Category Archives: Books

books

Edward Colie Caswell



Looking for a good novel to read while the 2020 campus shuts down for a winter break, Edith Wharton’s Old New York (1924) was suggested. A collection of four novellas set in the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, the last, New Year’s Day, seemed timely. Although written in France, they describe Wharton’s family home at 14 West 23rd Street–the same building that now holds a Starbucks–acting as prequels to The Age of Innocence, for which she received a Pulitzer Prize in 1921. Each of the four volumes is decorated with a paper label on the cover and illustrated endpapers designed by E.C. Caswell (1879-1963).

Edward Colie Caswell may not have known he was following in  Wharton’s footsteps when, a few years later, he moved into the Chelsea Hotel also on 23rd Street, joining the musicians and writers who first gave the Hotel its reputation for housing bohemians. Suzan Mazur wrote one of the few biographical sketches of Caswell, a well-known book illustrator and columnist for The Villager newspaper. “Caswell started out at a studio in the Ovington Building on Fulton St. before moving to the Chelsea Hotel in the 1930s,” she wrote, adding that he “helped establish the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibition.”

What she didn’t mention were his illustrations of Princeton University for the fictional memoir by Latta Griswold (1876-1931) entitled Deering at Princeton: a Story of College Life (1913. Recap PS3513.R786 D44 1913. Gift of Landon T. Raymond, Princeton Class of 1917 collection). It is the story of a freshman named Deering, who endured hazing, bullying, and other difficulties during his first year at Princeton.

The book was read by every student that year and in response to complaints, the author wrote a letter to the Editor of the Princetonian:

Dear Sir:— My attention has been called to the fact that in a recent story “Deering at Princeton”, published a few weeks ago, among the fictitious names given to various Princeton clubs I called one The Arch Club, assigning to it a somewhat undesirable character. It should be evident to everyone, but in case any misunderstanding should arise I desire to say through your columns, that when I selected this name I did not know that the Princeton Arch Club had been formed, and with quite different purposes from those associated with the name in my story. I regret very much that this should have happened, and offer my apologies very sincerely to any who may have been annoyed by the unfortunate mistake. In any future edition of the book the mistake will of course be rectified. Very truly yours, Latta Griswold.”– Daily Princetonian, Volume 37, Number 110, 5 November 1913


Edith Wharton (1862-1937), Old New York (New York and London : D. Appleton and Company, 1924). “The shared main title, Old New York, had served for the working title of The Age of Innocence … All four volumes printed at Van Rees Press, New York (printing completed 30 August 1924)”–Cf. Garrison.

Learn more about Edith Wharton’s New York home:

Maple Leaf Rag

Scott Joplin (ca. 1868–1917) and Ellen Banks (1938-2017), Maple Leaf Rag (Atlanta: Nexus Press, 1988). One folded sheet; 35 cm in case 46 cm. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Photo by Kalman Zabarsky for Boston University

 

After seeing her work, no one would be surprised to learn that one of Ellen Banks’ earliest influences was Piet Mondrian. In his essay, “Ellen Banks: The Geometries of the Score,” Graham Lock notes that she “paints nothing but music—not as heard but taken directly from the score and transformed, via a system of personal symbolism, into colors and shapes: ‘Music is my still life, my landscape, my nude.’ Banks is unique … in taking music as the sole subject of her art. Her approach is highly unusual too: her canvases are based not on the sound or performance of music but on musical scores.”

Although primarily a painter, Banks editioned this artists’ book [above] transferring her understanding of Scott Joplin’s notation into color and pattern. It is her visualization of sound in shape and embodiment of tone in hue.

Last two verses of The Maple Leaf Rag
Composition by Scott Joplin 1899; Lyrics by Sydney Brown 1903

The men were struck wit’ jealousy, the razors ‘gan to flash
But de ladies gathered ’round me for I’d surely made a mash
The finest belle, she sent a boy to call a coach and four
We rode around a season ’till we both were lost to reason

Oh go ‘way man, I can hypnotize this nation
I can shake the earth’s foundation wit’ the Maple Leaf Rag
Oh go ‘way man, just hold you breath a minute
For there’s not a stunt that’s in it with the Maple Leaf Rag

https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/4695627/Scott+Joplin/Maple+Leaf+Rag

Prints wearing out? Paste in new ones.

Engraved allegorical title page by Adamo Scultori (1530–1585) with a medallion scene of the Virgin and Child, flanked by Saint Dominic and Saint Vincent. Note the close trimmed print.

