Category Archives: Books

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Mysterious Japan by Julian Street

“Frank A. Vanderlip, formerly President of the National City Bank of New York, sailed from Seattle, Wash., April 10, [1920] for Japan, where he, with those who accompany him, are to be the guests of the Japanese Welcome Association at an informal discussion of problems confronting America and Japan. Those in Mr. Vanderlip’s party include Lyman J. Gage, former Secretary of the Treasury; Henry W. Taft, George Eastman, Darwin P. Kingsley, Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman, Seymour L. Cromwell, Vice-President of the New York Stock Exchange; Julian Street, and L. L. Clarke, of New York.”– The Commercial & Financial Chronicle, April 17, 1920.

Author Julian Street (1879-1947) returned from Japan with a magic lantern projector and a collection of lantern slides (some taken by George Eastman), which are now in the Graphic Arts Collection. Street used them to illustrate his travelog entitled Mysterious Japan (Garden City, N.Y., Toronto: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922). Princeton has a trade copy of Street’s book, as well as a presentation copy from the author to his daughter, extra-illustrated with all the documents Street collected on his trip. ((Ex) 1732.876).

These slides turned up recently while moving of our glass plates and glass negatives to their new home in the vault. There are no labels on the individual slides but many can be matched to the illustrations in Street’s book.

See also Japan Society (New York, N.Y.), Japan Through the Eyes of Lewis L. Clarke, Darwin P. Kingsley, Thomas W. Lamont, Jacob G. Schurman, Frank A. Vanderlip ([New York, 1920]). Recap 1735.1

Julian Street (1879-1947), Abroad at home: American ramblings, observations and adventures of Julian Street (Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Pub. Co., 1926, c1914). Recap 1053.885

Venice

Fine press book collectors around the world have been waiting many months for the new volume being produced at Whittington Press. This week, online comments have been springing up throughout social media sites as individuals finally received and opened their mail containing Venice.

John Craig, Venice; with 35 of his wood engravings (Risbury, Herefordshire: Whittington Press, 2016). Copy 44 of 150 in Pirate leather. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) in process

John Randle notes, “The 80 wood-engravings, and some linocuts, some with colour, have made the book a printer’s challenge. John Craig’s use of white space has, as with Britten’s Aldeburgh (2000) and The Locks of the Oxford Canal (1985), been critical, and the asymmetric imposition of type and images is based upon his precise layouts. The resulting double-page spreads can be seen almost as a series of stage sets, introducing us to the often undiscovered delights of a city which he has visited regularly for the past twenty years.

The French-fold binding style is a new departure for us. The pages are left folded at the top edge, enabling us to use a lightweight Zerkall mould-made paper, specially hot-pressed to give an extra sheen for the engravings, and allowing us to print throughout on the smooth side of the paper only.”

The book begins: “This collection of engraved illustrations is by, and for, a Venice amateur. I offer an apology; so much has been produced on the subject that one is wary of taking up yet more space on the shelf . . . and yet . . . there is some impulse that drives people to express, explain, pin down something that no other city possesses. With this in mind – (as Robert Graves puts it) ‘one still stands ready, with a boy’s presumption,/ To court the queen in her high silk pavilion’.

There is (or was) in Venice a bookshop as big as a small house that sells only ‘Venice’ books in which all the history, architecture, paintings, sculpture and topography are most expertly covered by the best authors—living and dead—the competition is enormous. For this reason I have chosen to ignore the better known set pieces and illustrated as an innocent holiday maker wandering—open mouthed—without plan or guide through the small and less known parts of the city.”

How To Sell A Book

Lawyer, librarian, and novelist Frederic Beecher Perkins (1828-1899) wrote Scrope while assisting his bother-in-law, Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) in the editorship of the magazine Old and New, in Boston. It was during this period that he became intimately involved with the buying and selling of books in America. Chapters of Perkins’s story were released in Old and New, before it was published in 1874.

The novel follows a young man from Hartford, Connecticut, trying to find some books that had belonged to one of his ancestors 200 years earlier. To this end, he becomes involved in the 19th-century practice of canvassing or selling of books by subscription.

“If I were to recommend the story as having any merit in particular,” commented Perkins, when his novel was reprinted 20 years later in Connecticut Magazine, “it would be for the description of the book auction in the first chapter; that of the subscription-book publisher, his character and ways of doing business, and that of old William Gowans and his catacomb of a book-store.”

