Rare, Signed James Joyce Dubliners Comes to Auction
Source: Independent IE
The book was signed by Joyce while he was staying in Torquay, Devon, on August 4, 1929, and it was presented by him to Jacob Schwartz, proprietor of the Ulysses Bookshop in London.
A spokesperson for Sotheby's told the Sunday Independent: "Despite Joyce's slight misspelling, the recipient (of the book) is almost certainly the proprietor of the Ulysses Bookshop in London, Jacob Schwartz. There are several references to Schwartz in Joyce's letters where Joyce omits the letter 't'."
First edition copies of Dubliners signed by Joyce are particularly rare and only two other signed copies of the book have been sold at auctions in the last 40 years.
The copy is coming up for sale at Sotheby's in London on July 15.
Joyce signed Schwartz's copy of Dubliners during the writer's two month holiday at the Imperial Hotel, Torquay, with lover and Connemara baker's daughter, Nora Barnacle.
In his award-winning biography of Joyce, the late Richard Ellmann recalls Joyce's stay in Torquay: "In his usual deliberate, though seemingly desultory way, Joyce read a series of strange newspapers and magazines. During the afternoons he lay on the beach, as he loved to do, fingering the pebbles for texture and weight. Occasionally he had a rush of energy and during one of these vaulted over a wall, but fell (because his sight was poor) on the other side, hurting his arm. In the evenings he went with (Stuart) Gilbert to local pubs, sipping a little cider (which he did not like) but mainly listening to several conversations at once and, to Gilbert's wonder, following them all."
The imminent sale of the signed copy of Dubliners neatly coincides with the centenary this month of the book's publication in June 1914.
When a signed copy of Dubliners last came up for sale at an auction it fetched STG£105,000 at Sotheby's in London on December 12, 2012.
The only other signed copy to come up for sale at an auction in the last 40 years sold for $230,000 at Christie's in New York on October 11,2002.
Schwartz privately published Joyce's 'James Clarence Mangan' under the Ulysses Bookshop imprint in 1930.
He was also the purchaser of the 'complete and final' proofs of Ulysses.
- See more at: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/whats-in-a-name-james-joyce-and-a-rare-misspelt-encounter-30391723.html#sthash.GWQoXmRI.dpuf
Declaration Of Independence Written By Jefferson
Source: Gothamist
(courtesy of Jonathan Blanc / The New York Public Library)
Many years ago, July 4th meant more than returning fireworks to the East River. To commemorate the humble origins of our country, the New York Public Library will display a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence written in longhand by Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson wrote the Declaration in Philadelphia between June 11 and June 28, 1776, at the age of 33. His editors were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman, and they decided to cut a large section of his original version that condemns the Crown's support of slavery (Franklin also replaced Jefferson's "sacred & undeniable" with "self-evident" because Franklin apparently had a keen eye for purple prose).
With the slavery-addicted states appeased, the Declaration was completed on July 1, and ratified by the Continental Congress on July 4th.
Upset by the redactions, Jefferson dashed off copies of his original version to his friends, with the axed language underlined. The NYPL's copy, written in iron gall ink, is believed to be one sent to Jefferson's former law professor, George Wythe. Jefferson also discussed the edits in his autobiography:
The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offense. The clause, too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under these censures, for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.<B>
The NYPL's copy, displayed at the Celeste Bartos Forum at the Libary's main location, will also be present at the naturalization ceremony for 150 immigrants taking place on July 2.<B>
You can look at this ancient text and ponder the ironies of a slave-holding member of the aristocracy expounding on the ideals of freedom and liberty in language that is now used by a cabal of Supreme Court justices to essentially disenfranchise the public, at the following times:
Friday, June 27: 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.
Saturday, June 28: 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.
Sunday, June 29: 1 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.
Monday, June 30: 10 a.m. to 7:45 p.m.
Tuesday, July 1: 10 a.m. to 7:45 p.m.
Wednesday, July 2: 2 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Thursday, July 3: 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.
Yup, This Book Really Is Bound in Human Skin
New tests prove what librarians have long believed: this book's cover is made of human skin.
Source: The Atlantic
Alexis C. Madrigal
:As regular readers may know, I announced that three books from the Harvard Library were bound in human skin. I then posted a retraction when that was found not to be the case on 2 of the books. Well, as it turns out, the third book is the real thing. I, personally, find this topic a bit disgusting and amazingly interesting fascinating. Here is the article from the Atlantic in its entirety. It would be worth a look at the Atlantic site to read the comments. You will find a link near the beginning of this post as well as at its end.
Surely, you've seen our recent work on anthropodermic bibliopegy, the early modern practice of binding books in human skin?
