Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, to Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Harper Lee grew up in the small southwestern Alabama town of Monroeville. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and she enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote, who provided the basis of the character of Dill in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

Lee was only five years old when, in April 1931 in the small Alabama town of Scottsboro, the first trials began with regard to the purported rapes of two white women by nine young black men. The defendants, who were nearly lynched before being brought to ... Read more

By Roger Stewart

New technology soon attracts controls. In the mid-fifteenth century the printing press brought about the (relatively) cheap production of numerous copies of books and the opportunity for their widespread distribution – an Information Age. Soon, governments and churches sought to control the outputs of publishers and printers. They did this by granting exclusive licences (privileges) for specific periods and in specific territories.

The Republic of Venice granted its first privilege 1486. The first British privilege was granted in 1518, while the copyright statute was the British Statute of Anne of 1710. Initially, ... Read more

By Roger Stewart

Publication History

In 1675, John Seller published A Draught of Bona Esperanca in Atlas Maritimus and in the third book of The English Pilot; the map probably was engraved by John Oliver. Seller got into financial difficulties and the various publishers who took over his business or plates continued to publish the Pilot until 1794. They used either a similar map drawn by John Thornton (Figure 2) or the second state of Seller’s map. [1] This ... Read more

Very few Christmas songs have travelled the world as widely as "Silent Night" has done.

Translated and sung in over 300 languages and dialects, the song has touched people of all nations and in the words of its composer Franz Xaver Gruber "expresses a great longing for peace and comfort."

In 2011, "Silent Night – the Christmas carol" was added to the list of UNESCO cultural heritage. 

Franz Xaver Gruber (1787 – 1863) was born into a weaver family in rural Austria, later teaching in a village school near Salzburg as well as working as an organist. 

"Silent Night" was heard for the first time ... Read more

The recently published love letters of André Brink and Ingrid Jonker have drawn attention to these two iconic South African writers and are widely discussed in the South African literary scene. 

Andre Brink, who died in February 2015, was a South African novelist, who wrote in both Afrikaans and English. He was a Professor of English at the University of Cape Town. 

In the 1960s he, Ingrid Jonker, Etienne Leroux and Breyten Breytenbach were key figures in the Afrikaans literary movement known as Die Sestigers. These writers sought to use Afrikaans to speak out against the apartheid government, and brought into Afrikaans literature the influence of ... Read more

The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs will be among the collectable books on offer at the Antiquarian on-line book auctions that started yesterday on www.antiquarianauctions.com/auction.

Published by AC McClurg and Company, Chicago in 1916 this first edition has a reserve price of $5,000. It is in the completely unrestored first-issue dust jacket.

According to the catalogue, Beasts of Tarzan is the third novel in Burroughs’ series of Tarzan adventure stories.

At the start of the novel, Tarzan is living in England as a wealthy Lord Greystoke. After his wife and son are abducted, Tarzan returns ... Read more

Written by Arne Schaefer from Africana Books.

In my hands is this bible printed in 1702. No, let me correct that – the bible is much too big and heavy to hold – it is lying on a table in front of me. A huge, stately book of almost ten kilos, bound in wooden boards which have been covered with lovingly anointed, but heavily cracked leather; the corners are protected by ornate brass work, and two clasps keep it shut. I open the book carefully; some newer pages have been inserted, covered with a beautifully calligraphed genealogy, beginning in 1232 AD, of one of the old Cape ... Read more

Lewis Carroll was born as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson on the 27^th January 1832 in Daresbury, England as the third of 11 children and oldest son to Pastor Charles Dodgson.
As a child he showed a profound interest in mathematics. He was very well read and wrote small theatre pieces for his younger siblings to escape from the “narrow” world of his pastoral family home. 
After unhappy years in a public school he began his studies at Christ Church College in Oxford and later taught mathematics at the college. Passionate about the new medium of photography and later dedicating much of his time to writing, he found great interest and pleasure in inventing ... Read more

This article was taken from The Antiques Trade Gazette, Issue 2199, 11 July 2015