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.

A century of Alpine postcards from the Isola Press archive, VINTAGE ALPINE POSTCARDS celebrates Europe's great mountain range. These dispatches from the Alps take us from men in bowler hats with stout ropes nonchalantly crawling over crevasses, through the gilded age of grand hotels and sleigh rides, to the modernist concrete infrastructure of mountaintop restaurants and cable-car stations. They frame the changing way we've experienced landscape and leisure over more than a hundred years - from the intrepid to the banal, sublime to ridculous and brutalist to kitsch. But postcards travel through time as well as space, and they arrive with messages from our former selves. Underlying the Alpenkitsch is a serious examination of our relationship to nature and how we have used and abused the beauties of the natural world. And, like sun-burnished memories of holidays past, their sunlit scenes do not necessarily correspond to reality. Postcard makers have always used artifice to conjure fantastic spaces, worlds in which the sky is always blue, the pine trees resplendent and there is always plenty of fresh powder. Featuring great views, architecture, infrastructure Alpinism, hiking and snow sports, VINTAGE ALPINE POSTCARDS is perfect for skiers, hikers, cyclists and mountain lovers. These skaters, skiers, sledgers and St Bernards will surprise and delight mountain aficionados, transporting them to a high altitude holiday wherever they are.

For German military document collectors this volume has a treasure trove of rare Afrikakorps related award documents, propaganda leaflets, Soldbuchs, Wehrpass and Remembrance/Death cards. Among the many rare documents you will see both Allied and German/Italian propaganda leaflets, Afrikakorps field newspapers, and two field-made newsletters associated with the Sonderverband 288 unit. We have also assembled several complete Afrikakorps veteran groupings and every known document variant of the AFRIKA cuffband and Italian-German Medal.

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 Nightingale robe; spectacles with dark crystal lenses and frames of horn; an elaborately decorated bow, arrows and quiver and many other rare artefacts.

Take a tour through time and learn about the exciting engineering developments that allowed the primitive bridges of ancient man evolve to the masterworks of today. This unique treatment, showing the large variety of bridge forms, is illustrated with postcards, archival photographs, and technical drawings and diagrams. These detailed images show stone arch, suspension, movable, and many more bridges. Laymen and engineers alike are certain to come away with a better understanding of the role of bridges in our built environment from the expert explanations of bridge types, materials, and construction to amusing anecdotes associated with these structures. Landmark bridges, construction methods, the interstate system, railroad bridges, and even bridge disasters are all documented in this technical record of civil engineering challenges and feats.

Paper Jewels is the story of postcards during the Raj, and covers India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Burma. It is the first book on the subject and contains some of the most beautiful and popular postcards telling the stories of the first postcard publishers between 1892 and 1947. The essays cover the major cities and regions important to postcard publishing and the key themes-from dancers to religion, to tea, soap, famines, fakirs, humour and warfare. The volume uncovers such gems as the early postcards of the great Indian painter M V Dhurandhar and the Ravi Varma Press, the exceptional work of an early Austrian lithographer in Kolkata and a German one in Mumbai. Many of the images in the book have never been published since their first runs a century ago.

Forever cherish your favorite Christmas traditions and celebrations with this heirloom-quality memory album! With an elegant linen cover, archival-quality paper, and hand-drawn illustrations, Our Christmas Story: A Modern Christmas Memory Book will be a family treasure for years and generations to come. Cherish your Favorite Memories: Write down meaningful traditions Remember holiday celebrations you hosted or attended Record special gifts given or received Save photos with Santa or annual family Christmas cards Preserve treasured family recipes And so much more! Heirloom Quality: Chic, timeless design Elegant linen cover Acid-free and archival paper Generous 9.75" x 9.75" trim size offers ample space for photos and cards Lay-flat design allows you to easily write in the book A pocket to safely store letters to Santa and other Christmas keepsakes Lovingly designed artwork and thoughtful prompts encourage you to reflect and celebrate PS: It's the perfect holiday gift!

