Recent Books

Artists and Others. The Imaginative French Book in the 21st Century: Koopman Collection, National Library of the Netherlands. By Paul van Capelleveen. Nijmegen: Vantilt Publishers. 2016. 216 pp. €29.50. isbn 978 9 46004 268 3.

The Dutch engineer Louis Koopman’s collection of livres d’artiste and special editions of French literature is one of the major collections of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. By the time of Koopman’s death in 1968 it comprised some 6000 books, and a fund to enable its continued development has allowed it to grow to 10,000 today. This book celebrates some of the more recent additions to the collection, in the various forms of artist’s book to have emerged from France since 2000. Profusely illustrated throughout, the book is divided into four sections by nature of collaboration: close collaboration between printers and artists, artists who print their own books, publishers who create books with authors and artists, and artists who collaborate with many others to produce books. The conceptual bases for these creations are highly varied, and this guide includes some reflections on the theoretical background to the work.

The Caroline Miller Parker Collection of the Work of Walter Crane at Houghton Library: A Celebration of its Riches and Research Potential on the Centenary Anniversary of the Artist’s Death, special issue of Harvard Library Bulletin, 26/1–2 (Spring–Summer 2015 [published August 2016]). iv + 205 pp. $30. issn 0017 8136.

This special issue of the Harvard Library Bulletin serves as a catalogue of the exhibition ‘The World of Walter Crane’ held at the Houghton Library from 30 September to 28 December 2015. Caroline Miller Parker formed one of the largest collections of Walter Crane’s works, augmented after her death in 1922 by her husband Augustin Hamilton Parker, who presented the collection of some 3000 items to Harvard with an endowment to support its further growth. In addition to the catalogue of the exhibition, written by Hope Mayo, this volume includes an extended account by Francesca Tancini of the formation of the collection, together with well illustrated case studies of the production history of his toy books King Luckieboy and The House that Jack Built.

Cambridge
Nicolas Bell

GERMANY

Lesen, Sammeln, Bewahren. Die Bibliothek Joachims von Alvensleben (1514–1588) und die Erforschung frühneuzeitlicher Büchersammlungen. Ed. by Berthold Heinecke and Reimar von Alvensleben. (Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie, Sonderband 119.) 379 pp. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. 2016. €98. isbn 978 3 465 04266 2.

Papers from a conference held in 2014 to mark the quincentenary of the birth of Joachim von Alvensleben who built up a remarkable library which suffered various vicissitudes over the centuries. Several of the sixteen contributions tell the story of the Alvensleben library itself (including: C. Volkmar, ‘Archivalische Quellen zu Adelsbibliotheken’; D. Sommer, ‘Die Rekonstruktion der Bibliothek der Familie von Alvensleben’; A. Kunze, ‘Frühe Bibliotheken in Stendal’), while others focus on particular strengths of the Alvensleben collection, such as the astronomica, the Paracelsica, the writings of opponents of witchcraft, and the collection of funeral sermons. Other contributions are concerned with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a librarian himself, who used the Alvensleben library a number of times in the early eighteenth century. A further group of essays seeks to place the Alvensleben library into a broader context by examining the history and fate of comparable aristocratic and scholarly libraries (including J. Wolf, ‘Die Fürstenbibliothek Arolsen und ihre Erforschung’; A. Noe, ‘Die Rekonstruktion der 1655 nach Wien verkauften Fuggerbibliothek’; and D. Schneider, ‘Zur verlorenen Bibliothek Otto von Guerickes’).

London
John L. Flood