Category Archives: Medium

mediums

Expedition to the Dead Sea, Petra, and the Left Bank of the Jordan

Honore Theodore Paul Joseph D’Albert Duc de Luynes (1802-1867), Voyage d’exploration à la Mer Morte, à Petra, et sur la Rive Gauche du Jourdain [= Expedition to the Dead Sea, Petra, and the Left Bank of the Jordan] (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, n.d. [ca.1868-74]). Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage RECAP-33945831

 

Alphonse Poitevin (1819-1882) won both of the 1856 photographic competitions sponsored by the Société françoise de photographie to discover a way (in short) to stop photographic prints from fading. Poitevin’s prize money was donated by Honoré d’Albert duc de Luynes (1802-1867) but when the Duke needed someone to print the photographs from his 1864 expedition to the Dead Sea basin and interior of Jordan, he passed on Poitevin and chose Charles Nègre (1820-1880).

An amateur archaeologist, Luynes organized the expedition to examine the region’s ancient ruins and perform geological and scientific observations. He took with him scientists, historians, and Lieutenant Louis Vignes (1831-1896), who served as the expedition’s photographer after receiving extensive training from Nègre. Vignes made both paper and glass plate negatives, which were carefully transported back to Paris and printed in ink as photogravures for the atlas documenting the expedition. Voyage d’Exploration a la Mer Morte à Petra et sur la Rive Gauche du Jourdain.

“Nègre was to complete the work by January 1868 for the sum of 23,250 francs. The photographs, made by the Duke’s second in command, Lieutenant L. Vignes, are for the most part rather contrasty and lacking in detail in the shadow areas. It is remarkable how Nègre was able to open up the shadows and fill them with light, detail and space. But undoubtedly the main reason the Duke chose Nègre to perform this task lay in the quality of the prints Nègre was capable of producing. Quite possibly de Luynes had expected the artist to win the prize of the Société Francaise competition, for he had achieved a control over his process which resulted in prints of rich tones, fine detail, transparency and effect.” – Borcoman, Charles Negre, pp. 45-46 and plates 199 and 200.

Together with three volumes of text, the atlas volume presents 64 of the Nègre photogravures; plus 18 lithographs, 2 maps, and 1 chart. Rachel Stuhlman, George Eastman House, writes that Nègre produced “printing plates capable of reproducing the entire gradation of tones, from the white of the paper to the strongest black…” and that he “…transformed the dull photographs into evocative images of great poetry.”

 

Contents: t. 1. Relation du voyage.–t. 2. De Petra à Palmyre, par m. Vignes.–Voyage de Jérusalem à Karak et à Chaubak, par mm. Mauss et Sauvaire.–t. 3 Géologie, par m. L. Lartet.–Atlas.

Decoration at Pynson Printers

Several years ago, while renovating Firestone Library, a canvas was found abandoned inside a temporary wall. The enormous painting of a Chinese bonsai tree could not be identified and was placed in our painting storage vault. Until now.

Recently we discovered this was the painting that hung in the offices of Elmer Adler’s Pynson Printers, positioned between his Pegasus logo and that of his colleague type designer Lucian Bernhard. Bernhard sublet space from Adler, who rented an entire floor in the New York Times Annex on 43rd Street beginning in 1923.

“From the twentieth of March, 1922, the Pynson Printers are at your service for the planning and production of all printing in which quality is the first consideration. We have founded our organization on the belief that the printer should be primarily an artist—a designer and a creator rather than a mere manufacturer. Toward this end, we have assembled a group whose several abilities and varied experience cover every phase of the art and business of printing. . . . We will do no work in which quality must be sacrificed to exigencies of time or cost” (Reprinted in Lawrance Thompson “Forty Mercer Street,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 2, no. 1 (November 1940): 32).

