M.J. Rose

A long view of the precious beauty of a simple book, and a new experience of thinking about the passage of time…

“In its essence, Future Library is hopeful – it believes there will be a forest, a book, and a reader in 100 years.” — Margaret Atwood

Growing A Book For One Hundred Years

(The Blog of the Long Now)

“It started with a seed planted in the mind of Scottish artist Katie Paterson when she made the connection between tree rings and chapters of books. Now several years in the making, Paterson’s vision will unfold over the next century in her artwork Future Library–an ambitious and evolving piece that will outlive Paterson and most of us living today…”

For the rest click here. For a video on the project click here.

For information on the related project: The Manual of Civilization, click here.

Beautiful!

Vatican Library Making 4,000 Ancient Manuscripts Available Online For Free

By Mary-Ann Russon

“The Vatican Apostolic Library is now digitising its valuable ancient religious manuscripts and putting them online via its website, available for the public to view for free, as well as turning to crowdfunding to help it complete its work.

The Vatican Library was founded in 1451 AD and holds over 80,000 manuscripts, prints, drawings, plates and incunabula (books printed prior to 1500 AD) written throughout history by people of different faiths from across the world…”

For the rest (and GORGEOUS images!), click here.

Behold, the story behind the first fully realized vampire story in English, John William Polidori’s 1819 story, “The Vampyre.”

(P.S. Lord Byron’s infamy knows no end!)

The Poet, the Physician and the Birth of the Modern Vampire

(The Public Domain Review)

“From that famed night of ghost-stories in a Lake Geneva villa in 1816, as well as Frankenstein’s monster, there arose that other great figure of 19th-century gothic fiction – the vampire – a creation of Lord Byron’s personal physician John Polidori. Andrew McConnell Stott explores how a fractious relationship between Polidori and his poet employer lies behind the tale, with Byron himself providing a model for the blood-sucking aristocratic figure of the legend we are familiar with today…”

For the complete (and irresistible) piece, click here.