The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, unveiled today its latest exhibition, a sumptuous showcase of nearly sixty contemporary bookbindings from the collection of Neale and Margaret Albert.

Our Bright Young Collectors series continues today with Manon Schutz, of Luxembourg, who recently won the 2019 ABA Book Collecting Prize.

Where are you from / where do you live?

I currently live in Oxford, United Kingdom. However, I’m originally from a small town in the South of Luxembourg—which makes me one of the country’s only 600,000 inhabitants.

What do you study at University?

I’m in the last stages of my doctorate in Egyptology at the University of Oxford. I already did a Master of Studies at Oxford and a Magister Artium in Egyptology and Classical Archaeology at the University of Trier, Germany. I don’t know yet what I’ll do after my degree, but I hope to stay in the field.

Please introduce us to your book collection. What areas do you collect in?

As an Egyptologist, I basically collect every book that has somehow to do with Egypt: specialist literature, picture books, historic and fantasy novels, etc. I don’t only like to read about Egypt for my work, but also for mere pleasure. I’m for instance very fond of the Amelia Peabody Murder Mysteries, written by the American Egyptologist Barbara Mertz under her nom de plume of Elizabeth Peters. Unfortunately, this beloved author of mine died in 2013, so that there will be no more new adventures of the Emerson-Peabody family.

Within my collection of Egyptological books, autobiographies and biographies of early travellers and Egyptologists—especially of women like Amelia Edwards (actually one of the inspirations for Amelia Peabody)—take up a particular space in my shelves and of course in my heart. For me, it was always important to remember and understand these early figures of my field and thus value their contribution. It was their dreams, motivation, energy as well as sacrifices and hardships that made the study of Egyptology actually possible. They paved the way for students like me. Furthermore, as I’ve been several times to Egypt myself, I like to read about their travels and compare them to my own. It is amazing to see what has changed and what hasn’t changed in the past centuries. Thus, these books also give me the opportunity to learn about the more recent history of Egypt seen through the eyes of many different people with different backgrounds and thus understandings.

As Mason Cooley said: "Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are." Thus, my collection of these (auto-)biographies gives me the opportunity to travel to Egypt—or rather many different Egypts at different times—when I have to stay at home.

How many books are in your collection?

To be honest, it’s hard for me to keep track of the exact number, as my collection is divided between my flat here in Oxford and my parents’ house in Luxembourg. Some time ago, I started registering my books on LibraryThing in order to get a better overview. So far, I’ve recorded over 1,000 books on their website. However, this number includes all of my Egyptological and Egypt-themed books. My collection of (auto-)biographies is significantly smaller, probably only around 75 items.

What was the first book you bought for your collection?

I was only 7 or 8 years old, when I knew that I wanted to become an Egyptologist, and I actually started collecting books before I was really able to buy my own. So, my first books on Egypt were given to me by family members as presents for Christmases, birthdays, and other special occasions.

I actually don’t remember which book about Egypt I first bought myself. However, Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters, the first volume of the Amelia Peabody Murder Mysteries, must have been one of them. In this series, the heroine Amelia Peabody and her husband Emerson, eminent Professor of Egyptology, meet and interact with many of the important Egyptologists of their time, e.g. Howard Carter, the discoverer of Tutankhamun’s tomb. As Elizabeth Peters, actually Barbara Mertz, was an Egyptologist herself, she was aware of the many anecdotes about certain scholars that circulate in the field and must have read at least some of their journals and (auto-)biographies. Her novels definitely sparked my interest in the history of Egyptology.

How about the most recent book?

The most recent book I bought is the fifth edition of Who Was Who in Egyptology, edited by Morris L. Bierbrier. It includes small biographies, often accompanied by pictures, of Egyptologists that contributed to the field. The existing biographies are constantly updated and new ones are added. The Who Was Who is a great starting point to get a quick overview of the lives of specific Egyptologists. And, of course, a great pastime.

And your favorite book in your collection?

Asking a collector about his or her favourite book in the collection feels like asking a parent about his or her preferred child. I actually like all my books and would not want to part with any of them. Of course, there are some books that might be rarer than others. I particularly like old books with dedications that are part of the object’s history and prove that they have been loved and cared for in the past. After winning the Colin Franklin Book Collecting Prize in 2019, I bought an 1877 copy of Amelia Edward’s A Thousand Miles up the Nile. The book was originally given by a husband to his wife for their 29th wedding anniversary and in remembrance of their visit to Egypt in 1867. It is these little details that make books for me even more special.

Best bargain you’ve found?

In a way, every affordable copy of a sought-after book is a bargain for me. As many of the Egyptological books are only published in small numbers, already new ones tend to be quite expensive. Thus, the prices for older and rarer publications go up even more over time—and thus out of reach for a student.

