Beinecke to Unveil Trio of Exhibits
Source: Yale Daily News
By Helen Rouner
staff reporter
This season, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is closing the gap between the visual arts and the art of literature.
On Saturday, Beinecke will unveil a trio of new exhibits that will draw on materials from across its collections. According to Beinecke’s Research Librarian Elizabeth Frengel, who curated one of the exhibits, the three shows were conceived and planned independently but are connected by an emphasis on visual elements atypical of library exhibitions. “Under the Covers: A Visual History of Decorated Endpapers” features the designs on the inside covers and front or back pages of books dating from the 15th century to the present day. A second exhibit entitled “Blue: Color and Concept” explores uses of the color blue in arts and letters of the 19th and 20th centuries. A third exhibit, “Stephen Tennant: Work in Progress,” highlights the archives of upper-class 20th century bon vivant Stephen Tennant, who maintained close friendships with authors such as Willa Cather.
Curator of Poetry at the Collection of American Literature Nancy Kuhl, who curated “Blue,” called the connection between the three exhibits a “happy coincidence of visual cohesion.”
“All three new shows are about classic items you find in a library, but they display a new type of research interest,” Young said. “It’s about the visual impact of materials you find in a library.”
Perhaps the most explicitly visual exhibit in the trio is “Under the Covers,” which displays the art of endpapers, some made of marbled paper or silk and some printed with maps, photos or illustrations. Endpapers originally were used to protect illuminations at the beginnings of books from volumes’ rough, rudimentary covers, Frengel said, explaining that over time, endpapers began to serve decorative — and even narrative — functions. Good children’s books in particular, Frengel noted, use endpapers to invite readers into the tale: the map of the “100 Aker Wood” that appears in the endpapers of “Winnie the Pooh” inspired the exhibit, she explained.
Kuhl’s “Blue” includes both literary and historical artifacts pertaining to the word “blue” in its physical and metaphorical senses. The exhibit features blueprints of Coney Island, movie posters from Warhol’s “Blue Movie,” in which “blue” refers to pornographic materials, and Langston Hughes’s blue cigarette case. The exhibit draws heavily from the Beinecke’s extensive holdings dating from the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that prominently featured blues music.
Kuhl said that the variety of media “Blue” uses allows the exhibit to explore poetic connections and visual rhymes.
“The exhibit shows a different way to approach research — different ways to ask questions and to reveal associations,” she said. “The exhibit has something in common with the way poems work.”
Young said that “Stephen Tennant” takes a similarly evocative approach to research. Rather than displaying an end product or answering a question, Young explained, his exhibit is meant to provoke interest in Tennant’s archives — to suggest that there might be something in the materials displayed worth researching.
Tennant, an illustrator and an unsuccessful novelist, was never especially famous in his own right, Young said, explaining that Tennant’s archives are significant largely because of the letters from and portraits of famous literary figures they contain.
Celebrating books as visual objects is a concept that libraries have begun to embrace only in the last 10 or 11 years, Young explained.
“Libraries have started to pay attention to objects as objects and not just as conveyors of history or stories,” Young said. “We’re not afraid anymore to show books just for their beauty.”
Frengel said that it is unusual for the Beinecke to debut three individual exhibits simultaneously, adding that the library typically displays one main exhibit at a time, sometimes with one or two peripheral shows. She attributed this year’s trio in part to the great deal of work involved in launching the major exhibitions that celebrated the Beinecke’s 50th anniversary last year. Dividing the library’s display space among three independent exhibitions, each with its own curator, allows for “a breather,” Young said.
The opening reception for the exhibitions will take place on Friday, Jan. 24.
Book Fair Celebrates the 450th Birthday of William Shakespeare
In commemoration of the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth in 2014, the California International Antiquarian Book Fair will pay tribute to the Bard when it opens its doors to the public from February 7 9 at the Pasadena Convention Center. The bi-annual Southern California rare book extravaganza that brings together the worlds foremost dealers, collectors and scholars, the Book Fair will present a special exhibit featuring some of the finest expressions of Shakespeare through the centuries.
The Huntington Library, which holds a world-class collection of early editions of Shakespeare's works, will offer an enlightening display on Shakespeare scholarship throughout the 90-plus years of its history. On view will be highlights of scholarly work researched, written, and published at the Huntington, as well as facsimiles based on Huntington holdings and items that illustrate the institution's focus on all facets of the history and culture of Renaissance England.
