john-harkers-journal

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Johnny there you are! Thought we'd lost you.

I may be silent for long spells, but I'm still here!

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I’ve accepted an internship where I’ll be working with medieval incunabula, attempting to map out where the books travelled as they switched owners throughout the Middle Ages!

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"The Vampyre" by John William Polidori. Had the chance to see this first edition copy today.

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IHob

International house of Byron

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May have the opportunity this August to see the original Frankenstein manuscript at Oxford!!!

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🥀

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Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) illustrated by Kate Baylay, published by the Folio Society.

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The Kafka Manuscripts

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From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Diary.

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The Garden

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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792 in original binding. Typo “Rights of Wowan” on spine.

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Working on another Plowman transcription

MS Douce 104

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Working on a translation of Beowulf’s funeral

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Just Pre-Ordered a facsimile of Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s hand for the 200th anniversary! 

Pictures from the SP Books Website.

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FRANKENSTEIN Turns 200!

This Day in World History: On January 1st, 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published  by the small London publishing house Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones.  It was issued anonymously, with a preface written for Mary by her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and with a dedication to philosopher William Godwin, her father.  It was published in an edition of just 500 copies in three volumes, the standard “triple-decker” format for 19th-century first editions.

Mary Shelley would receive credit as the book’s author in the second edition of Frankenstein, published four years later – August 11th, 1822 – in two volumes (by G. and W. B. Whittaker) following the success of the stage play Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake.

The (one-volume) edition most widely published and read now was first released nine years after that – on October 31st, 1831 –  and was heavily revised by Mary Shelley, partially to make the story less radical, and included a lengthy new preface by the author, presenting a somewhat embellished version of the genesis of the story.

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Transcribing and glossing a few lines from Piers Plowman.

MS Douce 104, fol. 74r