Fanny Bullock Workman (1859–1925) was an American geographer, cartographer, explorer, travel writer, and mountaineer, notably in the Himalayas.  She was one of the first female professional mountaineers; she not only explored but also wrote about her adventures.  She set several women's altitude records, published eight travel books with her husband, and championed women's rights and women's suffrage.  Born to a wealthy family, Workman was educated in the finest schools available to women and traveled in Europe.  Her marriage to William Hunter Workman cemented these advantages, and, after being introduced to climbing in New Hampshire, Fanny Workman traveled the world with him.   They were able to capitalize on their wealth and connections to voyage around Europe, North Africa, and Asia.  The Workmans began their travels with bicycle tours of Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Algeria and India.  They cycled thousands of miles, sleeping wherever they could find shelter.  They wrote books about each trip and Fanny frequently commented on the state of the lives of women that she saw.  Their early bicycle tour narratives were better received than their mountaineering books.  Despite not having modern climbing equipment, the Workmans explored several glaciers and reached the summit of several mountains, eventually reaching 23,000 feet (7,000 m) on Pinnacle Peak, a women's altitude record at the time.  After their trips to the Himalaya, the Workmans gave lectures about their travels.  They were invited to learned societies; Fanny Workman became the first American woman to lecture at the Sorbonne and the second to speak at the Royal Geographical Society.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Bullock_Workman

Sometimes a book just gets loved to death.  A Bible, or a copy of “Charlotte’s Web,” for that matter, can be opened only so many times, even by the gentlest reader, before its spine weakens and surrenders.  And here is a dirty little secret:  Public libraries, despite their reputations for hushed wonder about the written word, can be rough places.  Automated sorting machines, whirring conveyor belts and hard bins can break a book and shorten its life.  Donald Vass, who has spent the past 26 years mending and tending to books for the King County Library System, has seen mechanical and human-inflicted damage and more.  At 57 and with not many years left before retirement, he says he believes he will be the last full-time traditional bookbinder ever to take up shears, brushes and needles here. The skills take too long to learn, he said, and no one is being groomed to take his place in “the mendery,” Room 111 at the library’s central service center, where not so many years ago, 10 people worked.  He uses hypodermic needles to shoot bits of wheat paste into the corners of dog-eared covers to stiffen them, and an old-fashioned screw press to hold pages in place while adhesives dry.  He talks of his repaired books—60 to 80 a month—as if they were children heading out into a dangerous, unpredictable world.  “I’m reluctant, many times, to send them out because I know what they’re going to be up against,” said Vass, who is used to working alone.  Menderies, often called book hospitals, were once common in library systems nationwide.  But the digital revolution, cost-control pressures and shifting reader tastes pushed many libraries away from paper and the maintenance of fragile old classics.   His prized piece of machinery is a large cast-iron board shear that had a previous life slicing boxes in a candy company.  Made in the early 20th century, it can cut a book’s replacement cover pieces, called boards, with absolute precision.  He bought it at an estate sale, covered with dirt and rust, for $50 and restored it.  Kirk Johnson  http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/issaquah-bookbinder-among-handful-at-libraries-nationwide-still-operating-a-mendery/

Doubleday Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, has acquired a never-before-published Mark Twain children's story, it was announced January 20, 2017 by Mallory Loehr, Senior Vice President & Publisher of the Random House/Golden Books, Doubleday, and Crown Books for Young Readers Group.  The story, a fairy tale left unfinished by Twain, will be brought to life by author Philip Stead and illustrator Erin Stead, the creators of the Caldecott Medal-winning A Sick Day for Amos McGee.  The book, THE PURLOINING OF PRINCE OLEOMARGARINE, an eleven-chapter, 152-page illustrated storybook for all ages, will be published on September 26, 2017, with a first printing of 250,000 copies.  The basis of this new work is sixteen pages of Twain's handwritten notes after telling his young daughters a fairy tale one night in 1879 while the family was staying in Paris, an event he documented in his journal.  In 2011, a visiting scholar at the Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California at Berkeley spotted the notes in the archives while conducting his own research and recognized their significance. http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwbooks/article/Unpublished-Mark-Twain-Childrens-Book-to-be-Completed-and-Released-by-Random-House-926-20170120

What do Captain America, Wonder Woman and a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon manuscript have in common?  The Psychomachia, or ‘War of the Soul’, was composed by the Late Antique poet Prudentius in the 5th century and depicts an action-packed battle between the Virtues and Vices for possession of the human soul.  This allegory of good versus evil was hugely popular in the medieval period with about 300 surviving copies of the work, 20 of which were illuminated.  Two illuminated Anglo-Saxon copies are held at the British Library (now Additional MS 24199 and Cotton MS Cleopatra C VIII) and their illustrations can be compared to our comic books today.  Read more and see graphics at http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2017/01/the-psychomachia-an-anglo-saxon-comic-book.html

Francis Picabia:  Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction is a comprehensive survey of Picabia’s audacious, irreverent, and profoundly influential work across mediums.  This will be the first exhibition in the United States to chart his entire career, and the exhibition will run through March 19, 2017 at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.  Among the great modern artists of the past century, Francis Picabia (French, 1879–1953) also remains one of the most elusive.  He vigorously avoided any singular style, and his work encompassed painting, poetry, publishing, performance and film.  See pictures at https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1670  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Picabia

January 29, 2107  When Maurice Sendak died in 2012, he left a will directing that all his “rare edition books” go to the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia--a cache of 895 items that made up a large part of the celebrated author-illustrator’s own personal library of rare books.  But the Sendak estate contested the will, claiming that it had the right to keep many of the rare and valuable books.  After two years of litigation, the case recently came to a close, resolved through a combination of a Connecticut judge's rulings and an out-of-court settlement.  The net result:  643 books went to the Rosenbach, and 252 to the estate.  Many of the newly acquired books will be on display at the Rosenbach through April 30, 2017.  Peter Dobrin  Read much more and see graphics at http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/arts/Maurice_Sendaks_personal_library_comes_to_Philadelphia.html

The Rosenbach became affiliated with the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation in 2013, creating the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia.  This effort brought together two of the world’s preeminent collections of rare books, artifacts, and manuscripts, including Bram Stoker’s notes for Dracula with Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and thus creating one of the greatest collections of rare books, manuscripts, Americana, and artifacts anywhere in the world.  This affiliation also created a framework for endless new possibilities of sharing these collections with the public.  The Rosenbach is so named after Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and his brother Philip, whose personal collections form the heart of the collection today. https://libwww.freelibrary.org/locations/the-rosenbach/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1685   January 31, 3017  On this date in 1797, Franz Schubert, Austrian pianist and composer, was born.  On this date in 1862, Alvan Graham Clark discovered the white dwarf star Sirius B, a companion of Sirius, through an 18.5-inch (47 cm) telescope now located at Northwestern University.  On this date in 2010, Avatar became the first film to gross over $2 billion worldwide.