Author Archives: Julie Mellby

Dictionnaire botanique or livre d’artiste, take your pick

J.J. Audubon spent his life tracking and painting all the birds in America. Edward Curtis spent the majority of his adult life photographing the Indians of North America. In this extraordinary set of four volumes, a Belgian natural history enthusiast or scientist or doctor spent “most of my life” writing and illustrating a study of transformism, or what we would call evolutionary theory. And if that weren’t enough, the elephant folio Étude sur la transformisme comes with a three volume Dictionnaire botanique, every page hand written and hand colored.

This massive and extraordinary gathering of knowledge addresses everything from air currents to the working of the inner ear; from geography to biology; from Charles Darwin to Victor Hugo. The books are illustrated throughout with thousands of the watercolor paintings. It has been dated from the early 20th century, although the truth is there is no date yet found in any of the volumes. We can only hope it will catch the interest of a future researcher, patient enough to read the small print and find out the truth about the books and their anonymous author.

Étude sur la transformisme holds approximately 150 leaves, many folded, all heavily illustrated in full color. The three volume Dictionnaire botanique offers more than 1200 with several thousand color diagrams, charts, and paintings.

Although the sheer weight of the volume is pulling the paging from the binding, its impressive cover still holds the book together, offering four quotes to the reader:

La vie sans science est presque l’image de la morte, C. Volpi = Life without science is almost the image of the dead

Chercher. Comprendre. Vouloir. Pouvoir. Oser. Sentir. Méditer = Search. Understand. Want to. Power. Dare. Feel. Meditate

Naître, mourir et renaître sans cesse, telle est la loi, telle est lavie. V. Hugo = To be born, to die and to be reborn without ceasing, such is the law, such is the life.

Travailler pour être estimé. Etre estimé pour être aimé. Etre aimé pour être heureux = Work to be esteemed. To be esteemed in order to be loved. To be loved to be happy

There is the name Dumoulin, but we known absolutely nothing about him or her or them. It is unlikely this refers to the French artist Louis-Jules Dumoulin (1860–1924), who founded the Société Coloniale des Artistes Français in 1908. “Dumoulin is an Orientalist painter linked to the official artistic circles and a great traveler from the various missions that will be entrusted to him. He made his first major trip outside Europe in 1888 on the occasion of an official mission to Japan ordered by the Ministry of Education.”

Here is the description that comes with the set:

The large folio volume is really a huge collection of charts devoted to human anatomy, animal and plant biology, the fossil record and evolution (or transformisme). Botany makes up the largest proportion, but there are sections on insects, reptiles, birds, flying lizards, marsupials and mammals. Dumoulin also had an interest in Africa and there are sections on the Sahara and on the Belgian Congo. The focus is worldwide and is drawn from reference works rather than original research, but the arrangements are highly idiosyncratic. Several evolutionary charts are attempted, mentioning Linnaeus, Darwin, Lamarck and Jussieu.

The Dictionnaire botanique is a large 3 volume compilation mainly devoted to botanical classification, from the smallest mosses and seaweeds, to exotic flowering plants and forest trees. Like the larger folio volume, these volumes are illustrated throughout, with accompanying text in coloured inks and often containing emblematic figures of human figures appropriate to the origins of the plant: including Africans and Americans. They have apparently been bound from a large number of separate files (whose stiff paper cover with labels are preserved) each devoted to a different botanical family. The third volume contains additional materials at the end, including a study on Pasteur and germs, another on insects and another on bird classification. Like the preceding parts, these are also copiously illustrated in colour.

There is a note inserted that the author hoped his/her/their work would find its way into a university. Happily, the unusual set found a home in the Graphic Arts Collection at Princeton University. Please share the few facts presented here with colleagues and let us know if you have a theory about this massive undertaking.

OPEN

High noon at the Whitney Museum of American Art, week 2 open to the public.

Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1932.

Diego Rivera, Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita, October 13, 1931

Charles Demuth, My Egypt, 1927

Alexander Calder’s Circus

Political Animals. Note: this post includes offensive racial slurs

Politicians frequently use animals to symbolize their party, currently a donkey for the Democrats and an elephant for Republicans. Beginning in the 1840s, the American Whig party took the raccoon as its symbol, along with its associations with independent frontiersmen and their raccoon-skin caps. Nineteenth-century Democrats used the rooster.

