It is circa 1788. An American lawyer, Archippus Seele (1765–1789) of Easton, Massachusetts, is apparently in a grumpy mood. The reasons could be many. Some in the community accused Archie's father, a sawyer, of employing the imps of Satan to keep things running. That could make you unhappy. If Archippus had been a precog perhaps he had a freak when he intuited his mother would become a distant a... [more]

As if the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL; also referred to as IS, ISIS, and Daesh) actions weren't troubling enough, last week the US Department of State reported on the irrevocable damage the terror organization continues to wreak on cultural artifacts in Iraq and Syria. The destruction goes beyond wartime collateral damage– ISIL is celebrating their destruction of religious monum... [more]

Who would have thought that the University of Pennsylvania's PennApps competition would produce an app beneficial to the rare book world? PennApps is touted as the "premiere college hackathon" and it brings together 1,000 university students from more than 100 institutions across the globe for a 48-hour competition to create hacks and apps for web or mobile platforms. This year three students fro... [more]

Manuscripts for a previously unknown novel by Pearl Buck were discovered in a storage locker in Texas. The novel, entitled The Eternal Wonder, appears to have been completed just prior to Buck's death in 1973 and is described as "a coming-of-age tale of a young man who ends up on patrol in the Korean demilitarized zone and in his travels finds love and romance." “It's a novel that encompasses s... [more]

Two Illinois State University math professors recently authenticated that two math-notebook pages belonged to Abraham Lincoln. The pages were found in the archives of Harvard's Houghton Library and were part of a math workbook, called a ciphering book, that Lincoln worked on in his youth. The ciphering book is the oldest known Lincoln manuscript. Nerida Ellerton and Ken Clements, the professors wh... [more]

Capote's edits on the manuscript (image via Toronto Star) Truman Capote's typed Breakfast at Tiffany's manuscript was sold at auction late last month for a whopping $306,000. The 1958 manuscript contains Capote's handwritten edits, which number up to a dozen changes per page. Perhaps the most significant change is the heroine's name: originally Connie Gustafson, Capote crossed out every mention o... [more]

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, ... [more]

In the video below, ABAA member Dr. Sandra Hindman presents a brief overview of medieval manuscript illumination, focusing on their artistic value. [more]

An unpublished manuscript written by a fourteen-year-old Charlotte Brontë will go up for auction at Sotheby's London next month. The manuscript is of a mini-magazine entitled The Young Man's Magazine, Number 2, and tells a story of murder and madness. Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby's specialist on Books and Manuscripts, said that the piece "provides a rare and intimate insight into one of history's gre... [more]

In commemoration of what would be William Golding's centennial birthday, the Bodleian Library at Oxford will be displaying the original manuscript of The Lord of the Flies. The exhibit was curated by the author's daughter, Judy Carver, and will also include several first editions of the author's works, family photographs, and the Nobel Prize he received in 1983 for The Lord of the Flies. According... [more]