McDade is the curator of rare books at the University of Illinois College of Law. If you missed them, you should read his two recent blog posts on "The professionalization of library theft" and "Barry Landau's coat pockets," too.
McDade is the curator of rare books at the University of Illinois College of Law. If you missed them, you should read his two recent blog posts on "The professionalization of library theft" and "Barry Landau's coat pockets," too.
Charlie Lovett's debut novel, The Bookman's Tale (Viking, June, $27.95), entices the general reader in me. It opens in a bookshop in Hay-on-Wye where antiquarian bookseller Peter Byerly finds what he believes to be a watercolor portrait of his recently deceased wife, Amanda, tucked into a copy of An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers by Edmond Malone. Oddly, the portrait appears Victorian, so it sends Peter's mind reeling. An intriguing premise, but here we are on page 4, and already I'm doubting Lovett, a book collector and former antiquarian bookseller, because Peter removes the watercolor from the book and slips it into a cheaper book before checking out. What?! A find like that and he doesn't pause to consider whether the book contained more evidence, or the sagacity (not to mention ethics) of separating the book from its extra-illustration? Bad bookseller. And yet, as the story continues, we are meant to think of him as a something of a hapless genius.
Peter's pursuit to find the artist of this little watercolor turns into quite the quest--spanning numerous sets of characters and several centuries. William Shakespeare is one such character; Lovett imagines him annotating a copy of Robert Greene's Pandosto and then handing it off to a bookseller. That becomes the holy grail at the heart of the novel, surrounded by forgery, murder, and sex (the latter recounted from Peter's memories of his college days would have been better left unsaid). And while there were too many set changes for a novel under five hundred pages, what I liked about this story is how Lovett invents such a book's origin and follows it through the centuries from writer to bookseller to collector (Robert Cotton) so on and so forth. I would have preferred more in those chapters and less on Peter's personal history.
As my colleague Jeremy Dibbell pointed out last week, this may be the only novel to feature a Hinman Collator, which is pretty neat. Peter uses it to compare two copies of Pandosto while trying to prove that one is a genuine first edition. The final quarter focuses on forgery, through which Lovett develops narrative tension and delivers an interesting ending.
The Bookman's Tale is a breeze to read, and if you are not yet as jaded a reader as I am vis-a-vis biblio-fiction, it makes fine poolside reading.
Tempus fugit. I attended my ten-year college reunion last weekend at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. One activity advertised the opportunity to print a broadside keepsake on an 1834 Otis Tufts iron hand press.
I happily waited on line for an hour to feed a sheet of paper into the machine. Finally, I had my turn at the toggle lever and pressed an image of the college onto ivory paper. Luckily, a local professional printer was there to assist eager compositors; without a guiding hand I would have used far less force than was required to create the impression. In fact, there are some places on my keepsake where the ink is lighter than others.
The front of my broadside keepsake, after I folded it. The chapel spire is lighter than other sections.
Martin Antonetti, curator of rare books at Smith, spoke with me about how he had rescued the machine, and how it ended up on the third floor of the library. "I found the press in pieces in the basement of Hillyer Hall when it was being cleared out for the renovation project about 10 years ago. Some of the parts were actually missing, but we had them fabricated by the machinist Greg Young on campus, using a diagram we found in a 19th-century printing handbook." Now, alongside cases of antique type, the machine welcomes visitors at the entrance to the Mortimer Rare Book Room.
diagram of a hand press
While waiting for my turn at the press, I also spoke with Barbara Blumenthal, the rare book specialist in the Mortimer Rare Book Room as well as an administrative assistant for the Book Studies Concentration Program at Smith. She explained the new concentration program to me.
Since the program's inception in 2011, students have been able to choose from ten areas of interest. There's a concentration in poetry, the aforementioned Book Studies and even an exploration of Buddhism. Students may pursue a concentration in addition to declaring a major.
The goal of such a course of study is to combine practical and intellectual experiences around one subject. Each concentration culminates with a 'capstone' experience - an independent senior research project presented at the end of the spring semester.
The Book Studies Concentration is an exciting addition to the Smith curriculum and an excellent way to explore the vibrant book arts community in the Pioneer Valley.
The miniature will be auctioned on May 30th within its red leather traveling case, together with Autobiography of John Keats: Compiled from His Letters and Essays by none other than Earle Vonard Weller (Stanford University Press, 1933), in which an image of the very same miniature is color illustrated on the frontispiece. It is expected to reach £10,000-15,000 (US$ 15,000-23,000).
Image via Bonhams.com.
But in July of last year, the Law Society plucked three hundred of the most valuable books from the collection and consigned them to Sotheby's. An uproar ensued, and a petition was circulated to save the historic library from an uncertain fate. Negotiations began, and there was hope that the scholars and the solicitors might reach an agreement. According to Dr. Clive Field, president of the Religious Archives Group, the Law Society invited bids to purchase the entire collection from a number of UK universities. With no deal in sight, "Highlights of the Mendham Collection"--142 lots of bibles, prayer books, and other rare theological works--is now officially on the Sotheby's calendar for June 5. The six-volume polyglot bible pictured here at left is estimated to be one of the top lots at £70,000-100,000 ($105,000-150,000).
In anticipation of the auction, a letter of support for keeping the collection intact was sent to the Times of London on May 11. Dr. Clive Field; Diarmaid Maccullouch, professor of the history of the church, Oxford; and Roly Keating, chief executive, British Library, wrote as a group describing their concern. "Many items will doubtless be lost to the nation as a result," they wrote. They urged the Law Society to explore "alternative options to the Sotheby's auction, with the attendant damage to scholarship and national heritage."
Some solicitors have also shown support for the effort to save the collection from dissemination. In a May 14 letter to the Times of London, Ian Stevens, director of policy for the Solicitors Regulation Authority, 2007-2010, wrote, "As a history graduate, solicitor and former employee of the Law Society of England and Wales, I am dismayed by the society's proposal to break up and dispose of the Mendham Collection ... The donor's intention was to find a secure home for the collection, not to provide the profession with a disposable asset." Two other UK solicitors followed up with a letter in the Times on May 15 urging other solicitors to "contact the Law Society, as we have done, to ask that the sale be delayed. Short-term financial considerations cannot be a justification for the break-up of a historical collection."
Dr. Alixe Bovey, director of the University of Kent's Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, would very much like to see the collection preserved. In an email last week she wrote, "We're still making efforts to stop the break up of the collection but time is running out."
The Law Society, for its part, has refused to comment. A May 16 email from Fine Books went unanswered by the Society's press office.
Image via Sotheby's.com.