During the presidential election of 1844 between Democrat James K. Polk (1795-1849) and Whig Henry Clay (1777-1852) these two symbols were used effectively in rude and offensive caricatures of the other party. According to the Dictionary of Etymology the abbreviation for raccoon was already in use as a vulgar reference to African Americans, giving added weight to the ridicule loaded into anti-Whig texts and images.

“The now-insulting U.S. meaning “black person” was in use by 1837, said to be from barracoon (by 1837), from Portuguese barraca “slave depot, pen or rough enclosure for black slaves in transit in West Africa, Brazil, Cuba.” If so, no doubt this was boosted by the enormously popular blackface minstrel act Zip Coon (George Washington Dixon) which debuted in New York City in 1834. But it is perhaps older (one of the lead characters in the 1767 colonial comic opera “The Disappointment” is a black man named Raccoon).”– https://www.etymonline.com/word/coon

One of the chief issues in the 1844 election was slavery and the annexation of the Republic of Texas. This can be seen in the use of the raccoon caricatures in the anti-Whig newspaper The Ohio Coon Catcher, published by the Democrats in the pro-Whig state of Ohio. There were several other similar newspapers on either side.

The Graphic Arts Collection has an incomplete run of The Ohio Coon Catcher, which was published between August and November 1844, during the first American election held in November. A complete digital run has been posted by the Ohio Memory project https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p16007coll29. The paper was the project of Samuel Medary (1801-1864) the editor and publisher of the Ohio Statesman, as well as head of the Ohio delegation to the democratic National Convention. In both text and image, it promoted Polk’s candidacy with news items, political opinion, testimonials of reformed Whigs, poems, and cartoons.

In the national popular vote, Polk beat Clay by fewer than 40,000 votes, a margin of 1.4%.

See also: W. Miles, The people’s voice: An annotated bibliography of American presidential campaign newspapers, 1828-1984. Westport, CT: Greenwood press, 1987.

Sister Isabella Piccini’s first known work

Giovanni Palazzi, De Dominio Maris, Libri Duo. Serenissimae Venetae Reipublicae dicati. Venice: Combi & La Nou, 1663. Graphic Arts collection GAX 2020- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired what we believe is the first book engraved by Suor (Sister) Isabella Piccini (1644-1734). A Venetian law book with “laws of the Adriatic Sea,” the frontispiece is signed: Elisabeta Piccini [i.e. Isabella Piccini] f. B.R. in. For Graphic Arts, it is Piccini who is of particular importance. The daughter of the printer Giacomo Piccini (died 1669), she has become known for her many 17th- and 18th-century engraved portraits commissioned by Venetian publishers. In 1666 she entered the Convent of Santa Croce in Venice and took the name Suor (Sister) Isabella, while continuing to work as an artist. This work predates her convent years.

Here is the information that comes with the volume, ripe for a senior paper:

Scarce sole edition of this wide-ranging work by an Italian legal theorist, partly answering the treatises of John Selden (1635) and Hugo Grotius (1609) on the freedom of the seas. Palazzi (1640-1703) is of course most concerned with the sea-going activities of Venetian merchants and navies around the Mediterranean, but broadens his scope to give an account of historical claims to the high seas by the ancients Hebrews, Egyptians, etc. Quoting Selden and Grotius frequently, Palazzi also examines claims made by modern powers – including a legal discussion of the discovery of America on pp. 111-112 – and the recent problematic maritime activities of the Ottoman Turks.

Quite aside from its scholarly content, the present work is noteworthy as the first verifiable piece of engraving by Elisabetta / Isabella Piccini (1644-1734), the nun-engraver of Convent of Santa Croce in Venice. Thanks to the unequivocal date of the book and the full signature of the engraver (rather than ‘I. Piccini’, which referred to her father Iacopo), the 1663 De Dominio Maris thus bears a significant place in the canon of her works. It must have been executed when Piccini was just 19 years old – before she joined the convent and took the nom de religion of Isabella – and is figuratively quite striking for the work of a teenager. A nude female figure with bare breasts is seated atop a chariot being pulled by an unfortunate-looking male savage (perhaps signifying ‘Land’?); at her feet, a lion wields a sword, with a trident in its other hand poised to dig into the flesh of the man-of-burden.

Graphic Arts also holds the second Italian edition of an account of the conquest of Mexico by Spanish forces under Hernando Cortéz (1485-1547). The work describes the three years between the appointment of Cortéz as commander of the invasion expedition and the fall of Mexico City, which contains three marvelous full-page engraved portraits of the author, Cortéz, and Montezuma by Suor Isabella Piccini and five other plates engraved by Alessandro della Via, illustrating significant scenes of the conquest.