How about The One that Got Away?

As I’m far from done with collecting books, I don’t like to think of books that got away, just of publications that I don’t own yet. After all, if it would be easy to find and acquire all the books I wanted, it would take away some of the excitement, of the feeling of achievement when finally stumbling upon a long sought-after copy.

What would be the Holy Grail for your collection?

There are of course many books by early travellers and Egyptologists that are particularly rare and thus unaffordable for ‘normal’ people like me, except maybe if I would sell my soul to the devil. However, to be honest, I would actually not want to find the Holy Grail for my collection, as its discovery would mean an end to my quest. And, at least for me, the joys of collecting are as much about the mission, the treasure hunt than they are about the discovery and purchase as such.

Who is your favorite bookseller / bookstore?

I do not really have a favourite bookseller or bookstore. I do not discriminate, I love all of them. As my collection interest is quite particular—and some Egyptological books are rather rare—it can sometimes take me years to track down an affordable copy. I actually keep a list with rare book titles which I regularly check against the inventory of online catalogues and databases. There are of course specialist bookstores like Meretseger Books and Librairie Cybele, which mainly offer Egyptological publications, and they are often the starting point for my searches. However, it can also happen that I come across a desired book in a very unlikely place. Thus, I bought many books from a market stall here in Oxford, whose owner had purchased part of the collection of a deceased Egyptology professor. I always like to compare the search process to a treasure hunt—although I might just have watched too many Indiana Jones movies.

What would you collect if you didn’t collect books?

I actually cannot imagine my life without collecting books, as it is such an important part of me. However, as an Egyptologist and Egyptomaniac, I actually collect other items that are related to Egypt as well like jewellery, movies, figurines, posters, and other types of decoration. Hence, for instance, I’m the proud owner of a sarcophagus-shaped wine rack. So, if I would—or rather could—not collect books, I would probably just amass all the rest. I guess that collecting really lies in my nature.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, England, has been closed this month for conservation work, but on Friday, January 17, the 200th birthday of novelist Anne Brontë, there is a free preview day (10:00 a.m.–3:30 p.m.) for the museum’s forthcoming exhibition, Anne Brontë: 'Amid the brave and strong'.

Focusing on the life, work, and legacy of Anne, the youngest of the literary sisters, the exhibition will include her final letter; the first of Charlotte’s six ‘little books,’ which she wrote specifically for Anne; and a portrait of Anne by Charlotte, which will be displayed alongside the carnelian necklace which she wears in the picture. Other items include Anne’s sketching block that she bought in 1843 to sketch outside, as well as a selection of her drawings and paintings.   

Later in the evening the celebrations will continue in the Delius Centre in nearby Bradford, which will be holding a party for Anne’s 200th birthday featuring music, poetry, craft-making, dancing, and the promise of a taste of Anne Brontë punch. No booking required and pay whatever you like.

Anne Brontë: 'Amid the brave and strong' officially opens on February 1, 2020 and runs until January 1, 2021 at the Parsonage Museum.

Kicking off the week is the Fine Books, Maps, and Manuscripts sale at Revere Auctions (online), in 463 lots. A set of Sir Richard Burton's translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night (1885), with Supplemental Nights (1886), could sell for $3,000–4,000. The 1666 Pieter Goos map "Paskaerte van Nova Granada en t'Eylandt California," showing California as an island, is estimated at $2,000–3,000. At the same rating is a copy of the first American edition of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1848).

Kestenbaum & Company holds an online sale of Hebrew & Judaic Printed Books on Thursday, in 276 lots. Most estimates are in the three-figure range, but among the expected highlights are the first American edition (and first edition in English, in a translation by Isaac Leeser) of Joseph Schwarz's Descriptive Geography and Brief History of Palestine (Philadelphia, 1850), estimated at $1,000–1,500. At the same estimate is Joshua Falk's Sepher Avnei Yehoshua, the first rabbinical text published in America (New York, 1860). Chaim Abraham Gagin's Sepher HaTakanoth VeHaskamoth (Jerusalem, 1842), a collection of the rites and customs of Jerusalem by the city's chief rabbi, is estimated at $800–1,200.

Also on Thursday, Autographs, Books, Declaration Signers, FDR & More at University Auctions. The 281 lots include Abraham Lincoln's copy of Washington Irving's 1838 one-volume collection of Oliver Goldsmith's Miscellaneous Works, estimated at $100,000–120,000. Lincoln's brother-in-law Ninian Edwards gave the book to him, and it was among a box of books Lincoln gave to his law partner William Herndon before his inauguration. Herndon in turn gave the book to Boston activist Caroline Healey Dall in October, 1866. Since then the book has sold at auction at least four times, in 1923, 1974, 1980, and 2001.

