October feels like the right time to feature the books of author, publisher, and book collector Marc Hartzman, who first caught my attention back in 2015 with his novel, The Embalmed Head of Oliver Cromwell. Hartzman, aka the Weird Historian, enjoys the odd and unusual--as do I.

The Bibliographical Society in London has released details of its new lecture series, covering the rest of 2020 (via Zoom, starting 5.30 p.m. UK time) and into 2021 (when they hope meetings can start up again at the Society of Antiquaries in Piccadilly).

The Zoom talks are:

• November 17, 2020: Insights into the King’s Library of George III with Adrian Edwards who looks at how the monarch established his royal library of 65,000 books and pamphlets, now stored in the iconic central book tower in the British Library (pictured above). The talk looks in particular at the king’s collection of Americana.
• December 15, 2020: Paper for octavos: Innovation in early sixteenth-century book production with David Shaw, looking at medieval papermaking. 

In 2021 there will be talks about The Sloane Printed Books Project at the British Library (January 19); scholar-collector W.S. Lewis’s work on Horace Walpole (February 16); and the Rothschild book collection at the now National Trust-owned Waddesdon Manor (March 16), with Edward Wilson-Lee, author of The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books, speaking on the extraordinarily ambitious bibliographical project 'Hernando Colón and the Universal Library Machine.’

The 2020 talks are free but need to be booked online via the society’s website. 

Last week, the Library of Congress added the 2020 National Book Festival videos to its website. You can peruse them all here. The one I’ve selected for today’s Video Friday is a four-minute clip showing Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announcing Colson Whitehead as winner of the 2020 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

At auction on Tuesday night, Femme dans un fauteuil, a painting by Pablo Picasso of his muse, fellow artist, and photographer Dora Maar, sold for just under $30 million. Maar, who appears on the cover of our current issue, had long been cast in the shadow of Picasso’s immense celebrity, but has regained some of the spotlight in recent years, thanks to exhibitions and books about her life that focus on her creative output.

Painted in June of 1941, during the Nazi occupation of Paris, this image is quite distinct from and more austere than Picasso’s earlier work that also famously utilized the figure of Maar, his Weeping Woman. It is also one of a series completed in a burst of inspiration in 1941, all depicting Maar. Picasso eventually tired of her, though, and they broke up in 1945, the same year he exhibited Femme dans un fauteuil in a landmark London exhibition. Maar continued to make art, but led an increasingly solitary life and died virtually forgotten in 1997.

According to Christie’s, “Picasso’s images of Dora are among the greatest of his wartime work; the cataclysmic events of this epoch and the artist’s personal reaction to them etched onto the visage of his companion.”

In 2006, Picasso’s Dora Maar au Chat—another of Picasso’s ‘armchair’ paintings made in 1941—reached $95.2 million, the second-highest price ever paid for a painting at auction at the time.

Our Bright Young Librarians series continues today with Michelle Chesner, Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies at Columbia University.

What is your role at your institution?

My official title is Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies. I am technically situated in the Global Studies division in the Columbia University Libraries, but my position includes responsibility for Columbia's rare Judaica collection, which is located (mostly) in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

How did you get started in special collections?

I always loved history as a subject, and vaguely wanted to "see old books" from the time I was young. When I got to college, my advisor, Dr. Jim Grubb at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, encouraged me to do my undergraduate thesis on Hebrew incunabula. I was hooked! I interned that summer at (then) Baltimore Hebrew University's library (now part of Towson University's collection) and worked with books that had been confiscated from Jews by the Nazis. The multiple layers of history in those books -- centuries-old Hebrew annotations by Jewish users, the Nazi archival stamp, and the bookplate of the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction project, which distributed these books back to Jewish communities after WWII -- showed me how books were indeed the closest way to "hear" the people of the past. It was then that I knew I wanted to spend my life with rare books and manuscripts.

Where did you earn your MLS/advanced degree?

I did a joint MA/MLIS program through the NYU/LIU "Masters and Mentors" partnership, including an MA in Jewish Studies from NYU, and a Certificate in Rare Books and Manuscripts as part of the MLIS from Long Island University.

Favorite rare book / ephemera that you've handled?