No? Well, a quick refresher: some books, since the 16th century but before our own time, were bound in human skin. Why? "The confessions of criminals were occasionally bound in the skin of the convicted," Harvard librarian Heather Cole explained, "or an individual might request to be memorialized for family or lovers in the form of a book."
Qué romantico!
Anyway, we know it happened because people refer to it happening in the literature of the time, and also because some books bore inscriptions that literally said that they were bound in skin.
But such tomes are suspect. You can't just trust anyone who says they've bound a book in human skin. For example, one had this inscription, but turned out to be stupid sheepskin:
The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my dear friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King Mbesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it.
And so, I am happy to report, the Houghton Library's copy of Arsène Houssaye’s Des destinées de l’ame "is without a doubt bound in human skin," Cole, who is the assistant curator of modern nooks and manuscripts at the library, reports in a new blog post. (Des destinées de l’ame, by the way, translates to The destiny of the soul.)
And how do we know for sure this time, as opposed to taking the word of some creative bookbinder? The book, which had already attracted the attention of a Harvard dermatologist, was tested by the Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Resource Laboratory. Basically, you create a profile of proteins in the putative human skin, then you run the same test for reference samples of human skin, sheepskin, goatskin, leather (i.e. cow skin). Whatever it matches up with the best: that's what your binding is made of.
So... "The [test result] from Des destinées de l’ame matched the human reference, and clearly eliminated other common parchment sources, such as sheep, cattle and goat," said Bill Lane, the director of the Harvard laboratory.
Perhaps the book is cold, or just read some RL Stine? (JAMA Dermatology)
But there was still a catch! "Although the [test] was consistent with human, other closely related primates, such as the great apes and gibbons, could not be eliminated because of the lack of necessary references.”
So, then, they ran the putative skin binding through a second test, this time Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LCMSMS). And that brought Lane to the conclusion that it is "very unlikely that the source could be other than human."
We now know, then, that this book is the real deal, and the only one of three Harvard books thought to be bound in human skin that has had its reputation survive scientific testing. Which makes its inscription, always creepy, even more so:
“This book is bound in human skin parchment on which no ornament has been stamped to preserve its elegance. By looking carefully you easily distinguish the pores of the skin. A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering: I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman.
He goes on, but I think that gives you the idea."
Source: The Atlantic
Alexis C. Madrigal
Patricia Ahern of Quill and Brush Passes Away
I am sorry to have to tell you of the death of Patricia Ahearn, beloved wife of Allen Ahearn of Quill and Brush Books. I have always admired the Ahearns for their considerable knowledge of books and the "book world" but also because of their kindness. When I was just beginning my site, her4e, I came across an article written by the ahearns that I wanted to share with my raders. I contacted them at Quill and Brush and asked if I may republish it here for my readers. They both, very kindly, said yes. It still resides on page 24 of this site (as of today). Id you'd like to read that early article, you may find it HERE
The Quill & Brush was established in 1976 as an outgrowth of a part-time business run by Allen and Patricia Ahearn who started collecting and cataloging books in the early 1960s. The Ahearns have over 45 years of experience in the field. The Quill & Brush was operated by Allen and Pat and their daughter, Beth Fisher.
The Quill & Brush specializes in first editions of literature, mystery/detective fiction and poetry, as well as collectible books in all fields. The firm focuses mainly on books published from the middle of the 19th century to the present. Their stock of over 15,000 books is housed in a beautiful library in the Ahearns' home, nestled in the woods at the base of scenic Sugarloaf Mountain in Maryland. The Quill & Brush issues catalogs, offers books on the internet and at book fairs, and invites customers to visit the library Monday through Saturday by appointment.
Allen and Pat Ahearn are the authors of Collected Books: The Guide to Values (4th, revised and enlarged edition published in 2011), Book Collecting 2000 (Putnam: 2000) and over 200 individual Author Price Guides, all of which require they keep current on the market prices for collectible books and make them uniquely qualified to offer professional appraisal services and to establish fair prices when purchasing books or libraries.
The Quill & Brush is unique in its proud adherence to their long-standing, stated policy of accepting the return from a collector of any book at any time (in the same condition in which it was sold to them) for full store credit of the original purchase price. Their goal is to offer the finest copies of books available at a fair market price.
http://www.bookcollecting101.com/autographed-books-by-allen-and-pat-ahearn/
[Top]As Publishers Fight Amazon, Books Vanish
Source: Bits, NY Times
By DAVID STREITFELD and MELISSA EDDY MAY 23, 2014
As of Friday morning, the paperback edition of Brad Stone’s “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — was listed as “unavailable.”
Amazon’s power over the publishing and bookselling industries is unrivaled in the modern era. Now it has started wielding its might in a more brazen way than ever before.
Seeking ever-higher payments from publishers to bolster its anemic bottom line, Amazon is holding books and authors hostage on two continents by delaying shipments and raising prices. The literary community is fearful and outraged — and practically begging for government intervention.
