Since this handbook was first published in 1994, interest in the book as a material object, and in the ways in which books have been owned, read and used, has burgeoned. Now established as a standard reference work, this book has been revised and expanded with a new set of over 200 colour illustrations, updated bibliographies and extended international coverage of libraries and online resources. It covers the history and understanding of inscriptions, bookplates, ink and binding stamps, mottoes and heraldry, and describes how to identify owners and track down books from particular collections via library and sale catalogues. Each section features an evaluated bibliography listing further sources, both online and in print. Illustrated examples of the many kinds of ownership evidence which can be found in books are also shown throughout. Relevant to anyone seeking to identify previous owners of books, or trace private libraries, this title will also support the work of all book historians interested in the history of reading or the use of books and in the book as a material object. An essential handbook for anyone working in provenance research.

Die 25-jarige Lammie de Villiers van die Pretoria-kommando het op Spioenkop gesterf. Die leerstewels wat hy gedra het – en ook generaal Christiaan de Wet se saal, ’n rare velduniform van die ZAR Staatartillerie, en die kerse wat die Boervrou Kotie Steenkamp by haar gehad het toe sy in die veld geleef het, is van die objekte in hierdie boek.

Die volle drama van die Anglo-Boereoorlog word werklik en persoonlik in hierdie versameling ikoniese objekte uit die Oorlogsmuseum se versameling. Die boek volg grootliks die kronologiese verloop van die oorlog, maar lig ook sekere temas uit, waaronder Boere- en Britse wapens, mediese sorg en die vernaamste rolspelers in die konflik.

Die 100 ikoniese items word aangevul deur aangrypende historiese foto’s. ’n Verdere 200 bykomende objekte is ingesluit om die storie te help vertel van ’n oorlog wat ’n onuitwisbare merk op die Suid-Afrikaanse landskap gelaat het.

If you like true stories about real people, are intrigued by serendipity, curious about curiosities, or maybe you are a collector yourself, then this book is for you.

The collecting and researching of any collectable is an intense and pleasurable pastime. The author’s passion for more than half a century has been for collecting handwritten, original letters, antique documents, manuscripts, old share certificates, fire insurance policies, photographs and maps.

The writers of these words on paper include kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, admirals and generals, actors and authors, judges and prisoners, philosophers, statesmen, scientists, and sportsmen. Some were famous, some infamous, some important, others less so. Many you will know about; with others, only their names may be familiar. There’s Admiral Nelson, and the Duke of Wellington; there are queens Elizabeth I and II and kings George III, IV and VI; presidents Eisenhower, Kruger, and Mandela are here; prime ministers Botha, Hertzog and Smuts; explorers Scott and Shackleton. There’s Faraday and De la Rey, and many more, including two controversial giants of history – Napoleon and Rhodes.

The chapters need not be read in any set order, although there is an underlying thread linking them to the life of the author that enabled this eclectic collection to evolve in the way it did.

Since 1970 a collection of Panini stickers has accompanied each FIFA World Cup, held every four years. Each Panini album is not just a practical guide to the various rounds of the tournament, but it also provides a valuable visual archive of all the teams and their memorable matches. The book tells the story of the World Cup through the faces of its stars. Three thousand champions spanning the last forty years - the famous and the not so famous, the worshipped and the not so worshipped - all of whom have shared a desire to give their very best and bring soccer glory to their own nations. For fans of statistics and trivia, the albums (always brought out before matches are played) have been rounded off with charts and tables of the results of that year. Text in English, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Dutch.

Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, this luxurious week-to-view pocket diary has a foil and embossed cover with magnetic closure. Featuring on its cover a beautiful design from artist Aimee Stewart this diary makes a perfect gift or a special treat just for you.

The Anglo-Boer War in 100 Objects brings the victories and the tragedies, the full extent of the human drama behind this war – to life through 100 iconic artefacts.

While a Mafeking siege note helps to illustrate the acute shortages caused by the siege, a spade used by a Scottish soldier at Magersfontein and the boots of a Boer soldier who died at Spion Kop tell of the severity of some of the famous battles.

The book follows the course of the war but also highlights specific themes, such as British and Boer weaponry, medical services, POW camps, as well as major role-players on both sides.

The text is interspersed with striking historical images from the museum’s photographic collection. A further 200 secondary objects have been included to help tell the story of a conflict that left an indelible mark on the South African landscape.

Cats were illustrated in medieval manuscripts throughout the Middle Ages, often in exquisite detail and frequently accompanied by their natural prey, mice. Medieval cats were viewed as treasured pets, as fearsome mousers, as canny characters in fables, as associates of the Devil and as magical creatures. Featuring an array of fascinating illustrations from the British Library's rich medieval collection, Cats in Medieval Manuscripts includes anecdotes about cats - both real and imaginary - to provide a fascinating picture of the life of the cat and its relationship with humans in the medieval world.

