A widowed marquise of the French nobility, she was devoted to her children. When her daughter married and moved away, she became despondent. Loneliness prompted her to begin writing letters to Françoise Marguerite, a correspondence that by her death had numbered an estimated 1,700 epistles. It is the “most intimate and sustained chronicle of a mother-daughter relationship ever recorded” (New Oxford Companion to Literature in French).“After her daughter had gone to Provence, Sevigne was indeed inconsolable. Her devotion to the absent Francoise was intense; she and her friends wondered if it was too intense. In February 1671, four days after...
Lovers Live On In Library’s Victorian Valentines
Display Card For Valentine Maker Jonathan King, London c. 1870's.(All Images Courtesy of Bodleian Library.)A permanent collection of temporary items. That's one way to sum up what libraries and archives call "ephemera." Preserving items that were meant to be briefly used and thrown away seems like an exercise in futility at first glance. But paper ephemera -- such as leaflets, tickets, programs and playbills, posters, bookmarks, trade and calling cards, advertising inserts, and product packaging -- often reflect the day to day history of the average person in a way that more formal historical records can't.The Manufacture Of Valentines As...
Books on the Beach: Ikea Style
It's billed as the world's largest outdoor bookcase.In honor of 30th anniversary of their BILLY bookcase Ikea constructed an outdoor library, consisting of 30 bookcases, on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. The BILLY is the best selling bookcase in history with over 40 million sold and 3 million a year still being produced.The one day event allowed beach goers to swap books or to buy them with the proceeds going to The Australian Literacy & Numeracy FoundationEvery one in attendance also received a voucher for $30 off a limited edition BILLY 'Jader' bookcase. The BILLY 'Jader' bookcase is covered with...
Award Winning Weekend On Tap For Oscar’s Library
Poster For Best Picture Nominee The Philadelphia Story (1940).(All Images Courtesy Of Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences, Magaret Herrick Library.)As already reported here by Book Patrol's Stephen J. Gertz, the theme of the upcoming 43rd California International Antiquarian Book Fair is From Author To Oscar®. To be held February 12-14 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, the largest rare book fair in the world is "focusing on the symbiotic relationship between books and film." Since most of the Best Picture Academy Award®-winning films are based on literary works, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts...
Authentic G. Washington Bookplate Comes to Auction
An authentic example: Note the chain lines in the paper.Invisible at this size, the engraver's error is found abovethe B in Probat as a scratch exiting the leafat its base and to the right.(This is not the example selling at Heritage).A genuine bookplate belonging to George Washington will fall under the hammer at Heritage Auctions, February 11-12, 2010, at their new Beverly Hills, CA branch, sale 6038, lot 37023.Authentic examples don’t come to market very often, although genuine fakes are easily acquired; the Mount Vernon online store offers them for five-and-a- half georges.Heritage’s starting bid is $1,500. The bookplate is,...