“How is this not extortion? You know, the thing that is illegal when the Mafia does it,” asked Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, echoing remarks being made across social media.
Amazon is, as usual, staying mum. “We talk when we have something to say,” Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive, said at the company’s annual meeting this week.
The battle is being waged largely over physical books. In the United States, Amazon has been discouraging customers from buying titles from Hachette, the fourth-largest publisher by market share. Late Thursday, it escalated the dispute by making it impossible to order Hachette titles being issued this summer and fall. It is using some of the same tactics against the Bonnier Media Group in Germany.
But the real prize is control of e-books, the future of publishing.
Publishers tried to rein in Amazon once, and got slapped with a federal antitrust suit for their efforts. Amazon was not directly a party to the case but has reaped the rewards in increased market power. Now it wants to increase its share of the digital proceeds. The publishers, weighing a slide into irrelevance if not nonexistence, are trying to hold the line.
Late Friday afternoon, Hachette made by far its strongest comment on the conflict.
“We are determined to protect the value of our authors’ books and our own work in editing, distributing and marketing them,” said Sophie Cottrell, a Hachette senior vice president. “We hope this difficult situation will not last a long time, but we are sparing no effort and exploring all options.”
The Authors Guild accused the retailer of acting illegally.
“Amazon clearly has substantial market power and is abusing that market power to maintain and increase its dominance, which likely violates Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act,” said Jan Constantine, the Guild’s general counsel.
Independent booksellers, meanwhile, announced they could supply Hachette books immediately. The second-largest physical chain, Books-a-Million, advertised 30 percent discounts on select coming Hachette titles. Among the publisher’s imprints are Grand Central Publishing, Orbit and Little, Brown.
Amazon is also flexing its muscles in Germany, delaying deliveries of books from Bonnier.
“It appears that Amazon is doing exactly that on the German market which it has been doing on the U.S. market: using its dominant position in the market to blackmail the publishers,” said Alexander Skipis, president of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association.
The association said its antitrust experts were examining whether Amazon’s tactics violated the law.
“Of course it is very comfortable for customers to be able to order over the Internet, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Mr. Skipis said. “But with such an online structure as pursued by Amazon, a book market is being destroyed that has been nurtured over decades and centuries.”
Christian Schumacher-Gebler, chief executive for Bonnier in Germany, said the group’s leading publishing houses noticed delays in deliveries of some of its books several weeks ago and confronted the retailer.
“Amazon confirmed to us that these delays are directly related to the ongoing negotiations over conditions in the electronic book market,” Mr. Schumacher-Gebler said.
The retailer began refusing orders late Thursday for coming Hachette books, including J. K. Rowling’s new novel, published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
In some cases, even the web pages promoting the books have disappeared. Anne Rivers Siddons’s new novel, “The Girls of August,” coming in July, no longer has a page for the physical book or even the Kindle edition. Only the audio edition is still being sold (for more than $30).
The confrontations with the publishers are the biggest display of Amazon’s dominance since it briefly stripped another publisher, Macmillan, of its “buy” buttons in 2010. It seems likely to encourage debate about the concentration of power by the retailer. No firm in American history has exerted the control over the American book market — physical, digital and secondhand — that Amazon does.
James Patterson, one of the country’s best-selling writers, described the confrontation between Amazon and Hachette as “a war.”
“Bookstores, libraries, authors, and books themselves are caught in the crossfire of an economic war,” he wrote on Facebook. “If this is the new American way, then maybe it has to be changed — by law, if necessary — immediately, if not sooner.”
Mr. Patterson’s novels due to be released this summer and fall are now impossible to buy from Amazon in either print or digital form.
Hachette, which is owned by the French conglomerate Lagardère, was one of the publishers in the antitrust case, which involved e-book prices. But even before that, relations between the retailer and the publisher have been tense. Hachette made the case to Washington regulators in 2009 that Amazon was having a detrimental effect on publishing, but got nowhere.
For several months, Amazon has been quietly discouraging the sales of Hachette’s physical books by several techniques — cutting the customer’s discount so the book approached list price, taking weeks to ship the book, suggesting that prospective customers buy other books instead and increasing the discount for the Kindle version.
Amazon has millions of members in its Prime club, who get fast shipping. This was, as Internet wits quickly called it, the “UnPrime” approach.
[Top]One of the truly great sentences from literature
Source:: This World Like A Knife
From Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian: this sentence gave me a vision of literary godhood. It’s from the point of view of a bunch of ragged cowboys who have noticed a band of Comanches coming toward them from the distance. These cowboys (land pirates, really) are about meet near-total annihilation:
A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
What about it folks? Does anyone have a "more literate" sentence to compare? Leave a comment if you do...
