Category Archives: Illustrated books

illustrated books

Fitzgerald, Joyce, and Beach dine together June 27, 1928

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribner’s 1925). Beach 3740.8.341.11 c.4

Answering a reference question this morning, this charming sketch appeared. It is well-known in the Fitzgerald circles but makes for a nice ending to the week.


For the complete story, see J.D. Thomas, “F. Scott Fitzgerald: James Joyce’s “Most Devoted” Admirer,” The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 5 (2006), pp. 65-85 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41583113.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A48a8768555c6a35f8776080106641e8f

 

 

 

La Flaca, La Madeja Politica, La Carcajada, and El Lio

La Flaca, La Madeja Politica, La Carcajada, El Lio (Barcelona, March 1869 – March 1876). Complete with 256 weekly issues bound in 3 volumes, sophisticated copy. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

 

Latin American Studies and the Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a scarce complete run of this remarkably well-illustrated satirical weekly, which began life as La Flaca. Each issue is typically comprised of one bifolium with a full-page color lithograph in volume 1 and in volume 2 ans 3, a double-page lithograph. More digital images have been posted at: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Flaca&prev=search&pto=aue

Published in Barcelona, the Republican magazine faced intense government censorship and so, frequently changed its name, switching from La Flaca to La Carcajada, then La Madeja, La Madeja Política, and finally El Lio to avoid the censors. Biting criticism of the Spanish government and church was a staple while promoting freedom of the press.

The magazine’s chief illustrator was Tomás Padró y Pedret (1840-1877), who should be listed among the great caricaturist of the period. Born in Barcelona to a family of artists, he studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. It has been noted that another student, Mariano Fortuny, introduced him to the drawings by Paul Gavarni, an obvious influence in his satirical work. it is interesting that many plates use the iconography of drawing or writing or printmaking in their satirical message.


“The title was an ironic allusion to the plight of the Spanish people: the rickety woman with a shield bearing the country’s coat of arms and laurel wreath, accompanied by an equally starving lion on the cover of the magazine was a satire allegory of the woman and the lion fomented by the authorities in the 19th century and supposed to embody the alliance between the monarchy and the people.”

The contents are as follows:
Volume 1: La Flaca, nos. 1-100 (3rd of April 1869-3rd of September 1871). NB: no. 1 not dated.

Volume 2: La Carcajada, nos. 1-37 (17th of January 1872-31st of October 1872); La Flaca, nos. 38-84 (7th of November 1872-4th of October 1873).

Volume 3: La Madeja Politica, nos. 1-14 (1st of November 1873 – 31st of January 1873); El Lio, nos. 1-7 (7th of February 1874-18th of April 1874); La Madeja, nos. 22-50 (2nd of May 1874-19th of December 1874); La Madeja, nos. 1-22 (2nd of January 1875-3rd of March 1876).

 

Comparing The Seasons 1794 and 1797

James Thomson (1700-1748), The Seasons (Parma, Bodoni, 1794). Printed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813). In original orange boards. Graphic Arts Collection F-000132.

 

“Despite the general decline of the folio format in the second half of the century, it was revived for two editions of The Seasons, one of which was an elaborate subscription venture that took four years to complete; the other was commissioned and largely financed by Thomson enthusiast David Steuart, 11th Earl of Buchan. Catering to the upper end of the market, booksellers issued the lavishly illustrated 1797 folio edition, dedicated to the Queen, with engravings by Peltro William Tomkins and Francesco Bartolozzi.

In Italy, Giambattista Bodoni published another luxurious English-language folio edition for an elite clientele in Britain, using his superb type but no illustrations; he primarily targeted a Scottish market for the work because of the growing cult of Thomson that Steuart had fostered early in the 1790s, and aimed at book collectors to purchase his edition. –Brian Hillyard, “David Steuart and Giambattista Bodoni: On the Fringes of the British Book Trade,” in Worlds of Print: Diversity in the Book Trade, edited by John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong (2006), 113-25. 8.

To prepare for a virtual student visit this week, both folio editions of Thomson’s The Seasons were pulled and some pages photographed.

