Coming Events
Quotes & Comments
Swallows & Amazons
Back in December, we posted about a new tourism plan that allows visitors to “cast off into your very own Swallows & Amazons adventure,” inspired by Arthur Ransome’s classic series. Nigel Beale, founder of Literary Tourist replied: “Loved these books growing up! Great initiative.”
Pottering About
In January, Barbara Basbanes Richter gave us an update on Beatrix Potter-related events for the upcoming year, to which reader Meredith Crossman McClung added: “Another great way to connect with members of the Beatrix Potter Society is the conference this coming September, 2018. See the Society’s website for details on this enjoyable stay in the Lake District.”
Metaphoric Binding
Book artist and longtime contributor to FB&C Richard Minsky recently completed his latest “book shrine,” a metaphoric binding of It Can’t Happen Here. Fine Books editor Rebecca Rego Barry interviewed Minsky on our blog. He recounts:
“I read [the book] for the first time after the 2016 election, when it garnered a lot of attention and again became a bestseller. My original intention wasn’t to do a binding. In the novel the protagonist is a newspaper editor in Vermont. A populist buffoon is elected president of the USA and becomes a demagogue. All laws were made to benefit corporations. The editor and other members of the New Underground Resistance steal ‘an old hand printing-press’ from the basement of the newspaper office, and take 8-point type, a pocketful at a time. They publish a four-page pamphlet titled ‘Vermont Vigilance.’ One way of distributing the pamphlets was to surreptitiously insert them into other publications.”
Thoreau Trove in Rochester, NY / Chawton’s Library of Women Writers
Recent issues of FB&C featured Thoreau and the Chawton Library of Women Writers (Hampshire UK). Readers may be interested in the following supplementary information: Rochester Review (July-August, 2017) presented a detailed, illustrated article by Kathleen McGarvey on Thoreau collector, Raymond R. Borst. The respected Borst Collection of some 800 items is now preserved at the University of Rochester. Borst also published a descriptive bibliography of Thoreau (Pittsburgh, 1982) and a biography, The Thoreau Log (G. K. Hall, 1992). McGarvey’s article was reprinted online in the Florida Bibliophile Society newsletter (Sept., 2017); I was pleased to coordinate that broader accessibility.
FB&C’s article on the Chawton House Library might have mentioned one of the collection’s rarest and most elegant poetry books: Female Poems … by Ephelia (1679). Chawton acquired the Sir Edmund Gosse copy at the Brett-Smith Library auction (Sotheby’s 2004), £3360 (my auction report, Restoration Fall, 2004). Owing to its controversial history and intriguing connection to Mary (Villiers) Stuart, Duchess of Richmond (“the Butterfly”), the book has enjoyed considerable market appreciation and a second life. —Maureen E. Mulvihill, Collector profile, FB&C (Autumn, 2016)
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