Happiness is...a whole new book of Peanuts collectibles! Attention Peanuts Gang lovers! Here is another huge volume of treasures from our favorite crowd of kids. Jan Lindenberger has made another visit to the massive collection of Cher Porges to bring back over six hundred full color photographs of "Peanut-phernalia" not seen in any other book! In the enormous field of Peanuts collectibles, this series is a must, providing the photography, information, and up-to-date prices you need to keep your collection at its best. This is a fantastic book for the serious collector, but it's also a great Peanuts tribute-if you'd rather just play catch with Charlie Brown, get advice from Lucy, play a duet with Schroeder, fly with Snoopy against the Red Baron, or hang around the pumpkin patch to get philosophical with Linus. This book celebrates the wonderful innocence, cleverness, and unique humor of Charles Schulz's Peanut Gang.

The encyclopedic compilation Liber Floridus, created by the Flemish canon Lambert of Saint-Omer in the early twelfth century, survives not only in the form of his famous autograph, but also in a considerable number of later manuscripts which transformed the knowledge assembled by him and which became starting points for new appraisals of their texts and images. Shaping Knowledge examines the processes which determined this transfer over the centuries and evaluates the specific achievements of the different generations of scribes and illuminators. Taking account of the full range of manuscripts which transmit material from the Liber Floridus and focusing in more detail on three of them - now in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuttel, in the Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden and in the Abdijarchief of Tongerlo - it shows that the makers of these manuscripts did not merely select and copy material from the Liber Floridus, but also organized images and texts in new ways, sought out different exemplars for them and embarked on compilatory activities of their own. These relationships at the textual, visual and conceptual levels are lenses through which we can observe the networks subsisting among the manuscripts linked to the Liber Floridus and the much broader group of encyclopedic compilations to which they belong. Sixteen colour plates and one hundred black-and-white figures document the role of the visual and material dimensions of the manuscripts in the processes of transmission.

This is the first Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology ever to be published. Dealing with the subject of documentation - which affects everyone's lives (from every-day letters, notes, and shopping lists to far-reaching legal instruments, if not autograph literary masterpieces) - Peter Beal defines, in a lively and accessible style, some 1,500 terms relating to manuscripts and their production and use in Britain from 1450 to the present day. The entries, which range in length from one line to nearly a hundred lines each, cover terms defining types of manuscript, their physical features and materials, writing implements, writing surfaces, scribes and other writing agents, scripts, postal markings, and seals, as well as subjects relating to literature, bibliography, archives, palaeography, the editing and printing of manuscripts, dating, conservation, and such fields as cartography, commerce, heraldry, law, and military and naval matters. The book includes 96 illustrations showing many of the features described.

Miniature books, handwritten or printed books in the smallest format, have fascinated religious people, printers, publishers, collectors, and others through the centuries because of their unique physical features, and continue to captivate people today. The small lettering and the delicate pages, binding, and covers highlight the material form of texts and invite sensory engagement and appreciation. This volume addresses miniature books with a special focus on religious books in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The book presents various empirical contexts for how the smallest books have been produced, distributed, and used in different times and cultures and also provides theoretical reflections and comments that discuss the divergent formats and functions of books.

The cardinal role of Anglo-Saxon libraries in the transmission of classical and patristic literature to the later middle ages has long been recognized, for these libraries sustained the researches of those English scholars whose writings determined the curriculum of medieval schools: Aldhelm, Bede, and Alcuin, to name only the best known. Yet this is the first full-length account of the nature and holdings of Anglo-Saxon libraries from the sixth century to the eleventh.
The early chapters discuss libraries in antiquity, notably at Alexandria and republican and imperial Rome, and also the Christian libraries of late antiquity which supplied books to Anglo-Saxon England. Because Anglo-Saxon libraries themselves have almost completely vanished, three classes of evidence need to be combined in order to form a detailed impression of their holdings: surviving inventories, surviving manuscripts, and citations of classical and patristic works by Anglo-Saxon authors themselves.
After setting out the problems entailed in using such evidence, the book is provided with appendices containing editions of all surviving Anglo-Saxon inventories, lists of all Anglo-Saxon manuscripts exported to continental libraries during the eighth century and then all manuscripts re-imported into England in the tenth, as well as a catalogue of all citations of classical and patristic literature by Anglo-Saxon authors.
A comprehensive index, arranged alphabetically by author, combines these various classes of evidence so that the reader can see at a glance what books were known where and by whom in Anglo-Saxon England. The book thus provides, within a single volume, a vast amount of information on thebooks and learning of the schools which determined the course of medieval literary culture.

