Rare books, manuscripts, music, ephemera…
4th September 2012
The first edition of Pierre Baillot’s L’art du Violon, nouvelle Méthode was published in Paris in 1835. Two German translations appeared the same year, one by J. D. Anton (painstakingly copied out here by hand in 1837), the other by the German violinist Heinrich Panofka. I find it very interesting to see how Baillot’s book circulated […]
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18th January 2012
Umberto Eco’s latest novel, The Prague Cemetery, sees its main character write an anti-Semitic book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The novel may be fiction, but the Protocols really did, and still does, exist. The book, first published in 1905 and much reprinted, also circulated in manuscript, although only one early handwritten copy is […]
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24th October 2011
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 […]
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