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It was reviewed in our last issue by Liam Sims who described it as ‘brimming with new research’ and gave it high praise for resurrecting long-forgotten pieces of evidence. It is, he assured us, aimed at a general readership, which is always good to hear. that pillar of our community, the Bibliographical Society of America, has appointed a full time Executive Director to better meet the diverse needs of its members. Her name is Erin Schreiner and she took up her position in September. An independent bibliographer for many years, she was Special Collections Librarian and Digital Humanities Curator at the New York Society Library where she led a project to design City Readers, a digital humanities research tool. I know that all our readers will join me in giving her a warm welcome. Incidentally, to be a member of the BSA and so receive their journal, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, is good value: $80, and for Emerging Bibliographers it drops to $25. Only the book collector is comparable for value for money. Visit them on the web at https://bibsocamer.org/about-us/join-bsa/ to learn more. among the glories of the Tomash sale at Sotheby’s was lot 846, Jevons, Pure logic, or the logic of quality apart from quantity... London 1864, which fetched £ 800 at the hammer head. According to the cat- alogue note, ten months after publication it had sold but four copies. It would be nice to think that one of those four copies was the one that was being sold by Bloomsbury in February 1999 at the very moment that a young dealer called Carl Williams was walking past. Seeing the chance to turn a pound or two he bought it for £ 120, taking a chance with its condition (which is invariably poor, he says). Down the road and round the corner he went with it to Pickering & Chatto. There Jolyon Hudson took one look at it and asked very politely if Carl could leave it with him as it didn’t look ‘right’. What Jolyon had spotted was the blind stamp of the London Library. And thus, with this Jevons, began the unmasking of the book thief William Jacques, who has now served two prison sentences for his crimes. The story is unbeatable. The miscreant: mid-thirties, 2.1 degree in economics, qualified accountant, good job with Shell. The various plainti V s: Britain’s top libraries. The goods: Newton’s Principia (two editions), Malthus, Galileo, Descartes et alios. The value: immense. The sleuth: Detective Constable Paul Hewitt, whose favourite author was Wilbur Smith.
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