This book pioneers a branch of periodical studies that is distinctive to the concerns, contexts and media of Britain's Romantic age. Eleven chapters by leading scholars showcase the range of methodological, conceptual and literary-historical insights to be drawn from just one of the era's landmark literary periodicals, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Drawing in particular on the trove of newly digitised content, these chapters model how careful analyses of the incisive and often inflammatory commentary, criticism and original literature from Blackwood's first two decades (1817 37) might inform and expand many of the most vibrant contemporary discussions surrounding British Romanticism.

This book studies and compares two sixteenth-century libraries. Jean Grolier's was a bibliophilic "cabinet" of fine books. Hurtado de Mendoza's was a much larger and more scholarly collection; a full Catalogue is provided for the first time. Books commissioned by Jean Grolier, "the Prince of Bibliophiles", have long been famous. Hurtado de Mendoza was a poet and historian, a Greek scholar and Arabist. This book contains valuable information on Grolier and Hurtado de Mendoza's work, including catalogues, lists of bindings and indexes of printers, publishers, editors, commentators and translators.

Customers in the US and Canada can purchase the link here: https://bit.ly/2M3fDa7 This volume presents six papers from a one-day colloquium held at the Warburg Institute in February 2015 on the legacy of Aldus Manutius, marking the 500th anniversary of his death, together with three additional contributions. Rather than examining Aldus's own output, the nine papers focus on how the notion of `Aldine books' has changed over 500 years in Europe and North America, from the early days of the Aldine press to modern and contemporary book collecting and the antiquarian trade. The volume also includes a catalogue of the exhibition `Collecting the Renaissance: The Aldine Press (1494-1598)', held in the British Library in conjunction with the colloquium. Addressing a wide readership of scholars, booksellers and collectors, The Afterlife of Aldus aims to stimulate further research on areas fundamental for understanding Aldus's long-lasting fortuna. The conference, the exhibition and this volume have received generous financial support from the Bibliographical Society, CERL and Bernard Quaritch Ltd.

BL Contains substantial discussions of Donne, Shakespeare, Rochester, and Swift Long after the establishment of printing in England, many writers and composers still preferred to publish their work through handwritten copies. Texts so transmitted included some of the most distinguished poetry and music of the seventeenth century, along with a rich variety of political. scientific, antiquarian, and philosophical writings. While censorship was one reason for this persistence of the older practice, scribal publication remained the norm for texts which were required only in small numbers, or whose authors wished to avoid `the stigma of print'. The present study is the first to consider the trade in manuscripts as an important supplement to that in printed books, and to descrice the agencies that met the need for rapid duplication of key texts. By integrating the large body of findings already available concerning particular texts and authors it provides an arresting new perspective on authorship and the communication of ideas.

At first glance, esthetic experience and editing appear to have very little in common. But even on such apparently safe ground as philological editing this impression turns out to be wrong. An editor who ignores the esthetic richness of the material he is working on may divert the attention of his edition's recipient away from essential features of the work of art in question. This collection is the fruit of a conference at which numerous editors and editing experts from various disciplines discussed the theoretical and practical consequences of such a constellation and their implications for the history of scholarship.

"Cave, City, And Eagle's Nest" is the culmination of an international research project and series of conferences, organized by the Moses Mesoamerican Archive, focused on the sixteenth-century pictorial manuscript known as the "Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2." Painted on bark paper and measuring 109 x 204 centimeters, this extraordinary document contains over seven hundred images and symbols relating the story of the emergence of ancestors at Chicomoztoc (Place of Seven Caves), their migration to the sacred city of Cholula, their foundation and settlement of Cuauhtinchan (Place of the Eagle's Nest), their community's history and claim over the surrounding landscape, and many other occurrences along the way.

Dating from around the 1540s, barely two decades after the fall of the Aztecs, the "mapa" recently underwent extensive physical analysis, conservation, and a systematic photographic survey. These rare images--including sixteen full-size sections and a nearly quarter-size facsimile--accompany fifteen richly illustrated essays that explore the meanings and uses of the document, its complex narrative, and the social and ritual memory of an indigenous community struggling to hold its own in the turbulent atmosphere of early colonial Mexico.