When the information on this new acquisition is loaded into our online catalogue in a few weeks, the link to this physical book will probably disappear, superseded by one for the Hathi Trust digital copy. During this odd year, it is one or the other. This is too bad, given the unique material properties of our copy.

First published in 1573, compiled by the Dominican Andrea Gianetti da Salò (d. 1575) from the writings of Luis de Granada (1504–1588), the book offers a guide to the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. Scultori’s engravings caught the attention of the book’s many reader, leading to its reprinting over twenty times in the following thirty years. When Scultori’s plates became worn, they were sometimes re-engraved in later editions. This 1578 Varisco edition holds a number of prints beginning to show wear.

What is most interesting in this individual book are the rich, dark prints someone pasted on top of seven original engravings, a conservation procedure not yet found in any other copy. Our dealer notes “The lack of other similarly ‘improved’ copies seems to indicate a later intervention rather than something made at the time of printing, although the skill with which the new engravings have been pasted suggests a professional, maybe a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century binder or bookseller, rather than a former owner. See: Mortimer 218 (for the 1573 edition).”

Other owners might want to check their copies.

 

Luis de Granada. (Andrea GIANETTI, editor.) Rosario figurato della Sacratissima Vergine Maria Madre di Dio nostra avocata... (Venice, Giovanni Varisco, 1578). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

 

Here are some biographical details on Adamo Scultori (1530–1585) from Brown University:

Son of the Mantuan sculptor Giovanni Battista Mantovano (Mantuano) and brother of the engraver Diana Mantovana (Mantuana, Scultori), Adamo, like his sister, was taught to engrave as a child by his father. His earliest known work, done when still a youngster, was a series of figures from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel. His made many engravings after the Roman court artist in Mantua, Giulio Romano, and also after the antique. He also engraved frontispieces for book illustration, and in the case of the phlebotomy manual Discorsi di Pietro Paolo Magni Piacentino sopra il modo di sanguinar… he not only designed and engraved the frontispiece of Magni’s first, 1584 edition, but also engraved–and most likely designed-the other illustrations in the book. He was active as a print dealer and publisher in Rome between ca. 1577-80.

Juggling a diabolo in 1813

Le Diable couleur de rose ou Le jeu à la mode [=The Pink Devil or The Fashionable Game] (Paris: [Louis] Janet, Libraire, rue St. Jacques No 59, [ca. 1813-1819]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process


This luxury gift book/almanac for fashionable ladies features poetry, calendars, and six etchings depicting the game of ‘devil sticks’ also called the Chinese yo-yo also known as juggling a diabolo. Although the game originated in China, it was especially popular in France in the early 19th century, as seen here. The front and back endsheets incorporate gilt loops to hold a tiny pencil but there are no notes in this volume.

Bound and published by Janet, the BnF lists Pierre-Claude-Louis Janet, also known as Louis Janet (1788-1840) as a “Bookseller and bookbinder. – Son of the Parisian bookseller-bookbinder Pierre-Étienne Janet (1746-1830) and brother of the music publisher Pierre-Honoré Janet (1779? -1832) and of the engraver-publisher François-Pierre Janet (1784-1870). First established in 1810 as a satin maker and bookbinder. Patented bookseller in Paris on June 26, 1821, in succession from his father who gave him his patent (inspector’s report of April 12, 1821). Publishes almanacs, New Year’s Eve books and gift books known as “keepsakes”. Produces cardboard boxes, serial bindings and luxury bindings. Bankruptcy declared on July 6, 1838. Died in Paris in Jan. 1840. His widow succeeded him in 1841 and would practice until at least 1875.”

Janet’s “fixé sous verre” binding includes two hand painted scenes, front and back, mounted under transparent material framed with heavy gilt paper “gauffred cartonnage” [https://cool.culturalheritage.org/don/dt/dt1504.html]. On the cover a charming lady rises from a cloud balancing cupid on the stem of a rose. Above her is “Avis Aux Dames” or Ladies View or Ladies Point of View.

See also: https://cirque-cnac.bnf.fr/en/diabolo


 
 
Want to learn how to juggle the diabolo?

 

Universal Penman variations

“…hmmm. First edition, second issue…Second edition, first issue…”

George Bickham the Elder (1684-1758), The Universal Penman, or, The Art of Writing Made Useful to the Gentleman and Scholar, As Well As the Man of Business (London: Printed by and sold for the Author, 1741). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process


 

 

A classic text in the history of writing and printing, the engraved copybook The Universal Penman by George Bickham the Elder is a must for any serious rare book collection. According to most sources, Bickham began collecting samples of English penmanship in 1733 from 25 London writing masters. A master engraver by trade, he then transferred the ink calligraphy to engraved copper plates and issued them in 52 parts between 1733 and 1741. The popular collection was reprinted and reissued continually, most recently by Gale in 2018.