Warren E. Preece wrote a brief commentary on Bodoni, noting “In Italy, Giambattista Bodoni enthusiastically took up the principle of page design as worked out by Baskerville, though not his typefaces. Further modifying the Aldine roman of Garamond, he mechanically varied the difference between the thick and thin strokes of his letters to achieve the ultimate contrast possible in that direction. His letters are rather narrower than those of either Caslon or Baskerville. He exaggerated his thick lines and reduced the thin ones almost—it seems at times—to the point of disappearance. Like Baskerville, he used opulent papers and inks blended for special brilliance.

His pages were not easy to read, but he became, in the words of Stanley Morison, the typographical idol of the man of taste, and his “plain”—though deliberately and artfully contrived—designs were an important factor in the decline in importance of the édition de luxe and its replacement by works more austere in feeling, more modern even to today’s eyes. He set what was, in general, to be the standard book style of the world until the appearance of William Morris. Warren E. Preece, “Typography,” Encyclopædia Britannica

As is widely noted, William Morris considered Bodoni’s mechanical typography an example of “modern ugliness.”

Bodoni also set the standard for printing the alphabet with his Manuale tipografico (1818). The two-volume set features 142 sets of roman and italic typefaces, a wide selection of borders, ornaments, symbols, and flowers, as well as Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, Phoenician, Armenian, Coptic, and Tibetan alphabets (Graphic Arts Collection Q-000122).

 

 

 

 

James Thomson (1700-1748), The Seasons. Illustrated with engravings by F. Bartolozzi, R.A. and P.W. Tomkins, historical engravers to Their Majesties; from original pictures painted for the work by W. Hamilton, R.A. (London: Printed for P.W. Tomkins, 1797). Rare Books Oversize 3960.2.38.16f

 

In contrast with Bodoni’s Seasons, a lavish edition of The Seasons was prepared by Peltro William Tomkins, who commissioned paintings by William Hamilton (1751-1801), which were translated to engravings by Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815) and Peltro William Tomkins (1759-1840). Targeted at the Scottish market, this edition was enthusiastically promoted and sold well into the early 19th century.

The Osgood Sisters and Waldstein Press

Agnes Haswell Osgood in her Waldstein Press

Samuel Osgood, Letters to the Evening Post Written at Home and Abroad (New York: [Waldstein Press], 1890). Copy 13 of 25. Presentation copy inscribed by the author’s daughter: “Miss Graham from her friend Agnes H. Osgood New York March 9th 1891.” Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020-  in process

 

“… these days the new library was a household magnet that made up for many other changes,” wrote Mabel Osgood Wright in her autobiography My New York (Macmillan, 1926). “Even Gatha [Agnes], who resented innovation and change of any sort, took pleasure in arranging the books evenly, neatly, as they were wont to be shifted and pushed back at random.”

Agnes Haswell Osgood (1844-1929), Bertha Stevens Osgood Miller (1847-1917), and Mabel Osgood Wright (1859-1934) were the daughters of Ellen Haswell Osgood (1820-1906) and Reverend Samuel Osgood (1812-1880), pastor of the Second Congregational (Unitarian) Church in New York, better known as the Church of the Messiah. While the sisters were not allowed to attend Harvard College, as their father had, they were well educated at a private finishing school for ladies, where Agnes excelled at music, Bertha chose to paint, and Mabel, who wanted to be a doctor, settled for a career as a writer. Their New York home was frequented by actors, musicians, and politicians throughout the winter, while summers were spent at Waldstein (later called Mosswood), the family’s country estate in Fairfield, Connecticut.

 

In 1866, their father oversaw the design of a new church on Park and 34th Street, where a cornerstone was laid containing a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, a piece of the Trans-Atlantic cable, coins, medals and photographs. But as the congregation grew increasingly liberal, Osgood chose to resign, joining the Episcopal Church, where he was ordained as a priest in 1870. Samuel spent the majority of his later years writing essays for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Evening Post, where Mabel also published her first poem at the age of 16.