My favorite printed book is a legal text by Jacob ben Asher called Arba'ah Turim, printed in Constantinople by David and Samuel ibn Nahmias in 1493. The first book to be printed in the Ottoman Empire, this book also tells the story of the journeys of Sephardic Jews in the 15th century: its typefaces come from Guadalajara and Hijar (Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492), and the paper is from Venice and Naples. The book was finally printed in Constantinople, whose leader, Sultan Bayezid II, actively encouraged Jewish immigration to the Ottoman Empire in the late 15th century.

What do you personally collect?

There are so many things I WISH I could collect -- does that count? I'm particularly interested in Hebrew incunabula - there are between 150-200, depending on who you ask, and they range from secular literature to religious law to philosophy to grammar to Bible and Talmud. Making the choice to print something in the 15th century was a huge investment, and I think that early choices made by printers made can be very enlightening as to real or perceived audiences. As just a single example, contrary to Gutenberg's famous Bible, Hebrew Bibles were not printed until the end of the 15th century, because it wasn't necessary -- every synagogue had a Torah scroll with which one could access the text.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I adore musical theatre and performance.

What excites you about special collections librarianship?

To me, special collections stand for a unique entry into the past -- and being able to share that with others is a privilege that I am grateful for daily. I love to see and learn from the creativity in the special collections world, especially since COVID started. Librarians, curators, and even private collectors have taken to the internet to share their collections with the world. I am also constantly amazed by the unique ways in which people interact with rare materials: As just one example, Columbia holds an audio archive of interviews focused on linguistic aspects of Yiddish, and one artist used the audio file to create an interpretive dance piece based on the sounds of the conversation.

Thoughts on the future of special collections librarianship?

Openness and information sharing are critical to the future of special collections librarianship. Advocating for your collections looks different for everyone, but if nobody knows that you're there, it's hard to explain why your work should be supported. A friend of mine built a bot to showcase our Hebrew manuscripts on Twitter (@CULhebrewMss), and it now has about 1000 followers - and it's drawn considerable interest to the collections from audiences that I never would have encountered in traditional library outreach. I also strongly believe that mentorship and encouraging new "recruits" to the field is the only way that we can have a future. I have learned so much from both my mentors and mentees -- perhaps I shouldn't say this in a magazine devoted to books and collecting, but not everything can be taught in books!

Any unusual or interesting collection at your library you'd like to draw our attention to?

I am very proud of the Footprints project, which I co-direct with Joshua Teplitsky (Stony Brook), Adam Shear (Pittsburgh) and Marjorie Lehman (Jewish Theological Seminary). Footprints traces the movement of Jewish printed books through time and place - documenting the printers, owners, expurgators, thieves, readers, booksellers, and many other people who interacted with a particular copy of a printed work. As we've noted in various places, printed books are probably "the largest hidden archive of the early modern world," and it's very exciting to be part of a project that's working to bring that hidden information to the fore.

Any upcoming exhibitions at your library?

There are many exhibitions at the Columbia RBML, but I'm really excited about a joint exhibition scheduled (at this point) for Fall of 2021 on the Jews of Corfu, co-hosted by the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). Our two institutions (just six blocks apart) together hold a very unique collection on this little-known community, which produced incredible art, poetry, and religious literature during the early modern period. The exhibition will have a portion at JTS and a portion at Columbia, as well as joint programming around the materials.

Last month the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Washington, D.C., reopened with Her Story: A Century of Women Writers, an exhibition featuring portraits of twenty-four prominent authors, including Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Sandra Cisneros. Her Story is part of a larger initiative to highlight the historical and cultural contributions of women.   

“The work of these women has changed the way that we understand American literature,” said curator Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, the NPG’s senior historian and director of history, research and scholarly programs. “They have worked in many different modes, from poetry to prose, fiction and criticism. Their works have been written for stage and screen and adapted for those formats. Many of these writers are familiar names, while others will be new to many of our visitors. We hope that this exhibition will encourage people to dive deeper into the production of these writers, to revisit favorite books and read new ones.”

Here are the sales I'll be keeping an eye on this week:

Dominic Winter Auctioneers will sell 451 lots of Printed Books, Maps & Documents, Travel, Science & Engineering on Wednesday, October 7. Expected highlights include an unpublished manuscript, John Wallis' "Collection of letters intercepted in cipher during the late warres in England" (1653), estimated at £20,000–30,000, and a first edition in English of Newton's Principia (1729), which could sell for £15,000–20,000. The 1820–1821 manuscript journal of Anglican minister John West's mission to western Canada is estimated at £3,000–5,000.