Estimated at $50,000–100,000 is a photo album containing a signed CDV of Lincoln by Alexander Gardner (the Lincoln photograph has been removed and is now stored separately). A 1527 book in a binding bearing the arms of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, once in the collection of H. Bradley Martin, is estimated at $18,000–20,000.

Are you a poet living in Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, or Michigan? If so, there’s a competition out there just for you: Minneapolis-based Milkweed Editions has just opened its Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry to submissions.

The Ballard prize, which includes $10,000 and publication of the winner’s poetry, was established in 2011 with the goal of supporting and promoting poets from the upper Midwest and sharing their work with the rest of the country. The prize also includes national distribution as well as a robust publicity campaign. The winner will be announced in April, with a book launch celebration slated for November 2020.

This year’s judge is Aimee Nezhukumatathil, an English professor at the University of Mississippi, author of four collections of poems, and a grant recipient from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in Poetry, the New York Times Magazine, ESPN, and Tin House. 

Patrick Johnson won the 2019 prize for Gatekeeper, a debut volume of verse that explores the ominous inner workings of the dark web. 

Applications are being accepted now through Valentine’s Day on Milkweed’s Submittable page.

We were saddened to learn of the death of Joseph Rubinfine (1938-2019), a highly respected dealer in historical manuscripts. Richard Austin, senior vice president and head of books & manuscripts at Sotheby’s, described Rubinfine as “truly one of the good guys.” Fellow historical documents dealer Stuart Lutz said of him, “He was a great man and a great dealer. I would be happy to have half the career that he had,” adding, “He had an unblemished record in the field. No one had a bad word to say about him, which is rare when you have a fifty-year career.” Benjamin Shapell of the Shapell Manuscript Foundation posted a memorial to Rubinfine on the SMF’s blog, calling him “a quiet and dignified individual who was known throughout the autograph world as one of its leading dealers. Joe handled some truly exceptional material over the years, both privately and through his always wonderful and highly anticipated catalogs. His integrity, too, was unmatched. It was my good fortune to have benefited from his great taste in manuscripts and his gifted knowledge of history.”

There is a month left to enjoy the Doris Lessing 100 exhibition at the University of East Anglia’s Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, celebrating the centenary of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s birth.

Lessing left dozens of boxes of personal material to the UEA’s British Archive for Contemporary Writing which includes her correspondence, diaries, personal papers, manuscripts, and memorabilia, some of it made public for the first time thanks to her official biographer Patrick French who has enjoyed privileged access to it during his research for The Golden Woman: The Authorized Biography of Doris Lessing, due out later this year.

Central to the exhibition is a focus on probably her most famous work, The Golden Notebook. On show for the first time are journal entries and notebooks which she compiled as she wrote that show how she structured her writing. Among related correspondence is a letter from Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman who compliments her on her ouevre and says he is interested in filming her books, especially The Golden Notebook.

Covering the whole of her life, the wide-ranging exhibition also includes MI5’s and MI6’s files on Lessing which describe her as “An attractive, forceful and dangerous woman;” her personal copy of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse; stills from the 1981 film adaption of her novel, Memoirs of a Survivor; and her letter to the prime minister turning down a damehood in 1992, pointing out, “There is something ruritannical about honours given in the name of a non-existent Empire.”

Curated by Justine Mann and Nonia Williams, Doris Lessing 100 has been shortlisted for UEA’s Innovation & Impact Award (Outstanding Social or Cultural Impact category) and runs until February 9.

The Monkey’s Paw is a Toronto bookshop specializing in “uncommon books and paper artifacts from the age of print.” It is also the home of the Biblio-Mat, the world’s first randomized vending machine for old books.

I am a bibliophile, author, columnist, and software executive based in the Silicon Valley (Readers may recall my ‘How I Got Started’ profile from the summer 2016 issue of Fine Books.) During one of my visits to Toronto to study the Artificial Intelligence ecosystem, I did what I always do — sneak in a few hours to visit a local bookstore. The Monkey’s Paw inspired me to not only buy some rare books (The Niagara Peninsula by Charles P. deVolph; The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Railways by Hamilton Ellis) but to have a long conversation with the bookstore owner, Stephen Fowler.

Having been to hundreds of bookstores around the world, I consider The Monkey’s Paw to be one of the most unique ones, and this Q & A with Fowler will give you the reasons why!   

V.R. Ferose (VRF): Why did you name your bookstore The Monkey’s Paw? (I am aware of W.W. Jacobs connection.)

