Rare books, manuscripts, music, ephemera…
5th November 2020
I am currently cataloguing some new material in preparation for the Boston Virtual Book Fair next week. Here’s one such item: ‘This elaborate house-blessing [which measures 412 × 325 mm], issued in the 1820s by Johann Ritter and Company of Reading … provides a unique poetic blessing rather than the common prose versions and the shorter […]
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22nd October 2015
As I have written before, the 1780s saw a craze for all things ballooning. Above is a coloured engraving of an ascent made by the famous French balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard in Nuremberg on 12 November 1787. As one can imagine, such ascents were exceedingly popular with the public, but there was also an element of danger involved. A broadside […]
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23rd April 2014
As today is the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, I thought I’d share this illustrated Victorian broadside (566 × 440 mm) celebrating the 300th anniversary, produced by Macdonald & Co’s Steam Printing Works in 1864:
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14th March 2014
Spring has sprung, and thoughts (well, mine anyway) turn to the New York Book Fair. What to take? One thing which may make an appearance is the following which came in recently: a Whig poetical address to Queen Anne from 1710, written in opposition to Henry Sacheverell (1674–1724), the political preacher whose impeachment turned him into […]
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