ILAB Breslauer Prize 2018 - Jury releases more submitted titles
Writers, publishers, librarians, journalists, scholars, antiquarian booksellers, book collectors and all who are interested in bibliography and the history of the book were invited to submit books to the 17th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography by the end of April this year. Bibliographies are an indispensable tool for booksellers but this collection of publications is more than that. It portrays the variety and depth of our profession; academic excellence combined with the love and passion for the subject.
To view all books that were submitted for 2018, please follow this link.
Nicolas Barker: Visible Voices. Translating Verse into Script & Print 3000 BC - AD 2000
Barker traces the development of poetry from its ancient origins as an oral medium to its modern incarnation as primarily written or printed artform. The book moves from the pictograms through the alphabetic scripts, the Medieval manuscripts, the shift from script to print, all the way to the innovations of the modernist period. Illustrated throughout with pictures of the discussed texts.
Erika Mordek: The Secret Life of Watermarks
This book, number two of the series “Booksleuth Series”, was issued in 40 copies only. Its aim is to guide the beginner and to help the researcher in the fascinating field of watermarks. It describes 500 watermarks, some common, some unusual, others, enigmatic.
Domenico Jacono (ed.): Bulgarian Modernism. Books and Magazines 1919-1934.
Artists and poets from Central and Eastern Europe, like Tristan Tzara and El Lissitzky to mention but two of them, were a driving force behind the booming modernist arts and literature movement during the first decades of the 20th century. Correspondingly strong avant-garde movements with a fervent publishing activity were able to become established in their homelands of Russia and Romania, as well as in their neighbouring countries, e.g. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia. This eastern modernist orbit is well explored by scholars and markets alike.
But what about Bulgaria? Who was Geo Milev? And what was „Plamak“? For the first time a comprehensive catalogue explores the surprisingly rich fields of the short-lived modernist book and magazine production in Bulgaria. The protagonists were persecuted and killed, their works of art banned, pulped and destroyed. What survived is rare and sought after. 49 unique items are presented in this volume, extensively described and profusely illustrated throughout. Furthermore, this indispensable reference work contains introductions by two experts in Bulgarian modern art and literary history, a chronology of events, bio-bibliographical accounts, a list of reference works and an index of names.
A. Ikonomopoulos: Θησαυρός της Ελληνικής Γραμματείας (Thesuarus of the Greek Literature).
The aim of the book is to give classical scholars, book collectors and dealers a canon of Greek authors, and a through inventory of their works, in Greek as well as in their Latin version, with regards to their editions, including not only the published works, but also the existing fragments and the references to lost works. The book includes the biography of 3200 authors who lived from Homer era to the Fall of Constantinople; the descriptions of about 4000 editions from the beginning of printing up to the 20th century; the biography of about 350 editors and scholars involved in those editions.
Jean Balsamo: “L’amorevolezza verso le cose Italiche”. Le livre italien à Paris au XVIe siècle.
Between 1535 and 1610, the Parisian typographers-booksellers published about 100 books in the Italian language. These works were mainly the production of Italians living at the royal court or of Italianizing French authors. Since Francis I, the French court gave much importance to the Italian literature and tongue. Balsamo for the first time has surveyed and described in details this production, identifying 109 editions.
