Dr Sam Bailey
@18thcenturysam
Antiquarian bookseller @keelrowbooks /Visiting Fellow of Bibliography and Book History @newcastleuni / fan of weird books/ she/they
Unfortunate place to use a capital depicting Judith & Holofernes...
Read this in one sitting in the local queer café today. V worthwhile read that I have already passed on to a fellow bibliographer. If someone asks me what they should read to learn desc bib I will now always say this!
Nice to see how scholars from other disciplines talk about handpress era books lol.
My favourite thing in the world is talking about weird/beautiful/old books while in the proximity of wine. If you're in the NE and share this feeling then you should sign up for an event that is just that. Link: www.tixtree.com/e/keel-row-l...
My graduation on Friday was a wonderful but bittersweet experience. I have long called the English department at Newcastle my home, and my fellow scholars there are so dear to my heart. Seeing the culmination of three degrees over nine years has felt like a homecoming...
'An admirable attempt at repair' on a 1600 Bible, BCP, and Psalms.
Writing about the dildo-poem 'Monsieur Thing's Origin' today - which might be one of the gappiest title-pages of the hand-press era. A 'thing' made present by this absence perhaps?
The bookseller's label of the Dublin stationer Bennett Dugdale (fl. 1781-1800) in a manuscript. I don't often see letterpress 'sold by' labels in 18thc books!
A press room of 13-14 year olds at work, illustrating the young bookmakers who made the volume I'm currently cataloguing.
I have found many things in books, snakeskin is a first though...
I'm going to start citing Bowers whenever I'm asked to produce a timeline for a grant application.
A reminder that next week I'll be speaking alongside @heggledepeg.bsky.social at @keelrowbooks.bsky.social. There will be wine and hand-press era books in ample supply. RSVP: www.tixtree.com/e/seminar-in...
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'.
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...
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...