tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83820762729476895232024-03-17T20:03:48.615-07:00BOOKTRYSTInteresting and Curious
Rare and Antiquarian Books, &c.Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.comBlogger1238125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-39378122450490256582020-01-25T03:30:00.000-08:002020-01-25T03:30:00.183-08:00Is This The Worst 19th C. British Novel?<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s rarely a good idea to begin a novel with a Preface. It’s never a good idea to write a Preface as apology for what is to come. And what writer in their right mind would trust that their readers be indulgent and not too.critical of what they are about to read? Only a novelist who subconsciously knows that he is issuing a warning: Caution! Train-Wreck Ahead.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">Santa left ashes in the author's Xmas 1893 stocking.</span></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">No such luck for The Author, one T. Duthie-Lisle. The reviews for this three-decker upon its publication were devastating; this may be the worst 19th century British novel ever published.</span></div>
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"The hardiest spirit may well quail before the stupendous task of giving any accurate idea of what is, apparently, the first-fruits of Mr. Duthie-Lisle's imagination" (<i>The Saturday Review</i> Dec. 30, 1893); "...obtrudes itself on almost every page as deficient in sense as of grammar" (<i>The Academy</i> Oct., 21, 1893); "...this incredibly foolish book" <i>(The Speaker</i> Sept. 16, 1893); and this dart to its heart: "One of the missions of the literary critic is to warn off intending readers from books that are utterly worthless, and 'The Heirloom' comes within this category" <i>(The Athenaeum</i> Sept. 9, 1893). </span></div>
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Seventy-eight years later Robert Lee Wolff, in <i>Nineteenth Century Fiction</i>, declared it "...unbelievably awful as to style - antiquated, ungrammatical, melodramatic, like a parody of itself." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Of the author, little is known; it is hoped T. Duthie-Lisle survived the reviews to live in hiding. It appears that this was TD-L's first and last foray into “the wildest schemes which his imagination [could] conceive, the marvelous combinations which a turn of the magic kaleidoscope of eventualities, and what we misname fortune may produce, are again and again out acted in real life.”</span><br />
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Why was this novel issued? It was not the sort of book that its publisher, Gay and Bird, usually published.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Wolff suggests that it was a “‘prestige’ publication.” If so, Gay and Bird’s standards for prestige were decidedly low; the book deals prestige a deadly blow. Could the brain trust at Gay and Bird have been so devoid of taste and discernment? Their publication of this novel strongly suggests that they possessed the editorial instincts of a cane toad, Australia’s answer to promiscuous publishing: cane toads will attempt to copulate with dead animals including dead female cane toads, dead salamanders, dead rodents, dead reptiles. Hence the dead on arrival publication of this dreadful doozy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yet beyond its status as arguably the worst nineteenth century British novel, <i>The Heirloom</i> is significant as being among the last of the three-deckers, a format that ceased to exist by the end of 1894, with only an occasional three-decker published in the twentieth century, Tolkien’s <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> the most notable example. This copy of <i>The Heirloom</i> was deaccessioned from a circulation library and that tells us a story.<br /><br />Introduced in the early nineteenth century, three volume novels were expensive - the average retail price was 31 shillings.6 pence - far too expensive for even middle class readers. But though three-deckers did indeed provide a measure of prestige to the publisher, author, and the book, because of their expense the major source of reading distribution was through a circulation library. Yes, you could buy inexpensive reprints in single volumes but if you wanted to read the latest "prestige" novels you had to borrow from a library. With low print runs (generally 1000 copies or fewer) and high price a publisher could earn a tidy profit. Ultimately, however, publishers of three-deckers had to bow to commercial pressures and began to issue single volume novels. Single volume novels were less expensive to produce, could be sold for less than a three-decker, and though their price was low, greater profits could be earned via dramatically increased sales volume.<br /><br />At this point, you may be curious about the plot of <i>The Heirloom</i>. It is the sorry plight of the reader to plow through it. Three-decker novels typically possessed complicated plots, often dealing with marriage and property. <i>The Heirloom</i> cubes the complications, throws in a lot of mush, and the result is a plot so convoluted that one is tempted to go full-Alexander the Great and take a sword to this Gordian knot. It would, alas, take a machete to hack through it but with no guarantee of success. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It begins with the near-death ravings of Bertram Gonault, the presumptive hero of the story, as he lies in bed at Vernwood Manor. He made a fabulous fortune, and met a beautiful girl, who mysteriously vanished just prior to their wedding. As usual when a man loses the woman of his dreams, Bertram hit the road of dissipation that ended in deathbed delirium, an old man at 50 on page one, "at what a price!" A half hour after his feverish diatribe he was murdered. By the end of volume one, after an at best wearisome telling of the story of Bertram’s life, “the reader feels relieved when at the end of [that volume] he resumes his place in Bertram’s bedchamber” (<i>The Speaker</i>). You may want to get in bed with Bertie and take a quick nap before the murderer shows up. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The remaining two volumes are devoted to discovering the mystery murderer, finding a beneficiary for Vernwood Manor, the title's heirloom, and locating a mysterious ring, another heirloom to pad out the narrative. This is tantamount to asking readers to take a hundred mile hike with a hundred pound rucksack. Really, an army Ranger with a reading habit would be challenged to get though this book without giving up. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Oh, lordy, this book's a doozy. And quite scarce.<br />___________</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>DUTHIE-LISLE, T. THE HEIRLOOM</b>; or The Descent of Vernwood Manor. London: Gay and Bird, 1893. First (only) Edition. Three octavo volumes (7 3/3 x 4 3/4 in.). vii, (1, blank), 247, (1, blank), 16 (catalog); vii, (1, blank), 222, (2, blank), 16 (catalog); vii, (1, blank), 246, (2, blank), 16 (catalog) pp. Publisher's original gray cloth, gilt lettered title, sprig of leaves in black. Cloth soiled, lt-mod. wear, a few sm tears to spine tails, spine exhibits library label ghosts, "Lorde Circulating Library" stamped in purple to preliminary blanks, offsets to preliminary blanks from bookplate of Britten Memorial Library, otherwise a Good copy of a genuinely scarce work. Wolff 1966.
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Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-83670949228244235212019-08-27T03:00:00.001-07:002019-08-28T17:21:19.036-07:00Christopher Isherwood and Me at the Gym<span style="font-size: large;"><b> <span style="font-size: small;">by Stephen J. Gertz</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">(Written five years ago, the following has the honor of being rejected by every literary journal in California secondary to length (and perhaps certain content). Time to get it out, throw it on the wall, and see if it sticks).<b><br /></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“I’ve started going to the Physical Services gym at Westwood and Santa Monica, and already the exercise makes me feel good. I needed it so badly. That’s a good habit started. I must keep it up.” </i>(Christopher Isherwood, Diaries, January 12, 1954).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">Chris stood at his locker with a towel wrapped around his waist and shower sandals on his feet. He was soaked. He usually set aside a couple of extra towels; they were too small for any one of them to completely dry a body. He seemed lost and said nothing but it was clear what the problem was: a jerk too lazy to walk to the locker room entrance and get his own had walked off with Chris’. His partner, Don Bachardy, wasn’t around; perhaps still in the shower, or not present at all; I don’t recall. I brought Chris (for that is how he asked to be addressed after my initial “Mr. Isherwood”) a few more. It was part of my job: gym instructor, physical therapy aide, towel boy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“The smog was so bad yesterday that Bruce Conners </i>[sic]<i> at the gym said one really shouldn’t go out jogging in it; making yourself breathe heavily and inhale all that stuff does you much more harm than the exercise does you good.”</i> (October 3, 1970).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">The gym was the Bruce Conner - Al Hinds Health Club, established in 1947 as Bruce Conner’s Physical Services by Bruce Conner (1919-2010), a physical therapist with roots in competitive gymnastics and weightlifting, and the original Muscle Beach. Unlike the franchise model established by his friends, Vic Tanny and Jack Lalanne, Bruce opened what was at the time the only gym in the U.S. for men and women offering physical therapy and massage services. It’s quite possible that every orthopod in the area referred patients to Bruce; because it was operated by a physical therapist and respected athlete it was legit, not strictly for health nuts and ironheads, a nice space (Chris thought the atmosphere at Vic Tanny’s in Santa Monica, “squalid”), and Bruce was quite likable. Word got around. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It was located on Little Santa Monica Blvd. one block east of Westwood Blvd. on L.A.’s Westside. Because of its proximity to Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Santa Monica and its canyon communities, the gym attracted wealthy celebrity and civilian patients and members, as well as the general, non-wealthy public. In 1964 Bruce trained eleven Olympic medal winners, and the Russian Olympic weightlifting team once worked out at the gym. It was old-school—a small neighborhood spot with separate facilities for men and women, few machines, and little chrome, mostly for the ladies. I was a member for a few years before I worked there, 1976-78.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>“I went to the gym, where </i>[actor]<i> Richard Egan works out in a hooded sweater with a mackintosh pair of pants over it, presumably to make him sweat that much extra” </i> (November 14, 1961).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;">It was where I became friendly with many appropriately dressed, overdressed, underdressed, and completely undressed film, television, and music personalities. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Riccardo “Rick” Montalban didn’t bother with the graceful glide he had adopted to mask his pronounced limp and was thankfully amused when I once described a workout bench as being upholstered in rich Corinthian vinyl because I couldn’t resist. Richard “Dick” Jaeckel, a short, scrawny kid in his acting debut in <i>Guadalcanal Diary</i> (1943), had subsequently morphed into a mighty tree stump with blond hair, eternal tan, and solid chops (see <i>Sometimes a Great Notion</i>). Film director George Sidney, like me, grew up in Queens, NYC, and was a trove of vintage Hollywood lore and legend I could listen to at length and did because George liked to talk about the old days and dump on the new while exercising - or eating donuts he brought in and offered to all. A patient of Bruce and Al, Jan Berry, of <i>Surf City</i>’s Jan and Dean, never fully recovered from brain injuries after totaling his ’Vette ten years earlier near Dead Man’s Curve on Sunset Blvd. in Beverly Hills, two years after Jan and Dean’s <i>Dead Man’s Curve</i> became a top ten hit. Vito Scotti played Nazorine, the baker whose unwed daughter had a bun in the oven and boyfriend without green card in <i>The Godfather</i>. <i>Password</i> game-show host Allen Ludden was a good sport when I once asked for the password as he entered the steam room. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">There were many more, including screenwriter Bill Kerby, who, during pre-production for <i>The Rose</i>, his take on Janis Joplin starring Bette Midler, wrote <i>Van Nuys Boulevard</i>, mercifully unproduced to spare the public from a scene appearing on page 62:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">INT. BRUCE CONNER - AL HINDS GYM - MORNING<br /><br />With a searing CRASH! Man Mountain Wawrzeniak drops loaded dumbbells to the floor and looks at himself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. He nods his head. Next to him, FRED DRYER (Defensive End for the L.A. Rams) and STEVE GERTZ, stand by and openly stare. They are both specimens, themselves, but now they’re in the presence of Greatness and they know it.<br /><br /> STEVE GERTZ<br /><br /> Good set.<br /><br /> MAN MOUNTAIN<br /><br /> Yeah.<br /><br /> FRED DRYER<br /><br /> You should’ve gone </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"> t’the pros.<br /><br /> MAN MOUNTAIN<br /><br /> Football’s pussy.<br /><br />And with that, he turns and walks into the locker room. Gertz and Dryer look at each other.<br /><br /> STEVE GERTZ<br /><br /> An intellectual… <br /><br />Yes, Fred was a member, too. “Kate the Great” Schmidt, a close friend who held the American (and soon World) record in women’s javelin, began to workout there, then Jane Frederick, American record holder in women’s heptathlon; Maren Seidler, who had a lock on the American record in women’s shot put; and Italian track star Giulia Montefiore. The Montreal games were on the horizon and the gym again became an unofficial Olympics weight-training site, at least for the Olympians I knew.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><i>“At the gym I feel very strong”</i> (September 12, 1962).<br /><br />It’s where I reconnected with Lolo, a dear friend from high school who worked the front desk. It’s where I became friends with Levey, an instructor who, like me, was a former NYer, jazz drummer, and competitive boxer with a big, tough father sired by a tougher father, each of whom had been fighters; we shared issues as well as interests. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It’s where I met “Schitzo Nitz-o,” who, prior to working at the gym, did time for manslaughter after a bar fight went bad; kept a copy of the Physicians Desk Reference at home so he could investigate whatever pharmaceutical he was considering for abuse then take it no matter what the PDR said; was my co-bouncer at a couple of Westside bars; and accompanied me on evictions I handled for a gym member with upscale rental properties but a few downscale tenants who required emphatic assistance to immediately vacate. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It’s where I caught up with Lisa Lyon, another high school friend, who joined the gym to build strength while studying kendo, became Schitzo’s workout and otherwise partner, and later wound up as the first Women’s World Pro bodybuilding champion, and muse to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and philosopher, neuro-scientist, and psychedelicist John C. Lilly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It’s where I met Karl, an elderly, easily irritated and delight-to-incite staff masseur, he of the wandering hands and thankful distaff clientele. He, with fluffy gray-to-white hair on the loss, hard, ice-blue Nordic eyes, and Teutonic accent, we suspected had been Hitler’s personal masseur who fled the bunker after indiscreetly makin’ mit der shiatsu mit Eva, and whose delivery of <i>Schatziputzi</i>, a German term of endearment, remains the most obscenely creepy thing ever heard—just ask Lolo. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It's where I met Abbye (strictly ironic “Pudgy”) Stockton, a staff instructor and Muscle Beach alumnus who, during the ’50s health and fitness scene, was “America’s Foremost Bar-Belle." Her husband, Les, another Muscle Beach graduate and staff instructor, was a merry old philandering satyr with a twinkle in his eye and apparently a sparkle in his dick, judging from the effect on the women in the gym he sacked. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">It’s where I met The Amazing Mary, a middle-aged, formerly miserably married, sexually repressed lady who, according to her liberator, Les, was a subject of study at a sex institute in Santa Monica where she earned the world record for most orgasms within a given brief period of time. It’s a feat I can vouch for, having been treated to a clinical demonstration while sitting in the passenger seat of her VW Beetle in the gym’s parking lot in broad daylight as she, at the behest of Les, digitally drove herself in the driver’s seat. Les and a few men from the gym kept an apartment nearby for entertainment purposes, the purpose being to entertain themselves with Mary, who enjoyed entertaining and being entertained.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The gym was where I met Mambo, the woman who would eventually become my ex-wife due to my instability, with stupidity a close second.<br /><br /><i>“153 1/2 </i>[lbs.]<i>. We went to the gym”</i> (July 22, 1976).<br /><br />And it was where I met Christopher Isherwood.<br /><br />I became aware of him when I was fifteen years old. My mother took my sister and me to see the original Broadway production of <i>Cabaret</i> and I saw his name in the Playbill. I read Berlin Stories a few years later and it sparked an interest in Weimar culture. By the time I began working at the gym I was mindful of his larger literary reputation but hadn’t read any of his other books and was unaware that he had written screenplays. Berlin Stories was sufficient to make a profound impression. When Chris was in the gym I was in the presence of Greatness and I knew it.<br /><br />But I didn’t do much about it. In fact, I did nothing. I’ve regretted it ever since.<br /><br />Chris had been a member on and off for twenty-two years before I made his acquaintance, for some time also a member of Lyle Fox’s gym in Pacific Palisades, returning exclusively to Bruce’s when the Fox gym closed. He came in regularly, and stepped on the men’s locker room scale as if punching a time clock. Because I was either busy with a new member, PT patient, laundering towels, in the ladies gym where I spent half my workweek, or preoccupied with my own workouts, I never had many opportunities to talk to him. And Chris and Don kept to themselves, which I respected. But I could have engineered situations. The reality is that I was paralyzed by shyness. As a seasoned Hollywood veteran (I’d worked, after all, as a studio laborer, greensman, and propmaker) I had no trouble kibbitzing with the show biz set. But Chris, he was another matter. I was a precocious reader as a kid and, though I certainly loved movies and TV, accorded book writers with a degree of respect and awe reserved only for heroes. I’d placed him on a pedestal and was completely star-struck. That was not the case with Ray Bradbury, who I’d met a few years earlier while working in a Beverly Hills record shop. Ray was warm, open, and initiated conversation. Chris was not, and did not.<br /><br />During this time I was also touring the East, reading the <i>Upanishads, Ramayana, </i>and <i>Mahabarata</i>. I was interested in Vedanta. I would have loved to talk to Chris about this stuff, as well as literature. I probably would have been intrusively annoying, or so I sensed otherwise I would not have been so pathetically timid. It’s not that Chris had some sort of force field that he deliberately turned on to keep people away from him, but he projected an element of self-possession and reserve that might be interpreted as aloof, distant, and/or cold which, as I’ve since learned, he was not. I know because, like him, I was (and remain) a Virgo, his birthday falling on the day after mine, though I hope the reaction he got when answering “what’s your sign?” was better than I’ve ever received: “oh,” the “I’m so sorry” tacitly expressed. Maybe Chris and Don, like most people, just wanted to get in, workout, and get out; the likely explanation.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><i>“154 1/2 </i>[lbs.]<i> We saw Stay Hungry (with Jeff Bridges), went to the gym.”</i> (July 19, 1976).<br /><br />For an instant in the continuum of human existence I had the most spectacular calves in the cosmos. With a pair of glorious gastrocnemius, solid gold soleus, peroneus longus and brevis to long for, and with each sharply cut and precisely defined, I was “Mr. Universe from the knees down,” a wry homage by former Mr. America, Mr. World, and 4-time Mr. Universe (as well as escort service mogul, organized crimester, and arm-wrestling hustler who often earned over $1,000 a week from that alone) Dennis Tinerino, yet another gym member. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Support for that sterling epithet presented itself when, as a contestant in the 1977 Jr. Mr. Southern California competition, I was called out as the ideal against which all other contestants’ calves were to be judged, and the enthusiastically vocal audience, now awestruck at the appearance of my dogies, gasped before erupting into wild, unrestrained bravos as <i>Also sprach Zarathustra</i> heralded my ascension into the pantheon, the heavens opened up, a golden shaft of light bathed me in its numinous glow, I experienced ego death, everything was everything, I took my place on the Great Mandala and was at one with All, even the guy in the front row who for a moment looked like a hipster chimp with goatee and shades. On stage, posing before a packed auditorium, with an applied tan, shaved and greased-up from the neck down, and wearing only the suggestion of a Speedo that highlighted my religious heritage, things weren’t surreal enough so I’d dropped a cap of mescaline halfway through the event.<br /><br />Afterward, I rendezvoused with Spin and Lolo and her sister in the lobby and waited for our chauffeur, Gibson, to bring his limo around. Spin (gym member, natch’), who I’d been with for a few months, dropped her cap. The plan was to go Dada post-contest; I just arrived early. Lolo and Gibby (gym member, of course) had been dating; the limo ride was his idea and it was refined after a committee was formed to consider the possibilities for pagan worship. And so The Golden Calves Revue hit the road.<br /><br /><i>“Good workout again at the gym today”</i> (February 28, 1961).<br /><b><br /></b>Because of work, travel, and various ailments in 1964, Chris wasn’t going to the gym very much. If he’d observed the following he would have surely recorded it.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6UNPccVbj1xkfDhuVFgCuhj9-xK6kDEnEVrPGgN5Rtb7PvgQdAYRaqcUTDo6vunUny_W0Za9JDuMPhZJf4SM-VC6CbKeF8nwKp3ChsyenNGuN7Hy8zxZ85yLwIt1ON27wFSE12zgIzE1v/s1600/Conner-Hopper+1976.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1454" data-original-width="1600" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6UNPccVbj1xkfDhuVFgCuhj9-xK6kDEnEVrPGgN5Rtb7PvgQdAYRaqcUTDo6vunUny_W0Za9JDuMPhZJf4SM-VC6CbKeF8nwKp3ChsyenNGuN7Hy8zxZ85yLwIt1ON27wFSE12zgIzE1v/s400/Conner-Hopper+1976.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy of Royal Books.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">That year the gym earned a footnote in modern American
art history when painter, sculptor, assemblager, filmmaker, and
art-provocateur Bruce Conner visited Bruce Conner’s Physical Services
and demanded that Bruce remove his name from the building: there was
only one, true Bruce Conner and the town wasn’t big enough for the both
of ’em. Suffice it to say, Bruce Conner, physical therapist, gave Bruce
Conner, artist, the heave-ho and don’t ‘cha come back no mo’. Incensed
(mock or otherwise), Bruce Conner, artist, returned with
actor-photographer Dennis Hopper, who documented artist Conner and a
gaggle of models posed beneath the gym’s painted sign on the outside
west wall. (Original prints of Hopper’s photograph now sell for upwards
of $20,000). The visual pun was intended - and unintentionally
appropriate: the place was Libidoland. Afterward, Bruce Conner, artist,
went inside and distributed buttons to the membership that read, “I am
not Bruce Conner,” while sporting his own button, “I am Bruce Conner.”