[Top]Rare book sales providing water for Syria’s refugees
Source: Thame Gazette - Published on the 10 March 2014 14:55
Bookshop manager Dick Jennens
The books were donated to the Cornmarket shop in Thame towards the end of 2013.
Now they have been sold and the money received will go towards providing water for half a million refugees in Syria.
A first edition J.M. Keynes book on economics was bought online for £900 by a customer from Surrey and a set of surreal art magazines – VVV – was also sold over the internet to a Japanese customer for £550.
A book written by Margaret Thatcher, including the former prime minister’s autograph, was also sold in store for £175.
Shop manager Dick Jennens said: “The signature was just what you would expect. Beautifully neat and extremely well formed.
“I saw the lady looking at the book and she went away to make a phonecall.
“When I returned from lunch, one of the volunteers said it had gone so I assume it must have been her!”
Mr Jennens admitted he first wondered if the books were worth keeping.
He even offered them to occasional customer Boris Johnson when the mayor of London visited at the start of the year.
But the rare book sales have raised valuable funds and the bookshop continues to receive unique donations.
Mr Jennens said: “A lady staggered in with a book of artwork from Venice, which is lavishly illustrated.
“We also have a series of books by Allan Mallinson at the moment, who was an army officer in the Light Dragoons.
“But we continue to provide water tanks, taps, buckets and toilets in places like Zaatari in the desert.
“There are 130,000 people in need there. That’s 10 times the size of Thame!”
Elmore Leonard estate sale includes signed, first edition books
TORONTO — Famed author Elmore Leonard’s personal items are up for grabs this week in Michigan.
The Get Shorty writer died last August at 87.
The estate sale at his home in Bloomfield Hills — about 30 minutes outside Detroit — runs Thursday until Saturday and features first edition and signed books as well as furniture, lamps, linens and rugs.
Photos of what’s available for purchase can be found at estatesales.net.
Many of Leonard’s 45 novels were adapted into movies, including Be Cool, Jackie Brown and the made-in-Toronto Killshot.
[Top]Theodore Low De Vinne - American printer and author on typography
Source: Wikipedia
Theodore Low De Vinne (December 25, 1828 – February 16, 1914) was an American printer and scholarly author on typography. De Vinne did much for the improvement of American printing.
Contents
Life and career
The De Vinne Press printers mark
Theodore L. De Vinne was born at Stamford, Connecticut, and educated in the common schools of the various towns where his father had pastorates. He developed the ability to be a printer while employed in a shop at Fishkill, New York. He worked at the Newburgh, New York Gazette, then moved to New York City. In 1849 he entered the establishment of Francis Hart, and worked there until 1883 when the business was renamed Theodore L. Devinne & Co. In 1886 he moved to a model plant designed by him on Lafayette Place, which still stands.
De Vinne either commissioned Linn Boyd Benton, or co-designed in conjunction with Benton, the hugely popular Century Roman typeface for use by The Century Magazine, which his firm printed. For use at his own press, he also commissioned Linotype to produce De Vinne, an updated Elzevir (or French Oldstyle) type, and the Bruce Typefoundry to produce Renner, a Venetian face. However, his biographer Irene Tichenor notes that De Vinne's private correspondence shows he was not closely involved with the design of "De Vinne" and he ultimately was somewhat unhappy with the type.
He was one of nine men who founded the Grolier Club, and he was printer to the Club for the first two decades of its existence. He was also a founder and the first president of the United Typothetae of America, a predecessor of the Printing Industries of America.
Works
A prolific author in the periodical printing trade press, De Vinne was also responsible for a number of books on the history and practice of printing. For years his publications ranked at the head of American presswork. His works include:
- The Invention of Printing (1876)
- An investigation of the claims of Laurens Coster to be inventor of printing with movable type, and awarding the honor to Gutenberg
- Historic Printing Types (1886)
- Plain Printing Types (1900) (The Practice of Typography, v.1)
- Correct Composition (1901) (The Practice of Typography, v. 2)
- A Treatise on Title-Pages (1902) (The Practice of Typography, v.3)
- A revision of his earlier Title Pages as seen by a Printer, published by the Grolier Club in 1901
- Modern Methods of Book Composition (1904) (The Practice of Typography, v.4)
- Notable Printers of Italy during the Fifteenth Century (1910)
See also
References
- Jump up ^ Irene Tichenor, No Craft without Art: The Life of Theodore Low De Vinne. (Boston: David R. Godine, 2002), pp. 106-109. ISBN 1567922864
- Jump up ^ Mac MacGrew, "American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, Oak Knoll Books, New Castle Delaware, 1993. ISBN 0938768344
- Jump up ^ Tichenor, No Craft without Art, pp. 125-126.