Perkins continued, “The characters in the story are nearly all described from persons I have known. Mr. Tarbox Button, for instance, was a close study from the life of a late successful New York subscription-book publisher. I seem to have succeeded in delineating a type in this case; for when the printers of Old and New came to this personage, they wanted him left out. They said I had so accurately described the person and the ways of another well-known publisher in the same line, and who was a valuable customer of theirs, that when he came to see it he would certainly be angry and would take away from them all his business; and I had some difficulty inducing them to tolerate my portrait.”

In this novel, Button instructs his pupil in how to sell a book:

Commit this to memory word for word. Hold the Book you are selling in your own Hands. Don’t let the customer take it unless necessary. Don’t merely say you have got it and talk about it, but show it. Don’t ask the customer to buy it, except as the very last resort; but show it and describe it until he says, “I will take one.” Don’t tell what it costs until he wants the book. When he is ready, hand him the Order Book and pencil, and he will see the price extended opposite the names already in. Remember, you must make the customer want the book, before you try to sell it. He would not buy coined gold if he did not want it.

Frederic Beecher Perkins (1828-1899), Scrope; or, The Lost Library. A novel of New York and Hartford (Boston: Roberts brothers, 1874). RECAP 3888.41.384. This book was checked out of the Princeton University Library for the first time and only time today, June 18, 2016.

Mercury introducing Concord, Agriculture, and the Arts to America 1776

Bickerstaff’s New-England Almanack, for the Year of our Redemption, 1776 (Newbury Port: By Mycall and Tinges, [1775]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 1334.

On the title page of this 18th-century almanac is a crude woodcut depicting “Mercury introducing Concord, Agriculture, and the Arts, to America.” Sinclair Hamilton noted that “Concord’s nose appears to be broken and Mercury is quite bald,” (Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers. Supplement).The almanac offers “A description of the frontispiece” [spelling as printed]:

It represents Mercury introducing Concord, Agriculture, and the Arts, to America. Mercury, the inventor of useful arts, and the God of Commerce, is represented, as usual, with his caduce, or conjuring rod, in his hand, the virtue of which was such, that with a single touch it could reconcile any two of the most inveterate enemies. Concordia is represented by the goddess Concordia, with her crown of Pomegranates upon her head, and a jewel in the shape of a heart upon her breast. Agriculture is represented by the goddess Ceres, the constant companies of the former, and has her cornucopia and nosegay of poppies in her hand, a crown of wheat ears on her head, and a plough near her feet. And in the back ground, to represent the useful arts are a tenter ground, a country village, a farm-house, &c. &c.

Happy the man who free from law and strife, with his own oxen ploughs his father’s field.

Mark Twain publishers’ bindings

“Elisha Bliss, head of the Hartford, Connecticut subscription house, the American Publishing Company … suggested that [Mark] Twain rework the newspaper letters into a ‘humorous work,’ and referred him to the company’s success with the work of Albert Deane Richardson, a newspaperman and acquaintance of Twain.

Twain saw an opportunity for success where, The Jumping Frog had failed and began an intermittent, though ultimately life-long commitment to subscription book sales. …Beginning with The Innocents Abroad (the book about his Quaker City trip), published in 1869 by the American Publishing Company, Twain brought out the majority of his titles by subscription.”
–Scott E. Casper, Joanne D. Chaison, and Jeffrey D. Groves, Perspectives on American Book History: Artifacts and Commentary (2002)

Subscribers were offered the choice of several bindings, some more elaborate and expensive than others. Sinclair Hamilton collected the top of the line, which are now in Princeton’s collection.
Mark Twain (1835-1910), The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress: Being some account of the steamship Quaker City’s pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land: With descriptions of countries, nations, incidents and adventures, as they appeared to the author: With two hundred and thirty-four illustrations (Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company; Newark, N.J.: Bliss & Co.; Toledo, Ohio: R.W. Bliss & Co.; Chicago, Ill.: F.G. Gilman & Co.; Cincinnati, Ohio: Nettleton & Co.; St. Louis, Mo.: F.A. Hutchinson & Co.; San Francisco, Cal.: H.H. Bancroft and Company, 1869). Hamilton copy: Gold and blind stamped, pictorial cloth binding. Inscribed “Henry A. Goodwin, September 1st, 1869”–in ink, on third fly-leaf. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 1288

Mark Twain (1835-1910), Roughing It (Hartford, Conn.: American Pub. Co., 1872). Original blind and gold stamped, pictorial cloth binding; all edges speckled. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 1289

Mark Twain (1835-1910), Mark Twain’s Sketches, new and old (Hartford, Conn.: American Pub. Co., 1875). Black and gold stamped publisher’s cloth binding. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 1290

Samuel and Olivia Clemens married in 1870 and moved to Hartford in 1871. Their family enjoyed what the author would later call the happiest and most productive years of his life in their Hartford home.

