Manuscript Digest – February 2017 – This complimentary e-digest, launched in 2012, covers significant acquisitions and sales, manuscripts lost and found, rare books and ephemera, document conservation, and more.

In the News

Hot Topic
The Guardian, February 13, 2017
A commando-style heist has liberated £2 million of rare books from a London warehouse. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Dante, da Vinci …
• See the titles to watch

Monk on a Mission
The Atlantic, February 23, 2017
The rise of ISIS puts precious manuscripts in peril from the Balkans to the Middle East. Lost cause? Not on Father Stewart’s watch.

Saving a Page of History
Alton Telegraph, February 5, 2017
The old book of probate records was headed for the shredder. Then someone spotted a name: abolitionist martyr Elijah Lovejoy.

Mold Hits Mark Twain
Hartford Courant, February 5, 2017
Leaky roof. Faulty humidity control. It’s a recipe for mold, hitting the books in the Mark Twain museum. Now the museum is hitting back.
• How conservation is killing South Carolina history

Jackie’s ‘Dear John’
New York Times, February 8, 2017
After JFK’s assassination, rumors linked Jackie with one of Jack’s friends. Instead, she became Jackie O. Read her letters to the man she left behind.

Whitman Sample
NPR, February 21, 2017
A University of Houston grad student has found Walt Whitman’s lost novella — and maybe the roots of Leaves of Grass.
• A Harlem Renaissance novel, lost and found

Giving Libraries a Hand
Atlas Obscura, February 16, 2017
By the 1880s, fast-growing libraries needed to speed up their card-catalog entries. Typewriting? Too hard to learn. Then someone had an idea.
• Sarah Bliss and the Kaminski Handwriting Collection

The People’s Librarian
The New Yorker, February 19, 2017
A reporter goes behind the scenes with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. Discover her secret sauce and the treats in store for visitors.

Ex Libris
Hyperallergic, February 1, 2017
Call them art, artifact or the most charming anti-theft devices ever. Bookplates have made their mark for centuries. Check them out at the Rosenbach.

Old School, New View
Big Ten Network, February 19, 2017
Are rare books too rarefied to be relevant? The University of Iowa Special Collections says no, and it’s using social media to spread the word.

Events of Note

March 9–12 • Park Avenue Armory
New York Antiquarian Book Fair