Manuscript Digest – February 2018– 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

Miller’s Tale
New York Times, January 9, 2018
Where did Arthur Miller leave his papers? He said Texas. His estate leaned toward Yale.  What came next was a drama of high art and deep pockets. And the Miller archive goes to …

GoT Clues?
New Zealand Herald, January 3, 2018
Need a Game of Thrones fix? Scholars are unspooling the secrets of the Canterbury Roll, dating from the Wars of the Roses. Lancasters. Yorks. Lannisters. Starks. Winter has come.

Alice Down Under
Atlas Obscura, January 23, 2018
There it was, tucked into a used copy of Alice in Wonderland. How a 16th-century deed ended up in Australia — and why it pays to page through books before giving them away.

Linens and Things
Alexandria Times, January 3, 2018
After years in a linen cupboard, the manuscript memoirs of a teenage Revolutionary War privateer have landed in a museum. Makes you wonder: What’s in mom’s closet?

Second Acts
New York Times, January 5, 2018
It didn’t look like much, just a charred lump of pages too fragile to read. Now an X-ray scanner and computer modeling are revealing the text within an ancient Coptic codex.
• Another Dead (Sea Scrolls) reunion

Power of the Press
Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2018
Movable type was a game-changer. But what did it change? A new database of old books is mapping out the link between the rise of print and the spread of knowledge.

The Old Hand
The Guardian, January 31, 2018
Old English manuscripts, at least a score of them, are sprinkled with notes by a medieval scribe with a shaky hand. We don’t know his name. We do know why he matters.

Weather Eyes
Post and Courier, January 19, 2018
Spectacular storms. Disastrous drought. The 1860s weathered more than the Civil War. But who had time to keep track? Climate scientists are finding answers in an unexpected place.

Horrors!
Bangor Daily News, January 19, 2018
Stephen King writes to chill; this time the icy fingers were headed his way. Seven of his original manuscripts were trapped under six feet of mud and water. Their fate?

#Enough
The New Yorker, January 2, 2018
Twitter, I just can’t quit you. OK, maybe I can. After 12 years of collecting every tweet, the Library of Congress has a new policy. What it says about Twitter and the times.
From Our Blog

Presidential Autographs: An Unintended Collection
Every collection starts with a story. In a recent issue of Manuscripts, Francis J. Murray shared his. How a student’s generous gesture put a history professor in hot pursuit of POTUS signatures.

See Krewes
Manuscript Society Annual Meeting
April 18–21 • New Orleans
No. 1 of 52 places to go in 2018
> Join in

Book It
Rare Book School • Charlottesville, VA
Spring and summer signup
Apply by February 19
> Read up