The simple green pine desk that Henry David Thoreau used during his famous stay at Walden Pond left Concord, Massachusetts, for the first time last week, bound for the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City, where it will be on exhibit beginning Friday, June 2. Alongside eighteen other Thoreau artifacts from the Concord Museum, the desk is part of a joint exhibition titled, This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal. 
David Wood, curator of the Concord Museum and author of An Observant Eye: The Thoreau Collection at the Concord Museum, explained in a press release: "Thoreau's green desk was made in Concord in 1838 by a cabinetmaker who charged about a dollar for it. Thoreau kept it with him all his life, wrote on it daily, and kept his journal locked inside it. The part the desk played in American's intellectual history is all out of proportion to its humble form. It's interesting to note that in all likelihood Thoreau's green desk has never before been more than two miles from the shop it was made in."
Thoreau's walking stick, flute, spyglass, and his copy of the Bhagavad-Gita are among the objects lent by the Concord Museum to the Morgan for an exhibition marking the 200th anniversary of the author's birth. More than twenty of Thoreau's journal notebooks from the Morgan's collection, along with letters, manuscripts, and field notes, will also be featured.
This Ever New Self will be on view at the Morgan through September 10. It will then travel to the Concord Museum for a second run, September 29, 2017-January 21, 2018.
Image: Desk, about 1838; Concord Museum Collection; Painted pine, steel; Gift of Cummings E. Davis (1886) Th10; Provenance: Henry Thoreau; Sophia Thoreau; Cummings Davis.
A yearbook from Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, from Allen Ginsberg's graduating class of 1943, signed and annotated by the Beat Generation poet himself, goes to auction next month in California. Stored in a closet for more than seventy years by Ginsberg's classmate, Norman Katz, the yearbook turned up two years ago at an Antiques Roadshow event in Tucson, Arizona.
The blurb alongside Ginsberg's class picture describes him as "the philosopher and genius of the class ... hates dull teachers and Republicans," to which he added in blue pen, "May all of your 50 children be Democrats" and signed his name. 
A printed "Class Poem" by Ginsberg (the class poet) appears in the yearbook, with this opening stanza:
We leave the youthful pennants and the books,
Discard the little compasses and rules;
We open up our eyes, and test our souls,
Prepare ourselves to wield more mighty tools.
Ginsberg also personalized this particular yearbook with a handwritten ditty for his pal Katz that begins:
This is the Katz Pajamas,
our graduating now:
I wish to say that I'm a
graduate, too, and bow.
At the Roadshow event, appraiser Jason Preston valued the yearbook at $10,000 (watch the appraisal below). At the Profiles in History Historical & Pop Culture auction on June 8, the estimate is more conservatively placed at $4,000-6,000.
Images courtesy of Profiles in History
Gabriel García Márquez working on "One Hundred Years of Solitude." Photograph by Guillermo Angulo
Image courtesy of Harry Ransom Center
Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, and the Harry Ransom Center (HRC) at the University of Texas at Austin is marking the day by releasing an online collection documenting the creation of the novel that catapulted Márquez onto the world stage.
This digital launch is part of a larger project funded by a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources to digitize more than 24,000 images from the Márquez archive, which is slated to be completed by December 2017.
The acquisition of the Colombian-born author's collection from the Márquez family in 2014 complements the HRC's vast literary archives of fellow authors like James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and Jorge Luis Borges. Students in the Latin American Studies program will no doubt benefit from studying Márquez's trove of manuscripts, notebooks, correspondence, photo albums, and writing implements, like the two Smith Corona typewriters and five Apple computers Márquez kept and worked on throughout his career.
On May 24, the HRC hosted a Facebook Live discussion where José Montelongo of UT's Benson Latin American Collection and Alvaro Santana-Acuña, a Ransom Center fellow and assistant professor of sociology at Whitman College led a lively conversation in Spanish and English about Márquez and his book. (See the discussion here.)
Interestingly, Márquez destroyed his working papers for Solitude (the HRC does have galleys as well as the last typescript version of the novel), while the trove that remains reveals a perfectionist at his craft. Santana-Acuña, author of the forthcoming book, Ascent to Glory: The Transformation of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' Into a Global Classic (Columbia University Press), explained what awaits scholars who examine the remaining drafts. "He was a hardworking writer. He reviewed texts again and again until he made sure that the language was simple and effective." No small feat for a book whose plot covered seven generations and treated magic and mythology as reality, in the process creating what is widely considered the seminal work of magical realism.
Gabriel García Márquez's annotated typescript of "Love in the Time of Cholera." Image courtesy of Harry Ransom Center
The novel would eventually become known as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, garnering Márquez the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, yet it was not an immediate smash hit, at least among critics. "The book was an unexpected success, but critics were baffled back in 1967," explained Santana-Acuña. "It was anachronistic and traditionalist; a return to old-fashioned storytelling at a time when the novel form was said to be in crisis."
Crisis or no, when it comes to Solitude, Márquez put it best: "There is always something left to love."