Fine press and artists books from the Ella Strong Denison Library at Scripps College will show how Shakespeare has inspired the art of the book. Highlights include:
-Early 20th Century Hamlet from Doves Press, the British private press that was one of the exemplars of the Arts and Crafts movement.
-The Tragedie of King Lear, illustrated with spectacular woodcut prints by American artist Claire Van Vliet that eloquently convey the pain and drama of the play; printed in limited edition in 1986.
-The Txt Msg Edition, this limited edition, contemporary artists book created by Elizabeth Pendergrass and John Hastings in 2008 presents Romeo and Juliets balcony scene in the form of text messages printed on accordion folded pages fitted into a retro cell phone cover that is cradled in a miniature leopard-print, high-heeled shoe.
Poster images from the collections of the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will spotlight memorable film adaptations of Shakespeare from around the world including:
-Hamlet directed by and starring Laurence Olivier, 1948. Italian release
-Macbeth directed by and starring Orson Welles, 1948. Mexican release
-Throne of Blood director Akira Kurosawa transposes the plot of Macbeth to feudal Japan, 1957. Japanese release
The Honnold/Mudd Library at the Claremont Colleges Library will offer insights into stage productions with items that include:
-Photos of renowned Victorian actors Ellen Terry and Henry Irving in some of their most famous Shakespeare roles.
-Original 20th century costume studies.
-Prompt books with actors handwritten notes.
Rare books on food and cookery in Elizabethan times from the University of California San Diego Library. Highlights include:
-Ann Clutterbuck, Her Book. A English family manuscript book containing recipes for foods and for medicinal needs from 1693.
-Gervase Markham, The English House-Wife dated 1675.
-Bartolomeo Scappi, Operadell Arte del Cucinare from 1660 which includes fabulous woodcuts of the Renaissance kitchen and all its gadgets; first time knife, fork, and spoon shown together.
A related special panel on Saturday, February 8 at 1 p.m. entitled "What Shakespeare Ate: Dining in the Elizabethan Age" will further immerse Book Fair visitors into the world of the Bard. Panelists include Los Angeles Times and Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold; noted food historian Charles Perry; cookbook author and founder of the Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne Anne Willan; and bookseller Ben Kinmont who specializes in antiquarian books on gastronomy. Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison will moderate.
Those who want to start their own collections of the plays or sonnets will find many opportunities to acquire items from individual dealers who will be displaying their most desirable Shakespeare works at the Book Fair. Recognized as one of the worlds largest and most prestigious exhibitions of antiquarian books, the Book Fair gives visitors the opportunity to see, learn about and purchase the finest in rare and valuable books, manuscripts, autographs, graphics, photographs and more.
Book Fair hours are Friday, February 7 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday, February 8 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday, February 9 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Pasadena Convention Center, located at 300 East Green Street, Pasadena, CA 91101. Tickets on Friday, February 7 are $25 and provide three-day admission. Proceeds from Friday tickets will benefit and offer free admission to the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens during the month of February. Tickets purchased on Saturday or Sunday are $15 and include return entry and free admission to the Huntington during the Book Fair.
Purchase tickets for the Book Fair at Eventbrite. For more information, visit http://www.cabookfair.com or call 800-454-6401.
Connect with the Book Fair at http:/twitter.com/cabookfair or http://www.facebook.com/CABookFair.
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/01/prweb11486812.htm.
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Signed, First Edition - Video
I spotted this on YouTube and thought you might get a kick out of it...
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Defaced first edition of ‘Ulysses’ valued at €13,500
Book was defaced by an irate reader who regarded the book as pornographic...
A copy of Ulysses by James Joyce in which a previous reader has written “A Pornographic Bible” under the title. Photograph: Philip Cloherty
Source: The Irish Times
By: Michael Parsons
First published:
Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 01:00
A first-edition copy of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses has been valued at €13,500 despite having been defaced by an irate reader who regarded the book as pornographic.
Galway-based rare book dealer Norman Healy, who acquired the book in London, said a previous owner had defaced the book by writing the comment “a pornographic Bible” on the famous blue paper cover beneath the title. The word “pornographic” is underlined.
