Latest news with #GutenbergBible
Wall Street Journal
3 days ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
‘Noble Fragments' Review: Scripture in Pieces
In 1921 a rare-book dealer in New York acquired a Gutenberg Bible, one of only about four dozen believed to exist at the time. The dealer, the Hungarian émigré Gabriel Wells, disassembled his copy and sold it off in pieces, an act that scholars and book conservators have labeled vandalism, sacrilege and even a tragedy. Wells marketed the individual leaves as 'Noble Fragments,' a phrase the journalist Michael Visontay borrows for the title of his absorbing investigation into the fates of the separated pages. The search was prompted by the author's discovery of yellowed legal documents suggesting a connection between his grandfather and Wells. In his book, Mr. Visontay weaves his family history into an account of Wells's brazen business move. As a child in Australia, Mr. Visontay knew something of his Jewish-Hungarian family's experiences in the Holocaust. His paternal grandfather, Pali, was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp and survived the war. His father, Ivan, and his paternal grandmother, Sara, were transported to Auschwitz, where Sara was killed. Shortly after the war, Pali married a woman named Olga, who died not long after she, Pali and Ivan emigrated to Australia. While Olga had been erased from the family memory, Mr. Visontay discovered that Wells was her uncle and that she had inherited a share of his estate (but alas, no Gutenberg leaves) upon the bookseller's 1946 death. This windfall enabled the small, battered family to begin anew in Australia.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Magna Carta 'copy' sold for $27 found to be priceless original
A document bought in 1946 for $27.50 has been confirmed as an original royal issuing of Magna Carta potentially worth millions. Harvard Law School purchased the copy in 1946, completely unaware that it was in fact a priceless original. London booksellers Sweet & Maxwell had previously bought the document from First World War flying ace Air Vice-Marshal Forster 'Sammy' Maynard for £42. For context, an issuing of Magna Carta sold at Sotheby's in 2007 commanded a price of some $21 million. READ MORE: Dad slit throats of his kids to prevent their screams after being 'caught red-handed' READ MORE: Where failed Soviet spacecraft hit as it crashed back to Earth after 53 years in space Join the Manchester Evening News WhatsApp group HERE At its cataloguing in 1946 the document was believed to be a copy made in 1327, and described as "somewhat rubbed and damp-stained." Tests were carried out on the document including a comparison of the handwriting and the text, as well as scans using UV light and multi-spectral imaging. These confirmed that it was indeed the real deal, becoming only the 25th original issuing of Magna Carta by an English king known to still exist. For comparison the Gutenberg Bible, one of the most highly sought after books in the world, has 49 copies in existence, while around 235 first folios of Shakespeare are thought to survive. The task to identify the document was undertaken by Professors David Carpenter of King's College London and Nicholas Vincent of the University of East Anglia. 'Harvard's Magna Carta deserves celebration, not as some mere copy, stained and faded, but as an original of one of the most significant documents in world constitutional history, a cornerstone of freedoms past, present and yet to be won,' said Prof Carpenter. Prof Vicent highlighted just how rare the extraordinary document actually is. 'The comparison I would draw is the rarest painter known to everybody is Vermeer,' he said. 'There are I think, it's disputed, there are over 30 Vermeer paintings in existence and yet he is seen as the rarest painter in history. 'There are only now 25 of these Magna Carta originals. It is an extraordinary thing for anyone to possess.' Magna Carta was first signed by King John at Runnymede in 1215 after a years-long war against his own barons. Despite King John, known as "Lackland" due to his territorial losses, trying to walk back on the document just weeks later his son Henry III would reissue it during his own reign. Successive kings would then issue their own hand-copied originals of Magna Carta. The last of these was commissioned by Edward I in 1300, and it's this last original issuing of the charter that the Harvard document was found to be. The version issued by Henry III in 1225 would become the "definitive" text of Magna Carta, a charter which laid out key legal principles that would become foundational to UK law. "Whenever in the 13th Century there was a dispute between the king and the nation, kings reissued Magna Carta on at least three occasions after 1225," said Prof Vincent. This could have been a way for the king to try to placate any unruly barons by reaffirming the crown's commitment to the charter, which limited the crown's power and protected barons' interests. 'This one (Harvard's Magna Carta), the 1300 issue, is the last time it was issued as a single sheet document under the king's seal as an official endorsement of the settlement of Magna Carta, said Prof Vincent. He added: 'Every county of England would originally have had a Magna Carta of each of those issues." As for how the priceless document was mistaken for a later copy, Prof Vincent said: 'I think everyone was knackered at the end of the Second World War. 'I think whoever read it at Sotheby's and looked at it, I suspect what they thought was 'oh it can't be an original Magna Carta because we'd know about it'. 'They misread the date, they got the wrong king. They catalogued it as if it was a charter of Edward III, but in fact it's Edward I. 'For an amateur that's a fairly easy mistake to make."
