Author Archives: Julie Mellby

Ye olde London streete

Ye olde London streete ([London], 1884). Peepshow [also called a tunnel book] with 6 watercolored panels. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019 in process

Between the Cotsen Children’s Library and the Graphic Arts Collection, Princeton holds a large collection of European and American tunnel books. Here is one of our newest acquisitions.

In this example, the panels are attached to each other with cloth sides, making the whole easily foldable, like an accordion book. It offers a view of an imaginary old London street that was reconstructed at the International Health Exhibition of 1884. The street was made out of real houses, some four or five stories high and was built to give a contrast to the modern sanitary advancements. It proved to be the most visited exhibition.

The artist’s initials “G.C.S.” are struck through in pencil, followed by what we presume to be the owner’s name: Mary Dorothea. The piece is also signed at the back with the initials G.C.S. and manuscript note on the scenery, “Taken from the street in old London shown at the Health Exhibition 1884”.

In 1884 London hosted an International Health Exhibition under the patronage of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales, and directed by an Executive Council. The Exhibition was held in South Kensington, on a site between the Royal Albert Hall and the newly-opened Natural History Museum, on land which is now occupied by Imperial College of Science and Technology. Four million people visited the Exhibition between 8 May and 30 October 1884 (http://blogs.lshtm.ac.uk/library/2016/07/07/international-health-exhibition-1884/)

Here are a few more of our peepshows:
1. [Milan Cathedral peepshow]
[S.l. : s.n., 18–]. Graphic Arts Collection » 2007-0615N
2. Optique no. 12 : les Boulevards.
[Paris? : s.n., 18–]. Graphic Arts Collection » 2007-0609N
3. Optique no. 8 : le Parc de Versailles.
[Paris? : s.n., 18–]. Graphic Arts Collection » 2013-0443N
4. [Reims Cathedral peepshow]
[S.l. : s.n., 18–]. Graphic Arts Collection » 2007-1260N
5. Teleorama.
[S.l. : s.n., 18–]. Graphic Arts Collection » 2007-0688N
6. A View of the tunnel under the Thames, as it will appear when completed: the carriage ways will be circular : foot passengers will descent the shafts by stairs : dimensions of the tunnel, length fr…
[London] : Pubd. … by M. Gouyn, August. 1, 1829. Rare Books » 2010-0864N
7. Thames tunnel.
[London? : s.n., 184-?]. Rare Books » Oversize 2007-0169Q
8. A Brief account of the Thames Tunnel.
[London] : Azulay, Thames Tunnel, [1851?]. Rare Books » 2011-0054N
9. Ye Olde London streete.
[London : s.n., 1884?]. Graphic Arts Collection » N-001924
10. Grand théâtre en actions.
Paris : A. Capendu, éditeur, [189-?]. Cotsen Children’s Library » Moveables 19Q 44369
11. [Noah’s Ark] / devised by Jack S. Chambers.
[London : Werner Laurie, (not after 1950)]. Cotsen Children’s Library » Moveables 14964
12. Fünfhundert Jahre Buchdruckerkunst, 1440-1940 : über hundert Jahre Bauersche Giesserei, Frankfurt a.M., gegründet 1837.
[Frankfurt am Main : Bauersche Giesserei, 1940]. Cotsen Children’s Library » Moveables 30196 and Graphic Arts Collection » 2007-0617N
13. Tony Sarg’s treasure book : Rip Van Winkle, Alice in Wonderland, and Treasure Island.
[New York : B.F. Jay], c 1942. South East (CTSN) » Toys 11990

Mocha Dick

Randall Enos, The Life & Death of Mocha Dick (Brooklyn, NY: Strike Three Press, 2009). Copy 15 of 32. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

Abstract: “In 1841, Herman Melville sailed out to the whaling grounds of the South Pacific where he heard the legend of Mocha Dick. This huge bull sperm whale was known to attack whaling ships and battle his pursuers as they tried to harpoon him. Melville turned the whaler’s quest of Mocha Dick into the story of Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. Randall Enos tells the story of Mocha Dick, the hero of whales, and depicts the whale’s great battles and legendary encounters in a suite of eleven linoleum cuts.”–Strike Three Press.