For more, see the entry in the Enciclopedia delle donne: http://www.enciclopediadelledonne.it/biografie/elisabetta-piccini/

This new acquisition is in addition to other volumes engraved by Piccini:

Carlo Labia, Dell’imprese pastorali (Venetia: Appresso Nicolò Pezzana, 1685). Rare Books (Ex) Oversize N7710 .L12q

Carlo Labia, Simboli predicabili estratti da sacri evangeli che corrono nella quadragesima, delineaticon morali, & eruditi discorsi da Carlo Labia….(Ferrara: Appresso B. Barbieri, 1692).Rare Books (Ex) Oversize N7710 .L122q

Bernardo Lodoli, Serenissimo Venetiarum Dominio ill[ustrissi]mo, et ecc[ellentissi]mo Arsenatus regimini Bernardi Lodoli … fidele votum …([Venetiis], [1703]).

Antonio deSolís (1610-1686), Istoria della conquista del Messico della popolazione, e de’ progressi nell’ America Settentrionale conosciuta sotto nome di Nuova Spagna / scritta in castigliano da D. Antonio de Solis … e tradotta in toscano da un’accademico della Crusca (Venezia : Per A. Poletti, 1715).

Missale Romanum : ex decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, S. Pii V. Pontificis Maximi jussu editum, Clementis VIII. & Urbani VIII. Auctoritate recognitum ; in quo missæe novissimæ Sanctorum accuratè sunt dispositæ (Venetiis : ex Typographia Balleoniana, 1727 (MDCCXXVII)). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2012-0009F

Guillermo Deisler and the Peacedream Project

The Chilean-born visual poet Guillermo Deisler (1940-1995) was imprisoned in 1973 under the Pinochet government before being exiled to France, Bulgaria, and finally Germany. It was in Halle (Saale) that he began publishing the international mailart portfolio known as the Peacedream project UNI/vers(;) together with Hans Braumüller, Theo Breuer, David Chikladze (Georgia), Pedro-Juan Gutierrez (Cuba), Joseph Huber (Germany), César Figueiredo (Portugal), K. Takeishi-Tateno (Japan), Spencer Selby (USA) and many others.

“For the Latin Americans,” wrote Deisler, “including some of us right now, that voluntarily or driven by political circumstances are obligated to exile, those that work in ‘art by mail’ transform into a palliative that neutralizes this situation of ‘deceased citizens,’ the name coined by Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos for this massive emigration of cultural workers from the South American continent”

Published between 1987 and 1995 in 35 numbers, Deisler edited each issue focused on visual and experimental poetry. “The project encouraged visual and experimental artists to submit 100 works. 40 artists were put together in one issue, each artist receiving a copy of the magazine. Uni/vers (;) transmitted messages and poetry with simple matters. It was poetic communication bearing in mind the mass being available. In its best case an issue was simultaneous poetry in a collective form without censorship or borders.”–From http://centrodedocumentaciondelasartes.cl.;

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to acquire a partial run of UNI/vers(;) as well as a small group of his artists’ books and concrete poetry.

Guillermo Deisler (1940-1995), Exclusivo hecho para usted (Juego) (Antofagasta, 1971). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Gregorio Berchenko, Knock-out: poemas visuales / Gregorio Berchenko; cubierto, Guillermo Deisler (Antofagasta, Chile: ediciones Mimbre, [1971?]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020 in process

Guillermo Deisler (1940-1995), Poemas visivos y proposiciones a realizer (Antofagasta: Ediciones Mimbre, 1972). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020 in process

Guillermo Deisler (1940-1995), Poesia visiva en el mundo / selección y notas de Guillermo Deisler (Antofagasta, Chile: Ediciones Mimbre, [1972?]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020 in process

Guillermo Deisler (1940-1995), Le cerveau (Marseille: Nouv. Eds. Polaires, 1975). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020 in process

Guillermo Deisler (1940-1995), Stamp, 1990. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020 in process

Guillermo Deisler (1940-1995), UNI/vers(;): visuelle und experimentelle Poesie international: Magazin 1 / 5 jahre 5 years peacedream project uni/vers(;) 1984 – 1992 / peacedream project uni/vers(;) visuelle und experimentelle … (Berlin, 1992-1994). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020 in process
See all issues online: https://www.fondazionebonotto.org/en/collection/fluxus/deislerguillermo/8403.html

Guillermo Deisler (1940-1995), Everything I do is poetry (Cleveland, OH: Generator Press, 1996). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020 in process

Adler’s paper sample resources

Recently two paper sample cabinets owned by Elmer Adler (1884-1962) came back from off-site storage to our vaults, including this one housing sample books from the Alling & Cory Company.

