On Saturday, July 24, at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Boston-based RR Auction held a robst sale of memorabilia relating to notorious mobsters and outlaws like Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger.

High spots included Capone's ritzy platinum watch made by the Illinois Watch company. The timepiece exceeded its $25,000 pre-sale estimate, fetching a hammer price of $84,375.00. Manufactured between 1928 and 1929, the watch contains seventy-two cut diamonds, a platinum face, and an original 12 inch watch chain made of 14k white gold. The reverse of the case reveals the initials "AC," itself consisting of twenty-three cut diamonds and surrounded by twenty-six others. The watch was accompanied by an affidavit from Capone's great-grandson, Eric Griese, detailing its provenance.

A signed demurrer (a legal document objecting to an opponent's point) relating to a case between Capone and the State of Florida failed to meet its pre-sale estimate of $30,000, realising $19,375.00. The document probably related to a raid on Capone's Palm Island mansion in 1930 and highlights Capone's constant run-ins with the law.

Two life-size reproductions of John Dillinger's death masks realized $406.25. Four plaster masks were believed to have been made of the outlaw, with two remaining in existence. The day after Dillinger was shot and killed by Chicago police, his remains were visited by over one thousand visitors at the Chicago morgue.

Crime may not pay, but it sure makes for exciting auctions--check out all the results at rrauctions.com

                                                                                                                                                                          Mugshot of Al Capone: Public Domain

A man who says he is a distant cousin of Jesse James has come forward with a never-before-seen ambrotype of the notorious outlaw, young and handsome with piercing light eyes.

Patrick Meguiar of Tennessee first heard about the antique photo from his grandfather, Maynard Meguiar, who would tell stories about their ancestral connection to James, calling him "closely kin," a claim that is disputed by Eric F. James, co-founder of the James Preservation Trust. Maynard's grandparents spent time with James "on a least a couple of occasions," according to Patrick Meguiar. "The first time in 1868 and the second time in the late 1870s when cousin Jesse lived in Nashville, Tennessee." As family history has it, James gave the ambrotype to his cousin Sarah Mariah Martin Meguiar after he paid her a visit while hiding from the law following the Nimrod Long Bank Robbery. The ambrotype has been passed down in the Meguiar family ever since, landing with Patrick in 1977.

Meguiar, who never married, said he has now decided to sell it "because I have no one to leave it to in my family." The ambrotype will be offered at auction in Georgia on August 26. It is estimated to make $8,000-12,000.  

According to Meguiar, what's striking about the image are those obviously light eyes; James' eye color has raised eyebrows before. Some images that claim to depict James show dark eyes, which is incorrect, said Meguiar. "My image has the right eye color that is well-documented in lifetime descriptions." Indeed the only image signed and validated by James' widow (seen here) also appears to show light eyes. The most recently "discovered" tintype, in 2015--also a family heirloom--picturing James with Robert Ford makes James look cross-eyed, and, as Meguiar put it, "My cousin was not cross-eyed." Nevertheless, it sold at auction for $35,000.

Photo authentication is a fraught issue where James imagery is concerned. "The flood of newly discovered 'Jesse James' photos never stops," said T.J. Stiles, author of Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (2003). "They obviously can't all, or most, or perhaps any, be true images of Jesse James. This makes me suspicious of all newly discovered photos." He added that because James was a fugitive, he very likely did not have many portraits of himself made. It would take "rock-solid provenance," Stiles said, to build a case for authenticity, including a "clear chain of custody dating back to Jesse James, or at least his immediate family, and some contemporary documentation."

Those are things the auctioneer, Addison & Sarova in Macon, Georgia, believes it can offer in this case. "One of the things that makes it so great is that we can trace the provenance entirely," said Michael Addison. "There have been many photos over time purporting to be of Jesse James, most of which are fakes. In this case, the evidence is overwhelming given the provenance, but it's also fairly easy to compare this photo with the known photo of Jesse dressed as a Quantrill guerrilla, at 19 years of age. The present photo is of Jesse at about 21 years of age. So, his appearance hasn't changed all that much, and that makes the verification more simple."

Images courtesy of Addison & Sarova.

                                                                                                                                                                                                     Yesterday marked twenty years since J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was first published, and with 450 million books sold worldwide, "Pottermania" shows no signs of abating; the British Library is hosting a "Harry Potter: A History of Magic" in October, publisher Bloomsbury books issued a celebratory party pack filled with games, puzzles, and books, and the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) just launched a digital collection highlighting the historical and scientific connections behind many of the elements in the series.

