Although I'm here (Great Missenden Church) for a concert, I couldn't not go and find his grave.

Blood. Now books.

Time to roll the old sleeves up.

Our next lecture will take place on Tuesday 19 May 2026 at 5.30 p.m., at the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, and online via Zoom. Andrew Honey, Book Conservator (Research & Training) at the Bodleian Library will deliver the Homee & Phiroze Randeria Lecture.

Breitkopf & Härtel having some typographic fun in 1900.

Spotted in Cambridge the other day.

Delighted to be able to attend the premiere last night of Vita Mariae, a sequence of words and music I wrote based on Rilke’s Das Marien-Leben. Some beautiful, sensitive singing from Cambridge University Schola Cantorum under Graham Walker.

The Gore Memorial (1707) in Tring Church.

Back at Tring Church this evening, for a concert. I sang here between the ages of 8 and 18. Lots of memories.

The Bibliographical Society is looking for three volunteers to help with its FIRSTS London stall at the following times: • Friday the 15th of May, 5-8pm • Sunday the 17th of May, 11am - 1pm • Sunday the 17th of May, 1-3pm

Thank you, New York! It's been a great week.

And here's the venue: the iconic Park Avenue Armory.

A couple of hours to go before the opening of the New York Antiquarian Book Fair...

The manuscripts of Mozart's earliest compositions. He was five years old.

Was my favourite Dostoevsky novel when I was at university.

Jack Kerouac's own copy of On the Road.

Good morning, New York.

I've been asked to write a review of this. That's my flight to New York sorted.

Striking orange printed boards, advertising William B. Allen’s Newburyport bookstore in 1817. Something for next week’s New York book fair. ‘The future’s bright…,’ as they used to say in the ad campaign.

An extensive collection of Orders of Service for special services at St Paul’s Cathedral compiled by John S. Bumpus, author of 'The Organists and Composers of St Paul’s Cathedral', including Queen Victoria’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees and the burial of Sir John Everett Millais.

Colour woodblock scenes from one of the world’s first novels, the early 11th-c Tale of Genji (Kyoto, late 19th c.)

Some years ago, I became very interested in Rilke, specifically his cycle Das Marienleben, which he wrote just before he started work on the Duino Elegies. It set me on a stimulating path, as a bookseller (tracking down not only an inscribed copy of the first edition but...

Someone in Austin, Texas listened to some of my music yesterday. Always interesting to see how far it reaches. soundcloud.com/simon-42-1

A provincial performance of Charles A. Somerset’s 'Shakspeare’s Early Days' (1829), the first English Shakespeare biopic.

A complete set of a satirical illustrated ‘chronicle’ of the First World War (printed 1915–16) in the style of a lubok, a form of Russian popular print going back to the seventeenth century.

...and Cambridge.

Oxford...

Reading in a palanquin. From a 23-foot-long panorama, c.1843.

First Nations people in Calgary. Taken on a round-the-world choir tour in 1911, ‘one of the most remarkable events in British choral history’.

'Ladies’ Ceremonial Poetry Contest' by the young printmaker Kawanabe Kyōsui, daughter of the woodblock designer Kawanabe Kyōsai. Tokyo, c.1888.

A remarkable survival: the first fascicle of the important dictionary compiled by the Brothers Grimm.

The whitebeams (if that's what they are) I walk past every day looking gloriously fresh and green in the morning sunshine.

A children’s game issued to commemorate the first America’s Cup in 1851.

Out now: simonbeattie.co.uk/wp-content/u...

First edition of a dramatic work from 1887 (‘The Sea: a Musical Painting’) by the virtuoso pianist Andrei Oppel (1843–1888), dedicated to the painter Ivan Aivazovsky (famous for his seascapes), this copy inscribed to Prince Vladimir Mikhailovich Golitsyn.

An example of an ‘improved’ eighteenth-century print, the plate originally engraved in 1718, to which someone added Hogarth’s name in the early 1920s.

From a 19th-century French children's book.

Victorian toothache, as depicted by George Cruikshank in 1849.

The early 16th-century Pitchmarket in Cerne Abbas.

A rather elegant brocade paper, in a copy of Johann Christoph Beer's Christlicher Communicanten Geistliches Schatz-Kästlein, 1762.

From a 1968 children’s book about Mars. Artwork by the popular Soviet children’s illustrator, Yury Smolnikov (1926–1989).

A block-printed putto enjoying a book.

Rowlandson: bringing drama to what might otherwise have been a rather dull book of sword exercises.

19th-c black varnished paper lithographed in silver = tricky to photograph. A wonderful funereal binding, nevertheless.

Also now online is the Bibliographical Society’s lecture from February, given by Dr Barbara Heritage, 'Staying in print: The Brontës, 1846-1876': www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0FB...

For the Feast of the Annunciation today, in this Rilke centenary year, I offer ‘The Angel and the Unicorn’, which sets Rilke’s poem in a new translation. It was premiered by the Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge back in 2020 and is now published by Encore Publications.

Russian sheet music from 1881, with an original photograph (of General Mikhail Skobelev) pasted onto the chromolithographed cover.

Pink and blue is one of my favourite colour combinations. Here on a lovely block-printed paper in a copy of Gellert’s popular collection of model letters from 1763.

An 1835 Book of Common Prayer. ‘Factory’ here with the meaning of ‘an establishment for traders carrying on business, especially in a foreign country’ (OED). Sidenote: this book was in the city at the same time as Pushkin.

A nice piece of provincial bookmaking, from Kaluga in Russia, printed in 1913. ‘Michael Wood’ was the pen-name of Joy Hooper, an Anglican nun. Who knew?