narchival
narchival:
A Rare Book Podcast
“Searching where the archives end”
an·ar·chi·val, adj. — of a book long at large.
Improbable survivals. Overdue introductions.
Some books never make it into the record, and some slip out of it. This is a podcast about those — the ones that stayed at large, and what they turn out to be when someone finally looks. One object an episode: what it is, how it got here, and the story its condition tells. Hosted by Maxim Crispin, antiquarian bookseller. Most of what’s discussed here is, or has been, for sale.
Vesalius, Andreas. Epitome (German). Folio, Basel: Oporinus, 1543. Contemporary vellum.
A profoundly improbable find from the stacks of a closing bookshop — the rarest form of the book that founded modern anatomy — now consigned to Christie’s at an estimate of £20,000 to £25,000. Previously unrecorded in the census of surviving copies, and the second known copy in private hands.
Audio forthcoming
Zenker, Wilhelm. Lehrbuch der Photochromie. 8vo, Berlin: for the author, 1868 (Photograph made August, 1867).
The earliest recorded natural-color photograph issued in a printed book, and the only example known in private hands. We discuss how it survived, and how a forgotten schoolteacher helped lay the theoretical foundation for the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physics — and the book that did it is on the table.
Audio forthcoming
[Anon.] Adoulzin, ou les dangers d’une mauvaise Éducation. 12mo, “à Paris,” 1787.
What do Marie-Antoinette, a human baby nursed by a goat, a blackmail plot against the pope, and the man who popularized the foot-fetish all have in common? They are all connected to this anonymous novel from the dawn of the French Revolution, the only known copy in private hands in the world. We found who wrote it, 239 years after its clandestine publication.
Audio forthcoming
Occasional dispatches. No. 1 forthcoming.
☞ Entered in the ledger. Confirm by the link we have just posted you, and No. 1 will follow.
That did not go through. Write to books@anarchival.com and we will enter you by hand.