The world's definitive guide to identifying and valuing collectable children's books. A treasure trove of classic books from "Alive in Wonderland" to "Harry Potter". Includes a listing of over 15,000 titles by the most collectable authors with current values of all first editions.

Many important and valuable rare books, manuscripts and artefacts related to Korea have been acquired by donations throughout the long history of the Bodleian Libraries and the museums of the University of Oxford. However, due to an early lack of specialist knowledge in this area, many of these Korean items were largely neglected. Following on from the publication of the first volume of these forgotten treasures, this book collects together further important and often unique objects. Notable items include the only surviving Korean example of an eighteenth-century world map, hand-drawn, with a set of twelve globe gores on a single sheet; rare Korean coins and charms including excellent examples of the 1423 Choson t'ongbo ; official correspondence from the archives of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, shining a light on the history of Christian missions from the opening of Korea in the 1880s until after the Korean War; photographs from the end of the nineteenth century up to the 1960s showing village and street scenes; a rare silk coat with inner armour plates of lacquered hide; a massive iron padlock inlaid with silver character inscriptions, bronze shoes and spears with parallel-edged blades; spectacles with dark crystal lenses and frames of horn; an elaborately decorated bow, arrows and quiver for wearing with court dress and many other rare artefacts.

An illustrated history of football trade cards, an epic saga of 1,000 brands and myriad collections. The A-Z traces the earliest cards and stickers - British inventions, both - through a century of sports cards from tobacco cards to Panini stickers, via everything that came in between: footballers issued with chewing gum and sweet cigarettes, lucky bag mementoes, football teams cut from packets of tea, and many more. It chronicles the epoch of our forefathers and the very first football cards, dating back to the 1880s, followed by the era of their children and the earliest stickers - and so the rise of cigarette cards and paper soccer star adhesives. These days, along with our Panini stickers and trading cards, we appreciate these vintage treasures not only for their beauty but also for their value. Fond recollections of childhood passions past and present will warm hearts, while enchanting galleries of rarely seen cards will captivate football fans and collectors alike. Incorporating a guide to values, the A-Z is priceless.

Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, this luxurious week-to-view pocket diary has a foil and embossed cover with magnetic closure. Featuring on its cover a beautiful design based on The Bodleian Libraries bookshelves, this diary makes a perfect gift or a special treat just for you.

William Morris had a lifelong fascination with illuminated books. He collected thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts and became one of the foremost experts on the art of bookmaking and calligraphy. Aiming to resurrect a tradition that had fallen into abeyance with the invention of printing, he made eighteen illuminated books, using a variety of texts, during the course of his life. One of these, now held in the Bodleian Library, is a handmade edition of the Odes of Horace. The pages of this book, reproduced here in high-quality facsimile, are among the most intricate and ambitious that Morris ever created. Using a Renaissance italic style of calligraphy, he illuminated letters with delicate shades of gold and silver, and adorned them with floral decoration and miniature faces and figures. The openings to each of the four books of the Odes are stunning display pages on which Morris collaborated with the artists Edward Burne-Jones and Charles Fairfax Murray. The Roman poet Horace (65-8 BCE) wrote four books of lyric poetry in Latin which have subsequently been translated many times and have had an ongoing influence on Western literature. He combined descriptions of the everyday with the poetry of politics, patriotism, love and friendship, producing lines of beauty and wisdom which were very popular in Morris's day and continue to appeal in the twenty-first century. This facsimile edition is presented in a blind embossed slipcase featuring a detail from one of Burne-Jones' paintings in the book with a companion volume containing an introduction to William Morris's manuscript and an English translation of the Odes.

At the turn of the fifteenth century, private devotionals became a speciality of the renowned Ghent-Bruges illuminators. Wealthy patrons who commissioned work from these artists often spared no expense in the presentation of their personal prayer books, or `books of hours', from detailed decoration to luxurious bindings and embroidery. This enchanting illuminated manuscript was painted by the Master of the David Scenes in the Grimani Breviary (known as the David Master), one of the renowned Flemish illuminators in the sixteenth century. Every page of the manuscript is exquisitely decorated. Fine architectural interiors, gorgeous landscapes and detailed city scenes, each one depicting a narrative, form the subjects of three full-size illuminations and forty-two full-page miniatures. There are floral borders on a gold ground or historiated borders in the Flemish and Italian style on every page. It is one of the finest examples of medieval illumination in a personal prayer book and the most copiously illustrated work of the David Master to survive. The manuscript owes its name to the French Queen, Marie de Medici, widow of King Henri IV. For a time she went into exile in Brussels, where she is thought to have acquired the manuscript before moving again to Cologne. An inscription in English states that she left the book of hours in this city, and it is here that an English manuscript collector, Francis Douce, may have acquired the book and eventually donated it to the Bodleian Library. Together with a scholarly introduction that gives an overview of Flemish illumination and examines each of the illustrations in detail, this full-colour facsimile limited edition, bound in linen with a leather quarter binding and beautifully presented in a slipcase, faithfully reproduces all 176 leaves of the original manuscript.

