BOOKTRYST

Knorr Shows Sea Shells By The Sea Shore

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Wed, 30 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

In Nuremberg, 1757 through 1772, Georg Wolfgang Knorr (1705-1761), an engraver of great skill who, through self-study, learned a great deal about art and the natural sciences, published Vergnügen der Augen und des Gemüths, in Vorstellung einer allgemeinen Sammlung von Muscheln und andern Geschöpfen welche im Meer gefunden werden (Pleasure of the Eyes and Mind in a General Collection of Shells and Other Creatures Which Are Found in the Sea).

In six parts containing 190 hand-colored copperplate engravings of great beauty the book was an artistic triumph if not one of science; Knorr's casual approach ignored scientific order. The book was a simple - albeit magnificent - record of sea shells found in collections in Holland and Germany, including that of Martin Houttuyn, a doctor in Amsterdam whose collection contained many rare species.

It was soon issued in a French translation, Delices des yeux et de l'esprit... (1760-1773) and, later, an edition in Dutch by the heirs of Houttuyn as Verlustiging der oogen en van den geest... (1770-1775), a copy of which has recently come into the marketplace offered by Shapero Rare Books of London.

Nuremberg was, at the time, the European center for finely illustrated natural history books, led by J. Trew, a wealthy Nuremberg physician who organized and encouraged a salon of artists and scientists, including Knorr who earned his first major success with his illustrations to Johannes Jacob Scheuzer's Physica Sacra (1731-1735) in which he depicted the solar system with the zodiac as the sphere of stars. Many of the shells that Knorr depicted in Vergnügen der Augen und des Gemüths... came from Trew's personal collection in addition to Martin Houttuyn's.

Whether in German, French, or Dutch, Knorr's book of shells became an enormous popular success. It will come as no surprise that copies were broken up and the stunning hand-colored plates - which often exceeded the beauty of the shells in nature - sold separately. There is no shortage of modern reproductions currently offered for sale.

Curiously, Knorr, whether in German, French or Dutch, neglects to illustrate one of the Muscheln closely associated with him, the Creamy Garlic Shell found strewn upon the shores of grocery store shelves throughout the Western world. We rectify that omission here:

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KNORR, Georg Wofgang. Verlustiging der oogen en van den geest: of verzameling van allerley bekende hoorens en schulpen, die in haar eigen kleuren afgebeeld zyn. Amsterdam: By de Erven van F. Houttuyn, 1770-1775. First edition in Dutch. Six parts in two quarto volumes (26.1 x 20.5 cm). Six letterpress titles and 190 hand-colored copperplate engravings by J.A. Joniger, J.A. Eisenmann, A. Hoffer and others after Knorr, C. Dietsch, J. Wartenaar, and others.

Landwehr 96. Nissen ZBI 2236. Cf. Dance, Shell Collecting, pp. 156-157.

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Images courtesy of Shapero Rare Books, with our thanks.

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A Splendid $200,000 Album of Early 19th Century Chinese Export Watercolors

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Tue, 29 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

A remarkable early to mid-nineteenth century Chinese album, containing 141 full-page watercolors of exceptional quality, journeyed from the Celestial Kingdom to the library of a British noble thence disembarked to rare book shop in London where it is now being offered for sale. The asking price is $195,768 (£125,000).

Depicting the various ranks of Chinese society, including royalty, mandarins and other officials, warriors and archers, along with costumes of different provinces, as well as various trades and industries, the watercolors, created for export, are vivid and often highlighted with gilt.

Noteworthy are the large number of subjects pictured, the unusually large size of each painting, and the use of very fine, thin and delicate paper.

Later collections of Chinese export watercolors were routinely executed on less expensive, stronger and thicker "pith" paper (made from the pith of a plant related to ginseng); the demand in Europe for small, inexpensive, and easily transportable art souvenirs had grown huge and earlier watercolors of the finest quality, as here, were not practical to produce on the necessary scale to satisfy what had once been carriage-trade items but had evolved into a mass middle-class market.

The album thus represents an earlier, more prestigious style of export watercolor paintings specifically meant for wealthy Europeans. These are Chinese watercolors of the highest quality, designed and executed to the highest standards.

The album was once owned by Annie Pearson, Viscountess Cowdray (1881-1931), Steward of Colchester and wife of Lord Weetman Dickinson Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray. She likely acquired it from a previous owner.

“'Export' paintings, mainly oil paintings, as well as watercolours, gouaches on paper, board and glass, started in the mid eighteenth century and reached their climax in the mid nineteenth century but declined when photography became fashionable...

"In order to satisfy the great demand of the market...Guangdong painters opened workshops in the area of the Western factories (or 'Hong') where foreigners lived. They employed painters specialized in different sections and made many imitations with Western materials, paper and silk. After the Opium War between China and Britain in 1840, China was forced to open ports. When Shanghai was opened as a port in 1843, Great Britain, the United States and France established 'concession zones' in the city between 1845 to 1849. In the same way as had happened in Guangzhou, Guangzhou 'export' painters, among other Chinese painters, thrived in the new commercial emporium by producing 'export' paintings...

"'Export' painters, at the same time, produced lots of commercial paintings of the popular themes about the Chinese society. Since the purpose of producing 'export' paintings was entirely commercial, most artists rarely signed their works or, at the most, just added to them a monogram identifying the pictorial workshop to which they belonged" (Export Paintings, Civil and Municipal Affairs Bureau of Macao S.A.R.).

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[CHINA SCHOOL Watercolors of Chinese Costume and Trade]. N.p. [Guangzhou?]: N.p., n.d. [c. early-mid 19th century]. Large quarto (38.4 x 32 cm). 141 full-page watercolors on thin Chinese paper, some with gilt highlights, nearly all captioned in Chinese in ink in lower right corner. Each mounted on paper, recto only.

Bound in mid-nineteenth century half morocco, gilt, with spine compartments decorated in gilt. Bookplate of Annie, Viscountess of Cowdray.

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Images courtesy of Shapero Rare Books, with our thanks.

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Rare Wizard Of Oz Movable Book Pops-Up In Marketplace

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

A scarce, complete, first edition, first state copy of The Wizard of Oz Waddle Book (1934) - one of the rarest of all movable books - has come into the marketplace.

Inside rear cover. Note band covering envelope with ramp.

Not only are all six waddle figures present, four of them have not been punched-out from the background sheet and are as new. The accompanying yellow brick road ramp for Dorothy, the Wizard, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Lion, and Toto to waddle upon is also present. This is extraordinary; the figures and ramp usually wound up as confetti within days after children got their hands on them.

The Scarecrow.

The illustrations are by renowned American artist W.W. Denslow (1856-1915), who collaborated with Oz creator L. Frank Baum on many books.

The Cowardly Lion.

When the figures are punched-out, assembled with their hinged legs, and placed at the top of the ramp, they "waddle" down the incline as paper action figures. The Cowardly Lion, presumably, needs encouragement to take his first step on The Yellow Brick Road. A metaphysical nudge from behind should suffice; "Boo!" will do.

Dorothy.

The Wizard of Oz Waddle Book is actually a reprint of the fifth edition of the first book in the classic series, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), which, in its second edition, was retitled, The New Wizard of Oz (1903). The text points are similar to the fifth edition (printed 1920s-30s), second state, but with a new title page, an additional entry at the end of the Contents for the instructions, and with the instructions bound at the rear as pages 209-211.

The color plates have text printed on the versos. In the book's first state, as here, the punch-out waddle figures are printed on sheets of heavy card stock which are mounted on bound-in perforated stubs. In its second state, the waddle figures are not mounted on stubs but, instead, enclosed in the envelope along with the ramp. The second state of the cloth is light olive rather than bright green.

Toto.

Bobbs-Merrill, who published The New Wizard of Oz, leased the plates to Blue Ribbon Books, a division of Doubleday, Doran, for the Waddle Book. Bobbs-Merrill had earlier gained possession of the plates from the original publisher of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Geo. M. Hill Co., through Baum & Denslow, after Hill went into bankruptcy in 1902.

"Copies with the Waddles are rarely found," (Greene & Hanff). Copies with the Waddles unassembled and remaining firm in their sheets are miraculous, only seen when monkeys have wings and water is lethal to witches of a certain direction.

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BAUM, L. Frank. Wizard of Oz Waddle Book. New York: Blue Ribbon Books, n.d. [1934]. First edition, first state. Quarto. [1]. 210, [1] pp. Eight color plates by W.W. Denslow, six with die-cut figures. Original pictorial envelope a rear enclosing ramp and fasteners. Green cloth with pictorial onlay. Dust jacket.

Greene and Hanff p. 35-36.

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Of related interest:

How Much Is An L. Frank Baum Inscribed Wizard Of Oz Worth?

L. Frank Baum Tells How To Read The Wizard Of Oz.

L. Frank Baum Remembers Mama, You'll Remember the Price.
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Images courtesy of Aleph-Bet Books, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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The Rarest, Most Desirable Book By John Lennon Comes To Auction

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

"We're all in a bag, you know?...I was in a pop bag, going round and round, in my little clique. And she was in her little avant-garde clique, going round and round. So we just came up with a word. If you'd ask us what Bagism is, we'd say, 'We're all in a bag, baby'" - John Lennon, Avant-Garde, March 1970.

A scarce, complete, unnumbered and out-of-sequence first edition copy of John Lennon's Bag One, his 1970 collection of lithographs limited to 300 examples, is being offered by New England Book Auctions on Tuesday May 29, 2012. It is expected to sell for $20,000 - $30,000.

The only other copy to ever sell at auction fell under the hammer at Sotheby's twenty-four years ago, in 1988, for $12,155.

Bag One is a series of fourteen signed original lithographs originally conceived and executed in 1969 to commemorate Lennon's wedding to Yoko Ono and their subsequent honeymoon in Amsterdam.

The lithographs were scheduled for a two-week exhibition at London Arts Gallery at 22 New Bond Street on January 15th 1970. On the exhibit's second day, however, Scotland Yard raided the gallery and confiscated eight of the fourteen lithographs on the grounds that they were obscene and "exhibited to public view...to the annoyance of passengers, contrary to Section 54(12) of the Metropolitan Police Act, 1839, and the third schedule of the Criminal Justice Act 1967."

Text leaf.

The case was later dismissed when the magistrate hearing the case determined that they were unlikely to deprave or corrupt.

The lithographs were soon afterward exhibited by Lee Nordness Galleries in New York City, February 7 through February 28, 1970.

