Pretty swell to be among the many rare books, fine bindings and literary treasures at Firsts London again for the opening day. Here's a short piece on S*bst*ck about gawping at John Dee's handwriting etc..

open.substack.com/pub/bibliomani…

William was not well, he went with me to Wytheburn water, and left me in a post-chaise. Hail showers, snow, and cold attacked me. The people were graving peats under Nadel Fell. A lark and thrush singing near Coleridge's house.
– Dorothy Wordsworth, May 17 1802

That is the best kind of happy to be: so airless and independent. All other kinds of happiness seem to depend on someone else. But it is a lovely thing, that feeling.. like a seagull with a fish in its mouth.
– Truman Capote, May 16 1949

My friend Jane Haynes is organising a symposium , featuring (among others) Henry Marsh, former winner of the Ackerley Prize. Details here.

Fallen out of all regularity of writing. In the open air a great deal.. Strength seemingly inaccessible to me today (already inaccessible).
– Kafka (tr. Ross Benjamin), May 14 1915

Two weeks from today I’ll be fifty.. I suppose it’s always almost impossible to remember how long you’ve actually lived. I’ve been thinking too much about my age the last couple of years. Maybe, once I’m past the half century mark, I’ll stop it.
– Dashiel Hammett, May 13 1944

As for me, I maybe won’t ever write again and am surviving quite well all the same.
– Italo Calvino (tr. Martin McLaughlin), May 12 1961

.TUIPF24. Seven indie publishers, one day, all welcome!

Among the fragments of my lost Shelley, I found the following poetic commentary on the words of Keats..
Here lieth one, whose name was writ in water..
– Mary Shelley, May 10 1823

Why are all the truish novels written by the gloomy half-twilight realists..? Where are the novels of five years ago: Tono Bungay.. The New Machiavelli? Heavens, has the war caught all literature in the crossed nets of Galsworthy and George Moore?
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, May 8 1918

If I had unlimited funds to decorate a church, I would use modern art to make it as gorgeous as the old ones. Contemporary sculpture and painting, glassware and mosaic, textiles, metal, marble and gold.
– Tove Jansson, May 8 1939

Yes.. ladies especially ladies trying to write! have a hard time. But I have observed that the gentlemen so engaged also have their peculiar troubles. I’m not sure that I would swop my kind of troubles for theirs.
– Katherine Anne Porter, May 6 1959

But is there anything so dreadful as a Sunday in London, – when upset in body [or] mind, & although kept prisoner in the house, unable to apply to anything?
– Edward Lear, May 5 1861