Bookbindings, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Literary Cricketers: Summer Books Roundup

A special summer bumper edition of our regular look at new books that have recently caught the eye of our print and online editors:

Bookbindings: An Illustrated History by David Pearson

Another masterpiece from Pearson, author of many books on books including Speaking Volumes, this highly illustrated international history of bookbinding from the birth of the codex to the 21st century looks at all aspects of the art and what we can learn from examples around the world. Published by Bodleian Library Publishing.

Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark by James Bailey

A new analysis of the writer's life and work from her Edinburgh childhood to the end of her life in Tuscany. Published by Sceptre.

The Man Who Read Everything: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom, edited by Heather Cass White

From Yale University Press, a selection of the letters between the intellectual literary critic and writers and scholars including  Alvin Feinman, Northrop Frye, A. R. Ammons, John Hollander, James Merrill, John Ashbery, Henri Cole, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Many letters are published here for the first time.

Writers in Whites: How a group of literary cricketers changed English culture by Ollie Randall

A fascinating look using new research at how London's literary elite caught the cricket bug and used the sport as a networking tool to further their careers from the 19th century up to the 1960s as well as incorporate it into their writings, featuring the likes of PG Wodehouse, J.M. Barrie (who ran his own team), Arthur Conan Doyle (a fine batsman), and Jerome K. Jerome. From Fairfield Books.

Great Literary Sisters by Janet Phillips

Literature's finest sister acts from classics such as Middlemarch, Little Women, and Pride and Prejudice and including examples from the works of Charles Dickents, Toni Morrison, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Distributed by University of Chicago Press for Bodleian Library Publishing

Hal Foster’s Tarzan. The Complete Sunday Comics 1931–1937

Hal Foster began illustrating Tarzan of the Apes as a 60-episode daily newspaper strip, and from 1931 to 1937 his output included 292 full-page Tarzan Sunday comics. This book reprints every one from the original newspapers. From Taschen.

Reading Matters: A History for the Digital Age by Joel Halldorf

Published by NYU Press, Halldorf examines the history of reading and its effects on our culture, focusing on the impact of the digital revolution and using past examples of previous technical revolutions to understand where we are today. Originally published in Swedish in 2023. 

Jane Colden's Botanic Manuscript: The Legacy of America's First Woman Botanist by Fenella Greig Heckscher

An illustrated biography of the life and work of the still little-known Jane Colden (1724–1760) and her major contributions to early American botany - her ongoing detailed descriptions and illustrations of over 300 plant species in New York was unpublished during her lifetime. This volume features her own sketches and handwriting, as well as her important manuscript. From The American Philosophical Society Press.

Thoreau's Journal Drawings: The Power of the Visual by Kathleen Coyne Kelly

An appreciation of the undervalued importance of drawings - such as a hedgehog's quill - in Henry David's journal and why they mattered to him and his understanding of nature and writing. Published by University of Massachusetts Press

If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation by Daniel Hahn

An intriguing look at how Shakespeare  is translated and reinvented around the world outside English in more than 100 other languages, the author talking to writers and actors about the art of bringing his work to life. From Knopf.

Lady C: The Long, Sensational Life of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by Guy Cuthbertson

How the controversial novel has been read, recreated, and adapted over the last century. From Yale University Press.

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

A new limited edition of 750 copies from the Folio Society, illustrated by Mu Pan, and with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Dirda.