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Portraits of Women Take Over an Oxford Dining Hall

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Some of the new portraits (taken by Robert Taylor) in the dining hall at Hertford College.Credit Rob Judges

Hertford College, one of the first colleges at Oxford University to admit women for both housing and instruction, is celebrating 40 years of coeducation by belatedly giving women a full place at the table, figuratively speaking.

In a high-table twist on Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party,” the longstanding all-male portrait gallery of luminaries in Hertford’s dining hall will be replaced with photographs of distinguished female fellows and alumnae, including philosophers, economists, executives and athletes. The portraits, all taken by the photographer Robert Taylor, will hang for a year.

If Stephanie Cullen (a world champion rower) and Mary Warnock (a philosopher and member of the House of Lords) don’t have the same obvious marquee value as the poet John Donne and printer William Tyndale, that’s part of the point.

“It’s not just that our previous portraits were all of men, but more that they represented a narrow definition of achievement, and a very hierarchical one,” Emma Smith, a fellow and lecturer in English at the college and the organizer of the exhibition, said in a statement. “Our new portraits show that we are as proud of unsung achievement and of potential as we are of high office or salary.”

Rare Jane Austen Manuscript Goes on Exhibit

The Jane Austen news just keeps coming.

First, the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England, announced earlier this week that it had seized the world record for largest assembly of people in Regency dress (550, to be exact) from the Jane Austen Society of North America.

And now, Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire, has put part of a rare Jane Austen manuscript on display through December. The display consists of one of the 11 booklets that formed “The Watsons,” a novel that Austen started and then abandoned sometime between 1804 and 1805. Oxford University’s Bodleian Libraries bought the full manuscript for $1.16 million in 2011, and will be lending a portion to the museum.

The exhibition, which also includes a needle case and other domestic tools belonging to Austen, focuses on the way the author meticulously prepared her writing surface, pinning precisely sized patches to the paper in those rare places where she made substantial revisions. (Yes, scholars have studied those pins.)

“Jane Austen’s art is famously frugal,” Kathryn Sutherland, a professor at Oxford and a trustee of the museum, said in a statement. “The densely filled and patched small pages of the ‘Watsons’ manuscript offer us a precious insight into that rich and mysterious frugality.”

Manuscripts by the mature Austen are extremely rare. Aside from two chapters of “Persuasion,” none survive for any of her six published novels. But other instances of her handwritten material continue to attract intense interest. Abbeville Press recently published the first full facsimile of the three volumes of juvenilia that the teenage Austen bound into books. And earlier this year, scholars announced that they were examining a 5 inch by 1 inch scrap of paper written on by Austen to see if some “shadow” marks on the reverse were also traces of her hand.

Loeb Classical Library Goes Digital

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Credit Harvard University Press/Michael Rossi

The Loeb Classical Library, the series of trim red (Latin) and green (Greek) volumes beloved of generations of students and design geeks, has slipped its distinctive color-coded covers and headed into the ether.

The Digital Loeb Classical Library, available today on a fee basis, makes the more than 520 volumes of the series available on an online platform that allows readers to search, browse, share and annotate and bookmark any two-page spread, which, as with the print editions, shows the Latin or Greek on the left and an English translation on the right. In a statement, Jeffrey Henderson, the general editor of the series, which is published by Harvard University Press, called it “not merely another format for reading a given volume, but for having the whole Library, a wallful of volumes, on any connected device anywhere.”

The series was created in 1912 with the intent of placing “these treasures within the reach of all who care for the finer things of life,” as its founder, the philanthropist James Loeb, wrote. Over the years, the books — sized to “fit in a coat pocket” — have popped up everywhere from the world’s great libraries and bookstores to the pages of Martha Stewart Living to Mr. Burns’s study on “The Simpsons.”

Virginia Woolf, writing in the Times Literary Supplement in 1917, declared that the facing-page translations “came as a gift of freedom.” That gift, however, was not always complete. The 1914 edition of Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars, for example, declined to translate some of the bawdier passages, instead presenting the Latin text on both pages, in deference to the anti-obscenity laws of the time. Harvard University Press confirmed that the digital edition, like the current print edition, includes full translations of the dirty bits.

Rosa Parks Collection Going to Library of Congress

The Library of Congress will be the temporary home of a collection of more than 1,500 items relating to the civil rights activist Rosa Parks and recently purchased by the philanthropist Howard G. Buffett.