It was a happening, baby! The gym’s signage remained when, in 1971,
Bruce retired and turned the business over to Alan Hinds, a physical
therapist who had been his assistant. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“The only achievement for me has been at the gym” </i>(July 28, 1966).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The ladies gym was a garden. If I’d had the temperament for promiscuity I’d have needed a thirteen-month calendar to schedule dates. This is not ego; it was the same story for the other instructors. A member once told me she wanted to see what it was like with a big, built guy. Musicians looking like dental floss with legs may have been the ideal in the outside world during the mid-1970s but inside the gym muscle was exotic and, apparently, tempting, the apple on the tree. I had the astonishing opportunity to meet a lot of women, get to know them, become friends, and then and only then, ask them out if I was interested in something more. This was a first. Prior to that I didn’t meet many women so when one crossed my path discrimination tipped its hat to desperation and took a hike. Though I had a couple of escapades between them, prior to meeting Mambo I had two intense </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span class="tlid-translation translation" lang="fr"><span class="" title="">amours fous</span></span></i> with women I met at the gym.<br /><br />You could fit Spin in a tea cup and still have room for a tea bag and two lumps of sugar but she had big ideas. Most of them involved sex, many of which I enjoyed, others not so much. She held my testicles hostage to being “open-minded” and so I always said yes when my head was often screaming no. On one occasion she’d contrived I felt like a crash-test dummy at an orgy. She lived a few blocks away from the gym with her long-term boyfriend in an open relationship well on its way to closing up shop. She scared the hell out of me when she once lost consciousness after an orgasm and I thought I’d killed her, but she finally came to and wanted more. But I made excuses, afraid anxiety might kill <i>me</i>. During an evening shift, we once trysted in the gym’s ultrasound/hydrotherapy room, from within which on enchanted nights it was not unusual to hear ultra-sounds having nothing to do with standard therapeutic modalities. I was volunteered to pose for the boyfriend, a professional photographer with a scheme to broaden his portrait business with “fine art” erotic photography catering to sophisticated couples. His shot of me, however, looked like a porn bar mitzvah commemorative: <i>naket boychick</i> in full profile, head bowed and turned away in reverence with shadows for the sacred and solemn but head not turned and shadowed enough to mask the bar mitzvah boy’s <i>punim</i>. It was not a photograph I was keen on anybody ever seeing but people did when the weasel set up a display in The Pleasure Chest in West Hollywood without my consent. I had to pay him a social call to request all prints and negative, a visit I hope his recollection of stimulates the panic I witnessed when he opened the door and saw me looking nothing like happy. Macho has its appropriate moments.<br /><br />Rima was smart, exotic, and pensive, with a face like a bright full moon with a dark cloud hovering over its surface. She was a successful business machine saleswoman six years my senior whose twisted on and off relationship with her demon shrink she hoped I’d be the cure for. She told me she loved me and I believed her but couldn’t say it back because I didn’t want to believe it even though I felt it; doomed if I do, damned if I don’t. A hothouse flower, she wore Jungle Gardenia, a scent so overpowering that I often swooned when we embraced, so I asked her to tone it down. She did, confining it to down below. She asked me to hurt her during sex but that was new to me and I was too scared; I couldn’t meet that need and felt that I had failed her in a fundamental way. She wanted me to run away with her, somewhere, anywhere but I didn’t have the guts or maybe it was just good sense because I felt something wrong inside her, like a dog can smell cancer. I raced to see her at 2AM when she called, drunk and in tears two months after she once again fell under Freudenstein’s spell, and begged me to come over and hold her and I did, rocking her in my arms on her couch for as long as she needed because you don’t leave a wounded and defenseless animal in the middle of the road, you just don’t. But I abandoned her without a note after carrying her to bed and tucking her in when she finally passed out, a careless act not meant to be so that has haunted me ever since.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><i>“Today I did my first full day’s work at Fox. I have what seems to be a dream secretary, Eleanor Breese”</i> (September 24, 1956).<br /><br />I was anxious to move on from the gym; I was serious with Mambo and needed to demonstrate that I had a future. Lisa was a story analyst at American-International Pictures, and the knowledge that there was a job informally called “reader” was a welcome revelation. Sometime later I was talking to Bill Kerby about this employment manna and he said that a friend of his might need some help. He arranged a meeting. I put together a few writing samples, met his friend and for the next four years worked as assistant to and reader for a dream employer, Eleanor Breese, executive story editor at Lorimar Productions, at the time the number one television production company. During that period Eleanor talked about working in the Scribner’s steno pool for Maxwell Perkins and assignments he sent her on, e.g. working at the kitchen table in Thomas Wolfe’s Brooklyn apartment, typing up manuscript pages as he threw them over his shoulder while using the refrigerator as a standing desk. She mentioned working at Fox, but Chris never came up, which is odd because as I’ve subsequently learned the two became friends and socialized outside of work. If she had talked about him I’d have remembered.<br /><br />I asked Lolo what she remembers about Chris. Not much of anything, it turns out. Chris was gentle, Levey recalls. “He’d say ‘hi,’ when he came in. He fidgeted around; he didn’t sweat buckets.” Lisa, who was a friend of Don, doesn’t recall seeing Chris at the gym at all. Apparently, he possessed the power of invisibility when he wanted to move through the world unobserved.<br /><br />I’d have asked Schitzo but restlessness consumed him and he went AWOL. For three years if my phone rang in the middle of the night—as it did around once a month; it was his metaphysical menses—I knew who was calling and what to expect: in the midst of an existential crisis and heavily drugged he would channel The Beach Boys. And I’d respond in kind to keep him on the line and away from the ledge. I’d pick-up the phone and without greeting he’d begin.<br /><br />“I’m gettin’ bugged drivin’ up and down the same old strip. I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip.”<br /><br />“Don’t worry, Bobby, everything will turn out alright.”<br /><br />“Now it’s dark and I’m alone, in my room. What good is the dawn that grows into day? The sunset at night, or livin’ this way?”</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">“At least you’ve got the warmth of the sun.”<br /><br />“Yeah, but will I look back and say that I wish I hadn't done what I did?”<br /><br />He already wished that. Time to distract.<br /><br />“Perhaps, but here’s a little peninsula, and over here’s a viaduct leading over to the mainland.”<br /><br />“Why a duck?”<br /><br />And we’d run that Marx Bros. scene.<br /><br />Schitzo scrammed to Australia and worked in a health club in Sydney. When he got kicked out of kangaroo-land for lack of a work permit he wound up in Hong Kong, working in another health club. At one point in the mid-‘80s a mutual friend called to tell me that Schitzo was in town and wanted to get together. So I went over. I met his recent bride, a young Chinese girl who spoke no English. Schitzo didn’t speak Chinese. That can only have improved the marriage’s prospects for success. I would have asked him about it but he wasn’t around. Just before I arrived he announced to our friend that he was going out for a few minutes. I waited a few hours. He never showed.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><i>“154 1/2 </i>[lbs.]<i>. Don in Santa Barbara. By myself at the gym today, old Dobbin puttering about. I don’t do very much but it makes me feel as if I am really trying, and I am in my old Dobbin way. I am so lazy and exercising is so boring but I must do it. I fear that I will be too consumed by sloth to attend my own funeral. (I must stop thinking about death. Courage. Onward!). After showering, I went to my locker and found that someone had walked off with my towels. But Stan, one of the instructors, was kind to get some more. The young man is nice, and seems to always be on the verge of asking me a question but never does. I sometimes find myself staring at him, an Adonis from the knees down.”</i><br /><br />I wish he’d written that entry, even if he got my name wrong. Most fans of anyone feel that they know the person. This is particularly true with authors, who foster one on one relationships, the writer and reader engaged in a pas de deux, a rendezvous of minds with a strong tactile element: the feel of a book in the hands, the touch of a page. There is a certain intimacy. People curl up with a book; no one curls up with a movie. Yet whatever the medium fans would like to be acknowledged and set apart from the crowd. It would have been very satisfying to have gained Chris’ attention in a diary aside however trivial, silly, or critical. I regularly saw the guy, I (sort of) knew the guy. I was someone special! It is a vanity I confess to, an egoism I accept, just as Chris accepted his own vanity and egotism. I struggle to find connections, however tenuous, between us, forcing synchronicity where it doesn’t exist. Perhaps Chris’ guru, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, could have made more of coincidence than I can. One of the few things I get out of it is the gnawing sense that crossing paths with him was an augury that I ignored; that a life with books was my fate but I wasn’t paying attention until decades later when I finally awoke from an unsettling sleep.<br /><br />Taps has blown for the golden calves, and time hasn’t done me any favors from the knees up. The armor has fallen away and I feel lighter inside, though terribly vulnerable. Yet the world doesn’t hurt as much as it once did. As my body rides off into the sunset I watch from my homestead porch with amused irony. I have reverted to the tall, thin bookworm I began as, the intervening years as if a 45-year aberration, a strenuous journey essential to finding a place within my family, myself, and the world. <br /><br />For three years the gym was the center of my life and a formative experience that influenced all that followed. It was to me what Weimar Berlin was to Christopher Isherwood: a way station and safe place to explore young manhood, pursue adventures in masculinity, and observe and experience a fascinating, decadent milieu, albeit from a different orientation, and certainly without Nazis in the background, unless you count Karl. I wasn’t a camera but my Kundalini was taking notes.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><i>“Even now I can’t altogether believe that any of this happened” </i>(Goodbye to Berlin).
<br /><br />Nor can I. Memories are viewed through the wrong end of a telescope, so far away yet a nanometer nearby, trapped, stretched, and distorted between perspectives. The appearance of a golden age of youth is no more than that. When I woke up in the morning the days were dark and I’d hope they’d get light. The anger, confusion, and depression so well disguised that I fooled even myself remained veiled, their origins evaded until they could no longer be avoided. The past lies in wait, and it is patient. If you don’t deal with it, the past will deal with you.
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">_______</span><br /> </span>Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-73920841272997727082019-01-30T02:30:00.000-08:002019-01-30T02:30:00.266-08:00A Bodhisattva of the Book: William Dailey<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilxs1YWCw0pi91LjQmIXEd2q9XlaTbsGm8RulO5kKXFX846WjB9dAeMgeqh7_excc-r8vnVu9gN2iKRkO1m3n7LUWMoFpPVk5XRhfw3A_xDac6Lp4-UxA4yUlHuERDcmOYLjUKxDpfyl4R/s1600/BodhisattvaCover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilxs1YWCw0pi91LjQmIXEd2q9XlaTbsGm8RulO5kKXFX846WjB9dAeMgeqh7_excc-r8vnVu9gN2iKRkO1m3n7LUWMoFpPVk5XRhfw3A_xDac6Lp4-UxA4yUlHuERDcmOYLjUKxDpfyl4R/s1600/BodhisattvaCover.jpg" /></a></div>
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With a note of sadness, Booktryst is otherwise pleased to announce its latest publication, <b><i>A Bodhisattva of the Book: William Dailey</i></b>, a memorial to the Southern California bookman who tragically died in December 2017.</div>
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Featuring heartfelt contributions by <a href="https://variety.com/exec/john-burnham/" target="_blank">John Burnham</a>, <a href="https://www.mrtbooksla.com/shop/mrt/index.html" target="_blank">Michael R. Thompson</a>, <a href="https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/" target="_blank">Pom Harrington</a>, <a href="https://ilab.org/booksellers/davar-antiquarian-books" target="_blank">Ari Grossman</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_H%C3%A1y" target="_blank">Peter Háy</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_(publisher)" target="_blank">John Martin</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Humphries" target="_blank">Barry Humphries</a>, <a href="http://pleiadespress.org/interview-with-bruce-whiteman/" target="_blank">Bruce Whiteman</a>, <a href="https://www.hubbyco.com/" target="_blank">Bettina Hubby</a>, <a href="https://www.abaa.org/bookseller_interview/details/t-peter-kraus-ursus-rare-books" target="_blank">Peter Kraus</a>, <a href="https://rarebookschool.org/faculty/collections/johan-kugelberg/" target="_blank">Johan Kugelberg</a>, myself, and others, the book celebrates the consummate rare and antiquarian bookseller who was a mentor to many, a friend to many more, and whose book shop in Los Angeles was the hip Mecca on Melrose for bibliophiles.</div>
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<b>A Bodhisattva of the Book: William Dailey</b>. McMinnville: Booktryst, 2019. Octavo (8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.). 69, (1) pp. Color photo-illustrated wrappers. $25. <br />
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Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-28794971089390393412019-01-25T10:30:00.000-08:002019-01-25T16:26:39.670-08:00John R. Payne Reviews Catalogue 1: Rara Eros<b>by John R. Payne</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg64qmZDLICmqwVBl7DXHueCOwxOSgC1Bdx-7T7468TbLP4CB9RxuGJf30YEc-UieD6ChUjTxfAcb7dzjVgZ1jiplhQl6vdegXKRuFN8M0BvFg-T6cTBKXQ2QhCH5LSlUS8TwSBbyvRrzFc/s1600/paynegreattitle+closeup.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="490" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg64qmZDLICmqwVBl7DXHueCOwxOSgC1Bdx-7T7468TbLP4CB9RxuGJf30YEc-UieD6ChUjTxfAcb7dzjVgZ1jiplhQl6vdegXKRuFN8M0BvFg-T6cTBKXQ2QhCH5LSlUS8TwSBbyvRrzFc/s400/paynegreattitle+closeup.JPG" width="306" /></a></div>
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<i>John Payne’s most recent book is Great Catalogues by Master Booksellers, published in 2018. He is also the bibliographer of the English ornithologist and novelist, W. H. Hudson. John collaborated with the book collector, Adrian Goldstone, to compile a bibliographical catalogue of his collection of works by and about John Steinbeck that was published by The Harry Ransom Center in 1974. I am honored by his kind words -SJG.</i><br />
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<b>First Catalogues </b><i><br /></i></div>
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<i> </i>First catalogues by booksellers are always cause for celebration.</div>
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“There is never anything elusive about a dealer’s catalogue,” wrote Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine B. Stern. “If it is a good one it will be its maker’s earthly representative and hopefully remembered. A catalogue is a dealer’s showcase. In it he displays his wares, parades his knowledge, offers his expertise. His first catalogue is extremely significant. He has made his public début before a critical group of connoisseurs. This, his first catalogue, occasionally becomes his hallmark, stamping him as a specialist in Western Americana, medieval arts and letters, or modern firsts.”</div>
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Stephen Gertz’s Catalogue One: Rara Eros 16th-20th centuries is a sensitive, thoughtful, and bibliographically carefully described selection of 16th through 20th century imprints. Each title is illustrated in color, some with multiple illustrations. Prices range from $100 to $4,500. At the lower end is Claire Willows’ Modern Slaves: A Profound Study of the Forces of Destiny …. With ten full page illustrations. New York: issued Privately for Collectors by The Gargoyle Press, no date (1931). Limited edition of 1,350 copies. $100</div>
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Books illustrated by Mahlon Blaine are priced $400 to $3,000, the later price being for a copy of Venus Sardonica. 50 Extravaganzas … New York: (Jacob Brussel), 1929 (1938). Limited edition of 160 copies numbered and signed by Blaine. This is considered by Blaine and critics to be his finest work.</div>
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The least expensive item in the catalogue is Issue No. 1 of Exotica. New York: Selbee Associates [Leonard Burtman], n.d. (1960), Second Series in large format of Leonard Burtman’s classic fetish magazine published subsequent to Exotique. (Catalogue item 25). $35</div>
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Mr. Gertz gained his expertise with rare books the hard way: by working with other well-established booksellers, first from 1999 to 2007 with Bill Dailey, as head cataloguer and later as manager of his shop. After Bill closed his shop in 2007, Stephen worked for David Brass, as head cataloguer and later as Executive Director of David Brass Rare Books. He now describes his experience as running the gamut from incunabula through 20th century vintage paperbacks.</div>
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“My interests as a collector have always been erotica and drug literature, which I bring to bear as a seller. But one cannot live on sex and drugs alone—too risky in real life, too narrow to depend upon as a bookseller. So, while those are primary specialties, I will be offering, as the subscript to Booktryst states, ‘interesting and curious rare and antiquarian books, etc.’ I have an eye for the unusual, provocative, and controversial. My uncle, famed Chicago First Amendment and civil liberties attorney, Elmer Gertz, won Tropic of Cancer’s first victory in the U. S. in 1962. I must carry on the family tradition!”</div>
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You can access Rara Eros <a href="http://www.booktryst.com/2019/01/catalogue-1-rara-eros-16th-20th.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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<b><br /></b>Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-3892463098049826252019-01-25T02:30:00.000-08:002019-11-19T08:23:30.981-08:00Catalogue 1: Rara Eros 16th-20th centuries<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU884gqW8mLcrQxNXMrwpXLLc_XRapN_051nW9ChEh5Lti3v17s3L2ojov10DdkrLD50ptiXIymrZ2pZaaYV4uZsCLyecpR0wPzR3OZfhclsjNLdwh_Fw9w0Oh1V1s2X7uxNt915gTJ0cy/s1600/RaraErosBlogCover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU884gqW8mLcrQxNXMrwpXLLc_XRapN_051nW9ChEh5Lti3v17s3L2ojov10DdkrLD50ptiXIymrZ2pZaaYV4uZsCLyecpR0wPzR3OZfhclsjNLdwh_Fw9w0Oh1V1s2X7uxNt915gTJ0cy/s1600/RaraErosBlogCover.jpg" /></a></div>
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Booktryst is pleased to announce Catalogue 1: <i>Rara Eros 16th-20th centuries.</i></div>
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Featuring 60 items, including books and prints, it is illustrated with over 82 images, the majority in full color. The catalogue was designed by <a href="http://www.poltroonpress.com/" target="_blank">Poltroon Press</a> in Berkeley, CA.</div>
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Within you will see many scarce and obscure books that have not been seen in decades if not longer, artist proofs, and titlepages and illustrations published for the first time outside of the books themselves.</div>
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You may view the catalogue as a double-page spread PDF (recommended) <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/18W9MESwcjp8iu7LDMJZ3ryXDzMKmxyjT/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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If you prefer a single-page PDF you can view it <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SioCTY6przgPW9tLjufY0NkOFeHZsiCY/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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It pains me that given the current cultural climate I must offer a trigger warning: sexually explicit imagery (by respected artists mostly working anonymously or under pseudonym) is present within the catalogue. So, gird your loins, take a tip from Dante and "abandon all hope, ye who enter here."</div>
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A print version is available in a strictly limited edition of 50 copies only. It is 11 x 8 1/2 in. 32 pp. on 70# matte Titan white, 82 color and black and white illustrations, permabound, full color cover on 10 pt C1S/white stock with matte layflat lamination. Because of the nature of the material, its scarcity, the rigorous descriptions, informative and engaging annotations, and exceptional design, this catalogue will become collectable. </div>
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Purchase a copy of Rara Eros in print for only $55. <br />
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Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-52135007146228417302019-01-24T02:30:00.000-08:002019-01-24T02:30:02.983-08:00Booktryst At Rare Books - LA<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPrtjxyX-BnYaT21GvKfWgRDoPealHSTGcTl4DUnyhsUzn4aNsUsQqJRuN37UFxwWZ01BlM9575zAEN-MfgNtZZYyUr66ktmnUIhktv69ZQJin5VU_JcE0sApOqDYjmXUN-H1gLW4gV4xR/s1600/RB-LA.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="219" data-original-width="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPrtjxyX-BnYaT21GvKfWgRDoPealHSTGcTl4DUnyhsUzn4aNsUsQqJRuN37UFxwWZ01BlM9575zAEN-MfgNtZZYyUr66ktmnUIhktv69ZQJin5VU_JcE0sApOqDYjmXUN-H1gLW4gV4xR/s1600/RB-LA.jpeg" /></a></div>
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<b>Booktryst</b> makes its book fair debut at <a href="http://rarebooksla.com/" target="_blank">Rare Books Los Angeles</a>, at the Pasadena Convention Center February 1-2, 2019.<br />
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With many scarcities not seen in decades if not longer, and a gathering of books and prints that will have your eyes popping out of their sockets, our Booth 704 will definitely arouse your interest and may be the most provocative of the weekend.<br />
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This is also Rare Books - LA's debut and I'm pleased to be a part of it, all the more so on my home turf and among friends in the Southern California trade and local collectors. Kudos to Brad and Jen Johnson for organizing the event<br />
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Please stop by and say hello. That is, of course, if you're not left speechless by what Booktryst has in store for you. I'll publish a partial preview tomorrow.<br />
_____Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-74667010375375366432019-01-23T09:01:00.001-08:002019-01-23T16:19:41.897-08:00Booktryst Returns With Booktryst Anew<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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Having recently emerged from a secret lair within British Columbia where I'd been hibernating with a sloth of grizzly bears that had adopted me, I bring news of <b>Booktryst</b>. <b> </b></div>
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<b>Booktryst</b> now sells books. </div>
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Over the last 18-24 months I've been slowly transitioning Booktryst from blog to bookseller, remaining true to my tradition of doing things ass-backward. During this reorganization, I've been acquiring interesting and curious rare and antiquarian books, etc. (note new subscript below our header), sending out miscellaneous lists to a select few, growing sales, and carefully building the business toward a public debut.</div>
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That time is now. </div>
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I'll be posting important news over the next few days, with a major announcement on Friday, so keep an eye out (you can put it back in afterward).</div>
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In the meantime, I'm so post-hibernation hungry I could eat a raw tarantula. </div>
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______</div>
Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-7998106677770668122017-10-18T02:30:00.000-07:002019-01-29T10:47:45.589-08:00New Book: The Remarkable Martin Stone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1kn68XqtX2_68NljoiefbwymynDhRTm3FOFilAH656CVrezIGxgMB1uWFELdt6GssbNT2sozyZubXlkZjbhFD-BZ0xwGFNSwfW2nNF6KRlTJgG8ItuYMpX1OfCtdI5ypM3ws9MDwcN9KI/s1600/CCI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="621" data-original-width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1kn68XqtX2_68NljoiefbwymynDhRTm3FOFilAH656CVrezIGxgMB1uWFELdt6GssbNT2sozyZubXlkZjbhFD-BZ0xwGFNSwfW2nNF6KRlTJgG8ItuYMpX1OfCtdI5ypM3ws9MDwcN9KI/s1600/CCI.jpg" /></a></div>
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<b>Booktryst</b> is pleased to announce the publication of its newest book and first fine press edition, <b>The Remarkable Martin Stone: <i>Remembering the Celebrated Rare Book Dealer and Blues Guitarist.</i></b></div>
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The edition is limited to 150 copies (of which 25 are hors commerce w/o hand-numbering), binding designed and text designed and printed by <a href="http://www.poltroonpress.com/about-us/" target="_blank">Alastair Johnston</a> at <a href="http://www.poltroonpress.com/" target="_blank">Poltroon Press</a> on Hahnemühle Ingres paper with type composed in Monotype Bell. It is bound by <a href="http://www.johndemerrittbookbinding.com/" target="_blank">John DeMerritt</a>. And it features an engraved frontispiece portrait by<a href="http://arts.ucdavis.edu/faculty-profile/frances-butler"> Frances Butler</a>.<br />
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Each copy is signed by the designer/printer, binder, and artist on the colophon.<br />
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<b>The Contributors:</b><br />
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<a href="http://www.anyamountofbooks.com/" target="_blank">Nigel Burwood</a>; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bushnelltom" target="_blank">Tom Bushnell</a>; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/John-Eggeling-Antiquarian-Books-234551233262522/" target="_blank">John Eggeling</a>; <a href="http://www.mariannefaithfull.org.uk/" target="_blank">Marianne Faithfull</a>; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fox_(journalist)" target="_blank">James Fox</a>; <a href="https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/serendipity-books-r-i-p/" target="_blank">Peter B. Howard</a>; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Humphries" target="_blank">Barry Humphries</a>; <a href="http://www.maggs.com/about/ed_maggs/" target="_blank">Ed Maggs</a>; <a href="http://www.bookbill.com/" target="_blank">William Matthews</a>; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock" target="_blank">Michael Moorcock</a>; <a href="http://www.jeremyreed.co.uk/" target="_blank">Jeremy Reed</a>; <a href="https://www.abaa.org/booksellers/details/charles-seluzicki-fine-rare-books">Charles Seluzicki</a>; <a href="http://www.iainsinclair.org.uk/" target="_blank">Iain Sinclair</a>; and <a href="https://shakespeareandcompany.com/creator/10/sylvia-whitman" target="_blank">Sylvia Beach Whitman</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjPRzlOvgzTkFJip2UuxaQoUhTGd2EpdrrhbvQ3SsGNP0R4v3-sQ7EFIt34bgp63D8KuiPESKyevFHmvRBSWDUkXwtc_958M_C1u4lrrPaFpiVqnZIuiqRV_BLtj5TvD5_pAUwbsyLClEq/s1600/IMG_3744.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjPRzlOvgzTkFJip2UuxaQoUhTGd2EpdrrhbvQ3SsGNP0R4v3-sQ7EFIt34bgp63D8KuiPESKyevFHmvRBSWDUkXwtc_958M_C1u4lrrPaFpiVqnZIuiqRV_BLtj5TvD5_pAUwbsyLClEq/s640/IMG_3744.JPG" width="480" /></a></div>
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<b>Advance Praise:</b><br />
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“From its stunning binding and elegant design to its superb, heartfelt writing, <i>The Remarkable Martin Stone</i> is a bibliophile’s dream. Seeing the legendary book scout through the eyes of those who knew him best--booksellers, writers, and musicians--gives us one final, glorious glimpse of a man who was charming and generous to the last. This is a book that anyone who knew, or simply knew of, Martin will hold dear; I know I will” (<a href="http://rebeccaregobarry.com/">Rebecca Rego Barry</a>, <a href="https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/index.phtml">Fine Books & Collections</a>).<br />
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<b>By Subscription Only,</b> no billing. Books will be ready to ship in early December 2017. However, I expect the edition to sell out sooner rather than later, so order asap.<br />
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Booksellers who wish to buy 3 or more copies for resale can purchase them at a 30% discount. You must, however, <a href="mailto:sjg@booktryst.com">contact me</a> directly; the discount cannot be granted through the buy option below.<br />
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Net proceeds will be donated to the <a href="http://www.aba.org.uk/About-the-ABA/More-About-the-ABA/ABA-Benevolent-Fund" target="_blank">ABA Benevolent Fund</a>, which provided assistance to Martin during his illness. <br />
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<b>The Remarkable Martin Stone.</b> <i>Remembering the Celebrated Rare Book Dealer and Blues Guitarist</i>. McMinnville. OR: Booktryst, 2017. Octavo. 53, (1) pp. Engraved frontispiece portrait. Patterned Japanese cloth over decorated paper boards. Printed spine label. Cobalt blue endpapers. Plum cloth slipcase. $200.<br />
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Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-8132138241599382542016-09-23T02:00:00.000-07:002016-09-23T08:29:47.974-07:00A Book Shop Owner As Stuntman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration by Arnold M. Herr ©2016</td></tr>
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At the Megalopolis Book Shop, Mickey Tsimmis was all about customer service. No matter how potentially catastrophic the request (i.e. pulling a book from the shelves), Mickey was ready to sacrifice his life to help out. Coolly insouciant (or idiotic), he ignored the peril that was routine while navigating through the thicket that was Megalopolis. Danger was his business and to satisfy a customer no obstacle was too great to overcome. Scaling the shelves was an Olympic event in his jungle jumble of books, where organization was overrated and safety was for sissies. </div>
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Illustration from <b>The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Bookdealer </b>by Arnold M. Herr, "one of the wildest rides since Thompson and Steadman (or perhaps Mr. Toad) took to the highway."</div>
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"Screamingly funny" (<a href="http://bookstorememories.com/blog/?p=339">Bookstore Memories</a>). </div>
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Herr, Arnold M. <i>The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Bookdealer.</i>
Berkeley: Poltroon Press in association with Booktryst, 2016. Octavo.
