George Washington was a biblioklept. MobyLives hipped us to Ed Pilkington’s Guardian article. From the article:
Founder of a nation, trouncer of the English, God-fearing family man: all in all, George Washington has enjoyed a pretty decent reputation. Until now, that is.
The hero who crossed the Delaware river may not have been quite so squeaky clean when it came to borrowing library books.
The New York Society Library, the city’s only lender of books at the time of Washington’s presidency, has revealed that the first American president took out two volumes and pointedly failed to return them.
At today’s prices, adjusted for inflation, he would face a late fine of $300,000.
The library’s ledgers show that Washington took out the books on 5 October 1789, some five months into his presidency at a time when New York was still the capital. They were an essay on international affairs called Law of Nations and the twelfth volume of a 14-volume collection of debates from the English House of Commons.
The ledger simply referred to the borrower as “President” in quill pen, and had no return date.
Okay. Yes. Obviously this is the Shroud of Turin, which, hey, take it or leave it at your metaphysical will.
On August 29 of 2010 Biblioklept ran an image of Walt Whitman’s death mask; the day happened to be a Sunday, and we’ve run a death mask every Sunday since then, with the exception of Sunday, September 11, 2011, when to do so seemed to be in poor taste.
Over the past year and a half, folks wrote in to tell us repeatedly that the death mask was in fact a life mask, or that the death mask was perhaps of spurious origin, or even just that they liked the death mask. Thanks.
Anyway, Sunday death masks were fun for the past 17 months or so, but next Sunday marks a new year, and today’s Sunday is the last of this year, and it’s Christmas, which makes the Shroud of Turin a nice, easy way of saying: no more death masks, at least not on a regular basis. Maybe we’ll do some other regular Sunday posts (mugshots? bookshelves?) but no more regular death mask Sundays.
Also, Howard Zinn on Columbus Day.
[Editorial note: Yeah. We know we posted this last year. We still like it though].
Biblioklept 