Together with designers Walter Dorwin Teague (1883-1960), Hubert L. Canfield, and David Silvé, Adler opened a small, fine press printing shop at 122 East 32nd Street named Pynson Printers, after the sixteenth-century printer Richard Pynson. Within six months, the others had moved on, leaving Adler the sole owner of the firm (see: John F. Peckham “Forty Mercer,” Princeton Alumni Weekly 41, no. 12 (December 16, 1940): 8). As stated in the opening announcement, concerns with quality rather than commercial practicality led production.

The Pynson Printers office moved to the New York Times Annex at 239 West 43rd Street, elegantly decorated by Lucien Bernhard. In a 1925 letter to Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), with whom he was already in business, Adler wrote, “Since you were last here Mr. [Lucien] Bernhard has arranged to build a studio adjoining our shop which will help create more of the kind of thing we want to have….” (Adler to Kent, February 13, 1925. CO262, box 32, Adler papers). These three men, Adler, Kent, and the recently emigrated German designer Lucien Bernhard (1883-1972), began working together on a variety of printing and design projects. Their first fine press book, Candide, began in 1925 when 27-year-old Bennett Cerf and his 23-year-old friend Donald Klopfer decided they wanted a business of their own, which became Random House.

Adler closed the Pynson Printers in 1940, when he was invited to move to Princeton, New Jersey, and established a department of Graphic Arts for Princeton University. He brought with him a personal collection—fourteen tons of books, prints, paintings, records, and equipment—which became the basis for the graphic arts collection we enjoy today. Although he donated some records of the Pynson Press to the NYPL in 1936, he retained a large amount of material with which to teach, including papers, proofs, and plates, which he sold to the Princeton University Library in 1948 for one dollar.
See also: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2014/03/21/exhibition-chronology-of-the-little-gallery-of-the-pynson-printers/

 

Graphic Arts reference collection holds four enormous volumes documenting jobs produced by Elmer Adler’s Pynson Printers from 1922 to 1940 when the press was closed. An index to these volumes has been created by Sherry X. Zhang and Jena Mayer with help from Brianna R. Cregle and AnnaLee Pauls, which is key word searchable allowing researchers, for the first time, to study Adler’s commercial work. PDFs are attached here and to the voyager record for these scrapbooks. https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/7343684 Pynson Printers jobs. Graphic Arts: Reference Collection Oversize Z232.P99 A9f
Volume one:Copy of PynsonPrinters_Volume 1
Volume two:Copy of PynsonPrinters_vol.2
Volume three:Copy of PynsonPrinters_vol.3
Volume four:Copy of PynsonPrinters_vol.4 (1) (1)
Extras: Copy of PynsonPrinters_Presses

What the Rebels Claimed in 1861

The Progress of the Union Armies. What the Rebels Claimed in 1861. What They Hold in 1863 ([New York, August 1863]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

This rare American Civil War broadside is thought to have been published in the late Summer of 1863. To put it in perspective, here’s a brief timeline taken from: https://www.nps.gov/gett/learn/historyculture/civil-war-timeline.htm

January 1, 1863- The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect. Applauded by many abolitionists including Frederick Douglass, there are others who feel it does not go far enough to totally abolish slavery.

May 18, 1863– Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi begins. Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant attack Confederate defenses outside the city on May 19-22. If Vicksburg falls, the Mississippi River will be completely controlled by the Union.

July 1-3– The Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The bloodiest battle of the Civil War dashes Robert E. Lee’s hopes for a successful invasion of the North.

July 4– Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrenders to the Union Army under Grant. The capture of Vicksburg gives the Union complete control of the Mississippi River, a vital supply line for the Confederate states in the west. At Gettysburg, Lee begins his retreat to Virginia.

July 13, 1863– Draft Riots begin in New York City and elsewhere as disgruntled workers and laborers, seething over the draft system that seemingly favors the rich, attack the draft office and African American churches. The riots continue through July 16.

Publication of this broadside/election propaganda.

