These books were still reported missing as of June 11, 2019. The following items were stolen this past weekend in Brooklyn: 1. ; . Painting Illustrated in Three Dialogues, Containing Some Choice Observations Upon the Art. Together with the Lives of The Most Eminent Painters, From Cimabue, to the Time of Raphael, and Michael Angelo, with an Explanation of the Difficult Terms. London: Printed by John Gain for the Author, 1685. Quarto, three-quarter period-style calf gilt, raised bands, crimson spine label, marbled boards. Early owner signature of John Reynolds; first-issue title page printed in red and black, with 1685 date. Occasional foxing and soiling, a few early paper repairs, a few signatures embrowned. 2. Congreve, William . The Old Batchelor; The Double Dealer; Love for Love; The Mourning Bride; The Way of the World. London: J. Tonson, 1733. Five small octavo volumes, uniformly bound in polished speckled calf gilt by Zaehnsdorf, raised bands, maroon spine labels, gilt dentelles. Light offsetting from frontispiece plates, occasional light rubbing to spine ends. If you have any information on either of these items, please contact Heather O'Donnell at 917-974-2420 or heather@honeyandwaxbooks.com [more Two Books Stolen in Brooklyn]

There are two exciting book festivals happening this weekend, the Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, DC and the Brooklyn Book Festival in, you guessed it, Brooklyn, NY. The National Book Festival is free and open to the public and will be held on the National Mall from 10am-5:30pm on Saturday and 12pm-5:30pm, rain or shine. It wil feature presentations from more than 100 authors and illustrators in a variety of genre-specific pavilions as well as a number of family-friendly activities. The festival will also have a special pavilion dedicated to the Library of Congress that will offer "a behind-the-scenes look at the many ways the Library brings its extraordinary resources to people everywhere." The Brooklyn Book Festival is also free and open to the public, and will be taking place at Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza on Sunday from 10am-6pm. More than 280 authors will join bibliophiles, booksellers, and literary organizations that will pack the 14 stages at Borough Hall. This festival is considered by many to be "New York's premiere literary event" (obviously save for the April ABAA Fair). It sounds like a lot of fun and I am definitely planning on attending. So there you go, NYC and DC bibliophiles, two cool literary events to check out this weekend. If you know of a literary/book-related event or exhibition, please submit information about it here so that I can add it to our list of events on the ABAA site! [more Book Festivals This Weekend]

Chicago's Newberry Library is celebrating its 125-year anniversary with a wonderful exhibit, The Newberry 125, and a number of special events. The Newberry 125 showcases 125 unique items from the library's holdings that "best represents the Newberry's mission, its record of collection development, and the community of learning it has engendered throughout a 125-year history." Founded by a $2.2 billion endowment in 1887, the Newberry was established as a free, public library in Chicago with the mission to"provide relevant research and learning opportunities for the public of Chicago and beyond." It quickly became involved in educational programs for the public, and in 1897 the library began to focus building an exemplary collection on the humanities. In the 1940s, fellowships for advanced research and scholarly conference were introduced and they quickly became a major feature of the Newberry. The library opened four specialized research centers in the 1970s. The exhibition is immense, housed in all three of the library's galleries, and features a wide array of interesting items in a variety of mediums. It displays the Newberry's "most immediately awe-inspiring and most utilized, consulted, pored over" items. The original unbound printed instantiation of Voltaire's Candide, correspondence between a slave and his freed wife, letters from Hemingway, and Anna Pavlova's ballet shoes with accompanying program are ony a small taste of what the exhibition has to offer. A complement t... [more Newberry Library Celebrates 125 Years With Exhibition and Special Events]

A rare, first edition of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens with illustrations by Arthur Rackham was recently discovered in a UK charity shop. The 1906 limited edition is bound in vellum, has approximately 50 color plates illustrated by Rackham, and is signed by the artist. The book was donated to the Oxfam Book Shop in Alderley Edge along with a number of more commonplace titles (the donor remains unknown). Needless to say, the shop's manager deemed the find "extraordinary" and offered it for sale at the Alderley Edge Community Book Festival last weekend. Original estimates guessed the book could fetch up to £800, but excited bidders quickly surpassed that figure. In the end, the book was purchased by a 37-year-old Englishman for £1,700. Peter Pan book given to charity shop makes £1,700 [more First Edition Peter Pan with Illustrations by Arthur Rackham Found and Auctioned]

Young bibliophiles, pay heed! The Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies is sponsoring an essay contest for the 30 and younger crowd, and the grand prize is $1,000. That's enough to buy a lot of books with (or at least a few rare texts)! In addition, the essay will be published in the FABS newsletter, so you will get some great exposure as well. Full details are below. American Book Collectors & Collecting from 1940 to the Present A $1000 award for an original essay of 3000 to 4000 words by a writer aged 30 years or younger on any aspect of book or manuscript collecting by private collectors or institutions in the United States from 1940 to the present. The essay should be based on original source materials and documented by appropriate endnotes and citations. In addition to the cash award, the winning essay will be published in two parts, in the September 2013 and January 2014 issues of the FABS Newsletter. The text should be set in Times Roman, follow the Chicago Manual of Style and be formatted as a Microsoft Word document. Only electronic submissions will be accepted, and should be sent to the newsletter editor, Scott Vile, scott@ascensiuspress.com. The submission deadline is May 1, 2013. The deadline isn't until May, but this is a wonderful opportunity, so I would mark your calendar and start thinking about your essay now! [more Calling Young Writers: FABS Essay Contest]

