Tag Archive: 0London

For those of you following our social media this week, you may have noticed a bit of a floral theme; more specifically, we have been posting a short series of botanical illustrations from William Curtis’s The Botanical Magazine: or, Flower-Garden displayed … (London, Fry & Couchman ‘for W. Curtis, at his Botanic Garden’, 1787). This […]

‘No one buys more books than booksellers.’  This was the advice given to those setting out in the trade at the inaugural York Antiquarian Book Seminar last year by the American bookseller, Lorne Bair.  Lorne was talking about old books, but I suspect that the same may well hold true for reference books, too.  I […]

It’s May, and I’ve started cataloguing recently-acquired material in preparation for the London International Antiquarian Book Fair at the end of the month.  I’m not sure how this will fit on the stand, but… This large, folding chromolithograph (it’s over 6.5m long) is Adams’ Illustrated Panorama of History (London & Paris, A. H. Walker, 1878).  First published […]

Just back from Minneapolis, and the RBMS Preconference, where the theme, as I mentioned before, was “Performance in Special Collections”.  I like to try and find material relating to the history of performance, both in music and the theatre, and my library customers in particular are always looking for things they can use for exhibitions, […]

This week, in 1882, saw the first London cycle of Wagner’s Ring, the complete work’s first performance outside the German-speaking world. The Austrian impresario Angelo Neumann secured the performing rights for the Ring (and the Bayreuth stage equipment) from Wagner himself, intending to give 36 cycles in nine months.  He planned to open his campaign […]

I couldn’t resist buying this when I saw it.  Someone writing about the death of his squirrel?  In 1826?  Come on, who wouldn’t?  There’s even a picture of the poor creature.  I first thought it was perhaps written by a child, but in fact the history of the poem proved much more interesting. I soon […]