“Alling and Cory was a privately owned printing paper and packaging distributor headquartered in Rochester, New York, [Adler’s hometown]. Founded by Elihu F. Marshall in 1819, the company was the first paper merchant in the U.S. The company remained independent until 1996 when it was bought by Union Camp. Assumed to be among its employees were two United States Presidents and other United States statesmen.

At its height, Alling and Cory owned more than 20 branch offices from Toledo, Ohio to New York City. At one point, it was the United States’ oldest privately owned company in continuous operation. In 1910-1911, they built the Alling & Cory Buffalo Warehouse and in 2010, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”

See The New York Times article: “Alling & Cory Sold for $88 Million to Union Camp” from Dow Jones, April 16, 1996.

A second cabinet holds this wonderful color sample brochure. Here is a small part of the business history posted by the Beckett Paper Company:

With sales of less than $100 million, Beckett Papers is a rather small, yet distinctive, segment of the Fine Papers Division of Hammermill Paper Co., itself a subsidiary of $20 billion International Paper Co. Nevertheless, Beckett enjoys a long and distinguished heritage in the paper industry, stretching back 50 years earlier, in fact, than that of International Paper. Established in 1848, Beckett was controlled and managed by descendants of founder William Beckett until 1959, when it became a subsidiary of Hammermill Paper Co. Hammermill was in turn acquired by International Paper in 1984.

A well-established brand presence in the fine papers, stationery, and uncoated recycled stock segments enabled Beckett to retain its own identity and logo through the mid-1990s. But while its goods continued to be milled at the company’s birthplace in Hamilton County, Ohio, its headquarters was moved to East Granby, New Jersey, along with the rest of International Papers’ Fine Papers Group.

Beckett Papers was founded and eventually named for William Beckett. Born in 1821 and educated at southern Ohio’s Miami University, Beckett, along with a couple of partners, bought into an abandoned paper mill in the town of Hamilton in 1848. At first, the mill churned out newsprint made of rags for sale to newspaper publishers in nearby Cincinnati. Though the mill struggled to stay in the black during its first two years, efficiencies achieved through the addition of a second paper making machine led to a decade-long period of profitability. The Civil War helped to lengthen this prosperous period, as newspaper sales skyrocketed, fueled by public hunger for news from the battlefields. These high times subsided during the late 19th century, when panics and recessions hurt the company’s results.

Partners came and went over the course of the company’s first four decades in operation, and the business endured several name changes before its incorporation as The Beckett Paper Company in 1887. By this time Thomas Beckett, son of the founder, had joined the company. The second-generation leader brought new production methods to the company, including modern paper making machines that used wood pulp. Though his changes were vehemently resisted by some managers, modernizations kept the company’s costs competitive and eventually brought it out of the red. Thomas launched the Buckeye Cover brand of colored paper in 1894, a stock that soon gained a reputation for high quality. The buckeye, Ohio’s state tree, would serve as Beckett’s corporate logo for some 100 years, until the launch of a new logo in mid-1998.

These resources were originally moved from Elmer Adler’s office in The New York Times annex to Princeton in 1940, when he established a graphic arts program at the university. Special thanks go to my colleagues Jen Meyer and Mike Siravo, who arranged the moving and new storage for these important resources back into the department.

Picking Up a Book on Independent Bookstore Day

Independent Bookstore Day has been moved to August 29, 2020, a good excuse to visit Lit Bar in the South Bronx. But nothing is easy this year. http://www.indiebookstoreday.com/
Walking would be daunting, with no ferry operating

Weather was dangerousTransportation difficult to decipher, but it was worth the trip

Success!