"The American opening of Bag One was a lavish affair... I flew over on John's behalf to film the proceedings. The whole of the New York art scene and all the 'beautiful people' turned out. Dali came with his pet ocelot on a leash. The lithographs were on view in a specially created environment, where spectators were asked to remove their shoes. The next month's issue of the prestigious Avant Garde magazine featured the Erotic Lithographs on the cover and as the major inside spread" (Anthony Fawcett. One Day at a Time, pp. 164-173).

Cinnamon Press of New York issued the first edition in 1970 simultaneously with the exhibitions. Laurens A. Daane of Amsterdam published a subsequent edition afterward in the same year.

The whole, inside story of Bag One, from conception through exhibition and publication, was related by Lennon and Ono's personal assistant, Anthony Fawcett, in his 1976 biography, John Lennon: One Day at a Time. A Personal Biography of the Seventies. You can read that section here.

A copy of Bag One was offered in the Rock & Roll Pop Culture Auction held by Gotta Have Rick and Roll in December 2011. It was estimated to sell for between $75,000 and $100,000, with minimum bid $72,500. It did not sell, "irrational exuberance," evidently, not limited to the financial markets.

The auctioneer, high-as-a-Mr. Kite, it seems, was, apparently, under the influence of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, rather than Lovely Rita, down-to-earth meter-maid, when conjuring up that strictly from Alpha Centuri estimate.

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LENNON, John. Bag One. New York: Cinnamon Press, 1970. First edition, limited to 300 copies. Folio. Title page, text leaf, and fourteen SIGNED in pencil lithograph prints ( 58 x 76 cm) on BFK Rives paper, loose as issued in white vinyl portfolio with black lettering and three ribbon ties, here foxed and stained.

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Images courtesy of New England Book Auctions, with our thanks.
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Charles Bukowski, Artist

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

From: All the Assholes in the World and Mine (1966).

In 1966, after enduring a hemorrhoid operation, Charles Bukowski, America's poet laureate of the depths, published a commemorative short story. All the Assholes in the World and Mine featured a drawing by Bukowski, a Posterior-Impressionistic portrait of proctology's finest hour as a team of crack surgeons removes a bunch of wrathful grapes from Bukowski's butt.

A richly inscribed copy has come into the marketplace, addressed to the publisher, Doug Blazek of Open Skull Press, a prolific underground poet, key figure in the scene, publisher of the legendary literary chapbook, Olé, and one of the first publishers to recognize the rough, uncut diamonds in Bukowski's early work. The inscription reads:

"To Doug Blazek - As if a man don't have just enough fucking pain just looking out the window - But, no, there are always the little extras, one of which appears in this story - The poor asshole: Charles Bukowski Oct. 26, 1966."

From: Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Sleep With Beasts (1965).

A year earlier, in 1965, Blazek published Bukowski's Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Sleep With Beasts, which introduced the author'a alter-ego, Henry Chinaski, to the world, and featured a cover illustration by Bukowski.

This copy is inscribed, "For Doug Blazek - Doug - You know / what I mean - / that where almost all / men have fallen apart / under the smallest / circumstances, / you've held to it / kept it / like a sugar cube / in a vase. / O, tough young bastard of / holler, true son of / truth, - my remains of / love, / Buk 1-25-66."

Below the initial salutation is an original drawing, perhaps of a face, that covers Bukowski's false start to the iniscription.

This copy also includes two pieces of original Bukowski artwork to the final two blanks, "Hangover and First Drink"...

...And "Dream of the Insect."

(I suspect, however, that the true dream of the insect is to be able to sit down and read a good book -

...or suck up a good book's words).

Factotum (1975).

A thousand hardcover copies of Bukowski's Factotum were issued upon its publication in 1966.

250 of those copies were signed and numbered.

From: Factotum.

Seventy-five copies were signed and numbered, and included an original watercolor painting by Buk.

Recently, Loren Kantor, an artist located in Los Angeles who publishes Woodcuttingfool: Journal of a Carving Enthusiast, created the above portrait woodcut of Bukowski. Those interested in acquiring a print may directly contact the artist.

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BUKOWSKI, Charles. All the Assholes in the World and Mine. Bensenville, IL: Open Skull Press, 1966. First edition, one of approximately 400 copies. Octavo (8.5 x 5.5 in.). [12] pp. Illustrated saddle-stitched wrappers.

BUKOWSKI, Charles. Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Sleep With Beasts. Bensenville, IL: Mimeo Press / Publisher's of Ole, 1965. First edition, one of approximately 500 copies. Octavo (8.5 x 5.5 in.). [24], [2, blank] pp of alternating colored leaves: maize, white, and pink. Illustrated saddle-stitched wrappers.

BUKOWSKI, Charles. Factotum. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1975. First edition, one of 75 copies (out of a total of 1000) signed and numbered by the author and with an original painting by Bukowski,

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Book and art images courtesy of Whitmore Rare Books, currently offering these items, with our thanks.

Bukowski woodcut image courtesy of Loren Kantor, with our thanks.

Reading bug image courtesy of EmpireOnline, with our thanks.

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Of related interest:

Dirty Old Man Exposed at the Huntington Library.

Charles Bukowski's Last, Unpublished Poem and the Bestial Wail.

Charles Bukowski Bonanza At Auction.

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Jonathan Swift On Women Who Fart (Or Don't)

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

Today's guest blogger is Stinky the Brontosaurus, recently cloned from an errant strand of DNA recovered from a bone fossil. "Born" with the ability to communicate in a manner unknown during the Jurassic, he is a prehistoric marvel. - SJG

By Stinky the Brontosaurus

I read the news today, oh boy. It appears that my dinosaur brethren and I farted our way into climate change, our effusions of methane warming the Earth and, perhaps, rendering us extinct. Tyrannosaurus Reeks? I'm sticking to the death by asteroid theory.

Within my bathroom reading library is a book that refutes Fartageddon, one that I routinely peruse while on the throne awaiting an explosion down below.

The Benefit of Farting Explain’d, a tract attributed to Jonathan Swift (and not to be confused with The Winds of War by Herman Wouk), swiftly, of course, gets to the heart of things, its subtitle a redolent prospectus of what is to come in one of the great run-on titles:

Or, The Fundament-All Cause of the Distempers incident to the Fair-Sex, enquired into. Proving á Posteriori most of the Dis-ordures In tail’d upon them, are owing to Flatulen-cies not seasonably vented. Wrote in Spanish by Don Fartinando Puff-indorst’, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow. And Translated into English at the Request, and for the Use, of the Lady Damp-fart of Her-fart-shire. By Obadiah Fizzle, Groom of the Stool to the Princess of Arsimini in Sardinia. Long-Fart (Longford in Ireland): Printed by Simon Bumbubbad, at the Sign of the Wind-Mill opposite Twattling-Street.

The ladies will, I pray, direct their displeasure at Swift, not me. That unexpressed farts are the cause of bad moods a la femme is a calumny, though I once dated a stegosaurus who became a harridan while holding them in; she was a Lady who, as fine ladies often do, feared the social consequences of letting 'em rip in public. One need only read the book's A Certificate from the Court of the Princess Arsemini, and Miss V***e' F***s, in the Philippic Style to understand their anxiety.

While we're on the subject of A Woman Under the Influence of Flatulence, the movie that John Cassavetes dared not make, allow me to relate a story we often tell around the campfire:

Once upon a time, Gangolfus, a Carolingian warrior-aristocrat from Burgundy later beatified, was married to an adulterous wife.

It came to pass that, while on a long journey, Gangolfus bought a piece of land graced with a pure spring. Upon his return, his shrewish spouse ridiculed his purchase because the spring was so distant from their home that it was useless to them.

In riposte, Gangolfus thrust a stick into the ground and, miraculously, water poured forth and a clear pond, exactly like the one he just had bought, came into being. Suspicious of his wife's lousy attitude, he suggested that she dip her hand into the cool water. She did, and was scalded thereby betraying her adulteries. In revenge, her swain, a swinish priest, murdered Gangolfus.

Shortly afterward, God punished the evil ecclesiastic by gutting his entrails in the loo, the same death that took Judas the betrayer and Arius the heretic.

Miracles soon began to occur at the tomb of Gangolfus, a sign of his sanctity in life. When news of the miracles reached his widow, she said, "If Gangolfus can work miracles, then so can my asshole!"

As punishment for this wisecrack, God cursed her with violent flatulence whenever she spoke about the miracles of her dead husband. For the rest of her life her ass announced, in a malodorous, inflammable foghorn voice, his sainthood. Take that, wanton woman!

(I paraphrased this version from a review of Vita Gangolfi, Das Leben Gangolfs by Paul Dräger, found in Medieval Review, a journal I keep in the bathroom next to Primeval Quarterly).

Originally appearing in 1722, The Benefit of Farting Explain'd was reprinted in 1735 within a miscellany including two other scatological works. It is a very rare book. The first edition has fallen under the hammer only twice within the last thirty six years, in 1980 and 2007; the same copy. The 1935 edition has not been seen at auction at all within the same period.

This lower intestinal tract has long been attributed to Swift but, according to him is was written by "one Dobbs, a surgeon." Yet to my Bronosaurian mind it's quite characteristically amusing, Swifty and sniffty. I suspect Swift dodged attribution.

Another book has recently wafted its way upon a scatological zephyr onto my bathroom's bookshelf and into my nostrils, An Essay Upon Wind by Charles James Fox, [London}: Printed on superfine pot-paper, at the Office of Peter Puffendorf, Potsdam, 1800. It opens with the following epigraph, courtesy of John Wilmont, 2d Earl of Rochester:

Perhaps such writing ought to be confined
In mere good breeding, like unsavory wind.
Were reading forced, I should be apt to think,
Men might no more write scurvily than stink:
But 'tis your choice whether you'll read or no;
If likewise of your smelling, it were so,
I'd fart, just as I write, for in my own ease,
Nor should you be concerned unless you please.

Fox dedicated his essay to the Lord Chancellor, Edward Thurlow: "I have heard from several of your brother peers, that your Lordship farts, without reserve, when seated upon the woolsack, in a full assembly of nobles… May your Lordship continue to fart like an ancient Grecian for many years…" (I should point out that Fox, a Whig statesman, had, in 1783, formed a coalition government and sacked Thurlow as Lord Chancellor; this was his parting shot).

Fox anticipates a strong headwind from his audience, as I do: "I think I hear the CURIOUS reader exclaim, 'Heavens! That the brain of a man should be set to work on such cursed nonsense - such damned low stuff as farting; he ought to be ashamed of straining his dull facilities to such a nasty, absorb subject. But to PRINT his THOUGHTS upon farting, and to dedicate his dirty lucubrations to the Lord Chancellor, is the height of all human impudence and folly.'"

