“These are the wings which by estimate round
Are said to have cost forty thousand pound,
And which not quite according with Royalty’s taste,
Are doom’d to come down and be laid into waste.”

Attributed to Joseph Hume, The Palace that N–h Built: a Parody on an Old English Poem ([London]: Thomas McLean, [1829?]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process

“This parody of the popular nursery rhyme ‘The House that Jack built’ is a satire on George IV’s huge expenditure of public money on the conversion of Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace (begun 1825), and the apparent venality and incompetence of John Nash, the architect responsible. Although a Select Committee of the House of Commons had exonerated Nash of any professional misconduct in 1828, the issue of the spiraling costs of George IV’s new palace remained a national scandal until the King’s death in 1830 and Nash’s replacement by Edward Blore in 1832.

The pamphlet is printed in the style and format of a typical children’s rhyme book of the period. ‘I. Hume’ has not been identified and may be a pseudonym. [British Architecture Library’s] Early Printed Books suggests that either the author may have been Joseph Hume (1767–1843), a clerk at Somerset House who translated Dante’s Inferno (1812), or that the attribution is a topical reference to the well-known radical politician Joseph Hume MP (1777–1855), a prominent and outspoken critic of government overspending. The latter possibility seems more likely. The satirical illustrations are etched in the manner of George Cruikshank; most are just legibly signed ‘G. Davies’.” — From the John Soane Museum http://collections.soane.org/b10093

My thanks to Thomas Hare, William Sauter LaPorte ’28 Professor in Regional Studies, Professor of Comparative Literature; and to Eileen Reeves, Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature and an Associate Member of the Program in the History of Science at Princeton University.

Professor Hare has offered a bit more information on Shin Moyô Hînagata, which was posted a few days ago: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2016/07/30/shin-moyo-hinagata/. He agreed to let me pass it on:

The charming little book you and Graphic Arts have discovered is a pattern book of sorts. The title means something like New Patterns in Miniature, and the writing seems, at least in some cases, to number individual drawings (the numbers 8 and 9 are clear to read on the second full spread, the one of, I think, magnolias and some kind of little red flower.) I can’t make out the second graph on these pages very well, although it could possibly be two graphs combined, the second of which might be the -ta from [Hina]-gata. That word, in the title, btw, could also be read Hiinagata (or Hînagata, with a macron rather than the circumflex I’ve typed in ignorance of how to type a macron in email) I think that would be better that way, purely for euphony (5/5 rather than 5/4 syllables).

The little words with repeat marks next to the little brown bird on the second (single) page read “chû, chû, chû, etc.” and are onomatopoeia for the bird’s chirping.

. . .  I particularly like the one with the brown bird, because in ancient Japanese texts, incomprehensible speech (such as that of peasants from the point of view of the lofty Genji) is said to sound like the chirping of birds. This is a purely random association, but it does gesture toward our many languages, and toward the old Japanese conceit that all sentient creatures are endowed with the capacity to produce poetry.

2001

Thanks to Rubén Gallo, Walter S. Carpenter, Jr., Professor in Language, Literature, and Civilization of Spain. Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures, and Director, Program in Latin American Studies, who was traveling in France this summer, Princeton University Library acquired a back run of the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Thanks also to our colleagues John Logan, Literature Bibliographer, and Fernando Acosta-Rodriguez, Librarian for Latin American Studies, Latino Studies, and Iberian Peninsular Studies for their assistance with this acquisition.

2013

It is surprising and instructive to see what we were laughing at ten or twenty years ago. Note the 9/11 issue at the top. These newspapers will be boxed by our conservation department and stored in Rare Books and Special Collections’ recap, making them available to all researchers.

2010

2006

2005

1997

1995

January 2003.
The next time I vote [Lionel] Jospin [Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002].

Within the various collections in Rare Books and Special Collection we hold 13 copies of A New Hieroglyphical Bible for the Amusement & Instruction of Children published from 1794 to 1849. This doesn’t make it any less exciting to receive another.

The recent donation had condition issues and so, Mick LeTourneaux, Rare Books Conservator in our Preservation Office worked on it. Here is a look at the before and after.

Since there is no title page, it is difficult to know which edition we have. The newspaper waste used in the back cover gives an account of congressional funding for cannons, dated March 3, 1809, so that is helpful in dating the binding.

Each page has a key at the bottom in case you can’t figure out the sentence. Here is the right side:

Bound in with the Hieroglyphical bible is: The Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Apostles by Thomas Stackhouse (ca. 1680-1752). It is the first copy at Princeton that includes individual woodcuts and descriptions of all the apostles.

La vie et les mystères de la bienheureuse Vierge Marie, mère de Dieu (Paris, Nantes: Henri Carpentier, [Lemercier, Lithographic printer], 1859). Graphic Arts Collection RECAP-97154882

The German printmaker Franz Kellerhoven (1814-1872) was living in Paris in 1859, the year he created the 97 chromolithographs for this pseudo medieval manuscript, titled La vie et les mystères de la Bienheureuse Vierge Marie, mère de Dieu = Life and the mysteries of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. The British Museum identifies them as oleographs, or chromolithographs printed with an oil-based ink to replicate the look of a painted illumination.

Although the text was written by Arthur Martin (1801-1856), it is usually the Nantes printer/publisher Pierre Henri Charpentier (1788-1854) who receives the most credit for the project. The lithographs were printed at the Paris shop of Lemercier and the text in Nantes, “tirage a la presse a bras” (printed on a hand-worked press).

It is interesting that similar facsimiles were produced in installments over several years, not unlike a Dickens novel. Subscribers received a small section of the book as it was being produced. There is no documentation that Charpentier followed that process with La vie, but 97 lithographs from ten stones each (970 passes) would have taken a very long time to complete. Charles Wood III notes that binding directions are found on the final leaf.

Michael Twyman reminds us that Kellerhoven only undertook two major commissions with the French lithography firm of Lemercier & Cie., this being one. “In [this] book he put on stone work that Ledoux, Gsell, and Ciappori had drawn in the spirit of illuminated manuscripts of the seventh to seventeenth centuries . . . The amount of chromolithographic work needed for this publication in such a short period suggests that Kellerhoven must have employed several assistants . . . (A History of Chromolithography, pp. 352-3).

[These digital images were taken under fluorescent lights and are much greener than the original, sorry]