Category: Uncategorized

18th-century book stolen in Rome recovered in Argentina

Source: Malay Mail Online

BUENOS AIRES, April 24 — An 18th-century book on the history of Saint Peter's Basilica that was stolen last year in Rome has been recovered at a bookstore in Buenos Aires, officials said yesterday.

The 1748 book, which was lifted from a private library in the Italian capital, had been offered for sale online at a price of US$3,500 (RM12,600).

Authorities seized it after tracking it down at a bookstore in the Argentine capital's upscale Recoleta neighborhood, the attorney general's office said on its website.

The book is a history of the famous Vatican basilica's dome and the work to restore it — full title: Memorie Istoriche Della Gran Cupola Del Tempio Vaticano, E De' Danni Di Essa, E De' Restoramenti Loro Divisi In Libri Cinque. Alla Santita Di Nostro Signore Papa Benedetto XIV.

The title roughly translates to “Historical Memories of the Great Dome of the Vatican Temple, and the Damage to It, and Its Restoration, Divided in Five Books. To His Holiness of Our Lord Pope Benedict XIV.”

It was written by academic and architecture expert Giovanni Poleni and published by Stamperia del Seminario in Padua.

It was part of a stolen collection of 120 antique volumes valued at more than €1 million (RM3.89m).

The operation to recover it, carried out by the Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage at the Argentine office of Interpol, was launched after Italian police requested international help.

The book is in Interpol custody pending a formal request from Italian authorities for its return. — AFP

- See more HERE

9th Annual St. Louis Fine Print, Rare Book & Paper Arts Fair

ArtfixDaily.com)
Now in its ninth year, the St. Louis Fine Print, Rare Book and Paper Arts Fair set for May 1 to 3, 2015, is attracting participants from around the country with its growing reputation for quality dealers, enthusiastic crowds and a wonderful setting.

[Top]

Ten million dollar rare Bible and artifact display now open and free of charge

[Top]

Princeton Receives Its Biggest Gift, A $300M Rare Volume Book Collection

February 17, 2015
By Susan Snyder
The Philadelphia Inquirer via The Viewpoint
(TNS)
Princeton University on Monday announced its largest gift in history: a rare book and manuscript collection — including the first six printed editions of the Bible — valued at nearly $300 million.
The 2,500-volume collection, which includes an original printing of the Declaration of Independence and Beethoven’s autographed music sketchbook, has been housed at Princeton’s Firestone Library since 1959. That’s when alum and Philadelphia native William H. Scheide moved it there from Titusville in Western Pennsylvania, the town where he was reared.

[Top]

The newest satellite show for New York City Rare Book Week

The newest satellite show for New York City Rare Book Week will feature 60 fine book and ephemera dealers with fresh material. Located less than a mile from the NY Antiquarian Book Fair at the Park Ave, Armory.

logo NYC Book Week

Free Shuttle bus drop-off service from this fair to the armory running continuously from 8:15 am - noon.

April 11, 2015
Saturday 8am-4pm
Wallace Hall at St. Ignatius Loyola Church
980 Park AVe. (between 83-84 sts)
New York, New York

Directions
Dealer List
Discount Admission Coupon
Space Rental Inquiry
Purchase your ticket online in advance and save $5 off the admission
Purchase Tickets Here

[Top]

The University of Dammam Saudi Arabia Receives an Unprecedented Rare Book Collection

UoD Receives an Unprecedented Rare Book Collection

Pinterest
  • [Top]

    New Book about Books and Book People - The Forger by Bradford Morrow

    The Forger, Author Bradford Morrow

    Contemporary rare book dealers, antiquarian book fairs, forgers… this book satisfies your craving for an authentic, engaging biblio-mystery. I found myself unable to put it down until It was finished. This is an excellent story told by an excellent storyteller. Enjoy!!!

    A rather lengthy quote from The Forger that sums up my thoughts on book collecting very well. I finished the book. It is well worth the read...

    "Especially poignant to him was a book that looked just it did on publication day decades or centuries before. Looked just as it did when the author held it in his or her hands for the first time. To possess a pristine copy was to share the author's experience, to virtually exist in another era as a time traveler might, and to join in communion with all those owners down the years who had protected it against time's depravities. That to him was the virtue of condition. Nor did his love of signed or inscribed copies have much to do with ordinary fetishism or pure market investment value, although he was both a good investor and surely a fetishist of sorts. Again, it had to do with the proximity of the author. That the writer's flesh-and-blood hand had touched this title page or that piece of foolscap brought an immeasurable significance to the whole object. Made it distinctive and exceptional, yes, but, perhaps even more important, personal and even intimate. Authorial DNA, the inscribed phrases and tender inscriptions, lifted even the commonest works into a higher category of value, not just monetary but, if you will, spiritual."