He then treats the variations of flatulence:

"I take it there are five or six different species of farts, and which are perfectly distinct from each other, both in weight and smell. First, the sonorous and full-toned, or rousing fart; Second, the double fart; Third, the soft fizzing fart; fourth, the wet fart; and Fifth, the sullen wind-bound fart."

It's Fartapalooza.

As long as we're relieving ourselves, I would be remiss to not mention another scatological tract once published with a reprint of Swift-Dobbs' Benefits, A Curious Dissertation on Pissing; Written by Piss-A-Bed Scat-Her-Water, Countess of Piss-in-Ford, and Lady of the Manor of Piss-Pot-Hall.

Now, Mama brontosaurus, bless her, had a weak bladder since childhood, and, way too often, during seasonal migrations, she forced us all to stop by the side of the road so she could empty herself. I can't say that all women have urinary issues but it's probably no coincidence that incontinence pads are almost exclusively marketed to them. If Ma only had them back then...

Mama brontosaurus always lit a match when she farted, the smell of sulphur, to her nose, canceling-out digestive gas, though the rest of us disagreed, so much so that when she cut the cheese and prepared to strike a match, we ran, dug a hole, and waited for things to blow over. The prospect of the Earth's atmosphere igniting in a planetary conflagration and snuffing-out all life was too much to bear. Talk about global warming!

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[SWIFT, Jonathan, attributed to]. The Benefit of Farting Explain’d: Or, The Fundament-All Cause of the Distempers incident to the Fair-Sex, enquired into. Proving á Posteriori most of the Dis-ordures In tail’d upon them, are owing to Flatulen-cies not seasonably vented. Wrote in Spanish by Don Fartinando Puff-indorst’, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow. And Translated into English at the Request, and for the Use, of the Lady Damp-fart of Her-fart-shire. By Obadiah Fizzle, Groom of the Stool to the Princess of Arsimini in Sardinia. Long-Fart (Longford in Ireland): Printed by Simon Bumbubbad, at the Sign of the Wind-Mill opposite Twattling-Street, 1722 reprinted 1735). 12mo. 16 pp.

Rothchild 2225. Teerink 905.Terink 19 (note). Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica Vol II, p. 890p.

[ANONYMOUS]. A Curious Dissertation on Pissing; Written by Piss-A-Bed Scat-Her-Water, Countess of Piss-in-Ford, and Lady of the Manor of Piss-Pot-Hall. To which is added, The Benefit of Farting or the Fundament-All Cause of the Distempers incident to the Fair Sex enquir’d into: [N.p., n.p.]: 1787. First edition. 12mo. 36 pp.

FOX, Charles James. An Essay Upon Wind; with curious anecdotes of eminent peteurs. Humbly dedicated to the Lord Chancellor. [London}: Printed on superfine pot-paper, at the Office of Peter Puffendorf, Potsdam, 1800. Limited to 50 copies. Octavo. 56 pp.
ESTC N009441.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Slightly Nuts - But Not Crazy: Artist Henry Alken Lampoons Art

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

Plate 5. All Effect—The Subject far from good, but Rich

The terminology of art can be as confounding as that of rare books and bibliography. That arcane aspect of the book world was delightfully and satirically dealt with by Ronald Searle in Slightly Foxed - But Still Desirable in 1989.

165 years earlier, in 1824, the veil of mystery was torn off artist language in a similarly humorous manner.

Plate 2. Unpleasant in Effect—but the keeping is Good.

A Touch at the Fine Arts by Henry Alken and published by Thomas M'Lean in 1824, was "an attempt to elucidate, by graphic delineations, a variety of terms generally and perhaps exclusively made use of by artists, amateurs, connoisseurs, virtuosos, and the like. Long, indeed, has a generous public been, doubtless, puzzled in the endeavour to discover some ray of meaning in those glowing, brilliant and forcible phrases, which the critical catalogues, Catalogues Raisonnées, etc., of the day are woefully burdened with" (from the Preface).

Plate 9. A Very Warm Effect.

"It is a cheap kind of humour at the best. To take two of the most deserving subjects - ‘A Moving Effect; the Execution rapid,’ is represented by a runaway coach, with expressions of the utmost horror in the faces and attitudes of the occupants; ‘A Striking Effect, the handling by no means good or pleasant to the eye,’ is illustrated by a fracas between two returning roisterers and some night-watchmen.

Pl. 4. A Striking Effect—The handling by no means good, or pleasant to the eye.

"In these and in plate 2, a prison-scene depicting ‘An unpleasant effect, but the Keeping is Good,’ Alken shows genuine power as a draughtsman, and infuses his work with a character lacking elsewhere. The last plate, indeed, might almost be a coloured lithograph from the hand of Daumier. All twelve plates, it should be said, are soft-ground etchings, with colour applied by hand” (Martin Hardie, English Coloured Books, pp. 183-184).

Plate 3. A Moving Effect—the Execution Rapid.

Cheap, low humor, perhaps but, as Jonathan Swift observed in regard to punning, it "is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.” In other words, it's lousy unless you're the one who thought of it.

Adam Gopnik, of The New Yorker, notes that “Wit and puns aren't just decor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.”

Alken spotted the bugs in art and exterminated its pretensions with a slapstick pasquinade of painters and painting.

Plate 7. A Sudden Effect.

Alken was known primarily as a painter and designer of sporting scenes, producing many satires of horsemanship and the hunt, i.e Specimens of Riding Near London (1821), a rollicking lampoon of a horse's ass on a horse's back, many of its scenes capturing the horseman in a header over his steed and unceremoniously delivered unto the ground.

Plate 1. An Imposing Effect.

Henry Thomas Alken (1785-1841) "was the dominant sporting artist of the early nineteenth century... he delivered a long series of designs to the leading sporting printsellers—S. and J. Fuller, Thomas McLean, and Rudolph Ackermann among others.

"He was also a prolific designer, etcher, and lithographer of scenes relating to racing, shooting, coaching, and other sports... He wrote several books on aspects of engraving, including The Art and Practice of Engraving (1849).

"In later life he drifted into ill health, consumption, and poverty... He died in the early summer of 1851" (Oxford DNB), a Lethal Effect - the Result Permanent.

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ALKEN, Henry. A Touch at The Fine Arts: Illustrated by Twelve Plates, with Descriptions by Henry Alken. London: Published by Thomas M’Lean, Repository of Wit and Humour, 1824.

First edition. Large quarto (11 15/16 x 9 1/8 inches; 304 x 232 mm.). Twelve hand-colored soft-ground etched plates (8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches; 216 x141 mm.) mounted on heavy card stock, with the leaf of descriptive letterpress mounted on the facing page. Bound without the half-title, title, preface leaf, and leaf of advertisements.

Martin Hardie, pp. 183-184 and 319. Siltzer, p. 71. Tooley 58. Not in Abbey.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Hey Kids, Viva La Revolucion With Fidel And Che!

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

Front wrapper.

Madres y Padres! Los hijos falling asleep during El Líder's interminable orations? Are they missing out on the detailed history of the glorious revolucion? Is the ideology of sharing everything they own with everybody else here in our island paradise leading to counter-revolutionary sass? Are you dangerously harboring dissident tikes? State Security sniffing your kids' laundry?

Fear not! Album de la Revolucion Cubana is here!

The Coup of March 10th.

From the voyage of The Gramma returning Tios Fidel, Raul y Che to Cuba from exile in Mexico to spearhead the war against capitalist exploitation in 1956, all the way to Batista's fall, in 1959, every action-packed episode tells of the bravery y cajones of our comrades in the struggle.

Landing of the "Gramma," the yacht that ferried Fidel,
Raul Castro, and Che Cuevara from Mexico to Cuba
on November 25, 1956.

But, you may ask, how can I acquire this great primer for pre-pubescent Fidelistas when I can't even buy little Juanny a pair of shoes?

Leaders of the Revolucion.

We have heard The People. Album de la Revolucion Cubana is free! Free, I tell you, a gift from The People to The People. Just buy cans of Felices Frutas - "Las Más Exquisitas Frutas Cubanas" - and the album and one of the 268 cards in the set are free! Free, I say! Simply buy 268 cans of Felices Frutas to collect them all for your kids, have them read and mount each in their proper place in the album, and their political credentials are in order!

Think of them as Cuban baseball cards, revolutionary propaganda division. Happy Fruits beget happy children free from the pernicious anxieties associated with opposition politics on the see-saw and jungle bars.

Triumph of the Revolution, Fall of Batista.

Our glorious heroes won the revolucion with guns. Album de la Revolucion Cubana will arm our beautiful angelitos with Marxist-Leninist spirit!

Act now! Don't delay! The future of the revolucion is in the hands of our children. Support our nascent canned fruit industry, support the Revolucion, and prepare our children for life in communal paradise. It's a three-fer for Cuba. Los Cubanos, do your duty!

Advertensia! Children caught defacing the portraits of our leaders in Album de la Revolucioin Cubana by erasing moustaches and beards will be detained for re-education in a reform facility.

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[CHILDREN"S PROPAGANDA]. PICART, J.M. and Mario Jimenez. Album de la Revolucion Cubana: 1952-1959. Habana: Editorial Echevarria, 1959. First edition. Oblong quarto (12 x 8 3/4 inches). 32 pp. 268 numbered picture cards, mounted in numbered space, with printed captions. Drawings by Capdevila. Pictorial wrappers.

Distributed free to buyers of Felices Frutas. OCLC records a reprint by Habana: Revista Cinegrafico, 1960.

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Images courtesy of Aleph-Bet Books, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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Revisiting The Godfather, The Novel

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Mon, 14 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

There are strong similarities between Michael Corleone and Alexander Portnoy. Neither of them, for instance, wishes to enter his father's line of work. Each of them falls for a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant girl. Of course, there are some differences, too. When Alexander Portnoy's father is frustrated, he gets constipated; when Michael Corleone's father is frustrated, he gets someone killed.

'The Godfather' is the coming of age of Michael Corleone in a world that Philip Roth never knew. It is the world of the Mafia in America, and the dialogue and the logic of 'The Godfather' ring true enough to raise the suspicion that, at least by hearsay, Mario Puzo knows his subject well (Opening to NY Times review, April 27, 1969).

I can't remember if I read The Godfather when it was originally published, in 1969. It seems like I did. The book spent over a year on the New York Times Best Seller list; it was #1 the week of September 21, 1969. It was still #1 on November 30th, and then just sat around there lording it over everything else for a total of 67 weeks on the list. But I was eighteen years old and avoided books on the Best Seller list on principle: I dodged anything popular; it offended my sense of hip. By 1975, the book had sold 12,000,000 copies, 12,00,000 reasons not to read it.

