Category Archives: Books

books

Il favore degli dei

Aurelio Aureli (1652-1708), Il favore degli dei: drama fantastico musicale, fatto rappresentare dal serenissimo sig. duca di Parma nel suo Gran Teatro per le felicissime nozze del serenissimo sig. principe Odoardo suo primo genito con la serenissima signora principessa Dorotea Sofia di Neoburgo (Parma: Nella Stampa ducale, 1690). 14 folded engravings. Music by Bernardo Sabadini; Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection is proud to have acquired Arthur and Charlotte Vershbow’s copy of Il favore degli Dei, which includes the libretto, scenario, and cast (without the music) along with fourteen folded leaves of plates engraved by D. Bonaveri, G.A. Lorenzini and L. Mattioli, and others after Domenico Mauro.

Ferdinando Galli da Bibiena and Domenico Mauro designed the scenography, Federico Crivelli invented the choreography, and Gasparo Torelli created the costumes. Princeton’s copy is imperfect, lacking the large folding plate by Carlo Virginio Draghi.

Il favore degli dei (1690): Meta-Opera and Metamorphoses at the Farnese Court by Wendy Heller, Professor of Music. Director, Program in Italian Studies, Chair of the Music Department, Princeton University

In 1690, Giovanni Maria Crescimbeni (1663–1728) and Gian Vincenzo Gravina (1664–1718), along with several of their literary colleagues, established the Arcadian Academy in Rome. Railing against the excesses of the day, their aim was to restore good taste and classical restraint to poetry, art, and opera. That same year, a mere 460 kilometres away, the Farnese court in Parma offered an entertainment that seemed designed to flout the precepts of these well-intentioned reformers. For the marriage of his son Prince Odoardo Farnese (1666–1693) to Dorothea Sofia of Neuberg (1670–1748), Duke Ranuccio II Farnese (1639–1694) spared no expense, capping off the elaborate festivities with what might well be one of the longest operas ever performed: Il favore degli dei, a ‘drama fantastico musicale’ with music by Bernardo Sabadini (d. 1718) and poetry by the prolific Venetian librettist Aurelio Aureli (d. 1718).

Although Sabadini’s music does not survive, we are left with a host of para-textual materials to tempt the historical imagination. Aureli’s printed libretto, which includes thirteen engravings, provides a vivid sense of a production whose opulence was excessive, even by Baroque standards. The unusually large cast included twenty-four principal singers, some of whom were borrowed from neighbouring courts such as Mantua and Modena. In addition, the libretto lists seventeen choruses and seven ballets featuring goddesses, breezes, warriors, nymphs, virgin huntresses, cupids, demons, stars, tritons, graces, fauns, and nereids who populated the stage for this remarkable performance. The set designers, painters, and engineers were also kept busy producing seventeen different sets and no fewer than forty-three machines that bore characters to and fro ‘in the air and the earth’ (‘in aria, e in terra’).

To continue reading, see hotlink above.

The book was also owned by Parmenia Migel Ekstrom (1908-1989), ballet historian; purchased from Ximenes, 1991.

For more references, see: Sonneck, O.G.T. Librettos, p. 483-484; Sartori, C. Libretti italiani, 9837; Bowles, E.A. Musical ensembles, p. 379-380.

Unpacking “The Valise”

The Valise, a collective artists’ project, unites seven South American artists—Johanna Calle, Mateo López and Nicolás Paris, Maria Laet, Rosângela Rennó, Matías Duville, and Christian Vinck Henriquez—with the Argentine writer César Aira. The project, published by the Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art, arrived this morning and we are still unpacking.

The works were made in response to the idea of travel and to Aira’s novel Un episodio en la vida del pintor viajero (An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter), with both the original Spanish edition (2000) and the English translation (2006) included. The novel concerns the surreal story of an 1837 journey through South America by the German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas, an associate of the explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.

Stored in a special valise or carrying case, the works include original prints, maps, artists’ books, airmail envelopes, origami toys, posters, a sound recording, and a hand-blown glass sculpture, all reflecting the artists’ shared affinity for geography, travel literature, and bookmaking.

