Some very clean offsetting in a Huguenot Utopian novel.

Thesis submitted! 🍾🍾🍾 If you'd like to read something that contains both bibliographical formulae and discussions of rimming, then it may be for you!

I wouldn't normally go to bat for Kipling but the pictorial paper wraps on this 1st British ed of 'The Phantom Rickshaw' are just tremendous. Link: keelrowbooks.com/item/14704/t...

@elizaaudacis.bsky.social has returned from the US with perhaps the best belated Christmas gift I could ask for: a crisp first edition of Fredson Bowers' 'Dog Owner's Handbook'.

Hitting the road for the first book fair of 2026... Join us this weekend for the January York book fair, a bite sized version of the well loved September fair 👇🏽 Sat 10th Jan 10am - 4.30pm Knavesmire Suite, York Racecourse, YO23 1EX. For free tickets & more, visit yorkbookfair.com

On February 19 I'll be speaking alongside the excellent @heggledepeg.bsky.social at @keelrowbooks.bsky.social about aspects of early modern book history. I'm truly hoping to supply quality slop for the hogs. If you're in the area, you can sign-up here: www.tixtree.com/e/seminar-in...

Applications due January 16th! Apply for research fellowships at Houghton Library! Work with collections including Printing & Graphic Arts! Bother me irl with your ideas, questions, and quandaries! (It’s not a bother.)

A 1720 copy of one of Defoe's major sources for his Journal of the Plague Year (1722), formerly owned by a local sailor's asylum with a very sweet cymbiform book stamp. Perhaps someone thought this would be cheery reading for the afflicted?

'Scouts in Bondage', a wholesome novel about the values of scouting from the author of 'Trawler Boy Dick'. The title features prominently in Michael Bell's compilation of 'Titles that Might Cause Vulgar Minds to Misapprehend their Content'.

It's not often that the outside of a photo album is more attractive than the contents, but this embroidered binding might be the exception... As far as we can determine, the photographer was a talented amateur (likely an American woman) who travelled extensively in Europe at the fin de siècle.

I've now worked with a number of cookery manuscripts of the 18th/19th century, and I'm a fan of this one because we confidently identified the author (right down to finding her gravestone), and her curry recipes seem actually competent and use a variety of spices.

I think one of my all time favourite books that I've described: a nineteenth-century 'metaphysical story' about a man who can travel to planets inhabited by characters from novels. This copy is from an occultist library in Edinburgh, and we've only found two institutional copies worldwide...

In the spirit of Christmas I have allowed myself *two* footnotes that begin with the word 'consider' and contain long quotations from novels of questionable relevance to the argument.

Once again 'a copy of Newton's first publication in Germany in battered contemporary sheep' is at the top of every child's Christmas wishlist, and I'm glad to say we're the only retailer where that is available for purchase: www.abebooks.co.uk/first-editio...

I tried Gemini on some tricky marginal annotations I'm working on. I'm not a good manuscript scholar but it took much longer than me to produce a transcription that ignored most of the manuscript and inserted a word that wasn't there. I think I'm not going to give up reading my sources just yet.

This conference has been absolutely transformative for me every year that is has run. The continued commitment to hybrid is fantastic, I'll be attending online! Apply while you still can!

Deadline extended! You have until Monday October 20th to put in an abstract! #queerbibliography #transbookhistory @bibsoc.bsky.social @bibsocamer.bsky.social @obs1922.bsky.social @transbookhistory.bsky.social @thetransfemininereview.com @sharpnews.bsky.social @royalhistsoc.org

Surely one of the great ODNB epithets?

anyway, apropos of nothing, if anyone needs provide editing, proofreading, or archival/special collections/bibliographical research services, I have those skills that can be used on a freelance basis and otherwise

On my desk today: victorian Frankenstein x Dickens x Zola fan fiction; and a sammelband of pamphlets about ghosts, adult circumcision, and slavery.

Today's task: a love poem in cipher at the back of an otherwise quotidian local woman's memorandum book.

Our next Bibliographical Skills Workshop is taking place at the University of Stirling, on 28 October 2025: ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

I'm really delighted to say that following submission of my thesis in December, I'll be starting as a full-time cataloguer and bookseller at the Keel Row Bookshop, supported by a traineeship from the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association. Expect to see many more books here!

Hot take but it may be inadvisable for booksellers to describe 'Samuel Mearne bindings' on books printed 40 years after his death.