Stephen Fowler (SF): If you are familiar with the W.W. Jacobs piece, you know that the message of that story is "be careful what you wish for." Several years before I opened the shop, I already knew that I'd like to create a bookstore where people would be surprised by unexpected books (not the book you're looking for, but the one you didn't even know existed). So the "careful what you wish for" sentiment seemed to apply... plus, "The Monkey's Paw" is a memorable and somewhat creepy title, which also seemed fitting!

VRF: Why haven’t you considered having a digital presence (other than the lack of cheap media mail in Canada)?

SF: First of all, we do have a pretty active presence on social media (Facebook & Instagram). So, it would be inaccurate to suggest that we shy away entirely from the digital world. But it is true that we don't sell online. I'm no stranger to online bookselling — indeed the Monkey's Paw began in 2004 as an online-only shop. But once I opened in a Toronto storefront in 2006, I recognized the obvious advantages of in-person bookselling. Although it's easy to search for and purchase a specific title online, the web is a terrible way to browse for books. Browsing for old books is really only possible in person, hands-on. And with many of the older, longer-established shops either closing or migrating to the web, the general public was really missing the in-person browsing experience, and the pleasure of discovery it permits. The Monkey's Paw filled that gap. I abandoned online bookselling entirely after I'd had the open shop for just a few months. Basically, the books we sell (many of them unlikely and forgotten titles) are so obscure that few shoppers on Abebooks or Amazon would ever even know to search for them. Also, when I sell a book in the shop, I make a customer; the person who buys a book here will forever associate the book with the shop, and very likely return. People who buy books online don't really have any sense for where the books come from, so building customer loyalty is irrelevant and impossible.

The 2020 book auctions get underway this week with two sales on Thursday, January 9:

Forum Auctions will hold an online sale of Books and Works on Paper, in 206 lots. Three lots are each estimated at £1,000–1,500: the first is an unbroken run of Punch's Pocket Book for 1843 through 1881, from the library of Bradbury & Evans publisher William Bradbury. Some volumes contain manuscript annotations by the Bradburys. The second lot is Anthony Powell's Caledonia (1934), inscribed to Dorothy Varda and with manuscript corrections by Powell; finally, a set of Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy, in designer bindings by Kate Holland, rates the same estimate.

Estimated at £500–700 are Charles Jacques Poncet's A Voyage to Æthiopia (1709) and Michael Geddes' The Church-History of Ethiopia (1696). A partial set (four of fourteen volumes) of later editions of Hough's American Woods is estimated at £400–600. Other lots of interest in this sale might include an 18th-century English manuscript paraphrasing a bit of Horace; and uncut proof sheets of Beatrix Potter's illustrations for Jemima Puddle Duck and The Tale of Tom Kitten (all estimated at £300–400).

At PBA Galleries on Thursday, Art & Illustration – Occult & Hermeticism, in 399 lots. The latter section includes books from the Mateo Family Library. Rating the top estimate is a fifty-nine volume incomplete run of the weekly popular magazine La Vie Parisienne covering the years 1863 through 1926 ($5,000–8,000); a mixed set of Bertuch's Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnügen der Jugend could sell for $4,000–6,000. Dali's suite of lithographic illustrations for Alice in Wonderland (1981–1981) rates the same estimate.

Every now and then it's worth revisiting people and places that have been overlooked or ignored for awhile. Take, for example, the southernmost point in the United States, Key West. Once a remote hideaway for writers and musicians, Key West is now a routine stop for cruise ship organizations and road-trippers, but that literary history is still there for those who seek it out.

On a recent trip to Key West in December, I paid a visit to the home of Ernest Hemingway. The estate remains the largest residential lot on the island--no small feat in an era of rampant construction up and down the Keys. Our tour guide led us through the interior rooms--now occupied by 59 polydactyl cats, all descendants of Hemingway's beloved feline, Snow White--where Papa and his second wife, journalist Pauline Pfeiffer, spent ten years together. Hemingway composed Green Hills of Africa, Death in the Afternoon, and To Have and To Have Not here in between fishing expeditions on his boat, the Pilar. 

Across town on Truman Avenue, meanwhile, is the home of Tennessee Williams, now also a museum. Williams lived in Key West from 1941 until 1983, when he died at the age of 71. Tiny by comparison, the Williams house boasts an impressive collection of photographs, first edition plays and books, ephemera, even Williams' typewriter. 

Hemingway and Williams aren't the only writers to fall under Key West's spell: Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop (whose house on White Street was recently acquired by the Key West Literary Seminar), Richard Wilbur, and Judy Blume have spent time there.  

Meanwhile, plenty of actual writing is still happening in Key West: from January 9-12, the Key West Literary Seminar will host its annual writing workshop and seminar, cultivating new voices in American letters.