The Valise was conceived, edited, and organized by May Castleberry, Editor, Contemporary Editions, Library Council Publications.

Latin American Studies and the Graphic Arts Collection are collaborating on the purchase of this very limited edition.

The Valise is published in a signed edition of 100 copies for the members of the Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art. A deluxe edition of 25 copies is available for purchase. (The deluxe edition includes hand-cut paper architecture by López; a second original woodcut print by Duville; a Paris design, hand-painted in metal leaf, on the carrying case; and signatures on many of the individual pieces.) An additional 10 artist copies of each of the two editions go to the artists and other collaborators.

*This is only a small selection of items included.*

Oxford

Martin Parr. Beating the Bounds. Ascension day.2014.

“The very first photo-documentary of Oxford was created by William Henry Fox Talbot,” reads the announcements. “A century and a half later, Martin Parr’s new project pays tribute to [that] great pioneer of photography.”

Commissioned by the Bodleian Library and Oxford University Press, Parr’s upcoming book is a collection of around 100 photographs documenting the life of the university between 2014 and 2016. The images capture day-to-day life of the school, highlighting the colorful and arcane rituals “that make Oxford so distinctive.”

Last Friday, we were given a preview of the book, entitled simply Oxford, due out on September 7, 2017. An exhibition to accompany the book’s release will be held from September 8 to October 22, 2017 in Blackwell Hall, Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries on Broad Street, Oxford.

In paging through the maquette with Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden, we were introduced to the many bizarre, eccentric, peculiar, and unique activities at Oxford University (including a cat that is really a dog). One of the most memorable was the ancient practice of ‘beating the bounds,’ ceremonially re-enacted every year. The photograph by Parr at the top of this post is one such beating, although not the print that eventually made the cut for the book.

Another view of this ritual from the Graphic Arts Collection is: George Cruikshank (1792-1878), “May – Beating the Bounds,” in The Comic almanack; an ephemeris in jest and earnest, containing merry tales, humorous poetry, quips, and oddities. Text by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863); Albert Smith (1816-1860); Gilbert Abbot À Beckett (1811-1856); Horace Mayhew (1816-1872); and Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) (London: Tilt and Bogue, 1837). Graphic Arts Collection Cruik 1835.81. Published in a run of approximately 20,000.

Beginning in 1835 and continuing for nine years, Cruikshank alone drew the plates for each monthly issue. Thackeray contributed small stories and promoted the series writing that it showed “a great deal of comic power, and Cruikshank’s designs were so admirable, that the ‘Almanack’ at once became a vast favourite with the public and has remained so ever since.”

300 Coburn prints destroyed

The Graphic Arts Collection holds two copies of The Door in the Wall by H.G. Wells with photogravures from negatives by Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966). Princeton’s first book has ten mounted prints with letterpress captions while the second has only one.

The text was set by Bertha S. Goudy (1869-1935) at the Village Press, New York, with types and decorations designed by Frederic W. Goudy (1865-1947), under whose supervision it has been printed by Norman T. A. Munder & company, Baltimore, Maryland. Six hundred copies were printed on French hand-made paper in November, 1911.

When Coburn’s photogravures arrived in New York, an assistant mistakenly pounded a nail through the top of one crate destroying half of the prints. 600 photogravures had been prepared in England and only 300 were left for Frederic Goudy to fit into the New York edition.

Some books have 10 and the rest are missing one or more images. Princeton’s second copy is missing all but one. A slip is tipped onto the front board of each incomplete book. Some give the explanation that missing photogravures are replaced with prints made by the aquatone process. The slip in Princeton’s book reads “It was for this volume that Frederic W. Goudy designed his now famous Kennerley Type. Six hundred copies were printed. Unfortunately, only three hundred sets of the illustrations were complete, so that there remain three hundred copies of the book lacking one or more illustrations, of which this is a copy. The text is perfect.”

It was a complete surprise today to find the Rare Book division of the Library of Congress not only holds both complete and incomplete copies of Door in the Wall, but they also have Goudy’s own copy of the book’s maquette, originally placing the photographs on the right instead of the left and without his special type.