Photo-illustrated wrappers. 136 pp. Illustrations by the author. <a href="http://www.poltroonpress.com/book/the-wild-ride-of-a-hollywood-bookdealer/"><b>BUY NOW.</b></a></div>
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<b>__________</b></div>
<b>__________ </b><br />
<br />Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-18732296986202166052016-09-16T02:00:00.000-07:002016-09-16T04:25:03.305-07:00A Rare & Used Book Shop Owner's Lament<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKJ1YmP81hpbV73T8LKRboF74J_l0Zk-DXe4bLTF7XPXf7QDD775JBkQc5vm3PNrIKBDuLPQi8CBnw0R81iX7frPFsmW4P_P16fv19gLtG_pEBszUEq9_ZF6KFi6dxPMyFXMr1_oFya8aX/s1600/Arnold8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKJ1YmP81hpbV73T8LKRboF74J_l0Zk-DXe4bLTF7XPXf7QDD775JBkQc5vm3PNrIKBDuLPQi8CBnw0R81iX7frPFsmW4P_P16fv19gLtG_pEBszUEq9_ZF6KFi6dxPMyFXMr1_oFya8aX/s1600/Arnold8.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration by Arnold M. Herr ©2016</td></tr>
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Poor Mickey Tsimmis, his innocence lost in cruel Hollywood, the burg without mercy, the hamlet of vulgarity, the city<b> </b>without a soul. It's Despairsville, man, a drag and a half. But relief and change you could believe in were routinely found at his Megalopolis Book Shop on Melrose Ave. east of La Brea, west of the moon, south of no north.</div>
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__________</div>
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Illustration from <b>The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Bookdealer </b>by Arnold M. Herr, "one of the wildest rides since Thompson and Steadman (or perhaps Mr. Toad) took to the highway."</div>
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Herr, Arnold M. <i>The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Bookdealer.</i> Berkeley: Poltroon Press in association with Booktryst, 2016. Octavo. Photo-illustrated wrappers. 136 pp. Illustrations by the author. <a href="http://www.poltroonpress.com/book/the-wild-ride-of-a-hollywood-bookdealer/"><b>BUY NOW.</b></a><br />
<b>__________</b><br />
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Apologies to Kay Nielsen and Charles Bukowski.<br />
<b>__________ </b><br />
<b>__________ </b></div>
Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-9136369553458195932016-09-14T02:00:00.000-07:002016-09-14T07:00:13.260-07:00A Legend in the Hollywood Book Trade<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<i>The following appears as the Preface to this just published collaboration of <a href="http://www.poltroonpress.com/book/the-wild-ride-of-a-hollywood-bookdealer/">Poltroon Press</a> and Booktryst. </i><br />
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There are legends in the Los Angeles rare and used book trade. </div>
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In 1905, Ernest Dawson established L.A.’s first book shop exclusively devoted to rare books. Continued by his equally respected sons, Glen and Muir, the shop remained in business for 105 years. From the 1920s through the 1970s, Jake Zeitlin ran a rare book shop that became a locus for fine printing and local artists and typographers. A Texan by birth, Stanley Rose migrated to Los Angeles in the 1920s and began in the trade by peddling books on a push cart through the writers’ buildings at the movie studios He opened a shop on Hollywood Blvd. that became a hangout for screenwriters and local and visiting novelists. Rose had a back room that after the shop closed in the evenings became an “art studies” salon that concentrated on studying the nude female form, comely models provided for the students’ edification and attention to detail. Rose was also notorious for selling clandestine erotica, and published a few one-handers written by starving screenwriters. In the early 1960s, the Weinstein brothers established a junk store in Compton, CA that sold used books in addition to dross. Ultimately focusing exclusively on books, they developed their business into the most successful rare book firm in the world with final headquarters in a former mortuary to the stars in West Hollywood.</div>
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And then there was the late Eli Goodman (1925-2016) of Cosmopolitan Book Shop on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Established in 1958, Cosmopolitan was Hollywood’s oldest used bookstore. A luminary in the shade of the Los Angeles rare book trade, Eli Goodman was a legend based strictly on eccentric character. And he was a character, one too singularly colorful to have been invented; a novelist could not have dreamed-up the man. </div>
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Refusing to ever retire, he never did. His final promotion on the Cosmopolitan website was a calculated plea for mercy and desperate tug on the heartstrings: “I’M 91 YEARS OLD – PLEASE HELP ME! TAKE MY WONDERFUL BOOKS FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR!” </div>
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If Eli’s long-time assistant, amanuensis, and literary voice, Arnold Herr, is not exactly James Boswell, Eli Goodman will never be confused with Samuel Johnson - except for their pure love of books. Eli Goodman - within these pages “Mickey Tsimmis” - was passionate about them. </div>
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Parts of this book were originally published in the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) newsletter and later episodes on my blog-site for rare books, Booktryst.com. They are collected here, as they were on Booktryst, in serial form but with additional material not found in the online edition [now offline]. The episodes are based on journal entries made by Mr. Herr over many years. Some end with a cliff-hanger. The dangler could be Eli or Arnold hanging onto a steep, flimsy bookshelf for dear life - or somebody trying to hang onto their sanity.</div>
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In the 19th century, color-plate books were often “heightened with gum arabic” (as described in bookseller catalogues) to intensify the colors and provide a light sheen. It’s fair to say that the stories herein have been heightened. But it would be misleading to characterize them as tall-tales. They are not. But Mr. Herr was clearly wearing lifts in his shoes while writing them down.</div>
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I could go on about Eli Goodman, who I only knew from experience, and Arnold Herr, who has been a friend for many years. But there’s a guy wedged in a truck tire rolling down the street in my direction frantically waving his arms and shouting, “Get out of the way!” And so, hello, I must be going.</div>
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HERR, Arnold M. The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Bookdealer. Berkeley: Poltroon Press in association with Booktryst, 2016. Octavo. Photo-illustrated wrappers. 136 pp. Cover photo by Shelly Vogel. <b><a href="http://www.poltroonpress.com/book/the-wild-ride-of-a-hollywood-bookdealer/">BUY NOW</a></b>. </div>
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Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-47568108786907406142014-05-09T02:30:00.000-07:002014-05-09T15:44:45.822-07:00Sartain's Original Engraved Steel Plate Of Charlotte Brontë Portrait Comes To Market<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8xDZJZCFZsNyF8JT3Z8p9Pz_UUM123qMiKHVpHOG1F4F0CxCXunGOO23ZuyXCDZnEM-vHRFLkMVkRqhyo_VVcokks6ueZ4xYr3E03qze3qVUKWtmB928rsk7Aqy4V82qcEir2pdfbr8e-/s1600/Bronte-engraving-LG+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8xDZJZCFZsNyF8JT3Z8p9Pz_UUM123qMiKHVpHOG1F4F0CxCXunGOO23ZuyXCDZnEM-vHRFLkMVkRqhyo_VVcokks6ueZ4xYr3E03qze3qVUKWtmB928rsk7Aqy4V82qcEir2pdfbr8e-/s1600/Bronte-engraving-LG+copy.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The plate. </b><br />(Image surrounding engraved oval is a reflection off the plate while photographed).</span></td></tr>
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The original steel plate of the mezzotint portrait of Charlotte Brontë engraved by John Sartain has surfaced. <br />
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Sartain
(1808-1897), known as the "father of mezzotint engraving" in the U.S.,
produced the portrait, engraved after George Richmond's famous portrait in
chalk, in Philadelphia c. 1857.<br />
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The 10 1/4 x 7 inch beveled steel
plate, engraved with Sartain's signature (verso with dagger-and-S mark of John
Sellers & Sons Sheffield, an English manufacturer of steel and copper plates for engravers, amongst other goods, with an office in New York), appears to have been made to
accompany the long review essay, <i>The Life of Charlotte Bronte</i>, in the
October 1857 issue of <a href="http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007916563">The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art</a>, which Sartain had an early
financial interest in. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyAdYLfYGJ4TSO3zCKNj4HONdCY9XsnfqnOM5irVw1RavV_i15NVxmy9reITAJZD0PvkNkyNEvSfb7bNKKYqAftYZqDzkVBhKbI4eOTYikxpCtHLAHDMZEZQcQ3BvQvGGxqRWvI7iDJiQT/s1600/Bronte-engraving-LG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyAdYLfYGJ4TSO3zCKNj4HONdCY9XsnfqnOM5irVw1RavV_i15NVxmy9reITAJZD0PvkNkyNEvSfb7bNKKYqAftYZqDzkVBhKbI4eOTYikxpCtHLAHDMZEZQcQ3BvQvGGxqRWvI7iDJiQT/s1600/Bronte-engraving-LG.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A print struck from the plate.</span></b></td></tr>
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John Sartain was arguably the foremost American engraver of his time and inarguably the pioneer of the mezzotint process in this country. He popularized the intricate printmaking process when he emigrated to the United States from England in 1830. His mezzotint prints possess a strong and rich texture that heightens and intensifies their aesthetic character.<br />
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Sartain was born in London in 1808. Left fatherless at the age of eight, he became responsible for the support of his family. At age eleven, he took a job as assistant scene painter to an Italian pyrotechnist working at <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/141127/Covent-Garden">Covent Garden</a> under <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/314593/Charles-Kemble">Charles Kemble’s</a> management and at <a href="http://www.vauxhallgardens.com/">Vauxhall Gardens</a> in London. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNoQh0G6anDNGyZysaBt7fo2nbj7z-ytINVihoUn8dYlfFPY5dJvHDlAD4VbVEwsDOEO3iKZ2mTFKAJDV45mrj8A2ssB6o0Bx_oj5udbXWJ_PeLQZByYUGj7OIN8FNMFPL6-L4jkn1He_9/s1600/JohnSartain.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNoQh0G6anDNGyZysaBt7fo2nbj7z-ytINVihoUn8dYlfFPY5dJvHDlAD4VbVEwsDOEO3iKZ2mTFKAJDV45mrj8A2ssB6o0Bx_oj5udbXWJ_PeLQZByYUGj7OIN8FNMFPL6-L4jkn1He_9/s1600/JohnSartain.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">John Sartain.</span></b></td></tr>
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In 1823, Sartain became an apprentice to engraver <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Swaine">John Swaine</a> (1775-1860), with whom he studied and worked for seven years. Sartain also learned to paint, studying miniature painting with <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Richter,_Henry_James_%28DNB00%29">Henry Richter </a>(1772-1857). He moved to Philadelphia in 1830.<br />
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He then produced engravings for various American periodicals including <i>Gentleman’s Magazine, The Casket, </i>and<i> Godey’s Lady’s Magazine</i>. Sartain, beginning 1841, made quite a few engravings for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_Magazine"><i>Graham’s Magazine</i></a>, and, in 1849, he, along with William Sloanaker, bought the magazine for $5,000. They changed the title to <i>Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art</i>. Among Graham's noted contributors were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Edgar Allan Poe (an assistant editor there, as well), who became a close, personal friend of Sartain. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLPCyFSzUd3DBBC6COv3_O5VNOz5BIzWUoFWrpMV_evYD-lUmnRoRtwujx-AbLxpnnhDxawtpvW9yaYBidvqu8Q0fvakXskJtoW3GUsri1U-i5D7Kbqw9CIA9OCdpiNUm2uodsRjTDDTg/s1600/Bronte-Richmond.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLPCyFSzUd3DBBC6COv3_O5VNOz5BIzWUoFWrpMV_evYD-lUmnRoRtwujx-AbLxpnnhDxawtpvW9yaYBidvqu8Q0fvakXskJtoW3GUsri1U-i5D7Kbqw9CIA9OCdpiNUm2uodsRjTDDTg/s1600/Bronte-Richmond.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond, 1850.</span></b></td></tr>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Richmond_%28painter%29">George Richmond</a> (1809-1896), in his youth a disciple of William Blake, was a painter and draftsman with 326 portraits to his credit.</div>
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Brontë's publisher, <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/549732/George-Smith">George Smith</a> of Smith Elder & Co., commissioned this portrait in chalk of the novelist from Richmond as a gift for Brontë's father, who saw in it "strong indications of the genius of the author." Novelist <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/cranford/gaskell.html">Elizabeth Gaskell</a> recalled seeing the portrait hung in the parlour of the Haworth parsonage, and a copy of it appeared in her biography of Brontë.</div>
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Only a handful of likenesses of Charlotte Bronte have survived, Richmond's portrait is by far the most celebrated, and Sartain's mezzotint is the finest engraving based upon it. </div>
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The plate exhibits the <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mztn/hd_mztn.htm">mezzotint</a> (half-tone) process very well. Mezzotint achieves tone variations by working the plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth called a "rocker." In printing, the tiny pits in the plate hold the ink when the face of the plate is wiped clean. Subtle gradations of light and shade and richness in the print can be accomplished in skilled hands, and Sartain was a master of mezzotint, the first tonal process used in engraving, with <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aqtn/hd_aqtn.htm">aquatint</a> to follow. Previously, tone and shading were possible only by employing hatching, cross-hatching, or stipple engraving, line or dot-based techniques that left a lot to be desired for nuanced effects.<br />
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There is no truth to the rumor I started that the Van Morrison-penned song, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-Qn9CVnpmc">Mystic Eyes</a> (recorded by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Them_%28band%29">Them</a>, 1965), was inspired by the Richmond-Sartain portrait of Charlotte Brontë. </div>
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The plate is being offered by <a href="http://www.19thshop.com/">The 19th Century Rare Book & Photography Shop</a>, of Maryland and New York.</div>
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<b>[BRONTE, Charlotte]. SARTAIN, John. </b><i>Charlotte Bronte mezzotint portrait</i>. Original
steel plate, signed in the plate by John Sartain after George Richmond. N.P., [Philadelphia], c. 1857.</div>
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Original beveled
steel plate (7 x 10 ¼ in.), Light surface wear, a small tarnish mark. </div>
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Brontë plate and print images courtesy of the <a href="http://www.19thshop.com/">19th Century Rare Book & Photography Shop</a>, with our thanks. </div>
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___________Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-60616700409987230352014-05-07T02:30:00.000-07:002014-05-07T02:30:01.839-07:001st Edition Of Emancipation Proclamation & Final Edition Of Lincoln's Hair<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG-olu9zPQ8EYqsxXtvZWLhy33ojEUqVuTpSwg4gnf0cIwnneigvElGL9hZJOvWhu6hcq5v3ZDZ4-eviJUFKr32pD1NgXRni2FQ7VfOHvTVFiWNRz0qsbOr1qvEshm0LL_86ruV1aZFOb8/s1600/Emancipation.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG-olu9zPQ8EYqsxXtvZWLhy33ojEUqVuTpSwg4gnf0cIwnneigvElGL9hZJOvWhu6hcq5v3ZDZ4-eviJUFKr32pD1NgXRni2FQ7VfOHvTVFiWNRz0qsbOr1qvEshm0LL_86ruV1aZFOb8/s1600/Emancipation.jpg" height="591" width="400" /></a> </b></div>
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A copy of the first edition in book form of the Emancipation Proclamation, the document that freed the slaves in the Southern states during the American Civil War, will be offered by <a href="http://www.ha.com/">Heritage Auctions</a> in its <a href="http://historical.ha.com/common/auction/catalog.php?SaleNo=6114&ic=Items-OpenAuctions-Open-BrowseAuctionInfo-071713">Americana and Political Signature sale May 24, 2014</a>. It is estimated to sell for $5,000-$7,000.</div>
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The Proclamation in its preliminary form was issued by President Lincoln on September 22, 1862. It stressed military necessity as the basis for the freeing the slaves. The revised and final Proclamation became official on January 1, 1863. It was published as a broadside and simultaneously as a seven-page booklet (3 1/8 x 2 1/8 in.) in pink wrappers in December 1862 by John Murray Forbes, a Boston Unionist who helped to raise troops, including the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment. The booklet, seen above, was intended for distribution to Union troops who, in turn, could distribute copies to slaves in regions of the South occupied by Union forces. <br />
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It has the original thread binding and a brass grommet through pages 5-7 and the back cover. It is estimated that less than ten copies have survived.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivE0ymalGFO6Y4LtNe8khGw9b28CxqzHGyy6Xrq2pC6ay1IaTXDnWhFMTa0kRs_CU0TRzr-wdkcWXR89ufH4XyJxeoC2H0ImlxvNPsDkQ9UMIIDFdNNiDIs1XyhzHTDB_aHyLh-mTBbiV5/s1600/ALHair2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivE0ymalGFO6Y4LtNe8khGw9b28CxqzHGyy6Xrq2pC6ay1IaTXDnWhFMTa0kRs_CU0TRzr-wdkcWXR89ufH4XyJxeoC2H0ImlxvNPsDkQ9UMIIDFdNNiDIs1XyhzHTDB_aHyLh-mTBbiV5/s1600/ALHair2.jpg" /></a></div>
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Collectors of celebrity and historical hair will have their own stand on
end and dance a jig in their follicles when Heritage offers five
strands of Abraham Lincoln's scalp hair, part of a lock clipped while
The Great Emancipator was on his deathbed. The hairs are estimated to
sell for $1,000-$1,500.<br />
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The lock was originally owned by Dr. Charles Sabin Taft who was the second surgeon to treat Lincoln on the evening of his assassination. The five hairs are part of the most authenticated lock of Lincoln's hair extant. It was originally removed by Dr. Charles Leale, the first surgeon to arrive in aid of the dying President, so he could have clear access to examine and treat Lincoln's wound.<br />
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The lock was given to Mrs. Lincoln who soon returned it to Dr. Taft as a gift in appreciation of his efforts. Taft was a young surgeon who attended wounded Union troops at a Washington hospital and had become acquainted with the President during Lincoln's visits to the recovering soldiers. Dr. Taft willed the hair to his son, Charles C. Taft, who sold it to William H. Lambert in 1908. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpxAFvr0E2iMPrWrzmDxnapR01fC3uxMwuzYQkajrU4z7cAxgPEjfT2SSXpzr6oX3frUpdCva6YP-uOGtMAopEe7wrlrWTEK-5mzH9PT4NOj7yGl7Z6iM7bVGXw_3kkYJwy-_6PiPombSP/s1600/ALHair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpxAFvr0E2iMPrWrzmDxnapR01fC3uxMwuzYQkajrU4z7cAxgPEjfT2SSXpzr6oX3frUpdCva6YP-uOGtMAopEe7wrlrWTEK-5mzH9PT4NOj7yGl7Z6iM7bVGXw_3kkYJwy-_6PiPombSP/s1600/ALHair.jpg" /></a></div>
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Upon Lambert's death, the Lincoln hair was sold to Henry C. Hines, in whose possession it remained until 1993 when it was discovered in his estate. The small hairs are preserved in a plastic sleeve and barely perceptible in the image above. Copies of dozens of letters, documents and articles accompany the strands of hair as well as a Certificate of Authenticity from John Reznikoff of <a href="http://www.universityarchives.com/">University Archives</a>, holder of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvILbEoUu0c">Guinness World Record for the largest and most valuable collection of celebrity hair</a>. A dubious distinction to the artifact-jaded, perhaps but I, for one, think DNA testing on literary celebrities' hair could be quite revealing; I'd like to get a load o' Georges Sand's genome, for historical purposes only, of course.</div>
