The list, care of the New York Daily News.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Adventures of a Medieval Manuscripts Expert
Adventures, indeed!
From a piece in the Boston Globe...
In Reno, she found a 15th-century French prayer book with gold leaf once owned by a Welsh actor-turned-missionary. In South Dakota, she discovered a 600-year-old leaf from another book with a prayer meditating on the final seven statements uttered by Jesus.
And in Boulder, Colo., she found a rare image of the martyrdom of St. Eustace, who was boiled in a hollow bronze idol shaped like a calf.
Lisa Fagin Davis has written about each of these hand-written medieval manuscripts in university libraries as part of her virtual road trip around the country, examining ancient European texts found in unexpected places in the United States. Davis, who lives in Newton, is an authority on medieval manuscripts and recently started blogging about her finds.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Monday, January 27, 2014
The Peculiar Underworld of Rare Book Thieves
Their world discussed on Paste.
From the piece...
Nearly as shocking was the barbarian behind it all: the library’s own director, Marino Massimo de Caro. A politically wired, self-taught book expert, De Caro and his cronies—allegedly including a lawyer and a priest—looted the library and destroyed its card catalogue to cover their tracks. De Caro even commissioned master forgeries of an ancient book by Galileo so he could swap them for the real thing at other libraries.
In the peculiar underworld of rare-book theft, De Caro joins a rogue’s gallery that features flamboyant eccentrics, disgruntled employees, corrupt academics—even a serial killer.
While the criminal personalities vary, according to the elite detectives who hunt book thieves, they all share something in common: base greed and a knack for gaining insider access to the cozy, exclusive world of rare-book collecting.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
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