The binding and pages are larger in the maquette than the published version. The layout of the cover text is uniformly printed in plain type. Published books used a fancier, pseudo-Gothic face and reduce the size of Coburn’s name, giving his contribution less importance.

Library of Congress, Rare Books, Wells c.4

The maquette also holds additional prints, seen here laying side by side to check for variations.

H. G. Wells (1866-1946), The Door in the Wall and Other Stories by H. G. Wells, Illustrated with photogravures from photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1911). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2006-0844Q previously owned by Elmer Adler and GAX 2006-0845Q previously owned by Edwin Hooper Denby.

Goudy’s pencil design for the title page layout, at the Library of Congress. He might have anticipated a longer production schedule, assuming the publication date would be 1912 instead of 1911.

See also: Alvin Langdon Coburn and H.G. Wells: the photographer and the novelist: a unique collection of photographs and letters from the University Library’s H.G. Wells collection ([Urbana]: University Library : Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997). Marquand Library (SA) No call number available

James and Coburn

We were looking today at the photogravure frontispieces by Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966) for all but the final two volumes of what is known as Henry James’s New York Edition. The books were published two volumes at a time between December 14, 1907 and July 31, 1909. Above are the copies at the University of Virginia.

James famously called photography the “hideous inexpressiveness of a mechanical medium.” He told his publishers at Scribner’s that he wanted only a single good plate in each volume of the New York edition. “Only one but of thoroughly fine quality.”

George Bernard Shaw called Coburn “the greatest photographer in the world.” Alfred Stieglitz wrote that “Coburn has been a favored child throughout his career… No other photographer has been so extensively exploited nor so generally eulogized,” but that didn’t stop him from giving the young artist two solo exhibitions at 291.

In 1905, sixty-two-year-old Henry James was photographed by the twenty-three-year-old Alvin Coburn for the April 26 issue of Century Magazine. They became friends and collaborators, mutually agreeing on each of the twenty-four photogravures that Coburn created, beginning with a new portrait of the author for volume one.

Coburn cruised the Mediterranean and traveled to Paris, Rome, and Venice searching for the appropriate entrance scenes for each of his friend’s novels. The gravures are printed directly onto the book page with a tissue guard printed with a facsimile of James’ signature. This might be the greatest series of frontispieces ever created.

Henry James (1843-1916), The Novels and Tales of Henry James. New York edition ([New York: C. Scribner’s sons, 1907-17]). 26 volumes with 24 photogravure frontispieces by Alvin Langdon Coburn. (Ex) 3799.7.1907

The Graphic Arts Collection also has a single portrait of Henry James attributed to Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1866): https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2014/01/18/henry-james/

Giacomo Lauro

Last fall, Victor Plahte Tschudi, Director of the Oslo Centre for Critical Architectural Studies, published Baroque Antiquity: Archaeological Imagination in Early Modern Europe (Classics DG82 .T78 2017). This led to Anthony Grafton’s review “Invented Antiquities,” in the July issue of London Review of Books.

This led to a search for Giacomo Lauro, “a printmaker, whose albums of prints of Rome, the Antiquae Urbis splendor, command the lion’s share of Baroque Antiquity.” It is much more pleasant reading about old master prints while looking at them.

The earliest dated prints by this engraver, printer, and print publisher are from 1585 and carry the address of C. Duchetti. From 1590 he tried to establish himself as a publisher of his own work by acquiring old copper plates, restoring them, and publishing reprints. According to the British Museum, his Antiquae Urbis Splendor was published in parts from 1612. In the volumes issued in 1614 and 1615 Lauro refers to having worked on it for 28 years which would mean that he began it about 1586.

Grafton writes,

“At a cursory glance, Lauro’s slick, neatly engraved images give an impression of erudition and professionalism. . . But Tschudi’s close and tenacious examination reveals that Lauro was neither a professional antiquarian nor even a skilled draughtsman. His images were adapted from a vast range of existing sources: the drawings and prints of Pirro Ligorio and others, which the enterprising publisher Antoine Lafréry had gathered in albums in the 1570s. Lauro not only copied these, he used them to represent buildings for which no ruins or records survived.”