A Columbia graduate student discovered and authenticated a previously unknown manuscript by Claude McKay, a poet and intergal figure in the Harlem Renaissance. (McKay is best known for his poetry and his novel The Negroes in America.) The manuscript, a satirical novel set in 1936 entitled Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem, was discovered in a previously untouched archive by Jean-Christophe Cloutier. In 2009, Cloutier discovered the McKay manuscript while working in Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library going through an archive of materials belonging to Samuel Roth, an American bookseller, writer, and publisher who became best known as the plaintiff in Roth v. United States, a landmark Supreme Court case that redefined obscene material. The 300-page manuscript was bound between cardboard-like covers that listed the novel's title and McKay's name. Cloutier also found two letters from McKay to Roth about the possibility of ghostwriting a novel (not Amiable). The connection between Roth and McKay was previously unknown, and Cloutier and Brent Hayes Edwards, Cloutier's dissertation adviser and an expert in black literature, had to do a bit of literary sleuthing to authenticate the manuscript. It passed the first test: thematic elements in the novel, like Communism and labor strikes in Harlem, echoed other writings by McKay, and the term "Aframerican", which McKay used to denote black people in the Wes... [more Manuscript by Claude McKay, Seminal Figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Discovered]

The following items have been reported stolen: Title : Paradise Lost Authors : John Milton Date of publication : 1691 Publisher : Richard Bentley Description : Leather bound, illustrated, in good condition. On inside of front cover there is a sticker with a family coat of arms and the name "Geilston". There maybe also a name "Geils" (being the owner's maternal grandmother´s family name) in pencil. Title : Herball Authors : John Gerarde Date of publication : 1633 Publisher : Norton & Whittacker Description : Leather bound (restored?), illustrated, in good condition. On inside of front cover there may be a sticker with a family coat of arms and the name "Geilston". There maybe also a name "Geils" (being the owner's maternal grandmother´s family name) in pencil. The frontispiece had been lost and replaced by a facsimile. If you have any information on either of these items, please contact John Bryant at johnshielbryant@gmail.com or (506) 8393 3227. [more Stolen: Leather-bound editions of "Paradise Lost" and "Herball”]

Rare Book School has posted five lectures from the 2012 summer sessions online. Listen to Stuart Bennett on "Trade Bookbinding in the British Isles, 1660-1800", Matthew P. Brown's lecture on "Bell's Liberties", Anne-Marie Eze's presentation on "A Most Fascinating and Dangerous Pursuit: Rare Books at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum", Ezra Greenspan's discussion on "The Biographer and the Mysteries of the Archive: The Case of William Wells Brown", and Johan Kugelberg speak on "Documenting Counter-Culture: Problems and Solutions in the Preservation of Unpopular Historical Narratives." Here a link to a list of past lectures at Rare Book School; additional audio links can be found on the page. If you enjoy these lectures and the other resources on the Rare Book School site, please consider making a charitable donation to the school. Contributions directly support the RBS mission and help the school educate over 300 students every year. [more Rare Book School Lectures Available Online]

The well known magician David Copperfield recently purchased a previously posted about rare audio interview of Martin Luther King, Jr. Copperfield called the tape "priceless", declining to share the actual purchase price. "Not much amazes me, because of what I do, but to get a discovery like this is just mind-boggling," Copperfield said. The Manhattan dealer who sold Copperfield the tape said its value was appraised as $100,000. Copperfield intends to donate the tape to the National Civil Rights Museum, which plans to put the original reel on display and allow visitors to hear the full interview. History professor and head of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute at Stanford University Clayborne Carson said the tape was rare because of the content and nature of the recording (a one-on-one interview), but he also said that he didn't consider the tape to be "valuable as a historical document." He went on to say that he was "suspicious of the story that this was part of a book project" because the interview was so brief (it's only ten minutes long). I wish Professor Carson, or the Chicago Tribune, had elaborated on why he didn't consider the tape to be of historic value since that assessment seems contradictory to his other comments. What do you think? Magician David Copperfield buys rare Martin Luther King audio tape [more Magician David Copperfield Purchases Rare Martin Luther King Audio Tape]

Early findings in an interdisciplinary study at Stanford University provide biological evidence that supports the value of literature. Neurobiological experts, radiologists, and literary scholars have joined forces to examine the relationship between reading, attention, and distraction, specifically the "cognitive dynamics of the different kinds of focus we bring to reading." Participants in the study are asked to read a chapter from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park in two different manners: first, to leisurely skim a passage and then to read more closely, as if they were studying for an exam. The experiment takes place while participants are in an MRI machine so that researchers can monitor the blood flow in the brain during these activities. This shows "where neurons are firing, and when" and also tracks eye movement. If you've ever had an MRI, this probably sounds a little bizarre, as the machine has very tight quarters and you cannot move while the test is in progress. In this experiment, the text is projected onto a mirror inside of the MRI scanner. In addition to color coding within the text, participants receive a verbal cue to switch reading styles (reading for pleasure versus reading with heightened attention). After subjects finish the chapter, they exit the scanner and write a short literary essay on the section they were asked to analyze closely. (All participants are literary PhD candidates from the Bay Area, chosen because researchers thought they would be more adep... [more Literary Neuroscience: Stanford Researchers Demonstrate Value of Literature Through Brain Imaging]