Still, when I recently handled a first edition, first printing copy and routinely thumbed through the book I felt as if I'd previously read it, even though there were passages that seemed alien to my memory.

Of course, I've seen the movie, which came out three years later, and the movie, Part II (1974); I saw them immediately upon release. How many times since, I've lost count; at least twenty, easily. I was primed to plow through the entire novel: let's just say that the book made me an offer I couldn't refuse. It was not a virginal experience.

"Sonny Corleone was tall for a first-generation American
of Italian parentage, almost six feet, and his crop of bushy,
curly hair made him look even taller. His face was that of
a gross cupid, the features even but the bow-shaped lips
thickly sensual, the dimpled cleft chin in some curious way
obscene. He was built as powerfully as a bull..."

Since the movies' release it is impossible to read The Godfather without seeing and hearing Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, et al, while doing so. Seeing the movie in your head while you read is unavoidable. And it is equally difficult to not compare the movie with the book while reading it. The reality is that it is the movie and not the book that has become deeply embedded into American consciousness and culture to take its place within the American mythos.

While reading, what becomes immediately apparent is that Francis Coppola, working with Puzo, did a brilliant job in adapting the novel to film. Remember Nino Valenti, the mandolin-playing singer, lifelong pal of Johnny Fontaine, and Don Vito's other godson? Ripped from the pages of the book and thrown into the trash can never to be seen again. Lucy Mancini, the maid of honor at Connie's wedding and the object of Sonny's lust, lingers in the novel long after Sonny is gunned down.

Corleone Family gunsels Al Neri and Rocco Lampone are given much more attention in the book than in the first movie. Puzo devotes an entire chapter to Neri's bio; who knew he was originally a cop before he became "Michael's Luca Brasi," a physical and behavioral comparison absent in the films? Oh, and about Luca: his back-story you don't want to know; an infamy not for the faint of heart. Huge chunks of background material were cut out for The Godfather Part I; some reappeared in Part II. Lucy Mancini - who, in the novel, winds up engaged to a Jewish doctor, an abortionist in Vegas - doesn't show up again in the movie trilogy until Part III, sans doc but with grown child, Vincent, son of Sonny and not conceived by Puzo.

"He was short and burly, not handsome but with the same
cupid head of the family, the curly helmet of hair over the
round face and sensual bow-shaped lips. Only, in Fred,
these lips were not sensual but granitelike."

All this improved the narrative momentum of the first film. It is often frustrating to read the book; you become impatient for what you know is coming soon if only Puzo would get out of the way. Al Neri's story is presented as he's preparing to assassinate Don Barzini at the climax to the story. Knowing the film's inexorable, driving pace the Neri digression, however interesting, is annoying, and Puzo spends far too much time on Johnny and Nino's adventures in Hollywood. Did you know that after starring in Woltz International Pictures' anonymous stand-in for From Here To Eternity, the movie that brought Sinatra back from career death, Johnny became a successful independent producer? With Johnny's help Nino became a big movie star but he, being a simple, good ol' paesano, hated Hollywood success and drank himself to death. Interesting, sure, but ultimately, who cares? The movie has spoiled us for the novel.

It's easy to see why the book became such a phenomenon. In the Sixties, the veil over organized crime had begun to lift. Genovese Family member Joe Valachi had captured the nation's imagination with his revelations before Congress in 1963. The history, structure, and personnel of the American Mafia, La Cosa Nostra (in the book we learn that Don Corleone coined the phrase), became common knowledge. The Godfather integrated truth, rumor, and fiction into a compelling tale and provided rich. complex characters whose motivations were made clear, people who we, despite their behavior, came to feel deep affection and sympathy toward.

"He did not have the heavy, Cupid-shaped face of the
other children, and his jet-black hair was straight rather
than curly. His skin was a clear olive-brown that would
have been called beautiful in a girl. He was handsome
in a delicate way. Indeed there was a time when the Don
had worried about his son's masculinity."

Of paramount importance to its success, however, was that this was the first gangster novel as family drama, with appeal to women as well as men of all ages. The Godfather has become one of the great stories in modern American mythology.

Puzo wrote a terrific story. Literary exposition of character provides details and insight not found in the movies though as a filmmaker Coppola was able to capture much of it with a gesture, a look, without a word.

What is left wanting is Coppola's vision of the story as an Italian-American Greek tragedy told with bravura operatic theatricality without sacrificing naturalism, a delicate balance.

This is best illustrated by the story's penultimate sequence, when Michael "settles" family business. In the novel, the multiple assassinations occur sequentially, with background digressions. The baptismal scene occurs the day before. It was Coppola's genius to have the baptism and executions occur simultaneously, the rituals and chanting in Latin and Michael's acceptance of Jesus and rejection of Satan inter-cut with the murders providing an acutely emotive, sharply ironic contrast not present in the novel, and brings the religious sensibility of the final scene in the novel to the fore.

"She was too thin, too fair, her face was too sharply
intelligent for a woman, her manner too free for a maiden.
Her name, too, was outlandish to their ears;
she called herself Kay Adams."

At novel's end, Kay leaves Michael after she learns that he lied to her about ordering Carlo's death. But when she discovers, from Tom Hagen, the rationale, and reasonable, in this world, justification for Michael's criminal acts she returns to him and converts to Catholicism, accompanying Mama Corleone to Mass every morning to pray for the soul of Michael Corleone, the man she loves. It's a satisfying end to the book.

But Coppola captured the drama better. By cutting that sequence and ending with Kay witnessing the fealty of the Family soldier-retainers, hearing Michael addressed at Don Corleone, and seeing his office door and life closed to her she knows everything she - and we - need to know. Michael is guilty as sin and a malignant shadow has fallen over their marriage. Though Michael made his bones with Solozzo's murder, baby Anthony's entry into religious faith was Michael's, too, his baptism by fire as Don Corleone and grand entrance into the church of the Mafia and damnation.

• • •

I read the book during lunch breaks and stolen moments at work. I could not stay away from it until I finished it three days later; it is a compulsively great read, despite poor comparison with the film. In the evenings, I watched the movie. It was strange to read and watch the story in parallel as dueling media. In the end what became clear is that Coppola, more so than Puzo, understood that the novel was, first and foremost, the epic saga of a 20th century American family, and a parable about life in the U.S., the nation's values and ideals corroded by its post-WWII superpower status.

"Tom Hagen was thirty-five years old, a tall
crew-cut man, very slender, very ordinary-looking."

Overwhelmed by Copploa's trilogy (Parts I & II are considered to be in the top ten greatest movies ever made), the book is now merely a companion-guide to its cinematic incarnations, and nobody will ever read the book without having seen the movie first. There are no virgins to The Godfather, the novel. Yet I strongly recommend that readers take a look at it. It is, arguably, the best mainstream outlaw-romantic modern novel by an American writer, a genre that has a particular resonance in the American psyche. Though Puzo's prose is often poor his storytelling is always rich.

"Even as a young man, Vito Corleone became known
as a 'man of reasonableness.' He never uttered a threat.
He always used logic that proved to be irresistible. He
always made certain that the other fellow got his share
of profit. Nobody lost."

The book has certainly lasted longer in the popular American consciousness than Portnoy's Complaint, also published in 1969; the two were the big American novels of the year. Americans love men of action. When Alexander Portnoy gets frustrated, he masturbates. When Michael Corleone gets frustrated, he waits, and then he kills. But anybody can jerk-off. Few, however, have the power and will to live by their own rules and moral code. We admire and sympathize with Michael even as we understand that he's going to Hell, hand-basket unnecessary. The Greek tragedy that is The Godfather trumps the Jewish neurosis of Portnoy. The Corleones have become one of the great American Families, nice folks to visit but you don't want to live with them.

As of this date, it is estimated that The Godfather, the book, has sold approximately 21 million copies.
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How To Dance The Tarantella, In Scarce Lithographs (Cue The Godfather Theme)

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Thu, 10 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

Poor "Frankie Five Angels" Pentangeli. He schleps all the way from New York to the Corleone estate in Nevada for little Anthony's Communion celebration and is offered a "can o' peas," i.e. Ritz crackers with chopped liver. He wants the Rosato brothers dead; Michael Corleone tells him to baciarmi culo e affancul.

As if things could not get any worse, it's an Italian party and the band doesn't know the diff between a tarantella and Pop Goes the Weasel. É un incubo! A nightmare! I mean, everybody knows Zooma Zooma. It's like the national anthem. It comes automatic with a slice of pizza. Wha's a matta wich you? C'mon now, sing d'song!

C'e' la luna mezza 'o mare
Mamma mia m'ho maritari
Figlia mia a cu t' ho dare
Mamma mia pensaci tu
S'iddu nun e' lu musicante
Iddu vai, iddu vene
Sempe lu strumento a mano tene
Se ci piglia 'a fantasia
Lu strumento figlia mia

Oh, mamma zooma zooma baccala'
Oh, mamma zooma zooma baccala'
Oh, mamma zooma zooma baccala'
Zooma zooma, zooma zooma
Zooma baccala'

If Pentangeli had a copy of Gaetano Dura's Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine (c. 1834) with him on that fateful day a travesty could have been avoided. It illustrates how to perform the tarantella in eighteen beautifully hand-colored lithographed plates as a fold-out panorama, with captions. As a bonus for bandleaders who haven't a clue, another plate contains the music of a typical tarantella in its traditional rhythm, triplets in 6/8.

"[Of note in] the trend of illustrating Neapolitan folklore... is the lithographic album titled Tarantella. Neapolitan Dance, drawn entirely by Dura [1805-1878], published in Naples in 1833, and lithographed by Gatti in 1834 [as Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine].

"Dura's [Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine], a very important document for the reconstruction of the Neapolitan tarantella, presents nineteen plates, accompanied by captions that explain, step by step, all the different phases of the dance.

"The style of the illustrations is basic: two dancers, drawn not without a certain grace and accuracy, move isolated on a white background completely devoid of any decoration or pittoresco.

"In the mid-1830s Dura became associated with Gatti, founding a lithographic establishment that soon became one of the most important in Naples. The brand of "Gatti and Dura" published prints, calendars, atlases, graphic novels and works of a popular nature, such as almanacs and miscellanies" (Encyclopedia Treccani.it, L'Enciclopedia Italiana).

This is an extremely rare book. ABPC records only one complete copy at auction since 1923; an incomplete copy with only ten plates was sold in 1955. OCLC/KVK note only three institutional copies, at Harvard, NYPL, and Austria State Library.