“…Lauro and [Athanasius] Kircher, in other words, were not making and commissioning these sometimes highly imaginative prints at random. They had a precise notion of the market at which they were aiming. Their work didn’t involve creating images anew, after long weeks camped out at the ancient sites, but reusing existing prints. . . They used the work of others as soon as the privileges that protected them ran out, while invoking privileges of their own to protect the value—and price—of their own work. They were not explorers of ancient sites but aficionados of modern prints.”

Giacomo Lauro (active 1583-ca. 1645), Splendore dell’antica e moderna Roma (Roma: Nella Stamparia d’Andrea Fei, 1641). Pt. 1: Antiquae urbis splendor hoc est præcipua eiusdem templa … Romæ, 1612; pt. 2: Antiquitatum urbis liber secundus … Romæ, 1613; pt. 3: … Antiquæ urbis splendoris complementv̄, … Romæ, 1615; pt. 4: Antiquæ urbis uestigia quæ nunc extant … Romæ, 1628. Marquand Library (SAX) Oversize N6920.L37q

See also: Giacomo Lauro (active 1583-ca. 1645), [Engraved views of Italian gardens, showing the Quirinal, Monte Celio, Vatican, Tivoli, Pincio and Barco di Barnaia (Rome?: 1616?]). Marquand Library (SAX) NA9500 .L37

Giovanni Battista de Rossi (active 1630-1660), Palazzi diversi nel’alma cita di Roma et alter ([Rome]: Ad instanza di Giombattista de Rossi, 1638). Prints by Giacomo Lauro. Marquand Library (SAX) in process

The Anti-Masonic Movement

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this early almanac focused on the anti-masonic movement in the United States. So much was written and published, this poem appeared in 1829:

O books! books! books! it makes me sick
To think how ye are multiplied,
Like Egypt’s frogs, ye poke up thick
Your ugly heads on every side.

If a new thought but shake its ear
Or way its tail, tho’ starved it look,
The world the precious news must hear,
The presses groan, and lo! a book.

The American anti-masonic movement was officially formed in 1828 following the disappearance and presumed murder of William Morgan (1774–1826?). Morgan was about to publish a book exposing Freemasonry’s secrets and so, the fraternal society was thought to have killed him to keep their information secret.

A congressional convention took place in Philadelphia in 1930. Eli Bruce, Loton Lawon, Nicholas Chesebro and Edward Sawyer were each convicted of taking part in the kidnapping and served time in prison.

We have dozens of other publications in our collections. Of particular interest are those in the Sinclair Hamilton collection with early American wood engravings and gritholaphic plates. Here are a few others.

Edward Giddins, Anti-Masonic Almanac for the year 1832, no. 4. (Utica, [N.Y.]: William Williams [et al], (1831]). Illustrated by D. C. Johnston. 1st ed. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process

Timothy Tickle, The doleful tragedy of the raising of Jo. Burnham; or the “cat let out of the bag”: in five acts, illustrated with engravings (Woodstock, Vt.: Printed by W.W. Prescott, 1832). Illustartions attributed to Benjamin Tuel by Hamilton and others. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 1958

Morganiana, or, The wonderful life and terrible death of Morgan / written by himself. Illustrated with gritholaphic [i.e. lithographic] plates, by Hassan Straightshanks, Turkey. First American ed., tr. from the original Arabic manuscript. By Baron Munchausen, jr. … (Boston: Printed and published by the proprietors, 1828). “Johnston was fond of using pseudonyms and, as the name Straightshanks is an obvious play on Cruikshank, and as the plates are in the style of Johnston, it seems plausible to attribute them to him.”–Cf. Hamilton. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 937

Henry Brown (1789-1849). A narrative of the anti-masonick excitement, in the western part of the state of New York, during the years 1826, ’7, ’8, and a part of 1829 (Batavia, N.Y.,: Printed by Adams & M’Cleary, 1829). Rare Books (Ex) HS525 .B7

A (new) Modest Proposal

Jonathan Swift, Gerald Scarfe, and Fintan O’Toole, A Modest Proposal, 2017. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process

To celebrate the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Stoney Road Press has published a limited, boxed edition of the satirical essay A Modest Proposal, illustrated with three etchings by satirical cartoonist Gerald Scarfe and an introduction by Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times literary editor and Princeton University Visiting Lecturer in Theater; Acting Chair, Fund for Irish Studies (Spring 2018).

