Woolsthorpe manor, of apple tree/gravity fame, i.e. Newton’s birthplace (also pictured in previous post), is just a short bus ride away - and all of this just an hour from London. It makes running an antiquarian bookshop in Lincolnshire rather special!

Autumn visit to Woolsthorpe Manor, birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton. In my previous life as a scholar of the history of alchemy, I would not have imagined that Newton’s school and the library he used as a child would be a 5 minutes’ walk from my office one day.

How wonderful is this rare proof of a 'lost' Kelmscott?

William Morris' wood-engravings cut from Edward Burne-Jones's drawings, for Morris's 'The Earthly Paradise' - an abandoned edition - printed in 1974 by the Rampant Lions Press for Clover Hill editions, as 'The Story of Cupid and Psyche'.

For International Dog Day: T.E. Lawrence with dogs.

From Clare Sydney Smith's 'The Golden Reign. The Story of my Friendship with "Lawrence of Arabia"' (1949).

Sir Joseph Banks was so convinced of this cookbook's merit that he sent his own chef, Henry Osborne, to assist - so William Kitchiner's "The Cook's Oracle" (here the 1822 edition) has 10 recipes of puddings eaten by Banks!

More information: www.typeandforme.com/index.php/20...

Happy Tuesday!

Snapshot from above my desk.

Happy Saturday!

Summer's essence, captured as only the private press can.
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A limited edition print tipped into Matrix 8 - just one of the very cool (?hot) things I get to work on.

…seed packet here. Also sketches of John Evelyn’s gardening tools, lots of tulips, and the first lawn mower.

Look what I got to see! Fab gardening exhibition at @britishlibrary.bsky.social, closing on Sunday.

Objects pictured are loans from @linneansociety.bsky.social (Darwin’s vasculum, seed packet prob. from Captain Cook’s 2nd voyage, Caribbean art) and the Guildford Museum (Gertrude Jekyll’s boots).

Third post here and already off-topic? No - the beauty about being an antiquarian bookseller is that I get to see fabulous exhibitions all the time as part of my continuing education!

NB: Kettle’s Yard’s Mari Mahr / Lili Brik exhibition - now closed - was extraordinary! So lucky to have caught it.

“Lovely book … I am reading it from the beginning, some every night, slow & light & lifted” (Dylan Thomas)

A tiny insight into what’s on my desk at the moment: Vernon Watkins’ “The Lady with the Unicorn”, 1948.

Watkins worked at Bletchley Park during the war but kept writing poetry throughout. 1/3

Be an antiquarian bookseller, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. And they were right!

I’m new to this platform, and here to share miscellaneous thoughts about books and life as a specialist.