a long line on one shelf, gold-stamped and bound in green leather."
Did Charles Dickens Change "Oliver Twist" to make it Less Anti-Semitic?
"It is believed that Dickens altered the final chapter of the book after receiving a letter in 1863 from Eliza Davies, wife of a Jewish banker, complaining of the 'vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew.'"
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