50 Books About Books

Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England by Susan Frye (University of Pennsylvania Press, jacketed hardcover, $65). From works on paper to needlework and painting, the author discusses how Renaissance women communicated with each other and shaped their own identities.

The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay by Umberto Eco (Rizzoli, jacketed hardcover, $45). Eco revels in our impulse for collecting and our passion for cataloguing, with illustrations from the Louvre. Eco spoke on this topic at the ILAB-LILA International Congress and Book Fair earlier this year.

Literary Life: A Second Memoir by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster, jacketed hardcover, $24). A follow-up to his acclaimed Books, McMurtry continues his musings on writing and bookselling.

A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses by Anne Trubek (University of Pennsylvania Press, jacketed hardcover, $24.95). A travelogue combined with literary history, written with humor and humanity, by professor Trubek. Great idea, wonderfully executed. (Read more about it on our blog.)

Living With Books by Dominique Dupuich & Roland Beaufre (Thames & Hudson, hardcover, $45). A beautiful book about bookcases, bookshelves, and home libraries with amazing photography of the collections of writers, artists, designers, and more. This title is also a “Nick’s Pick.”

The Oxford Companion to the Book edited by Michael J. Suarez, S. J. & H. R. Woudhuysen (Oxford University Press, two volumes hardcover, in slipcase, $325). These two volumes contain more than a million words across more than 1,400 pages, treating nearly every imaginable aspect of book culture. Nearly four hundred scholars from twenty-seven countries contributed the fifty-one essays (nineteen thematic studies, thirty-two national/regional histories of the book) and 5,160 A-Z reference entries. From the FB&C spring quarterly: “It’s awe-inspiring.”

Neverland: J. M. Barrie, the du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan by Piers Dudgeon (Pegasus, jacketed hardcover, $26.95). A no-holds-barred biography of J. M. Barrie, containing new details of his involvement with the du Maurier family and the Davies children, who provided the inspiration for Barrie’s story of a little boy who did not want to grow up.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett (Riverhead, jacketed hardcover, $24.95). A gripping—and disturbing—account of the life and crimes of serial book thief John Charles Gilkey, along with profiles of the booksellers and others who have long sought to put an end to Gilkey’s crime spree.

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro (Simon & Schuster, jacketed hardcover, $26). Taking the bull by the horns, acclaimed Shakespeare scholar Shapiro deftly tackles the so-called “authorship controversy” by examining its roots, its various forms and their proponents, before concluding that, based on all the evidence we have, Shakespeare was Shakespeare after all.

Lost Rights: The Misadventures of a Stolen American Relic by David Howard (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, jacketed hardcover, $26). The thrilling saga of North Carolina’s original copy of the Bill of Rights, stolen during the Civil War and displayed in the home of an Indiana family for decades before a FBI sting resulted in the document’s triumphant return to North Carolina. From our August 2010 review: “For collectors, dealers, archivists, and armchair historians, his book has much to offer, not the least of which is a poignant cautionary tale.”