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Included is a letter from Charles C. Taft to Civil War sergeant, writer, and famed collector of Lincoln memorabilia, <a href="https://archive.org/details/lifeofosbornhold00benh">Osborn H. I. Oldroyd</a> (1842-1930), offering the lock of hair in 1907. </div>
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<i>Dear Sir,<br /><br />I am in receipt of yours from the 13th and contents noted. in reply will state that I will sell you the Lock of Hair and cuff button from the late President Abraham Lincoln for one thousand dollars. I consider this a very low figure for such precious articles, and were it not that I can use the money, I would not part with them at any price. Awaiting your reply.<br /><br />Very truly yours,<br /><br />Charles C. Taft</i><br />
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It is unknown how many strands of hair were in the original lock. Charles C. Taft split hairs, presenting six strands to John Hay, Lincoln's personal assistant and, later, Secretary of State. Hay had his six strands put inside a ring and in 1905 presented them to President Theodore Roosevelt upon the occasion of his inauguration with a letter that read "The hair in this ring is from the head of Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Taft cut it off the night of his assassination." The rest of the lock remained in Taft's possession.</div>
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His offer to Oldroyd declined, in 1908 Taft wrote to General James Grant Wilson offering the Lincoln Hair and a cuff button for sale. Wilson couldn't purchase the items but he alerted Major William H. Lambert. Lambert purchased the Lincoln items in a well documented sale on March 12, 1908.<br />
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For collectors of Americana, particularly of Lincolniana, these five strands of Lincoln's hair should be tantamount to five leaves from a Gutenberg Bible yet they are being offered for only $200-$300 per strand.</div>
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For perspective, a lock of Elvis Presley's hair sold in 2009 for $15,000. Our cultural priorities appear to be twisted; sic semper tyrannis, Jack. Perhaps if Lincoln had sung Heartbreak Hotel while wearing blue suede shoes on the night of the assassination his hair would be appraised at higher price.</div>
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Not too long ago twelve strands of Michael Jackson's hair sold for $2,000, a price that seems rather low but the hairs were singed in 1984 while Jackson was shooting a Pepsi commercial and his head accidentally caught fire during the pyrotechnical display: condition is everything. Michael Jackson hair in fine condition would surely have been a thriller and fetched a great deal more.<br />
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Hair today, gone tomorrow, the auctioneer declared then ducked a tomato thrown his way. </div>
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Images courtesy of <a href="http://www.ha.com/%E2%80%8E">Heritage Auctions</a>, with our thanks. <br />
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__________ Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-25839913535045890922014-05-05T02:30:00.000-07:002014-05-05T02:30:00.801-07:00Mark Twain, Collector Of Compliments<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxPb97Y6vMt6XWxpr2gxIFrFgeMCbdR_mj5Y-R412QLvqVTr6eeJi_xDO5p-5E_dXde6VlSJ4cq20l0bADCsefeK0WmGcSBwcdCGThyphenhyphenVNxT2sqDY0oEaQ4ctBKaW6fAEwpnHjLyK-5wK9/s1600/twain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxPb97Y6vMt6XWxpr2gxIFrFgeMCbdR_mj5Y-R412QLvqVTr6eeJi_xDO5p-5E_dXde6VlSJ4cq20l0bADCsefeK0WmGcSBwcdCGThyphenhyphenVNxT2sqDY0oEaQ4ctBKaW6fAEwpnHjLyK-5wK9/s1600/twain.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Little Montana Girl's Compliment<br />"She was gazing thoughtfully at a photograph of Mark Twain <br />on a neighbor's mantelpiece. Presently she said, reverently, <br />'We've got a Jesus like that at home only ours has more trimmings.'"</span></b></td></tr>
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On January 11, 1908, The Lotos Club in New York City, one of the oldest literary associations in the United States, held a dinner in honor of one of its members, Samuel L. Clemens, aka Mark Twain.<br />
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Founded in New York City in 1870 by a group of young writers, journalists and critics, the Lotos Club initiated Twain to membership in 1873, who, waggish card that he was, immediately declared it “The Ace of Clubs.” At the dinner - attended by many luminaries - the guest of honor gave a speech announcing that he had become a collector of compliments. <a href="http://www.pbagalleries.com/">PBA Galleries</a> is offering one of those compliments, in Twain's hand, in its <a href="http://www.pbagalleries.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/331/">Historic Autographs & Manuscripts with Archival Material sale May 8, 2014</a>. It is estimated to sell for $2,500-$4,000.</div>
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As reported in the New York Times, January 12, 1908, Twain told the gathering:</div>
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"I wish to begin at the beginning, lest I forget it altogether. I wish to thank you for your welcome now and for that of seven years ago, which I forgot to thank you for at the time, also for that of fourteen years ago which I also forgot to thank you for. I know how it is; when you have been in a parlor and are going away, common decency ought to make you say the decent thing, what a good time you have had. Everybody does it except myself.<br />
<br />
"I hope that you will continue that excellent custom of giving me dinners every seven years. I had had it on my mind to join the hosts of another world - I do not know which world - but I have enjoyed your custom so much that I am willing to postpone it for another seven years.<br />
<br />
"The guest is in an embarrassing position, because compliments have been paid to him. I don't care whether you deserve it or not, but it is hard to talk up to it.<br />
<br />
"The other night at the Engineers' Club dinner they were paying Mr. Carnegie here discomforting compliments. They were all compliments and they were not deserved, and I tried to help him out with criticisms and references to things nobody understood.<br />
<br />
"They say that one cannot live on bread alone, but I could live on compliments. I can digest them. They do not trouble me. I have missed much in life that I did not make a collection of compliments, and keep them where I could take them out and look at them once in a while. I am beginning now. Other people collect autographs, dogs, and cats, and I collect compliments. I have brought them along.<br />
<br />
"I have written them down to preserve them, and think that they're mighty good and exceedingly just."<br />
<br />
[Twain began to read a few. The first, by essayist, critic, and editor <a href="http://www.summitnjhistory.org/Historian_Mabie.php">Hamilton W. Mabie</a>, declared that La Salle might have been the first man to make a voyage of the Mississippi, but that Mark Twain was the first man to chart light and humor for the human race].</div>
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"If that had been published at the time that I issued that book [<i>Life on the Mississippi</i>] it would have been money in my pocket. I tell you it is a talent by itself to pay complements gracefully and have them ring true. It's an art by itself.<br />
<br />
"Now, here's one by my biographer. Well, he ought to know me if anybody does. He's been at my elbow for two years and a half. This is <a href="http://www.twainquotes.com/19370410.html">Albert Bigelow Paine</a>:<br />
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"'Mark Twain is not merely the great writer, the great philosopher, but he is the supreme expression of the human being with its strengths and weaknesses.'<br />
<br />
"What a talent for compression!" </div>
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<br />
[Novelist, editor, and critic <a href="http://college.cengage.com/english/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/late_nineteenth/howells_wi.html">William Dean Howells</a>, Twain said, spoke of him as first of Hartford and ultimately of the solar system, not to say of the universe].<br />
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"You know how modest Howells is. If it can be proved that my fame reaches to Neptune and Saturn, that will satisfy even me. You know how modest and retiring Howells is, but deep down he is as vain as I am."<br />
<br />
"Edison wrote: 'The average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person he generally selects Mark Twain.'<br />
<br />
"Now here's the compliment of a little Montana girl, which came to me indirectly. She was in a room in which there was a large photograph of me. After gazing at it steadily for a time, she said:<br />
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"'We've got a John the Baptist like that.' </div>
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<br />
"She also said: 'Only ours has more trimmings.'<br />
<br />
"I suppose she meant the halo.<br />
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[Since the offered "compliment" is numbered “4” and the Times reported the little girl’s compliment after three prior, this sheet was most likely Twain’s reading copy; he extemporaneously changed some of the words but it was basically the same story]. <br />
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"Now here is a gold miner's compliment. It is forty-two years old. It was my introduction to an audience to which I lectured in a log schoolhouse. There were no ladies there. I wasn't famous then. They didn't know me. Only the miners were there with their breeches tucked into their boot tops and with clay all over them. They wanted someone to introduce me, and then selected a miner, who protested that he didn't want to do on the ground that he had never appeared in public. This is what he said:<br />
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"'I don't know anything about this man. Anyhow, I only know two things about him. One is he has never been in jail and the other is I don't know why...'"</div>
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The dinner was Twain-themed. As tasty as his speech was, the meal was tastier, a feast for those whose tongue for Twain went all the way. On the menu that evening:</div>
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<i>Innocent Oysters Abroad.<br />Roughing It Soup.<br />Huckleberry Finn Fish.<br />Joan of Arc Filet of Beef.<br />Jumping Frog Terrapin.<br />Punch Brothers Punch.<br />Gilded Duck.<br />Hadleyburg Salad.<br />Life on the Mississippi Ice Cream.<br />Prince and the Pauper Cake.<br />Pudd'nhead Cheese.<br />White Elephant coffee.<br />Chateau Yquem Royals.<br />Pommery Brut.<br />Henkow Cognac.</i></div>
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Dishes served only in spirit included:</div>
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<i>Double-Barrelled Detective Mystery Vegetable.</i></div>
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<i>Connecticut Yankee Stew.</i></div>
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<i>Mysterious Stranger Souvlaki.</i></div>
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Our compliments to the chef - and honoree. <br />
__________<br />
<br />
Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.pbagalleries.com/">PBA Galleries</a>, with our thanks.<br />
__________<br />
__________Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-32072374186912268732014-05-02T02:30:00.000-07:002014-05-02T02:30:00.602-07:00Stories By Great Danes Are Not Dogs<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX65O64ff8oJ24dstJDOpBYAnHoNDzF3fC04rV2mZDfzsnIEI1CsYS_6LpAJthluIRmph40bGtlXoVEpZ1CuWhtOvFgCh-YxHc8J_eUqXaiMC6AZxdjVaQIMxUQb1b5xkQRjMFXulTEYbL/s1600/00298_title_v_1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX65O64ff8oJ24dstJDOpBYAnHoNDzF3fC04rV2mZDfzsnIEI1CsYS_6LpAJthluIRmph40bGtlXoVEpZ1CuWhtOvFgCh-YxHc8J_eUqXaiMC6AZxdjVaQIMxUQb1b5xkQRjMFXulTEYbL/s1600/00298_title_v_1.jpg" /></a> </b></div>
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The literature of mid-nineteenth century Denmark is the subject this anthology of tales and verse selected and translated by Mrs. Anne Bushby (b. ? - d. 1875). </div>
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“Most of the following stories have appeared, from time to time, in the ‘New Monthly Magazine,’ and a few in other periodicals. They are now gathered together, and it is hoped that they may convey a favourable impression of the lighter literature of Denmark, a country rich in genius, science, and art” (Prefatory note).</div>
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Included are stories and poems by <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/hans_christian_andersen/">Hans Christian Andersen</a> (“Morten Lange. A Christmas Story” and “The Man from Paradise. A Comic Tale”); Carl Bernhard aka A.N. Saint-Aubain (“Cousin Carl,” “Aunt Francisca,” “Damon and Pythas,” and “The Bankrupt”); novelist and poet <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Severin_Ingemann">Bernard Severin Ingemann</a> (“The Doomed House,” “The Secret Witness,” “All Souls’ Day,” “The Aged Rabbi. A Jewish Tale,” and “The Death Ship”); <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carit_Etlar">Carit Etlar</a> (“Too Old,” “The Shipwrecked Mariner’s Treasure,” and “Twice Sacrificed”); poet <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=da&u=http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Peter_Holst&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%2522H.P.%2BHolst%2522%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DyMH%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official">Hans Peter Holst</a> (“Lisette’s Castles in the Air”), poet and playwright <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Oehlenschl%C3%A4ger">Adam Oehlenschlager</a> (“Death and His Victims”), and others.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn9pjq_QOlNGrmvTatBW01Ygf1h_HMq2YNoC4DCNQVS1X50mSNRNZl15eplXXrt53mErpMvTgs1VthNFAFv_YgUWR4nDtyPp5mrivgbMvkH91y2HSCL7E2bXoPbVAwoWQUfXi5ta8rYErT/s1600/00298_set.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn9pjq_QOlNGrmvTatBW01Ygf1h_HMq2YNoC4DCNQVS1X50mSNRNZl15eplXXrt53mErpMvTgs1VthNFAFv_YgUWR4nDtyPp5mrivgbMvkH91y2HSCL7E2bXoPbVAwoWQUfXi5ta8rYErT/s1600/00298_set.jpg" /></a></div>
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The translations were not universally admired; Mrs. Bushby took liberties; hers is not a literal translation. Yet she understood what the authors meant and captured the underlying sense of their work.<br />
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"Mrs Bushby is in many ways an interesting translator, who did not see Andersen as simply a children's writer, and that some of her divergences from Andersen's text are not mistakes but deliberate adaptations for the benefit of her audience in Victorian Britain...Mrs Anne S. Bushby knew Andersen personally, had indeed courted his acquaintance since his first visit to London in 1847, when her husband called upon him to invite him to dinner.</div>
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"At that time Andersen's English translator was Charles Beckwith Lohmeyer, but his English publisher, Richard Bentley, apparently encountered difficulties with him, and in a letter to Andersen dated 18 January 1853 suggested Mrs Anne Bushby instead, referring to her as 'a friend of yours, I believe.' How Mrs Bushby came to know Danish we do not know. However, it is remarkable that unlike most of Andersen's other translators from the same period, she seems to have translated mainly poetry, and of prose only Danish…<br />
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"...Mrs Bushby was not a professional translator, but that her work was indeed a labour of love. It is equally clear from examining the stories she chose that she was not aiming at the children's market, where stories like 'The Old Bachelor's Nightcap' have never belonged. Nor are her two volumes of tales (A Poet's Day Dreams (1853) and The Sand-hills of Jutland (I860) illustrated or in other ways made appealing to the young. Indeed it would seem that she saw it as her job to supplement the earlier translations, translating new work by Andersen rather than bringing out established successes in yet another version. This was undoubtedly also the attitude of her publisher, Bentley, who at one point complained to Andersen that competition was becoming so fierce and pirating so rife that only new work which could be published and sold before competitors could pirate it was reasonably sure of earning a profit... In the end, Bentley gave up publishing Andersen altogether" (Viggo Hjørnager Pedersen, <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fojs.ub.gu.se%2Fojs%2Findex.php%2Fnjes%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F240%2F237&ei=3s9iU7zRJ8zpoATFjYCQCw&usg=AFQjCNFmxCRQa01dGv40-8CS19ZFaoGkQw&sig2=1x9fozLDOS1coMag_kiYrQ&bvm=bv.65636070,d.cGU"><i>Anne Bushby, Translator of Hans Christian Andersen</i></a>, Gothenberg University, 2004). </div>
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Andersen's<i><b> The Man From Paradise</b></i> could not be more
different than the children's stories that earned him fame. A widow,
recently remarried, is depressed, thinking about her first husband in the great beyond while
the second is away. Suddenly, she hears a knock on the door and
presumes a ghost "or corpse-like form" will appear. It is, instead, a
young man. <br />
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Upon questioning him she learns that he is on his way
to Paris. Unfortunately, she hears it as "Paradise," and asks him to
give her love and that of their daughter to her late husband, as well as "his
successor's compliments."<br />
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The young man, an itinerant con man, plays along, claiming to have met her husband in Paradise, who, according to
him, is currently in bad shape and in need of all she can provide to
him.<br />
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The widow loads the knave up with food and clothing and
sends him on his way. Enter husband number two, who upon hearing his
wife's tale "smelled a rat" and took off on horseback after him, not admitting his
suspicions to his wife.<br />
<br />
He catches up to the thief but is bamboozled into
believing that the real bandit just passed by on foot a moment ago. Leaving his horse
in trust with the stranger, the man takes off into the forest after the knave, who, as expected,
mounts the horse and rides off, his laughter trailing behind him.</div>
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The duped and embarrassed husband schleps back home.</div>
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<i>"'Well, did you find him?' asked his smiling wife. </i></div>
<i>He answered, in a tone subdued, 'My life, <br />I did. I found him, and--and--for your sake,<br />Our best, our swiftest horse I let him take,<br />That he with greater speed might find his way.'<br />The dame smiled on him, and in accents gay<br />Exclaimed, 'O best of husbands! who could find<br />Your equal--one so thoughtful, wise, and kind!'"</i><br />
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The similarity to a typical <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/books/review/King-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">Raymond Carver</a> short story is manifest in
the tacit ending wherein the defeated husband collapses into the Lazy-Boy in the rec room of their seedy-side of the San Fernando Valley house-wreck in foreclosure, pours himself a tall
whiskey, drains it, and proceeds to empty the .38 kept on the coffee table as a conversation piece, shot by shot, into the ceiling, a wall, the big-screen TV, a window, his framed high school diploma, the widow, and himself: what we talk about when we talk about love.</div>
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<b>[BUSHBY, Mrs. Anne, editor and translator]</b>. <i>The Danes Sketched by
Themselves</i>. A Series of Popular Stories by the Best Danish Authors.