The Beatrix Potter Society is crossing the pond next month to host a three-day symposium at Connecticut College entitled, "Beatrix Potter in New London on the Thames River." Sponsored in conjunction with the college's Linda Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives, the three-day program will feature talks exploring Potter's life and her relationship with the natural world, panel discussions, and an exhibition of original Beatrix Potter materials. Speakers include historian and Potter biographer Linda Lear, the Free Library of Philadelphia's art department head Karen Lightner, and the current resident of Potter's marital home Mandy Marshall, among many others.
The Roly Poly Pudding. Public Domain
Potter enthusiasts are heartily welcomed, especially since this is is the first Potter Society meeting held in the United States in five years.
Registration for the symposium is required and the deadline to register has been extended to May 31. The full cost to attend is $450, which includes on-campus lodging and all meals. A reduced rate of $370 is available for those lodging off-campus. Members of the Potter Society may also apply for funding assistance through the Jane Morse Memorial Fund.
Find the application here.
For further information, contact Betsy Bray at braybetsybps@gmail.com or at (860) 752-9303
In need of some bookish beach reads for the upcoming long weekend? Get thee to a bookstore or library and fetch one of these five recommended novels:
Mad Richard by Lesley Krueger (ECW Press, $15.95) is based on the tragic true story of Victorian-era artist Richard Dadd. As his promising career takes off, Dadd rubs shoulders with J.M.W. Turner and Charles Dickens. Charlotte Brontë also enters the picture, after Dadd's mental health takes a turn and he ends up in the Royal Bethlem Hospital (i.e., Bedlam). Smart and satisfying.
The Book of Summer by Michelle Gable (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, $25.99) is the third novel by the author of A Paris Apartment, featured in my 2014 summer reading round-up. Set in Nantucket, the novel's dual narrative pings between the eve of World War II and the present, following the characters who fill the faded pages of a summer home's guest book. A great escape!
Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller (Tin House, $25.95) is my current read, picked up for its premise: A wife hides letters to her husband within the pages of the thousands of books he has collected, and then disappears. Set on the English seaside, the novel is thoughtful, with a sharp edge. If that sounds like your cup of tea: try an excerpt. 
The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World by Brian Doyle (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, $25.99) is Robert Louis Stevenson's lost first novel, imagined by Doyle. As "an affectionate homage," (The New York Times) Stevenson fans are likely to either love or hate it. Boyle, however, does succeed in transporting the reader to 19th-century San Francisco.
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Random House, $28) is historical fiction--not "bookish" in the same sense of the others on this list, but it is so innovative in narrative style and so brilliantly imagined, the reader feels herself in the presence of Literature. It is haunting and heartfelt, and lives up to all of the hype (...MacArthur Genius, bestseller, critical acclaim).
Images courtesy of ECW Press and Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Press.
Exciting news for young female book collectors: Brooklyn's Honey & Wax Booksellers has announced an annual prize of $1,000 to be awarded to a woman aged 30 or younger with an "outstanding book collection." The collection can include books, manuscripts, and/or ephemera, organized by whatever principle the collector deems appropriate to the material. 
Honey & Wax booksellers Heather O'Donnell and Rebecca Romney, pictured here at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair last year, took some inspiration for the collecting prize from the American book collector Mary Hyde Eccles. "Rebecca and I are both interested in the historic role of women in the rare book trade, on both the buying and the selling sides, and want to do whatever we can to get younger women involved," said O'Donnell.
The Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize "rewards creativity, coherence, and bibliographic rigor," according to the announcement, and "collections will not be judged on their size or their market value." Entrants need not be enrolled in a degree program, a significant difference from similar collecting contests, and one that opens it up to a broader range of applicants. As O'Donnell said, "We want to give those women who have applied to their college book collecting contests and/or to the National Collegiate contest an additional chance to be recognized for their work, and we'd also like to reach out to bookish young women outside the academy."
The deadline is July 15, and the application details are here.
Image courtesy of Honey & Wax.
Bronze relief portrait medallion. 1906. 60 mm diameter.
The 19th Century Rare Book & Photograph Shop recently announced the sale of a massive 750-piece collection dedicated to the life and works of the father of modern psychology and psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.
The collection includes a comprehensive representation of Freud's published works from the 1880s to the 1940s. Freud was is one of the field's most prolific authors, and many of the books in this collection are in their original printed wrappers. A run of 22 rare offprints--galley proofs, presentation and association copies--is believed to be the largest such collection in private hands.
Also among the items are etchings, lithographs, bronze medallions, and photographs of Freud, many of which are signed by the doctor. In addition to manuscripts, correpondance, and psychoanalytic journals, are nearly 80 books that Freud had donated to the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, remarkable because the Nazis dissolved the society and destroyed the library in 1938. This cache was secretly saved.
Believed to be one of the most thorough private collections on Freud, the entire collection is being offered for $350,000. For a detailed inventory, contact Stephan Lowentheil at 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph shop at http://www.19thshop.com/
Sangorski & Sutcliffe is synonymous with fine binding and is often hailed as the "Rolls Royce of Bookbinding." At the turn of the twentieth century, Francis Sangorski and George Sutcliffe wowed their fellow craftsmen with elaborate and innovative leather binding designs. Ornate jewelled bindings--featuring inset semi-precious stones--became one of their specialties.
