This manuscript by Anselmus Faust, dated 1612, is the oldest surviving European manual on bookbinding. Written in Latin & Dutch, it was created for the St Bernard's Abbey near Antwerp. What makes it especially unique is its rare dos à dos binding: 2 books bound back-to-back, sharing a single spine.

Rewatching Columbo and just got to the conveniently labeled “first edition” of Alice in Wonderland.

Fantastic post on the blog today by Joe Black, who discusses Lady Bindloss's booklist--evidence of what books she bought, how she ordered them from London, and even how she shelved them by color earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/08/20/l... #EarlyModern #HerBook

A nice binding on this book printed in Seville, 1587. Rel.e.58.4 @theulspeccoll.bsky.social

When You Love Something, Hide It Underwater? Ireland’s Oldest Book Shrine, Found Buried in a Lake, Reemerges share.google/SwLDzqhgDTMd...

Delighted to see Longleat library's project with Birmingham Uni announced. Rewarding work producing the digitised MS and collaborating with Liv to create physical & online exhibitions for general audiences. Longleat MS 258 is fascinating - do explore the online content or come visit us!

Yet another example of daughters‘ essential roles in bookselling families: In 1581-2, Middelburg bookseller Dierick van Helmondt repeatedly sent his daughter Janne to buy books from Plantin in Antwerp and settle his accounts (his son worked in the business too) (Museum Plantin-Moretus Arch. 60 f. 2)

I dunno, I didn’t think he was that bad

For those who have not seen it, researchers at the University of St Andrews are testing a device that can identify through light the presence of arsenic in old books: news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/new-... The research poster is a great recap: @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @universalstc.bsky.social

four. different. ampersands. !!!! & they all illustrate the origin of the ampersand in the ligature of the latin conjunction “et” (“and”). 222050 • @folger.edu

Did you study or work at CLW, DILS or DIS in Aberystwyth, any time from 1964 onwards? Help us celebrate 60 years with our reminiscence project, gathering memories and memorabilia. See libraryschool.aber.ac.uk to find out more. We’d love to hear from you.

Start the week with a dose of National Trust library history. The Book Collector's summer issue has a piece on the wonderful library at Springhill.

ESTC is back online in a new beta version hosted by CERL: datb.cerl.org/estc/ #RareBooks #BookHistory #Skystorians #GLAM 📚📜

What better way to celebrate #EarthDay than with a hand-coloured incunable? 🌎 This is Ptolemy's 'Cosmographia', from 1482, which features 32 early examples of printed maps! Shelfmark: Grylls 2.195 lib-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/Record/90ed3...

Interested in big house libraries? My article about the library at the National Trust's Springhill is out now: www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/lih.2025.0189 Many thanks to LIH's editors Nadine Kozak & @jilld17.bsky.social.

It's that Friday feeling.

Call for Papers: ‘Built with books: shaping the shelves of the early modern library’ Deadline 16th May 2025 9 –10 September 2025 at UCL, London

For anyone interested in the early Bodleian Library or early modern book owners, the Shaping Scholarship project at CELL, UCL has made the project data available: ebdo.org.uk/data/ It details every officially recorded donation made c. 1600-1620, plus some extras, which is around 10,000 items.

Hurry! 🏃‍♀️ It's your last weekend to catch the display of costume books from the libraries at Longleat House. Image from Mercuri's Costumes historiques (Paris: Levy fils, 1860-1861). www.longleat.co.uk/whats-on/thr...

Just keep writing, just keep writing....

A tiny, intensely illuminated Italian book of hours, newly acquired at the Boston Public Library. Copied in or around Brescia at the end of the 15th century, this book has never been in an institutional collection and will soon be digitized. Now BPL MS q Med.303 bpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S7...

Supercute. Conrad Gessner’s bunny, from his history of animals, the copy presented to @theul.bsky.social by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1574. N*.1.19(A) (1551) @theulspeccoll.bsky.social

How to organize your books in true #earlymodern style by following 3 simple steps. Here is an advice from 1504: Step 1: lay them on top of each other. Step 2: book spines facing up. Step 3: Have a few boxes within your book collection. #bookhistory #skystorians

‘Redublique’ [sic]

📢 The program for our upcoming workshop "Turning Page(s)" is now available! Join us on December 6th at the Arnamagnæan Institute or online via Zoom (link in the first rwply) for a full day of insightful talks on the history of books, libraries, and more. Register now! #BookHistory #LibraryHistory

*twitch* I’ve honestly never seen some of the ways this printer is designating signatures.

Today on our blog on early female book ownership: a post by @tarallyons.bsky.social on a lovely bible with names of early modern women, a gift inscription, and a recipe https://buff.ly/3YPkiQ7 #EarlyModern #HerBook

And so VAM didn't collect any late medieval English illumination (with very few exceptions) bc they had things like this. (The two following drawings may be French, as Shaw claims, but this border isn't!)

Need Some Color Today? You're welcome! Silk and bonus sequins courtesy of 18th c. Barcelona Opera libretto fashion, lovingly collected by Howard Mayer Brown and now at #NewberryLibrary!

Just an English pamphlet from 1649 (about a fire in London) with an image from a walking juvenile skeleton on the title page. The 'a', 'b', 'c' labels around the skeleton are evidence that the copperplate used for this print was borrowed from an earlier medical publication. 1/2

#CallForPapers: The Women and the Household in the Early Modern Book Trade (5-7 November 2025, Antwerp). #Bookhistory #HerBook #WomensHistory #Herstory museumplantinmoretus.be/en/page/wome...

#WoodcutWednesday This illustration comes from the 1594 edition of The Gardener's Labyrinth by Thomas Hill, now on display in the Wren Library's exhibition, 'Early Modern Gardens and Gardening'. 🌿 A digital version of the exhibition can be found here: trin.cam.ac.uk/library/gardens-exhibition/

Mistakes happen! If you forget to insert that one sentence in a paragraph the solution is easy. Just draw a dude in a hood and he will pull the missing text to the right place with a piece of rope! Walters Ms. W.102 Book of Hours, late 13th/early 14th C. www.thedigitalwalters.org/Data/Walters...

We are all Augustine being told off by Jerome to close all our tabs and just get on with writing. recherche.smb.museum/detail/87014...