If ever there were a headline--or a book title--to entice bibliophiles, surely this is it. And Sasha Abramsky's new book, The House of Twenty Thousand Books (NYRB, $27.95), a combination of memoir, history, and biography, more than delivers on that lure.

House20k_2048x2048 copy.jpgAbramsky, a journalist and senior fellow at Demos think tank, writes lovingly of his grandparents' house at 5 Hillway, in Highgate, London. Chimen, the Russian-born atheist son of a famous rabbi, and his wife, Mimi, gathered not only thousands of rare books there but hundreds of scholars, friends, and family members, turning their home into "one of left-wing London's great salons." Each chapter invites readers into one room of the house to survey its bookish contents and to hear fascinating accounts of prominent visitors, bitter arguments, and delicious meals.

Chimen, introduced at a 1969 Jewish Book Week lecture as "possibly the greatest Jewish bibliophile in the world," collected both Socialist material and Judaica. Abramsky writes, "...every single room in the house, except the bathroom and kitchen, was lined from floor to ceiling with shelves double-stacked with books." There were rarities like The Communist Manifesto with both Marx's and Engels' personal annotations, and William Morris' complete collection of the Socialist League's journal, The Commonweal, stored in a box built by Morris. There were sets of egalitarian Everyman's classics too. The incredibly well-read Chimen, perhaps best suited for academic life, ran a bookshop called Shapiro, Valentine & Co. in London's East End in the sixties. His encyclopedia memory for bibliography served him well as he became the leading consultant on manuscripts at Sotheby's; he catalogued the collection of David Sassoon in the seventies, a sale that "essentially jump-started the modern global market in rare Hebrew materials." In his later years, Chimen joined the faculty of University College London and lectured widely on Jewish books and history.

In 2010, Chimen died at the age of 93, and his library--an estimated 15,000-20,000 volumes--was sold. The author kept a shelf-full of his grandfather's books as a legacy. More significantly, though, he documented his grandfather's life. It is an important story, and Abramsky confronts harsh truths with warmth and wisdom. He also understands (and celebrates) the bibliomania behind the floor-to-ceiling, double-stacked shelves. In discussing Chimen's friendship with Italian expatriate economist Piero Sraffa, he writes, "Over the decades, they swapped rare books and shared with each other the joy of the hunt, the unspeakable pleasure--that only a fellow connoisseur could understand--of finding a particular edition of a particular book or pamphlet, and of procuring it for a lower-than-anticipated price." It's a feeling that all of us can relate to.  

Image via NYRB.

Guest Post by Catherine Batac-Walder

aerial photo from blenheimpalace.com.jpgThe annual Blenheim Palace Festival of Literature, Film & Music in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, was held this past weekend on September 24-27, and I had the opportunity to attend the Endeavour event on Sunday. (Endeavour is a British TV drama series, a prequel to the long-running Inspector Morse series, based on the crime novels of Colin Dexter. The show follows the early career of the younger Morse in Oxford in the 1960s.) The panel consisted of actor Shaun Evans (who plays Endeavour Morse), writer Russell Lewis, and producer Dan McCulloch. Dexter, now 85, was present in the audience. The group showed us a clip from series three which airs in January.

As a fan of the original series and of Oxford as a location, it is always refreshing to find new Morse stories. As much as Russell Lewis remarked that Endeavour isn't meant to be a tribute to what we know about Morse, I couldn't help but notice the formula being used for these spin-offs. I do love literary mysteries, but it would be nice to have more variety and less crimes that relate to a poem, a crossword puzzle, or a piece of music. Other than this, in my opinion, the actors and creators of Endeavour are doing a great job, and to recreate a 1960s Oxford is no menial task.

Other guests at this year's festival included Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who talked about his new novel, A Strangeness in my Mind, and radio presenter Paul Gambaccini, whose new book is called Love, Paul Gambaccini.

On its own, Blenheim Palace is a fantastic place to visit with its park, gardens, miniature train, and 300 years of history. It is also the birthplace of Winston Churchill, whose grave is in nearby Bladon.

--Catherine Batac-Walder is a writer living in the UK.

Image via Blenheim Palace Festival of Literature, Film & Music.


249L15414_8FFP8.jpgA typescript of Bob Dylan's lyrics for "It's a Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" will be auctioned at Sotheby's London tomorrow. The heavily revised text, showing more than 110 words in Dylan's handwriting, is, Sotheby's noted, "a highly important early working draft of the song that first revealed Dylan's poetic ambitions as a songwriter." The estimate for these two precious leaves is £150,000-200,000 ($234,000-312,000).

It is widely believed that Dylan typed this document in a "hide-out room" above the Gaslight, a folk music club/cafe in New York City's Greenwich Village. According to folksinger Tom Paxton, Dylan first thought of "Hard Rain" as a poem. The "hide-out room" was likely the office of Hugh Romney, aka Wavy Gravy, who was the club's poetry director at the time. This typescript actually comes to auction from the family of Romney's first wife, Elisabeth (Lily) Djehizian, a waitress at the Gaslight in the early sixties.

