Update (2/22): Overholt has added photos. Now you can see engravings used as an anti-piracy device, watercolors as early paint-by numbers, sloppy printing, and a bookplate of a rotund jester. Thanks, John!

Jessy has pointed me to a wonderful blog that I hadn’t seen before: Hyde Collection Catablog, “The world’s greatest Samuel Johnson collection, one book at a time.”

In my experience, this is a unique idea for a blog. Cataloger John Overholt of Harvard’s Houghton Library is cataloging the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson. As he encounters interesting books or Johnson anecdotes, he writes them up on the blog.

You need not be a Johnson expert or enthusiast to enjoy this blog. Overholt’s tone is fairly light and informal; I submit the entirety of the post What did you say your name was again? as exhibit A (the blog has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, so I feel OK reposting it here):

This copy of Rasselas has what looks exactly like the signature of a previous owner, except that the name is “Steadfast Bunny”. Our index lists several people with the last name of Bunny, so I guess it’s not impossible, but still I feel strange putting “Bunny, Steadfast, former owner” in my record. That’s not a name, it’s the title of a children’s book!

“..and so, the Steadfast Bunny returned to his warren, having learned a very important lesson about the value of friendship.”

Overholt also gives a great feeling for the thrill of holding and examining 18th century books in all their various states (I think it was Michael Winship I first heard say that every manuscript is pretty much the same, but every copy of a book is different), as in the post Time travel: now in book form!

My only complaint? No pictures! Show us the goods, John!

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