Everyone knows which books people buy; they can just look at the best-seller lists. But who knows which books people steal? Who, for that matter, knows that authors ruin the book market by writing too much? Or why book critics are not critical? Or why librarians need to throw out more books? Who, indeed, knows the answer to that all important question in our democracy: should presidents and presidential candidates write books? (The answer is no.)

In this irreverent analysis of the book industry, John Maxwell Hamilton -- a longtime journalist and public radio commentator -- answers these questions and many more, proving that the best way to study books is not to take them too seriously. He provides a rich history of the book -- from the days when monks laboriously hand-copied texts to the recent tidal wave of Titanic tie-ins -- and gives a succinct overview of the state of the industry today, including writing, marketing, promoting, reviewing, ghost-writing, and collecting.

Throughout, Hamilton peppers his prose with spicy tidbits of information that will fascinate bibliophiles everywhere. For instance, did you know that Walt Whitman was fired from a government job because his boss found Leaves of Grass, and its author, immoral? Or that the most stolen books in the United States are the Bible, followed by The Joy of Sex? How about that Dan Quayle's 1989 Christmas card read "May our nation continue to be a beakon of hope to the world?" Or that Casanova was an ardent lover of books as well as women?

Hamilton offers an inside look at the history and business of book reviewing, explaining why, more often than not, reviewers resemble "counselors at a self-esteem camp" and examining theenormous impact of the "Oprah effect" on the market. As the self-appointed Emily Post of the book world, he advises publishers, authors, and readers on proper etiquette for everything from book parties ("Feel free to build a party around a theme in a book, no matter how tacky") and jacket photos ("You should not show off your new baby unless [your] book [is] about raising kids"), to book signings ("Just because an author has given you an autograph does not mean they want to become your pen pal") and promotion by friends and relatives ("They should carry the book at all times on public transportation with the cover showing").

Both edifying and enjoyable, Casanova Was a Book Lover fills a Grand Canyon -- sized void in the literature on literature. It is indispensable for book enthusiasts who want to know the naked truth about reading, writing, and publishing.

What does a library say about the mind of its owner? How do books map the intellectual interests, curiosities, tastes, and personalities of their readers? What does the collecting of books have in common with the practice of architecture? "Unpacking My Library" provides an intimate look at the personal libraries of twelve of the world's leading architects, alongside conversations about the significance of books to their careers and lives. Photographs of bookshelves"--"displaying well-loved and rare volumes, eclectic organizational schemes, and the individual touches that make a bookshelf one's own"--"provide an evocative glimpse of their owner's personal life. Each architect also presents a reading list of top ten influential titles, from architectural history to theory to fiction and nonfiction, that serves as a personal philosophy of literature and history, and advice on what every young architect, scholar, and lover of architecture should read. An inspiring cross-section of notable libraries, this beautiful book celebrates the arts of reading and collecting. "Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books "features the libraries of: Stan AllenHenry CobbLiz Diller & Ric ScofidioPeter EisenmanMichael GravesSteven HollToshiko MoriMichael SorkinBernard TschumiTodd Williams & Billie Tsien Peter Eisenman's Recommended Titles: Robert Musil, "The Man Without Qualities"Le Corbusier, "Vers une Architecture"Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"Robert Venturi, "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture"Rem Koolhaas, "Delirious New York"Jacques Derrida, "Of Grammatology"Andrea Palladio, "The Four Books on Architecture"Walter Benjamin, "Illuminations"James Joyce, "Finnegans Wake"William Faulkner, "Light in August"

The Ormesby Psalter is perhaps the most magnificent yet enigmatic of the great Gothic psalters produced in East Anglia in the first half of the fourteenth century. Its pages boast a wealth of decoration picked out in rich colours and burnished gold, and its margins are inhabited by a vibrant crew of beasts, birds and insects. Fantastic imagery proliferates: musicians, mermaids, lovers and warriors are juxtaposed with scenes from everyday life, from chivalric legend, and from folk-tales, fables and riddles. The psalter takes its name from Robert of Ormesby, subprior at Norwich Cathedral Priory in the 1330s. He was not the first owner, however, and it has long been acknowledged that the writing, decoration and binding of the book took place in a series of distinct phases from the late thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century. The final result was the work of four or five scribes and up to seven illuminators and its pages show a panorama of stylistic development. Unravelling its complexities has sometimes been thought to hold the key to understanding the `East Anglian School', a group of large, luxury manuscripts connected with Norwich Cathedral and Norfolk churches and patrons. This book casts an entirely new light on its history, not only clarifying and dating the successive phases of production, but associating the main work on the manuscript with the patronage of John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, one of the greatest magnates of the time. It is extensively illustrated with full-page colour reproductions of the manuscript's main decorated folios, as well as many smaller initials and numerous comparative illustrations.