The Books and Prints of Anaïs Nin and her Gemor Press

Please join us at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, September 25, 2020, for the fifth in our series of live webinars highlighting material in the Graphic Arts Collection at Princeton University Library. Recently we acquired most of the rare letterpress editions printed by Anaïs Nin (French-Cuban, 1903-1977). Best known for her diaries, Nin also wrote fiction with themes of history, feminism and multiculturalism. Together with Gonzalo More, one of her many lovers, Nin ran a private printing press in Greenwich Village where she taught herself to set type, stood for hours pumping a treadle press, and distributed her books with the help of Frances Steloff at Gotham Book Mart. Many were illustrated with original etchings by her husband, Hugh Parker Guiler, a banker who used the pseudonym Ian Hugo so his colleagues would not discover he was also an artist.

They called the imprint Gemor Press (pronounced G. More) after Gonzalo, although it was Anaïs who raised the money and did most of the physical work. Located first on MacDougal Street and later at 17 East 13th Street where the small building she rented still stands. After a close look at the books and prints, we are fortunate to be joined by Andrew Berman, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, who will update us on their efforts to landmark this building, as well as other Village homes and studios of writers we all know and love.

This session is free and open to all. To register: click here

Here is the complete series of past and future webinars highlighting material in Princeton’s Graphic Arts Collection

New Theories on the Oldest American Woodcut. May 22, 2020
To celebrate the 350th anniversary of the oldest surviving print from Colonial America, we assembled all five extent copies of the portrait of the Reverend Richard Mather (1596-1669) by or after John Foster. Julie Mellby was joined by Caroline Duroselle-Melish, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Early Modern Books and Prints and Associate Librarian for Collection Care and Development, Folger Shakespeare Library.

Thomas Eakins and the Making of Walt Whitman’s Death Mask. June 26, 2020
This program was chosen specifically for June, LGBTQ pride month and this year, the 50th anniversary of the first Gay Pride march. Both Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins, in their own way, broke down barriers around sex, sexuality, and the celebration of the human body. Presented by Julie Mellby, Graphic Arts Curator, and Karl Kusserow, John Wilmerding Curator of American Art, Princeton University Art Museum.

Afrofuturism: The Graphics of Octavia E. Butler. July 31, 2020
This month focused on the speculative fiction, also called Afrofuturism, of author Octavia E. Butler. Julie Mellby was joined by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award winning team who produced the graphic novel adaptations of Parable of the Sower and Kindred.

Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. August 26, 2020
The fourth in our series celebrated the centenary of the 19th amendment on Women’s Equality Day. Julie Mellby was joined by Lauren Santangelo, author of Suffrage and the City and lecturer in Princeton University’s Writing Program, along with Sara Howard, Librarian for Gender & Sexuality Studies and Student Engagement within Scholarly Collections and Research Services at Princeton University Library.

The Books and Prints of Anaïs Nin and her Gemor Press. September 25, 2020
For the fifth in our series we highlight the recently acquired letterpress editions printed by Anaïs Nin (French-Cuban, 1903-1977). Together with Gonzalo More, Nin ran a private printing press in Greenwich Village where she printed and published fine press books, distributed with the help of Frances Steloff at Gotham Book Mart. Julie Mellby will be joined by Andrew Berman, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, who will talk about efforts to landmark the Gemor Press building and other Village homes and studios of writers we all know and love.

Arthur and Albert Brisbane

Thanks to a gift in the 1970s from Sarah Brisbane Mellen (1913-1977), daughter of Arthur Brisbane, granddaughter of Albert Brisbane, also known as Mrs. Chase Mellen, the death mask collection acquired three examples in three very different formats. The first was made in 1890, at the death of Albert Brisbane (1809-1890), whose head was only partially cast in plaster, either in Richmond where he died or in Buffalo, where he was buried. A second mask was made of his son, Arthur Brisbane (1864-1936) and used to sculpt a full standing bust of Arthur’s head. A third wax cast of Arthur’s face was moulded either directly or from the plaster cast.

Arthur Brisbane’s bust is signed in the plaster by Herman Walthausen (188-1962), as mentioned in his New York Times obituary:

“Herman Walthausen … a molder and an assistant to sculptors, died today in a nursing home here [White Plains]. …Mr. Walthausen, a pupil of the late Augustus St. Gaudens, had worked with such sculptors as the late Adolph Weinman, Charles Keck, Daniel Chester French and Jacques Lipchitz. Projects on which he had worked included the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, the Confederate Memorial Monument at Stone Mountian, GA., and death masks of former Gov. Alfred E. Smith of New York, Arthur Brisbane, the editor, and Sir Jacob Epstein, the sculptor. –New York Times, September 23, 1962.

