Sunday, March 13, 2016

Links & Reviews

- Matthew Kirschenbaum's Rosenbach Lectures are coming up this week in Philadelphia.

- Cambridge University Library is celebrating its 600th anniversary with a physical and online exhibition, "Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World." Sarah Knapton writes in the Telegraph about the show, focusing on Isaac Newton's copy of his Principia. Maev Kennedy covers the exhibit for the Guardian.

- Two Tel Aviv men have been indicted on charges of burglary, breaking and entering, conspiracy, and trespassing after they broke into the Rambam Library in Tel Aviv and stole 17th-century rabbinical manuscripts.

- The NYTimes editorial board weighs in on the ongoing budgetary battle that threatens the future of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln editorial project.

- Folger curator and RBS faculty member Heather Wolfe is profiled in the WSJ for some of her recent paleographical discoveries.

- Geoffrey Giller writes for the Yale Alumni Magazine about some of the copper plates from Audubon's Birds of America, several of which are at Yale's Peabody Museum.

Anthropomorphic landscapes are the order of the day at Public Domain Review.

- The second portion of Hugh Selbourne's library was sold at Bonhams London this week; in total, the library realized more than £2.6 million.

- Tess Goodman has a post at Inciting Sparks on the creation of authorial personae, highlighting Elizabeth Gaskell and Walt Whitman.

- The new Common-place is up, and it includes Hilary Wyss on "Eighteenth-Century Letter-Writing and Native American Community."

- Also now available, the March 2016 issue of the AAS Almanac.

- Shakespeare's World is highlighted by Charlotte Salley for The American Scholar.

- The National Archives has released images and a transcription of a letter written by Walt Whitman acting as amanuensis for a dying Civil War soldier. More from Michael Ruane in the WaPo.

- The Boston Globe editorial board argues for changes at the BPL as a new leader is sought.

- Jonathan Guthrie, writing in the Financial Times, explains "Why collecting books can be a deep source of pleasure."

- Emory University has acquired W.E.B. DuBois' copy of David Walker's Appeal.

- Antiquarian bookseller Éamonn de Búrca is profiled in the Irish Times.

- Sarah Minegar is up next in the FB&C "Bright Young Librarians" series.

- From the New Yorker, Daniel Gross on "The Custodian of Forgotten Books."

- Alexander Historical Auctions will sell what's being described as Hitler's own copy of Mein Kampf.

- This week's "On the Media" is all about books, from publishing to theft to industrial bookselling.

- Missed this last month: Greg Cram writes for the NYPL blog on the process they undertook to evaluate the rights status of all those public domain images they released recently.

Reviews

- Anne Boyd Rioux's Constance Fenimore Woolson; review by Wendy Smith in the Boston Globe.

- Elaine Showalter's The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe; review by David Hugh Smith in the CSM.

- Austin Reed's The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict; review by Annette Gordon-Reed in the WaPo.

- Eric Burns' The Golden Lad; review by Del Quentin Weber in the WaPo.

- Vanessa Ogle's The Global Transformation of Time; review by Thomas Meaney in the TLS.

- Matthew Kirschenbaum's Track Changes; review in Kirkus Reviews.

- Catherine Lowell's The Madwoman Upstairs; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at FB&C.