Arthur Train

While moving the glass negative collection, we found a box labeled “Train.” It turned out to be portraits of Arthur Train (1875-1945), lawyer and author of crime fiction from the 1910s and 1920s. Here are computer positives from the glass negatives.

On of his famous characters was the attorney Ephraim Tutt, first introduced in Tutt and Mr. Tutt (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1920). PS3539.R23 T888 1920

Did an artist have to pay to get a copy of their own book?

[Above: Subscription list from Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (New-York, [1791])]

Akiyo Ito’s article “Olaudah Equiano and the New York Artisans,” in Early American Literature 32, no.1 (1997) mentions that “Cornelius Tiebout, the engraver who did the portrait of Equiano for the New York edition, was also a subscriber.”

The frontispiece by Cornelius Tiebout (1777-1832) was copied from an engraving by Daniel Orme for the 1789 London edition, which in turn was after a portrait painted by English miniaturist William Denton. Both Denton and Orme were also subscribers to Equiano’s book.

Did an artist receive a copy of the book with their work, or did they have to subscribe and pay for the book, if they want one?

The Self-Interpreting Bible: Containing the Sacred Text of the Old and New Testaments . . . (New-York: Printed by Hodge and Campbell, M.DCC.XCII. [1792]). Plates engraved by Abraham Godwin, Cornelius Tiebout, William Rollinson, Peter Maverick, and Amos Doolittle. William H. Scheide Library (WHS) 19.6.4

The following year, Tiebout was one of the subscribers who ordered this bible in advance of its publication. The other artists who produced work for the book–Godwin, Rollinson, Maverick, and Doolittle–chose not to buy a copy. Did Tiebout subscribe to all books with his prints in them?

The quick answer is no, since three years earlier, Tiebout chose not to subscribe to William Gordon (1728-1807), The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America (New-York: Printed by Hodge, Allen, and Campbell, 1789). John Witherspoon Library WIT 1081.402

A brief survey revealed many other artists had to purchased a copy of the book they helped to create. For instance, Daniel Bellany’s Ethic Amusements (London: printed by W. Faden, 1768) includes engraved plates by George Bickham (1706?-1771) and Charles Grignion (1721-1810). The names of both these artists appear on the list of subscribers published with the book.

Please let me know if you find others.

The specimen book to end all specimen books

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813), Manuale tipografico del cavaliere Giambattista Bodoni (Parma: Presso la Vedova, 1818). 2 volumes, frontispiece portrait engraved by Francesco Rosaspina after a painting by Andrea Appiani; 33 cm. 250 type specimens designed and cut by Bodoni in Latin, Greek, German, Hebrew, Russian and numerous other languages. One of approximately 290 copies. Purchased with funds provided by the Friends of the Princeton University Library and the Graphic Arts Collection. GA 2016- in process

Thanks to the Friends of the Princeton University Library, we are the proud owner of the second and final edition of Giambattista Bodoni’s Manual tipografico. This much enlarged edition of his 1788 specimen book represents the culmination of more than four decades of work by one of Italy’s greatest typographers, type-designers, compositors, printers, and publishers. Universally celebrated as a “libro importantissimo” (Brooks), “ouvrage magnifique” (Graesse), “an imposing tour de force” (Updike), and “the specimen book to end all specimen books” (Lester), it was surprising to find this pivotal study had been missing from Princeton University Library.

David Pankow, for his introduction to the 1998 DVD, wrote, “The Manuale Tipografico of Giambattista Bodoni has been called the greatest type specimen book ever printed. Issued posthumously in 1818 at Parma by Bodoni’s devoted widow Margherita, the two-volume work contains a dazzling array of 142 roman alphabets with corresponding italics, . . . the culmination of more than forty years of assiduous devotion by Bodoni to the typographic arts, both in his capacity as printer to the Duke of Parma and as proprietor of his own private press and type foundry.”

