15 New Books / September 2012 Acquisitions

New acquisitions have been arriving daily here at the PLL.  I even found the compelling How Prints Look: Photographs with a Commentary by William M. Ivins, Jr. (Robert Smithson Collection) yesterday at a local junk shop.  How Prints Look investigates the process and reproduction of various prints, frankly discussing "of copies, facsimiles, and other bothersome matters."

An original 15th Century Florentine woodcut (left) and a copy by Pilinski of Paris.  Of course, this is a reproduction of a reproduction and a reproduction of a reproduction of a reproduction.

Included in the new batch of acquisitions are a few books that focus on geology and mineralogy - all from the Robert Smithson Collection:

The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams
Landforms of Australia by Vincent Serventy
Western Gem Hunters Atlas by Bob & Cy Johnson
Biogeography of the Southern End of the World by Philip J. Darlington, Jr.

The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Adams (a spread showing Gessner's classes of fossils)

Landforms of Australia by Vincent Serventy (spread showing snowy vistas and Tunnel Creek in Western Aus.)

 

Western Gem Hunters Atlas by Robert & Cy Johnson (spread showing area around Portland Ore.)

 Beautiful hardbound volumes are also added to the Library to support the Jorge Luis Borges Collection:

New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson
Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days by Arnold Bennett

As well as In the Sky Garden by Lizzie Chamney, from the Maria Mitchell Collection.  This beautifully illustrated (by "Champ") of fables is dedicated to Maria Mitchell herself:

"To Professor Maria Mitchell, . . Written in the hope of interesting the small people, and leading them to a study of its more fascinating truths, is gratefully and lovingly dedicated by her pupil and satellite,"

Other acquisitions from the Robert Smithson Collection include:
A Fire on the Moon by Norman Mailer
Phenomenology: Its Genesis & Prospect by Quentin Lauer
On Violence by Hannah Arendt
Poems & Prose by Gerard Manley Hopkins

From the Jorge Luis Borges Collection:
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen
The Golem by Gustav Meyrink

From the Italo Calvino Collection:
The Way Things Are (De Rerum Natura) by Lucretius

Please contact the Personal Libraries Library at personallibraries{at}gmail{dot}com for questions about membership or checking out books.