 

 

left: Mabel Osgood Wright at Waldstein

Most nights, the Osgood family gathered in their upstairs library, where bookshelves had been built across the entire length of the wall. Mabel wrote, “The new love of books, which not only for their contents, but for the shape, size, feel and type, enthralled me and still does, was born of the dainty well-bound, well-printed volumes from which Clarence Cook had read to us at his literature class at Number One Fifth Avenue. His Chaucer and Shakespeare, in English editions, by their form seemed to give more meaning and importance to the text. His Tennyson also, in tree-calf covers, printed on heavy paper in clear text, was such a contrast to the odd volumes of our own copies, “pirated” editions and printed cheaply, like so much of the work of overseas authors before the honor of publishers and the law of international copyright prevailed.”

When Rev. Osgood died unexpectedly in 1880, Bertha had already married and was living apart. In 1884, Mabel married James Osborne Wright (1851-1920), a British art and rare book dealer, moving with her new husband to London. Agnes remained with her mother, living primarily at Waldstein, where she set up a small proofing press and taught herself to set type. By 1889, she had finished printing 25 copies of a two volume set of her father’s essays, entitled Letters to the Evening Post Written at Home and Abroad. She called her operation Waldstein Press, after the family estate, and although she may having continued to print, no other books were ever released with that imprint.

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired copy 13 of this set, inscribed “Miss Graham from her friend Agnes H. Osgood New York March 9th 1891.” For the frontispiece of volume one, Agnes chose a portrait of her father and for volume two, she used a photograph of herself with her modest press.

Not long after this, Mabel and James returned to Waldstein, where she continued writing for the New York Evening Post, and then, for Macmillan Press, which published Friendship of Nature (1894), Birdcraft (1895), and Flowers and Ferns in Their Haunts (1901) among others.

 

Miss traveling? Unusual histories and wonderful experiences commenced in the year 1660

Eduward Meltons, Engelsch Edelmans, Zeldzaame en gedenkwaardige zee- en land-reizen: door Egypten, West-Indien, Perzien, Turkyen, Oost-Indien, en d’aangrenzende gewesten; behelzende een zeer naauwkeurige beschrijving der genoemde landen, benevens der zelber jnwoonderen gods-dienst, regeering, zeden en gewoonten, mitsgaders veele zeer vreemde voorvallen, ongemeene geschiedenissen, en wonderlijke wedervaringen. Aangevangen in den jaare 1660. en geeindigd in den jaare 1677. Vertaald uit d’eigene aanteekeningen en brieven van den gedagten heer Melton, en met verscheidene schoone kopere figuuren versierd...(Amsterdam. 1702). Second edition. Nine of the plates, including the added engraved title page, were engraved by Jan Luiken (1649-1712); others engraved by Jacob Harrewijn (1660-1727). Graphic Arts GAX 2020- in process

= Eduward Meltons, English noblemen, Rare and memorable sea and land journeys: through Egypt, West-Als, Persians, Turkyen, East-Als, and neighboring regions; comprising a very accurate description of the countries mentioned, in addition to the self-inhabiting religion, government, morals and customs, as well as many very strange occurrences, unusual histories, and wonderful experiences. Commenced in the year 1660 and ended in the year 1677. Translated from the notes and letters of Mr. Melton’s own notes and letters, and adorned with several beautiful copper figures

With an added engraved title page with title Eduward Meltons Zee en land reizen door verscheide gewesten des werelds = Eduward Melton’s Sea and Land travel through various parts of the world.

The Graphic Arts Collection acquired this compilation of travel accounts from various sources by the fictitious Eduward Melton, attributed to Godofridus van Broekhuizen.