September –November 1863– The Siege of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Confederate forces under Braxton Bragg surround the occupied city. General Ulysses S. Grant is assigned to command the troops there and begins immediate plans to relieve the besieged Union army.

November 19, 1863– Dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address.

December 8, 1863– Lincoln Issues his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which would pardon those who participated in the “existing rebellion” if they take an oath to the Union.

The broadside’s map of the United States in 1863 shows the “Free States and Delaware” in white, with the partially shaded area indicating “the States and Territories claimed by Jeff. Davis, and over which for a considerable period his Rebel arms were triumphant, but which have been wrested from him by our heroic soldiers.” The darkest area indicates Confederate control. A table contrasts “The Claim of the Confederacy, 1861” with “The Situation—August, 1863.”

Recognized today as a campaign poster for the 1863 New York State elections, the broadside promotes a slanted perspective on the success of the Union army. Susan Schulten observes:

“There were no shortage of war maps for the northern public, but these were unique, recording conflict as a story of territorial control rather than discrete battles. Indeed they were a kind of first draft of history, an attempt to create a story where the outcome was not as yet unknown. Yet in generalization, they imply a steady state of progress and control that was at odds with the chaos on the ground. Again, one thing that strikes me about the use of such imagery is the suggestion of ongoing territorial progress. Such a depiction allows little room to acknowledge the notorious reversals of territorial control in the east. But to boost the flagging spirits in the Union, the image was compelling indeed, supported by extensive statistics of square miles and population under Union control.”– Mapping the Nation  http://www.mappingthenation.com/blog/mapping-the-progress-of-the-union-army/

Compare this map to another clearly labeled as a campaign promotion:

United States: map showing loyal states in green, what the rebels still hold in red, and what the Union soldiers have wrested from them in yellow. New York; Boston; Chicago, H. H. Lloyd & Co.;B. B. Russell; R. R. Landon, [1864].

The last line of the broadside reads: “Voters of New York, the good work must go on! While our brave soldiers, of your own blood and kindred, are fighting in the field for the Union, let your votes be recorded in the same glorious cause at home!”

Two tables near the bottom emphasize the point of the map, outlining the population of the Confederate and border states and territories in 1861, contrasted by how much land had been recovered by the Union, as compared to what remained in the hands of the rebels. The tables show that of the 1,222,385 square miles possessed by the Confederacy in 1861, 909,275 of that had been reclaimed by the Union.

Dictionnaire botanique or livre d’artiste, take your pick

J.J. Audubon spent his life tracking and painting all the birds in America. Edward Curtis spent the majority of his adult life photographing the Indians of North America. In this extraordinary set of four volumes, a Belgian natural history enthusiast or scientist or doctor spent “most of my life” writing and illustrating a study of transformism, or what we would call evolutionary theory. And if that weren’t enough, the elephant folio Étude sur la transformisme comes with a three volume Dictionnaire botanique, every page hand written and hand colored.

This massive and extraordinary gathering of knowledge addresses everything from air currents to the working of the inner ear; from geography to biology; from Charles Darwin to Victor Hugo. The books are illustrated throughout with thousands of the watercolor paintings. It has been dated from the early 20th century, although the truth is there is no date yet found in any of the volumes. We can only hope it will catch the interest of a future researcher, patient enough to read the small print and find out the truth about the books and their anonymous author.

Étude sur la transformisme holds approximately 150 leaves, many folded, all heavily illustrated in full color. The three volume Dictionnaire botanique offers more than 1200 with several thousand color diagrams, charts, and paintings.

Although the sheer weight of the volume is pulling the paging from the binding, its impressive cover still holds the book together, offering four quotes to the reader:

La vie sans science est presque l’image de la morte, C. Volpi = Life without science is almost the image of the dead

Chercher. Comprendre. Vouloir. Pouvoir. Oser. Sentir. Méditer = Search. Understand. Want to. Power. Dare. Feel. Meditate

Naître, mourir et renaître sans cesse, telle est la loi, telle est lavie. V. Hugo = To be born, to die and to be reborn without ceasing, such is the law, such is the life.

