Anti-Catholic Broadside

Copies of this Paper may be had Gratis for posting on Church and Chapel boards.

Instruments of Torture in Use in English Convents ([London]: Published by the Protestant Evangelical Mission and Electoral Union… [no date, ca.1865]). Broadsheet, wood engraving & letterpress. Sheet size 755 x 500 mm (29¾ x 19¾ inches). Graphic Arts Collection GA2016- in process

Various scourges and belts supposedly used by Catholic nuns are displayed in this anti-Catholic propaganda broadside distributed free of charge by the Protestant Evangelical Mission and Electoral Union. “[The organization] had its start as the sponsor of public lectures by William Murphy, an itinerant lecturer whose violent anti-Catholic rhetoric kept England north of the Trent in an uproar from 1866 until his ultimately fatal beating in 1871. After the loss of its champion, the group continued a shadowy existence into the early 1900s, reprinting salacious tracts by Pierce Connelly, Blanco White, and Maria Monk.” –Denis G. Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England (Stanford University Press, 1992).

See also: Monthly record of the Protestant Evangelical Mission and Electoral Union (London: Protestant Evangelical Mission and Electoral Union, 1871- ).

A report of a public discussion on transubstantiation held in Victoria Rooms, Doncaster, on Saturday, December 2nd, 1866, between Mr. William Murphy, the Protestant Electoral Union, London, and Mr. Saynor, Roman Catholic of Leeds (London: Published at the Offices of the Protestant Electoral Union, 1866).

Eckels’ Anatomical Aid

Howard Samuel Eckels (born 1865), Eckel’s Anatomical Aid. First edition (Philadelphia: H. S. Eckels & Co., no date [ca. 1903]). Oblong folio wallet with leaves mounted on guards, chromolithographic flaps. The signature of ‘Owen L Walker’ is at head of the front pastedown.

Eckel’s anatomical aid with moveable flaps was produced specifically for the use of embalmers. Beginning with “The Body” (ten flaps), the user is then introduced to “The Head” (three flaps), the “Eye and Ear” (eight flaps in all), the “Skeleton,” the “Transverse section of the neck in region where the carotid arteries are raised,” the “Muscles, Veins Arteries and Nerves,” the “Transverse section of the leg in region where the femoral artery is usually raised,” a “Diagram of the Nervous System,” the “Organs of the Thoracic and Abdominal Cavities,” “Blood Formation, Absorption and Circulation,” “Reproduction of Original Arterial System,” concluding with “Sections of Upper and Lower Extremities” (ten flaps in all).

Eckel’s first published his anatomical aid in conjunction with an accompanying volume of text, The Practical Embalmer, though both stand alone and are rarely found together in contemporary collections. The format was possibly inspired by, and may even have obtained the plates for, David Graham and James Knox’s Embalmers’ Anatomical Aid (1884), or from Ira E. Bunn & Company’s Physicians’ Anatomical Aid (ca. 1890).

Conversation on Scientific Subjects

Bourne Hall Draper (1775-1843), Scientific Conversation Cards (London?, no date]. 53 pink cards printed in letterpress housed within the original ribbed pink and green paper slip case. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2016- in process.

Dealer’s note: “A scarce educational card game, intended not only to impart information, ‘but [so] that persons may be induced to think for themselves’. Listed in the 1834 issue of the Monthly Literary Advertiser, and the 1835 January-April issue of the Metropolitan magazine, the game was the brain child of Reverend B. H. Draper.”

“According to the rules, the cards were to be distributed ‘in equal proportions to the company. Then let a question be read; and, when all have given their thoughts on it, let the card answering to the number of the question be produced and read’”

An ordained Baptist minister, Bourne Hall Draper was the author of a number of books for children including The Juvenile Naturalist (1839), Bible Illustrations (1831) and The Youths’ Instructer (Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1830). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 1674(b)

A search of the collection uncovers several other sets of conversation cards, suggesting that Draper was not the inventor of the game. Geographical conversation (London: John Wallis, 1799. (CTSN) 7186278); Instructive conversation cards (London: W. Darton, 1813. (CTSN) Cards 23152); and Conversation cards or pleasing pastimes ([England. ca. 1815?]. (CTSN) Cards 17027).