On Thursday, October 8, Maps & Atlases at Forum Auctions, in 181 lots. A much-used copy of Smyth's Hydrography of Sicily, Malta, and the adjacent islands (1823) rates the top estimate, at £1,500–2,000. The Sayer & Bennett four-sheet New and Correct Map of North America (1779) is estimated at £1,200–1,800.

At Leslie Hindman Auctioneers on Thursday, Selections from the Library of Gerald and Barbara Weiner, in 336 lots. Five lots share the top estimate of $60,000–80,000: a copy of the Shakespeare Fourth Folio (1685); an inscribed presentation copy of T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926); uniformly bound first octavo editions of Audubon's Birds and Quadrupeds; a first edition of Darwin's Origin (1859) with a laid-in 1880 autograph note from Darwin; and a Kelmscott Chaucer (1896). A great many additional high spots and interesting volumes up for grabs in this one, along with the Audubon letters that Rebecca posted about last week.

Rounding out Thursday's sales is Fine Literature – Science Fiction – Illustrated Books at PBA Galleries. The 356 lots include a copy of the Black Sun Press edition of Hart Crane's The Bridge, with three photographs by Walker Evans ($10,000–15,000); a first American edition of Moby-Dick (1851), estimated at $3,000–5,000; and the 1983 Black Sparrow Press edition of Charles Bukowski's Hot Water Music, with an original oil painting by Bukowski.

The week's sales conclude on Saturday, October 10 with an October Sale at Arader Galleries, in 192 lots. Three manuscript maps of the lands held by Thomas, Lord Fairfax, containing the first detailed survey of the Potomac River, are estimated at $800,000–1,200,000. At the same estimate range are three manuscript documents relating to the founding of Germantown, Pennsylvania, and a 1720s manuscript map of the American southwest, from the collection of map historian and collector Dr. Seymour I. Schwartz.

The New-York Historical Society is hosting The People Count: The Census in the Making of America, an exhibition from the collection of David M. Rubenstein. It originally opened just as the world was shutting down due to the coronavirus but has now reopened through November 8. We posted some highlights here on Census Day, April 1, and the above two-minute video provides more on this important topic.

Though launched in 2000, the staff at London's Chelsea Bindery participate in the tradition of fine leather book binding that goes back centuries. This month the bindery celebrates twenty years in business with a catalogue showcasing 170 pieces highlighting the bespoke techniques and skill involved in creating leather bound works of art. 

“These bindings are really individual works of art – the process of cleaning, sewing, fixing endpapers, head banding, gilding and working with illustrators to design one-of-a-kind cover art takes many hours and requires the use of specialized vintage machines that are rarely found in working condition," said Pom Harrington, proprietor of the Chelsea Bindery and the greater Peter Harrington Rare Books empire. "Finding skilled bookbinders who know how to operate them can be even rarer! At the Chelsea Bindery we have an intertype machine that belonged to the legendary Zaehnsdorf Bindery and is almost 90 years old. To our knowledge it is the only machine of its type in regular use in the London area.”

The Chelsea Bindery operates exclusively for Peter Harrington out of a 2,000-square-foot workshop in the London suburb of Battersea, where bookbinders focus on special projects for Harrington customers, including gilt lettering, rebinding, preservation boxes, and restoration. Approximately 150 books pass through the shop every year. 

“The nostalgic element of having a finely bound leather book never seems to lose its appeal among bibliophiles, and fine leather bindings occupy a very special place in the rare book world,” noted Harrington. 

Among the highlights in the bindery's birthday celebration catalogue include a first edition of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s with delicate diamond cover details, hand-bound in rose-pink and black morocco leather and featuring Audrey Hepburn in silhouette, posing in her black Givenchy dress with a cigarette dangling from her hand. Its price? £2,750. There are also unique bound editions of A. A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Frank L. Baum, and J. D. Salinger.

“Fine leather binding is very labour intensive, which means few businesses are willing to invest in the time and skills it requires to create these beautiful books. At the Chelsea Bindery we do it because our customers still love finely bound books. We believe keeping the craft alive is worth the effort and will allow future generations to enjoy that special atmosphere of retiring to a library or reading corner with a beautiful book, whose binding tells as much of a story as its pages,” said Harrington.