Travailler pour être estimé. Etre estimé pour être aimé. Etre aimé pour être heureux = Work to be esteemed. To be esteemed in order to be loved. To be loved to be happy

 

 


There is the name Dumoulin, but we known absolutely nothing about him or her or them. It is unlikely this refers to the French artist Louis-Jules Dumoulin (1860–1924), who founded the Société Coloniale des Artistes Français in 1908. “Dumoulin is an Orientalist painter linked to the official artistic circles and a great traveler from the various missions that will be entrusted to him. He made his first major trip outside Europe in 1888 on the occasion of an official mission to Japan ordered by the Ministry of Education.”

 

 

 

Here is the description that comes with the set:

The large folio volume is really a huge collection of charts devoted to human anatomy, animal and plant biology, the fossil record and evolution (or transformisme). Botany makes up the largest proportion, but there are sections on insects, reptiles, birds, flying lizards, marsupials and mammals. Dumoulin also had an interest in Africa and there are sections on the Sahara and on the Belgian Congo. The focus is worldwide and is drawn from reference works rather than original research, but the arrangements are highly idiosyncratic. Several evolutionary charts are attempted, mentioning Linnaeus, Darwin, Lamarck and Jussieu.

The Dictionnaire botanique is a large 3 volume compilation mainly devoted to botanical classification, from the smallest mosses and seaweeds, to exotic flowering plants and forest trees. Like the larger folio volume, these volumes are illustrated throughout, with accompanying text in coloured inks and often containing emblematic figures of human figures appropriate to the origins of the plant: including Africans and Americans. They have apparently been bound from a large number of separate files (whose stiff paper cover with labels are preserved) each devoted to a different botanical family. The third volume contains additional materials at the end, including a study on Pasteur and germs, another on insects and another on bird classification. Like the preceding parts, these are also copiously illustrated in colour.

There is a note inserted that the author hoped his/her/their work would find its way into a university. Happily, the unusual set found a home in the Graphic Arts Collection at Princeton University. Please share the few facts presented here with colleagues and let us know if you have a theory about this massive undertaking.

Sister Isabella Piccini’s first known work

Giovanni Palazzi, De Dominio Maris, Libri Duo. Serenissimae Venetae Reipublicae dicati. Venice: Combi & La Nou, 1663. Graphic Arts collection GAX 2020- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired what we believe is the first book engraved by Suor (Sister) Isabella Piccini (1644-1734). A Venetian law book with “laws of the Adriatic Sea,” the frontispiece is signed: Elisabeta Piccini [i.e. Isabella Piccini] f. B.R. in. For Graphic Arts, it is Piccini who is of particular importance. The daughter of the printer Giacomo Piccini (died 1669), she has become known for her many 17th- and 18th-century engraved portraits commissioned by Venetian publishers. In 1666 she entered the Convent of Santa Croce in Venice and took the name Suor (Sister) Isabella, while continuing to work as an artist. This work predates her convent years.

Here is the information that comes with the volume, ripe for a senior paper:

Scarce sole edition of this wide-ranging work by an Italian legal theorist, partly answering the treatises of John Selden (1635) and Hugo Grotius (1609) on the freedom of the seas. Palazzi (1640-1703) is of course most concerned with the sea-going activities of Venetian merchants and navies around the Mediterranean, but broadens his scope to give an account of historical claims to the high seas by the ancients Hebrews, Egyptians, etc. Quoting Selden and Grotius frequently, Palazzi also examines claims made by modern powers – including a legal discussion of the discovery of America on pp. 111-112 – and the recent problematic maritime activities of the Ottoman Turks.