Poor Frankie Five Angels. If he'd known that not too far away, in '50s Las Vegas, an Über-Guido was bompin' 'n stompin', working The Strip like crazy, in the process becoming an Italian-American royal mixing classic tarantella, American pop, and jazz into a zesty zuppe de verdure, Frankie would have had Willy Cicci escort the man back to Casa de Corleone for a command performance of real, honest to goodness tarantella. Instead, he later slit his wrists.

Below, after paying tarantella tribute to Angelina, the girl who serves spumoni (and is ripe for matrimony), Il Re di Las Vegas, backed by Sam Butera and The Witnesses, sings Zooma Zooma better than anybody since Mama Corleone at Connie's wedding back in August '45, in the good old days, before, you know...

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DURA, Gaetano. Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine dirigée par Louis Puccinelli Maitre de Danse dessinée par Gaetan Dura. Naples: Gatti et Dura, n.d. [c. 1834].

First edition. Oblong octavo (5 7/16 x 7 1/8 in; 138 x181 mm). Hand-colored lithographed frontispiece, engraved title, one plate of music notation, and seventeen hand-colored lithographed plates with captions, a total of twenty panels in panorama format unfolding to 142 1/2 inches.

Cf. Colas 921.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Tennessee Williams' Sweet Sacred Ibis Of Youth

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

Cover by C.C. Senf.

"Hushed were the streets of many peopled Thebes. Those few who passed through them moved with the shadowy fleetness of bats near dawn, and bent their faces from the sky as if fearful of seeing what in their fancies might be hovering there..."

An emotionally iffy ancient Egyptian princess, sister to the Pharaoh, seeks revenge on those who conspired to execute her beloved brother, ascends the throne, builds a temple as an elaborate death-trap, drowns them all with sadistic glee, and then kills herself.

It's Tennessee Williams' first published story, his second appearance in print, The Vengeance of Nitocris, issued under his given name, Thomas Lanier Williams, and published by Weird Tales, the American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine, in 1928. It might just as well have been titled A Chariot Named Desire, or The Orisris Menagerie.

"I was sixteen when I wrote [the story], but already a confirmed writer, having entered upon this vocation at the age of fourteen, and, if you're well acquainted with my writings since then, I don't have to tell you that it set the keynote for most of the work that has followed" (Tennessee Williams, New York Times interview, as cited by Francesca M. Hitchcock, "Tennessee Williams' Vengeance of Nitocris: The Keynote to Future Works," The Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 48, 1995).

A strong if emotionally fragile woman, a close brother-sister bond, a descent into madness, and death - this is, indeed, Williams territory, with revenge and lurid blood and guts thrown in as a nod to the Bard, Titus Andronicus, according to Hitchcock, William's favorite play by Shakespeare. In this weird tale for Weird Tales, as in so much of Shakespeare - and pulp fiction - everybody dies miserably ever after. It's necropolis-noir.

Little Tommy Williams was in good company in this issue. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, contributed the featured story, Red Shadows, which introduced 17th century Puritan swashbuckler Solomon Kane and is considered to be the first published example of Sword and Sorcery fiction.

This issue also contains Crashing Suns, a story by science-fiction pioneer Edmund Hamilton. Hamilton, in 1946, married science fiction writer, and screenwriter, Leigh Brackett, perhaps best known for her collaborations with William Faulkner (The Big Sleep, 1946); five Westerns for director Howard Hawks; Robert Altman (The Long Goodbye, 1973); and Lawrence Kasdan (Star Wars' The Empire Strikes Back, 1979). This copy, in fact, belonged to Hamilton and Brackett; their ownership stamp appears on its first page.

"What more horrible vengeance could Queen Nitocris have conceived than this banquet of death? Not Diablo himself could be capable of anything more fiendishly artistic. Here in the temple of Osiris those nobles and priests who had slain the pharaoh in expiation of his sacrilege against Osiris had now met their deaths. And it was in the waters of the Nile, material symbol of the god Osiris, that they had died. It was magnificent in its irony!...

"When in the evening the queen arrived in the city, pale, silent, and obviously nervous, threatening crowds blocked the path of her chariot, demanding roughly an explanation of the disappearance of her guests. Haughtily she ignored them and lashed forward the horses of her chariot, pushing aside the tight mass of people. Well she knew, how-ever, that her life would be doomed as soon as they confirmed their suspicions. She resolved to meet her inevitable death in a way that befitted one of her rank, not at the filthy hands of a mob.

"Therefore upon her entrance into the palace she ordered her slaves to fill instantly her boudoir with hot and smoking ashes. When this had been done, she went to the room, entered it, closed the door and locked it securely, and then flung herself down upon a couch in the center of the room. In a short time the scorching heat and the suffocating thick fumes of the smoke overpowered her. Only her beautiful dead body remained for the hands of the mob."

Sweet Sacred Ibis! The maturation from purple pulp to poetic prose may have been Williams' greatest achievement as a writer, though the recognizable, often delicately tough, real yet unnatural and not quite of this world turn of his language can be glimpsed this early.

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WILLIAMS, Thomas Lanier [Tennessee Wiliams]. The Vengeance of Nitocris. [In Weird Tales, p. 253]. Indianapolis, Indiana: Popular Fiction Publishing, 1928. Octavo. 288 pp. Illustrated wrappers.

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Images courtesy of Between the Covers, with our thanks.
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Of related interest:

Unpublished Significant Early Tennessee Williams Poem Surfaces.

Tennessee Williams Rocks the Rare Books Round Up at L.A. TImes Festival of Books.

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A Stunning Rare Illuminated Book Of Hours, $13,583 Per Hour

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Tue, 08 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

Shepherds' Proclamation.

On May 21 2012, Ketterer Kunst Auktions - Hamburg is offering the De Gros-Carondelet Book of Hours. It is estimated to sell for €299,000 ($326,250).

Presentation in the Temple.

Produced on very fine and delicate vellum, this manuscript was initially designed for the Burgundian court secretary Jean III de Gros (1434-1484) c. 1480, and, some twenty years later, passed into the ownership of the Burgundian chancellor Jean I Carondelet and his family.

John on Patmos.

The book features twenty-two full-page miniatures with surrounding borders comprised of various leaves, flowers, fruits, birds, etc. and with three-line initials in colors, with six small miniatures as well as numerous two- and one-line white-heightened initials in gray blue against a gilt-heightened red brown background, and line fillers of similar design.

The revival of Lazarus.

Of the highest quality, this illuminated Book of Hours manuscript is of the utmost nobility and provenance, and at the same time a primary source and historical document from the inner circle of the Burgundian court’s last period.

The evangelist Mark.

Magnificently preserved, the manuscript exhibits unique development from an originally Flemish to a later French style.

Corpus Christi procession.

It was originally illuminated by Simon Marmion, the Dresden prayer book master, and other painters. After it changed ownership and moved to France, which may have been, in part, politically motivated, the miniatures as well as the borders were entirely reworked and modernized by an unknown but gifted French book painter, which led to its fascinating synthesis of Flemish and French stylistic elements.

Madonna and child.

“The apparently complete ‘redecoration’ of the illuminations just a few years after the commissioned manuscript was actually made is so unique that it causes one to speculate whether it was simply motivated by aesthetic reasons or if perhaps treason of the previous owner may have been the actual reason. Whatever the reason, as far as I am concerned, this work is unique considering the aspect of the illuminations.“ (Dr. Bardo Brinkmann, of Basle).

Souls in Purgatory.

Jean de Gros III (1434-1484) began his royal court service an early age and was soon named secretary. He became a ducal audiencer in 1467, and gained further office under Charles the Bold. He had financial administration duties, and was treasurer of the Order of the Golden Fleece. He owned a splendid house in Bruges.

Initial decorations.

Jean Carondelet (1428-1502), Seigneur de Champvans et de Solre, was in the service of the Burgundian dukes, Philip the Good and Chrarles the Bold; the fortunes of the Carondelets were closely tied to the Budundian Netherlands. He was President of the Great Council of Mechelen 1473-1477, and Burgundian chancellor 1480-1496.

The manuscript is in a contemporary Flemish calf binding over blind-tooled wooden boards, each board with eight stamps in blind separated by friezes.

The word for Book of Hours in German is Stundenbuch; the book will leave you stunned in awe.

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[De Gros - Carondelet]. Book of Hours. Flanders c. 1480, Burgundy c. 1485-1500. Illuminated manuscript on vellum with 16 text, 17 calendar lines. 348 ff. 22 illuminated miniatures, 6 small miniatures, initials throughout. Flemish Bastarda in black ink, rubrics (obviously) in red.

Provenance: Not in the relevant literature. In the possession of the family of Georg Hasenclever (1855-1934), father of expressionistic writer Walter Hasenclever, since the late 19th century.

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Richard M. Nixon, Thespian Interpreter Of Ayn Rand

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

Ronald Reagan was not the only President of the United States who was an actor before entering politics.

On the evening of October 20, 1938, Richard M. Nixon, a year after being admitted to the bar and thirty years prior to his election as POTUS, trod the boards as District Attorney Flint for the first of a two night run of the Whittier Community Players' production, staged at the Whittier Woman's Club House, of Night of January 16th, Ayn Rand's courtroom drama, her first play and a hit on Broadway during the 1935-36 season.

This was the amateur Master Thespian's first bite at potential stage stardom. Later in the year, he co-starred with Thelma "Pat" Ryan as the leads in the Whittier Community Players' production of George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woolcott's mystery-melodrama, The Dark Tower. Following the standard script, the two actors fell in love.

On this night (October 20, not January 16th), however, Nixon limned the role that he would wear as a political mantle, that of a D.A. whose traditional values drive him to prosecute the alluring, independent, atheistic flouter of social standards, Karen Andre (Rand's stand-in), for murder as much for her offense to the social order as her guilt.

The spokesman for the future Silent Majority found his voice in the character, his acting experience preparing him for the second of his six crises (the first as snake pursuing Alger Hiss), his 1952 role as Vice-Presidential Candidate up against the wall to face dastardly charges of corruption. It was a heart-rending portrayal capped by the schmaltz-shmeared Shakespearean monologue known as "the Checkers speech" in which he wept havoc and let slip the pooch of war to vanquish his enemies, succeeded, and definitively proved that in politics a honey-baked ham can make it to the big time. In politics, as well as strip-tease, you gotta have a gimmick.

And in dramaturgy, too. Rand's contrivance in Night of January 16th was to have the play's jury chosen from each performance's audience and let them decide the play's ending, "guilty" or "not guilty." Further, Rand left the ultimate truths ambiguous, leaving it up to the actors to decide whether their characters were lying or being honest. - another nod to politicians who often don't know whether they're honestly lying, lying about being honest, are actually honest, or honestly don't know the difference.