The part relating to Egypt has been identified as a translation of Johann Michael Wansleben’s Nouvelle relation en forme de iournal, d’un voyage fait en Egypte (Paris, 1677; London, 1678). Rare Books 2272.68958.332.6. No plates

The part relating to New Netherland is thought to be an abridgement of Adriaen van der Donck’s Beschrijvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant (Amsterdam, 1655). Rare Books EXKA Americana 1655 Donck; With the introduction to that part being taken from Arnoldos Montanus’s De nieuwe en onbekende weereld (Amsterdam, 1671). Rare Books Oversize 1075.651q


The part relating to the West Indies is in part taken from Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin’s De Americaensche zee-rooveres (Amsterdam, 1678). Rare Books EXKA Americana 1678 Exquemelin. See more at the John Carter Brown Library: https://jcblibrary.org/collection/engelsch-edelmans-zeldzaame-en-gedenkwaardige-zee-en-land-reizen

Jan Luyken or Luiken or Luijken (Dutch, 1649-1712) studied under the painter Martinus Saeghmolen. He married Marie de Oude on 5 March 1672 and had five children, all of whom died young, except for Caspar, the eldest. Shortly after 1673, having been enthralled by the religious teachings of Jacob Böhme, he became a fanatical Pietist. Jan Luyken was a member of the Haarlem guild in 1699 and returned to Amsterdam in 1705. His large output of engravings totalled some 3,275, and he was also an author.–Benezit Dictionary of Artists

Detail of Slave Market

Look inside this cabinet of wonders, a beautiful rarity


Open the cabinet door, inscribed “Schöne rarität, schöne spielewerk” (Beautiful rarity, beautiful game work), and you will see what others are viewing through the peep holes at the sides. This volume has two engraved plates with movable flaps, along with eight others engraved by Christian Friedrich Boetius, Johann Benjamin Brühl, and Georg Paul Busch after designs by David Richter.

 

Later in the volume, two wide  tables open to let the viewer see inside the two tents, guarded by several antelope.


The stories are credited to Jean Chretien Toucement, the pseudonym for Johann Christian Trömer (1697-1756), a Franco-German dialect poet at the court of Augustus the Strong. The Oxford companion to German literature by Henry and Mary Garland describe the author:

 

Jean Chretien Toucement des Deutsch Franc̦os schrifften, mit viel schön kuffer stick, kanss complett, mehr besser und kanss viel vermehrt. Leipssigck, Bey die auteur und ock bey Johann Christian Troemer [1736]. Graphic Arts 2020- in process.  Note the date written in a rebus at the bottom of the title page.

Princeton also holds the later 1745 edition, with many plates reprinted.

 

 

 

The History of [American] Political Parties

Walter Raleigh Houghton (1845-1929) was a history professor at Indiana University who believed  that “the political history of the United States has received less attention than any other important portion of the history of our country, notwithstanding the fact that there is no other subject which meets with such general consideration as politics.” Therefore he took it upon himself to chronicle and depict American political history in several books, each using these colorful maps and charts.


Unfortunately, Googlebooks did not remove the panoramic charts from the envelope, so that they could be digitized.

In this 1880 plan, Republicans are red and the Democratic are yellow. There are many online sites giving the modern day history of party colors but few of them mention yellow. For instance: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-republicans-were-blue-and-democrats-were-red-104176297/

Slate magazine offers this short video:

Here is the timeline broken into segments so it can be read. 1789 to 1881 election data includes various heads of state, treasury, war, navy, post office, justice, and interior.

Walter R. Houghton (1845-1929), Conspectus of the History of Political Parties and the Federal Government (Indianapolis, Ind.: Granger, Davis & Co., 1880). ReCAP oversize 1097.478q

Princeton’s copy is missing the timeline that presents U.S. political parties entitled: “Diagram of the Rise and Fall of American Political Parties, from 1789 to 1880, inclusive.” Here is the online version:

Note, Houghton’s “Rules of Politeness” can be downloaded for free: https://openworks.wooster.edu/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Houghton%22%20author_fname%3A%22Walter%22&start=0&context=4358143&facet=

 

Sons of Africa designed by Aaron Douglas


The designs created by Aaron Douglas (1899-1979) for Georgina A. Gollock’s Sons of Africa (New York: Friendship Press, 1928) are simple and refined but add enormously to the beauty of the book’s first edition. Gollock compiled this collection of biographies of notable Africans, “including kings and chiefs of pre-modern times, characters of the early nineteenth century when Africa was coming to know the West, and recently living Christian leaders.” In the 19th century, the Sons of Africa was an abolitionist group composed of prominent Africans living in Britain, including Olaudah Equiano.