Translated by Mrs. Bushby. In Three Volumes. London: Richard Bentley,
1864.<br />
<br />
First edition. Three octavo volumes
(7 7/8 x 4 15/16 inches; 200 x 125 mm.). [2, publisher’s
advertisements], [6], 312; [4], 303, [1, blank]; [4], 303, [1, blank]
pp.<br />
<br />
Original terra cotta pebble-grain cloth with covers
decoratively stamped in blind and spines ruled, decoratively stamped,
and lettered in gilt. Original cream-colored endpapers. </div>
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Not in Sadleir or Wolff.<br />
__________<br />
__________Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-88523223634547976992014-04-30T02:30:00.000-07:002014-04-30T02:30:00.794-07:00The Awful Visitation Of Four Dreadful Monsters To Four Young Women<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikDSoLUoaqBGzRhKDsv8IrCxiIOSEWwwnOCjmXIGtsGxhldoPG2YL9AIHd1_s9dGflcH7fAEDRuE3vkgC2nE4v6hU4lPbsZ08CcYPoZiJs3BGbApTE38VJ9162w3sk3PRzz39ItmbvicSg/s1600/Awful.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikDSoLUoaqBGzRhKDsv8IrCxiIOSEWwwnOCjmXIGtsGxhldoPG2YL9AIHd1_s9dGflcH7fAEDRuE3vkgC2nE4v6hU4lPbsZ08CcYPoZiJs3BGbApTE38VJ9162w3sk3PRzz39ItmbvicSg/s1600/Awful.jpg" /></a></div>
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The awful Visitation of </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Four Dreadful </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Monsters, </span></div>
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To four Young Women, at one of </div>
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their Houses in this Town, where </div>
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they had met for the Purpose of </div>
seeing their intended Husbands.</div>
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On the 21st ult. JANE SMITH, MARY STEWART, ANN THOMPSON, and MARY RELL, agreed to meet according to the old rule and custom, to see if possible they could make their sweethearts appear. They all accordingly assembled at one of their houses, each of them provided with a clean shift, likewise a plentiful supply of bread, cheese, and ale, in order if their sweethearts should arrive. At length the long wished for time drew near and on its striking twelve, they all began to repeat the following words:<br />
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<i>May our sweethearts, if far or near,<br />At this moment before us appear, <br />And turn our shifts, if love they bear.</i><br />
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They had no sooner uttered the above words than four men entered their apartment with ghastly appearance, each of them having a lighted torch in their hands, and like Banquo's ghost unceremoniously seated themselves in the vacant chairs. Mirth, like a coward, vanished at their presence, and every smiling feature of the face was changed to an expression of consternation and horror. At length one bolder than the rest retreated, and she immediately followed by the whole females in the house; and the host remained as if riveted by some magic spell to his seat.<br />
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We shall leave him there to enjoy the company of his visitors, and return to those who fortunately found asylum in the house of a neighbor. After their alarm has a little subsided, and the power of utterance was restored, they began to conjecture who their visitors might be, and what the purport of their arrant? Unlike many momentous considerations, there was little diversity of opinion, for they unanimously agreed that it could be bno other than his satanic majesty and three of his imps which had fled with their bread, cheese, and ale.<br />
<br />
Fordyce, Printer, 29, Sandhill.</div>
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___________ </div>
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</div>
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<i>The awful Visitation of Four Dreadful Monsters, to four Young Women, at one of their Houses in this Town, where they had met for the Purpose of seeing their intended Husbands</i> [caption title]. Woodcut vignette of devil at top. Handbill, printed on one side only. 340x128 mm. [Newcastle upon Tyne]: Fordyce, Printer, 29, Sandhill, early 1800s.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.swanngalleries.com/">Swann Galleries</a>, offering this handbill in its<a href="http://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/asp/searchresults.asp?st=D&pg=1&sale_no=2348+++&ps=10"> Early Printed, Medical & Scientific Books sale, May 1, 2014</a>, with our thanks. </div>
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__________</div>
__________Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-63326621150941398022014-04-28T02:30:00.000-07:002014-04-28T06:29:45.619-07:00Spectacular Simone de Beauvoir Archive $380,000-$470,000 At Christie's<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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An outstanding trove of over 350 original and unpublished signed autograph letters and postcards written by French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, social theorist, and author of the major work of Feminist theory, <i><b>The Second Sex</b></i> (<span lang="fr"><i>Le Deuxième Sexe, </i></span>1949; 1953 in English), <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/">Simone de Beauvoir</a> (1908-1986), is being offered by <a href="http://www.christies.com/">Christie's-Paris</a> in it <a href="http://www.christies.com/salelanding/index.aspx?intSaleID=24720">Importants livres anciens, livers d'artistes & manuscrits sale, April 30, 2014</a>. It is estimated to sell for $380,000-$470,000 (€280,000-€350,000; £250,000-310,000).<br />
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Spanning the years 1918-1957, the letters, each 1-10 pages in length and written to her mother, Françoise de Beauvoir (1887-1963), constitute an informal book by de Beauvoir, discussing her childhood and adolescence, life as an independent teacher, her emancipation, etc., and in detail recounts her daily life, travels, her readings (Dumas, Dostoevsky, Saint- Exupery, Faulkner, Celine, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and many detective novels), meetings, and the progress of her literary work.<br />
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As the letters progress from youth to adulthood, discussion of her blood family ebbs and the tide flows to the "small family" she was adopted into, whose members, cited many times, included Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques-Laurent Bost, Olga Zuorro, Bianca Bienenfelds, Nathalie Sorokin Fernand, and Stephan Gerassi, and also Merleau-Ponty, Nizan, Colette Aubry, the Morels, the Guilles, the Leiris, Raymond Aron, etc. </div>
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There is much discussion of Jean-Paul Sartre, whom she met in 1929, opening "a new era" in her life. Several letters detail her life with Sartre: a trip together to Spain in 1931; sojourns in Spain, Italy, Germany - where she joined Sartre in an internship at the French Institute in Berlin in 1939 - in Greece (July-August 1937) and Morocco (summer 1938). She finds Nuremberg "covered with swastikas," and Morocco "horribly lousy, but extremely attractive." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgepat2ZKLcuihEdURgRIBzC36UZCDWtdb8QiM22yI1MQJcT1hIzqFwpYh7Rn2yPZfOrrVBMj8PJhb5yPx7sN1ifhe2gckvfsN8nzi0pP8gjAeysFkO7oRnHi6zkNxqw_wCjpkUD50ED0Z_/s1600/SdeB1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgepat2ZKLcuihEdURgRIBzC36UZCDWtdb8QiM22yI1MQJcT1hIzqFwpYh7Rn2yPZfOrrVBMj8PJhb5yPx7sN1ifhe2gckvfsN8nzi0pP8gjAeysFkO7oRnHi6zkNxqw_wCjpkUD50ED0Z_/s1600/SdeB1.jpg" /></a></div>
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She discusses her June 1940 exodus from Paris - Sartre was taken
prisoner and would not be released until April of the following year;
Simone took refuge in La Poueze. She writes of taking a long bicycle
trip with Sartre in the free zone to organize a resistance movement.
"There is a dearth here," she wrote Sept. 13, 1940 from Cannes, "and twice I
had a breakfast of dry bread." The Liberation and her immediate post-war life are covered.</div>
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She writes of her 1947 lecture tour in the United States, where she met novelist Nelson Algren, who took her for a walk on the wild side and became her lover. "New York absolutely delights me and life is delicious" (January 28, 1947). She talks about a trip to Sweden with Sartre, and another in the United States and Mexico with Algren in 1948, then Algeria the following autumn, and with a ferocious appetite for life she describes her discoveries and impressions. Concurrently, she began <i><b>The Second Sex</b></i>: "J’ai envie de travailler le plus possible parce que ce livre sera très long à faire et je voudrais quand même bien qu’il soit fni dans un an," she writes in September 1948; the book would be published a year later. </div>
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Additional Sartre, Algren, an important trip to China in 1955, and more through 1957 when the correspondence ends.</div>
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The provenance to the archive is rock-solid: from Henriette, Simone's sister, aka Helene de Beauvoir. Her adopted daughter, Mrs. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, assisted Christie's with the dates to many letters otherwise dateless.</div>
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The significance of this archive cannot be underestimated: it constitutes an epistolary autobiography of one of the towering figures in feminist thought and a major figure in twentieth century French literature.</div>
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Images courtesy of <a href="http://www.christies.com/">Christie's</a>, with our thanks.<br />
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__________Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-9015546427352020572014-04-25T02:30:00.000-07:002014-04-25T02:30:03.462-07:00A Superlative Original Kate Greenaway Watercolor <b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikPimquch6ZridaZh1DdIN4Uvke79w6psGnwKAWejP9hfhxhRPV_GvZKkfFBmtBFv2szF5CU3JvqSWFA8WHKkb-5PQ7Jl_1Xlb13IfTo3Bf3uzYZts7VtPf2sOzOYSFCFGjM0UEdUngTov/s1600/main.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikPimquch6ZridaZh1DdIN4Uvke79w6psGnwKAWejP9hfhxhRPV_GvZKkfFBmtBFv2szF5CU3JvqSWFA8WHKkb-5PQ7Jl_1Xlb13IfTo3Bf3uzYZts7VtPf2sOzOYSFCFGjM0UEdUngTov/s1600/main.jpg" /> </a></div>
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A scarce and significant Kate Greenaway painting, this beautiful gouache, an important early example of her evolution as an artist, appeared as "Disdain," opposite p. 84 in <i><b>The Quiver of Love </b></i>(1876), one of four unsigned illustrations by Greenaway of a total of eight, the other four by Walter Crane.</div>
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"The crowning event of this year [1876] was the publication by <a href="https://openlibrary.org/publishers/Printed_by_Marcus_Ward_&_Co.">Mr. Marcus Ward</a> of the volume mentioned by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._J._Loftie">Mr. [W.J.] Loftie</a>, entitled 'The Quiver of Love, a Collection of Valentines, Ancient and Modern, With Illustrations in Colours by from Drawings by Walter Crane and K. Greenaway.' All the designs had already been published separately..." (Spielmann, p. 53).</div>
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Indeed, this design originally appeared as one in a set of four valentine cards illustrated by Greenaway.</div>
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"Through Loftie she established a connection with the publisher Marcus Ward, for whom she designed 32 sets of greeting cards between 1868 and 1877, when his repeated exploitation of her designs without further payment led her to sever their connection. The cards served a triple purpose for Greenaway: they provided a steady income, they gave her work public visibility, and they furnished a forum in which to develop the 'Greenaway child' that would become her hallmark.</div>
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"Despite the rather garish colours employed in Ward's early chromolithographs, samples preserved in the greeting card collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum show both the evolution of Greenaway's style and its departure from other exceedingly mawkish cards then on the market. The valentine <i>Disdain</i> is a notable example. An especially popular greeting card, it was repackaged with other designs by Greenaway and Walter Crane and sold as a book, <i>The Quiver of Love</i>. Its Pre-Raphaelite tone would resurface more forcefully in much later paintings, such as the Fable of the Girl and Her Milk Pail (1893)" (Gaze, <i>Dictionary of Women Artists</i>, p. 611).</div>
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The watercolor is identified by the title, "Roses," on the rear of the artboard, and it may be that it was the painting's original name; it is unclear. Here in its original full design, the image was cropped for the card and book.</div>
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The verse (by "F.R.") accompanying this illustration in <i><b>The Quiver of Love</b></i> reads:</div>
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<i>My love, alas, our old acquaintance has forgot,<br />She never turns her eyes, and passing heeds me not;<br />Ah! scornful maiden! true hearts do not strew the ground,<br />When you relenting seek one, it may not be found</i>.</div>
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<b>GREENAWAY, Kate</b>.<i> "Disdain."</i> An Early Original Watercolor in Gouache by
Kate Greenaway for The Quiver of Love. c. 1875-1876. Image: 168 x 128 mm
on art board (218 x 176 mm).</div>
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Spielmann, p. 53. Schuster and Engen 167 (book). Schuster & Engen 288 (card). Engen, p. 49-50.</div>
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Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.nudelmanbooks.com/">Nudelman Rare Books</a>, with our thanks.</div>
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Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-21060816381109295812014-04-23T02:30:00.000-07:002014-04-23T06:55:12.145-07:00An "Excessively Rare" Thomas Rowlandson Suite Of Caricatures<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjImhA2M1qedrexIBSrgW3SXQlVDDMEYkVgtMZYftcGhUAJflppWzI8g2dYsUSU1FjqYS-v7MFc9N_ZhzF0wcfSGnCw_qLyNL9sSsWaF_KfgmKgxMiTkVHFOGLN8MiPIud9HIaFCrxl9v5H/s1600/Main19.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjImhA2M1qedrexIBSrgW3SXQlVDDMEYkVgtMZYftcGhUAJflppWzI8g2dYsUSU1FjqYS-v7MFc9N_ZhzF0wcfSGnCw_qLyNL9sSsWaF_KfgmKgxMiTkVHFOGLN8MiPIud9HIaFCrxl9v5H/s1600/Main19.jpg" /></a> </b></div>
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In 1800, <a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jackermann.htm">Rudolph Ackermann</a>, the great print publisher, issued <i><b>Masqueronians</b></i>, a suite of six hand-colored emblematic etched plates by the great caricaturist, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Rowlandson">Thomas Rowlandson</a>, each with three figures representing various English "types," for a total of eighteen.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEYtUnsI9PRfBDAhC74RKuNPmqFfwHESYTSKN29nCtWLsgENvA1L2TzvCk4Hlb3GlhegLk_o6_OwQ978z0a1f7TJuiNyrRjeA_ZtCCfrYD6Qkzl5-2hgoFwDAGguVCu_SFdr0R6EOngLVL/s1600/main1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEYtUnsI9PRfBDAhC74RKuNPmqFfwHESYTSKN29nCtWLsgENvA1L2TzvCk4Hlb3GlhegLk_o6_OwQ978z0a1f7TJuiNyrRjeA_ZtCCfrYD6Qkzl5-2hgoFwDAGguVCu_SFdr0R6EOngLVL/s1600/main1.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilKdVboLjFKPfEgLJX7CZlY52cu5m3Ddrv0EmeI7Kh2gjPoYV4jmoKVivmfg3eTcoWiLX0KmgPtfofUN6-UpO8AK0TgRdK_81TLVzXjlEA1RZBmtdy1mKd_cIl6iLNa6yfwURwcMQyFz0h/s1600/main2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilKdVboLjFKPfEgLJX7CZlY52cu5m3Ddrv0EmeI7Kh2gjPoYV4jmoKVivmfg3eTcoWiLX0KmgPtfofUN6-UpO8AK0TgRdK_81TLVzXjlEA1RZBmtdy1mKd_cIl6iLNa6yfwURwcMQyFz0h/s1600/main2.jpg" /></a></div>
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The species include an undertaker; barber; flower girl; lawyer;
soldier; fish-monger; street vendor; doctor; nun; pub owner; fashionable
lady; philosopher; fox hunter; writer, and etc.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9FsHEbKzHgDfZADZOO7eRdL0ToYwjBzPC85w7rp17r0ZQj80SNxYWQviEcFLOu58xKUE9R0slp4jjVZ1LT7w-rTqsnf2BqLZ46BF7gWsWm9GvdmktZtd3YgL9My9ufDX0pxQaOzuAHBGi/s1600/main3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9FsHEbKzHgDfZADZOO7eRdL0ToYwjBzPC85w7rp17r0ZQj80SNxYWQviEcFLOu58xKUE9R0slp4jjVZ1LT7w-rTqsnf2BqLZ46BF7gWsWm9GvdmktZtd3YgL9My9ufDX0pxQaOzuAHBGi/s1600/main3.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb0dZpzBQFGuYU0qIpk8WLZgRgj_T11tXBA6GBV7YRvYX6dL4J6jw3qGaF5DGF5Ai1qms086D1EHfCuRnlUI-pn6YbGYdA9y4TUmU4dqzjrbC7GjSQFAKyzmGbVwadSOv4aD59ZT0Ic4fp/s1600/Main4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb0dZpzBQFGuYU0qIpk8WLZgRgj_T11tXBA6GBV7YRvYX6dL4J6jw3qGaF5DGF5Ai1qms086D1EHfCuRnlUI-pn6YbGYdA9y4TUmU4dqzjrbC7GjSQFAKyzmGbVwadSOv4aD59ZT0Ic4fp/s1600/Main4.jpg" /></a></div>
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Only one copy has been seen at auction since 1922: "An excessively rare Rowlandson item, only one other copy being known" (Anderson Galleries sale, 1922).</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiChijM2gIxPnfWVySxRXMgo_XuITq6P4zt5pzCiTfWINYKG6pTxgT9AOFmwDrN_xdAj7tUmRTxpgd0DqkGlvoeeIgyZGgAi8OHrk5CT_aMQz8UDscmNK6mwzeb1DnsK-hIqyOf5yQmQKSL/s1600/Main5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiChijM2gIxPnfWVySxRXMgo_XuITq6P4zt5pzCiTfWINYKG6pTxgT9AOFmwDrN_xdAj7tUmRTxpgd0DqkGlvoeeIgyZGgAi8OHrk5CT_aMQz8UDscmNK6mwzeb1DnsK-hIqyOf5yQmQKSL/s1600/Main5.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsalpOd5r92n_mskE1Lm7D8eMayrIh8yHD3oKKIL3J0eKS2mp50E9xyVeVR8OhSXQk7YggctCE8MiyRnu_1CBWDH3Kgqo7LqfXqJUb01LcxiS0f48Ya2U_Riox2D1GfjOD0je8yupm7Nok/s1600/Main6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsalpOd5r92n_mskE1Lm7D8eMayrIh8yHD3oKKIL3J0eKS2mp50E9xyVeVR8OhSXQk7YggctCE8MiyRnu_1CBWDH3Kgqo7LqfXqJUb01LcxiS0f48Ya2U_Riox2D1GfjOD0je8yupm7Nok/s1600/Main6.jpg" /></a></div>
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Color-plate books depicting itinerant tradesmen and/or occupations were
nothing new in 1800, when <i><b>Masqueronians</b></i> was published. <i><b>Cries of London</b></i> -
"cries" being the street language of vendors hawking their wares in the
squares and markets of 17th-century London - was published by John
Overton in London 1680-1700. Between 1792 and 1795 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Wheatley_(painter)%E2%80%8E">Francis Wheatley</a>
exhibited a series of oil paintings entitled the “Cries of London.” It was a popular subject.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikJXUYbkHJUF4fhynVCvolEkMOkeMOLMPIPWsZAFid287n1leIMIOj2iFSGE3Qn_5EFB1xSU8HDd5MsDsb_UhCfBBDvqUlwd5TDoCGZBdx5eX1wRJ7DlP4d-k42_M44J0I0wLYIzc4y6X9/s1600/Main7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikJXUYbkHJUF4fhynVCvolEkMOkeMOLMPIPWsZAFid287n1leIMIOj2iFSGE3Qn_5EFB1xSU8HDd5MsDsb_UhCfBBDvqUlwd5TDoCGZBdx5eX1wRJ7DlP4d-k42_M44J0I0wLYIzc4y6X9/s1600/Main7.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA31Ta48SUB3m56YWgo_SbeSXAiEp2gu2lhvH3z_xIjyZoCoQBCmwfU50V3UKGUu_rIAcAODaqW1IeWLIXmHed-M4RgsKCeULKgLhktg1mYt5p6Z-MOOMor-ooIXvzqjBeJQSYANoOINBk/s1600/Main8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA31Ta48SUB3m56YWgo_SbeSXAiEp2gu2lhvH3z_xIjyZoCoQBCmwfU50V3UKGUu_rIAcAODaqW1IeWLIXmHed-M4RgsKCeULKgLhktg1mYt5p6Z-MOOMor-ooIXvzqjBeJQSYANoOINBk/s1600/Main8.jpg" /></a></div>
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But it was up to Rowlandson to treat the subject emblematically as social satire, the wares or tools of the trade worn as garlands.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidPGWjs-IR7nJFLpHsMQR3TIYb39mSbi7yQXw8lJCUnAEvpZsjDWpDr5xXfJlotsZNVQKHlEDy55-9M1w6R3Hiej3V8OoX7memxbCPEe-BZONfQMy6QMOe4_LgRIS_7B7FV-1EgP70RFZ0/s1600/Main10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidPGWjs-IR7nJFLpHsMQR3TIYb39mSbi7yQXw8lJCUnAEvpZsjDWpDr5xXfJlotsZNVQKHlEDy55-9M1w6R3Hiej3V8OoX7memxbCPEe-BZONfQMy6QMOe4_LgRIS_7B7FV-1EgP70RFZ0/s1600/Main10.jpg" /></a></div>
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His aim included a caustic arrow to the faces he associated with each occupation. The street vendor above ("Trafficorum"), for example, is depicted with a hooked nose and it doesn't require a Ph.D. to understand that Rowlandson is skewering Jews. Rowlandson impales physicians as sour-pusses impaling patients with their main instrument of practice, a clyster syringe, the better to drain der keister of all that ails ye.</div>
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Don't get him started on nuns and the proprietors of pubs.<br />
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We will gloss-over the fashionable lady in her finest frou-frou: the philosopher appears to be annoyed to be matched with her; inquiring into the mystery of life is his trade but the mystery of women remains a mystery to him, as it was to whom appears to be his descendant, Freud. </div>
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Actors and fox-hunters beware: Rowlandson has your number. And writers? The pen may be mightier than the sword but strangled by vipers, as <i>Penserosa</i> seems to be, the sword might be the best way out when critics spew venom, quills being notoriously undependable instruments of suicide.</div>
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<b>ROWLANDSON, Thomas</b>. <i>Masqueronians</i>. London: R. Ackermann, 1800. <br />
<br />
Folio (275 x 375 mm). Six hand-colored etchings, each with three emblematic portraits, all printed in brown ink.<br />
<br />
The Plates: <br />
<br />
1. Philosophorum, Fancynina, Epicurum<br />
2. Penserosa, Tally Ho! Rum!, Allegora<br />
3. Physicorum, Nunina, Publicorum<br />
4. Funeralorum, Virginia, Hazardorum<br />
5. Battleorum, Billingsgatina, Trafficorum<br />
6. Barberoum, Flora, Lawyerorum<br />
<br />
BM Satires 9616-9621.</div>
_________<br />
<br />
Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.<br />