The reviews for this production of Rand's Night of the 16th are lost to history; we don't know whether Nixon laid an egg or, as Ruby Keeler in 42d Street, went out a youngster and came back a star.

"Nixon, you're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star!"

"Now, take off the dress and lose the hat. You look ridiculous."

Whatever the critics may have thought the footlights agreed with him.

"One day in 1938, Mrs. Lilly Baldwin, the director of the local amateur theatre group, telephoned me to ask if I would like to play the part of a prosecuting attorney in their upcoming production of Ayn Rand’s courtroom drama, The Night of January 16th. I took the part and thoroughly enjoyed this experience in amateur dramatics" (RN, interview cited by Nixon Foundation).

This choice little piece of ephemera is being offered by Between the Covers as "The PERFECT gift for conservative objectivists." Liberal subjectivists may conscientiously object; it's the perfect gift for the Leftie in your life who needs a good laugh.

We leave you with Our Man Flint's bravura turn as Man On The Ropes; afterward, he was in like Flynn, without the sexual connotation, of course.

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[NIXON, Richard M.]. [RAND, Ayn]. Whittier Comunity Players Present "Night of January 16th" by Ayn Rand. Woman's Club House, October 20 and 21, 1938. Seventeenth Season, First Production. Whittier [California]: Whittier Community Players, 1938. Program for the play.

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Program images courtesy of Between The Covers, with our thanks.
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Read This House!

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

An anonymous author’s novel written on the walls
of an abandoned house in Chongqing, China.

The writing's on the wall: Amazon won't be selling this book. Yet perhaps the innovative new format, in a striking Domicile binding of full Chinoise dry-wall with pictograph decoration in black, clapboard trim, and five residential spine compartments, will kindle a new trend if not an app: live-in literature for the completely immersive reading experience.

What is this book about? The novel, its mortgage diced and sliced into packets sold as unregistered securities, will blow up if confidence in the writer erodes. Will the bottom drop out of the literary marketplace? Only the novelist can fight the charge of derivative but will the bank foreclose before the last chapter is finished? Can this book be bailed out? Is it too big to fail? Will the author be evicted from his book?

Market analysts at the New York Times Sunday Book & Real Estate Review suggest a re-fi is in order but the author is reportedly resistant to editorial changes from mortgage bankers who know how to cook the books but not how to write them - sub-prime novelists, each and every one of them.

The Chairman of the Federal Literary Reserve Board earlier today issued the following statement, already criticized by publishing-world pundits as exhibiting "irrational exuberance":

Bless this book, O Lord we pray,

Make it safe by night and day.

Bless these walls so firm and stout, 

Keeping turgid language out.

Bless the roof and chimneys tall, 

Let the words lie overall.

Bless this door that it may prove

Modern lit.'s a solid groove.

Bless these windows shining bright, 

Don't let Goldman Sachs hacks write.

Bless the scribe who dwells within

With cigarettes, drugs, and gin.

Bless us all that we may be, 

Fit, O book, to dwell in thee.

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Image courtesy of Tumblr, with our thanks.
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Meet "The Reader," A Drama In Lithography

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Thu, 03 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

TOBIAS, Abraham Joel (1913-1996). The Reader.
New York: Works Progress Administration, 1935-43.
Lithograph. Image size (21 1/4 x 15 3/4 in; 54 x 40 cm). .

Painter, lithographer, illustrator, and muralist Abraham Joel Tobias (1913 - 1996) was primarily known for his sculptural paintings of the 1930s, a pioneer in the form.

"[From] 1934-35, Abraham Joel Tobias created and exhibited an extraordinary group of works he called 'sculptural paintings' that integrated shaped canvases and complex framing devices, both conditioned by the imagery they contained. With their complex yet coherent interplay of imagery, construction, and composition, the sculptural paintings are uniquely innovative works within the history of American art" (Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University).

During the mid-1930s through early 1940s, Tobias was employed by the Works Progress Administration, the New Deal program, 1935-1943, that put millions of unemployed laborers, as well as those in the arts, to work during the Great Depression on public works projects. It was during this period that he created The Reader, a stunning composition that highlights, perhaps as no other visual depiction, the intensity of an active reader, deeply engrossed in, and wholly united with, the volume. The reader and book are physically as one and indivisible, and lost to the outside world. At this moment there is nothing more important in the universe than the reader and the book; a holy communion, a prayer meeting. Tobias's use of chiaroscuro effects heightens the drama.

As matted and framed.

"The name Tobias may not ring a bell with most New Yorkers, but tens of thousands of them a day pass one or more of his works huge murals everywhere from Public School 134 on the lower East Side to the lobby of the Domestic Relations Court in downtown Brooklyn…

"Tobias, who was born in upstate Rochester but spent his early years in Scotland before returning to New York at age 8, once said he chose art on his first day of school. The story goes that he was so upset the teacher gave him pencil and paper and asked him to draw her a picture. He did and she praised him so lavishly that he continued to draw for the rest of his life.

"Tobias was one of the first artists to paint on shaped canvasses and to make the frame part of the painting. In the '30s, when he started, that went unremarked, but in the '80s, the techniques caused a stir among art critics.

"He had shown the paintings in 1935 then put them away for more than a half century, until a curator at the Smithsonian Institution heard about them. The Smithsonian bought one shaped like a huge seashell and called his works 'astoundingly different.'

"Forty-four other works, in all sizes and shapes, were exhibited at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

"He refused to sell them, and they are now back in storage" (NY Daily News obit, February 05, 1996).

A print of The Reader is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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Images courtesy of Between The Covers, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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Hey, Rare Book Guy! Is It Erotica, Curiosa, Or Pornography? (May be NSFW)

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

Hey Rare Book Guy!

I was looking through a rare book catalog from the early 1980s. The dealer subtitled his business, Erotica, Curiosa, and Sexology. What's curiosa? What's the difference between erotica and curiosa? And what’s the difference among erotica, curiosa, and pornography?

- Lost in Intercourse, Pennsylvania, USA.

Dear Lost:

Nice, though exhausted double-entendre, place to be lost in; the burg of biped bonomos in hominid drag. I'm sure the Amish who populate the town enjoy being the object of a cheap sex joke.

Yours is a highly serendipitous query. It’s almost as if I made it up.

First edition, Histoire d'O, 1954.

On May 11, 2012, Christie’s - Paris is offering eighteen lots of “Curiosa” in its Importants Livres Anciens, Livres d'Artistes et Manuscrits sale.

I’ve spent a lot of time considering curious literature, of which there is no shortage: strange, bizarre, and weird books occupy a warm space in my heart, with a large library of volumes archived within my right cerebral hemisphere. This accounts for my head always being slightly pitched to the right, as if I'm observing the world with analytical interest instead of merely leaning so due to heavy internal bookshelves.

If you’re outside of Rio De Janero, the carioca is certainly curiosa. Curious literature and carioca, however, have nothing to do with the curiosa that Christie’s is auctioning off.

Edouard Chmot, Rêves et Masturbation.

Early in my career I specialized in sex-oriented literature. I’ve studied it going on thirty years now. So, when I was reading through the Christie’s catalog my head snapped back when I saw “Curiosa.” It’s not a word one comes across very often these days. It’s a throwback to an earlier era. I was amused. I suspect the cataloger was amused when he/she used the word. To those below fifty years old it’s a “Huh?”

By Hans Bellmer, from: Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror, 1971.

So, what exactly does curiosa mean?

John Carter, in his classic, ABC For Book Collectors, states, “This familiar subject heading may cover anything from the risqué or gallant...to the indecent, which would be more properly listed under Erotica. It will sometimes include medical or pathological works, but these are nowadays mostly cataloged frankly under ‘Sex’ or more generally under ‘Sexology.’”

By Carter's standard, curiosa encompasses the suggestive through the explicit, decent sex to indecent, the entire universe of sexual literature, pornography and erotica included, as well as sexual folklore and humor, but excluding the sciences.

But flip to the index to G. Legman's The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Literature and Bibliography (1964) in search of curiosa and here's what you'll find: "Curiosa see Erotic Literature." Go to Erotic Literature in search of curiosa and there is no mention of it. To Legman, curiosa and erotic literature are one and the same thing.

Curiosa, a noun found in the titles of books as far back as the 17th century, originally referred to the unusual, the wondrous, the intriguing, the eye-opening, the, well, curious. By the 1880s it had evolved in meaning to describe books concerning tabooed subjects, the tabooed subjects 99.9% of the time being, sex, sex, and you get the drift. For the Victorian era, it was perfect: innocent yet delicately suggestive and tempting with a sly wink.

Erotica is, by Carter's definition, indecent literature expressly meant to arouse sexual desire. Most people think that's the definition of pornography (writing of prostitutes), a word originally coined to describe the sixteenth and seventeenth century literary dialogues between whores, i.e the Ragionamenti (1534-36) by Pietro Aretino; La Retorica delle Puttane (The Whore's Rhetoric,1642) by Ferrante Pallavicino; L'Ecole des Filles (The School for Girls, 1655), attributed to Michel Millot and Jean L'Ange; and Aloisiae Sigeae Toletanae Satyra Sotadica de arcanis Amoris et Veneris (The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea, c. 1660) by Nicolas Chorier. From this humble and narrow beginning, the word has been conflated to represent the wide world of graphically open sex.

Most people now think that erotica is literature (or art) meant to arouse the mind as well as the genitals. Yet we also now understand that the mind and flesh are one; even the worst written porn engages the mind; the flesh follows. Erotica, though nice sounding and redolent of Eros, remains a messy word: what qualifies a book as being erotica? Is sexual content enough or is there something more involved than the "indecent"?

If erotica and pornography are synonymous, there is still no chance that an auction house or respectable rare book dealer will employ "pornography" as a catalog category; an aesthetic distinction is made: pornography = smut, and respectable auctioneers and rare book dealers do not purvey the vulgar and obscene. Unless, of course, it is of historic and/or literary significance, rare and desirable. It is then magically transformed into toney "erotica" and rendered acceptable. It's the literary equivalent of money-laundering with fabric softener thrown in for fresh-air scent and good feel.

By Hans Bellmer, from: Kleist, Les Marionettes, 1969.

