“To the Impartial reader. Be not discouraged from reading this small treatise, because of the unhappy end of a wearisome pilgrimage, which the author met with in this world; if we get a fall in a journey or meet with a great shower of rain so it be in the close of the day when we are near our inn, where we meet with accommodation and refreshment, we are the less troubled. . . .”

Princeton is fortunate to own several copies of A dying father’s last legacy to an only child: or, Mr. Hugh Peter’s advice to his daughter. Written by his own hand, during his late imprisonment in the tower of London; and given her a little before his death (Boston: printed by B. Green, for Benjamin Eliot, at his shop on the north side of King street, 1717).

Two copies can be found in the Graphic Arts Collection, each with a frontispiece woodcut attributed to James Franklin (1697-1735). Note the differing layout of the two copes (Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton SS 539 and Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 9s).


 

James Franklin (1697-1735), half-brother of Benjamin Franklin, apprenticed as a printer in London before opening his own press in Boston around 1717. In this same year, A Dying Father’s Last Legacy was published with a woodcut initialed J.F., presumably James Franklin, who had also learned the art of wood cutting while in London.

Franklin went on to publish the influential newspaper New England Courant, with twelve year old Benjamin working as an indentured apprentice in James’ printing shop. It is interesting to note that most indentures ran for seven years, while Benjamin’s term was for nine, with journeyman’s pay only in the final year.

Last year, The Guardian began publishing a new graphic novel by the cartoonist Chris Ware. Installment number 48 of The Last Saturday is available at http://gu.com/p/4xcd2/sbl and if you haven’t been following, all the past episodes are also available. Labor Day weekend might be a good time to binge read the entire year’s postings.

September 13, 2015, will either be the beginning of a new year’s story or the end of the book. I don’t believe that has been announced.

The story follows the lives (or life cycles) of six characters, all from the resort community of Sandy Port, Michigan. See details from the first post on the right.

Designed by J. McLenan

The American illustrator John McLenan (1825-1865) moved to New York City in 1851 and within a year sold drawings to illustrate Baynard Rush Hall’s Frank Freeman’s Barber Shop; Sarah Josepha Buell Hale’s, Northwood, or, Life North and South; The Mother’s Pictorial Primer; and An Old Fogies Advice to a Young’un or the Politicians Guide to Office, published by Thomas W. Strong (1817-1892). When Strong began a new humor magazine in 1852 titled Yankee Notions, he hired McLenan to draw most of the caricatures. The journal lasted over fifteen years with a circulation of 47,000 at its height. In 1853 Strong added Young America to his publication list, again employing McLenan as the artist.

Throughout 1852 and all these publications, the young artist experimented with his artistic style and his public persona. For Freeman’s Barber Shop he used a pseudonym, Rush B. Hall, and for each of the caricatures in Yankee Notions, he signed his name with a different signature. See five versions here.

When McLenan died at the young age of 39, Strong praised his friend and colleague in Yankee Notions:

“When an unpretending man of genius passes away, simple and earnest words best befit his memory. Since our last issue, John McLenan, one of the best draughtsmen America has ever produced, has been numbered with the dead. . . .

We call the skillful artist and estimable citizen who has thus suddenly been snatched away, our friend, for the intimacy that existed between us was almost brotherly. . . .Genius rarely remains long unrecognized in this city, and soon after John McLenan took up his abode among us, shrewd publishers and a tasteful public discovered that he was no ordinary draughtsman. Equally at home in caricature and in sketches from the life, with a quick perception of the ridiculous and a fine appreciation of the picturesque, he soon took his place among the illustrators of our current literature, second to none. The Harpers employed him on their Magazine and Weekly, and also in the embellishment of their more permanent works, and his services were in request among other leading publishing houses.

Thus placed on the high road to distinction, the young artist would soon have found it the road to fortune, had not feeble health interfered with the exercise of his professional abilities.

…We miss his frank and hearty daily greeting, his manly candid face, his straightforward simplicity of heart, his trustful confidence in our advice and friendship. True friends are few and far between. They are rarer even than great artists, and John McLenan, in the genuine sense of that much abused word, was our FRIEND.” –IN MEMORIAM, Yankee Notions, May 1, 1865

Yankee-Notions (New York: T. W. Strong, 1853- ) Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Hamilton SS 521q

Princeton University library holds over 40 copies of various editions of the children’s picture book by Johann Comenius, The Visible World, A Nomenclature and Pictures of all the chief things that are in the world, and of men’s employments.

This one from the Graphic Arts Collection includes 156 woodcuts repeated from the 1658 edition, designed by Paul Kreutzberger (active 1647, died ca. 1660) and printed by Michael Endter.

The author’s preface offers: “See here then a new help for schools . . .  Which, that you, good Masters, may not be loath to run over with your scholars, I will tell you, in short, what good you may expect from it.”

“It is a little Book, as you see, of no great bulk, yet a brief of the whole world, and a whole language: full of Pictures, Nomenclatures, and Descriptions of things.
I. The Pictures are the representation of all visible things, (to which also things invisible are reduced after their fashion) of the whole world. And that in that very order of things, in which they are described in the Janua Latinæ Linguæ; and with that fulness, that nothing very necessary or of great concernment is omitted.

II. The Nomenclatures are the Inscriptions, or Titles set every one over their own Pictures, expressing the whole thing by its own general term.

III. The Descriptions are the explications of the parts of the Picture, so expressed by their own proper terms, as that same figure which is added to every piece of the picture, and the term of it, always sheweth what things belongeth one to another.” –The Author’s Preface to the Reader.

Chapter 39 features a representation of Shakespeare’s The Seven Ages of Man: A man is first an Infant; then a child; then a Boy; then a Youth; Adolescent; a young Man; then a Man; an elderly Man; and, at last, a decrepit old Man.

Chapter 120 describes Married Persons, (by the blessing of God) have Issue and become Parents. The Father, 1. Begetteth, and the Mother, 2. Beareth Sons, 3. and Daughters, 4, (sometimes Twins). It is interesting that the father is depicted as a painter.