Library
To filter through hundreds of articles, tick the boxes below
Search
ILAB Library - All You Need To Know About Rare Books and the Antiquarian Book Trade
-
[+] More Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein - Monster Book Sells for Monster Price at the London International Antiquarian Book Fair
Published since 19 Jun 2013Over 1,000 people visited the London International Antiquarian Book Fair on the first day, with a record-breaking queue when the Fair opened its doors at 3pm on Thursday June 13, 2013 at the National Exhibition Hall at Olympia, West London. This resulted in an 18% increase in visitor numbers on the first day compared to the 2012 Fair and this trend continued with visitor numbers up on both of the following two days.
-
[+] More Intellectual Gluttony - Philosophy Against the Abundance of Books, from Petrarca to Kant to Hegel and Nietzsche
Published since 14 Jun 2013A characteristic feature of Modernity is the contempt of too much food - and books. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche considered the abundance of books to be unhealthy. In their view, both libraries and human thinking should be restricted to a moderate amount of keeping and reading “the right books”. At the same time health fanatics, physicians and the ever rising fashion industry put the world on a diet. The ideal of physical slimness and the contempt of too much food (and drinks, of course) coincides with the philosophical ideal of “intellectual slimness”, writes Manfred Schneider, professor of German Literature and Media at the University of Bochum. In his historical outline he describes how philosophers from Petrarca to Kant to Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger condemned the abundance of books in libraries and how they fought against, what they thought to be, intellectual gluttony. -
[+] More A Brief History of Broadsides
Published since 13 Jun 2013Samuel F Haven, former librarian for the American Antiquarian Society, presided over one of the largest collections of broadsides in the world. Historians and rare book collectors alike cherish broadsides because they offer snapshots of moments in time, helping us to understand the zeitgeist of that era. Broadsides make ideal complements to a rare book collection, granting the collection greater depth and context.
-
[+] More What do you see? Frontispieces of Margaret Cavendish – A Lecture by Maureen E. Mulvihill
Published since 12 Jun 2013Students of 17th century women writers, art history, and book culture will be interested in Maureen E. Mulvihill’s observations on the articulate frontispiece portraits of Margaret (Cavendish), Duchess of Newcastle, published in her remarkable corpus of work. With digital images, a table display of rare books (Mulvihill Collection), and a distributed bibliography, Maureen E. Mulvihill (Princeton Research Forum, Princeton NJ) will engage with these visual constructions as physical artifacts of 17th century book design and as ‘text’ to be read and parsed on the writer’s character and identity. Keynote speaker Maureen E. Mulvihill is a broadly published specialist on women writers, rare books, the London & Dublin book trade, and the intersection of literary text and the visual arts. She also has published on Rubens, Van Dyck, the Elzeviers, printers’ marks, watermarks, woodcuts, and the Stuart legacy of Veronese. She studied at Wisconsin, the Yale Center for British Art, the Columbia University Rare Book School, and, as an NEH Fellow, Johns Hopkins University. Since the 1980s, she has been a visiting professor and speaker on many campuses. She is at work on Irishwomen’s political writings and response c1603-1801.
-
[+] More Collecting Rare Books and First Editions - Blood and Laughter
Published since 11 Jun 2013For a few brief months the journals spoke with the great and unprecedented rage that neither arrest not exile could silence. At first their approach was oblique, their allusions veiled, and they fell victim to the censor’s pencil. But people had suffered censorship for too long. Satirists constantly expanded their targets of attack, demolishing one obstacle after another as they went, thriving on censorship.
-
[+] More Cataloguing Rare Books - May We Please Have Our Description Back?
Published since 07 Jun 2013I have an idea for something that might actually provide the protection that copyright alone does not. As you might expect, it involves, once again, the internet. If that is where the crimes are now being committed, that is where we should put our cops to work. What I have in mind is a descriptive bibliographic database where booksellers can publish all their copyrighted descriptions in a way that clearly establishes priority and ownership. It would be a public place where you can claim what is yours. But it would also be much more than that. If enough booksellers participated, an open searchable database of this nature would soon constitute a valuable bibliographic reference that collectors, librarians, students and scholars could use for all types of research. It would make a useful permanent resource out of information that is now mostly ephemeral.
-
[+] More BOOKS GO LIVE! – The London International Antiquarian Book Fair
Published since 06 Jun 2013The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association’s London International Antiquarian Book Fair features a range of special activities in the LIVE! zone at this year's fair which will be held at the National Hall, Olympia from Thursday 13th to Saturday 15th June 2013. They proudly present a variety of events: Lectures, Guided Tours and workshops, which will appeal to experienced collectors and bibliophiles as well as those just starting out.
-
[+] More How To Identify Simon & Schuster First Editions
Published since 05 Jun 2013One of the four largest English-language publishing houses, Simon & Schuster now publishes over 2,000 titles a year under 35 different imprints. The firm started by publishing crossword puzzle books and grew to publish some of the world's most recognized authors. How to identify Simon & Schuster first editions.
-
[+] More Collecting Rare Books and First Editions - Space Travel and The Private Library
Published since 04 Jun 2013In 1813, British mathematician William Moore published Treatise on the Motion of Rockets, the first exposition of rocket mechanics based on Newton's Third Law of Motion. But it was not until the early 20th century that this literature really can be said to have properly begun. It has its roots in the work of three men: Hermann Oberth, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard. Each of these pioneers of astronautics appear to have independently developed similar theories about the possibility of rockets escaping earth's gravitational pull, and their earliest expositions of such theories are the core of any private library purporting to cover space travel.
-
[+] More In the Press - Robert the Bruce Letter Found at British Library
Published since 04 Jun 2013“A previously unknown letter of Robert the Bruce, addressed to the king of England, has been found in a British Library manuscript. The letter was written in 1310, and reveals how, when faced with an English army marching into Scotland, Robert made an eloquent appeal to King Edward II, asking for peace on the understanding that Scottish independence be recognized. Robert's letter, written in Latin, is entered into the pages of a manuscript made towards the end of the 15th century by the monks of Kirkstall Abbey (Yorkshire). Its significance was recognised by Professor Dauvit Broun of the University of Glasgow, the principal investigator of the Breaking of Britain project (Cross-border society and Scottish independence, 1216-1314) ...”