__________<br />
__________Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-84030438334034334992014-04-21T02:30:00.000-07:002014-04-21T02:30:00.572-07:00Primo Copy Of Piranese's Imaginary Prisons $270,000-$400,000 At Christie's<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPHEQ0NJ6Ot61pejV2z_3BFzz3_ezqXaNwHnZSJVvpL-4NpsBBgQ4hnkdJhJ5AKL8bAuVTZpoY4b-F-34lirIpW84Zrd-QPk9aXUUbn2BpE_q8p1Enh_bj_sT2zY9m3gzx7xtsmZvZijSP/s1600/piranese1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPHEQ0NJ6Ot61pejV2z_3BFzz3_ezqXaNwHnZSJVvpL-4NpsBBgQ4hnkdJhJ5AKL8bAuVTZpoY4b-F-34lirIpW84Zrd-QPk9aXUUbn2BpE_q8p1Enh_bj_sT2zY9m3gzx7xtsmZvZijSP/s1600/piranese1.jpg" /></a></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"I need to produce great ideas, and I believe that if I were commissioned to design a new universe, I would be mad enough to undertake it" (Piranese).</i></blockquote>
</div>
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A magnificent copy of the scarce first edition of Italian artist and printmaker <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pira/hd_pira.htm">Giovanni Battista Piranese's</a> (1720-1778) celebrated suite of designs for an imaginary prison, <i><b>Invenzioni Capric di Carceri</b></i> (Rome: Giovanni Bouchard, n.d. [c. 1750]) - which has had an enormous influence upon literature - is being offered by <a href="http://www.christies.com/">Christie's-Paris</a> in its <a href="http://www.christies.com/salelanding/index.aspx?intSaleID=24720">Importants livres anciens, livres d'artistes & manuscrits sale, April 30, 2014</a>.<br />
<br />
With all of its fourteen beautifully designed and etched plates in their first impression, second state (except one), before numbering and retouching, on un-watermarked paper, and in excellent condition, it is estimated to sell for $270,000-$400,000.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOxDbQkQaVKObWWTr8Lfly7pu4r1ih66ImyP2lqDM6vOlFKbaHlXtiIe7VFwqNAD1RHSd7_i6jO6fkEpzYQSEqTOtflegGU1Z6ZhSznYfz3jdNV8o2jZLqUlhl-qhNZJ1A11hS3iYAxUpn/s1600/piranese2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOxDbQkQaVKObWWTr8Lfly7pu4r1ih66ImyP2lqDM6vOlFKbaHlXtiIe7VFwqNAD1RHSd7_i6jO6fkEpzYQSEqTOtflegGU1Z6ZhSznYfz3jdNV8o2jZLqUlhl-qhNZJ1A11hS3iYAxUpn/s1600/piranese2.jpg" /></a></div>
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The plates depict fanciful subterranean vaults and machines somewhat Kafkaesque in nature, with surreal distortion later found in the work of M.C. Escher, featuring bizarre, labyrinthine structures that are chemerical mash-ups of monumental architecture, epic caprices depicting "ancient Roman or Baroque ruins converted into fantastic, visionary dungeons filled with mysterious scaffolding and instruments of torture" (Encyclopedia Britannica).<br />
<br />
Only the engravings of Goya and William Blake have inspired writers as much as those of Piranesi's <i><b>Carceri</b></i>. Their roots lie in the theatrical dioramas that Piranese designed for the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/64385/Galli-da-Bibiena-family">Galli da Bibiena</a> family of stage set designers in Bologna as well as those for his father, a stonemason. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge1ToLbJSw7xstuLgw-skHnWWLUjmbFrtrAtnqbZqu0AAmkSKo4rWXL_tWWRZm37nnsBIhoqJ66g5sEkVYOHyGd-sME46GUqATGA8lB41u7x6vSXkF2eKfiF3EDYY_YhZG-Wj5xDW6oNj-/s1600/piranese3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge1ToLbJSw7xstuLgw-skHnWWLUjmbFrtrAtnqbZqu0AAmkSKo4rWXL_tWWRZm37nnsBIhoqJ66g5sEkVYOHyGd-sME46GUqATGA8lB41u7x6vSXkF2eKfiF3EDYY_YhZG-Wj5xDW6oNj-/s1600/piranese3.jpg" /></a></div>
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The rare second edition, later published by Piranese himself with the plates reworked, contains an extra two plates yet here "in Bouchard's edition the plates are more lightly etched throughout with none of the strong contrasts of light and shade seen in the later edition. There is a wonderful simplicity in the design in the early states, and none shows this quality in greater beauty than plate four of the series" ( Hind ). <br />
<br />
The haunting, dream-like quality to the plates fired the imagination of the Romantics.<br />
<br />
"The fascination of Piranese's<i><b> Imaginary Prisons</b></i> for the literary mind is attested by transmutations in story, poem, and essay. In a recent attempt to explain the appeal, Aldous Huxley remarks that the etchings express obscure psychological truths: they represent 'metaphysical prisons, whose seat is within the mind, whose walls are made of nightmare and incomprehension, whose chains are anxiety and their racks a sense of personal and even generic guilt.' Whatever the explanation may be, the influence of the <i><b>Prisons</b></i> on writers of the last two centuries, particularly on the Romantics, will one day make a chapter of literary history which will include the names of Walpole, Beckford, Coleridge, De Quincey, Balzac, Gautier, Baudelaire, and doubtless many others" (Paul F. Jamieson. <i>Musset, de Quincey, and Piranese</i>. Modern Language Notes, Vol. 71, No. 2, Feb. 1956).<br />
<br />
"Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist...which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever: some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) representing vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, etc., etc., expressive of enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further, and you perceive it come to a sudden abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him" (Thomas De Quincey, <i>Confessions of an English Opium Eater</i>).</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZC9_FQZTQAwdqJZth1y0w0Q80H2Bq6zDnjltkY3RtoVSKrF-z42Mkqe-W9OZ1Xn53d46oBN4YvPx8TusHuptsmHfiRzD47_gwk3hlLJ7AxXFT7pAn1lx_tKQleVgqCCX1S8a12eFKFpB2/s1600/piranese4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZC9_FQZTQAwdqJZth1y0w0Q80H2Bq6zDnjltkY3RtoVSKrF-z42Mkqe-W9OZ1Xn53d46oBN4YvPx8TusHuptsmHfiRzD47_gwk3hlLJ7AxXFT7pAn1lx_tKQleVgqCCX1S8a12eFKFpB2/s1600/piranese4.jpg" /></a></div>
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The Plates:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
I - Title <br />
II - The Round Tower<br />
III - The Grand Piazza<br />
IV - The Smoking Fire<br />
V - The Drawbridge<br />
VI - The Staircase with Trophies<br />
VII - The Giant Wheel<br />
VIII - Prisoners on a Projecting Platform<br />
IX - The Arch with a Shell Ornament<br />
X - The Sawhorse<br />
XI - The Well<br />
XII - The Gothic Arch<br />
XIII - The Pier with a Lamp<br />
XIV - The Pier with Chains<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"One of the greatest printmakers
of the eighteenth century, Piranesi always considered himself an
architect. The son of a stonemason and master builder, he received
practical training in structural and hydraulic engineering from a
maternal uncle who was employed by the Venetian waterworks, while his
brother, a Carthusian monk, fired the aspiring architect with enthusiasm
for the history and achievements of the ancient Romans. Piranesi also
received a thorough background in perspective construction and stage
design. Although he had limited success in attracting architectural
commissions, this diverse training served him well in the profession
that would establish his fame" (Metropolitan Museum of Art).</div>
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This copy, formerly in the collection of the <a href="http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb.html">National Gallery of Art</a> (with small stamp on the back of each plate with stamp cancellation), was last seen at Christie's-London July 2, 2003 when it sold for $140, 506 (£83,650; €101,704).</div>
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<a href="http://vimeo.com/perspixe">Grégoire Dupond</a> created the below animated film for <a href="http://www.factum-arte.com/pag/154/The-Art-of-Piranesi--architect--engraver--antiquarian---vedutista--designer--The-exhibition">Factum Arte</a>, based upon Piranesi's engravings for <i><b>Invenzioni Capric di Carceri</b></i>, as a walk through the artist's amazing spaces:</div>
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/36757486?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe>
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__________<br />
<br />
Images courtesy of <a href="http://www.christies.com/">Christie's</a>, with our thanks.<br />
__________<br />
__________Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-82486369572223590802014-04-18T02:30:00.000-07:002014-04-18T06:51:05.476-07:00Dime Novels Led To Boy's Death By Lynching<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidAHj7GkKy-9lzI7t0bcbAwBTiETiPxaOB9RpdMWYajb-LgVeQG7hzQWLfOdJIR5kYsb8B3IqsmsnrYUo5mMWPnwBIJRIimKaRZi-uogXSWd6v4fkC1wfCduyRydAw4JUx_ZxI4aJxNcFu/s1600/jesse+james+dime+novel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidAHj7GkKy-9lzI7t0bcbAwBTiETiPxaOB9RpdMWYajb-LgVeQG7hzQWLfOdJIR5kYsb8B3IqsmsnrYUo5mMWPnwBIJRIimKaRZi-uogXSWd6v4fkC1wfCduyRydAw4JUx_ZxI4aJxNcFu/s1600/jesse+james+dime+novel.jpg" /></a></div>
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"Kansas city, Jan. 24 - The Times' Wichita, Kansas, special says: Reports are received here to the effect that Sheriff Shenneman was shot while arresting Charles Cobb, alias Smith, a desperado, near Udell station yesterday afternoon and died last night. By the aid of neighbors Smith was held at a farm house where he was captured to await assistance from Winfield. Upon receipt of the intelligence at Winfield twenty-five armed men proceeded to the scene of the tragedy and hung Cobb to the nearest tree. Cobb also killed a constable in Butler county a few days before" (Las Vegas Daily Gazette, January 25, 1883)<br />
<br />
"During Wednesday evening he confessed to Mrs. Shenneman, the widow of the dead sheriff, that he was Charles Cobb, and gave her his revolver. Subsequently he stated to Shenneman that he had been led to the committal of the lawless act by reading the exploits of Jesse James and other desperadoes..." (Arkansas City Weekly, February 7, 1883).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFdgu5NNtMqd-8jZIeijFXuNqLjW_3AAIbBE6pHN9xC9QCseR_oUwggejbAxWcrwvP67AgFJU3m21SxqwI_P2QhdWBFqFEAJL7DPJC_O1IO-u8PB6lM6s61D40ucdrGxWEynUPbNDjLS-0/s1600/NY_Det_Lib_389.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFdgu5NNtMqd-8jZIeijFXuNqLjW_3AAIbBE6pHN9xC9QCseR_oUwggejbAxWcrwvP67AgFJU3m21SxqwI_P2QhdWBFqFEAJL7DPJC_O1IO-u8PB6lM6s61D40ucdrGxWEynUPbNDjLS-0/s1600/NY_Det_Lib_389.jpg" /></a> </div>
<br />
"A Jefferson County constable tried to arrest a young person by the name of Charles Cobb on Saturday, January 13, 1883. Jefferson County is northeast of Topeka. Cobb was wanted for promiscuously brandishing a knife and a revolver at a country dance the week before. Instead of surrendering, Cobb whipped out one of his deadly six-shooters and killed the constable. After the shooting, Cobb mounted a horse and rode off in a southwesterly direction. Possibly he was making for Hunnewell, Kansas, and from there to take the cattle trail to Texas.<br />
<br />
"Sheriff Shenneman received a telegram from the authorities stating that the fleeing murderer would probably pass through or near Winfield, and to intercept him if possible. Shenneman circulated cards giving the desperado’s description and offering the usual reward for his capture.<br />
<br />
"Cobb carried a Winchester rifle and many other weapons, and if he was recognized during his flight, the invitation to tackle a perambulating arsenal was declined.<br />
<br />
"Charles Cobb came to Winfield during the morning of Monday, January 15th, and then traveled north toward Udall. He was seen by a farmer to stop near the corner of Mr. Worden’s farm in Vernon Township and read the placards located there. One of them was of himself.<br />
<br />
"The fleeing Cobb stopped at the Jacobus house, in Maple Township, in the evening. Cobb told Mr. and Mrs. Jacobus that his name was Smith and that he had just come from Texas with a herd of cattle. He further stated that he was seeking work till spring. They told him they did not need help then. Cobb then asked if he could pay board and stay a week, so he could look around. Jacobus agreed, and received payment for a week’s board. Mr. and Mrs. Jacobus testified later that Cobb had a shotgun in his possession and noticed he always carried a revolver and slept with it under his pillow. They thought this was simply his 'cowboy ways' and let it pass.<br />
<br />
"On the Sunday before the shooting Cobb showed some boys his skill as a marksman. Cobb was breaking bottles thrown into the air with a single shot from his revolver.<br />
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<br />
"The schoolmaster, who also boarded with the Jacobus family, received one of the description cards sent out by the Sheriff. He came to Winfield and informed the Sheriff of his suspicions on Monday evening, January 22nd. That same evening Shenneman informed a friend that he had located his man and in less than twenty-four hours would have him in hand. The Sheriff was cautioned to be careful as the boy was clearly a desperate character and would shoot to kill. Shenneman said he would go prepared and could shoot as quick as anyone. On Tuesday morning about nine o’clock the law officer put his Winchester in his buggy, strapped on his revolver and left for the Jacobus house.<br />
<br />
"Mrs. Jacobus stated that on Tuesday morning, January 23rd, Cobb’s week’s board was out so they relented and hired him to work. As they were all sitting at lunch, some one drove up and called Mr. Jacobus out. He soon came back and said that Dr. Jones, of Udall, was out there and would stop for lunch. Dr. Jones was an assumed name used by the Sheriff. Charles Cobb was all this time sitting at the table. Mr. Jacobus - and the man introduced as Dr. Jones - passed through the kitchen and the 'doctor' looked very sharply at the prisoner. The two men went into the other room and Shenneman pulled off his overcoat and threw it on a chair. About this time young Cobb got up from the table, took his hat and gloves and started toward the door.<br />
<br />
"Mr. Shenneman then sprang upon Cobb from behind. A scuffle followed and they fell to the floor. Two shots rang out with both bullets lodging in Shenneman’s stomach, but he continued to hold Cobb. Mr. Jacobus ran in and took the pistol away from the prisoner and told him to give up or die.<br />
<br />
"The Caldwell paper reported 'At all events, it appears to be certain that when the latter (Cobb) got through, he started to go out, when the sheriff, thinking he was likely able to handle what appeared to be a mere boy, threw his arms around Cobb from behind. The latter managed to get hold of his self-cocking revolver, and pointing it backward, fired, the ball penetrating the sheriffs bowels.' The prisoner then cried out that he would give up, not to kill him. Mr. Shenneman then said, 'Hold him, he has killed me.' The sheriff staggered into a nearby bedroom and fell onto the bed. Jacobus and the school teacher, after tying up the prisoner, went to assist Shenneman.<br />
<br />
"Sheriff Shenneman later said that as he looked at the fugitive, he decided that he wouldn’t pull a revolver on such a mere boy. He would catch Cobb and hold him while the other fellow disarmed him. After the Sheriff grabbed Cobb, he found that he couldn’t handle him.<br />
<br />
"Mr. Jacobus said: 'When Shenneman jumped on him, I followed up close. As soon as I could, I got hold of his revolver and held it on him until he said he would give up. I then called the teacher from the school house and we tied him.'<br />
<br />
"Sheriff Shenneman could not be moved. Plans were made to bring the prisoner to Winfield in the Sheriffs buggy by Cowley County Deputy Taylor and Undersheriff McIntire. A wagon-load of men, having heard the news and intent on seizing Cobb, met them that evening about a mile from town. The Sheriffs buggy was lighter and the team faster, so the officers outdistanced and lost the pursuers.<br />
<br />
"The officers came into town in a roundabout way and unloaded their prisoner just back of D. A. Millington’s residence. They went through the back yard into Rev. Platter’s wood shed. Cobb was held there by Deputy McIntire while Taylor scouted around. Taylor found that the jail was surrounded by a mob, which had spread out and was also patrolling the alleys in the vicinity.<br />
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"Deputy McIntire in the meantime was holding the prisoner in the wood shed, and they could hear footsteps prowling around the area. The prisoner said he wanted to be shackled to him and given a pistol; then he would go into the jail. George McIntire wouldn’t accede to that request so Cobb hunted around and got a smooth stick of stove wood. Soon the crowd around the jail was distracted and the mob rushed to another part of town. The officers seized the opportunity and hurried the prisoner over and put him in jail.<br />
<br />
"The Courier reporter and other Winfield folks returned by way of Udall where the train had been held for them. An immense crowd had gathered at the depot expecting the prisoner to arrive in that way. They made a rush for the coach. They were, with difficulty, persuaded that the man was not there. It was not a crowd of howling rabble but an organized body of determined men. They were bound to avenge the brave officer to the last drop of blood.<br />
<br />
"The crowd then marched up the main streets of the city. They scattered guards out onto the roads over which they expected the prisoner to arrive. Others watched the jail while hundreds gathered on the streets in little knots and discussed plans for capturing the prisoner from the officers.<br />
<br />
"One more venturesome than the rest went about with a large rope on his arm and blood in his eye. The crowd surged too and fro until long after midnight when they began to thin out. Under the influence of more sober-minded citizens, they gave up their ideas of mob violence. About this time McIntire and Taylor appeared on the street and the few remaining citizens were eager to learn the whereabouts of the prisoner. Little was learned before morning and even then the location where he was being held was known to only a select few.<br />
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<br />
"On Wednesday morning, January 24, 1883, a Courier reporter learned of the prisoner‘s whereabouts and interviewed him. The reporter copied the following description of the Jefferson County murderer that was telegraphed to the Sheriff.<br />
<br />
“'Charles Cobb, about nineteen or twenty years old: light complexion: no whiskers or mustache: blue eyes: a scar over eye or cheek, don’t know which: height five to five feet three inches; weight 125 to 135 pounds: had black slouch hat: dark brown clothes and wore large comforter: may have large white hat: was riding a black mare pony with roach mane, and carried a Winchester Rifle and two revolvers: had downcast look.'<br />
<br />
"The prisoner crouched in a comer of a small room. After introducing himself, the reporter asked the prisoner for his story of the trouble. He said: 'My name is George Smith, and I am about eighteen years old. I came up to Dodge City from Texas with a herd of cattle, in the employ of W. Wilson. Have been on the trail about a year. My parents reside in Pennsylvania. I was paid sixty dollars when the cattle were shipped.<br />
<br />
“'I then rode east, intending to work my way back, and on a week from last Monday, it being too cold to ride, I stopped at Jacobus’ and tried to get work, or to board, until I could look around. On Tuesday as I was eating lunch a man came in who was introduced as Dr. Jones. As I got up to go out, the Doctor jumped on me without saying a word. My first impression was that it was a conspiracy to rob me, and I wrestled to defend myself.'<br />
<br />
“'I had a revolver on my person because I was among strangers, had some money, and was used to keeping it about me. If he had only told me, he was an officer, and had put his gun on me as he ought to have done if he believed I was the desperate character I am credited with being, this business would never have happened.<br />
<br />
“'I am no criminal, and I am not afraid if the law is allowed to take its course. If a mob attacks me, all I ask is the officers will do me the justice to allow me to defend myself. If they will take off these irons and put a six-shooter in my hand, I will take my chance against the kind of men who will come here to mob me. I am guilty only of defending myself, and I ask the law either to defend me or accord me the privilege of defending myself.'<br />
<br />
"The newspaper reporter stated: 'In personal appearance the prisoner looks to be a bright, healthy, smooth-faced boy, and has but few of the characteristics of a desperado. Cobb is a perfect picture of robust health, muscular and compact as an athlete. The prisoner’s description tallies almost exactly with that of the Jefferson County murderer. He has a small scar above his lip on the right comer, and above his eye. In talking the captive uses excellent language, speaks grammatically and shows evidence of good breeding.'<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb6lIoHFONgpOQZKnzGKUcZfCkm7VUkel9q9uuK6FKvhvMZQEnIMP4GKyQFkyaWlAq2tTZGQrerSlJR4Ep7SPt9gHGh8iFqjSS9Gkf_-gPgX2mpJ6NbFgmClCn1QiiYAoYMyMbe02GEFkt/s1600/contentdm.carleton.edu3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb6lIoHFONgpOQZKnzGKUcZfCkm7VUkel9q9uuK6FKvhvMZQEnIMP4GKyQFkyaWlAq2tTZGQrerSlJR4Ep7SPt9gHGh8iFqjSS9Gkf_-gPgX2mpJ6NbFgmClCn1QiiYAoYMyMbe02GEFkt/s1600/contentdm.carleton.edu3.jpg" /></a> </div>
<br />
"The prisoner was taken to Wichita later Wednesday afternoon by deputy Finch and confined in the Wichita jail. The lawmen wanted him out of the way of violence in case of Sheriff Shenneman’s death.<br />
<br />
"On Thursday morning, January 25, 1883, the Sheriff of Jefferson County arrived, accompanied by a farmer who lived near Cobb and knew him well. They identified the prisoner as Charles Cobb. Cobb feigned not to know his old neighbor and still stuck to his cow-boy story.<br />
<br />
"Sheriff Shenneman died Thursday evening at 9:45 p.m., in Udall, Kansas.<br />
<br />
"On Saturday morning, January 27th, Sheriff Thralls of Sumnner County, Sheriff Watt of Sedgwick County, and Cowley County Deputy Taylor brought Charles Cobb back to Winfield in a carriage. Parties on the north-bound train passed them between Mulvane and Udall.<br />
<br />
"This news electrified citizens in the community. In the evening about two hundred resolute men gathered at the crossing. They boarded the incoming train thinking that Cobb might have been put aboard at some way station, but he was not found. The vigilantes returned to the city and placed squads at each bridge and on streets surrounding the jail.<br />
<br />
