A pocket-size 14th-century handwritten copy of Magna Carta, the first book on the legal rights of women published in England, letters from the 18th-century jurist William Blackstone and papers belonging to a real-life London lawyer praised by Charles Dickens’s fictional yes-man Uriah Heep are among the highlights of a rich trove of rare legal books and manuscripts just acquired by Yale University.
via English Gavels Resound in a Trove Headed to Yale – NYTimes.com.
Jules Verne is one of the best-known authors who ever lived. A record 300 movies, TV shows and plays have been based on his work and more are on their way. But although everyone knows Jules Verne much of what they know is wrong.
via Everything You Know About Jules Verne is Probably Wrong.
Victor Frankenstein loves his brother Konrad more than anything else in the world. As they grow up they entertain themselves with adventure stories until one day they discover The Dark Library with its sorcerous texts. Their father demands that they never return to it again, but when Konrad begins to die of a mysterious illness and none of the greatest doctors in all of Europe can save him, Victor turns to The Dark Library. Alongside his lovely cousin Elizabeth and his friend Henry, Victor begins searching for the ingredients to the fabled Elixir of Life under the guidance of a once acclaimed alchemist.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein not only shows the readers a picture of the egotistical male, but also the lack of power women have.
via Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Codependence of the Masculine and Feminine.
Strawberry Hill House, the restored Gothic ‘plaything house’ of Horace Walpole in Twickenham, London, has won the 2013 Europa Nostra ‘Grand Prix’ award for conservation.
via News | Strawberry Hill wins Europa Nostra award | M&H Online.
Public libraries across the U.S. are getting into the online book-selling business, providing convenience for patrons but also raising concerns that the sales threaten to commercialize taxpayer-supported institutions founded to provide information free-of-charge.
via New York Public Library, Others Check Out Online Book Sales – WSJ.com.
Investigating the ‘Real Frankenstein Potential’ of Johann Conrad Dippel, Pt. 1
This is a special book from the early Middle Ages (France, 9th century). Not only does it contain a high volume of very attractive images, but these images are also not what you would expect: they are drawn, as it were, with words. They illustrate Cicero’s Aratea, a work of astronomy. Each animal represents a constellation and the written words in them are taken from an explanatory text by Hyginus (his Astronomica). His words are crucial for these images because the drawings would not exist without them. It is not often in medieval books that image and text have such a symbiotic relationship, each depending on the other for its very existence.
via Erik Kwakkel • Medieval animals made out of words This is a….