    Review
    One of Amazon's Top 100 Books of the Year
    A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
    An Indie Next Pick for November
    A LibraryReads Selection for November
    A Library Journal Editors' Pick for Fall

    Forgers

    “From its provocative opening line . . . Bradford Morrow’s latest novel takes on a knowing, noirish tone, like a crime movie by the Coen brothers. . . . The pleasure of reading The Forgers comes not only from trying to figure out what happened to Diehl but also in deciding, chapter by chapter, how much trust to grant the narrator, who is our only source.”—Miami Herald

    “The Forgers is quintessential Bradford Morrow. Brilliantly written as a suspense novel, lethally enthralling to read, and filled with arcane, fascinating information—in this case, the rarified world of high-level literary forgery.”—Joyce Carol Oates

    “Bradford Morrow’s The Forgers is a bibliophile’s dream, an existential thriller set in the world of rare book collecting that is also a powerfully moving exposé of the forger's dangerous skill: what happens when you lie so well that you lose touch with what is real? In beautifully controlled prose, Morrow traces the shaky line between paranoia and gut-intuition, memory and self-delusive fiction, hollow and real love. It's perfect all-night flashlight reading—Bradford Morrow at his lyrical, surprising, suspenseful, genre-bending best.”—Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Swamplandia!

    “The Forgers is remarkable. Bradford Morrow is remarkable. The Real Thing, which is rare on this earthly plane.”—Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and The Snow Queen

    “Delightful to read.”—NPR.com

    “Bradford Morrow illuminates the seamy side of the rare-book trade in The Forgers.”—Vanity Fair

    “In The Forgers, Bradford Morrow hits the sweet spot at the juncture of genre crime fiction and the mainstream novel with an almost mystical perfection. Readers of either form will be gratified and impressed, and those who are readers of both will be thrilled. In its deep knowledge of books and those who trade in them, and in its thousand vivid, unexpected turns of phrase—its depth of both subject and language—The Forgers could have been written only by Morrow and at only the rare and striking level of mastery he has now achieved.”—Peter Straub, author of A Dark Matter and Ghost Story

    “[A] consistently unnerving mystery. . . . The best moments in The Forgers come . . . from its intimate knowledge of books, details about signatures, ink, bindings, the slant of Arthur Conan Doyle’s handwriting . . . creating an ambience of old-fashioned gothic suspense that bibliophiles in particular will enjoy.”—USA Today

    “With The Forgers, Bradford Morrow has masterfully combined an exquisitely thickening plot, an informed appreciation of the antiquarian book world, and a deep understanding of what makes the obsessive people who inhabit this quirky community do the sort of impassioned things they sometimes do, up to and including the commission of horrific crimes. Morrow has hit the ball out of the park—The Forgers is a grand slam, in the bottom of the ninth, to boot. This is a bibliomystery you will want to inhale in one sitting.”—Nicholas Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness and On Paper

    “The Forgers . . . stuns from its first line. . . . Morrow offers a suspenseful plot that coexists with gritty characters and ominous imagery.”—Fine Books Magazine

    “[An] artfully limned suspense novel. . . . The insights Morrow offers into the lure of collecting, the rush of forgery as a potentially creative act, and underlying questions of authenticity render the whodunit one of the lesser mysteries of this sly puzzler.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

    “The Forgers is a reader’s dream: intelligently written, with beautiful details paid to the use of inks and stationary, pen pressures and hand flourishes. Bradford Morrow has created in Will a character rich in criminal indignation.”—Bookreporter

    “As Morrow pulls back the curtain to reveal the murky world of book sellers and buyers and ushers readers into the mind of a forger for whom falsifying the perfect signature is a thrill, he also draws us deeper into the puzzle . . . Morrow writes with a sure, clear voice, and his prose is lush and detailed. . . . Recommended for readers who enjoy atmospheric literary thrillers such as Caleb Carr’s The Alienist.”—Library Journal

    “Will, the narrator of Morrow’s seventh novel, is a fine creation. . . . A pleasurable study of the lives of book dealers. . . . Morrow’s well-researched passages on the collector’s art meshes well with Will’s romantic longueurs about the life of fakery he left behind.”—Kirkus Reviews

    “So well written, The Forgers will take some time to finish as readers might want to reread every sentence.”—Jean-Paul Adriaansen, Water Street Books, Indie Next selection

    [Top]

    “les Essais de Montaigne” Sells at auction for $9,600

    A rare book “les Essais de Montaigne” garnered strong interest from many antiquarian book dealers and was finally hammered down at $9,600 at Kaminski Auctions Sale.

