Audubon - How much for 'priceless'?

A copy of James Audubon's famous Birds Of America sold at Sotheby's for over £7 million. The new owner, Michael Tollemache, a London dealer, could be said to actually have more money than sense as he described the work as "priceless". It's not clear whether that statement was before or after handing over the cash of the price.

Some interesting quotes from the Wiki page on Audubon;

Colorists applied each color in assembly-line fashion (over fifty were hired for the work). The original edition was engraved in aquatint by Robert Havell, Jr. ... Known as the Double Elephant folio after its double elephant paper size, it is often regarded as the greatest picture book ever produced and the finest aquatint work.

He followed Birds of America with a sequel Ornithological Biographies. This was a collection of life histories of each species written with Scottish ornithologist William MacGillivray. The two books were printed separately to avoid a British law requiring copies of all publications with text to be deposited in Crown libraries, a huge financial burden for the self-published Audubon.

I suspect the British Library and fellow Crown libraries have copies now.

Apparently the cost of printing the Birds of America was US $115,640 (over US $2 million today, or £1.3 million). When the project stuttered during an enforced absence, he told the wary few (of his otherwise loyal) subscribers: "'The Birds of America' will then raise in value as much as they are now depreciated by certain fools and envious persons."

In the same Sotheby's sale a 1623 First Folio Shakespeare cost a buyer £1,497,250.

Historians

From Terry Pratchett's Jingo:

Lord Vetinari:
'Oh my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can't possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands.'

Cooking an internet thief

I'd hope we are all aware of the problem of Intellectual Property (IP) theft on the internet, and that (sadly) numerous print magazines and book publishers and authors (who should know better) lift online material wholesale and without credit.

So draw up your editor's chair, uncap the red pen, adjust the eyeshade and refill the Chardonnay glass as I bring you a warming tale of an arrogant cookery magazine editor's demise through theft and hubris - as Conrad Black has found, a dangerous combination.

...writer Monica Gaudio, who was surprised to learn this week that the small culinary magazine Cooks Source had lifted her five-year-old story for medieval cookery blog Gode Cookery entitled "A Tale of Two Tarts" ...

Challenging the editor, Judith Griggs, with a reasonable request for adjustment, Griggs responded with a breathtakingly foolish reply I quote in full:

"Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was 'my bad' indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things. But honestly Monica, the web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!"

Oops. To cut the long story short, after Gaudio crowdsourced the story, Cooks Source got a (legal) online hammering on their Facebook page - to the extent of moving to a new one (which, of course failed to stop the crowd's challenges. Griggs has been through a savage learning experience, as she recounts here.

The good news is that Griggs has made appropriate restitution to the author and apologised; the bad news is that what is a small magazine may fold from Griggs' overload due to the consequences of the problem. Some of the internet crowd found other (alleged) lifted articles and others contacted the magazine's advertisers with the result that some have withdrawn their advertising and others fight shy.

I was recently 'informed' that Intellectual Property was unprotected in the age of the internet, as bringing a legal case was too difficult and expensive against the potential award obtainable. (For the record, I don't think that's an accurate analysis, or true.) However this case clearly shows that an ignorance of copyright law and a lack of care (and inadequate internet savvy) are potentially lethal to publishers. Ignorance of the law is no defence, as we should all know; but it is not necessarily the process of law but online 'justice' that may render a - potentially disproportionate - correction.

Caveat emendator.

James

Thanks to 'Steve Crewdog' on WIX for drawing my attention to the story here, and to the linked online sources particularly Salon here and Gode Cookery.

Top Twain

An excellent article in today's The Age on Mark Twain by wordsmith Don Watson.

A couple of quotes.

Talking about his unusual approach to autobiography;

But more to his point was the language, and that depended on the manner in which the work was to be written. When we write about something that has just happened, he said, we write "naturally", as if we were simply talking about it. In this form, our accounts are "absolutely indestructible" and time "has no deteriorating effect" on the episodes they describe. By contrast, when we write from a distance in the historian's language, we rarely manage more than "a pale and tranquil reflection" of our subject.

And on writing:

Anyone needing a lesson in writing will profit from his letter to the "unteachable ass" who had the gall to edit his work. The letter is priceless not only for the lethal eloquence of his retort, but also for the insight into the writer's insecurity: the greater the writer, perhaps the greater the insecurity.

The full article here (for the moment), while the subject is the publication of his papers cum autobiography a century after his death.

James

Calling yourself names

The ever increasing depths politicians abseil into trying to say much while avoiding meaning and commitment, noted many years ago by Orwell (yes, him again) were explored in a different way in this ABC article. One passage stood out.

Kevin Rudd set out to convince us of his economic conservatism in the 2007 campaign by shooting an ad in which he simply told us he was: "People have called me an economic conservative. And it's a badge I wear with pride."

(Later, according to an account by Herald journalist Peter Hartcher in his book 'To The Bitter End', Labor's national secretary Tim Gartrell anxiously double-checked with Google that people had really called Rudd an economic conservative. He found two instances; one where The Australian's Paul Kelly had called Mr Rudd an economic conservative, and one where Mr Rudd had called himself an economic conservative. "That'll do," thought Gartrell.)

What more can you say?

Leaving aside the politics, both Rudd and his successor Julia Gillard are language disasters. Rudd spoke like a middle level civil servant - the one that, when speaking, makes a brief meeting feel like an ice-age - while Gillard as Prime Minister has a dreadful habit of over using a phrase, and making herself sound like the trainee junior project gofer who has read the mission statement but just doesn't get it. Yet both are clearly intelligent and articulate people outside this job.

James

Valuing Orwell.

News item here:

An authentic first edition of George Orwell's novel 1984 that turned up in a Lifeline charity bin has sold for [A]$2,000 at auction.

The book was published in 1949 and has a red dustcover.

It was found last week in a bin of around 200 books by a Lifeline volunteer in Wollongong, on the New South Wales south coast.

While this has got money for a good cause, one wonders what amount Eric earned per copy.

James

Early bath...

The latest Terry Pratchett paperback was snagged by Bev a few weeks ago.

It's Unseen Academicals.

As 'master of the footnote', Terry surpasses himself with this one with a footnote not just in the first page or first paragraph of the book, but in the first sentence. And the footnote has a footnote buried within it itself. Class.

Sadly the rest of the book ~ speaking as a dedicated follower ~ just wasn't very good, with several clunky passages and only a few examples of his normal wit; a particular example of the latter being the Dwarf fashion show.

Not the best, and with a messy, unsurprising and predicable ending. Bev noted the absence of the usual, separate but interwoven plot-lines, and there was no real sense of risk or doom. There were also a couple of frankly nasty moments, one where the cardboard psychopath gets a comeuppance from a 'good' charecter was jarring and left a bad taste. He's handled these scenes better. Ah, well, there's 36 other books to play with, and I hope Terry's health remains good and he delivers more to his normal, high, standard.

I'll also avoid (almost) all the laboured football references most reviews have played with.