According to Sotheby's, "The current typescript is one of three known manuscripts of the poem, the others being an autograph lyric fragment among the Mackenzie-Krown papers now at the Morgan Library, and the final working manuscript (sold Sotheby's, New York, 24 June 2014, lot 141, $400,000)."

Pop music lyrics are increasingly a hot commodity at auction. Dylan's working manuscript of "Like a Rolling Stone," made more than $2 million in 2014, and Don McLean's original working manuscript of "American Pie" achieved $1.2 million earlier this year. Tomorrow's sale also includes manuscript lyrics by Jack Bruce and Bruce Springsteen. 

Image via Sotheby's.


brodsky doll.jpg

Precise glass towers soar along an alluring coastline, a cozy treehouse named in honor of Winnie-the-Pooh, and a dollhouse that bears a greater resemblance to a totem pole than a child's plaything - these are a few of the eccentric illustrations created by Moscow natives Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin during a fifteen-year span from 1978 to 1993. (After viewing a set of images, I thought the work was an unexpected marriage of illustrations in Diderot's Encyclopédie with the unsettling whimsy of Edward Gorey. Take a look for yourself, and tell me what you think.) Though graceful handwritten text often accompanies each etching, it rarely deciphers the image at hand and serves more as a written counterpoint to the Soviet demand that everything be purely functional and devoid of beauty.
brodsky winnie.jpg

Brodsky and Utkin collaborated on dreamlike illustrations of homes, gardens, and entire cities with the ultimate goal of creating drawings whose futuristic components are solidly rooted in historical precedence, evoking an imaginary utopia at the turn of the 20th century, where utilitarian Soviet structures do not exist and citizens coexist happily among each other in well-planned (if totally fanciful) spaces. Though the men did not travel outside the USSR, their local library provided inspiration on topics like Egyptian tombs, French urban planning, and the Japanese obsession with refinement and precision. In a bid to undermine their work, Soviet detractors called Brodsky and Utkin 'paper architects', but the men embraced the moniker, and their art became illustrated architectural criticism of the Soviet Union and its ideology. These monochrome etchings have remained valuable educational tools for city planners, politicians and even set designers. 

A compilation of their work, entitled Brodsky & Utkin, was first published by Princeton Architectural Press in 1991. The book was reprinted earlier this month (again, by Princeton) in the same navy blue, clothbound cover as the original. This latest printing coincides with a display of Brodsky and Utkin's etchings at London's Tate Modern art museum. Part of a larger exhibition called Poetry and Dream, these illustrations highlight that, no matter how experimental or abstract contemporary art may be, there is often a strong desire to connect with the past, whether it ever existed or not. 

Brodsky & Utkin, with a new preface by Aleksandr Mergold, and original introduction by Lois Nesbitt; Princeton Architectural Press, $50.


Poetry & Dream is an ongoing display at the Tate Modern art museum in London.


Top Image: Doll's House, 1990. Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc. Bottom image: Dwelling House of Winnie-the-Pooh, 1990. Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc.


Related articles
Boston_Library_eb1.jpg
The rare book department at the Boston Public Library has closed for five to ten weeks after the staff discovered mold spores on a medieval manuscript as well as several other prized holdings in scattered locations throughout the department.

Boston Public Library's rare book department is located in the McKim Building in Copley Square. The building was completed in 1895, long before modern advances in archival climate control. The staff depends upon the central air conditioning system in the building as well as strategically deployed dehumidifiers. 

The McKim Building is in the middle of a major renovation. When the renovation was coupled with late season humidity it created a "perfect storm" of conditions according to Laura Irmscher, chief of collections strategy. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Irmscher continued, "I think the time of the year and the extended humidity really played a significant part in it."

Librarians will proceed to stabilize the humidity levels in the rare book department, then decontaminate the impacted materials. All 500,000 volumes in the collection -- widely considered one of the world's best -- will need to be hand-examined.

Image of the McKim Building from Wikipedia.
Penguin is a book publisher that always seems to be innovating with its packaging and design (e.g. Penguin Drop Caps, Little Black Classics, re-designed Penguin Classics by Coralie Bickford-Smith). Now Penguin is trying its hand at "craft-inspired jackets." They've taken six novels and allowed six artists to re-imagine the cover art in different media. The artwork was then reproduced as paperback cover art. The results are amazing.

getimage-3.jpgFor The Postmistress by Sarah Blake, artist Jenny Hart embroidered the entire design by hand. Read more about it here

getimage-1.jpgFor The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank, designer Genevieve Dionne chose the art of wood burning to create her cover. Read more about it here.  

getimage-2.jpgFor The Help by Kathryn Stockett, designer Brenda Riddle created her book jacket first in a quilt. Read more about it here.

The Penguin By Hand series also includes Karen Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club, showing a cut paper and collage-inspired cover; Kim Edwards' The Memory-Keeper's Daughter featuring a design created by "tactile typography"; and Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love, displaying a needlepoint design. 


