It's an exciting time to be a bibliographer. For most of the twentieth century, W. W. Greg and Fredson Bowers's work on descriptive bibliography-deducing the nature of the "ideal" copy of a book based on the evidence from copies of the book itself-have influenced the work of book historians. Collectors and dealers use modified forms of Greg and Bowers's methodology to determine that a book is complete and not missing pages. Their work focused almost exclusively on the hand-press period, before printing became automated, and considered only the work of the printer and not of illustrators or bookbinders. [read more]

Literary biography is a mongrel genre, mixing historical biography with literary criticism. Mediocre literary biographies merely recycle fact and gossip about the author but offer no insight about how their works were written and received, and why they continue to endure. Andrew Delbanco’s Melville: His World and Work belongs among the superlative breed of biography. It’s an outstanding reappraisal of Melville, a reminder of his importance in American literature and his relevance in our time. [read more]

According to Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, the word mongo was coined in New York in the 1980s. It refers to trash, or more specifically, to treasure found in trash: books, artifacts, furniture, even food. Ted Botha’s book explores a whole culture, and various subcultures, that revolve around mongo. [read more]

I know less about bookbindings than I like to admit, a gap in my training that I suspect is shared by many of my colleagues in special collections libraries. Fortunately for my self-esteem, I am not alone, according to David Pearson, who states in his recent book on English binding styles that the subject “remains an area in which even rare book specialists often feel under-equipped or under-trained, and one that is often poorly served in catalogues.” [read more]

An eyewitness account of the sacking and destruction of the Iraqi National Libraries in April 2003 leads Philip Hensher to note, “The burning of books…is so powerful a symbol of barbarism that the stench of it hangs in the air long afterward: It is something impossible to forgive, impossible to forget.” Unfortunately, this was not the first time books were destroyed in Iraq. According to Lost Libraries, “Genghis Khan’s grandson burnt the city in the thirteenth century and, so it was said, the Tigris River ran black with the ink of books.” [read more]

This is a pleasing book for anyone with an interest in Shakespeare’s life and works. Jane Purcell, a high school teacher, offers far more than a handbook or guide to the Huntington Library’s Shakespeare holdings. The book’s eighty-five pages contain ninety-eight illustrations—including the inevitable title-pages and portraits, as well as art inspired by the plays and modern-day photographs of the library. [read more]

When I show rare materials to students and other groups, the maps we encounter often elicit a collective indrawn breath, a palpable focusing of attention and scrutiny. Collectors of maps have an intimate knowledge of this fascination, and David Rumsey is clearly a map collector of the first rank. [read more]

“Books are, let’s face it, better than everything else,” writes Nick Hornby If that opening salvo doesn’t intrigue you as a bibliophile, or if you strongly disagree with it, you should put down this magazine and find something else worthwhile to do with your time (canasta, perhaps), because everything that follows in Hornby’s book, and in this review, is a passionate and opinionated dispatch about reading books. [read more]

If you collect fiction published in the United States during the middle years of the twentieth century—by Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, Graham Greene, Ayn Rand, William Styron, Franz Kafka, John Hersey, Hermann Hesse, John Dos Passos, or quite literally hundreds of other lesser-known authors—you will be familiar with the jacket art of George Salter. [read more]

I was a fan of The West Wing in its first few seasons, and I recall an episode in which the press secretary, C. J. Cregg, is cornered and subsequently closeted with a band of radical cartographers who lobby for every public school to adopt the Peters projection of the world map. This method of turning the round globe into a flat surface was promoted by the late Arno Peters (1916–2002), a German historian, and is allegedly fair to all peoples. [read more]

The Golden Age of Science Fiction spanned the middle of the twentieth century, roughly 1920–1970, give or take a decade and a few heated arguments among fans. The groundwork was laid in the science romances of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, and the genre came of age in magazines and anthologies with hyperbolic titles like Amazing Stories, Super Science and Fantastic Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Uncanny Tales. [read more]

