Richard Minsky's book, The Art of American Book Covers, 1875-1930, is now available in a Smyth-sewn paperback from George Braziller, with, Minsky writes in his blog, "the same high quality paper and printing as the two sold-out hardcover editions." Obviously, it also has the same fantastic inside, which I reviewed back in April 2010. The Art of American Book Covers was the 2011 Worldwide Books Award for Publications from the Art Libraries Society of North America.

Last week we reported on the export ban placed on Jane Austen's ring, purchased at auction by the American pop star Kelly Clarkson. As a condition of the temporary ban, if a British individual or institution raises enough money to match the winning bid of £152,450, the ring will stay in the country. The Jane Austen House Museum quickly began a funding campaign to keep the simple, but elegant ring in Britain. The museum received a huge boost to its campaign last weekend when an anonymous donor contributed £100,000 to the effort.

Prompted by a question raised at Rare Book School a couple of weeks ago, I blogged about what might be the first American bookplate. Since then, some further ideas and opinions give reason for reconsideration.

Lew Jaffe, who runs Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie, commented: "The question is simple enough but the answer is more complicated...Once you start delving into early 18th century American bookplates you are probably dealing with Anglo-American plates from the libraries of royal governors and large land holders like Lord Baltimore. Most of the bookplates were not dated so I suspect your quest is a major research project."

David Szewczyk of Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Co. gently chastised me for the Anglo-centric use of the word "American." He wrote, "Libraries, both institutional and private, existed in Spanish America more than 100 years before they did in the English colonies. The earliest bookplates for Mexico, as far as we know (but much research is still needed) are in books that belonged the Jesuit establishments and were a woodcut stamp on pieces of paper that were affixed to pastedowns and other blank areas. Other times the stamp was simply used as a stamp. These date from as early as the 1580s."

And, Steve Ferguson, the curator of rare books at Princeton, sent me a PDF of a 1949 article in The New Colophon called "A Seventeenth Century Book-Label Problem," in which Edward Naumburg Jr. makes the claim that Steven Day's printed book label bearing his own name is not, in fact, the earliest American book label. He reveals several reasons why he believes this to be the case; mainly, it seems, because the fleur-de-lis type ornament used was "not found until 1693 in America, but prevalent in England at the time of his label." Instead, Naumberg writes, "the earliest authentic dated American book-label, printed by Samuel Green on Steven Day's press at Cambridge" is that of Samuel Phillips May 31 1652 (twelve years after the Bay Psalm Book). It looks like this:

Thanks to those above for contributing to this conversation. Further comments and additions welcomed! ??

When Leslie Klinger was preparing an anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories written by modern day authors (In the Company of Sherlock Holmes), he received a letter in the mail from the Arthur Conan Doyle estate demanding a hefty licensing fee. Klinger is a well-known Holmes expert, author of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes and consultant on the recent Holmes films.  Only ten of the sixty Sherlock Holmes stories remain under copyright in the United States.  Klinger felt that the fifty public domain stories establish the defining story and character elements, thus freeing up the characters to be used in fiction today. So Klinger took the Conan Doyle estate to federal court last February in Illinois, asking the court to affirm the public domain status of Conan Doyle's work in the United States and revoking the right of the estate to collect the licensing fee.

Yesterday the New York Times Opinionator ran a piece called The Cartes de Visite Craze by Andrea L. Volpe. In it, Volpe looks at images of the Civil War through the commercial photography available at the time: 2 1/2-by-4-inch portraits known as cartes de visite. She writes: "The images were so popular the press called it 'cartomania.' The first photo albums were created to hold them. Engraved copies, based on widely circulating carte portraits of politician and generals, illustrated the pages of magazines like Frank Leslie's and Harper's Weekly. Cartes de visite of the 'near and dear' and the 'great and good' literally and figuratively allowed Northern viewers to picture themselves as part of the nation. The public's abstract connection to the Union was made material by collecting images of the nation's leaders side by side with family portraits."

Coincidentally, Volpe, who is finishing a book titled National Bodies: Cartes de Visite and the Politics of Photography in Civil War America, wrote an article for us just last month on Walker Evans' photography and book jacket design.

Image: Carte de visite of Steward Beach, full-length studio portrait. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The debate over export of cultural property resumed this past weekend when news broke that the United Kingdom's culture minister, Ed Vaizey, issued a temporary ban on the export of Jane Austen's ring, won last year at auction by the American singer Kelly Clarkson. The ban means that while Clarkson is not technically required to sell the ring, she may not take it out of the UK. (She can, however, temporarily content herself with the removal of the first edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion from 1818 that she bought for £4,000. Who knew Clarkson was an Austen collector?)

When someone asks a crowd, 'how many of you know Aldus Manutius?' and nearly every hand pops up, you know you're in the right place. And by right place, I mean you are among your book-loving peers--the librarians, archivists, booksellers, collectors, professors, students, conservators, and the rest of us who are interested in studying the culture and history of the book. That question was posed by collector G. Scott Clemons during last Wednesday night's Rare Book School Forum at the Small Special Collections Library. Clemons--who was here not only as a guest speaker but as a student in the descriptive bibliography course--gave a rousing and convincing talk on "How Aldus Manutius Saved Western Civilization," discussing how the printer's "portable books" at the turn of the sixteenth century preserved Greek classics that might otherwise have disappeared.

That was one highlight of my week at Rare Book School. But there are others. It feels impossible to cram a thoughtful synopsis into a blog post, and yet, I'll try. First and foremost, a few words on the course I took: Provenance: Tracing Owners and Collections with David Pearson. Each day from 8:30-5:00, we studied the rudiments of palaeography, bookplates, personalized bindings, heraldry, and other forms of ownership marking. Several sessions allowed us the opportunity for hands-on exercises with sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century books from the Rare Book School collections and the Small special collections. I believe there was a unanimous feeling among my classmates that this course is particularly wonderful in scope and content, and that David Pearson, director of culture, heritage, and libraries at the City of London Corporation and most recently the author of Books as History, is a thoroughly engaging teacher. 

Booksellers' night on Thursday was a fun event, so nicely arranged by RBS staff and local booksellers. I visited four shops, and I purchased four books, all very good reading copies of modern books that had either been on my long mental list of books to buy someday or books that I had not heard of; pleasant surprises, in any case. Umberto Eco's book-length essay, Postscript to The Name of the Rose, is one such treasure, mined at Heartwood Used and Antiquarian Books.

I was glad to meet so many book world colleagues, some of whom I had previously connected with by email or social media, and some of whom were entirely new, friendly faces.

Having not attended RBS since 2004, I was surprised by some additions -- including great new spaces -- and awed by the precision of the weekly schedule. It's clear that much thought and effort go into planning every RBS session, and the staff is phenomenal. I can't say enough good things about my week at RBS, so I will leave it at this: if you have never been, make your plans for next year. You will not regret it.  

The good folks at Peter Harrington have produced a short video to help book collectors identify modern first editions. Take a look:

 

How to Identify First Editions from Peter Harrington on Vimeo.