Browne’s Transparencies

Lit from the front
Lit from the back

Verso showing the tissue paper backing
There is little information on Mr. Browne of Browne’s Transparencies. The British Museum’s print described as “Scene in ecclesiastical ruins at night, with people gathered in the left foreground cooking over an open fire, and a couple walking further off,” transparency with hand-colouring recto and verso is probably also one of Browne’s Transparencies, although the label is torn.

Two comments about transparency prints that mention Browne were published in the July 8, 1882 issue of Notes and Queries. “These curiosities were more common some forty years ago [1842] than is generally supposed. Many of them were lithographs coloured by hand, and with one or more plates behind so perforated that when held up to the light the scene was completely changed. The first I remember (and still have) cost four or five shillings, and was the second of “G.W.’s Dioramic Views,” representing “A Village destroyed by an Avalanche,” and was published by Reeves & Sons, Cheapside, and W. Morgan, 64, Hatton Garden.”

“. . . One “G. T. B.” also issued a series of “Transparencies,” of which I have only No. 5; and “Browne’s Transparencies,” of which I have only one, “Ruins by Moonlight,” were also issued by Reeves & Sons, Cheapside, and Morgan, 64, Hatton Garden. All these are on cardboard “mounts,” and show best by artificial light. I have never seen any adapted for the lower panes of windows, but I have one of “A Smugglers’ Cave,” apparently that referred to by P. P., and the shape is “unsuitable for a window pane.” — Estb. Birmingham.

The second note followed: “These certainly were in existence about the year 1837, and I am inclined to believe that they were printed and published by a firm in Cheapside. They were artistically printed in colours, and by holding them before a strong light the subjects, which were varnished and pasted on at the back, became visible. The fire, for instance, was seen in the bandits’ cave; the gipsies [sic] appeared boiling their kettle in the ruins of Netley Abbey; the empty chairs in the continental cathedral were filled with occupants; Vesuvius sent forth its volumes of flame; and Napoleon, instead of standing alone at St. Helena, reviewed his Old Guard. The last-named transparent print was entitled “Napoleon powerless and Napoleon powerful.” They must at the present time be very scarce. – John Pickford, M.A. Newboume Rectory, Woodbridge.”

See also Edward Orme, An essay on transparent prints, and on transparencies in general (London: Printed for, and sold by, the author, 1807). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize Rowlandson 8415q

The shop selling Browne’s Transparencies was W.J. Reeves & Son or Reeves & Sons (1819-1890). According to the Index to British Artists’ Suppliers, “By 1819 William John Reeves was 65 and the business became W.J. Reeves & Son, when his son, James Reeves (1794-1868), was taken into partnership. Subsequently in 1827 another son, Henry Reeves (1804-1877), joined the business. Following William John’s death in 1827, the business became Reeves & Sons . . . James Reeves retired in 1847 and in the following year two of his nephews, the brothers Henry Bowles Wild (1825-82) and Charles Kemp Wild (1832-1912), were taken into the business (Goodwin 1966 p.36); they were both listed as artists’ colourmen in the 1851 census, ages 26 and 18, residing with their father, Henry Wild, a wine merchant at 98 St Martin’s Lane. On the retirement of Henry Reeves in 1866, control moved to the Wild family who made the decision to remove manufacturing from Cheapside to a much larger site in Dalston, where they built a four-storey factory.”

The Princeton Print Club Scrapbooks Online

The first page of the Princeton Print Club scrapbook, now available online at http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/td96k526s, holds a small card that reads “Friends of the Princeton Library invite your presence at the opening of the house Forty Mercer Street Thursday, October seventeen, 1940 from four to six, R.S.V.P.”

The letterpress text is neatly set inside a decorative cartouche copied from a type specimen catalogue of Binny and Ronaldson owned by Elmer Adler (1884-1962). Around it on the page are placed no less than six articles announcing the opening of Alder’s printing library at Princeton along with a program of instruction in the graphic arts.

Writing in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, John F. Peckham, Class of 1940, noted that Princeton was not alone in recognizing a need for such a program. In 1938, the newly appointed librarian of Harvard University’s library, William Jackson (1905-1964), asked Philip Hofer (1998-1984) to head the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, the first such department in the country. That same year, Massachusetts Institute of Technology established the Dard Hunter Paper Museum and hired Hunter (1883-1966) as its curator.