No facsimile or DVD can truly replace the original printed pages of this typographic milestone and the acquisition of Bodoni’s 1818 Manuale closes a significant gap in our collection on the history of printing. Bodoni’s introduction of what were considered exotic typefaces—Hebrew, Greek, Russian, Arabic, Coptic, Armenian, Phoenician, and Tibetan alphabets—is essential to the study of European history and publishing.

“Bodoni’s Manuale is a crucial document,” writes Thomas Keenan, Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Librarian, “of the introduction to the West and the first attempts at standardization in the West of the non-Roman scripts of Russia, Eastern Europe and the territories of the present-day Former Soviet Republics, and most particularly of the Cyrillic alphabets used in Russian and other Slavic languages, and the Georgian and Armenian scripts.”

The Water of the Wondrous Isles

William Morris (1834-1896), The Water of the Wondrous Isles (Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1897). Limited ed. of 250 copies printed on paper. Cf. Peterson. “Printed at the Kelmscott Press … The borders and ornaments were designed entirely by William Morris, except the initial words Whilom & Empty, which were completed from his unfinished designs by R. Catterson-Smith …”–Colophon. Original full limp vellum with silk ties, lettered in gilt on spine. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2016- in process

A heliogravure portrait of William Morris is tipped in as a frontispiece, engraved by Frederick John Jenkins (1872-1929), after a negative by Elliott & Fry (active 1863-1962), published 1895.

The copy of The Water of the Wondrous Isles recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection was once owned by Sydney Ansell Gimson (1860-1938), with a bookplate on the front pastedown designed by his brother Ernest Gimson (1864-1919). Primarily a furniture and wallpaper designer, Ernest was an early member of the Art-Workers’ Guild and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

This might be his only attempt at a bookplate design. He gave his brother two options, writing “I have done what I can with the book plates and send you the result. They are neither of them satisfactory… I don’t understand designing for reduction. And it would require a more microscopic eye than mine to draw it real size.”

To read the entire text, in this edition, see http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/Images/WaterWondrousIsles/waterwondrouskelmscott.html.

“In this magical setting,” writes literary historian Holly Ordway, “Morris gives us a characterization that subverts contemporary cultural norms for female behavior at a time in Victorian England when women agitated for the right to vote and equality before the law. What makes it even more complex is the issue of Birdalone’s beauty. In her world of brave knights, evil witches, and magical quests, it’s expected that damsels will be lovely. In this setting, to be the subversive character that she is without being beautiful would suggest that her independence is a compensatory mechanism, and that with physical attractiveness to fall back on she would be more traditional. As it is, her beauty seems irrelevant, making the point beauty is not a prerequisite to love, be loved, and be an individual as Birdalone is.”– “Subverting the Female Stereotype: William Morris’s The Water of the Wondrous Isles,” by Holly E. Ordway, Associate Professor, MiraCosta College

The author and designer, William Morris, died in 1896 before the printing of his novel was finished and so, the book was published by the members of Morris’s estate. Enormously popular, OCLC lists 85 editions of the book from 1897-2016.

16

Several years in the making, the Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to acquire copy 84/150 of the fine press, limited edition entitled 16, published at the centenary of Dublin’s 1916 Rising.

Stoney Road Press, An Post, and Poetry Ireland collaborated to produce this book, which includes four contemporary poems by Harry Clifton, Vona Groarke, Paula Meehan, and Paul Muldoon, alongside eight historical texts.

In addition, Stoney Road Press commissioned four limited edition prints by Irish artists Michael Canning, Alice Maher, Brian O’Doherty, and Kathy Prendergast. The Irish literary scholar, Professor Declan Kiberd, provides the introduction. More information on the project can be found at http://www.stoneyroadpress.com/books/16/

http://rte.ie/r.html?rii=b9_20953810_1526_17-03-2016_

A special program on RTE radio with historian Declan Kiberd, Maureen Kennelly of Poetry Ireland, and publisher Kieran Owens was broadcast last March but it can still be hear at the above link.

Paul Muldoon, Princeton University’s Howard G.B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities; Director, Princeton Atelier; and Professor of Creative Writing reads his own poem in Irish and Kennelly reads her translation in English.

See also W.J. McCormack, Enigmas of sacrifice: a critique of Joseph M. Plunkett and the Dublin Insurrection of 1916 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, [2016]). Firestone Library (F) DA962 .M243 2016

A selection from Easter, 1916
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

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