Mr. Buffett, a son of the investor Warren Buffett, acquired the collection last month for $4.5 million. It includes letters, photographs, clothing and awards, like Parks’s Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal. It will be at the library on a 10-year loan, and some items will be incorporated into the exhibition “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom,” which opened Sept. 10.

Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger in December 1955 helped start the Montgomery bus boycott, died in 2005 at age 92. Since then her papers have been embroiled in a legal dispute among her heirs and an educational institute she had founded in Detroit, her longtime home.

Mr. Buffett, who acquired the collection through his foundation, told The Detroit Free Press that the purchase had been prompted by a television news report about how the items had been in storage since 2006, unavailable to scholars.

“I’m only trying to do one thing: preserve what’s there for the public’s benefit,” he said. “I thought about doing what Rosa Parks would want. I doubt that she would want to have her stuff sitting in a box with people fighting over them.”

Proceeds from the sale will be divided between the heirs and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, with the institute receiving 80 percent of the proceeds after sales commissions, The Free Press reported. Other civil rights material at the Library of Congress includes the papers of Thurgood Marshall, Bayard Rustin and Roy Wilkins, and the records of the National Urban League and the N.A.A.C.P.

New Margaret Atwood Work Coming in … 2114?

Fans clamoring for Margaret Atwood’s next work of fiction will need to take a serious chill pill, or even better, seek a full cryogenic freezing. The project she’s currently working on won’t appear until 2114.

No, that is not a typo. Ms. Atwood, the author of the dystopian novels “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Oryx and Crake,” has been named the first contributor to the Future Library, a project conceived by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson, and set to unfold over the next century, The Guardian reported. Each year a writer will be invited to contribute a text to the literary equivalent of a seed bank, where the manuscripts will be stored, unread, in a room at the Deichmanske municipal library in Oslo lined with wood from a forest planted this summer outside the Norwegian capital.

In 2114 the forest will be cut down to provide paper for the books. The room has also been equipped with a printing press, on the chance that the capacity to print paper books has been destroyed in an e-pocalypse. Read more…

Michael Sheen and Kate Burton to Appear in “Under Milk Wood” in New York

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An advertisement for a 1953 performance of "Under Milk Wood."Credit

The Welsh actor Michael Sheen, currently starring as the bow-tied sexologist William Masters on Showtime’s “Masters of Sex,” will be stepping into the shoes of a less buttoned down midcentury figure: Dylan Thomas.

On Oct. 26, Mr. Sheen will direct a performance of Thomas’s “Under Milk Wood” at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, on the same stage where the work — described by Thomas as “a play for voices” — had its premiere in May 1953. Mr. Sheen will also read the part of “First Voice,” a narrator, one of the parts originally read by Thomas.

The performance, which will be broadcast live on BBC Radio Wales, will also feature the actress Kate Burton, whose father, Richard Burton, helped popularize “Under Milk Wood” through a 1954 BBC radio broadcast and 1972 film adaptation. It is part of a week of events in New York and elsewhere celebrating Thomas’s 100th birthday, including “Dylan Thomas in America,” an exhibition about the poet’s star-making trips to the United States in the 1950s that will be on view at the 92nd Street Y.

Thomas died in November 1953, a few months after the “Milk Wood” premiere. Mr. Sheen, who was born near Thomas’s hometown, Swansea, Wales, said in a statement that the performance and live broadcast would be “an opportunity to celebrate him and his work in both New York — a city that became so important to Dylan — and, at the same time, in Wales, his inspiration and home.”

Tickets to the performance, which are free, can be reserved starting at noon on Sept. 9 at http://www.92y.org/dylanthomas.

George R. R. Martin to Appear at 92nd St Y

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George R. R. MartinCredit Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times

The Seven Kingdoms will meet the Five Boroughs — or Manhattan, at least — when George R. R. Martin touches down at the 92nd Street Y on Oct. 26 for his only United States appearance this year discussing and promoting his new book, “The World of Ice and Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones.”

The book, released on Oct. 28, and written with Elio M. Garcia Jr. and Linda Antonsson, the founders of the fan site Westeros.org, is billed as offering “never-before seen” history of the intrigues, rebellions, machinations and rivalries that led to the “present-day” struggles of the Starks, Lannisters, Baratheons and Targaryens, as featured in Mr. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series and on the hit HBO show “Game of Thrones.”