I've been reading a lot of introductions to get a feel for writing my own, and I fear this thesis may fall into the classic genre of 'book about the turn of the 18thc that begins with long quotation of questionable relevance from Pepys' Diary/London Spy/The Spectator.'

Some days I wonder if doing a whacko collation over the course of 2 days is worth it or if '8 volumes, gathered in an erratic order' would have the same effect.

Perhaps my most heinous take is that books as furniture is a practice that is both rooted in the long tradition of using books as vehicles for visually appealing bindings, and is a necessary means of dealing with the swathes of volumes that have few other uses. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

There have been too many instances in this PhD where following up a citation leads to me realising that some apparently momentous event in the history of sexuality was probably just made up by John Wilkes in an attempt to impress women.

I have rarely seen a work of art that speaks to me so specifically.

Earlier today, Patrick J. Kearney emailed me to tell me that he fabricated five letters allegedly written from James Campbell Reddie to Henry Spencer Ashbee, a transcription of which he has posted on his website + scissors-and-paste.net/pdf/Reddie_L...

Today I am a bibliographer of erotica, reading a letter between two other bibliographers of erotica, which was mounted into a a bibliographer of erotica's copy of the Erotika Biblion.

My ambition for a bookshop is to have a floor dedicated to 'specialist publications' that consists of scarce but unsaleable books.

Does anyone on here have any recommendations for reading about gender and hobbyists? Particularly about how male hobbyists create intimate communities around homosocial hobbies? I remember reading something years ago about the sexual politics of model army builders but I now can't recall it at all

Just wanted to shout out NOTCHES, the history of sexuality blog I help to edit, which is feeling a little lonely on Bluesky at the moment! If you'd like to have more history of sexuality (including looooots of queer stuff) pop up on your feed, why not give us a follow? @notchesblog.bsky.social

Such an exciting programme! What better reason than this to come to the sunny Tyneside riviera in June?

ESTC not only being back but for the first time actually displaying the local catalogue notes is like all my Christmases have come at once.

Registration for the 3rd Queer Bibliography symposium is now live! Please share widely. Attendance is FREE with registration; the symposium runs 11-13 June both in-person at Newcastle University (UK) & online. Register (by 09 June): bit.ly/QB2025Register Short Programme: bit.ly/QB2025ShortP...

I don't think I've ever encountered a bibliography that announces so clearly up front that it is going to be wrong.

Proud that my local is the sort of pub where patrons quote modernist epics in toilet graffiti

PLEASE REPOST: I'm looking for someone to do one to two days (possibly more) of (paid) research assistance in Los Angeles for my current book project. I need someone who is experienced with archives, careful, and discreet. Ideal work for a grad student in history. ben [at] ben writes things dot com

Glad to see that this World Book Day that the local kids have once again embraced dressing up as the scarce jacket from W.W. Greg's 'Some Apsects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550-1650'.

This year's @stationerscomms.bsky.social Archives Evening focuses on women in the history of the Company; I'll be presenting some of my ongoing dissertation research, alongside other fabulous presentations. Please come along! 07 April 2025, 5:30-9:30pm, £40/ticket www.stationers.org/events/detai...

❗️CFP for the 3rd annual (!!) Queer Bibliography symposium in Newcastle & on Zoom! The organizers have worked so hard, and I’m honored to be on the planning committee. 📚 full cfp: bit.ly/QueerBiblio2... 📁 submission form: bit.ly/QB2025Propos... This call will close Fri 31 Jan 2025. Share & submit!

I've been working on 18thc puzzle-pictures recently. This 1786 ad in the Rambler shows the only way that I want to list books for sale.

🚨This Friday is the deadline to submit!🚨 It's set to be an exciting conference, hosted hybrid. If you have questions, ask me or any member of the committee, all of whom are listed in the cfp.

This FRIDAY, 31 Jan is the deadline if you are thinking about submitting to Queer Bib in the summer. It will be hybrid and free or token cost to attend. ASK if you have questions!

A reminder that you have 11 days until this closes! If I hadn't attended the first queer bib in 2023, I'd be writing a considerably different thesis, and without so many of the friends and collaborators that I met on those 3 days. Hopefully queer bib 2025 can be similarly formative for you...

Speaking of which, it's 2 weeks until this closes. Do submit!

Now that authors often publish in print on demand before they get a book deal, I've seen some quite eccentric true firsts printed in a4 with the default Kindle typeface. I think we might eventually see a lot of 'the second, and best, edition' in future...

You still have a few weeks to get your submissions in for #QueerBib2025! Links below 👇