Quite aside from its scholarly content, the present work is noteworthy as the first verifiable piece of engraving by Elisabetta / Isabella Piccini (1644-1734), the nun-engraver of Convent of Santa Croce in Venice. Thanks to the unequivocal date of the book and the full signature of the engraver (rather than ‘I. Piccini’, which referred to her father Iacopo), the 1663 De Dominio Maris thus bears a significant place in the canon of her works. It must have been executed when Piccini was just 19 years old – before she joined the convent and took the nom de religion of Isabella – and is figuratively quite striking for the work of a teenager. A nude female figure with bare breasts is seated atop a chariot being pulled by an unfortunate-looking male savage (perhaps signifying ‘Land’?); at her feet, a lion wields a sword, with a trident in its other hand poised to dig into the flesh of the man-of-burden.

See also: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/09/07/isabella-piccini/ and https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2017/11/09/isabella-piccini-and-angela-baroni-18th-century-engravers/

Graphic Arts also holds the second Italian edition of an account of the conquest of Mexico by Spanish forces under Hernando Cortéz (1485-1547). The work describes the three years between the appointment of Cortéz as commander of the invasion expedition and the fall of Mexico City, which contains three marvelous full-page engraved portraits of the author, Cortéz, and Montezuma by Suor Isabella Piccini and five other plates engraved by Alessandro della Via, illustrating significant scenes of the conquest.

For more, see the entry in the Enciclopedia delle donne: http://www.enciclopediadelledonne.it/biografie/elisabetta-piccini/

This new acquisition is in addition to other volumes engraved by Piccini:

Carlo Labia, Dell’imprese pastorali (Venetia: Appresso Nicolò Pezzana, 1685). Rare Books (Ex) Oversize N7710 .L12q

Carlo Labia, Simboli predicabili estratti da sacri evangeli che corrono nella quadragesima, delineaticon morali, & eruditi discorsi da Carlo Labia….(Ferrara: Appresso B. Barbieri, 1692).Rare Books (Ex) Oversize N7710 .L122q

Bernardo Lodoli, Serenissimo Venetiarum Dominio ill[ustrissi]mo, et ecc[ellentissi]mo Arsenatus regimini Bernardi Lodoli … fidele votum …([Venetiis], [1703]).

Antonio deSolís (1610-1686), Istoria della conquista del Messico della popolazione, e de’ progressi nell’ America Settentrionale conosciuta sotto nome di Nuova Spagna / scritta in castigliano da D. Antonio de Solis … e tradotta in toscano da un’accademico della Crusca (Venezia : Per A. Poletti, 1715).

Missale Romanum : ex decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, S. Pii V. Pontificis Maximi jussu editum, Clementis VIII. & Urbani VIII. Auctoritate recognitum ; in quo missæe novissimæ Sanctorum accuratè sunt dispositæ (Venetiis : ex Typographia Balleoniana, 1727 (MDCCXXVII)). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2012-0009F

 

The Books and Prints of Anaïs Nin and her Gemor Press

Please join us at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, September 25, 2020, for the fifth in our series of live webinars highlighting material in the Graphic Arts Collection at Princeton University Library. Recently we acquired most of the rare letterpress editions printed by Anaïs Nin (French-Cuban, 1903-1977). Best known for her diaries, Nin also wrote fiction with themes of history, feminism and multiculturalism. Together with Gonzalo More, one of her many lovers, Nin ran a private printing press in Greenwich Village where she taught herself to set type, stood for hours pumping a treadle press, and distributed her books with the help of Frances Steloff at Gotham Book Mart. Many were illustrated with original etchings by her husband, Hugh Parker Guiler, a banker who used the pseudonym Ian Hugo so his colleagues would not discover he was also an artist.

They called the imprint Gemor Press (pronounced G. More) after Gonzalo, although it was Anaïs who raised the money and did most of the physical work. Located first on MacDougal Street and later at 17 East 13th Street where the small building she rented still stands. After a close look at the books and prints, we are fortunate to be joined by Andrew Berman, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, who will update us on their efforts to landmark this building, as well as other Village homes and studios of writers we all know and love.