Is there a definitive first edition?

Princeton University Library now holds three early collections of Bickham’s parts. Our most recent is complete with an engraved frontispiece by Hubert-François Bourguignon, commonly known as Gravelot (1699–1773), two engraved title pages, and 212 engraved plates of calligraphy. The table of contents matches one other volume but not the front matter, while the pages match a second volume but not the index. This post is not a solution but only the question, whether one set of parts is more correct than another.

Kim Sloan writes for the Dictionary of National Biography:

Bickham, George (1683/4–1758), engraver and writing-master, was born in London; he was said to have been seventy-four when he died in 1758. …Bickham was apprenticed to the writing-master and engraver John Sturt and quickly gained a good reputation among writing-masters as an engraver of calligraphy. Joseph Champion claimed Bickham surpassed his master by being the first to cut through wax on copper without tracing the design first, thus transmitting the master’s original more faithfully. …In his first surviving trade card, of 1705, Bickham advertised himself as a copperplate-engraver and teacher of drawing at Hoop Alley in Old Street, London.

…In 1723, while living in the parish of St Leonard, Shoreditch, in London, he was declared insolvent and imprisoned. Three years later he designed and engraved several plates in Thomas Weston’s Writing, drawing and ancient arithmetick for the use of the young gentlemen at the academy at Greenwich, a school at which his son George later taught drawing. Several combination drawing and writing copybooks were published by George Bickham in the 1720s and early 1730s, and it is impossible to say for certain whether father, son, or both were responsible for them, since by this date both taught drawing and both were skilled engravers.

Often—as in the case of The Drawing and Writing Tutor—the first edition is undated and later editions contain additional plates clearly engraved by the son. However, the invention of plates which cleverly combined simple drawing examples with calligraphic text can undoubtedly be attributed to the father.

In the 1730s the elder Bickham seems to have settled fairly permanently in the Clerkenwell district of London, where his Penmanship in its Utmost Beauty and Extent (1731) was sold from his premises in Warner Street. Two years later he embarked on his most important contribution to British engraving, The Universal Penman, a joint work with his son and John Bickham (fl. 1730–1750), his son or brother, which was sold from his house in James Street, Bunhill Fields. Issued in fifty-two parts from 1733 to 1741, it was the culmination of his work as an engraver of calligraphy: it contained examples by twenty-five contemporary writing-masters on 212 folio copperplates, many embellished with decorations engraved by his son, as the elder Bickham firmly believed that drawing was a necessary qualification for the man of business.

Or woman of business
 

 

“By the Arts of Reading and Writing we can sit at Home and acquaint our selves with what is done in all the distant Parts of the World, & find what our Fathers did long ago in the first Ages of Mankind.”

 

 

Alisa Banks’ Fire

 

Alisa Banks, Fire (Dallas, Texas: A Bee Press, 2020). No. 1 of 4. Wool, silk, cotton, thread, paper, wax, ink, and dye with handwritten text. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Visual artist Alisa Banks writes, “… my work addresses the quest for understanding identity and all it encompasses. … Each individual, quiet story coalesces to form a cultural memory that is shaped by experience, ritual, belief, places and relationships, and is called upon to explore connections. …It continues when stories that reference culture, the body, memory, and place are shared. It continues when an object relays an experience, either by paint, thread or paper. It continues.”

The Graphic Arts Collection acquired our first book in Banks’ elemental series. “Part autobiography, part auto-biology, elemental focuses on aspects of identity in relation to the elements Earth, Fire, Air and Water. In each, the viewer is invited to dig through layers that are sometimes easily accessible and sometimes not.”

Fire is the last of this series.

 


 

Based in Dallas, Texas, Banks produced each book in an edition of only four copies. Fire is fashioned of wool, silk, cotton, thread, paper, wax, ink, and dye with handwritten text. Pamphlet cover with pockets containing an envelope with a scroll, inner envelope, and paper rock. The artist notes, ”Fire – orange to red, to blue, to white – is both intimate and universal. Fire catches and holds on to matter, consuming it until it is transformed into something else, an essence. Fire is mesmerizing, in turn lulling and igniting fervor. In religion and mythology, it is the element that represents awareness and consciousness.”