J. N. Reynolds. “Mocha Dick: or the White Whale of the Pacific,” in The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine 13, no. 5 (May 1839): 377–92.

J.N. Reynolds, Mocha Dick, or The White Whale of the Pacific (London; Glasgow: Cameron & Ferguson, [1870?]). Rare Books 3906.39.364.1900

Manganelli’s ouroboric mini novel

Paul Malutzki, Irrläufe: Hundert = Centuria: One Hundred by Giorgio Manganelli (Flörscheim, Germany: Malutzki, 2019). Copy 4 of 25. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

“A writer is writing a book about a writer who is writing 2 books about 2 writers, one of whom writes because he loves the truth, and the other because it makes no difference to him. These 2 writers write a total of 22 books that talk about 22 writers, some of whom lie without knowing they are lying, others lie and know so, others seek the truth while knowing they won’t be able to find it, others believe themselves to have found it, still others believed themselves to have found it but have started to have doubts…” –Paul Malutzki

Manganelli’s ouroboric mini novel (No. 100 of a collection of 100) is used bilingual in German and English translations. The two texts run through the accordion book as unbroken lines. The binding structure of the book (printed on both sides) allows to reconnect the text ends to the text beginnings, thus associating an endless (ouroboric) reading.

After setting the texts on computer with 30 point “Polymorph South” they were printed letter press, using polymer plates. On their meandering path through the book they circumscribe glued-in text fragments from novels by Paul Auster, Simone de Beauvoir, Michail Bulgakov, Italo Calvino… and Virginia Woolf.

Since the novel fragments are taken from real books, each copy of the edition contains its own little extracts from the respective novels. Each copy is, in terms of the novel fragments, one-of-a-king. – Paul Malutzki

Giorgio Manganelli (1922-1990) was an Italian journalist, avant-garde writer, translator and literary critic. Centuria, which won the Viareggio Prize, is probably his most approachable [book]; translated into English in 2005 by Henry Martin. Italo Calvino called him “a writer unlike any other, an inexhaustible and irresistible inventor in the game of language and ideas.”

Calvino also once remarked that in Manganelli:

“Italian literature has a writer who resembles no one else, unmistakable in each of his phrases, an inventor who is irresistible and inexhaustible in his games with language and ideas.” Nowhere is this more true than in this Decameron of fictions, each composed on a single folio sheet of typing paper.

Yet, what are they? Miniature psychodramas, prose poems, tall tales, sudden illuminations, malevolent sophistries, fabliaux, paranoiac excursions, existential oxymorons, or wondrous, baleful absurdities?

Always provocative, insolent, sinister, and quite often funny, these 100 comic novels are populated by decidedly ordinary lovers, martyrs, killers, thieves, maniacs, emperors, bandits, sleepers, architects, hunters, prisoners, writers, hallucinations, ghosts, spheres, dragons, Doppelgängers, knights, fairies, angels, animal incarnations, and Dreamstuff. Each ‘novel’ construes itself into a kind of Möbius strip, in which, as one critic has noted, ”time turns in a circle and bites its tail” like the Ouroborous.

In any event, Centuria provides 100 uncategorizable reasons to experience and celebrate an immeasurably wonderful writer. Brilliantly translated from the Italian by Henry Martin.”

Leonard Trask, the Wonderful Invalid

As a healthy young man, the Maine farmer Leonard Trask (1805-1861) stood 6 feet, 1 inch tall. He was married in 1830 to Eunice V. Knight and together they had 7 children between 1831 and 1846.

While out riding in 1833, Trask’s horse bolted and he was thrown to the ground, injuring his neck and shoulders. Over the next few months he gradually recovered but his symptoms returned with a stiffening of his back and neck, and his head curving forward. In 1840, he fell again and in 1853, he was thrown from his wagon, breaking his collar bone. Each accident aggravated his symptoms and the curve of his spine grew worse. Eventually, his height was measured at 4 feet, 10 1/2 inches.

Trask was now severely disabled. He published this account of his condition to raise money for the family; worked briefly for a local circus as a curiosity; and according to The Maine Register for the year 1855, was given a pension of $12 per month because of his condition (known today as ankylosing spondylitis).