Defaced books are often worthless but such is the desirability of first-edition copies of Ulysses it has been catalogued for resale at €13,500. Mr Healy said the book would normally be valued at about €10,500 but he believed the comment, added by “a previous, less than enthusiastic owner”, had enhanced the value.
The identity of the previous owner is not known but the defacement is likely to have occurred long before the book’s importance and financial value became apparent. The comment reflected the view, widely held in the early 20th century, that Ulysses was scandalous.
Ulysses was published in Paris on Joyce’s 40th birthday, February 2nd, 1922, by Sylvia Beach, an American publisher and founder of the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company. A thousand numbered copies were printed, clad in soft covers that featured the title and the author’s name in white on a blue background. A copy can be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of euro, depending on the condition and whether or not it was signed or inscribed by Joyce.
For collectors of rare books, Ulysses is said to be the most sought-after and valuable 20th century first edition. The most valuable are those rare examples that still have the fragile dust-jacket wrapper intact and were signed or inscribed by Joyce.
The defaced “pornographic” copy is missing half the dust jacket and was not signed by Joyce.
The highest price achieved to date for a first edition of Ulysses was for a copy, inscribed by Joyce to Henry Kaeser, a Swiss publisher, that was sold in 2002 at Christie’s, New York, to a private collector for $460,500 (€333,600).
Of the 1,000 first-edition copies of Ulysses, 200 are reliably believed lost or destroyed. Of the 800 copies known to be extant, about half are in public collections – including that of the National Library – and the others are privately owned. Copies occasionally turn up at auction or for sale by dealers.
In the 1920s the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice ensured Ulysses was effectively banned in the United Sates and copies sent there were seized and destroyed by the post office. Despite strict censorship during the 20th century, Ulysses was not banned in Ireland but was not imported, for fear of a prosecution.
Even some of Joyce’s literary contemporaries expressed disapproval of the novel. DH Lawrence regarded Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of the novel as “the dirtiest, most indecent, obscene thing ever written” and told his wife: “This Ulysses muck is more disgusting than Casanova.”
Virginia Woolf was shocked by the “obscenity” she encountered in Ulysses.
In 1934, a US court ruled that the book was neither pornographic nor and obscene. Further editions were then published and the novel became available worldwide.
[Top]On Today's Date 1843 Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol Was Published
1843 – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (pictured), a novella about the miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his conversion after being visited by three Christmas ghosts, was first published.
[Top]RIP George Rodrigue, Blue Dog Artist
Source: Chron : TIMES-PICAYUNE (New Orleans) | December 17, 2013
George Rodrigue, a Cajun bricklayer's son whose fanciful painting of a beloved pet became an iconic image that was displayed in advertising campaigns and on the walls of celebrities' homes and the White House, has died.
Rodrique died Saturday at Houston Methodist Hospital after a long battle with cancer. He was 69.
Rodrigue became internationally celebrated and cherished for his Blue Dog paintings, which were inspired by a deceased pet named Tiffany. The blue spaniel-terrier mix, with a white nose and yellow eyes, first appeared in 1984. Since then, it has turned up in advertising campaigns for Absolut Vodka, Neiman Marcus and Xerox Corp.; in posters for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival; in Harrah's New Orleans casino; and on an apartment wall in the situation comedy "Friends."
Whoopi Goldberg and Tom Brokaw are among the celebrity collectors of Blue Dog art, and Bill Clinton commissioned one for his 1993 presidential inauguration, showing him with Al Gore, who would become his vice president.
Although the Blue Dog paintings may look like nothing more than tributes to a special pooch, they, like Rodrigue's other works, draw on Cajun traditions and folklore, said William Andrews, director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. The Blue Dog is a gentle, friendly version of the loup-garou, the werewolf or ghost dog that hides in sugarcane fields and haunts mischievous children.
"The genius of his work is that it always goes back to his Cajun heritage," Andrews said. "He did a wonderful job of leaving a trail of bread crumbs. All of those crumbs will lead you back to his roots. You'll go into the woods and find amazing things there."
[Top]Rare Book of Psalms Sells for Record-Breaking $14.2 Million
A tiny book of psalms from 1640, believed to be the first book printed in what’s now the United States, sold for just under $14.2 million on Tuesday, setting an auction record for a printed book.