Adler’s earliest Princeton supporters and collaborators in this venture were Lawrance Thompson (1906-1973), professor of English and American Literature, and curator of the Library’s Treasure Room, along with Francis Adams Comstock, Class of 1919 (1897-1981) professor of architecture and a talented visual artist. Thompson introduced Adler to the other Friends of the Princeton University Library (FPUL) in a long piece for the Princeton University Library Chronicle, published in November 1940. “Those of us who have admired the adventurous spirit with which Mr. Adler has embarked on a variety of uncharted seas, in the past, feel confident that his voyage to Princeton is the beginning of another equally successful saga.”

Thanks to Robert Cresswell, Class of 1919, chairman of the FPUL, and a grant from the Carnegie Foundation, Adler was invited to Princeton for a period of three years with the understanding that the total cost of the program, budgeted at $18,000, would be covered by the FPUL, while the “University would not bear any of the responsibility for financing or continuance of the program; and while Mr. Adler would be attached to the staff of the library as research associate in the graphic arts, he would not be given faculty rank and students taking his courses would not be given curriculum credit.”

Once the contract was signed, an early suggestion was to locate Adler in one of the eating clubs along Prospect Avenue. Lawrence approached the Cottage Club in 1939 but wrote Adler of his disappointment when, “They voted against the housing of the collection in the library . . . [since] the library room and particularly the room beyond was needed for football weekends when the house overflows with luncheon and cocktail guests.”

Another plot would have placed the collection in the damp basement of 20 Nassau Street, with Adler residing at the Nassau Club. It was only after Adler had “worn to a frazzle several real-estate agents, who showed him practically every available house to rent in Princeton, did he settle on the dignified, hundred year old and vacant Miller house at Forty Mercer Street.”

Within the first year of his tenure, Adler transformed the modest frame building on Mercer Street into a vibrant nucleus teeming with activities, displays, celebrated guests, and giveaways. Its most consuming project was The Princeton Print Club and 40 Mercer became known as its clubhouse. By the end of the 1940-1941 school year, the student’s monthly The Nassau Sovereign proclaimed Elmer Adler “an amazing man and his brilliant house—each a new nerve center of campus activity.”

With the fall semester quickly approaching, Adler swung into action and had University carpenters, painters, electricians, plumbers, and others renovate the building into a series of small meeting rooms and galleries, along with an apartment where he would live during the week. The three floors included a working print shop, a library, an exhibition gallery, print room, and in the basement, a smoking room where the anti-smoking, anti-drinking Adler rarely appeared.

By October, the doors on Mercer Street opened with a selection of Adler’s personal collection of prints and printed books on view. “Faculty members, students, and Princeton residents yesterday turned out for the first formal showing of a collection of over 8,000 books and 4,000 prints belonging to Elmer Adler, a research associate on the staff of the University Library,” announced the Daily Princetonian.

“The collection which will provide the basis for informal courses on various aspects of the graphic arts is located at 40 Mercer St. and is open to the public. . . Individuals wishing to use the collection for study and research should obtain admission cards from Lawrance Thompson in the University Library Treasure Room. However, those interested in the collection as an exhibit may take advantage of the open invitations, which will be arranged serially by the Friends of the Princeton Library.”

To learn more about the Princeton Print Club, visit the digital scrapbook at: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/td96k526s.

Although the book is inscribed: “Delivered August 14, 1947. Pasting through September 14, 1947 by Wm. G. McLaughlin Jr [Club President],” someone has added several more pages, including information on the new graphic arts curator Gillett Griffin in 1953.

Giving away your collection with the collection catalogue

“I started buying snapshots and vernacular photos, almost twenty-five years ago,” writes New York collector Peter Cohen. “Since then I’ve amassed a substantial collection. I always bought what I liked . . . I hope that the images on this site will be enjoyed by yet a larger group of people.” http://www.pjcohencollection.com/

Three years ago, Cohen went even further, publishing an unassuming volume of snapshots entitled Dangerous Women (Pittsburgh: Spaces Corners, 2013. Marquand Library N7433.4.C375 C64 2013). Not only can you enjoy images from his personal collection but slipped into the middle of each book, in a tiny glassine envelope, is an individual photograph. Buy the book and you get part of the actual collection.

