blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

Benjamin Franklin founded the ideal of the American polymath. He was a statesman through and through, performing roles as theorist, diplomat, and governor; he was an inventor and famously dabbled in the nascent science of electricity. But the portrait of Ben Franklin the publisher is frequently forgotten or understated. His press eventually became the most successful in the Colonies, printing everything from hardcover volumes to almanacs, newspapers, pamphlets, and even lottery tickets.

For sixteen years, the illustrators of children’s books were neglected during awards season. Since 1922, the Newbery Medal had been awarded yearly to a work of distinguished children’s writing, but no such equivalent existed for illustrations in picture books. Not, that is, until 1938, whereupon a veritable dark age in the recognition of great illustrators was extinguished with the inception of the Caldecott Medal.

How much do you know about Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame? It’s considered a seminal text of Gothic fiction, a style that’s often characterized by settings in looming castles with dark passageways, and general elements of the macabre or supernatural. Yet the Gothic isn’t a genre of literature unto itself, but rather a style that can make its way into various literary forms.

For Hugo, the Gothic tradition provided him with a way to conjure the medieval period in France in the early 19th century. Given that the term "Gothic" initially referred to a mode of art and architecture produced in the late middle ages, Hugo connected present-day Paris to the 15th century period in which he set the novel. Indeed, such a link proved necessary to discuss the historical importance of the Notre Dame cathedral, which was completed between the mid-13th century and early 14th century.

"No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world," Robin Williams's character, Mr. Keating asserts in the film "Dead Poets Society." Mr. Keating could have used French writer Emile Zola and the letter he wrote to a Paris newspaper in January 1898 to illustrate his point. Simply titled "J'Accuse" ("I accuse!"), Zola's letter shone a light on the injustice and antisemitism of 19th century France. So powerful was the document that it ultimately led to the exoneration of an innocent man and the passing of a French law separating church and state.

It has been suggested that Alfred Nobel created the peace prize in his will to assuage his guilt at the destruction and harm caused by his own inventions (dynamite among them). It is perhaps fitting, then, that in 1952 the prize was awarded to a man whose medical work in an African mission transcended guilt about colonialism to yield a legacy of saved lives, as well as a globally-praised philosophy.

Haruki Murakami is one of contemporary literature’s true international stars. American readers, not known for their fondness of translations, cannot get enough of the Japanese writer's work. One of his most recent books, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, was released in August 2014 and topped The New York Times bestseller list, selling one million copies in Japan alone. He is also immensely popular in his native Japan, and cannot jog in his suburban Tokyo neighborhood without being recognized, a distinction he has called burdensome. 

You might think you’ve never heard of Charles Perrault, a French aristocrat who lived 1628 to 1703, but you definitely know his work.  A little volume written for his children and published near the end of his life has dwarfed his other contributions to history and made him famous under another name: Mother Goose.

In December, at The Symphony Space in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, professional actors dramatized the work of two famous authors. Before the performance, the writers personally introduced their work to the audience. These authors were Teju Cole, author of the 2011 PEN/Hemingway winner, Open City, and Salman Rushdie, writer of The Satanic Verses and the classic novel Midnight’s Children.

When recollecting writers who utilized the science fiction genre as a means for political and social commentary, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, and Isaac Asimov often come to mind. But in the early part of the 20th century, a young writer named Karel Čapek also used sci-fi to expertly grapple with topics like totalitarianism and control, challenging the harsh Nazi rule in his native Eastern European homeland.

Credited with inventing the term “robot,” Čapek’s life and work provide an interesting study for many reasons. Not only did he greatly influence the science fiction genre, but he also played an integral part in the continued revival of the Czech written language.