The Bay Psalm Book, which was auctioned at Sotheby’s in Manhattan, had a pre-sale estimate of $15 million to $30 million. A copy of John James Audubon’s “Birds of America” was the previous record-holder, selling for $11.5 million at Sotheby’s in 2010.
Only 11 copies of the Bay Psalm Book survive in varying degrees of completeness. The book sold at Sotheby’s was one of two owned by Boston’s Old South Church, which voted to sell it to increase its grants and ministries. Samuel Adams was a member and Benjamin Franklin was baptized at the church, which was established in 1669.
“This is enormous for us,” said the Rev. Nancy Taylor, senior minister of the church. “It is life-changing for the ministries we can do.”
The book was bought over the phone by American businessman and philanthropist David Rubenstein, who plans to lend it to libraries around the country. The sale price included the buyer’s premium.
In April, Taylor called the book “spectacular” and said it is “arguably one of the most important books in this nation’s history.”
The church owned five copies of the 6-inch-by-5-inch book. One is now at the Library of Congress, one is at Yale University and one is at Brown University.
The book was published in Cambridge, Mass., by the Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony just 20 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.
It was supposed to be a faithful translation into English of the original Hebrew psalms – puritans believed selected paraphrases would compromise their salvation. The 1,700 copies were printed on a press shipped from London.
A yellowed title page, adorned with decorative flourishes, reads: “The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Faithfully Translated into English Metre.” At the bottom, it says: “Imprinted 1640.”
Historians believe an almanac may have come off the press before the Bay Psalm Book. But the chief of rare books and special collections at the Library of Congress, Mark Dimunation, has said the almanac was more of a pamphlet or a broadsheet than a book. No copy of the almanac exists today. Dimunation noted that in the Americas, in general, books were printed in what is now Mexico as early as 1539.
“American poetry, American spirituality and the printed page all kind of combine and find themselves located in a single volume,” Dimunation said of the Bay Psalm Book.
The last time a copy came on the auction block, in 1947, it sold for a record auction price of $151,000, surpassing auction prices for the Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare’s First Folio and “Birds of America.”
The auction record for any book goes to the Leonardo da Vinci Codex Hammer, a personal notebook of scientific writings and diagrams. It sold for $30.8 million at Christie’s auction house in 1994.
[Top]Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing 2007 - 18 November 2013
It is with great sadness that we bid farewell to the Nobel Prize winning author and Booktrust President Doris Lessing, who died aged 94 this weekend.
She was a brave novelist, who made an immense contribution to the literary world, and we are forever grateful for the support she gave us in encouraging reading and writing.
Lessing completed more than 50 novels during her lifetime, spanning a broad spectrum of politics, science and feminism. Her longest and best-known work, The Golden Notebook, explored the layers of one woman's personality, leading her to become a trailblazer of the feminist movement. She, however, felt that her 1970s science fiction series, Canopus in Argus, was her best work.
I read because I adored it, and still do. Born in Iran and raised in Zimbabwe (issues of post-colonial politics were very present in her novels), Lessing dropped out of school at 13, and took to ordering parcels of books from England. From Dickens and Kipling, she fed her imagination, and was soon making up bedtime stories for her brother - they provided her with an escape. When she appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1994 she was asked if she read as a child out of boredom, to which she responded 'No, I read because I adored it, and still do'.
She was heavily decorated with awards and prizes, including the David Cohen Prize in 2001, which is now one of Booktrust's portfolio of managed prizes. In 2007, she arrived at her North London home to find a sea of reporters and photographers on her doorstep, following the announcement of her as as the oldest person to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In typical Lessing fashion, she was unimpressed by the intrusion, encumbered as she was with heavy shopping bags, and merely offered the words 'Oh Christ!' to reporters!
[Top]Era ends: Liquidation sale at Berkeley’s Serendipity Books
Source: Berkeleyside
November 7, 2013 11:00 am by Frances Dinkelspiel
Photo: Scott Brown
When Peter Howard, the owner of Serendipity Books, died in March 2011, he left behind more than one million books crammed into his two-level store on University Avenue in Berkeley with the oak barrel hanging out front.
Howard’s collection of rare and antique books was considered one of the best in the country; he often sold books and manuscripts to places like the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley or the Lilly Library at Indiana University.