Safety campaigns touch a nerve in all of us. Over the years, these posters, slogans and TV adverts have imprinted themselves on our collective memory, evoking nostalgia for childhood and a bygone Britain. In 2011, RoSPA made a wonderful discovery: a superb 'missing' archive of historical safety posters dating from the 1930s to 1970s. Clever, beautifully designed, often amusing, always packing a punch - these posters not only showcase the talented designers of the time, but also reflect the momentous changes that swept 20th-century Britain, revealing our social and industrial history from a unique new angle.

James Birch first came across the postcards when he was a student in Aix-en-Provence. A froth of smiling babies boiling away in a cauldronA" caught his eye and he bought a small number of cards. He didn't really pay much attention to the cards again until years later in the 1980s when he visited the Pompidou Centre for an exhibition on Surrealism. There in one of the vitrines was a collection of fantasy baby postcards shown for their inspirational importance to both the Dadaists and the Surrealists. He became hooked and started collecting. Despite the immensely varied subject matter of the postcards little is known of their history. They were produced from around 1900-1920 and were found from Russia, to Spain to Great Britain and most countries in between, however the majority appear to be from Germany. The postcards were a source of inspiration to many artists in the 1920s and 30s, in particular to both the Dadaists and the Surrealists. They were collected by Paul Eluard, Andre Breton, Salvador Dali, Hannah Hoch, Herbert Bayer, and Man Ray. The popular images excited inspiration in these artists because of their boundless inventiveness. The foreword is by George Melly, who was an acknowledged expert in the field of surrealism. Best known as a jazz and blues singer, writer and broadcaster, George Melly was also an art critic and a devotee of the Surrealists. This is one of the last pieces he wrote before his death in 2007 at the age of 80.

Barnstaple, the main town in North Devon, is quite possibly the oldest borough in the United Kingdom and is home to a community rich in history, ambition and achievement. The town still preserves its medieval layout. Its wealth was derived from its licence to export wool, which was also later imported from Ireland. After its harbour silted up, the growth of other industries such as sawmills, foundries and shipbuilding were established. Its Victorian market still survives and the railway is still in much use. In Barnstaple & Around: The Postcard Collection, authors Denise Holton and Elizabeth J. Hammett explore the town and its surrounding areas through the use of beautiful postcards.

Writing a new page in the surprisingly long history of literary deceit, Impostors examines a series of literary hoaxes, deceptions that involved flagrant acts of cultural appropriation. This book looks at authors who posed as people they were not, in order to claim a different ethnic, class, or other identity. These writers were, in other words, literary usurpers and appropriators who trafficked in what Christopher L. Miller terms the "intercultural hoax." In the United States, such hoaxes are familiar. Forrest Carter's The Education of Little Tree and JT LeRoy's Sarah are two infamous examples. Miller's contribution is to study hoaxes beyond our borders, employing a comparative framework and bringing French and African identity hoaxes into dialogue with some of their better-known American counterparts. In France, multiculturalism is generally eschewed in favor of universalism, and there should thus be no identities (in the American sense) to steal. However, as Miller demonstrates, this too is a ruse: French universalism can only go so far and do so much. There is plenty of otherness to appropriate. This French and Francophone tradition of imposture has never received the study it deserves. Taking a novel approach to this understudied tradition, Impostors examines hoaxes in both countries, finding similar practices of deception and questions of harm.

The Getty Museum inaugurates a new series of affordable publications that introduce the public to the richness of its holdings in illuminated manuscripts. The first in the series features Italian manuscript illumination from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries. This volume showcases full-colour reproductions of masterpieces by Niccolo da Bologna, Pisanello, Girolamo da Cremona, Taddeo Crivelli, Giovanni di Paolo, Matteo da Milano, Antonio da Monza, and the Master of Gerona, among a number of Italy's finest illuminators. The selection includes multiple illuminations from such sumptuous volumes as the Montecassino Breviary, the Gualenghi-d'Este Hours, the Missal of the Anti-Pope John XXIII, and the recently discovered Orsini Missal, along with exceptional leaves from the celebrated choir books of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Florence, and from the laudario of the Compagnia di Sant'Agnese, Florence. J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM