Harvard University Press Blog

More Loebs!

Earlier this year we asked for you to help us celebrate the 100th anniversary year of the Loeb Classical Library by sending us pictures of your Loeb collections. We shared a batch of your pictures in the spring, and we’re back today with another bunch. Our sincere thanks to everyone who has sent in photos.

First up, a man we were thrilled to hear from, Mr. Charles Montgomery Burns, of Springfield. He keeps his Loeb volumes right by the hearth in his library. Here he is, pondering the classics with a nice snifter of something warm:

From Burns to the basement, for this shot from Seminary Co-op in Chicago:

And here, top to bottom, are the personal collections of Ralph Aulenta, Maddy Bowman, and Alan Steele, a British Army Chaplain, who says he normally takes a couple of Loebs with him when deployed to hot and dusty places.

Here’s the collection at P. Tombolini and Co. in Rome. Loebs in Rome!

Your Loebs!

A few months back, as part of our celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Loeb Classical Library, we asked you to show us your Loebs. And you did! We’ve been receiving submissions from around the world.  Take a look!

Before we get to the photos we have this fantastic video, from our friends at Blackwell Classics in Oxford:

 

Loeb at First sight, indeed!

Another great surprise: last week the online literary magazine The Rumpus featured a really terrific illustrated documentary on the San Francisco Public Library by the artist Wendy MacNaughton. You should definitely read the whole thing, but first check out the Loebs!

As the caption indicates, the Loebs in the piece illustrate the fact that the overwhelming majority of resources housed in libraries still aren’t available digitally. Digital Loebs? We’re working on it, actually.

Show Us Your Loebs!

Earlier this year the Home & Garden section of the New York Times ran a story on books as interior design elements. The piece spotlighted a creator of decorative “book solutions” who helps clients fill their shelves with that certain je ne sais livre. Need 2,000 cream-colored leatherbound books to fill your library? There are specialists to help. Not so picky? Books-by-the-foot apparently account for 5% of sales at the Strand in New York.

The rise of these purely aesthetic bespoke libraries is perhaps a slightly unsettling comment on the book’s continued utility, or maybe it’s just a tad silly. But, hey, books are beautiful. We know that. A book collection’s varying colors, shapes, and sizes never fail to amount to a visually stunning collage that can also serve as a three-dimensional map of the collector’s intellectual path. But, as with the collection of 2,000 cream-colored leatherbound books for an equity manager’s “gentleman’s library,” sometimes uniformity can make an even more arresting visual statement than variety. We know that, too, thanks to the Loeb Classical Library, the 100th anniversary of which we’re celebrating this year. These little volumes of facing page translations enrobe Ancient Greek in green and Latin in red, setting a now iconic color palette for the classics.

It’s long been lore here that Martha Stewart herself is fond of decorating with Loeb volumes, particularly the reds. A couple of years back we also spotted the stack of Loeb volumes in this Pottery Barn ad: 

Beyond such decorative appointments, though, the Loebs also get pride of place in some beautiful libraries and bookstores the world over. They’re great and useful books, after all!

Here they are, with what also appears to be the I Tatti Renaissance Library, in Georgetown University’s Riggs Library, courtesy of a photo set compiled awhile back by Curious Expeditions:

Here they are, beautifully lit, in the newly created Lanier Theological Library in Houston:

Awesome photos of the world's great libraries

A mega photo post of libraries from around the world, many quite overwhelming both for their physical beauty and for our knowledge of their noble purpose. The Loker Reading Room at Widener is included, but we were especially enthused to spy in the photo of the Riggs Library at Georgetown what looks like a complete set of the Loeb Classical Library, as well as its cousin the I Tatti Renaissance Library ...

Many many thanks to Curious Expeditions for compiling this fantastic set of photos.

Yet another use for the Loeb Classical Library

Pottery Barn set decoration:

That, folks, is the "Spring Fling Patchwork Quilt & Sham" from Pottery Barn, and on the lower right you'll be pleased to note what we believe is the Loeb edition of Hesiod (the old one, actually; there's a new translation) crowning a stack of seven or so of the little green guys. At least we know that whoever curls up in that spring fling patchwork thing has got their head on straight with regard to the classics.