Poe RR.jpgA rare Edgar Allan Poe letter is up for grabs from Boston's RR Auction. The short but "boldly penned" letter dated September 21, 1843 is addressed to Elwood Evans, a Philadelphia lawyer and potential literary journal subscriber. The author writes, "I have been absent from the city for the last few weeks and your note of the 15th is only this moment received. I have the pleasure of informing you that Mr. Dana's address is Chestnut Street, Boston."

Poe letters are uncommon and pricey at auction; even this brief and somewhat ordinary (contextually speaking) piece of correspondence is estimated to make $60,000-80,000. Online bidding has already commenced; the live auction begins on Monday, Sept. 28, at 1:00.

"Poe's autograph is excessively rare in any form and among the most sought-after of all literary figures," said Bobby Livingston, Executive VP at RR Auction.

Other highlights of next week's auction include a typed J. D. Salinger letter and a signed first edition of The Archaeology of the Industrial Revolution signed by Stephen Hawking.

Image Courtesy of RR Auction.
H3257-L78859843.jpgAmongst the incredible collection of rare Orson Welles scripts and photographs on offer at Profiles in History's Hollywood Auction 74 next week, this "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast transcript stands out. The transcript was issued by CBS on October 31, 1938, the day after American listeners heard Welles read the H.G. Wells adaptation and promptly went mad. Yes, Welles' dramatic reading of the sci-fi classic was so convincing that many believed a real Martian invasion was at hand, and hysteria ensued.

A cover letter included with the hole-punched typescript reads: "Attached is a complete transcript of the Mercury Theatre On the Air transcript of H.G. Wells 'War of the Worlds' broadcast over the WABC-Columbia Network last night (Sunday, October 30th, 8 o'clock to 9 o'clock PM, EST). This transcript presents an accurate and complete account from the recordings made of the program at the time it was broadcast. The Columbia network sincerely regrets the delay in getting this transcript to you, but it was felt that complete accuracy would be wanted by the press."

The estimate is $20,000-30,000. Several Citizen Kane manuscripts are also for sale, including an original first rough draft and a final shooting script.

Image via Profiles in History.

I just returned from a long weekend in Paris, and it was the first time I'd spent any time in the city in over a decade. As we strolled, sipped, and simply bathed in the glory of the city, I was moved to recall that old epigram by French critic Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, or, the more things change, the more things stay the same. I think this applies especially to Parisian book culture. The famous bouquinistes, or open-air antiquarian booksellers, still manned their hunter-green stalls along the river quayside, offering passersby the pleasure of searching for literary treasure while simultaneously taking in the city sights. While I knew that this tradition had existed in Paris since the 1500s, I didn't realize just how many bookstalls comprise this UNESCO World Heritage Site. In fact, over 200 booksellers operate 900 book boxes, stretching from the Pont Marie on the Left Bank to the Quai Voltaire on the Right Bank, and is touted on postcards printed by the Mairie de Paris as 'the largest open-air bookstore in the world.'

a

A "bouquiniste" by the Seine, in Paris, France (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After browsing the stalls, I hopped on the Métro, taking the lightning-fast Line 14 to visit my old stomping grounds, the ever-evolving Tolbiac section of the 13th arrondissement. In addition to a bustling Chinatown, this neighborhood is famous for hosting the large towers of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. Fourteen years ago, the only things piercing the skyline here were the four glass-and steel towers of the library, and visitors unfamiliar to the area were few and far between. (For a detailed picture of the highly ambitious, intensely controversial construction of the new facility, look no further than the last chapter of Nick Basbanes' Patience & Fortitude, where the library's architect calls the Tolbiac site "a stretch of industrial wasteland on the banks of the Seine.")


BnF_Site_Tolbiac_01.jpg

By savagecat [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons


Well, things do change. The area is now home to urban hipsters, boutiques, movie theaters, eco-friendly condos and floating bars. The piscine Josephine Baker, the first pool to be built in Paris since 1992 was opened across from the Bibliotheque. Best described as a pool-barge, the Josephine Baker's glass windows look directly onto the Seine, and get swimmers as close to taking a plunge in the river without chancing their health. On sunny days, the roof retracts, and sunbathers can gaze out onto the Seine, or admire their literary patrimony soaring into the sky beside them.


So what did I bring home? A novel by Francophone writer and UCLA professor Alain Mabanckou, and another biting satire by Michel Houellebecq, who, rumor has it, also calls the 13th his home. Vive Paris!


In June, I had the pleasure of spending several weeks in Scotland.  One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to The Innerpeffray Library in a beautiful, secluded section of Perthshire.  The Innerpeffray Library is the oldest lending library in Scotland, originally founded in 1680.

I was treated to a tour of the library and its grounds by its delightful Keeper of Books, Lara Haggerty, who was previously profiled in our Bright Young Librarians series on this blog.  Below is a "wee" video I compiled of the visit using my iPhone:




For more about the history of this fascinating library, check out this video: