Author: Regan Kladstrup
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13,000 Books, Two Wives, and One Very Large Late Fee
Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617), a French historian and politician who lived during the tumultuous reigns of Henry III and Henry IV, assembled one of the greatest libraries of his time. Open to all scholars who wished to use it, the library contained close to 13,000 volumes at the time of his death. Thou’s library later…
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A Maddening Stamp
[This stamp has been solved! It is the stamp of 20th-century Paris bookseller Arthur Lauria. Many thanks to Jasmin and Mitch Fraas for solving the mystery!] Stamps should be easy to identify. You don’t have to decipher bad handwriting. You are more likely to find information about people, libraries or businesses who stamp their books…
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Cataloging Conundrum: Unidentified Coat of Arms
We haven’t been able to identify the coat of arms in this bookplate. It is found in our copy of Bernardino Campelli’s Delle historie di Spoleti : sopplimento di quelle del regno d’Italia nella parte, che tocca al ducato Spoletino, à principi di esso, & alla città, che ne fù capo (Spoleto: Giovanni Domenico Ricci,…
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Incunable Week (cross-post from Pennrare)
Editor’s Note: Today’s post by Regan Kladstrup is cross-posted here and at the Penn Rare Books Cataloging blog. Regan and her team do an amazing job with our unique items and I’d encourage everyone to check out their ongoing provenance identification project here. One week a month is devoted to cataloging incunables, the first books…
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Incunable Week
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is cross-posted here and at the Unique at Penn blog. One week a month is devoted to cataloging incunables, the first books printed after the invention of movable type in the second half of the 15th century. Incunables are a joy to catalog. There is so much to describe: rubrication and…
Unique at Penn 