Manuscript Digest – February 2020 – 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

Guilty
People, January 14, 2020
A former archivist and a rare books dealer have entered guilty pleas in decades of thefts from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Value: around $8 million. Sentencing: April 17.

Columbus on ICE
Delaware News Journal, January 23, 2020
For the fourth time in as many years, ICE has recovered a hot Christopher Columbus “Plannck” letter, this one missing since the the 1980s. Where it’s been and where it’s going.

Hot on the Trail
artnet News, January 17, 2020
Netherlands art detective Arthur Brand was closing in on a €1 million Persian manuscript stolen around 2007. Also on the chase: the Iranian government.

Bar and Seller
The Guardian, January 21, 2020
A guide for medieval hermits has created a stir. First the book went to an overseas buyer, then the UK placed an export bar. The real twist, though, was the identity of the seller.

Missal Launch
Baltimore Sun, January 31, 2020
The St. Francis Missal is on show for the first time in almost 40 years. To get ready, it needed some serious conservation at the Walters Art Museum. Holy relic? No pressure.

Gay Rights Writ
Smithsonianmag.com, January 3, 2020
“A Problem in Greek Ethics” may not sound incendiary. But the 1873 essay helped start a revolution in gay rights. A long-lost version just surfaced at a rare books store.

Page Turner
New York Times, January 8, 2020
The voluminous archive of prodigious biographer Robert Caro has found a home at the New-York Historical Society. Now others will get to turn every page of his files.

Oh, Snap!
The Atlantic, January 21, 2020
Will future scholars actually follow Caro’s edict to “turn every page”? Probably not. How smartphones and digital archives could change the way history is written — and by whom.
• Documented: stories of slavery in America

On the Case
Leamington Observer, January 26, 2020
Marry a doctor! Good advice for the daughter of a peripatetic playwright? Susanna Shakespeare thought so. Four hundred years later, her husband’s casebook is out in print.

Remembering Joe Rubinfine
Fine Books & Collections, January 9, 2020
Longtime Manuscript Society member Joe Rubinfine spent decades building a reputation — and a collection. A look at the legacy, and the material, he left behind.

It Must Be Rome! · October 3–11

Take a Roman holiday with the Manuscript Society. See the rare manuscript collections at most beautiful libraries of Rome. Enter the Vatican Museums before they open to the public. Access special material at the Vatican Library. Go behind the scenes with the owners of a private villa, opened just for our tour. Abbondanza!

Linked In
“Six Degrees of Mark Twain” Clusters of Clemens connections > Explore

Book Tour
Places to vacation, bibliophiles edition > Enjoy