A brief biography of Albert and Arthur was posted by Syracuse University Special Collections, which I quote here:

Albert Brisbane (1809-1890), social reformer, was born in Batavia, N. Y., the son of James and Mary (Stevens) Brisbane. He was sent to a boarding-school on Long Island, and then studied in New York City under private tutors. He traveled to Europe, where he was influenced by the ideas of Charles Fourier, the French utopian socialist. Poor health on his return to the United States in 1834 dampened his Fourierism campaign, but in 1840 he published Social Destiny of Man: or, Association and Reorganization of Industry. After striking up a friendship with Horace Greely, he began writing for the Tribune. His “hasty propaganda” gave birth to numerous experiments in Associationism, as he called his theories, the general failure of which caused a waning of interest in the whole movement. In 1876, he published General Introduction to Social Sciences containing the essence of Fourier’s social theory and a translation of his History of Universal Unity. Brisbane was a highly educated man with a vigorous mind, but he failed as a social reformer because he lacked an ability to lead, as well as a realization of the practical difficulties in the way of a universal panacea for evil. He wrote with comparative ease as well as fervor, but only as object lessons in social reform have his writings survived the movement of which they were a part. [adapted from American Authors 1600-1900, (1938)]

With his first wife, Sarah White, Albert had three children, one of whom, Arthur (1864-1937), would go on to become a successful writer and newspaper editor. After completing his education in the United States and Europe, Arthur Brisbane took his first newspaper job as a reporter with the New York Sun. He went on to hold jobs as an editor at the Sun, the New York World, and the New York Evening Journal. He remained editor of the Evening Journal until 1921 and continued to write for the paper as a columnist until his death. Brisbane was known for his punchy prose style and fondness for short, blaring headlines. By the time of his death he was the highest paid newspaper writer in the world ($260,000 a year). [ Adapted from World Authors 1900-1950, (1996)]

Death mask of Albert Brisbane (1809-1890), Partial plaster cast, 1890. Graphic Arts Death Mask Collection (Ex) 4875. Gift of Sarah Brisbane Mellen, 1913-1977

Death mask of Arthur Brisbane (1864-1936). Plaster bust on pedestal. 1936? Graphic Arts Death Mask Collection (Ex) 4876. Gift of Sarah Brisbane Mellen, 1913-1977.

Wax mould of Arthur Brisbane (1864-1936). Graphic Arts Death Mask Collection (Ex) 4877. Gift of Sarah Brisbane Mellen, 1913-1977.

An affecting history of the captivity & sufferings of Mrs. Mary Velnet–Fiction or Non-Fiction?

The Sinclair Hamilton copy of Mary Velnet’s 19th-century slave narrative has been digitized and is available for download.

Mary Velnet (born 1774), An affecting history of the captivity & sufferings of Mrs. Mary Velnet, an Italian lady Who was seven years a slave in Tripoli, three of which she was confined in a dungeon, loaded with irons, and four times put to the most cruel tortures ever invented by man written by herself (Boston: Published for W. Crary [1800?]). Graphic Arts Collection Hamilton 185. https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/2990368

Woodcut frontispiece showing Mary in her dungeon loaded with irons. Inscribed in ink on first fly leaf: “John Bright Jun. property–Waltham,” and “John Bright Jun. Waltham 1810 July 15th” on last leaf.

The book tells the story of Mary Velnet, wife of Morn Henri Velnet, an East Indian trader. Mary left Italy on June 20, 1797, to join her husband in Canton and two months later, her ship was attacked by the Tripolitans in North Africa. She was captured, sold, and held in slavery for seven years.

Although Velnet is called an Italian lady, it has been suggested that this was an American story, commissioned by an American publisher for the extensive audience hungry for for slave narratives involving white women. Princeton owns the first American edition, one of at least six printings of this book.

Paul Baepler’s White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives, suggests that the popularity in the United States of these sensational narratives of white women captured and tortured in African and Indian countries led to many fictitious publications.

“We have no bibliographies of Barbary captivity narratives, and while this list doesn’t claim to be comprehensive, I hope it moves us toward a fuller understanding of the genre’s publication history. No doubt there are many more narratives among newspaper accounts, unpublished diaries, sermons, letters, travel narratives, captain’s logs, and miscellany. I have included the seemingly fictitious accounts that were printed in the United States—Vandike, Velnet, Martin, Nicolson, Bradley, and Laranda—and with the exception of the Nicholson narrative, all of these were reputedly written by non-American but published exclusively in the United States.”

What do you think?