This session is free and open to all. To register: click here

Here is the complete series of past and future webinars highlighting material in Princeton’s Graphic Arts Collection

New Theories on the Oldest American Woodcut. May 22, 2020
To celebrate the 350th anniversary of the oldest surviving print from Colonial America, we assembled all five extent copies of the portrait of the Reverend Richard Mather (1596-1669) by or after John Foster. Julie Mellby was joined by Caroline Duroselle-Melish, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Early Modern Books and Prints and Associate Librarian for Collection Care and Development, Folger Shakespeare Library.

Thomas Eakins and the Making of Walt Whitman’s Death Mask. June 26, 2020
This program was chosen specifically for June, LGBTQ pride month and this year, the 50th anniversary of the first Gay Pride march. Both Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins, in their own way, broke down barriers around sex, sexuality, and the celebration of the human body. Presented by Julie Mellby, Graphic Arts Curator, and Karl Kusserow, John Wilmerding Curator of American Art, Princeton University Art Museum.

Afrofuturism: The Graphics of Octavia E. Butler. July 31, 2020
This month focused on the speculative fiction, also called Afrofuturism, of author Octavia E. Butler. Julie Mellby was joined by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award winning team who produced the graphic novel adaptations of Parable of the Sower and Kindred.

Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. August 26, 2020
The fourth in our series celebrated the centenary of the 19th amendment on Women’s Equality Day. Julie Mellby was joined by Lauren Santangelo, author of Suffrage and the City and lecturer in Princeton University’s Writing Program, along with Sara Howard, Librarian for Gender & Sexuality Studies and Student Engagement within Scholarly Collections and Research Services at Princeton University Library.

The Books and Prints of Anaïs Nin and her Gemor Press. September 25, 2020
For the fifth in our series we highlight the recently acquired letterpress editions printed by Anaïs Nin (French-Cuban, 1903-1977). Together with Gonzalo More, Nin ran a private printing press in Greenwich Village where she printed and published fine press books, distributed with the help of Frances Steloff at Gotham Book Mart. Julie Mellby will be joined by Andrew Berman, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, who will talk about efforts to landmark the Gemor Press building and other Village homes and studios of writers we all know and love.

 

Edward George Mevs, Photographer in Haiti



Born in New York City on October 18,1866, Edward George Mevs was registered as an American citizen while in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1877. The purpose of his visit is listed as business although he was 11 years old. There is no information about his father’s occupation.

Back in New York in 1893, now 26-year-old Mevs applied for a passport to travel to Port-au-Prince as a photographer, promising to return in two years. A second application was completed in 1895 when the two years ran out.

Mevs continued to travel between the two cities throughout his life, the last recorded trip at the age of 63 in 1930. We know he was 5’ 11’’ with brown hair and a fair complexion, although his nationality is listed as American, Haitian, and West Indian on various documents.

Mevs is the one photographer’s name that has been found in a small volume labeled Illustrated Souvenir Album of Haiti, Comprising the Leading Business Houses and Views of The Republic (Toronto: S. McCoy, 1895). Each recto has a cyanotype, most illustrating a Haitian business with text identifying the company on the opposite page. Several prints are further described in a written caption.

 

 

This is a curious album printed by A. S. Barham in Kingston, Jamaica, and published by S. McCoy from Toronto. Included are drugstores, hotels, banks, import/export merchants, suppliers of French goods, drugstores, coffee exporters, hardware stores, lumber mills, opticians, printers, a cooper, and an ice factory with diverse locations such as Port-au-Prince, Gonaïves, Cap Haitien and Jacmel.

It is not unusual for a photographer to use cyanotypes in this period, which is a relatively inexpensive process. Also called Blueprints, the image is made by painting iron salts on paper or cloth and then exposing the material to sunlight through a photographic negative. Long term, the image is susceptible to fading when given too much light exposure, but it is also surprisingly resilient, as the image may return when left in the dark.

