SCHOLARSHIP MALFUNCTION

How embarrassing! The 1626 edition of the Bibliothecae Alexandrinae Icones Sybmolicae has a very noticeable little typo (or is there a word for a typo that is engraved) for its Icon of Erudition/ERUDITIO

PRE-INTERNET ADVERTIZING IN THE BOOK TRADE: AN EXAMPLE

I found this in a book I began to catalogue today (will post on that when I get around to it)– a nice little reminder as to the way things used to be done in the trade, cut and paste on letterhead, pure class, and the telegraphic equivalent of a catchy screen name (BOOKMEN). “Messrs. Henry Sotheran & Co. present their respectful compliments to Mr. Howard, and venture to take the liberty of drawing his attention to a very curious book at present in their possession.” It’s a little piece of ephemera that only survives in special circumstances, or should I say, with owners who save the documentation about above across around &c…& through their book collections. Now that I think about it, I only do this by accident, since the receipts and invoices that come with my books suffer immediate conversion to bookmarkdom. What about you?

TREND ALERT: ANAGRAMS!

Our copy of Guidobaldo Monte’s Mechanicorum liber (1577)– a major work on mechanics that influenced the likes of Galileo & Descartes among others– includes a neat little anagram written into the fly leaf, where you can see the writer [Phillip III of Spain himself?] working out a motto from the letters of his name:

D o n   f e l i p e   t e r c e r o  d e  A u s t r i a

is rendered as Protector eres de la fe diuina, Spanish for  “Your are protector of the divine faith.” Games like this, challenging wordsmiths to make something meaningful and fitting (if not wish-fulfilling) out of their name were a common early modern past time.

Stay tuned for the next hip & wordy trend I’ll be posting on, the Italian tradition of Imprese, which combines name, Latin motto, and iconography.

A Bookseller’s Tale No. 1

From the San Francisco Book Fair, presented without further comment:

Stranger: What’s that?
BP: Oh, it’s a manuscript leaf from an Antiphonal, circa the mid 14th century. We like to call the bird-headed guy in the historiated letter “L” an Anthropozoomorphic Figure…because that’s a word we’ll sadly never have another occasion to use.
Stranger: Huh, neat. I was just wondering, because my husband used to deal in medieval fragments, and he and his friends would front the money for a book together and then take it apart and they’d sell them individually. Do you do that?
BP: Never.

AMERICAN LIBRARY DIRECTORY 2008-2009

Sometimes following the bottom-line in the book trade leads us to tasks of an enormously un-fiscal nature, a downright waste of time. I recently had the distinct pleasure of skimming the entirety of The American Library Directory 2008-2009 in search of that singular Early Printed Books Library in Mesopotamia, PA or wherever that we may have overlooked in mailing out our Summer Catalogue. One lesson learned from the exercise was that, on paper, American libraries are overwhelmingly interested in collecting “Oral History” and “Genealogy”-related materials. Another was that skimming through directories such as these is a time-honored tradition of anyone starting out in the book trade, as my boss had done so in the 70s before me, and doubtless others before him. Like scouring as many auction catalogues as possible on a weekly basis, it’s one of those processes absolutely necessary, and tedious, that cat-like Googling reflexes has very little impact on.

But my lite reading was even more fun than that, because luckily, recourse to the internet makes all information interesting!

Here is a TOP FOUR COUNTDOWN of the library collections you may want to include in your next research proposal, or less insidiously, All-American Road Trip:

INAUGURAL POST

Fig 1.1 The Sanderson Sisters Rely on Books as a Source of Power & Eternal Youth.

For many years many people have made and used books for many reasons (see Fig 1.1). This is yet another so-called ‘biblioblog’ that collects tidbits, particularly from the older portions of the timeline of bookishness. It will stray toward commonplacing and away from commentary, although that really depends on how self-indulgent I’m feeling.