Next month, the eclectic journal Esopus (Marquand NX460.E86Q) will include over 100 anonymous and vernacular photographs from Cohen’s collection. We are all welcome at the issue’s launch party on Wednesday, May 11, 2016 at the Museum of Modern Art or simply cross the plaza to Marquand Library to enjoy it. http://www.esopus.org/

Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), The Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African: from an Account Written by Himself to which are Added Some Remarks on the Slave Trade, etc. abridged by A. Mott (New York: Samuel Wood & Sons, 1829). Wood engravings by Alexander Anderson (1775-1870) Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 286.

In 1789, a forty-four year old African living in London, Olaudah Equiano, wrote and published his biography: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Later that year, it was also being sold by Mr. Johnson, St. Paul’s Church-Yard; Mr. Buckland, Paternoster-Row; Messrs. Robson and Clark, Bond-Street; Mr. Davis, opposite Gray’s-Inn, Holborn; Mr. Matthews, Strand; Mr Stockdale, Piccadilly; Mr. Richardson, Royal Exchange; Mr. Kearsley, Fleet-Street and the booksellers in Oxford and Cambridge.

By 1790, there was a Dutch edition sold in Rotterdam by Bij Pieter Holsteyn and in 1791 an Irish edition sold by W. Sleater, and the other Booksellers in Dublin.

It wasn’t until 1829, forty years after it was written, that the first illustrated edition was printed and sold by Samuel Wood & Sons in New York City. The illustrator of this edition was Alexander Anderson (1775-1870).

Anderson included a version of a diagram for housing slaves aboard a ship, also found as a broadside, Remarks on the slave trade, extracted from the American Museum, for May, 1789 (Philadelphia: Printed by Mathew Carey, 1789). Rare Books (Ex) Oversize 1083.323f

“Visualising the transatlantic slave trade”: http://www.history.ac.uk/1807commemorated/exhibitions/museums/brookes.html

The Golden Chain of Salvation

Isaac Taylor (1730-1807) after design by Reverend John Clark, The Golden Chain of Salvation (Published as the Act directs March 1, 1776 by the Rev. J. Clark). Engraved broadside. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2016- in process

At the bottom of this illustrated broadside are two columns of printed text explaining the biblical allegory taken from the verse: Romans 8: 29-30. The journey to salvation is depicted as a chain of interlinking circles. According to the Dictionary of National Biography Isaac Taylor (1730–1807), “worked successively as a brassfounder, a silversmith, and a surveyor, owing this versatility to his father, who cast a chandelier for the Worcester town-hall in successful competition with a Birmingham firm, and who also engraved cards for tradesmen and silver plate for the county families.”

“About 1752 Isaac, thinking himself ill-used at home, made his way to London, walking by the side of a wagon. He found employment first at a silversmith’s, and then with Thomas Jefferys, the geographer, at the corner of St. Martin’s Lane. Under his guidance he executed a number of plates for the Gentleman’s Magazine. He gradually concentrated his attention upon book illustration, among the first that he illustrated being Owen’s Dictionary and Andrew Tooke’s Pantheon. Soon after its incorporation, in January 1765, Taylor was admitted a fellow of the Society of Artists, and in 1774 he was appointed secretary as successor to John Hamilton, being the third to hold that post.”

Gentile’s Carbon Print of Sheridan

In the September 1877 issue of the Philadelphia Photographer, Edward L. Wilson (1838-1903) published the first carbon print in an American magazine. Wilson was not shy about discouraging his readers from attempting this complicated printing process but did want to show an example in his magazine.

The Naples-born photographer Carlo Gentile (1835-1893), best known for his portraits of Native American Indians, was one of the few photographers to purchase a patent for the carbon process and experimented with permanent prints. When his work won a first prize in February of 1877, Gentile offered to make enough copies for Wilson to paste one into each issue of his magazine. This was not completed until late August, appearing in the September issue.

Gentile’s photograph is titled “Lieutenant-General P.H. Sheridan of the United States Army and staff; Military Division of the Missouri.” Having succeeded Sherman as commander of the Division of the Missouri, Philip Henry Sheridan (1831-1888) led a massive campaign against the American Indians of the southern plains from 1874 to 1875. Two years later, when he posed for this photograph, Sheridan had also concluded a campaign against tribes in the northern plains.

To help explain the photograph, Wilson published a letter from Gentile along with the print. It reads in part:

“The original picture, from which the illustration is taken, is made 30 by 40 inches; was exhibited in New York in February and was awarded the first prize for composition pictures in carbon.

