It was announced yesterday that Ellis Gene Smith, the Utah native who had the largest collection of Tibetan books (outside of Tibet), died in New York City. Smith was also the executive director of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center. Here's his obituary from the New York Times and another from the Wall Street Journal.

Earlier this week, we were also saddened to learn of the death of professor Denis Dutton, who had been running the Arts & Letters Daily website for twelve years.
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In this week's New Yorker, Daniel Mendelsohn writes about the Vatican Library's treasures. Only an excerpt is available online, so if you're not a subscriber, pick up a print edition. A short slide-show of Vatican manuscripts is, however, available for browsing online. Pictured here is "a scene from the Urbinate Bible, which Federico di Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, commissioned from Vespasiano da Bisticci, a renowned fifteenth-century Florentine bookseller."
Hear ye, dealers and curators: Booklyn is looking for a buyer. The Booklyn Artists Alliance has finished organizing a ten-year archive of correspondence, book mock-ups, artist's proofs, prints, invoices, etc. and is looking to sell to a public collection. You can download a PDF of the archive (twenty boxes of book arts history) from this page. Looks like an excellent collection!
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Devoted blog readers may remember that last year I received one very special two-volume set of Thoreau's Cape Cod for Christmas (No? You missed that one? Read it again here.) This year another beautiful book was added to my collection, this one a slim fine press edition from Oak Tree Fine Press. FB&C did a short article on Oak Tree back in March, and I was so impressed by their books and their vision. All of the money publisher Bruce Howard raises with these editions is donated to African children with HIV/AIDS. He has persuaded authors like John Coetzee, Philip Pullman and Margaret Atwood to 'donate' a chapter of their work to this cause. The volume I received is part of Oak Tree's First Chapter series; mine being the first chapter of A. S. Byatt's Possession (you might have guessed!). It is a signed, limited edition featuring original artwork by David Royle. It is a treasure. Thank you, Santa! 
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Mass production of Christmas cards ramped up in the 1860s in Britain, although this hand-colored beauty from 1843 is believed to be the oldest example of a commercial card. It's at the Bridwell Library at SMU's Perkins School of Theology. Here's what they say about it:

Approximately 1,000 copies of the card were printed but only 10 have survived to modern times. Bridwell Library acquired its copy in 1982. The card was designed for Henry Cole by his friend, the English painter John Calcott Horsley (1808-1882). Cole wanted a ready-to-mail greeting card because he was too busy to engage in the traditional English custom of writing notes with Christmas and New Year's greetings to friends and family....[More]


Jonathan Shipley

Jonathan Shipley is a freelance writer living in Seattle. He’s written for the Los Angeles Times, Gather Journal, Uppercase, and many other publications.

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How about Charles Dickens' old pet cat's paw mounted to a letter opener? Look no further!
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With nothing in the top ten under $14,000, it was a good year for AbeBooks. ABE has posted its 'Most Expensive Sales' list, with an Islamic manuscript at the top and political commentary at the bottom. Goodies in between include a facsimile Book of Kells and the super deluxe 1979 Arion Press edition of Moby-Dick (pictured here), with engravings by Barry Moser. The list is then broken down into different categories -- children's, art, modern firsts, ephemera, etc.

The top 30 signed books list is also available, with Franzen's Freedom in the no. 1 spot.
Two weeks in a row, CBS Sunday Morning has had great book segments. Last week, they did a short piece on birding and the recent record sale of Birds of America. This week, we were treated to a short history of book covers and dust jackets, including interviews with major book jacket designers (Chip Kidd, needless to say), as well as a curator at NYPL to talk about fifteenth-century book covers. It runs about eight minutes and is great fun to watch. Check it out.


It's no secret that the state of many small-town and county archives (and even many small colleges) is dire. The Society of American Archivists made lemonade of out lemons when it announced on Wednesday the winner of its "Worst Archives" contest: The Houston County Archives in Tennessee. According to an email sent out by the SAA, "The entries were judged on current storage conditions, funding needs and the urgent action required to preserve the collection." The winner received a $250 gift certificate from Gaylord, an archival supply company, to make-over its archives.

Runners-up included the Gooding County Historical Society and the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum.
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In honor of Miss Austen's 235th birthday today, take another look at some of our Austen coverage over the past year or so...

Our recent auction report on P&P in original boards:

Not a beautiful object to behold, I grant you, but a copy in the drab boards in which it was first issued by Egerton in 1813 is something beyond the reach and ambition of almost all devoted and determined Austen collectors - even assuming they have the necessary funds.

Our interview with the editor of Quirk Books, the mastermind behind the bestselling mash-up, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. From the piece:

Rekulak says the overlap between Austen aficionados and horror/fantasy devotees has been greater than he imagined. He estimated that 80 percent of Austen readers have enjoyed the new violent version of the text.

"What I find is that most Austen fans are so fed up with all the Regency Pride and Prejudice sequels ... they appreciate the originality of this idea," Rekulak said.

Our coverage of the Morgan Library's  2009 exhibit on Jane Austen, A Woman's Wit.

Only a relatively small number of Austen's personal letters have survived. The Morgan is a major repository of her correspondence, with one third of all surviving letters held in the department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts. These materials--from correspondence to her beloved sister, Cassandra, to a letter to her niece in which all the words are spelled backwards, to "crossed letters" (also known as "cross-hatching," in which Austen, to save paper and reduce postal charges, wrote across the horizontal lines of text at right angles)--offer a remarkable glimpse into Austen's everyday life and relationships, as told in her characteristically witty and confident voice.

What else? How about a Jane Austen finger puppet? Or action figure?! She is omnipresent, and that's pretty wonderful.