Old Books Are Best” reads the title of Beverly Chew’s poem, one of the many examples of booklore Robert Shaddy collects in Essays on Books and Bibliophiles. Chew, a founding member of the Grolier Club, continues with verse touching on his true love, “What though the prints be not so bright, / The paper dark, the binding slight? / Our author, be he dull or sage, / Returning from that distant age / So lives again, we say of right: / Old Books are best.” [read more]

Crossing the border from the United States into Canada, one discovers a multicultural mosaic of literary voices and a vibrant community of authors with international stature, like Margaret Atwood, Austin Clarke, Alice Munro, and Michael Ondaatje. Step back in time one hundred years and the literary landscape in Canada becomes much thinner. [read more]

The festivities in honor of the centennial of the birth of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda have already exceeded those that surrounded his receipt of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971. Although the birthday party will soon end, a flurry of books published in connection with the anniversary will enlighten current and future fans of the life and work of Neruda for years to come. [read more]

Books about books is a misnomer of a genre name. If these titles were strictly about books, and nothing else, they would be title catalogs threaded with wisps of narratives: “And then I bought this. And then I sold that.” Such flat enumerations would numb the soul of the most passionate bibliophile. The best books about books are about books and people, specifically, about the sellers, collectors, enthusiasts, and oddballs, including the authors themselves. [read more]

The malapropism “book snake” is applied to David Meyer by an acquaintance reaching for the word “bookworm.” “Snake” suggests a creature that navigates hazardous terrain and tight corners in a single-minded pursuit of its prey. “You have to be willing to go anywhere, and climb over, dig through, and move around all manners of obstacles to get to the books,” Meyer writes. [read more]

ABC for Book Collectors is the standard primer and glossary for book collecting in the English-speaking world. It enumerates the terminology used, commonly and uncommonly, among collectors, booksellers, auction houses, librarians, and scholars. It describes the life of the book, from the original holograph manuscript, through galley proofs, to issue as parts in wrappers, until binding and distribution. [read more]

Recently, a friend was asked for advice on how to start collecting books. Although he has collected for many years, he was struck dumb by the question, his head filled with a jumble of thoughts about issues, states, original boards, and a hundred other bits of book arcana. Matthew Budman, a magazine editor by trade, helps answer the question with what may be the first true beginner’s handbook for book collectors. [read more]

This new English-language history of one
of Europe’s oldest libraries, at Leiden University, demonstrates that freedom of ideas has been central in the development of libraries from the beginning. The University of Leiden was founded during a long period of warfare between Catholics and Protestants. [read more]

Terry Jones’s interest in the Middle Ages dates to his days at Oxford, before he became famous as a member of British comedy troupe Monty Python. After the huge financial success of the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which Jones starred in, co-wrote, and directed, he took a year off to write a well-received book about The Canterbury Tales. [read more]

The arrival of the last volume in Nicholas Basbanes’ trilogy of books about books is cause for celebration. Basbanes’ trilogy is actually a quartet: in addition to A Gentle Madness and Patience and Fortitude, he also wrote Among the Gently Mad, a kind of foreword to the series, even though it arrived third in the chronology. This book quartet serves three purposes. [read more]

Recently published in the U.S. (following the British first edition), A Pound of Paper combines an author’s understanding of the book world with stories from several decades of inspired collecting—a combination bound to keep the stampedes at library and estate sales as lively (and brutal) as ever. John Baxter, an Australian cinema biographer, conjures a cast of richly drawn literary characters from his adventures in the book trade. [read more]

Advertisements for the English translation of Åsne Seierstad’s “astounding international bestseller” originally titled Bokhandleren i Kabul quote reviewers who have called it, correctly, “An unblinking account of the inner workings of an Afghan family” and “A searing attack on the way Afghan men treat women.” [read more]

In any diner on any street in New York, clusters of old-timers can be found gathered around a Formica table, hashing over the city’s history. A quartet of old socialists argues over Debs, Trotsky and the Rosenbergs. Next to them, a trio of sports fans recalls the Dodgers at Ebbets Field and the Giants at the Polo Grounds. [read more]