Just what titles is Christie’s offering under the curious rubric, curiosa? A first edition of Histoire d’O (The Story of O, illustrated by Hans Bellmer, 1954); a collection of Tijuana Bibles, the sexually explicit comic books issued during the 1930s in the U.S.; Le Paysan Perverti ou les dangers de la ville (1776), Restif de la Bretonne’s first autobiographical novel, a moral tale in epistolary format about the corrupting influence of Paris upon a peasant whose flesh is stirred; a mixed edition of Sade’s seven-volume Histoire de Juliette ou Les Prosperités du vice (“En Hollande: 1797,” i.e. Bruxelles, 1865, the final volume from the first edition of 1801-1802); a first edition of André Thiron’s Le Grande Ordinaire (1943), illustrated by Oscar Dominguez; artist Martin Van Maele’s Le Grande danse macabre vifs (c.1907-1908); Francis Carco’s L’amour vénal (1926); the Bellmer-illustrated edition of Lautreamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror (1971); Dali’s Les Métamorphoses érotiques (1969); a collection of illustrations by Edouard Chimot, all explicit; etc.

By Marcel Vertés, from: Caroco, L'amour vénal, 1926.

The tame to the feral is represented

It's all curiosa but is it erotica or pornography?

From a Tijuana Bible, c. 1930s.

There are those who make distinctions between the two genres of sexual literature. These differences generally concern class and art. Erotica is high class, pornography is low; erotica has artistic merit, pornography does not. Erotica is beyond the law and legal, pornography is often subject to censorship. Erotica can be charming, pornography is graceless. Erotica enlightens the human experience, pornography debases it. Erotica is literature; pornography is trash. Erotica is healthy, pornography is sick.

By Oscar Dominguez, from: Thirion, Le Grand Ordinaire, 1943.

Clearly, these are opinions and highly subjective. “What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another” (D.H. Lawrence, Pornography and Obscenity). Yet in the same essay Lawrence posits that “pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it. This is unpardonable.” Lawrence goes further: “even I would censor genuine pornography, rigorously.”

Restif de la Bretonne, Le Paysan Perverti, 1776.

Yet what constitutes “genuine” pornography? Inauthentic erotica? Lawrence circles back on himself here, and we’re back to the subjective. Nuance creates a general, agreed upon need for a different word to express a concept that possesses objective shades of meaning; synonyms are never absolutely and exactly synonymous. Yet because erotica and pornography are entirely subjective concepts whose meanings have yet to be objectively agreed upon, arguing what’s what and which is which is a hopeless exercise in sophistry.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's 1964 threshold for pornography - "I know it when I see it" - just won't to. It's a tad imprecise.

Susan Sontag didn’t bother with these distinctions. The word erotica never passes her lips; the word that does, she's not happy about.

“I’m willing to accept (in the privacy of serious intellectual debate, not in the courts) the dubious label of pornography...The ratio of authentic literature to trash in pornography may be somewhat lower than the ratio of novels of genuine literary merit to the entire volume of subliterary fiction produced for mass taste” (The Pornographic Imagination).

From: Sade, Histoire de Juliette, 1797 (1865).

What I’ve noticed over the years is that If it’s current and crude, it’s called porn. If it’s old and crude, it’s erotica; age plays a role. The engravings to Sade’s Histoire de Juliette were pornographic and obscene when originally published but two hundred years later they possess a vintage, ye olde dirtie booke charm, erotic artifacts from a bygone era and somewhat quaint. The medium of engraving, no longer in general use, plays a role in distancing us from the subject matter, implicitly disarming whatever danger the imagery once explicitly threatened. The image above, in modern color photography, becomes Debbie Does Dallas And Then Some and we enter lewd, rude, and crude land, which is just fine if lewd, rude, and crude interests you. A hundred years from now, DDDATS, if a DVD survives, will become a curious relic worthy of collection and study. Age will lend acceptance and credibility. YIKES! will settle into lower case and lose the exclamation point.

From: Martin Van Maele, Le Grande danse macabre vifs.

Perhaps the only work being offered by Christie's that can safely, without question, be called curiosa is Martin Van Maele’s Le Grande danse macabre vifs, a work that contains, as seen here, a strange, bizarre, and weird image that is definitely curiosa. Oh, is it curious, a troubadour strummin' on the ol' banjo as he croons O Sole Mio to Aphrodite in his room with a callipygian view.

I expect that some readers will disagree, perhaps vehemently, that there is no rational and objective difference between erotica, curiosa, and pornography. That's fine, as long as you understand that the perceived differences are purely subjective. Put three people in a room and you'll get five opinions on the matter.

I propose that the word curiosa be deep-sixed as a catch-all for sex-lit. It's a curious euphemism, an indirect word so mild, ambiguous, and detached from what it attempts to describe that, while useful in the Victorian Age when sex was not openly discussed or written about, is now useless as a classification. Livres libre - liberated or "free" books - covers it nicely, I think, with an upscale Continental gloss. It's a phrase the French have often used to describe sexually open and graphic literature, and dodges the erotica v. porn conflict, ultimately a false dichotomy.

Of course, no auctioneer or rare book dealer will ever market "free books." It sends a mixed message guaranteed to inspire knuckleheads to demand the books, gratis.

Perhaps the best way to resolve the issue is to simply catalog sex-lit. as Pornographie, the French spelling that classes it up and turns the rough flannel into silk thus providing the oh-la-la! without the oy vey.

In the meantime, I hereby hijack curiosa as a precise category to cover curious literature.

The Carioca I leave to Fred and Ginger:

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All images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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The First Novel On Free Blacks And Race Relations In The North (1857)

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

The book which now appears before the public may be of interest in relation to a question which the late agitation of the subject of slavery has raised in many thoughtful minds; viz.--Are the race at present held as slaves capable of freedom, self-government, and progress?

The author is a coloured young man, born and reared in the city of Philadelphia...

Being one of the nearest free cities of any considerable size to the slave territory, it has naturally been a resort of escaping fugitives, or of emancipated slaves...

The author takes pleasure in recommending this simple and truthfully-told story to the attention and interest of the friends of progress and humanity in England.
- H.B. Stowe.

The Garies and Their Friends, by Frank J. Webb, the second novel by an African-American (preceded by Clotel; or, The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown, 1853) and the first to consider the lives of free African Americans in the pre-Civil War North was issued in 1857 - but not in the United States. Published in London, it required an ocean to separate it from its home.

Perhaps the sympathetic mixed-race marriage that forms the center of the book had something to do with it. Or, the violent racism and riots that free Blacks experienced in the City of Brotherly Love, one of the most racially integrated cities in the nation but intensely so. Maybe it was the author's satire of benevolent yet patronizing white Philadelphian abolitionists who preferred sentimental tear-jerkers ala Uncle Tom's Cabin and didn't appreciate criticism. Possibly, light-skinned blacks passing as whites inspired the heebie-jeebies in fair-skinned citizens. Perchance the idea that black Americans should become capitalists and gain wealth was too much, the final Whoa, Nelly!

This was not subject matter that comfortable whites found palatable. Though sentimental in its own right, the novel was not an uplifting experience. It provoked anxiety. It was not a great beach read on American shores; it left too much sand in the shorts.

Moreover, it didn't dwell on slavery and its horrors; it was not an abolitionist tract condemning the moral stain. And it raised questions about whether emancipation would succeed. The novel was, for the most part, given short shrift in America, if noticed at all.

It wasn't published in the U.S. until 112 years after its original appearance, in 1969.

Author Frank J. Webb (1828–1894) was an African-American poet, and essayist. The Garies and Their Friends was his first and only novel.

He was born in Philadelphia and grew to become an active member of the city’s free African American community. He married in 1845, and his wife, Mary, gained admiration for her dramatic readings of works by Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Longfellow. Her work attracted the attention of Harriet Beecher Stowe; Stowe was so impressed by Mary’s readings that she adapted scenes from Uncle Tom’s Cabin expressly for her to perform.

HBS helped to arrange a transatlantic tour for Mary, and, armed with letters of introduction from Stowe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Frank and Mary traveled to England in 1856. Mary’s readings gained critical acclaim, and the two received a warm welcome from many British nobles, including Lady Noel Byron (Anne Isabella Noel Byron, 11th Baroness Wentworth and Baroness Byron) to whom Frank dedicated The Garies..., and from Henry, Lord Brougham (1st Baron Brougham and Vaux), who wrote a brief though enthusiastic introduction for the book.

"According to its many critics...The Garies and Their Friends seems to share [Harriet Beccher Stowe's] doubts concerning the capability of 'the race at present held as slaves" to govern themselves. At least that's one way to read an African American author's frustrating decision to write a novel in 1857 that spends little time detailing the horrors of slavery - a subject that contemporary black writers took pains to elaborate.

"The year that the novel was published, a London Sunday Times reviewer chided Webb for leaving 'untouched' the problem of how emancipation 'is to be effected, without as much injury to slave as slaveowner.' For the most part, time did not change critical attitudes toward the text...More recently, critics...have argued persuasively that the text deserves analysis, not only as the second novel written by an African American, but also as one of the first to deal with volatile questions of identity and loyalty within the black community.

"Yet Webb's text still continues to languish from a general lack of scholarly attention" (Duane, Anna Mae. Remaking Black Motherhood in Frank J. Webb's The Garies and Their Friends. African American Review, Vol. 38, No. 2 [Summer 2004], pp. 201-212).

The first edition is scarce, particularly in the original cloth. OCLC notes only a handful of copies in institutional libraries, and no copies of the book, in cloth or its simultaneous issue in wrappers, have come to auction within the last twenty-five years.

The Garies and Their Friends is an extremely important American novel, if for no other reason than it illustrates the question unresolved since Webb first broached it in fiction: Can American blacks successfully assimilate into the American mainstream without losing themselves and their culture in the quest for the American Dream?

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WEBB, Frank J. The Garies and Their Friends. With an Introductory Preface by Harrier Beecher Stowe. London and New York: G. Routledge & Co., 1857. First edition (issued simultaneously in wrappers as a "yellowback"). Octavo. vi, [2], 392 pp. Publisher's original dark blue cloth.

BAL 19392.
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Images courtesy of Between The Covers, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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Magnificent 15th C. Illuminated Hebrew Manuscript Estimated $540K - $800K

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

Cantor pointing to The Book of Life, opening Yom Kippur.

A mahzor, or Jewish holiday prayerbook, an illuminated manuscript in Hebrew on vellum from Tuscany (likely Florence), c. 1490s, is being offered by Christie's - Paris on May 11, 2012. It is estimated to sell for €400,000 - €600,000 ($540,000 - $800,000).

Ark of the Covenant, with men teaching in the synagogue below.

It is magnificently illuminated in the characteristic style of Giovanni di Giuliano Boccardi, known as Boccardino il vecchio (Boccardino the Old, 1460-1529) and considered one of the last representatives of the golden age of Florentine renaissance illumination. His princely clients included Lorenzo de' Medici "Il Magnifico," and Matthias Corvinus

Leaf with illuminated border and headpiece.