Yomiuri Shimbun
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Trump Fires Library of Congress Chief Carla Hayden, Citing DEI
Joshua Yospyn/For The Washington Post Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden at her home in Baltimore in 2019. President Donald Trump on Thursday fired the head of the Library of Congress, Carla Hayden, the first woman and first African American to lead the world's largest library. She was informed of the decision in a terse, two-sentence email. 'Carla,' read the message from the White House deputy director of presidential personnel, Trent Morse. 'On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.' The Library of Congress has thousands of employees and archives more than 178 million items, including rare books, medieval manuscripts, a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and a perfect vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible. As its chief librarian since 2016, Hayden also appointed U.S. poets laureate and oversaw the Congressional Research Service and the Copyright Office. 'There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a news conference Friday, referring to Trump's campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government. 'We don't believe that she was serving the interests of the American taxpayer well, so she has been removed from her position, and the president is well within his rights to do that.' Hayden had been appointed to a 10-year term by former president Barack Obama, which was set to expire next year. It was not immediately clear which of Hayden's policies the White House took issue with, but like many other U.S. cultural institutions, the library had increased its outreach to minority communities in recent years. 'The collections of the Library of Congress tell the rich and diverse story of LGBTQ+ life in America and around the world,' reads a research guide on the library's website. And Hayden has talked to The Washington Post about how U.S. curriculum used to severely downplay slavery and Black history. 'It's unheard of,' John Cole, a former historian of the Library of Congress who worked there for more than 50 years, said of Hayden's firing. Cole said Trump hadn't shown as much interest in the library as past presidents, so many staff didn't think the president would appoint a new librarian until next year when Hayden's term ended. 'There was no way we were going to avoid this Trump crisis with the library,' he said. 'But it sure surprised me that it happened the way it did.' The firing seemed to surprise staff, too. In an internal email late Thursday, principal deputy librarian Robert Newlen said that he would assume the duties of acting librarian of Congress until he received further instruction. 'I want you to hear it from me first,' Newlen wrote, promising to 'keep everyone informed.' Newlen sent another email Friday morning, praising his predecessor for her efforts to expand the library's exposure to the public, including by 'inaugurating an urgent effort to rapidly digitize as many of our collections as possible' – and by interviewing Kermit the Frog. 'She has been widely recognized as an unbiased, nonpartisan and energetic servant to the United States Congress,' he wrote, and added elsewhere: 'She has achieved a level of popularity and acclaim that is surely unfamiliar to most librarians.' Indeed, Hayden got a hero's send-off in Baltimore in 2016 when she stepped down after 23 years leading its public library system to take over the Library of Congress. She was the first librarian by profession to be appointed to the job in decades; typically, the post goes to historians and scholars. But her Senate confirmation to the post was held up for weeks, as Hayden faced criticism from Republicans over her stint as president of the American Library Association in the early 2000s. In that job, she had publicly sparred with President George W. Bush's Attorney General John Ashcroft over parts of the Patriot Act, the law that expanded government surveillance powers in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Hayden also opposed a law that required libraries receiving federal funding to install internet filters that blocked pornography. Some conservatives attacked her as an 'activist librarian' and a 'quota hire,' foreshadowing Trump's ongoing efforts to purge the government of diversity initiatives and attack Black officials. In recent days, a conservative advocacy organization, the American Accountability Foundation, had criticized Hayden as 'woke' on social media. The organization's director says it researches and identifies nonpartisan appointees who it suspects will resist Trump's policy goals, The Post has reported. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Virginia), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, denounced Hayden's firing in a statement to The Washington Post. 'With this decision, Donald Trump continues his attempts to censor our history, bend our culture to his will, and interfere with the free flow of information among the American people. It is a national disgrace,' he said. His concerns were echoed by many Democrats and others. Three U.S. poets laureate appointed by Hayden – Ada Limón, Joy Harjo and Tracy K. Smith – condemned the firing Friday, according to the Associated Press. Producers of the Broadway musical 'Dead Outlaw' canceled an upcoming performance at the library and released a statement praising Hayden as 'a fierce advocate for preserving America's cultural memory and a great champion of the Broadway community.' The Library of Congress was founded in 1800 by the second U.S. president, John Adams, who sought to essentially make a law library for congressmen. It evolved into a repository for the entire country, visited by 1.5 million tourists every year. The library is now one of the most recognizable cultural institutions, featured in films like 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,' 'All the President's Men' and 'National Treasure.' Its responsibilities go far beyond preservation and book classification. The library's Congressional Research Service practically functions as a nonpartisan think tank, providing research and analysis to lawmakers for national policymaking. It keeps public and nonpublic papers from dozens of Supreme Court justices, as well as top-secret military records. And its Copyright Office reviews hundreds of thousands of applications each year, advises Congress on intellectual property issues and sets regulations across the country. The librarian, who is picked by the president and confirmed by the Senate, is one of the rare executives who doesn't normally leave with the outgoing administration. The position was considered a lifetime appointment before an Obama-era law imposed a 10-year term with an option for reappointment. Hayden's term was set to expire in 2026. Before Hayden, two librarians had been replaced by incoming presidents. Andrew Jackson replaced George Watterston in 1829. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln replaced John Silva Meehan with a political supporter, John G. Stephenson.
Boston Globe
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Searching for an unsung hero in your family's history of thriving after the Holocaust
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Wells's main claim to fame, Visontay continues, was that he bought a Gutenberg Bible in 1920 and then broke it up into sections, which he packaged and sold as 'Noble Fragments.' The proceeds contributed to Olga's inheritance and Visontay's family's escape from Eastern Europe just as the Soviet Union was beginning its reign of oppression there. Advertisement In ' Advertisement In the world of rare books, cutting out leaves for individual sale is considered practically a sin, Visontay points out, but Wells's act 'gave my family a new lease on life.' The book pushed Visontay into deeper historical research and more personal territory than he had ever attempted before. It was rewarding. 'I've found that if you just dig a little bit beneath the surface, you'll always be shocked by what sort of richness lies below. And if you just keep digging, you can join some dots,' he says, and adds that the project taught him another lesson: 'Life can turn on very small moments, and you can choose to recognize them, or you can choose to ignore them.' Michael Visontay will read at 6 p.m. on Monday, April 7, at the . And now for some recommendations . . . In ' ' Advertisement Jon Hickey's debut novel ' Murray Kempton was a man of the 20th century, and his dispatches provide an excellent guide to American concerns of the time (many of them are even bigger concerns now). As ' Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's Books section.