"The carriage with the prisoner arrived about eleven o’clock. The officers came by way of the ford at Tunnel Mill, thus enabling them to avoid outlying pickets, and drove to the crossing of Fuller street and Eleventh Avenue. Deputy Taylor was then dispatched to the jail to see how the land lay. He arrived just after a squad had searched the jail for the prisoner Cobb. Taylor quickly returned with the news that it was certain death to put Cobb in the jail.<br />
<br />
"Sumner County Sheriff Thralls and Sedgwick County Sheriff Watt took the prisoner out of the carriage and started south on foot with him.<br />
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<br />
"Taylor was instructed to take the team out into the country. In going out of town, a squad of vigilantes caught the deputy and brought him back. From all parts of town men came running, wild with excitement. They formed in a dense mass around Deputy Taylor and clamored to know what had been done with the prisoner. As the crowd surged around the brave police officer, it felt as if the very air was laden with vengeance.<br />
<br />
"Soon someone cried 'the Brettun,' and almost to a man the crowd started in a run for the hotel. Here they found the door barred, but one of their number was allowed inside. He looked in the room of Butler County Sheriff Douglass, and found nothing.<br />
<br />
"The vigilantes then returned to the group holding Taylor and demanded that he tell them where they could find Cobb. Soon the horde went again to the jail and searched it from top to bottom. They then searched the courthouse and outbuildings. The search being fruitless, they re-turned exasperated, and for a few moments it looked as if Taylor would be abused.<br />
<br />
"Deputy Taylor was finally compelled to tell where he had left the prisoner. A rush was made for that part of town, carrying Taylor along to show the exact spot. A vigorous, but fruitless, search of barns and outbuildings in the vicinity continued for the balance of the night.<br />
<br />
"By this time Sheriffs Thralls and Watt, with the prisoner, had traveled out the Badger Creek road to William Dunn’s, arriving at two o’clock, and failed in securing a conveyance with which to transport the prisoner to Douglass. They went on until they found a team and wagon. Sheriff Watt then took the prisoner to Wichita, by way of Douglass, where Cobb was to remain for some time.<br />
<br />
"Cobb was returned from Wichita on Wednesday evening, January 31st, by Deputy Taylor and again lodged in jail. Mrs. Shenneman went in and talked to him for a few moments. As she looked into his eyes, the criminal broke down completely and wept like a child. Soon people began to gather and many citizens saw Cobb for the first time. About eleven o’clock he asked to see Mrs. Shenneman again and confessed to her that he was Charles Cobb. He asked her to write to the wife of the constable in Jefferson County and tell her that he was sorry for killing him. He asked her to keep his revolver. Afterward, to Sheriff McIntire, he said he was led astray by reading the exploits of Jesse James and other desperados in the dime novels.<br />
<br />
"Mr. William Shenneman (who was a police officer in Bay City, Michigan) and Deputy Taylor remained to help Sheriff McIntire should anything occur. By two o’clock in the morning everything was quiet about the jail and on the streets so Mr. Shenneman and Deputy Taylor retired to the house across the walk.<br />
<br />
"Startled late pedestrians saw a company of men, their faces covered with black masks and thoroughly organized, marching down Ninth Avenue toward the jail. They went to Fuller Street where the leader flashed a dark lantern. The mob then marched back and tiled into the courthouse yard.Four of them, with pistols drawn, rushed into the sheriffs office, located in front of the jail. The black-masked leader ordered Sheriff McIntire to throw his hands up and the order was quickly obeyed. He then demanded the keys and Sheriff McIntire handed them over.<br />
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<br />
"The masked Captain then threw the jail door open and said 'Number 1, 2 and 3 to your posts!' and three men trotted into the jail. He then ordered 'Reserve, guard the door!' The three men came out leading the prisoner. The Captain and his three men stayed at the office door for about five minutes before he demanded: 'DO you promise you won’t follow us?' No answer was immediately given so the captain shouted 'Halt!' to the men on the sidewalk with the prisoner. He then turned to the Sheriff again and said, 'Now say you won’t follow us, and say it D--m quick!' He received no answer.<br />
<br />
"The other three left, but the Captain delayed for a moment while standing in the door, with revolver drawn. He again ordered, 'Command. Halt! Send me two men!' The men came and took his place as the leader left.<br />
<br />
"The two masked men guarded the Sheriff for about five minutes. They then pulled the office door shut and lee. The company surrounded the criminal and marched him down Ninth Avenue to Main Street. From there they moved north to Eighth Street and then turned west until they reached the railroad bridge. By this time a multitude had gathered and were following them. Two squad members fell back and with drawn revolvers they shouted 'Keep your distance.'<br />
<br />
"The masked vigilantes got to the railroad bridge where a rope, prepared beforehand, was placed about Cobb’s neck and tied to the bridge beam.The moon was just up; and several boys who were following, crept up into the brush on the river bank and saw the rest of the proceedings. After the rope was tied, the unidentified leader, in a gruff voice, ordered Cobb to say what he had to say quickly. The boys in the brush heard Cobb say, 'Oh, don’t boys!' and 'Father, have mercy on Me!' Two men wearing masks then took him up and dropped him through between the bridge railings.<br />
<br />
"Cobb fell about ten feet and rebounded half the distance. The black-masked mob then filed on across the bridge, leaving two of their number to guard the rear. These stood until the others had gone on across, when they too retreated. The crowd came up and looked at the victim. His body continued to hang there while the coroner was summoned. The scene was visited by hundreds. The County Coroner arrived, empaneled a jury, and only then was the body taken down.<br />
<br />
"The coroner’s jury returned its verdict the next day, February 2, 1883, which was 'Charles Cobb came to his death at the hands of parties unknown to the jury.'<br />
<br />
"Mr. George C. Rembaugh owned and operated the 'Telegram' newspaper at that time. Many years later he was quoted as submitting the following story. 'A coroner’s jury was called to sit on the case. The main witness, when questioned as to whether or not he could identity any member of the mob answered, 'Why yes, Judge.' He then addressed the foreman, 'The leader looked a lot like you and was built a lot like you. He even moved around like you do.' A few more questions were asked and the jury handed down its verdict that the deceased came to his death at the hands of parties unknown. Mr. Rembaugh insisted that he, while hid out, saw the mob and he, like the main witness, thought the leader of the mob resembled the jury foreman.<br />
<br />
"On the same day as the verdict, the following telegram was received: <br />
<br />
"'Will you box my son and send him by express to this place? If not, hold him until I come. C. M. Cobb.' The corpse was placed in a casket and sent to Valley Falls (in Jefferson County) on the Santa Fe train Friday afternoon" (Dr. William W. Bottorff and Mary Ann Wortman. <a href="http://www.ausbcomp.com/%5C~bbott/subjects/index.html">Articles on Various Subjects from the Old Cowley County Newspapers and Interviews With Oldtimers</a>. Sheriff A. T. Shenneman of Cowley County, Kansas 1880-1883).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBjvn5IGD7h-mTNuCM37E_pKgHq7gGToJRCAHRE5I3rWcmTv4O4q9IBuI8RM0e7SAGogwIotGvOXSW9qQHda_CgPoTpzDuLcwBSjMHGJ7LVb9yu_ZOVeJGktgj6SbHEYI07i2Oa9yw48Jc/s1600/017_NYDL_James+Boys.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBjvn5IGD7h-mTNuCM37E_pKgHq7gGToJRCAHRE5I3rWcmTv4O4q9IBuI8RM0e7SAGogwIotGvOXSW9qQHda_CgPoTpzDuLcwBSjMHGJ7LVb9yu_ZOVeJGktgj6SbHEYI07i2Oa9yw48Jc/s1600/017_NYDL_James+Boys.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
"The fate of Cobb, the boy who was lynched at Winfield on Wednesday
last, was a sad, but a deserved one. He stated just before he was hung
that it was reading the sensational narratives of the exploits of Frank
and Jesse James that led him to destruction. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"We have frequently seen
Atchison boys pouring over these works of the devil, and afterward
imitating the supposed exploits of the James boys in their play. This is
extremely dangerous, and the sooner the fact is impressed upon the
youthful mind that these men were not heroes, but brutal, cowardly
robbers and murderers, the better it will be for the rising generation. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
"All such books and plays should be suppressed, and that murder and
robbery is heroic eradicated from the youthful mind, by a vigorous
application of the paternal slipper. Let the boys learn that honest,
patient labor is heroic, and that dishonesty and crime are despicable,
but keep forever out of their reach these untrue stories that have
already ruined so many" (Winfield [Kansas] Courier, February 8, 1883). </div>
__________<br />
<br />
Images courtesy of <a href="https://contentdm.carleton.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/DimeNovels">Carleton College Dime Novel Collection</a>, with our thanks.<br />
__________<br />
__________ Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-9391345131537144122014-04-16T02:30:00.000-07:002014-05-05T17:12:19.251-07:00First Printed Edition Of The Torah In Hebrew $1,400,000 - $2,000,000 At Christie's<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
<b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis7oqmNEn-eAcvdqopT49pqT0ZBuTTkQunvqDHM_HGQigLXB0xYD5kmK3ys5AEj0A4MF_26dWpiUFfLwKbgyQK8nIjAME5P9Gwm6dsXmgaUv8ViAPDTO39tSRu3Qdpm3JFyHTn340OviTq/s1600/torah1+copy+copy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis7oqmNEn-eAcvdqopT49pqT0ZBuTTkQunvqDHM_HGQigLXB0xYD5kmK3ys5AEj0A4MF_26dWpiUFfLwKbgyQK8nIjAME5P9Gwm6dsXmgaUv8ViAPDTO39tSRu3Qdpm3JFyHTn340OviTq/s1600/torah1+copy+copy.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>"The educated man knows, indeed, from his knowledge of history that the
art of Gutenberg saw its inception with a Latin Bible in the middle of
the XVth century. Yet what layman knows when the original text appeared
for the first time? Not even the bibliophile knows; although a
non-Jewish expert, Count Giacomo Manzoni, asserts in his enthusiasm for
the book that the first edition of the Hebrew Bible is the most precious
book on earth"</i> <a href="http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6758-goldschmidt-lazarus">(</a><a href="http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6758-goldschmidt-lazarus">Lazarus Goldschmidt</a>, 1950)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
A
newly discovered, large and complete copy in very fine condition of the
first printed edition of the Pentateuch - the first five books of the
Bible aka Torah - in Hebrew is being offered by <a href="http://www.christies.com/">Christie's-Paris</a> in its <a href="http://www.christies.com/salelanding/index.aspx?intSaleID=24720">Importants livres anciens, livres d'artistes & manuscrits, Wednesday, April 30, 2014</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
Printed
on vellum in Bologna by Abraham ben Hayim of Pesaro for Joseph ben
Abraham Caravita, this, the Hamishah humshe Torah was published on
January, 25, 1482 with Aramaic paraphrase (<a href="http://targum.info/onk/Gen1_6.htm">Targum Onkelos</a>) and commentary by <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/rashi.html">Rashi</a> (Solomon ben Isaac).<br />
<br />
<br />
Rarer than copies of the Gutenberg Bible (49, per <a href="http://www.clausenbooks.com/gutenbergcensus.htm">last census</a>),
and one of only twenty-eight surviving copies on vellum (with eleven
survivors on paper), most incomplete, it is estimated to sell for
$1,400,000 - $2,000,000 (€1,000,000-1,500,000; £900,000-1,300,000).</div>
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNXBwXuqBoLrnh2C_GaL1jLEhXX_zjWaa7yEWopTLmMT4ID2StoUHKO5g0DmMEk7CAOj5hcmPDQy_3lyz_57N7wJGu1JtPVXBS8kAsNVFgQmj0rEa6w2GYyYg3U3X4hpffn5dCWlUKgy6F/s1600/torah1.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNXBwXuqBoLrnh2C_GaL1jLEhXX_zjWaa7yEWopTLmMT4ID2StoUHKO5g0DmMEk7CAOj5hcmPDQy_3lyz_57N7wJGu1JtPVXBS8kAsNVFgQmj0rEa6w2GYyYg3U3X4hpffn5dCWlUKgy6F/s1600/torah1.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Arguably the most important book in the history of Hebrew printing and
publishing, it incorporates the first appearance in print of the ancient
Targum attributed to Onkelos. Rashi’s commentary, also included, was
first published in Rome around a dozen years earlier. This first edition
of the Pentateuch in its original language is the first Hebrew book
with printed vowel and cantillation signs (those symbols beneath the
letters).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Abraham ben Hayim may have started as a textile printer
and dyer and/or bookbinder in Pesaro. His first recorded printing press
stood at Ferrara in 1477, which produced two books, beginning with Levi
ben Gershom’s Be’ur sefer lyov (Commentary on the Book of Job), edited
and/or financed by Nathan of Salò; then it completed - about two thirds
of the text - Jacob ben Asher’s Tur yoreh de’ah (Teacher of Knowledge),
which had been started at the press of Abraham ben Solomon Conat in
Mantua. At his second press, in Bologna, Abraham ben Hayim worked for
Joseph ben Abraham, a member of the Caravita, an influential Jewish
family of bankers. </div>
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-hwBnQ763j-NYJblrerQtO3oZ_52cI65nfHcJkqpO7ie10Bu7WA3EzJQKM-WU-wMXsfXvSlxViJ3PfwNfW1y_qXAP0hdx8FAWmusFaPGcXXmkxzcxvzij67L_FFHKnPDPuT3-pClocj4/s1600/torah2.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-hwBnQ763j-NYJblrerQtO3oZ_52cI65nfHcJkqpO7ie10Bu7WA3EzJQKM-WU-wMXsfXvSlxViJ3PfwNfW1y_qXAP0hdx8FAWmusFaPGcXXmkxzcxvzij67L_FFHKnPDPuT3-pClocj4/s1600/torah2.jpg" /></a><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
In Bologna, Abraham ben Hayim first printed this fully vocalized
biblical text with cantillation marks, a landmark in the history of
Hebrew book production not only for the importance of its text, but no
less for its pioneering technique of casting and setting accents; this
fully developed typographical accomplishment can only be compared with
Francesco Griffo’s solution for adding accents to the Aldine Greek
founts some dozen years later. <br />
<br />
<br />
Abraham ben Hayim da Pesaro and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Griffo">Francesco Griffo da Bologna</a>
are likely to have known each other and it's possible that Griffo cut
Abraham’s punches; both were subsequently associated with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soncino_family_%28printers%29">Soncino</a>
family of printers in Italy, although at dates about two decades apart.
An earlier typographical attempt at adding Hebrew accents, in a 1477
folio edition of the Psalms printed by a consortium of typographers in
Northern Italy, was aborted after a few pages. The only other surviving
Bolognese production by Abraham ben Hayim is slightly later in date than
this Torah, a folio edition of the Five Scrolls (Megillot), now
recorded in two copies (Vatican and Parma Bibl. Palatina).<br />
<br />
<br />
Liturgical
readings of the Torah in synagogue, then as now, must be done from
manuscript scrolls. This, the Bologna editio princeps, combining the
text with the Aramaic targum and Rashi’s commentary, was aimed at an
educational market, the codex format being most efficient for study.</div>
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVozp_OWIcEsKfrb4WsgYIuVb8Lb0Rc5f5ydarmSe42s0Dye4auKpVRozRZAtWGml3UEqQOo0NyekRZWYWoRr7DmJoNMCYMHh3T1Sr6iiZ7xSk2GO7YyFPUNy5dKEXpcGJeiFAhyphenhyphen_pAUTp/s1600/torah3.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVozp_OWIcEsKfrb4WsgYIuVb8Lb0Rc5f5ydarmSe42s0Dye4auKpVRozRZAtWGml3UEqQOo0NyekRZWYWoRr7DmJoNMCYMHh3T1Sr6iiZ7xSk2GO7YyFPUNy5dKEXpcGJeiFAhyphenhyphen_pAUTp/s1600/torah3.jpg" /></a><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Rashi’s commentary was first printed in Rome c. 1470 as a separate edition by three Jewish contemporaries of the Christian proto-typographers, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz. The second separate edition - the first dated Hebrew printed book - appeared on February 18, 1475 from the press of Abraham ben Garton at Reggio di Calabria (a single copy known), while the third edition of 1476 is the first Hebrew book printed in Spain.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Another edition of the Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, Haftarot and Megillot, also vocalized and with cantillation accents, was printed somewhere in Italy by Isaac ben Aron d’Este and Moses ben Eliezer Raphael (3 copies extant and 7 single leaves); its date has in the past been assigned to c. 1480 (Goff Heb-13; Offenberg 25), based on research on by A. Spanier (Soncino Blätter I, 77), but it is now more accurately dated to c. 1489 from paper and watermark evidence in the Vatican Library copy (Piccard, Wasserzeichen Lilie II, 945).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Two obscure Iberian editions of the Torah - little known because of their extreme rarity - may also belong to the early 1480s, and may also be candidates for the first printed edition of the Torah in Hebrew: Offenberg 23=Goff Heb-16(III) recorded only in fragments of eight leaves (New York JTSL), one leaf (Oxford Bodleian) and a partial leaf (Jerusalem NLI); Offenberg 26=Goff Heb-16(II) surviving in a single copy (Florence Laurenziana) and a fragment of of 4 leaves (JTSL).</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>BIBLE, Pentateuch, in Hebrew</b> – <i>Hamishah humshe Torah</i>, with Aramaic paraphrase (Targum Onkelos) and commentary by Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac). Edited by Joseph Hayim ben Aaron Strasbourg Zarfati. Bologna: Abraham ben Hayim of Pesaro for Joseph ben Abraham Caravita, 5 Adar I [5]242 = 25th January 1482.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Median folio (320 x 230 mm). Printed on vellum (flesh side to flesh side, hair side to hair side, the sheets highly polished to minimize contrast). Collation: 110 28 310 48(-7) 58(-8) 62 710 8-98 106 1110 124 13-146 (Genesis-Exodus); 1510 168 176 18-218.10 228 234 248 256 2610 27-288 296 (Leviticus-Deuteronomy, 19/1v beginning of Numbers, 29/5v colophon, 29/6 blank). 219 leaves: Complete (but without final blank). </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Vocalized biblical text with accents, surrounded by paraphrase in a narrow outer column and commentary in long lines above and below, the pages set in formes (the outer forme of the outermost vellum sheet of each quire printed on the fesh side). Square Hebrew type 1:180 (text, headlines), semi-cursive Hebrew type 2:90 (paraphrase, commentary and colophon). 20-21 lines of text and headline and 40-42 lines of paraphrase to the full page, numbers of commentary lines varying, no printed signatures or catchwords. (Light yellowing of the hair sides of the sheets, some minor stains, a few small wormholes at beginning and end, but in VERY FINE CONDITION, WITH LARGE MARGINS.) 18th-century binding of brown sheep over pasteboard (front cover and spine gone, back cover preserved but worn and detached, original sewing somewhat defective, frst quire detached from the book block). Modern folding box.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Provenance: inscribed, signed and dated by three Italian censors. Luigi da Bologna, Dominican friar, March 1599 – Camillo Jaghel 1613 – Fra Renato da Modena 1626. Individual words or short phrases censored, scored through in ink on 1/2r, 1/6r, 2/3v, 5/2v and 22/4r and several words erased on 10/6v and 11/3v, all in Rashi’s commentary. – There is no evidence of more recent provenance, except for the modest 18th-century binding, which is probably French. – French Private Collection, by descent to the present owner.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Hain 12568; GW M30624; BMC XIII, 26-27 (C.49.d.2); Proctor 6557; Goff Heb-18; CIBN Heb-4; IDL 2440; IGI E-12; Oates 2482; Bod-inc Heb-8. De Rossi I, 7; Steinschneider 2; Thesaurus A15; Van Straalen p. 29; Zedner p. 106; Marx 7; Goldstein 20; HSTC 22; Offenberg 13. ISTC ib00525570.</div>
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<br />
<b>5/1/2014: UPDATE: Sold for €2,785,500 ($3,850,679).</b><br />
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<br />
Images courtesy of <a href="http://www.christies.com/">Christies</a>, with our thanks.<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkEYjF2-lRJ__SJT49cJkgnnMN8XuMiY14NbABefv_bl6POQ6VOmyFjH7_shjRXScDoPh4jbSEFOQK1X9yLUe3cQ_NX6EaGYi5PKGBnNlJXJh-Mwb_Tmsv_7_LW2S3LTr-MfNLDYu1hzAc/s1600/SLjFesRd.png" /></div>
<b> </b></div>
<br />
They take no guff from deadbeats.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqgrUBDK6Dhe3HxX7DDd2JczapddRuiMTo_x_FCKSzhoX0hFnLBlTMd0fPk2ouAtI9pdNd2W6lz5yPw7tK8-lSAL-lpWKzu94731lYDXa0REjyIvMNdCq5mLZMqWwKCP4cGfvogGpbfuzz/s1600/RBf9I5Vu.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqgrUBDK6Dhe3HxX7DDd2JczapddRuiMTo_x_FCKSzhoX0hFnLBlTMd0fPk2ouAtI9pdNd2W6lz5yPw7tK8-lSAL-lpWKzu94731lYDXa0REjyIvMNdCq5mLZMqWwKCP4cGfvogGpbfuzz/s1600/RBf9I5Vu.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art by Casey Jones for <i>Crackers in Bed</i><br />by Vic Fredericks. Pocket Books 1053 (1955)</span></b>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Books and snacks in the boudoir are their after-hours business - and business is good.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie9Vj580DDyd2Xl2zhbp5ERLd9G-2AK-w7pkKRWPhr74avjAFafAKKY6IU2BlRwyhml53CZH1O-LWx7IyPCF1yrLy9oFU8gaNtesljSG3S3-bbBbxoYMBK9s7mrXNYTRC-mHWaleJPE-B4/s1600/rFTTpByG.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie9Vj580DDyd2Xl2zhbp5ERLd9G-2AK-w7pkKRWPhr74avjAFafAKKY6IU2BlRwyhml53CZH1O-LWx7IyPCF1yrLy9oFU8gaNtesljSG3S3-bbBbxoYMBK9s7mrXNYTRC-mHWaleJPE-B4/s1600/rFTTpByG.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art by Peff (Sam Peffer) for ?, London: Pan Books.</span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