Entitled "How to Pass Your O.W.L's at Hogwarts: A Prep Course," the digial exhibition examines forty of the nearly 33,000 rare books and manuscripts housed at the NYAM and their connection to the Harry Potter books. Rare books curator Anne Garner said the show is a natural fit. "The genesis of the show was finding a way to attract more kids to the library," she said. "When visitors come to the rare book room, they often say it looks like Hogwarts, and when we realized the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter was coming up, mounting this show made even more sense."                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                                               Rowling's background in the classics provided much grist for her books, where spells and creatures often have Latin roots--and the NYAM's show illustrates where she pulled from history. Organized thematically by seven courses taught throughout the Harry Potter series, the collection appears like a fictional study guide to assist would-be wizards in their studies.                                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                      Take the section entitled Herbology, for example: "Some plants are good for spells and not for others," explained Garner. "In Book Two [The Chamber of Secrets] Harry goes to a class where the teacher is instructing how to repot mandrakes. Mandrake roots look eerily human, and in the fifteenth century, there was a superstition that if you pulled a mandrake root out of the ground, it would scream." An incunable on display from 1499 called Hortus sanitus (Garden of Health) exhorts would-be botanists to use a dog and earmuffs to pull mandrakes out of the ground. "Harry's professor tells his students to wear earmuffs when they're pulling out mandrakes. Clearly, Rowling was familiar with these ancient treatises and incorporated them into her books."

The Serpent of Slytherin also has roots in medieval lore. "The word basilisk comes from the Greek word basiliskos -- little king--and the ancients believed it was a mythical snake with a head in the shape of a crown, whose mere gaze could kill," said Garner. Rowling's basilisk in The Chamber of Secrets is also a monstrous beast with killer eyes owned by the villainous Slytherin.

Even Nicholas Flamel, a pivotal character in the first book, is based on an actual person. "Flamel appears in Book One as a 600-year-old alchemist and is credited with discovering and making the philosopher's stone, the pinnacle of chemical achievement that led to eternal life," said Garner. "In fact, the actual Flamel wasn't an alchemist, but a fourteenth-century French bookseller and scribe who married well." Seventeenth century booksellers revived Flamel as an expert in the hermetic arts--a popular topic at the time-- and the NYAM's display includes a text on hieroglyphics attributed to Flamel, but was likely fabricated by the author, William Salmon, to generate reader interest.                                                                                                                                                                                

The images are accessible online only, but the library does welcome vistors by appointment. "Filmmakers, genaolgy researchers, even cookbook writers visit our collections because we house centuries of documentation relating to how humans view and care for their bodies through history," Garner said. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                 The New York Academy of Medicine is located at 1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street New York, NY. View the Harry Potter-themed online collection here. 

Image credits: The New York Academy of Medicine. 

Earlier this week, the Concord Museum in Massachusetts received a daguerreotype of Sophia Thoreau (1819-1876), younger sister of American essayist and naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). The timing is fortuitous; July 12 marks the bicentennial of the birth of the author of Walden and Civil Disobedience.

"It is remarkable that her [Sophia's] image should come to the Concord Museum, since all the great Thoreau objects in our collection came through her hands," said museum curator David Wood. Numbering 250 artifacts, including Thoreau's writing desk, snowshoes, textiles, and books, the Concord Museum boasts the largest collection of objects related to Concord's native son. Thoreau's journals and manuscripts are at New York's Morgan Library. 

Thoreau's fame came posthumously, largely due to the efforts of Sophia, who served as her brother's literary executor until her own death. She shepherded Henry's journals to Harrison Blake, an admirer and disciple of Thoreau who edited the material for publication.

                                                                                                                                               The Sophia daguerreotype is a gift from the Geneva Frost Estate in Maine, and the acquisition is so new that Concord Museum is still researching the portrait and how it ended up in Maine in the first place.                                                                                                                                      

The Concord Museum recently collaborated with the Morgan Library on a comprehensive exhibition dedicated to Henry Thoreau entitled This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal, currently on display in Manhattan. The show travels to Concord in September, where the portrait will be displayed alongside Henry's quill pen, which is inscribed with a handwriiten note by Sophia, "The pen that brother Henry last wrote with." This Ever New Self  will be on display in Conord until January 2018. 

On Friday the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford will ask the question: Which Jane Austen?

