Abe Books has pulled together some interesting tidbits below:

And many of Charles Dickens titles are available in electronic format from Project Gutenberg.  The Providence Athenaeum has an extensive collection of Dickens works including many 19th century editions.

WatchMojo has produced a three minute video montage of films produced from Dickens works. The most popular being A Christmas Carol. Take a look:

PBS Arts received many comments on this video but I liked this one: If words have meaning and type has spirit then handwriting got soul! shaunoconnordotnet

There are innumerable fonts and imaginative ways to express letters and numbers. Paul Octavious stacks books to create numbers.

BYGG Studios has designed an entire alphabet of stacked books.

Brain Pickings has put together their list of 10 Essential Books on Typography.

And the Athenaeum recently bought Simon Garfield’s Just My Type. As they say in the video: you need type again and again and again to get through the day, to live your life.

Thanks to @Brainpicker

Beatrice Coron has fascinating stories to tell and she tells them in silhouettes.  The paper cutouts take numerous forms from book arts to clothing to large constructed public art displays.  If you have the time (20 min.) the TED talk below is amazing:

I’d like to leave you with a quote from this Atlantic piece about her work:

In life, and in paper-cutting, everything is connected — one story leads to another. –Béatrice Coron

Flavorwire did a nice piece this week on the myriad book jackets created for Tolkien’s works.  Above is the original 1937 dust jacket designed by the author.  Translated into over 40 languages, published hundreds of times, the art and print work are astounding.  The Gallery of Tolkien Book Covers is extensive. If you search Amazon for The Hobbit over 2100 items appear. Everything from the standard text to dramatizations, a parody called The Wobbit, an annotated edition, teachers guide, graphic novel, pop-up version, and a work titled Finding God in the Hobbit.

Director Peter Jackson has given us the definitive visual representation of the Lord of the Rings and now he is bringing his genius to The Hobbit.  The story will be told in two movies and according to the trailer below we have to wait until December 2012 for the first installment.

Another wonderful book artist, Guy Laramee focuses on landscapes. Carving a hole in the top of this one to allow filtered light in is brilliant. For more pics of his work check this Colossal Art & Design post or this at the Huffington Post.

I wonder if the Athenaeum could afford one of his works. We could supply him with the raw material if he’d consider it.

Thanks John

The Voynich Manuscript, often described as the most mysterious manuscript in the world, is now available online. Named for the bookseller who acquired it in 1912, the Voynich Manuscript has been dated to the late 15th or early 16th century, but it has never been translated, nor has the language been identified. It is generally believed to be either scientific or magical in nature due to the prominent illustrations of star charts and (largely unidentified) plants. However, one theory states that the manuscript is written entirely in anagrams of medieval Italian, and that it may be the work of a young Leonardo DaVinci. I can’t decide if that makes it more or less interesting.

Any library in the world would be thrilled to have her creations. If you are ever in Providence…

   The database is called “What Middletown Read” because of a 1929 sociological study of Muncie that labeled the town as an average American town. The most read books and authors are listed here.

Although Athenaeum members have never been “average” I decided to compare what Muncie readers read to what our collections hold. Horatio Alger was the most popular author in the Muncie study but the Athenaeum only holds 4 of his works, one of which is a biography. In fact the only popular Muncie author that the Athenaeum avidly collected, we have 38 of his titles, was Francis Marion Crawford,  a writer of romantic travel novels mostly of Italy. Popular fiction, not the classics, were the most circulated titles during the period.

The Athenaeum has ledgers similar to the ones used at the Muncie Public Library, from 1815 and our days as the Providence Library Company, to 1894 although there is a large gap between 1853 and 1891. Kate Wodehouse, Collections Librarian, calls them charging books and uses them regularly in exhibits.

Thanks John and Kate

Ravenous loves the 19th century and is very excited about the release of the 2nd Sherlock Holmes movie.  Collider.com has an everything you’d care to know about A Game of Shadows on their website and it looks to be bigger and bolder than the first film.

To be sure we still adore the BBC/PBS Sherlock that we wrote about here and eagerly await the next installment in 2012. What would Sir Arthur think of this continued interest in his Sherlock?