     

    EST: $3,000 - $5,000

    Follow us: @virtualstrategy on Twitter | VirtualStrategyMagazine on Facebook
    Read more at http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2014/12/10/monumental-russian-samovar-and-sapphire-and-diamond-bracelet-achieve-top-prices-kaminski-#9SQk7bexheIFwrdX.99

    [Top]

    Long-lost letter that inspired Kerouac's On the Road to go up for auction

    Written by friend and muse Neal Cassady, the Joan Anderson Letter was believed lost after the poet Allen Ginsberg tried to get it published in 1968
    American Beat writer Jack Kerouac leans closer to a radio to hear himself on a broadcast, 1959. Photograph: John Cohen/Getty Images

    Source: The Guardian (USA) Associated Press in Los Angeles
    Sunday 23 November 2014 12.03 EST

    It’s been called the letter that launched a literary genre – 16,000 amphetamine-fueled, stream-of-consciousness words written by Neal Cassady to his friend Jack Kerouac in 1950.

    Upon reading them, Kerouac scrapped an early draft of On the Road and, during a three-week writing binge, revised his novel into a style similar to Cassady’s, one that would become known as Beat literature.

    Kerouac said shortly before his death that the letter would have transformed his counterculture muse Cassady into a towering literary figure, if only it hadn’t been lost. It turns out it wasn’t lost, says Joe Maddalena, whose southern California auction house Profiles in History is putting the letter up for sale on 17 December. It was just misplaced, for more than 60 years.

    The letter is being offered as part of a collection that includes papers by ee Cummings, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Penn Warren and other prominent literary figures. But Maddalena believes the item bidders will want most is Cassady’s 18-page, single-spaced screed describing a drunken, sexually charged, sometimes comical visit to his hometown of Denver.

    “It’s the seminal piece of literature of the Beat generation, and there are so many rumors and speculation of what happened to it,” Maddalena said.

    Kerouac told The Paris Review in 1968 that poet Allen Ginsberg loaned the letter to a friend who lived on a houseboat in northern California. Kerouac believed the friend then dropped it overboard.

    “It was my property, a letter to me, so Allen shouldn’t have been so careless with it, nor the guy on the houseboat,” he said.

    As for the quality of the letter, Kerouac described it this way: “It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better’n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves.”

    It turns out Ginsberg apparently was trying to get it published when he mailed the letter to Golden Goose Press in San Francisco. There it remained, unopened, until the small publishing house folded. When it did, its owner planned to throw the letter in the trash, along with every other unopened submission in his files.

    That was when the operator of a small, independent music label who shared an office with publisher Richard Emerson came to the rescue. He took every manuscript, letter and receipt in the Golden Goose Archives home with him.

    “My father didn’t know who Allen Ginsberg was, he didn’t know Cassady, he wasn’t part of the Beat scene, but he loved poetry,” said Los Angeles performance artist Jean Spinosa, who found the letter as she was cleaning out her late father’s house two years ago. “He didn’t understand how anyone would want to throw someone’s words out.”

    Although she knew who Kerouac and Cassady were, Spinosa had never heard of the Joan Anderson Letter, the name Kerouac gave it for Cassady’s description of a woman with whom he had a brief romance.

    “It’s invaluable,” historian and Kerouac biographer Dennis McNally said. “It inspired Kerouac greatly in the direction he wanted to travel, which was this spontaneous style of writing contained in a letter that had just boiled out of Neal Cassady’s brain.”

    It was a style he would put to use in the novels On the Road and Visions of Cody, which featured Cassady, thinly disguised under the names Dean Moriarty and Cody Pomeroy, as their protagonists. He would continue to use it in such books as The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bums and Lonesome Traveler, cementing his reputation as the father of the Beat generation.

    Cassady would gain some small measure of fame as Kerouac’s muse and, later, as the sidekick who drove novelist Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters bus across the country.

    Meanwhile, about a third of the Joan Anderson Letter, copied by someone before it disappeared, became well-known to students of Kerouac.

    When Spinosa discovered she had the whole thing, she took it to Maddalena, a prominent dealer in historical documents and pop-culture artifacts, to authenticate it. He is reluctant to estimate what it might sell for. Although the original manuscript of On the Road fetched $2.4m in 2001, everyone knew that existed. It is much harder to estimate the value, he said, of something no one knew was still around.

    For her part, Spinosa says, she is just happy her father rescued the letter from the trash. She is hoping whoever buys it will give the public a chance to see it.

    “The letter is so good, and you see why these guys loved him,” she says of Cassady’s fellow Beats. “The writing, it just breathes off the page.”

    [Top]

    Bauman Gift Catalog is Now Available

    If you want a real treat, be sure to take a look at the 2014 Bauman Rare Books Gift Catalog. It is definitely something to see. Yes, the prices are high but the books are superb. It is well worth a look... Just:

     

    Go Here

    [Top]