 

Chapters include: The discovery of the sons of Africa. The great Askia; a tale of Timbuktu. Osai Tutu Kwamina; from Kumasi to the coast. A Nigerian romance; the career of Bishop Crowther. Tshaka the Zulu; a black Napoleon. Moshesh the nation-builder. Khama the Good. Sir Apolo Kagwa; from page to prime minister. Where three continents meet; the life work of J.E. Kwegyir Aggrey. Men of affairs. Evangelists, pastors, teachers. Among the prophets. Mothers of men.

 

1928 was a pivotal year for Douglas, a pioneered the African-American modernism. He received a one-year Barnes Foundation Fellowship in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he studied the painting and African art collection of Albert C. Barnes. It was also the year Douglas participated in the seminal College Art Association exhibition entitled “Contemporary Negro Art.”

 

 

 

The book’s publisher, The Friendship Press, was at that time a branch of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, which produced an international array of progressive books, including Blind spots: experiments in the self-cure of race prejudice by Henry Smith Leiper; India looks to her future by Oscar MacMillan Buck; Young Islam on trek by Basil Mathews; and Aggrey of Africa: a study in Black and white by Edwin William Smith.

 

Princeton’s copy also includes the dust jacket, which reproduces the design printed on the front and back covers.

Mame et Compagnie Bindings


One of the sad aspects in the history of our library, like many other institutional collections, is that many books and magazines were rebound as soon as they are purchased, discarding often decorative and even unique bindings. Although we already hold many books from the publishing firm of Mame et Compagnie or Mame et fils, we have acquired an additional set of ten volumes with their 19th-century French decorative paper bindings intact. Each has the original publishers’ colored embossed paper-covered boards, many with hand-colored lithograph inlays, some with school prize labels.

 

“The book then undergoes the binding in three workshops, magnificent in their arrangement and comfort, and in which are employed 260 men and 250 women and children.” This is the entire description of the Mame binding workshop given in the 1878 history of the Mame and Sons publishing company, entitled Firm of Alfred Mame and Sons (1796-1893): printing–binding–bookselling: patronal institutions: participation, A. Mame’s endowments, homes for working people, superannuation, mutual aid societies. The report offers little information on production of their books but concentrates on the civic engagement of the company, which promoted the health and well-being of its workers through stock participation, company housing, and other benefits.

“…The situation of the establishment in the centre of a city excluded the idea of giving gratuitous lodgings to the working people: a [site], Peabody’s buildings style, has been constructed, where 62 families are lodged in habitations completely isolated the one from the other, each having its little garden and forming a quadrangle around a vast square planted with trees” …The Firm of Alfred Mame… https://archive.org/details/firmofalfredmame00alfr/page/4/mode/2up

 

The titles included in this group of decorative bindings
Louis Fridel, Les Naugrages au Spitzberg ou les Salutaires effets de la confiance en dieu. Neuvième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1850.
Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Champagnac, Les Amies de Pension traduit de l’anglais. [Bibliothèque spéciale de la jeunesse]. Paris: P.C. LeHuby, [c. 1851].
Washington Irving, Voyages et découvertes des compagnons de Colomb… 4e édition. [Bibliothèque des écoles chrétiennes]. Tours: Mame, 1851.
Washington Irving, Voyages et découvertes des compagnons de Colomb… 7e édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1858.
Fanny, comtesse de Tilière, Laure et Anna ou la Puissance de la foi sur le caractère… sixième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1859.
Jules Lacroix de Marlès, Histoire de Russie… nouvelle édition. [Bibliothèque des écoles chrétiennes].Tours: Mame, 1861.
Ernest Fouinet, Gerson ou le Manuscrit aux enluminures… dixième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1866.
Anaïs, comtesse de Bassanville, La Gerbe. Rouen: Mégard et Compagnie, 1870.
Catherine-Thérèse Woillez, Le jeune Tambour… onzième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours, Mame et fils, 1872.
Contes arabes tirés des Mille et une nuits… Iere partie. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame et fils, 1879.

