About half of the short stories contained in this volume are set in and around Washington Square. This passage from "The Repairer of Reputations" is one of the most chilling reading experiences I have ever had:

It was, I remember, the 13th day of April, 1920, that the first Government Lethal Chamber was established on the south side of Washington Square, between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue. The block which had formerly consisted of a lot of shabby old buildings, used as cafes and restaurants for foreigners, had been acquired by the Government in the winter of 1898. The French and Italian cafes and restaurants were torn down; the whole block was enclosed by a gilded iron railing, and converted into a lovely garden with lawns, flowers and fountains. In the centre of the garden stood a small, white building, severely classical in architecture, and surrounded by thickets of flowers. Six Ionic columns supported the roof, and the single door was of bronze. A splendid marble group of "The Fates" stood before the door, the work of a young American sculptor, Boris Yvain, who had died in Paris when only twenty-three years old.

For those who don't know their historic New York City geography, Washingon Square South between Wooster Street and Fifth Avenue South is the exact location of Bobst Library.

Happy Halloween!

This one is at the very top of my list. Dig it:

Here's a transcription of the label:

Sams' Circulating Library, Hoddesdon, Herts.
Books Lent to Read, by the Year, Half-Year, Quarter, or Single Volume.
Magazines, And other Periodical Publications, on the Shortest Notice.
Every Article in the Stationery, Bookselling, and Perfumery, at the London Prices.
Genuine Medicines.
Books Neatly Bound.

If you are interested in learning about the circulation of books in the nineteenth century, the history of commercial circulating libraries is the place to start. Here's an article that makes for a nice introduction: "The Economy of Novel Reading: Jane Austen and the Circulating Library" by Lee Erickson. For a longer treatment of the company I often describe as the Blockbuster Video of the nineteenth century, check out this book: Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel by Guinevere L. Griest (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1970).

But without reading anything further about the circulating library, this label gives you a sense of the context in which this object circulated. Sam has all of your light reading needs covered AND you can pick up your perfume and "Genuine Medicines"! One-stop shopping, 1820s style.

The text inside? It's another one of those unknown gems:

Isn't it Odd? by Marmaduke Merrywhistle (London, 1822)

Graphs Maps Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary Theory (2005) by Franco Moretti.
It's pretty short -- three essays that fill just over 100 pages -- but it's sparking some big ideas.

I'll just quote from the opening pages:

To begin with, this is an essay on literary history: literature, the old territory (more or less), unlike the drift towards other discourses so typical of recent years. But within that old territory, a new object of study: instead of concrete, individual works, a trio of artificial constructs -- graphs, maps, and trees -- in which the reality of the text undergoes a process of deliberate reduction and abstraction.

... But their consequences are on the other hand extremely concrete: graphs, maps, and trees place the literary field literally in front of our eyes--and show us how little we still know about it. It is a double lesson, of humility and euphoria at the same time: humility for what literary history has accomplished so far (not enough), and euphoria for what still remains to be done (a lot). Here, the methodology of the book reveals its pragmatic ambition: for me, abstraction is not an end in itself, but a way to widen the domain of the literary historian, and enrich its internal problematic. How this may be done is what I will try to explain. (1-2)

Ever since I started working in Fales I have felt that same combination of humility and euphoria when I confront the very concrete books on our shelves. There are just too many for even the most dedicated reader to consume in a lifetime, let alone digest and interpret.

I intend to chip away at this Big Idea here in the coming weeks, but the nub of my gist is that there is a role for the library/librarian in presenting our holdings to our users in entirely new ways. What if our users don't want to read our books but do something entirely else? What if they just want to graph them? What if they want to build charts and maps?

These are certainly things I want to do, and I know the technology to do it is out there. Stay tuned while I try to figure it all out.

I haven't done anything but drool over the amazing illustrations in this book, but it's very interesting that it's published by the SPCK. I wonder if there is an element of evangelism in this book, or if it's just straight-up natural history.

I'm just glad we have a nice handful of mid-19th-century examples of non-fiction to complement our Melville holdings.

And this one has a nice Arthur Gordon Pym vibe to it:

This collection came to NYU last Fall, the gift of Larry W. Bowman who gathered together books, periodicals, maps, and other materials on the Indian Ocean littoral - from Cape Town to Fremantle, with a focus on Mauritius and Seychelles. I spent the better part of my day today identifying items to be added to our general Special Collections holdings.

There are some amazing books in this collection -- great 19th-century volumes of exploration, trade, and seamanship. Most appropriate for Fleet Week in NYC.

Here's an excellent example:

That's the cover of this one:

The Sailor's Horn Book from 1860.

There are books about India, books about pirates, books about Madagascar, books about whaling. All sorts of good things. It will take a while for everything to turn up in BobCat, but this is a nice complement to the Victorian-era fiction about travel and exploration and empire.

Stay tuned for more choice selections.

As with many items from the Levy Dime Novel Collection, I'm not entirely sure these qualify as "dime novels" -- they're both novelizations of popular plays. But with covers like these, who wants to split hairs?