Tag Archive: 0German

It’s been a while since I wrote anything here, but things have been busy. After an enjoyable summer break, visiting Nîmes amongst other places (including one of the best-preserved Roman amphitheatres in the world, c.100 AD), September saw me in York, teaching at the annual York Antiquarian Book Seminar, before heading off to Berlin, for […]

I blogged last year about the idea of books being ‘fashionably orange’. Here’s another example: This is a copy of the first edition of Die natürliche Tochter, the last of Goethe’s three verse dramas in the classical style, which had received its premiere, in Weimar, in April 1803. This copy is in the original orange […]

There is something about orange publishers’ bindings that has always appealed, for some reason. It’s not a common colour and perhaps that’s why they always leap out at me. I blogged about this example, from 1851, back in 2012: But when did such orange covers start? The question occurred to me recently when I was […]

In my last blogpost, I wrote about a Victorian binding which sought to imitate polished walnut. This week, I wanted share another paper, one from earlier in the nineteenth century, and from Germany, which was also used to mimic burr wood veneers or, on books, tree calf. It’s called Wurzelmarmorpapier (lit. ‘root marbled paper’) and […]

I wrote last month about my latest translation, Clouds over Paris, which I’m delighted was chosen by Hatchards as its non-fiction Book of the Month, and has been featured in The New European. I also wrote about the book for Hatchards’ blog, the text of which I thought I would reproduce here. In September 1952, […]

I’ve blogged before about translating, and then setting, the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. As yesterday was International Translation Day, I thought this week I’d write about another piece of mine, At Cana. This was actually what first brought me to Rilke, when, in 2019, I was looking for a text to set for a […]