New York Times
27-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Leonard Polonsky, Philanthropist Who Supported the Arts, Dies at 97
Leonard S. Polonsky, a philanthropist who funded the arts and helped make significant historical artifacts and documents available to the public, including Sir Isaac Newton's early papers and a letter from Christopher Columbus's maiden voyage, died on March 14 at his home in Manhattan. He was 97. The cause was diastolic heart failure, his wife, Georgette Bennett, said. Mr. Polonsky made his fortune in the financial services sector, when his company, Hansard Global, a successor to one he founded in 1970, went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2006, earning him a profit of 99 million pounds. But his philanthropy began earlier, in 1985, when he started the Polonsky Foundation, in an effort to support the arts. Among its many beneficiaries was the Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn, where Mr. Polonsky was born. The theater, which specializes in preserving, performing and studying the works of Shakespeare, received a gift of $10 million in 2013, and its venue was renamed the Polonsky Shakespeare Center. In 2021, Mr. Polonsky made a $12 million donation to establish a new permanent exhibition at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. Library employees spent three years sifting through 56 million artifacts in storage to identify 250 or so of the most awe-inspiring. The resulting display, known as 'The Polonsky Exhibition of the New York Public Library's Treasures,' resembles a gilded curio shop of priceless items — among them, George Washington's copy of the Bill of Rights (with 12 amendments instead of 10); Thomas Jefferson's annotated version of the Declaration of Independence; a Gutenberg Bible; an Andy Warhol painting of a Studio 54 ticket; and stuffed animals that inspired A.A. Milne's 'Winnie-the-Pooh.' The idea for the exhibition — which, as of June 2024, had attracted some two million visitors — emerged from a 2016 meeting Mr. Polonsky had with Anthony W. Marx, the president and chief executive of the New York Public Library. Mr. Marx happened to show Mr. Polonsky a letter Christopher Columbus wrote in 1493, informing the Spanish royal court of land he had discovered. 'The whole colonial enterprise was laid out in that letter,' Ms. Bennett, his wife, said in an interview. 'Leonard said, 'This is the New York Public Library — why am I the only one who's seeing this?'' Mr. Polonsky's foundation also made it possible, in 2011, for the Cambridge University Library to digitize Isaac Newton's early papers and an annotated first edition of his 'Principia.' Beginning in 2012, the foundation funded a collaboration between Oxford's Bodleian Libraries and the Vatican Library, resulting in the digitization of 1.5 million pages from early printed books written in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. And in 2014, it helped establish the Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. In a 2013 ceremony, Queen Elizabeth II named Mr. Polonsky a Commander of the British Empire for charitable services. 'Support for the arts seems so natural to me that it would be strange if I didn't do it,' he said in 'The Art of Being Leonard,' a 2010 documentary commissioned by his family. Leonard Selwyn Polonsky was born on April 13, 1927, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the eldest of three sons of Murray Polonsky, who owned a tobacco store, and Sadie (Futoran) Polonsky, who oversaw the home. He attended Townsend Harris High School, in Queens, where students were required to take a version of the Ephebic Oath, which concludes, 'I shall not leave my city any less but rather greater than I found it.' After high school, he attended New York University, graduating when he was 18, in 1944. Following a year and a half of Army service, he traveled to Europe in 1947, basking in what he called the 'curious intimacy' of postwar London and cultivating an interest in art in Paris. The next year, he married Beata Herzfeld, who died in 1989. In addition to Ms. Bennett, whom he married in 2001, he is survived by three children from his first marriage, Alan, Marc and Nicole Polonsky; a stepson, Joshua-Marc Tanenbaum; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Toby, a son from his first marriage, died in 1986. During his time in Europe, Mr. Polonsky studied at Oxford, where he earned a bachelor's degree in literature, and the Sorbonne, where he received a doctorate in literature. He began his financial career in 1955, selling mutual funds in Rome. He established his foundation in Britain, with the intent of democratizing knowledge and preserving international cultural heritage. Soon after, around 1986, he renounced his U.S. citizenship, in part for tax reasons, and settled in London, where he kept a home. Well into his 70s, Mr. Polonsky retained his enthusiasm for learning. In 2002, he enrolled in a Ph.D. program in literature at the City University of New York, cramming for tests and writing term papers as he had done in his youth. 'He still needed to get straight A's,' Ms. Bennett said. 'And he did.'
