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This week, book shops and libraries across the UK are opening their doors to the public for the first time in three months.
The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked economic havoc across the nation, and the book industry has been affected as much as anyone. With bookstores and libraries forced to close, fairs cancelled and events postponed, book...
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This week book shops across the UK are opening for the first time in three months.
To celebrate we have decided to share an account of an extraordinary phantom book sale.
Titled, 'The Library of Count de Fortsas, 1840', this article was published in number 6 of The Book Collectors Quarterly, in June 1932. It was written by William Blades, the...
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If you missed Spencer Stuart's wonderful webinar back in April - Lifecycles: Collecting and Collections, based on his three-part Lifecycles program - here is your chance to take part. The next Lifecycles virtual presentation will take place on 26th June 2020, at 1pm EDT / 6pm BST.
Registration for the June session is reflecting a diverse cross-...
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All The Book Collector Podcasts are special, but this one may be more special than others.
It is Mark James, reading Anke Timmerman's article relating to Joseph Banks, the famous explorer and naturalist whose death 200 years ago is being remembered worldwide.
'A Palimpsest of Naturalists: The Manuscripts of the Linnean Society of London...
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This week The Norman Rockwell Museum released a powerful letter from the Museum Director/CEO, Laurie Norton Moffat, titled 'Hope in the Time of Despair'. The letter invites readers to join in a "conversation with the community on race and healing" with a virtual Four Freedoms Forum on 11th June 2020.
"Please come together to share your thoughts...
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In 1966 a devastating flood swept through the city of Florence, destroying homes and livelihoods, and killing 101 people.
Thousands of priceless books, papers and manuscripts were reduced to mulch in the space of a few hours.
This article from our Spring 1967 issue (which was dedicated to Florence) is a first hand account from Mario Witt,...
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250 years ago, during the voyage of HMB Endeavour, Captain James Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to set foot on the eastern coast of Australia. Among them was the ship’s naturalist, twenty-seven year old Lincolnshire botanist Joseph Banks, who discovered some 1,300 previously unknown botanical species during this voyage – from Brazil...
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Want to know more about the history of the early printed Qur'an in the Muslim world?
Nick McBurney will be talking about this surprisingly under-explored subject next week, with Roxana Kashani (Bloomsbury Auctions) discussing the manuscript Qur'an, and Alex Day (Bernard Quaritch) on the Qur'an in the West.
You can join them for this virtual...
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Worldwide lockdowns have taken their toll on us all. So many freedoms that we had taken for granted, suddenly seem like distant memories. The pleasure of wandering into a library and browsing through the stacks is certainly a feeling we lament.
There is hope on the horizon, as June will see some of the social restrictions begin to ease in the...
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We are now in week nine of lockdown in the UK and a lot has happened during a time when our lives have been restricted so dramatically. The antiquarian book world seems to have got on with it and it has brought about some fantastic collaborations among dealers and some new ways to run book fairs and sell books around the world.
The pandemic may...