Johnny Depp (image via Wikipedia) HarperCollins announced today that Johnny Depp will partner with the publisher to create his own literary imprint, called Infinitum Nihil (the same name of the production company Depp started with his sister in 2004). HarperCollins said the new imprint, which means "nothing is forever', will publish titles that reflect Mr. Depp's eclectic tastes and seek "authent... [more]

Earlier this year, a German citizen purchased a thin brochure inscribed with the name “Brücke” for €5 at a local flea market. It turns out this was quite a find; the brochure was a catalogue for a 1912 travelling exhibition of the Die Brücke collective. Die Brücke ("The Bridge") was a German artists' group formed in 1905 by four architectural students in DresdenErnest Ludwig Kirchner, Fr... [more]

The Seventh Annual NY Art Book Fair was held two weeks ago at MoMA PS 1, and I'm sorry that I missed it. Organized by Printed Matter, the fair had more than 200 local and international exhibitors and also included screenings, lectures, musical performances, and book signings. ABAA member Adam Davis of Division Leap (Portland, OR) was exhibiting at the fair for his fourth consecutive year. Division... [more]

Jorie Graham has the distinction of being the first American woman to win the Forward Prize for Poetry. Her book P L A C E was awarded Best Collection, a prize that was last awarded to a woman in 2004. P L A C E "explores the ways in which our imagination, intuition, and experience - increasingly devalued by a culture that regards them as 'mere' subjectivity - aid us in navigating a world moving b... [more]

Sourcebooks publishing house has recently released a line of ebook/iPad apps called The Shakesperience. Using the iPad's technological capabilities, these books provide a multimedia experience that allow readers to interact with Shakespeare's plays. Each play features an embedded glossary of approximately 2,000 terms; video and audio commentary, interviews, and introductions by thespians; classic ... [more]

Two recently published titles focus not on the fatalistic claims that we are closing in on 'the end of the book', but rather examine what the future holds for books, in both the private and public sectors. In This Is Not the End of the Book, Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere have a lively intellectual discussion about books, "reading, the Internet, book collecting and odd byways of literary and... [more]

An extensive Ernest Hemingway collection compiled by a Mississippi physician was donated to the University of South Carolina Columbia and put on display at the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library for a special showing earlier this week. Edgar Grissom, the 70-year-old collector and donor, has worked for more than 50 years in his quest to compile all of Hemingway's English-language public... [more]

A rare 161-year-old book of recipes owned by Beatrix Potter is set to go to auction on Thursday. Also for sale is a collection of books and ephemera from Potter's husband William Hellis's personal effects. The cookbook is full of Hellis's family recipes, clearly handed down through generations, but there are several recipes that appear to be in Potter's own hand. Richard Westwood-Brookes, a repres... [more]

In July, I posted about a rare first English edition of Machiavelli's The Prince (1640) that the head of British auction house Keys found during a collection evaluation. Needless to say, Keys considered it a "very exciting find" and expected to bring in between �25,000 to �30,000 ($30,992 to $46,488) at auction. Unfortunately, bidders were not as enthusiastic and the book failed to sell. As a resu... [more]

Maggs Bros. Ltd., a prominent London antiquarian book firm, currently has an exhibition on display that links contemporary art with antiquarian materials. After visiting a group exhibit in which artists were invited to create pieces inspired by a British museum, Maggs director Robert Harding had a brilliant ideawhy not replicate a similar project at Maggs, allowing artists to create unique pieces... [more]

Tom Congalton, newly elected ILAB President (image via ILAB) Thomas Congalton, proprietor of Between the Covers Rare Books, Inc. and long-time ABAA member, was elected ILAB President yesterday at the annual President's Meeting. His election by his international colleagues, all Presidents of their respective national associations, was unanimous. The meeting took place during the 40th ILAB Congress... [more]

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 bil... [more]

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 ... [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]

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 ... [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]

Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the most renowned photographers of the twentieth century, considered by many to be the father of modern photojournalism and a "master of candid photography". From 1967-1997, the majority of Cartier-Bresson's beautiful black and white photographs were printed by Voja Mitrovic, a master printer at Picto, the famed Parisian photo lab. During the time they worked toget... [more]

One of Mr. Locke's pay phone libraries (via his blog) John H. Locke, a Manhattan architectural designer, has found a unique use for NYC phone booths: turn them into libraries. With the advent of cell phones and smart phones, the use of public telephones has taken a nosedive in recent years but 13,000 still remain on city streets. In July, the Department of Information Techonology and Telecommunic... [more]

I came across this cool blog called Underground New York Public Library that uses photographs to document what New York subway riders are reading. The blog is of obvious interest to me as a New Yorker, avid reader, and daily subway rider, but I recommend checking it out. Besides providing me with a great place to read, my favorite part of riding the subway is scoping out what other people are rea... [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]

After a friend showed Thom Adorney, a retired Colorado schoolteacher, an antique whaling journal written by an ancestor in the 1850s, Mr. Adorney had a great idea: why not give students at the local Ute Meadows Elementary School the unique opportunity to unlock history for themselves? For over a year now, that's exactly what students have been doing. The entire journal was photographed and student... [more]

On May 1, Emory University's Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) opened the archive of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to the public. The SCLC was founded in 1957 by seminal civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. in response to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Black leaders in the southeast were cognizant that the boycott was the beginning of a much l... [more]

The Chicago-based Churchill Centre has donated $8 million to establish the first U.S. research center and library devoted to the legacy of Winston Churchill. The National Churchill Center and Library will be located on the campus of George Washington University and is slated to open between 2013 and 2015. Members of the Churchill Centre will collaborate on the collection that will be housed in the... [more]

Our friend and former ABAA President Stuart Bennett recently published a novel encompassing genres including historical fiction (think Jane Austen and the Regency Period, Shakespeare's London), romance, and time travel. The Perfect Visit "tells the story of two bibliophiles who go back in time to rescue lost books and manuscripts." I couldn't put it down! A must read for any rare bookie. Check it ... [more]

ABAA Members Anne and David Bromer have very generously donated two million dollars to the Boston Athenaeum in support of the institution and the Bromer Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Athenaeum. Read more about it here! [more]

Member Barbara Cohen has put together a fabulous website, newyorkboundbooks.com, that is a "resource dedicated to all things New York for readers and writers". Here's a link to a blog post about the site from the NY Times. Congratulations, Barbara, and thank you for putting together a great resource! [more]

Bon Appetit recently named the "7 Best Culinary Bookstores in America" and ABAA firms Rabelais (Portland, ME) and Amber Unicorn (Las Vegas, NV) made the list! (If you've browsed either shop's inventory, this is no surprise!) Congratulations! The 7 Best Culinary Bookstores in America [more]

Last weekend's 35th Annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair was a great successlots of incredible material was being offered by dealers and each day the fair was filled with enthusiastic attendees both young and old. If you could draw your attention away from the books, prints, maps, ephemera, etc., you could even see a few celebrities! According to the Boston Globe: Rocker Peter Wolf, ... [more]

In 1863, Union Army Captain William A. Treadwill of the 4th New York Regiment took a book of court records from a Virginia county courthouse and shipped it north to Boston, presumably to keep the book as a relic. The book made its way from Boston to Jersey City, where it remained in the Jersey City Free Public Library for the past 150 years. The book was recently unearthed while librarians were pa... [more]