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Bob MacLean

@bobmaclean.bsky.social

Assistant Librarian (rare books), University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections

83 Posts457 Follower494 Folgt
Jay Moschella@jaymoschella.bsky.social · 4w ago

Fun new acquisition here at the Boston Public Library. This is a 1476 edition of Eusebius of Caesarea's church history, printed in Rome. We bought this book for basically one reason only -- a fantastic printing error that left an impression on one page from a single piece of "fallen type."

The full opening of the book, showing the fallen type in the lower-right cornerThe piece of type, in detail. You can see the full body of the type, shown from the side, as its lays across the surface of the locked type. The black part on the left is the letter itself. The body of the type has been drilled through, which is evidenced by the white circle in the middle. The purpose of drilling through type is still not entirely understood.
Prof. Dimitra Fimi@dimitrafimi.bsky.social · 2mo ago

When I caveat research points about Tolkien (e.g. there’s no evidence that he knew/meant that - that we *know* of) is because there’s still primary material out there we haven’t seen yet. This is a case in point: newly discovered letter by Tolkien to be sold by Christie’s 1/2

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John Self@john-self.bsky.social · last yr.

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, translated by Margaret Jull Costa. Published by the Half Pint Press, London, 2017. There were only 50 copies of this made for sale (out of a total run of 80), so I thought I’d share as much of it as I can. Numbering of fragments follows the 1982 edition.

Cardboard box letterpressed with the title and authorBack of box stating 80 copies were made of which 50 were available to buy. This is copy number 37.The box opened. Inside are objects and documents and scraps of things, the ephemera of a life, each printed with one of the fragments of text that make up The Book of Disquiet.
UofGlasgow Archives & Special Collections@uofglasgowasc.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'The string alphabet remains a remarkable chapter in the development of tactile literacy in Scotland' Dr Taylor Hare, Visiting Research Fellow, investigates the history of raised-letter printing in Glasgow. Read his full guest blog exploring his findings.

The String Alphabet in Nineteenth-Century Glasgow

Guest blog by Dr.Taylor Hare, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections. Dr Hare is a Postdoctoral Fellow in English Literature at Baylor University (…

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Glenn Fleishman@glennf.com · 2mo ago

I want to compliment Sam Regal, Editor of Printing History (the Journal of the American Printing History Association) for being braver and franker in his introduction to the current issue about American democracy than nearly all mainstream media in this country.

The pomp and circumstance accompanying the 250th anniversary of the United States—its superficial patriotism and the quasi-religious fervor it tends to inspire—stand in ironic contrast to the radical resistance at the core of the nation's founding. In the US of 2026, activists protesting the Trump administration's various violences are explicitly targeted and, in some cases, exterminated. Speech is policed and, in a number of sectors including the milieu of higher education, controlled by the State's pocketbook. The 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence was an act of sedition, and that fundamental aspect of our history is in dramatic misalignment with the current political agenda. The myth of American exceptionalism has presently achieved new grotesqueries. The snake of it roils, squirms, and expands to encompass every institution and individual it can manage to flatten, to reduce in its acids. The Declaration's dissonances— most evocatively, its espousing of the equality of man set against its conspicuous omission of enslaved peoples—are representative of a foundational national myopia and are predictive of our viciously xenophobic present. And so we must ask: as we mark the Semiquincentennial, what exactly are we celebrating? Printing History 38 contextualizes this question by interrogating influential instances of seditious printing, broadly defined.
Bob MacLean@bobmaclean.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I love this category of typographic blunder. I blogged about my favourite one of these I’ve seen: universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/b...

Bad Grammaire

Something is very strange about this titlepage. Amusingly so. Can you see what it is? During printing the second “M” of the second word in the title, “GRAMMAIRE”, must accidentally have been omitte…

universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com

McNaughtan's Bookshop@mcnaughtans.co.uk · 3mo ago

That letter ‘S’ after the apostrophe on the top line is a bit of an afterthought, J. Boyle, printer of Aberdeen. He perpetrated this typographical horror in 1788 so I’ve probably left it a bit late to complain.

McNaughtan's Bookshop@mcnaughtans.co.uk · 3mo ago

That letter ‘S’ after the apostrophe on the top line is a bit of an afterthought, J. Boyle, printer of Aberdeen. He perpetrated this typographical horror in 1788 so I’ve probably left it a bit late to complain.

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Katie Collins@spissatella.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Audited one of my favourite drawers today. As far as I can tell there was an entire generation of past mollusc curators who communicated entirely by means of passive-aggressive drawer notes to each other

A drawer of fossil molluscs mounted on cards taken from a pre-1980s display. In the middle is a curatorial note in red pen that says "Don't fumble with these until we find out smarting of glue they are stuck down with" and underneath in a different smaller hand in black ink "yes I will! Fumble fumble fumble - so there!". Several additional notes in the second hand are scattered in the drawer with arrows pointing to various specimens. They all read "fumble fumble fumble".