 

 

“Fire features stories of the transformative power of action, understanding, and experience. A fabric envelope features text about fire and transformation. The envelope is opened to reveal a scroll that features an account of desegregating an elementary school. The story unfolds to reveal another fabric envelope featuring an account of the transformative power of motherhood. Inside the envelope is a paper rock that speaks to the unboundedness of love.”

 

https://www.alisabanks.com/news

https://www.alisabanks.com/body

 

 

 


Ragamuffin Day cancelled


“The entire Ragamuffin Parade Committee is heartbroken,” wrote the 2020 committee, “that we will be disappointing so many children and, of course, their parents by not having this big, fun event along Third Avenue this year.”

 

Don Freeman (1908-1978), Dress Up Day, ca. 1936. Lithograph.

First held on Thanksgiving in 1870, American children would dress as beggars or street urchins and go door to door asking for candy and pennies. Eventually, uncontrolled begging was replaced with an annual costume parade. Last held in Manhattan around 1956, the parade was revived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and continues along Ragamuffin Way each year (except during the present Covid 19 epidemic).

James Greenwood (1832-1929), The True History of a Little Ragamuffin (London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1867). Not yet at Princeton University Library. See David Croal Thomson , Life and labours of Hablôt Knight Browne, “Phiz” (London, Chapman and Hall, 1884). Graphic Arts Collection oversize 2008-0463Q. 20-volume set, extra-illustrated with tipped-in works by Browne, including: etchings (some hand-colored); engravings; aquatints; lithographs; wood engravings; pencil drawings (some with added gouache); pen and ink washes; watercolors; one albumen photograph of a drawing; illustrated letters; and book covers.

 

 

https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.princeton.edu/docview/1830982791/B3CDF9747F384D93PQ/1?accountid=13314

Le Gueux = The Beggar

Eugène Héros (1860-1925) editor, Le gueux. January 1891-October 1892. Monthly. [Paris, 35, rue d’Hauteville: Gueux, 1891-92]. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

 

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired 16 individual fascicles, a complete run, of the short lived satirical monthly Le gueux (The Beggar), edited and printed by the lyricist Eugène Héros. A trained lawyer and member of Le chat noir, Héros later became managing director of the Théâtre du Palais Royal (1907-1910) and manager of La Scala (1914-1918). In between writing popular songs, he published the pamphlet Suppression de l’assistance publique (Paris: P. Andreol, 1890), followed by La partie de baccara: comédie-vaudeville en un acte, the first of many plays.

 

 

Each issue of Gueux has a singular color lithograph on its cover designed by H. Gray (Henri Boulanger 1858–1924), Jules-Alexandre Grün (1868–1938), Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859-1923), Victor Sorel, Lilé, Jasmin, and Tzar. Number 9 has the a center fold by Steinlen, also seen on sheet music, titled Mon petit salé (My salted pork).

 

Also included in one issue is a subscription card and receipt card designed by H. Gray (Henri Boulanger 1858–1924).

 

Who needs paper?

Fred Tomaselli, Untitled, 2020. Paper collage, resin, paint. James Cohan Gallery

Will your library continue to purchase paper newspapers?

At a time when the home delivery of the paper New York Times is rising to nearly $200/year (depending on location and a variety of discounts) and a petition is being widely circulated to stop the freezing the largest historical paper collections in the world (webpage), we seem to be at a precipice in our need or appreciation for paper, in its many formats.

At the same time, those living in the New York area can pick up around two dozen free paper newspapers focused on neighborhoods and/or social groups (is anyone collecting them?) And the most interesting art exhibition of the weekend involves the intersection of newspaper text (specifically from the New York Times) and painting. Three of the eight works by Fred Tomaselli (born 1956) shown at James Cohan’s Gallery are pictured here digitally, better seen in the original.

These are disparate topics, that do seem to relate.

 


Fred Tomaselli, Untitled, 2020. Paper collage, resin, paint. James Cohan Gallery

Fred Tomaselli Opening October 23 from James Cohan Gallery on Vimeo.

Fred Tomaselli, Untitled, 2020. Paper collage, resin, paint. James Cohan Gallery

“In early 2020, the management of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Den Haag) made the decision that its famous paper historical collection will no longer be a “core domain” and thus be terminated in terms of curatorship. Starting in January 2021 the second largest paper collection in the world will be without an active curatorship and without further collection development, i.e. no more acquisitions of relevant objects and specialist literature. While the collection will be stored and available, ongoing and future research will be frozen.”

Perhaps this is one of many collections that no longer have the benefit of curatorial control, perhaps that is another issue. It does seem to be a moment when we are re-evaluating the importance of paper within special collections and in our lives.

Detail, Untitled, 2020.

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