 

The Catholic Encyclopedia published this biography of Alfred-Henry-Armand Mame (1811-1893) https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/alfred-henri-amand-mame

“Alfred conceived and carried out, for the first time, the idea of uniting in the same publishing house, a certain number of workshops, grouping all the industries connected with the making of books: printing, binding, selling, and forwarding. By analogy with the great ironworks of Le Creusot, the Mame firm has been called the literary “Creusot”.

Mame was also one of the principal owners of the paper-mills of La Haye-Descartes; and it could thus be said that a book, from the time when the rags are transformed into paper up to the moment when the final binding is put on, passed through a succession of workers, all of whom were connected with Mame. Daily, as early as 1865, this publishing house brought out from three to four thousand kilograms of books; it employed seven hundred workers within and from four hundred to five hundred outside.

Inspired by the social Catholic ideal, Alfred Mame established for his employees a pension fund for those over sixty, wholly maintained by the firm. He opened schools, which caused him to receive one of the ten thousand francs awards reserved for the “établissements modèles où régnaient au plus haut degré l’harmonie sociale et le bien-être des ouvriers”. In 1874 Mame organized a system by which his working-men shared in the profits of the firm.”

Ida Saint-Elme, the Female Casanova

Ida Saint-Elme on the left, Daumier on the right

Ida Saint-Elme (née Maria Johanna Elselina Versfelt, 1776-1845), La caricature française. Journal sans abonnées et sans collaborateurs [= French Caricature. Journal without subscribers and collaborators] no I-XXV [= all published]. (London: Privately published, 1836). Bound with: Album de la correspondance du prince émigré. Londres, privately published. Imprimerie de Schulze et Cie 1836. Bound with: Portrait d’Alibaud, avec sa défense interrompue par les pairs et des confidences sur sa vie intime, d’une jeune francaise, publié par Mme. Ida St. Elme, 1836. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

 

The Dutch writer, explorer, and actress Maria Johanna Elselina Versfelt (1778-1845) was also known as Ida Saint-Elme; Elzelina av Aylde Jonghe; and by her pseudonym La Contemporaine. The Getty’s union list of artist names adds: Elzélina van Aylde Jonghe and Elzélina Tolstoy van Aylde-Jonghe.

Her moniker “the Female Casanova” came after she published her eight volume memoir Mémoires d’une contemporaine, 1827-28 [recap 1509.178.7913], which emphasized her romantic adventures. Perhaps to escape this celebrity, she spent the next few years sailing the Nile and exploring Egypt, publishing a six-part travelogue La Contemporaine en Egypt.

Later, while working as a manuscript dealer in London, she also published a satirical magazine modeled after Charles Philipon‘s La caricature, which she called La caricature francaise. Journal sans abonnées et sans collaborateurs. This is possibly the earliest satirical magazine written, illustrated, and published by a woman. However she stole many images directly from Philipon’s magazine, such as her copy of Honoré Daumier’s 1833 lithograph “Ah ! Tu veux te frotter à la presse !” from La Caricature.

 

“One of the most unusual results of the September Laws was the founding in March 1836 of a French caricature journal in exile, La Caricature Françoise. It was published anonymously (by the Bonapartist intriguer Ida Saint-Elme) in London, in order to escape censorship, at an office it dubbed “The Crowned Pear.” This new extremely rare tabloid-sized weekly, which lasted only six months, consisted of four pages of text and included on the title page a woodcut caricature which was often copied from drawing previously published in Philipon’s journals.” –Robert Justin Goldstein, Censorship of Political Caricature in Nineteenth-century France, 1989.

“The magazine contained letters from the king, whether or not forged, which ridiculed him. In April 1841 this led to a legal process against Versfelt, the so-called “Procès des lettres”. But the court could not prove that the published letters were actually falsified and Versfelt was therefore not convicted. But many English prominent people considered her a forger. After this Versfelt left for Belgium, where she would live until her death in 1845. She died on 19 May 1845, blind and penniless, in a hospice in Brussels. She was buried in an anonymous grave.” ~ Enne Koops
https://historiek.net/maria-versfelt-biografie-vrouwelijke-casanova/135805/