Leonard Trask (1805-1861), A Brief Historical Sketch of the Life and Sufferings of Leonard Trask, the Wonderful Invalid (Portland [Maine]: Printed by David Tucker, 1857). Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in process

Public Typewriter

Now through July 27, 2019, is the exhibition “New Typographics: Typewriter Art as Print,” featuring Lenka Clayton, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Gustave Morin, Elena del Rivero and Allyson Strafella, at the Print Center, 1614 Latimer Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103: http://printcenter.org/100/siena-and-new-typographics/

The exhibition highlights work by artists who use the typewriter as a matrix for forming text into image. Typically referred to as typewriter “art” or typewriter “drawings,” this exhibition posits that artworks created with a typewriter should be recognized as prints, in light of the mechanism and process of their production.

“I use the typewriter against itself. It was built to draft first chapters of novels and resignation letters; I use it to draw my son’s eyelashes and knitted socks . . . . I really enjoy that this process allows me to focus on those very simple forms and moments that are, perhaps, usually overlooked.”–Lenka Clayton

While you are there, you can “Create Your Own Typewriter Print.” The Print Center will host a “Public Typewriter” as part of Philly Typewriter’s “Philadelphia Public Typewriter Program.” Philly Typewriter is a retail typewriter store located in Philadelphia that also repairs typewriters and hosts classes and events. A temporary loan of a manual typewriter prepared for use by typewriter restoration classes at Philly Typewriter will allow visitors to make their own typewriter prints.

On Thursday, May 2, at 6:00 p.m. curator Ksenia Nouril will give a talk on the history of typewriter prints, highlighting key moments and artists that were influential to the thinking around the exhibition.

Concrete poets Dom Sylvester Houédard and Gustave Morin highlight the typewriter print’s immense potential for both visual and linguistic communication. In concrete poetry, the representation of language supersedes its legibility and even meaning. The results are wildly whimsical and fantastically funny renderings that allude to historical and imaginary people, places, and things.

Houédard, whom Morin calls “The Great Typewriter Poet,” was a Benedictine priest in post-World War II England. His typewritten visual poems, which he named “typestracts,” were developed together with leading conceptual writers and artists of the period, including but not limited to William S. Burroughs, Bob Cobbing, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Allen Ginsberg and Yoko Ono.–Press release

http://printcenter.org/100/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/TPC_Siena_Typewriter_Gallery-Notes-1.pdf

Dom Sylvester Houédard

Drawings for the Iliad [no drawings included]

Lithographs after drawings

Richard Lattimore’s now-classic translation of Homer’s The Iliad was first published by the University of Chicago Press in 1951. A decade later, the Press invited the artist Leonard Baskin (1922-2000) to produce drawings for a lavish illustrated edition, which came out in 1962.

That same year a deluxe portfolio of 150 lithographs [seen at the top] after Baskin’s pen and ink wash drawings was published by Delphic Arts in New York, with the title Drawings for the Iliad. The first 90 copies included an additional three etchings, which were also distributed separately (two copies of each etchings) under the same title. If that isn’t complicated enough, an exhibition of Baskin’s drawings traveled to multiple venues in 1962 and an exhibition catalogue published under the same title.

Princeton University is fortunate to have all the variations of publications reproducing Baskin’s drawings, albeit without any original pen and ink wash drawings.

Homer, The Iliad. Translated with an introduction by Richmond Lattimore. Drawings by Leonard Baskin ([Chicago] University of Chicago Press [1962]). Graphic Arts Collection Oversize PA4025.A2 L35 1962q
“In addition to the generous size, the forty-eight full-page illustrations are printed on a rich ivory paper, especially manufactured to reproduce as flawlessly as possible the color and texture of the paper used by Leonard Baskin in creating the original drawings.” The book was offered at an introductory price of $11.50 after which it would be sold for $13.50.

Leonard Baskin (1922-2000), Drawings for the Iliad [by] Leonard Baskin [an exhibition at the] Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, Philadelphia Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [and the] Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Oregon ([Chicago, Art Institute, 1962]). Graphic Arts Collection 2012-0145Q
“Delphic Arts has acquired the sixty drawings for the Iliad in conjunction with their publication of a deluxe portfolio. This exhibition has been prepared and organized by Delphic Arts, New York City”–T.p. verso.