The collection included so many amazing items that Bonham’s held six different auctions of his holdings, selling off early editions of John Steinbeck, a broadside by James Joyce, many modern first editions, early baseball memorabilia — even poet Carl Sandburg’s guitar.
But there are still books left to sell. More than 100,000 books, in fact.
On Saturday at 10 a.m., the doors of Serendipity Books at 1201 University Ave. will open for what will surely be one of Berkeley’s most memorable used-book fairs. Eureka Books of Eureka, California, acquired the remainder of the Serendipity collection, and will sell the books on most weekends through Dec. 15. The books start out at $5 early in the sale, and will drop to $1 each in mid-December.
“It was a one of a kind place,” said Scott Brown, the co-owner of Eureka Books, who was also a longtime Serendipity customer. “I don’t think there is another bookstore like Serendipity around.”
The bookstore was a jumble of books stacked high in shelves and in boxes and bags when Howard, 72, died of pancreatic cancer. The auctioneers moved out most of the books, but the store was still a wreck when Eureka Books came in to sort, said Brown. Workers spent weeks reassembling the place.
The mystery section of the second floor was virtually impassable, with bags of books blocking the floor. Many books were still stacked up on high shelves and were unreachable; the Eureka staff brought them down to viewing height. The shelves in the front room were almost empty, but now have been refilled with books from other parts of the store. (The shelves and other fixtures are also for sale.)
“It would not be wrong to say there were 1,000 bags and boxes filled with books in the store,” said Brown. “By the time we unpacked those I would say the whole ground floor was full again.”
Even though the best books were auctioned off, many gems remain, said Brown. There will be an entire section of 18th- and 19th-century leather books on sale for $5.
“While there are no $1,000 books laying around, we left many, many things that were priced in the hundreds,” said Brown.
Howard’s daughters plan to keep the University Avenue building and find a new tenant after the sale, said Brown. They donated Howard’s correspondence with literary luminaries like J. D. Salinger, Graham Greene and Larry McMurtry to the Lilly Library, he said.
A number of leather-bound old books will be on sale for $5 at the Serendipity Books liquidation sale.
Howard started Serendipity Books in 1967 in a small store on Shattuck Avenue and moved to the University Avenue location in 1986. Howard collected a voluminous number of books – he often bought individual’s entire collections. He had a reputation as an astute rare-book dealer. He discovered and saved many important manuscript collections, as well as collecting works by both well-known and lesser-known writers. He consulted with major libraries on what to buy and how much to bid.
“He was one of the major antiquarian book dealers of our time,” said Victoria Shoemaker, a literary agent, close friend and former neighbor of Howard’s.
Howard made some notable purchases in his lengthy career as a bookseller.
In the late 1990s, he bought the 18,000-volume collection of Carter Burden, a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and a progressive New York politician and businessman. The size of the collection prompted Howard to install space-saving compact shelving, making Serendipity the only bookstore in the world to have such shelving.
In 1991, Howard was offered the archives of Thomas M. Jackson, an Oakland grocer who had served as secretary for the California chapter of the NAACP from 1910 and 1940. After Jackson died, in 1963, someone took his papers to the Berkeley dump. Someone else rescued them and asked Howard to help them find a proper home. Howard sold the papers to the Bancroft Library.
Later in that decade, someone found 946 letters exchanged between two Japanese-American teenagers who met at an internment camp in Utah. Tamaki Tsubokura and David Hisato Yamate were separated for a few years during the war, and they wrote to one another frequently. These letters were also dumped at the Berkeley landfill and later rescued. Howard brokered their sale to the University of Utah.
One indication of the reverence in which Howard was held by the rare-book community came every two years around the time of the Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco. Howard would throw a huge party at Serendipity Books the Wednesday before the fair. He would clear the books in his store out of the aisles and off of the tables, tent-over the parking lot, and have Poulet cater the meal. He would have a suckling pig, and the printer, Alistair Johnson, would print up the menu, said Dahm. The party was so popular that the store and tent were jammed.
The liquidation sale will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. almost every weekend through Dec. 15th. Check Here for schedule.
All books will be $5 on Nov. 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, and 17th. Then the price will drop to $3 each book on Nov. 21, 22, 23, and Dec. 5, 6, and 7. The prices drop to $1 on Dec. 12, 13, 14, and 15th.
Visit the Serendipity Books Liquidation sale Facebook page.
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