Next month one of those sumptuous bindings is going to auction in New York. It is, according to Bonhams, a "fantastic example of a Sangorski & Sutcliffe jewelled binding ... with 9 pearls and 3 rubies, and incorporating 9 sapphires, surrounded with a wreath of laurel enriched with 79 pearls." And the inside is as beautiful as the outside: Bound within is an illuminated manuscript on vellum of Byron's "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte" accomplished by L. Fairfax Murray, an artist associated with the English Arts and Crafts movement. 
Notably, this book was once owned by Phoebe A.D. Boyle, a Brooklyn widow and prominent Sangorski & Sutcliffe collector. Boyle's collection of 45 S&S jewelled bindings (and 31 illuminated manuscripts done by Alberto Sangorski, Francis's brother) went to auction in 1923. "It was by far the greatest array of these masterpieces ever put together and can never be replicated," wrote Stephen Ratcliffe, in a 2014 article for Fine Books about the Ransom Center's renowned S&S collection.
Perhaps not replicated, but some collector will have the opportunity to nab this one at least -- for an estimated $40,000-60,000.
Image courtesy of Bonhams
In response to California's recently passed autograph law, Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation filed a First Amendment lawsuit in the Northern District of U.S. District Court in California on behalf of Bay Area bookstore Book Passage and its co-owner, Bill Petrocelli, seeking a repeal of a law they consider unconstitutional.
The complaint, Passage v. Becerra, alleges that Assembly Bill 1570 makes it illegal for Book Passage to host author talks and signing events. According to section 1739.7 of the law, anyone selling an autographed book worth more than five dollars must provide a "certificate of authenticity," which must include a description of the book, the signatory's identity, the identity of any third parties witnessing the autograph, date of sale, insurance information, and other such details. A copy of these records must be maintained by the seller for seven years. Violating these requirements subjects a seller to huge fines: "a civil penalty in an amount equal to 10 times actual damages, plus court costs, reasonable attorney's fees, interest, and expert witness fees, if applicable, incurred by the consumer in the action. The court, in its discretion, may award additional damages based on the egregiousness of the dealer's conduct." (California Civil Code § 1739.7(g))
The law went into effect on January 1.
Book Passage alleges AB-1570 is a violation of the First Amendment because of the undue burden it creates on the bookseller to both disseminate books, autographed or otherwise, and burdens protected speech.The lawsuit also claims that AB-1570 irrationally exempts pawn shops and online retailers from the law but not brick-and-mortar storefronts. "The new restrictions were held out as a means to protect consumers, but the Legislature exempted precisely those transactions -- internet and pawn shop transactions -- where consumer vulnerability is highest," said PLF Senior Attorney Joshua Thompson.
Petrocelli says Book Passage hosts over 700 author events a year and that this new provision to the autograph law will create a "massive bureaucratic nightmare," severely hampering his ability to continue hosting author talks at his three stores.
Pacific Legal Foundation is representing Book Passage pro bono in the lawsuit. "With the passage of AB-1570, California lawmakers have threatened the vitality of bookstores and the hosting of author events, and in so doing, dealt a major blow to free speech," said PLF Attorney Anastasia Boden.
A spokesperson for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said they are reviewing the complaint.
Speaking on behalf of the ABAA regarding any legal action, Executive Director Susan Benne said: "We fully understand and share the frustrations and problems AB-1570 has caused since its passage. The ABAA has chosen to pursue a legislative solution by collaborating with California lawmakers to amend the legislation to protect our members, rather than suing the state of California to overturn it in court. A protracted lawsuit would be costly, could take years to resolve, and risks a judgement adverse to our interests."
See the complaint here.
Collectors of any stripe will recognize themselves within the pages of James Barron's absorbing book, The One-Cent Magenta: Inside the Quest to Own the Most Valuable Stamp in the World ($23.95), published earlier this year. ? la The Red Violin, Barron traces the episodic history of the penny postage issued in British Guiana in 1856 that implausibly became the world's most expensive stamp when it sold at Sotheby's for about $9.5 million in 2014 (auctioneer David Redden, who has sold his share of famous rare books, plays the role of supporting actor in Barron's book). 
It all began with a twelve-year-old philatelist who discovered the reddish scrap with clipped corners among his uncle's old papers. He sold it for six shillings (about $16.83 in today's dollars, Barron informs us). After that, the stamp had many adventures and more than a few oddball owners, which Barron, a New York Times journalist, reports with verve.
Hidden away for large blocks of time in a Parisian castle and a New York City bank vault, the unique one-cent magenta became a source of intrigue: Was it doctored? Over-painted? Was a second discovered and quickly destroyed to bolster its value? Barron delves into these details without getting bogged down in philatelic minutiae--readers need not have more than a passing interest in postal matters to thoroughly enjoy this book.
Image Courtesy of Algonquin Books