Leonard Baskin (1922-2000), Drawings for the Iliad (New York: Delphic Arts, 1962). [68] leaves of plates. Copy 27 of 150. Marquand Library Oversize NE539.B2 A4e
“150 copies … have been published … The paper throughout is Fabriano … text … printed at the Gehenna Press … quotations are Lattimore’s translation … The edition has been arranged as follows. Copies number one through ninety are accompanied by three original etchings by Leonard Baskin …

Leonard Baskin (1922-2000), Drawings for the Iliad (with six original signed etchings by Leonard Baskin: two impressions each of “Hephaistos”, “Ares”, and “Homer”) (New York: Delphic Arts, 1962). Edition: 60

The first eight Surgeons-General of the United States Navy

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, The Maltine Company of Brooklyn published a series of pamphlets advertising the company to the general public through interesting facts and medical history. This was the first, ca. 1898, listing the Surgeons-General of the U.S. Navy.

William P.C. Barton (1786-1856), Princeton Class of 1805, studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania before entering the Navy at the age of 23 as a surgeon. The portrait below left is by Thomas Sully (1783-1872), depicting Barton in his first uniform [Philadelphia Museum of Art]. The artist of the portrait used by the Maltine Company is not identified.

Besides teaching and practicing medicine, Barton was a talented botanical illustrator, publishing: Vegetable Materia Medica of the United States or, Medical botany: containing a botanical, general, and medical history, of medicinal plants indigenous to the United States (Philadelphia: M. Carey & Son, 1817-1818). Graphic Arts Collection 2015-0057Q

and

A Flora of North America. Illustrated by coloured figures, drawn from nature by William P.C. Barton (Philadelphia: M. Carey & sons, 1821-23). Graphic Arts Collection 2015-0055Q

According to Appletons’ Cyclopaedia, the U. S. Naval Bureau of Medicine and Surgery was organized by Barton and he was the first chief clerk of that Bureau, appointed in 1842 by President John Tyler. Although the post of Surgeon General of the Navy wasn’t created until 1871, Barton is considered the first to hold the Navy’s senior position.

Surgeon-Generals of the Navy
William P. C. Barton 1842–1844
Thomas Harris 1844–1853
William Whelan 1853–1865
Phineas J. Horwitz 1865–1869
William Maxwell Wood 1869–1871
Jonathan M. Foltz 1871–1872
James C. Palmer 1872–1873
Joseph Beale 1873–1877

Extinction Aria

Anne Waldman, Extinction Aria: Its Exegesis, the Realms, How Ink is Blood (Hopewell, New Jersey: Pied Oxen Printers, [2017]). 60 x 25 cm. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

Poet’s note for Extinction Aria:

“Extinction Aria” was composed responding to what is known as the cycle–within the Wheel of Life–of the six realms in Buddhist philosophy: hell realm, hungry ghost or preta realm, animal, human, warring god, and pleasure-seeking god realm. The text seemed to emanate from a vibrating larynx and dance in the air. The words here are meant to project the tangibility of the psychological state of each realm. Thus the poem is proclamation of a specific insight into “samsara,” Sanskrit for a wandering through the endless cycle of existence, transmigrating lifetime after lifetime. “Extinction” may be interpreted here in both a negative and positive sense. Extinction as in the “sixth extinction” comes to mind; the planet is threatened from many directions by global warming, nuclear war and other ominous threats of the Anthropocene, where humankind is constantly running interference. From the spiritual perspective one aspires to the exhaustion of “ego” and its grasping. “We are here to disappear” is a tenet of Buddhism. I felt a vatic assertive voice on both sides of this inhabiting the poem … the voice of a harpy, a hag, a seer, conjuring images of gloom and doom to wake the world up to itself, and also a consciousness or impulse seeking to disappear. The title may also be read as “extinction air” as in our atmosphere so threatened by unmitigated pollution. The image and insistent repetition of “ink” during the piece was important to the sense of the poem needing to be scribed, physically embodied as spell or charm or transmission. This originally came from a dream that inflected the power of ink as a kind of lifeblood for poetry. These spiritual aspirations can’t merely exist in air. They needed to be written in “blood” and in the minerals of an earthy ink and project a strong visual presence, as they do in David Sellers’ inspired design and rendering. The mantra “E Ma Ho!” weaves in, which is an exclamation of amazement and wonder, and when repeated, carry the blessing of purifying body, speech and mind. The writing of this piece was extremely visceral, performative, in that a pulse of kinetic energy kept pushing the momentum of the language and its images forward. The poem comes off the center of the page; its lines settle down the middle axis as if it is a core of wind, or air, a channel of breath. This centering gives spine and location for the textures and language of the aria.