The portraits were, of course, all taken separate, and so that the perspective would be correct when grouped. This picture was made without any original sketch, and some of our best Chicago painters say that the group is excellent. The group is intended to represent General P. H. Sheridan and staff at some military post ‘out West.’ The General is supposed to have just arrived and he and his staff requested to sit for their photographs, and no attempt has been made to make it appear that they are doing anything else.

The background is composed of some artillery that belongs to the militia of the State of Illinois, who were the same uniform as the United States regulars, consequently come in very a propos for a group to compose the picture of the General; of course the artillery men were taken in the attitude of firing the gun, which they are doing in honor of the arrival of the distinguished visitor, and thereby giving action to the picture.

The landscape background is made up from photographs from two different views in Arizona Territory; the right-hand, showing the tents, was taken at Camp Crittenden, in the heart of the Apache country, and the mountains in the background are the Santa Rita, near the borders of Mexico.

One of the most important objects, a little in the rear of the staff of the General, is the famous horse ‘Winchester,’ too well known to need any mention.”

This volume of the Philadelphia Photographer was a gift from David H. McAlpin, class of 1920; and was previously owned by the Camera Club of New York (sold in 1955). Graphic Arts Collection (hsv) 2007 0008M

See also: Cesare R. Marino, The Remarkable Carlo Gentile: pioneer Italian photographer of the American frontier (Nevada City, Calif.: Carl Mautz Publishing, 1998). Marquand Library (SAPH): Photography TR140.G413 M374 1998

As dainty an edition of Marmion as any lady can desire.

Walter Scott (1717-1832), Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field (London: A. W. Bennett, 1866). 15 albumen silver prints by Thomas Annan (1829-1887). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2016- in process

An 1865 article in the London Examiner entitled “Gift Books” noted:

“Mr Alfred W Bennett stands foremost among the London publishers as a producer of beautiful Christmas books illustrated by photography. He chooses for illustration books that are worth having and keeping, and that admit of the best and most legitimate sort of sun-painting for adornment of the text.

Printing his text and binding it with luxurious good taste, he enriches it with so liberal a supply of mounted photographs of the best quality, that the pictures alone are almost if not altogether worth the price of the book they illustrate. . . Mr Bennett’s other photographic book is a gay and luxurious edition of Scott’s Marmion, illustrated with smaller photographic views by Mr Thomas Annan, of Norham, Warkworth, Bamborough, Crichtoun, and Bothwell Castles, Holyrood Palace, Tantallon Hold, Durham Cathedral, Lindisfarne Priory, and Whitby and Dunfermline Abbeys, Linlithgow Palace, and Twizel Bridge; a photograph of Scott’s monument at Edinburgh, serving as frontispiece.

The book is richly bound in gold and scarlet, has initial letters to each canto illustrated in woodcut, and is as dainty an edition of Marmion as any lady can desire. Its images of the scenery that lay in Scott’s own mind as that of the poem suggest the right background of local colour to the fancy of the reader.”–The Examiner, No. 3017, 25 November 1865, p. 746.

We recently acquired the first edition of Sir Walter Scott’s book with photographic illustrations by Thomas Annan, including his view of Linlithgow Palace, reflected in the Loch. A notebook of Thomas Annan’s at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow shows a drawing of Linlithgow Palace dated 24th May 1862.

“The sketch at Linlithgow shows the composition proposed and the time of day to make the desired image is indicated. . . . Below the sketch is a note which indicates Annan’s concern about perspective and distance and the problem of relating foreground to middle and background, confirming his awareness of compositional rules in painting.”

This approach suggests that Annan was visiting at least some locations prior to photographing to get an impression of the aspect and light, before addressing the logistics of arriving at the desired time with his bulky photographic equipment.–Roddy Simpson, The Photography of Victorian Scotland, 2012. Firestone TR61 .S467 2012.

The quote on the cover comes from this stanza:

Well was he armed from head to heel
In mail and plate of Milan steel;
But his strong helm, of mighty cost
Was all with burnished gold embossed;
Amid the plumage of the crest
A falcon hovered on her nest
With wings outspread, and forward breast;
E’en such a falcon, on his shiel
Soared sable in an azure field:
The golden legion bore aright
Who checks at me to death is dight.
Blue was the charger’s broidered rein;
Blue ribbons decked his arching mane;
The knightly housing’s ample fold,
Was velvet blue, and trapped with gold.

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