In an exhibition marking the bicentennial of the author's death, Austen's world is broadened beyond her native Hampshire. The manuscripts, artifacts, and ephemera on exhibit aim to contextualize Austen as a businesswoman and as an avid spectator of global issues, including war and British empire-building. For example, her novels, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion, are interpreted in the exhibition as wartime texts set alongside military treatises and political cartoons. Three of Austen's brothers served in the military; the logbook kept by Frank Austen as Post-Captain of HMS Canopus, open at his entry describing the Battle of Trafalgar and the death of Admiral Nelson, is one of the show's highlights.

Oxford University professor Kathryn Sutherland, curator of the exhibition and leading Austen expert, said, "Contrary to popular belief, Jane Austen was no retiring country mouse. And while it is assumed that, as an 18th-century female, her context was local and her outlook parochial, Austen was always very much a writer of the world."

Other highlights include "Volume the First," a collection of short stories, plays, and verse written by Austen between the ages of 12 and 18; manuscripts of The Watsons and Sanditon; first editions of her novels; her writing desk; and many family and professional letters. The Bodleian Libraries have one of the world's three most significant collections of Austen material. For this exhibition, several institutions, including Chawton House Library, Jane Austen's House Museum, the National Maritime Museum, the John Murray Archive, and others, loaned important items.    

A range of events are taking place across the UK this summer to observe the 200th anniversary of Austen's death (July 18), including The Mysterious Miss Austen, an exhibition at the Discovery Centre, Winchester (through July 24), and various tours, programs, and exhibits at Chawton House Library and Jane Austen's House Museum.

Images: (Top) A portrait of Jane Austen from the frontispiece of A Memoir of Jane Austen, a biography of the novelist published in 1869 by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh.The portrait is a steel engraving by an unknown artist and is based on a watercolor by James Andrews (1807-1875). Andrews, in his turn, based his portrait on a sketch made by Jane's sister Cassandra c. 1810. Credit: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. (Middle) Front cover of the unique manuscript "Volume the First." Credit: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.

Guest Post by Martha Bayne

The second-floor ballroom at Chicago's Journeymen Plumbers Union Hall is a beautiful space--its broad, curving staircases and hanging lamps arguably as well suited to browsing vintage maps and books as hammering out a new contract for the Local. Or at least it was on Saturday, June 17, when the Midwest Antiquarian Booksellers Association (MWABA) hosted its 56th annual Chicago Book and Paper Fair.

Of the fifty-three exhibitors, the vast majority were from the Midwest--Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, though some had traveled farther. In addition to the array of first editions of Lolita, On the Road, and A Canticle for Leibowitz, locked inside protective vitrine cases, some glorious bits of Chicagoiana could be found on display and up for sale: a massive ten-volume set documenting the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, a signed limited edition of Norman Maclean's 1976 fly-fishing masterpiece A River Runs Through It, and Vol. 1, #2 of "The Dil Pickler," a letterpress pamphlet produced by the city's famed Bohemian club of free thinkers.

In a corner of the floor Carlos Martinez, proprietor of Chicago's Bibliodisia, pointed out a two-volume set of the Koran with marbled paper covers and a colored map insert ($1,075) and a worn copy of Culpeper's Complete Herbal ($75), an inspiration for J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, and the basis for many of the potions and herbal remedies used at Hogwarts.

The fair was going "very well," said Martinez, adding, "I'm always amazed at what people will buy."

"I like looking at old stuff," said Don Krage, who comes to the fair every year with his son, a collector of opera memorabilia. "This place is so full of things that go back hundreds of years; I always find interesting things for myself that spark my imagination."

--Martha Bayne is a Chicago-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in Buzzfeed Reader, Belt Magazine, Crain's Chicago Business, the Chicago Reader, Latterly Magazine, the Rumpus, and other regional and national outlets.

Images courtesy of Martha Bayne

screenshot: PixGrove                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Ever feel like your home is overwhelmed with books? (No? Really?) Well, Spanish artist Alicia Martin has taken inspiration from book sprawl and created massive outdoor sculptures that suggest the aftermath of a book-eating cyclone.

Since the late 1990s, Martin's book sculptures have tumbled from windows or cascaded over archways throughout Europe, with three located in the heart of Madrid. Despite the innate grandeur of these projects, very little has been written about Martin's work, in English or Spanish, other than on than a handful of Pinterest sites and blogs. But, here's what we know:

Each sculpture requires a minimum of 5,000 volumes, according to the artist, who sources her raw material from an ever-present supply of discards. Each structure is held together by internal metal and mesh framing, around which Martin attaches the books. These sculptures recall the work of another biblio-centric artist, that of Nancy Gifford and her piece "Lament," which we wrote about back in 2014. (Update: "Lament" found a permanent home at the Davidson Library at UC Santa Barbara in 2016.)

