Successfully managing rare book collections requires very specific knowledge and skills. This handbook provides that essential information in a single volume. Rare Book Librarianship for the 21st Century is the first new rare books handbook of practice in 25 years. Authored by two special collections experts with extensive field experience, this book is also the first to discuss the role of digital technologies in managing a rare book collection. After a fascinating discussion of the history and current state of rare book libraries, this handbook provides a comprehensive account of the core skills and knowledge needed to be a successful rare book librarian. Topics include best practices for handling, housing, and conserving rare materials; collection development techniques; and user education and outreach. This book will serve as a handbook for practitioners in academic settings, large public libraries, and special libraries, and as a textbook for students in MLIS courses on rare book librarianship and curatorship.

Critic, poet, editor, chronicler of the “lost generation,” and elder statesman of the Republic of Letters, Malcolm Cowley (1898–1989) was an eloquent witness to much of twentieth-century American literary and political life. These letters, the vast majority previously unpublished, provide an indelible self-portrait of Cowley and his time, and make possible a full appreciation of his long and varied career. Perhaps no other writer aided the careers of so many poets and novelists. Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Kerouac, Tillie Olsen, and John Cheever are among the many authors Cowley knew and whose work he supported. A poet himself, Cowley enjoyed the company of writers and knew how to encourage, entertain, and when necessary scold them. At the center of his epistolary life were his friendships with Kenneth Burke, Allen Tate, Conrad Aiken, and Edmund Wilson. By turns serious and thoughtful, humorous and gossipy, Cowley’s letters to these and other correspondents display his keen literary judgment and ability to navigate the world of publishing. The letters also illuminate Cowley’s reluctance to speak out against Stalin and the Moscow Trials when he was on staff at The New Republic—and the consequences of his agonized evasions. His radical past would continue to haunt him into the Cold War era, as he became caught up in the notorious “Lowell Affair” and was summoned to testify in the Alger Hiss trials. Hans Bak supplies helpful notes and a preface that assesses Cowley’s career, and Robert Cowley contributes a moving foreword about his father.

A rigorously researched biography of the founder of modern magick, as well as a study of the occult, sexuality, Eastern religion, and more The name “Aleister Crowley” instantly conjures visions of diabolic ceremonies and orgiastic indulgences—and while the sardonic Crowley would perhaps be the last to challenge such a view, he was also much more than “the Beast,” as this authoritative biography shows. Perdurabo—entitled after the magical name Crowley chose when inducted into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—traces Crowley’s remarkable journey from his birth as the only son of a wealthy lay preacher to his death in a boarding house as the world’s foremost authority on magick. Along the way, he rebels against his conservative religious upbringing; befriends famous artists, writers, and philosophers (and becomes a poet himself); is attacked for his practice of “the black arts”; and teaches that science and magick can work together. While seeking to spread his infamous philosophy of, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” Crowley becomes one of the most notorious figures of his day. Based on Richard Kaczynski’s twenty years of research, and including previously unpublished biographical details, Perdurabo paints a memorable portrait of the man who inspired the counterculture and influenced generations of artists, punks, wiccans, and other denizens of the demimonde.

This volume, the third in the series, discusses the works of 11 British 18th-century writers, providing information on the nature of the MS, date, variant title(s), state of completion, provenance and location, date and first form of publication, any scholarly use of the MS, and the existence of any published facsimiles. Information is drawn from material in libraries, record offices and private collections throughout the world. The listing of each author's manuscripts is preceded by an introduction. The book records many hitherto unrecorded manuscripts.