It may also serve as a cheat sheet for Mr. Martin, who is currently (or so one hopes) working on the sixth volume of the series. Whenever he can’t remember a detail, he told The New Yorker in 2011, he consults Mr. Garcia. “I’ll write something and email him to ask, ‘Did I ever mention this before?’” Mr. Martin said. “And he writes me right back: ‘Yes, on Page 17 of Book Four.’ ”

Tickets to the 92nd St Y event, which start at $100, include a signed copy of the book. For fans who lose out on the game of seats, the event will be live-streamed at www.92Y.org/livecast.

A Book Bound in Human Skin? Sorry, Not This Time.

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An inscription inside “Biblioteca Politica,” a 17th-century book containing Latin essays on the divine right of kings, states that the book is bound in human skin. But testing revelealed that is bound in sheepskin.Credit

Three months after scientists at Harvard confirmed that a 19th-century French treatise in one of its libraries was almost certainly bound in human skin, another institution has put a supposed anthropodermic binding in its possession to the test and come up wanting.

Juniata College, a liberal arts school in Huntingdon, Pa., has announced that its copy of “Biblioteca Politica,” a 17th-century book containing Latin essays on the divine right of kings, is bound in sheepskin, not human skin, as a handwritten inscription on the inside cover states.

The result may count as bad news at Juniata, where the book has something of a cult status, according to Jacob Gordon, the college’s reference librarian. “The book has sort of taken on the status of an urban legend,” he said in a statement. “Every semester, students come in and want to see it.”

Mr. Gordon, working with two Juniata professors, sent samples from the book’s binding in May to the Harvard lab that had confirmed the French treatise as bound in human skin. (Scientists there previously found that another supposed anthropodermic binding in Harvard’s collection was actually sheepskin.)

Mr. Gordon has also started a database to track examples of anthropodermic bibliopegy held at other institutions. The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, according to the database, is the leader with some six examples, including an 18th-century treatise on pregnancy said to be bound in skin taken from a woman’s thigh.

Ginsburg and Alito to Speak at New-York Historical Society

Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Samuel A. Alito Jr. are among the luminaries scheduled to speak at the New-York Historical Society this fall and winter, as part of a lineup heavy on reconsideration of legal issues past and present.

Justice Ginsburg will appear on Oct. 29 to offer “personal insights into the culture of the current Supreme Court and the difference between being an advocate and a judge,” according to a release. Justice Alito will appear on Nov. 14 with the constitutional law scholar Philip C. Bobbitt, to introduce a screening of the 1957 classic “Witness for the Prosecution,” part of a series dedicated to the theme “Justice on Film.”

Neither jurist is expected to hand down any verdicts, but Judge Denny Chin of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will mete out justice (or not) on Oct. 18, when he presides over “22 Lewd Chinese Women,” a drama he has written that re-enacts the 1874 trial of 22 immigrant women who were arrested in San Francisco on charges of “lewdness,” or prostitution, because they were traveling alone.

Mr. Chin will also appear on Oct. 17 to discuss the film “Flower Drum Song” with the playwright David Henry Hwang. Other events include appearances by David H. Petraeus, the retired general; the photographer Annie Leibovitz; the activist and scholar Cornel West; the composer Tan Dun and the actress Nancy Kwan (“The World of Suzie Wong”), one of a number of speakers appearing in conjunction with the exhibit “Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion,” which opens on Sept. 26.

Smithsonian Turning to the Public to Help Transcribe Documents

The Smithsonian Institution has followed the crowdsourcing crowd, with the opening of an online transcription center allowing members of the public to help decipher thousands of digitized pages of Civil War diaries, botanical labels, correspondence and other documents that cannot be easily read by a computer.

Over the past year of beta testing a team of volunteers has transcribed more than 13,000 pages of documents, including personal correspondence of the so-called Monuments Men; the 1948 diary of Earl Shaffer, believed to be the first man to hike the entire Appalachian Trail; a 19th-century ballooning scrapbook; and a significant portion of the tiny labels in the National Museum of Natural History’s collection of nearly 45,000 bumblebee specimens.

Now the Smithsonian is hoping the broader public will help transcribe, among other highlighted projects, the field notebooks of the Virginia bird-watcher James W. Eike; the research notebooks of Joseph Henry, a physicist and the Smithsonian’s first secretary; and a collection of letters from American artists to be included in the coming book “The Art of Handwriting.”

Once transcribed the documents will fully searchable, thus greatly improving their accessibility to both scholars and casual browsers.

Each transcription is reviewed by another volunteer and then certified as accurate by a Smithsonian expert. In a release, the institution estimated that without help it would take its staff decades to transcribe the millions of pages from its collections that have been digitized.
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