In different ways, both Gifford and Martin offer up commentary on the grand sweep of cultural change underway. "The book chose me," said Martin for the Spanish-language art website queleer.com in 2014. "It [a book] carries much symbolism, and though the result seems obsessive, I do not recognize myself in this obsession. It is an object that stores and records time and space. The book itself is an object to be read, and offers as many "readings" as there are people who have read it."

So, the next time your books find themselves everywhere but the bookshelves, just think: glued together and toppling out a window, they could have a new story to tell.

The House at Lobster Cove, by Jane Goodrich; Benna Books, $24.95, 388 pages.

George Nixon Black (1842-1928) was a Boston-based heir to a real estate fortune, philanthropist, and collector, and in Jane Goodrich's fictionalized biography, violence and unhappiness give way to secret romance.                                                                                                                                                                                               Born in a rough-and-tumble timber town in Maine, Nixon's privileged childhood is marked with turmoil. His family moves to Boston, and Nixon's nascent homosexuality requires stealth and secrecy while navigating a world filled with buttoned-up Brahmins.                                  

After the death of his infirm sister, Nixon (as he was called to distinguish from his father) taps architect Robert Peabody to build a summer home in the seaside resort town of Manchester-by-the-Sea. Dubbed Kragsyde, the shingle-style home becomes Nixon's private pleasure grounds where he retreats from Boston with his lover, Charles Brooks Pittman. Nixon and Pittman carve out nearly forty years at Kragsyde, pursuing an unconventional life of domestic bliss. Since so little is known about Nixon's private life, here the author has crafted a persuasive rendering of what happened behind closed doors.

                                                                                                                                                                As one of the wealthiest men in Boston, Nixon also used his fortune to amass a magnificent collection of antiques and paintings, and ultimately became one of the largest benefactors of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The iconic portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, for example, came from Nixon. 

                                                                                                                                                     Goodrich first learned about Kragsyde and its owner as an art-history student. When she discovered that the house had been demolished 1929, she vowed to resurrect it on Swan's Island, Maine, which planted the seed for this project.                                                                                                                                                                 

The book itself reflects Goodrich's other formidable talent as a letterpress printer. The cream-colored cover and title pages were both hand-printed at the author's studio, while the illustration is Peabody's own hand-drawn sketch of Kragsyde.

A beguiling examination of life and love in the Gilded Age, The House at Lobster Cove is an ode to a man, his house, and their respective secrets.

                                                                                                                                                                                   All images courtesy Jane Goodrich. Library photo: Bret Morgan. 

What better day than June 14--the birthday of author Harriet Beecher Stowe--to share this exciting literary tourism news: The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut, launched a new interactive tour of the writer's house this past weekend. According to a press release, "Throughout the National Historic Landmark home, velvet ropes and stanchions have been removed." You can literally immerse yourself in Stowe's salon. "In Stowe's parlor, visitors will sit to discuss 19th-century social justice issues just as Stowe did during her residence. In conversation with their guide, visitors will connect the past to the present, identifying issues that resonate today."

Stowe (1811-1896) is best known for her bestselling anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). The Stowe Center is a museum and research library based in the home where she lived from 1873-1896 (incidentally, right next door to fellow author Mark Twain).

The Stowe House recently began an extensive, $3.3-million preservation project as well. So far, new climate controls, state-of-the-art fire suppression, and renovated historic windows have been installed. They are currently working on interiors, with custom-made carpeting, paint, and wallpapers reflecting Stowe's choices being readied for final placement this summer.  

"An important part of the Stowe Center's mission is preserving Stowe's home and historic collections," said Thomas Farrish, chair of the Stowe Center Board of Trustees. "After being open to the public since 1968, major capital improvements were essential to preserve the National Historic Landmark for generations to come."

Aside from the new tour and refurbished rooms, visitors can also see the table where Stowe wrote her famous bestseller, as well as the 1853 anti-slavery petition presented to her by the women of Great Britain--the 26-volume collection was signed by a half million women.

The Stowe House is open year-round. Check out its calendar of events and programs online.

Image credit: Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, CT. Courtesy of the HBSC.