Additional notes: https://www.piedoxen.com/aria-notes-and-commentary

Additional images: https://www.piedoxen.com/books#/extinctionaria/

Brother Jonathan: Stop the Presses

William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), the ninth President of the United States, died on his 32nd day in office, April 4, 1841. Only six days later, the spectacular mammoth double sheet pictorial newspaper Brother Jonathan published a special spring issue with a commemorative note on their masthead [see above], replacing the usual logo [seen below].

“For the first time in its history, the nation is called to lament the death of a chief magistrate,” wrote the editor Benjamin Henry Day (1810-1889), “…we thought it our duty, in the recess of Congress, and in the absence of the Vice President from the seat of Government, to make this afflicting bereavement known to the country, by this declaration, under our hands.”

Nine years later, July 9, 2850, the second president to die in office, Zachary Taylor, was similarly honored by Brother Jonathan. Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth in 1865, after Brother Jonathan had ceased publication.

According to their own advertisements, these enormous newspapers (called bedsheet size) began in 1840:

“The Pictorial Double Brother Jonathan for Christmas and New Years was first issued in the year 1840-—just twenty years ago. It was at that time such a novelty that the demand for it continued three or four months, and even then the circulation reached eighty thousand copies. Since that period it has been issued regularly each year, with the avearage [sic] sale of over one hundred thousand copies for every number. Among the Newsvenders, the Brother Jonathan is extremely popular, as they never have a copy of it leftover unsold.

The immense size of the Mammoth Double Brother Jonathan enables us to give in it a profuse amount of reading and still leave room for the great number of Elegant Large Pictures. Altogether, you will find it to be a paper unsurpassed in interest, in point of handsome embellishment and agreeable reading. We give away this elegant Pictorial Paper to every yearly and half-yearly subscriber to the Weekly Brother Jonathan. The Christmas and New Years Pictorial Brother Jonathan will be sent, post-paid, to purchasers at 12 cents per single copy, or ten copies for One Dollar; but if you [subscribe] to the weekly paper, you will get a copy of the pictorial for nothing. Be sure to mention that you want the Pictorial Brother Jonathan, to prevent any mistake. Send cash to B. H. Day, 48 Beekman-Street, New York.”

Princeton University Library now owns 24 mammother issues and and 2 prospectuses of the Pictorial Double Brother Jonathan. Many have been cleaned, flattened, repaired, catalogued, digitized, and posted online for the public to read and enjoy. This one will also soon be cleaned and repaired. See more: http://pudl.princeton.edu/objects/9z903261b

It took a great deal of text to fill the mammoth newspaper. Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty was the fifth of his novels to be published, first appearing in serial form in Master Humphrey’s Clock from February to November 1841. At approximately the same time, Day published it in the United States serially in Brother Jonathan. This is only one of many novels to appear in the paper.

Brother Jonathan, special memorial edition, vol.2, no. 41 whole number 92 (April 10, 1841). Gift of Ivan J. Jurin, 2019. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

Notre-Dame Cathedral in silent films

https://rbsc.princeton.edu/pathebaby/node/2329

The Graphic Arts Collection of French silence movies from the 1920s holds several films that include images of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Two are documentaries and one is a movie about several tourists on holiday [see above]. Each of these can be downloaded to your own media device, if you like. Because the title frames are held for a long time (our first attempt at digitization), you might want to fast forward to get to the pictures.

https://rbsc.princeton.edu/pathebaby/node/2451