A contest held by the University of Chicago's Special Collections Research Center has cracked the code of handwritten marginalia in a 1504 Venetian edition of Homer's Odyssey. Collector M.C. Lang donated his collection of Homer's works to the University of Chicago Library in 2007 so that it could be used by students and researchers. The 1504 edition of the Odyssey was included in the donation and ... [more]

The literary world has been buzzing all week about ABAA members George Koppelman and Dan Wechsler's possession of a dictionary, John Baret's Alvearie, they believe was owned and annotated by William Shakespeare. There has been considerable press on Shakespeare's Beehive, and Dan has had the opportunity to chat about their scholarship with a number of outlets. Dan Wechsler sat down with Amy Eddings... [more]

George Koppelman and Daniel Wechsler have been waiting for this day for six years– the day the world will discover they are in possession of a book they claim was owned by William Shakespeare. Koppelman and Wechsler purchased a copy of Baret's Alvearie, or Quadruple Dictionarie (1580), on eBay in 2008. While other books have more famously earned the designation of Shakespeare source texts, work... [more]

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 s... [more]

The Charleston Library Society, the oldest library in the South, has been conducting a muti-year search and cataloguing project to record the multitude of volumes it contains in its vault. (The library has been moved a number of times over the years and collections have been integrated, thus necessitating the project.) Recently the search unearthed a rare, 270-year-old book on political parties, H... [more]

In early April, I posted about an amazing find that member Ken Sanders made at a charity event in Sandy, Utaha German language Nuremberg Chronicle from 1494. The owner had no idea what he possessed; it was passed down from a great uncle and has been sitting in his attic for decades, which impacted the condition of the book greatly (only about 1/3 of the full text is present). Despite its conditio... [more]

Last May, the Brooklyn Historical Society discovered a rare 1770 Ratzer map in its possession. The map was delivered to the society's office in May along with a shipment of other maps and prints from their warehouse in Connecticut. There was no catalog listing the map or any record of how the map was acquired, but the society was thrilled with the discovery nonetheless. Prior to this finding, it w... [more]