A launch party was held June 17 at the Dalkey Book Festival, hosted by O’Toole, His remarks were followed by a reading of Swift’s essay by actor Nick Dunning.

It was noted that Dunning got further than Peter O’Toole did in 1984. As Fintan O’Toole wrote, “When the Gaiety Theatre held a gala performance to mark its reopening after refurbishment, Peter O’Toole was invited to do the opening turn. Presumably, the expectation was that he would do a bit of Shakespeare, perhaps, or a Yeats poem. He decided to read, slowly and deliberately, Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, with its suggestion that the children of the Irish poor be sold as food for their landlords, ‘who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.’ Some members of the dress-suited audience began to heckle; others walked out. RTÉ, which was broadcasting the show live, cut O’Toole off in the middle of the reading and went to an ad break.“ –Fintan O’Toole, “The Genius of Creative Destruction,” New York Review of Books, December 19, 2013

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burthen to Their Parents or the Country: and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick ([London]: Dublin, printed, and reprinted at London, for Weaver Bickerton, in Devereux-Court near the Middle-Temple, 1730). Rare Books (RB) RHT 18th-587

“In the large body of stories about him in the collections of the Irish Folklore Commission,” O’Toole continued, “Swift is almost always ‘the Dean’ or, in popular pronunciation, ‘the Dane’. The name shows immediate awareness that he was a high functionary of the established, Protestant, Church of Ireland—an institution unpopular with the oppressed Catholic majority. Yet he transcends these sectarian divisions. He was revered by middle-class Protestants, who named inns and ships after him and built bonfires to celebrate his birthday. Catholics, meanwhile, attached to ‘the Dean’ many of the common trickster stories that circulated around Europe. Swift and his servant, usually called Jack, form a comic double act.”

Five Dials

http://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/handle/88435/dsp01zp38wg21x

Hamish Hamilton is one of London’s oldest publishing houses, founded by Jamie Hamilton in 1931. Home to authors such as J.D. Salinger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, W.G. Sebald and Truman Capote, their aim remains to publish the very best literary writers from around the world, from Alain de Botton to Zadie Smith.

They also publish the online literary magazine Five Dials, available directly to your email free of charge. To make the publication searchable and easily available to our students, the dspace (read digital) team and especially Kim Leaman, Special Collections Assistant V, is uploading the run into our catalogue. You can also use the permanent URL:
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp010z709004v

Literary magazine is named after the old red-light area Five Dials in London—-notably the area Hamish Hamilton’s offices on 80 Strand overlook. In his Letter from the Editor, Craig Taylor writes “we’re hoping Five Dials will be a repository for the new, a chance to focus on ideas that might not work elsewhere, a place to witness writers testing new muscles, producing essays, extracts and unexplainables.” –Five Dials, no. 1, http://fivedials.com/

Each issue has a separate title and theme, such as no. 30: A Stranger Again (The Camus Issue) or no. 10, Celebrating the life and work of David Foster Wallace 1962-2008. The upload should be complete next week.

The Kalevala

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a small volume that probably should have been on our shelves many years earlier. First published in 1835, the Kalevala is complete in 22,795 verses, divided into fifty songs of Finnish folklore, compiled thanks to Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884).

This contemporary presentation of one section was printed in 1992 by the Maine artist David C. Wolfe, “arranged for oral presentation” by Anne Witten. The book has only 15 pages but they are beautifully printed letterpress with original woodcuts by Wolfe, bound in handmade cream and brown Lokta paper over boards.

This project was published at Wolfe Editions in the Bakery Studios on Pleasant Street in Portland, Maine. The building is also home to White Dog Arts, Peregrine Press, Art House Picture Frames, and 16 studio spaces making it a center for artistic activity in the city.

Many fine press books in our collection were printed by Wolfe, through his association with Anthoensen Press, Shagbark Press, Stinehour Press, and finally Wolfe Editions. Wolfe teaches letterpress printing from his own studio and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, an international craft school located in Deer Isle, Maine.