They're know-it-alls with only one answer - the one that men want!<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqHPpkhxq9BE7VilnP0mfYqSh9T9FBSH6YWa-anxG2y2oHoUFW_VCEivG-MlOQGymBrrD1wbKUg0rjngLaD6g7jsYCYny1JNGlFHvgmR6oqGTuUT_JnSfbk9l5q3_an91tHdZztAT5BHal/s1600/99nD8fip.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqHPpkhxq9BE7VilnP0mfYqSh9T9FBSH6YWa-anxG2y2oHoUFW_VCEivG-MlOQGymBrrD1wbKUg0rjngLaD6g7jsYCYny1JNGlFHvgmR6oqGTuUT_JnSfbk9l5q3_an91tHdZztAT5BHal/s1600/99nD8fip.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art by Darcy (Ernest Chiriaka) for <i>Dearest Mama</i><br />by Walewska. Digit Books 393 (1956).</span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
They read trash for breakfast, season it with tawdry filth, chase it with smutty little stories, and reach their bliss multiple times but it's never enough to satisfy their primitive hunger!<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7ZhFdcfQDJHZ8edU8BJAZVKcxj46WeiTzXN3zVHHpSneIc7puYfJZgO9VkA_pPNr-SGzlRjGwc5dAxTUA1Swnx9_xHDgL1Ing10AZmfqQYr0SUs2av1_wVC7-j15MpD8W7HGPBrxScHTl/s1600/BS0cWfMH.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7ZhFdcfQDJHZ8edU8BJAZVKcxj46WeiTzXN3zVHHpSneIc7puYfJZgO9VkA_pPNr-SGzlRjGwc5dAxTUA1Swnx9_xHDgL1Ing10AZmfqQYr0SUs2av1_wVC7-j15MpD8W7HGPBrxScHTl/s1600/BS0cWfMH.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art by Bill George for <i>Haunted Lady </i><br />by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Dell 814 (1955).</span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Though they get creeped-out by wacko stalkers with twisted desires,<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKCYxrjFKgTG6roqVN8wzSgiTuSuQOiXvB28WQy3j7tcFq9vrmddqe7dglC0eY9khfKrDIhLCZEm5HhBzck1oY4JgvUnuTT_M2j6uGiJmKCTlGfnSgmRgYcWPde3Em7m3bQu-7jOWf9CMR/s1600/Gl6xAMT3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKCYxrjFKgTG6roqVN8wzSgiTuSuQOiXvB28WQy3j7tcFq9vrmddqe7dglC0eY9khfKrDIhLCZEm5HhBzck1oY4JgvUnuTT_M2j6uGiJmKCTlGfnSgmRgYcWPde3Em7m3bQu-7jOWf9CMR/s1600/Gl6xAMT3.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art by Rafael DeSoto for <i>The Girl From Big Pine</i><br />by Talmadge Powell. Monarch 483 (1964).</span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
they're always willing to go out on a limb for a sweet daddy-o with dangerous eyes and a savage smirk!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia7_SVHg3OoPDuVvRSwDFvW1FqwldGsN5cntIlyAnE-EH3vKcFe_YvipVQNDQCG3Jw2G93oAB8sUBKTe_b9_1dMGXf-ic7FZociinwGgittSxbxaKyil-rYaWUO5ihUOeZmymrhl0hfIp5/s1600/GOaZOITL.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia7_SVHg3OoPDuVvRSwDFvW1FqwldGsN5cntIlyAnE-EH3vKcFe_YvipVQNDQCG3Jw2G93oAB8sUBKTe_b9_1dMGXf-ic7FZociinwGgittSxbxaKyil-rYaWUO5ihUOeZmymrhl0hfIp5/s1600/GOaZOITL.png" /></a></div>
<br />
They're merciless with bimbos who avoid books, <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ6moLWf1qsztxHHwPZ_qfxiVE2tOODYHKMRtDvYMrat6Z2osdVNtaXLKWj6NRO6-5Ih9837VFSXhX6X4ObRwDisaTdyq3beDMwHwpy2IU-Pfl49bb1Lr7Q6U7QlQRNKWBu2pDzGZdwdcA/s1600/hoEJFN3D.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ6moLWf1qsztxHHwPZ_qfxiVE2tOODYHKMRtDvYMrat6Z2osdVNtaXLKWj6NRO6-5Ih9837VFSXhX6X4ObRwDisaTdyq3beDMwHwpy2IU-Pfl49bb1Lr7Q6U7QlQRNKWBu2pDzGZdwdcA/s1600/hoEJFN3D.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art by Reginald Heade for <i>Plaything of Passion</i><br />by Jeanette Revere. Archer Books 57 (1950).</span></b></td></tr>
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and possess mad, unholy desire and strange diabolical hate and all-consuming love for abbreviations formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSO1yavJ5yyNH2iPpUBtrgHQZmAhx713e2xCHCCExQhGNe3V38VCZpNE8vJh5YwaQ0eFL7XbQkyZIWsiverCFHlKINrx3HAbVixi-L-U7PNjerwNiLD7RXTOJjTN8kjbbQnzKOAo-G9Wv-/s1600/jwergzZ1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSO1yavJ5yyNH2iPpUBtrgHQZmAhx713e2xCHCCExQhGNe3V38VCZpNE8vJh5YwaQ0eFL7XbQkyZIWsiverCFHlKINrx3HAbVixi-L-U7PNjerwNiLD7RXTOJjTN8kjbbQnzKOAo-G9Wv-/s1600/jwergzZ1.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art for <i>The Case of the Rolling Bones</i><br />by Erle Stanely Gardner. Pocket Books 2464 (1949).</span></b></td></tr>
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They play craps with their reputation and gamble away their morals for a chance at the big time - but a good time will do!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpo_M_63enqy86b7SvvKMO5_AlMhj_QuVXdrasbuCXepSigZZvd2wqppU6UMp4qthrgDH6IJ0GkHBqCUrwLcflpGicMLtn0KOhFC8g9A_YU11BqxK5R8S3RWK-a5v-emKVblIH2eRmG3Ok/s1600/mfvjobkm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpo_M_63enqy86b7SvvKMO5_AlMhj_QuVXdrasbuCXepSigZZvd2wqppU6UMp4qthrgDH6IJ0GkHBqCUrwLcflpGicMLtn0KOhFC8g9A_YU11BqxK5R8S3RWK-a5v-emKVblIH2eRmG3Ok/s1600/mfvjobkm.png" /></a></div>
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They're a strange cult into weird hats and bizarre dining rituals,<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM5ie6COvz23aheVklGmpltdHGRgSkbX-T0NqKIO7bWsSf63GjyZRLhjDiS3lpm8T-Q8CubHJtpDdFXQ8ziRXMigg3Rjoc6D8UyqU_dnZD1lJEWKa34kht0-jS6hyrZRkOlcnPXk8EKUAb/s1600/Y15Hh7u4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM5ie6COvz23aheVklGmpltdHGRgSkbX-T0NqKIO7bWsSf63GjyZRLhjDiS3lpm8T-Q8CubHJtpDdFXQ8ziRXMigg3Rjoc6D8UyqU_dnZD1lJEWKa34kht0-jS6hyrZRkOlcnPXk8EKUAb/s1600/Y15Hh7u4.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art by Verne Tossey for <i>The Case of the Lonely Heiress</i><br />by Erle Stanley Gardner. Pocket Book 922 (1952).</span></b></td></tr>
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with sensitive janes overcome in the public john by loathsome forces beyond their control!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG9hU7QdHOPVWK7nM9XAVvrLOIRAzjqLwbibKuO0aappNYz3oDGWCptCtnRBd-54oYCKO5ZlWrIudeSJKPsdS4_tr_V5wEQdGWxfp19uY11IkvlWt_CV_vlgGyvf-ZwZYjUwj55yl8VRKH/s1600/UrKoujpp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG9hU7QdHOPVWK7nM9XAVvrLOIRAzjqLwbibKuO0aappNYz3oDGWCptCtnRBd-54oYCKO5ZlWrIudeSJKPsdS4_tr_V5wEQdGWxfp19uY11IkvlWt_CV_vlgGyvf-ZwZYjUwj55yl8VRKH/s1600/UrKoujpp.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art by Rafael DeSoto for <i>Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective</i><br />by Agatha Christie. Dell 550 (1951).</span></b></td></tr>
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But when those sensitive janes detect halitosis and rank B.O. wafting their way they smell trouble and it's pine-scent Mace<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">®</span></span> for the great unwashed with library cards!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ8pg0B4KRfw8W6zP3yPUHumIS3li59SRNBGev6YpDk_tuERk00AJ16J0gdlzfi2Z1DQ1c3UsVqXd3YZtm7Wp7s_YKx5APDPTWevYQ_wlZA77fY-zETZq5YhqFaSFbh64SGsqONjBRARmm/s1600/T6vfTZ0O.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ8pg0B4KRfw8W6zP3yPUHumIS3li59SRNBGev6YpDk_tuERk00AJ16J0gdlzfi2Z1DQ1c3UsVqXd3YZtm7Wp7s_YKx5APDPTWevYQ_wlZA77fY-zETZq5YhqFaSFbh64SGsqONjBRARmm/s1600/T6vfTZ0O.png" /></a></div>
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They're no patsies, they ain't like Dr. Jennifer Melfi. Talk therapy don't cut it for some and she knows it.</div>
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<i>Dr. Melfi: That Departures magazine out there. Did you give any thought at all to someone else who might wanna read before you tore out the entire page?<br /><br />Tony Soprano: What?<br /><br />Dr. Melfi: It's not the first time you've defaced my reading materials.<br /><br />Tony Soprano: You saw that, huh? People tear shit outta your magazines all the time, they're a mess. I try to read 'em.<br /><br />Dr. Melfi: I don't think I can help you.</i></div>
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<i>Tony Soprano: Well, change 'em. Bring in some new shit. </i></div>
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<i></i></div>
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<i>Dr. Melfi: I mean therapeutically. <br /><br />Tony Soprano: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, OK? Now what the fuck is this? You're, uh, firin' me 'cause I defaced your Departures magazine?</i></div>
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No, when L-Girls are confronted by a chronic defacer of library periodicals they don't mess around. When they say get lost they mean take a long walk off a short pier: they cancel his subscription to life; you won't see him around no more; he sleeps with the fische.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkEYjF2-lRJ__SJT49cJkgnnMN8XuMiY14NbABefv_bl6POQ6VOmyFjH7_shjRXScDoPh4jbSEFOQK1X9yLUe3cQ_NX6EaGYi5PKGBnNlJXJh-Mwb_Tmsv_7_LW2S3LTr-MfNLDYu1hzAc/s1600/SLjFesRd.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCCtZ0sxKlVL3IaEmNX1kGQrdWMm3Q32b24D3d8yYKTPJuauxuNJq9_N8g6wP9tmhc-mf2VH4-xMn6e2YzXE_ZOFH1ShohWB25bOxNQ97-do_EgJSzjNnCaMslCbNhliUfYiYFNxgDnwmP/s1600/nG9ZkdWf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCCtZ0sxKlVL3IaEmNX1kGQrdWMm3Q32b24D3d8yYKTPJuauxuNJq9_N8g6wP9tmhc-mf2VH4-xMn6e2YzXE_ZOFH1ShohWB25bOxNQ97-do_EgJSzjNnCaMslCbNhliUfYiYFNxgDnwmP/s1600/nG9ZkdWf.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art by Gerald Gregg for <i>Who's Calling?</i><br />by Helen McCloy. Dell 151 (1947).</span></b></td></tr>
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Silence in the stacks? Tell it to the library card-holding psycho with logorrhia and a Van Gogh fixation!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPuSht3CrZTc8kbn1lli3FS-jaXjZNJvRMjQMSksay880BA_cAoeLRmkbni-jo7xtjd4fL23ffNT4evaYfPPb3LcfIV32ehsZPwGaQZSY_VbVHrXlAxv1pwssw3avvrPpyj8oPVA0aFo1o/s1600/zLgkJ4ha.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPuSht3CrZTc8kbn1lli3FS-jaXjZNJvRMjQMSksay880BA_cAoeLRmkbni-jo7xtjd4fL23ffNT4evaYfPPb3LcfIV32ehsZPwGaQZSY_VbVHrXlAxv1pwssw3avvrPpyj8oPVA0aFo1o/s1600/zLgkJ4ha.png" /></a></div>
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Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of the library book-drop box? Drop-offs, droppings, or rotting, vermin-infested fast-food left-overs? It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.</div>
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<b> </b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglENImMHkUDQWSNXPOh3DODoWKyI_rYd3etDwEY2l1DiFtRBJFbZCkY46ch4lTCJaw5cqQccMXorlsuG77tUFQtQMvAzrpB9-A4zLf9mlwJFajqjdkYVQXg7OdA9GOit3_zhMf7iJS7RpX/s1600/6MHJ97Rm.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglENImMHkUDQWSNXPOh3DODoWKyI_rYd3etDwEY2l1DiFtRBJFbZCkY46ch4lTCJaw5cqQccMXorlsuG77tUFQtQMvAzrpB9-A4zLf9mlwJFajqjdkYVQXg7OdA9GOit3_zhMf7iJS7RpX/s1600/6MHJ97Rm.jpg" /></a></div>
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And how 'bout that famous writer of L.A.-noir novels who visited his local branch of the <a href="http://www.lapl.org/%E2%80%8E">LAPL</a>, hit on a married reference librarian I know, wouldn't take no for an answer, kept sending flowers to her, and didn't stop his unwelcome advances until she flipped him an oath and he skulked off and out of the library?</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdZu0KXmCmC2uKb3hMCvAFJhZ0vMgB-wm7Va37BnLmVr0DJfwwkfkKbOSLELEs-ttXSIGD5RG1z9AnYTWd4zihhBhXrgklkI_WdSVsqXGTgbVQZnbG1oLD4XeqVt6-wJrs1tyGqUi3EImI/s1600/q5H9ET7K.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdZu0KXmCmC2uKb3hMCvAFJhZ0vMgB-wm7Va37BnLmVr0DJfwwkfkKbOSLELEs-ttXSIGD5RG1z9AnYTWd4zihhBhXrgklkI_WdSVsqXGTgbVQZnbG1oLD4XeqVt6-wJrs1tyGqUi3EImI/s1600/q5H9ET7K.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Original cover art by Rudolph Belarski for <i>Don't Ever Love Me</i><br />by Octavus Roy Cohen. Popular Library 332 (1951).</span></b></td></tr>
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The fact that she fought for her intellectual freedom to be left alone while wielding a heater to punctuate her point may have had something to do with it. He had an acute fear of perforation by a stacked n' sultry long tall sally with a MLS, a gripe, and a gat. Yet where had she been all his life?</div>
<b>__________</b><br />
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All images courtesy of <a href="http://simplebooklet.com/publish.php?wpKey=zwTY8mLCC3wV31ORtETcye#page=0">Professional Library Literature</a> with special thanks to the anonymous creator of these brilliant book parodies, who, I suspect, may be in fear of losing their job if outed. Additional thanks to B.T. Carver of <a href="http://lisnews.org/">LISNews</a> for drawing our attention to this delightful webpage. There are more of the same on the site.<br />
<br />
The Sopranos dialogue from Episode #85, <i>The Blue Comet</i> (2007), written by David Chase and Matthew Weiner. <br />
<br />
Those with knowledge of the unidentified books (or pulp magazines) are encouraged to leave a comment.</div>
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__________<br />
<br />
<b>Of Related Interest:</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.booktryst.com/2010/06/lurid-story-of-book-dope-and-lives.html">A Lurid Story of Book Dope And Lives Twisted By Mad Desire!</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.booktryst.com/2013/06/caution-these-books-are-too-hot-to.html">Caution: These Books Are Too Hot To Handle! </a><br />
<a href="http://www.booktryst.com/2013/06/caution-these-books-are-too-hot-to.html">__________</a><br />
__________ </div>
Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-80047210977870056412014-04-11T02:30:00.000-07:002014-04-11T02:30:03.397-07:00Two Great Typewriter Posters From 1909<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl3s8yUzKD9G-DE_FqXXmwGPqAvfcpscrlJWuq9N16Sc-ChKQ-A2LpyGPR486zUhmkZqhph3KyVFMom3gCgqpuwx9FC9T1SXTBFkDI29QNqd0DjhEw7HSC9ODMca2Hlu0z-th9Hz4kOoGd/s1600/Oliver.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl3s8yUzKD9G-DE_FqXXmwGPqAvfcpscrlJWuq9N16Sc-ChKQ-A2LpyGPR486zUhmkZqhph3KyVFMom3gCgqpuwx9FC9T1SXTBFkDI29QNqd0DjhEw7HSC9ODMca2Hlu0z-th9Hz4kOoGd/s1600/Oliver.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Paul Scheurich, 1909.</span></b></td></tr>
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<b> </b></div>
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A copy of Paul Scheurich's 1909 poster for Oliver typewriters is being offered by <a href="http://www.swanngalleries.com/">Swann Auction Galleries</a> in its <a href="http://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/asp/searchresults.asp?st=D&pg=1&sale_no=2346&ps=10">Modernist Posters sale, April 24, 2014</a>. It is estimated to sell for $800-$1,200.<br />
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Printed by the renowned Berlin shop, Hollerbaum & Schmidt, which, in the years before World War I, was known not only for the quality of its lithography but for its impressive stable of artists, including <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Bernhard">Lucian Bernhardt</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rudi_Erdt">Hans Rudi Erdt</a> and <a href="http://www.theviennasecession.com/gallery/klinger-julius/">Julius Klinger</a>, as well. <br />
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Scheurich (1883-1945) was born and raised in New York City but settled in Germany to work. A painter, sculptor and prolific graphic designer, he was a professor of porcelain painting in Meissenand and worked in Dresden as a graphic designer before moving to Berlin.<br />
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Much like his fellow artists, Scheurich's style was heavily influenced by contemporary British graphic design, which emphasized flat tones and no outlining. That is certainly the case in this Sachs Plakat (Object Poster), in which the object being advertised is depicted against a flat background as Lucian Bernhard did in his series of posters for Adler typewriters. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvR43TC9vgqocjXcL76SypcBMRUNKrYF4CMUrSinz0Nk0QWRY-KoJWFXPO6bASW_kv7L7uPGL_yEBIgvc5-XejqvDBzYbrOrgkXZmBt1_0edgAA4eFZ9HTWtl4It8VIubsX7c-S-80R-Hr/s1600/BernhardAdler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvR43TC9vgqocjXcL76SypcBMRUNKrYF4CMUrSinz0Nk0QWRY-KoJWFXPO6bASW_kv7L7uPGL_yEBIgvc5-XejqvDBzYbrOrgkXZmBt1_0edgAA4eFZ9HTWtl4It8VIubsX7c-S-80R-Hr/s1600/BernhardAdler.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lucian Bernhard, 1909.</span></b></td></tr>
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"Bernhard recognized that the image of the typewriter itself, with its potential for speed and efficiency, was an effective way to advertise the product. This poster, the first of several that Bernhard designed for the Adler company, embodies the simplicity of the Sachplakat while maintaining certain elements of the same late nineteenth century graphic style that overpowered and inspired Bernhard as an adolescent, such as the bold, flat planes of color and the shadow line that emphasizes the curving forms of the letters" (Caitlin Condell, <a href="http://www.cooperhewitt.org/object-of-the-day/2013/05/16/seduced-object-poster">Seduced by an Object Poster</a>).</div>
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Caitlin Condell</div>
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Caitlin Condell</div>
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Note, however, that Bernhard's seminal poster for Adler
typewriters was, as Scheurich's for Oliver typewriters, also designed in 1909. According to <a href="http://www.swanngalleries.com/specialists/?userid=3">Nicholas D. Lowry</a> of Swann, it is impossible to determine
which image influenced the other.</div>
___________<br />
<br />
Oliver image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.<br />
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___________Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8382076272947689523.post-77576089521366071722014-04-09T02:30:00.000-07:002014-04-09T02:30:02.275-07:00Clarence Darrow Writes About A Publisher And Prohibition<b>by Stephen J. Gertz</b><br />
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On October 24, 1931, legendary American lawyer and social reformer Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) wrote to American attorney, civil rights pioneer and president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Arthur Spingarn, about his as yet to be published autobiography.</div>
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"The book will be finished this month. As I have said, no contract has been made with any one, but several publishers seem anxious to get it. I do not feel like giving it to Liveright & Co. I have said that I will show it to them, which I will do; still, that is superfluous, if they are not in the running. I presume I could ask each publisher to make an offer, and I could safely give it to the one that makes the best offer; still there are other things to consider. Had I better send a copy of manuscript to you to deliver to them when I send out any others? Have you any idea of the best way to handle the situation? I do not like to make any pretense that I feel is not true, but I think I should put it where I want to, and, of course, since I have given them $1,000.00 and you got me a clean release, I have the right to do it. One of these days I will be in New York, but on account of the other fellow rushing his book out in a hurry – after promising to wait! – I felt that I had better get mine done. With thanks, and best wishes, [signed] Clarence Darrow." </div>
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A postscript in holograph reads: "I have a story in this coming Nov. number of Vanity Fair on what one can and can not do to get rid of prohibition. We can not repeal the 18th Amendment. I think my plan has never been published."<br />
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Clarence Darrow, the son of pro-suffrage and abolitionist parents, began his celebrated law career in Ohio. He soon found himself defending anarchists, union leaders and murderers. His slow, shambling demeanor belied a brilliant mind, evident in his spectacular defense in the 1924 Leopold-Loeb murder trial and the famous Scopes trial of 1925, the latter upholding the right to teach the theory of evolution. Among Darrow’s high-profile defenses were such racially charged cases as the <a href="http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/not_guilty/clarence_darrow/index.html">Sweet Case</a>, in which a black family used deadly force to defend itself against an attack while attempting to move into an all-white Detroit neighborhood. The NAACP (with the support of Spingarn, the letter’s recipient) also offered Darrow’s services to the <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scottsboro/scottsb.htm">Scottsboro Boys</a>, nine black teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Alabama in 1931 and convicted by an all-white jury. A pacifist and civil libertarian, Darrow was knowledgeable, shrewd and deeply committed to justice.<br /><br />After the 1919 passage of the 18th Amendment, which banned the production and sale of alcohol in the United States, Darrow became an outspoken opponent. He published such articles as “The Ordeal of Prohibition” in the August 1924 issue of American Mercury, and the same year he debated the issue with prominent Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes. He co-authored a book entitled <i><b>The Prohibition Mania </b></i>(1927), and he published several articles in Vanity Fair including “Why the 18th Amendment Cannot Be Repealed” in the November 1931 issue, referred to in this letter. Darrow lived to see the repeal of prohibition with the passage of the 21st Amendment in 1933. <br /><br />The letter also discusses Darrow’s autobiography, <i><b>The Story of My Life</b></i>, which Charles Scribner’s Sons published in 1932. Darrow had defended New York publisher Liveright & Co. against charges of obscenity alleged by the <a href="http://nyssvhistory.weebly.com/">New York Society for the Suppression of Vice</a> and Boston's <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/01/dwight_strong_watch_and_ward_society_leader_dies/">Watch and Ward Society</a>, but he apparently did not want to use the publisher for his own work.<br /><br />Arthur Spingarn (1878-1971), the son of an affluent Jewish family, earned a law degree at Columbia and, along with his brother Joel, dedicated his life to racial justice for blacks. He headed the legal committee of the NAACP and, in 1940, succeeded his brother as president of the civil rights organization, holding the position until 1965. He also became known for his vast collection of books, manuscripts and ephemera related to American blacks, most of which are now at Howard University.</div>
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Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.lionheartautographs.com/">Lion Heart Autographs</a>, with our thanks, and a tip o' the hat to its cataloger.<br />
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___________Stephen J. Gertzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369781936876020975noreply@blogger.com0