 

 

This Hunger….

Anaïs Nin (born Neuilly, France, 1903-1977), This Hunger (New York: Gemor Press, 1945). No. 28 of 50 with 5 color woodcuts by Ian Hugo (Hugh Parker Guiler, born Puerto Rico, 1898-1985). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process.

When Nin’s 1944 book, Under a Glass Bell sold out in three weeks, she and her lover Gonzalo More moved their printing press to a new home on East 13th Street, calling it Gemor Press after More’s initials. She wrote in her diary,

“As Gonzalo wanted the press to seem more businesslike, more impersonal, less like a private press run by writers, we had to find an appropriate place. The Villager had just moved out of 17 East Thirteenth Street. It was a small, two-story house. The ground level with a cement floor was suitable for the printing press. A narrow, curved iron staircase led to the second floor, which would be perfect for the engraving press. The house rented for sixty-five dollars a month, almost twice as much as the old studio on Macdougal Street.”

 

Their first book at the new location was This Hunger…., later expanded and incorporated into Ladders to Fire, She completed it in September 1945, noting in her diary that she “printed the one hundred and eighty-fourth page, the last of the de luxe edition of This Hunger” and went home exhausted. Although More wanted the business, Nin did the majority of the work, printing at least eight hours a day. The move was expensive and she owed money to everyone, saved in part by Henry Miller, another lover, who gave her $1,000, ”the first large amount he ever earned, which helped me pay off debts; with the rest he bought a cottage in Big Sur.”

 


According to volume 4 of The Diary of Anaïs Nin 1944-1947, in the mid-1940s Nin also had a relationship with Edmund Wilson (1895-1972). In reviewing This Hunger in The New Yorker November 10, 1945, he wrote:

“There is not much expert craftsmanship in This Hunger by Anaïs Nin but it is a more important book than either Marquand or Isherwood because it explores a new realm of material. Even Isherwood can do little more than add to an already long series another lucid and well-turned irony of the bourgeois world on the eve of war. But Anaïs Nin is one of those women writers who have lately been trying to put into words a new feminine point of view, who deal with the conflicts created for women by living half in a man-controlled world against which they cannot help rebelling, half in a world which they have made from themselves but which they cannot find completely satisfactory.”

He ends “I feel sure that Anaïs Nin has still hardly begun to get out of her intelligence and talent the writing that they ought to produce. This new book, like the one before it, has been published by Anaïs Nin herself. Anaïs Nin is at present a special cult, when she ought to have a general public.”

He sent her flowers and a set of Jane Austen. “He was hoping,” Nin wrote, “I would learn how to write a novel from reading her!”

 

Maya Angelou and John T. Biggers

https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-angelou/

Maya Angelou (1928-2014), Our Grandmothers. Lithographs by John T. Biggers (New York: Limited Editions Club, 1994). Lithographs and letterpress. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process


She stands
before the abortion clinic,
confounded by the lack of choices.
In the Welfare line,
reduced to the pity of handouts.
Ordained in the pulpit, shielded
by the mysteries.
In the operating room,
husbanding life.
In the choir loft,
holding God in her throat.
On lonely street corners,
hawking her body.
In the classroom, loving the
children to understanding.

Centered on the world’s stage,
she sings to her loves and beloveds,
to her foes and detractors:
However I am perceived and deceived,
however my ignorance and conceits,
lay aside your fears that I will be undone,

for I shall not be moved.
–Maya Angelou, Last stanzas from “Our Grandmothers” first published in I Shall Not Be Moved (1990).

When Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson) agreed to allow her poem “Our Grandmothers”  be used in a Limited Editions Club publication, she asked that it “be illustrated by her favorite artist, John T. Biggers, an internationally acclaimed muralist and printmaker. …And now, for the Maya Angelou poem, Biggers has created five monumental lithographs that synthesize his concepts for the soul of Black Africa and its American reincarnation, of ancient myth and contemporary reality.” [-prospectus]. In planning his contribution to the book, Biggers used several elements from his 1992 triptych entitled “Family Arc,” seen above.

Originally published in her fifth poetry book, I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), the poem’s 1994 printing had a limited run of 400 numbered copies signed by both the author and the artist. It was one of the largest-format books (17 3/4 x 22 inches) ever issued by the Club.

“Angelou had written four autobiographies and published four other volumes of poetry up to that point. Angelou considered herself a poet and a playwright and her poetry has also been successful, but she is best known for her seven autobiographies, especially her first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She began, early in her writing career, of alternating the publication of an autobiography and a volume of poetry. …[She grew up] with their grandmother in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps, the young girl experienced the racial discrimination that was the legally enforced way of life in the American South, but she also absorbed the deep religious faith and old-fashioned courtesy of traditional African American life. She credits her grandmother and her extended family with instilling in her the values that informed her later life and career. She enjoyed a close relationship with her brother. Unable to pronounce her name because of a stutter, Bailey called her “My” for “My sister.” A few years later, when he read a book about the Maya Indians, he began to call her “Maya,” and the name stuck.
—https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-angelou/

An unsigned obituary for John T. Biggers, published on January 29, 2001 in the Washington Post, mentioned their collaboration, describing him as ”a pioneering black muralist who became known for the epic sweep of his work in profiling the African American experience.” The piece continues:

“Dr. Biggers, who lived in Houston, founded the art department of what is now Texas Southern University in Houston in 1949. He directed the department and served on its faculty until retiring in 1983 to devote his time to his artwork. He had gained national attention in 1943, when his mural “Dying Soldier” was included in the landmark exhibition “Young Negro Art” in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. After he settled in Houston, his artwork, which was inspired by Mexican political muralists, became part of the very landscape of Lone Star schools and businesses.

…In 1994, he illustrated Maya Angelou’s poem “Our Grandmothers.” She had said that his art “functions as delight and discovery. He sees our differences and celebrates them. And in so doing, he allows the clans of the world to come together in respectful appreciation.”

 

 

Inspired by a Dictionary

Perhaps it was an odd match to cast Mel Gibson [below] as Sir James Augustus Henry Murray [above]  (1837-1915), editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until his death, and Sean Penn as William Chester Minor (1834-1920), one of the OED’s major contributors. They star in the film adaptation of Simon Winchester’s 1998 book The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (also called The Surgeon of Crowthorne) chronicling Minor’s relationship with Murray, while confined in the Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.

 

After years of delay, the film is streaming on Kanopy: https://princetonlibrary.kanopy.com/video/professor-and-madman

Work on the OED began in 1857 and unbound fascicles were published from 1884 forward under the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009038919.  In 1899 alone, Minor provided 12,000 quotations for the OED. The project was expected to take ten years to complete and be some 7,000 pages long, in four volumes. In fact, when the final results were published in 1928, it ran to twelve volumes, with 414,825 words defined and 1,827,306 citations employed to illustrate their meanings.

 

Among the other work inspired and produced thanks to the OED are the animations of William Kentridge, who took over the video screens of Times Square in December 2019 with “To What End?” for that month’s Midnight Moment.

Animations projected on dictionary pages continued work he began with “Second-Hand Reading” (2013) and the book Second-Hand Reading (2014) in the Graphic Arts Collection: recap RCPXG-8786663:

 
In 1994, the Cuban American photographer Abelardo Morell created a series around the dictionary, including Six Dictionaries, 1994 and Dictionary, 1994. Morell was a 2006 Visiting Professor in the Humanities Council and Class of 1932 Fellow in Visual Arts.

Abelardo Morell, Six Dictionaries, 1994.

Abelardo Morell, Dictionary, 1994