While Boccardino's work dominates the first sixty-eight leaves, subsequent illuminations were completed by followers or members of his workshop after Boccadino's designs.

Frontispiece with border medallions.
Note coat of arms in lower panel, flanked by cherubs.

The Jewish community of Florence flourished in the 15th-century, their position closely linked to the fortunes of the de' Medici. Lorenzo il magnifico was their protector; he encouraged Jewish scholarship and scholars. It is, then, unsurprising that Jewish patrons of this Mahzor solicited an artist who worked for Lorenzo for this luxury manuscript. While Christian Florentines illuminated Hebrew manuscripts, this Mahzor appears to be the only example illuminated by Boccardino.

Mose holding the tablets of the law.

Raising of the Passover Seder basket.

The coat of arms bears resemblance to the Ambron family but coats of arms used by Jewish families were inventions, not official, and variable, employing traditional Jewish symbols. Positive identification is difficult. The manuscript's 16th century binding bears a central medallion combining elements of the armorial devices of various Italian noble families, including the Tedeschi and Uzielli of Tuscany

Leaf with illuminated initial and vignette.

A couple in bed.

The Sabbath meal.

Containing prayers for the entire Jewish liturgical year, the Mahzor includes: blessing of the Name of the Lord; a hundred blessings to be recited daily; blessing for the Lord; the recitation of Shema and prayers to be said before retiring to bed; for the Sabbath; for the blessing for a new moon; for Hanukkah with extracts from the Book of Esther; prayers to be said before reading the Megillah; for Passover; before the fast of Tammuz, followed by prayers for the fast of the Ninth of Av and relating to the Book of Lamentations, followed by prayers and Psalms; prayers for Rosh Hashanah; for Yom Kippur; for Sukkoth; Tsam'a Nafshi, the 12th-century poem by Abraham ibn Ezra, the author's name picked out acrostically in the margin; and commentary on the death of Moses in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Leaf with illuminated vignette.

This mahzor was still in Italy early in the 17th century when it was seen by the Christian censors Fra Hippolytus of Ferrara and Camillo Jagel who signed the final leaf, in 1601 and 1611(?). An inserted note records the purchase of the manuscript in Frankfurt before 1908. It was published in London, 1930, in Adler's Jewish Travellers, when it was in the possession of E. Bicart-Sée in Paris and then by descent to the present family owners.

Binding, lower board.

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MAHZOR. Tuscany (Florence?), c.1490s. Small octavo (6.61 x 4.9 inches; 168 x 125 mm). ii, 442 leaves, apparently complete with catchwords on final versos of many gatherings, some signature still visible, foliation every 10 leaves includes front flyleaves and is followed here, 20 lines of Italian semi-cursive script in black ink, with vowel points, rubrics in smaller script mostly in red or blue, Hebrew square script for initial words, prayers for Yom Kippur highlighted in gold, initial word panels throughout in burnished gold on red, green or blue grounds, some embellished with marginal sprays, text illustrations including the Matzah and Maror, FRONTISPIECE WITH FULL-PAGE BORDER INCORPORATING MEDALLIONS WITH PROFILE HEADS, LANDSCAPE VIGNETTES AND THE COAT OF ARMS OF THE ORIGINAL OWNER, two openings with similar single panel borders and a two-sided floral border on a vellum ground, TWO SMALL, TWO HALF-PAGE AND FOUR FULL-PAGE MINIATURES, two of them with full-page borders incorporating coats of arms, edges gilt and gauffered (occasional light losses of pigment or gold, some unobtrusive smudging or offsetting, a few marginal creases, some fading of ink, particularly to final leaf).

Mid 16th-century Italian gold-tooled dark brown goatskin over thin wooden boards with strapwork painted in red and yellow, both covers with central cartouche with coat of arms, elaborately decorated with a unicorn and rabbit, hatched leaf and flower tools, solid dots and foliate rolls, evidence of two fore-edge clasps, four nail holes at edge of cartouche, (rebacked, repaired at board edges, paint rubbed, clasps missing).

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Lincoln's Opera Glasses From Assassination Night Come To Auction

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

The opera glasses owned and held by Abraham Lincoln at the moment of his assassination on April 14, 1865 at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C. are being auctioned during an online sale closing on Monday, April 30, 2012 by Nate D. Sanders Auctions. The current bid is $252,582 with only fourteen bids cast thus far.

President Lincoln brought these German-made glasses to assist in his enjoyment of the show, a light-hearted farce entitled Our American Cousin, starring Laura Keene.

During the third scene in the second act, John Wilkes Booth gained entry to the Presidential Box where Lincoln was seated beside his wife, and fired his Philadelphia Derringer pistol into the back of Lincoln's head behind his left ear. Immediately after Lincoln was shot, Laura Keene entered his box and cradled the wounded President's head in her lap. Booth managed to escape the chaotic scene, and Lincoln, unconscious, was carried out of the theater and across 10th Street to a nearby boarding house by a huddle of doctors, soldiers and guards.

Among the guards was Captain James M. McCamly, an on-duty Washington City Guard and 70th New York Volunteer Infantry veteran. McCamly noticed the glasses had fallen from Lincoln's body, picked them up off of the ground and put them in his pocket. Abraham Lincoln died the next morning, and McCamly served as commander of the honor guard that was part of the Lincoln funeral procession to his burial in Springfield.

Letter from the Chief Curator of the National Park Service.

Along with the actual pistol that fired the fatal shot, The Ford's Theatre National Park collection houses the carrying case into which these glasses fit ''precisely,'' according to a 1968 letter from the Chief Curator of the National Park Service, Harold L. Peterson. A copy of this letter is included, as is an affidavit from the McCamly family, in whose possession the glasses remained for generations before being bought by the Malcolm Forbes estate.

Affidavit from the McCamly family.

These black enameled Gebruder Strausshof Optiker, Berlin, opera glasses measure 1.5'' high, 4'' across at their widest point, and 3.75'' in length when fully extended. Each ocular tube contains a pair of glass lenses measuring .5'' and 1.5'' in diameter with a late-turned threaded eyepiece. Central spindle contains focus adjustment wheel. Gilt metal throughout. One of the small lenses is chipped from the inside.

This is an amazing artifact, still functional, from one of the most fateful nights in American history. In addition to the provenance documents, the glasses' sales history will be provided by the auctioneer.

Yes, opera glasses are not books, much less rare books, but these are Abraham Lincoln's opera glasses. To hold them in your hand is to be as close to Lincoln at his assassination as one could possibly be 147 years afterward. They tell quite a story. That's what books are all about. This pair of opera glasses has history written all over them.

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Images courtesy of Nate D. Sanders Auctions, with our thanks.
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A Spelunker In The Cave Of Poverty

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

In 1715, Lewis Theobald, a British lawyer and budding poet with literary ambitions just beginning to be realized through translations of classical Greek dramas, stood at the entrance of an immense allegorical cavern and, ropes, hard hat, and lantern at the ready, stepped inside the gaping hole.

Journeying through an immense labyrinth with more underground byways than Mammoth Cave National Park, he beheld horrors at every turn. He took notes. The result was a proto-Desolation Row, Bob Dylan in wig and tricorne writing an infernal travel brochure in iambic pentameter inspired by Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser.

Meet the Goddess of the Cave, the Queen of Poverty, a Gorgonesque creature out of Clive Barker, basking in squalor and her power over the world:

Far in the Dungeon's Depth, in sullen Pride,
On matted Straw the gloomy Regent sat:
Famine, Despair, and Sickness by her side,
The Motions of her envious Pleasure wait.
Behind her violent Deaths attend; which, when
Inrag'd, she sends to tempt unwary Men.

Pale was her Face, and shrivell'd was her Skin,
Eyes sunk, and starting Bones; as she were now
The Skeleton of what she once had bin;
So lean and wretched did the Daemon shew:
Her Locks with Filth so clotted, she appears
A Fury, hung with Snakes, instead of Hairs.

Plain was her Furniture, of homely Wood;
And mean, and squallid, was her whole Attire;
Some far-fetch'd Roots and Water were her Food,
And Furz of Heaths the Fewel of her Fire.
On Earthen Lamp twice Twenty Glow-worms lay,
Whose spangled Light supplies the want of Day.

By the light of this worm-infested Tiffany lamp, the walls of the cavern are revealed. Verbal cave paintings, 127 stanzas worth, they are inscribed with woes and deprivations.

Two tubes extend from deep within the cave as telephone party lines. Listening through one, the Goddess eavesdrops upon a voice damning poverty and praising wealth. Through the other, she overhears a case praising poverty and cursing wealth. The Goddess is pleased; it's a delightful dirge to her ears. For the rest of us, it's a dreary prospectus perhaps foreshadowing the 2012 U.S. Presidential campaign, class warfare to some, yawning income gap to others.

By journey's end, our intrepid spelunker has encountered the foul agents of poverty and experienced a filthy laundry list of human misery and ills. The tube in praise of poverty (in this context we presume a tin can with string) has the last word:

Thus spake the Tube: When lo! on Eastern Cloud,
That sullenly receiv'd her early Light,
The chearful Rosy-finger'd Morning glow'd;
With Blushes, like a rifled Maid, bedight:
Th' Enamour'd Sun, holding the Nymph in Chase,
O'er her young Beauties shed redoubled Grace.

In short, the sun shines on the noble poor. Those living below the poverty line may appreciate the initial warmth of the sun but for them it shines hard and relentlessly, and they are unlikely to appreciate an upside to sunstroke.

Theobald was not a great poet, and this is not a great poem. One contemporary Tweeted this review: "Here in one bed two shiv'ring sisters lye / The cave of Poverty and Poetry" (Alexander Pope, The Dunciad 1:31-32).

Pope and Theobald were arch enemies. Theobald, if not a worthy poet did, however, evolve into one of the great editors of Shakespeare. In 1726, he published Shakespeare Restored, or a Specimen of the many Errors as well Committed as Unamended by Mr Pope in his late edition of this poet; designed not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the true Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever published. Pope was not pleased, hence the wisecrack in The Dunciad two years later.

It is ironic, and to this eye just plain weird, that this copy of Theobald's paean to poverty is elegantly bound in a rich Art Nouveau binding by Alfred De Sauty.

"Alfred de Sauty (1870-1949) was a bookbinder who produced tooled bindings of exceptional delicacy. De Sauty was active in London from approximately 1898 to 1923 and in Chicago from 1923 to 1935. His finest work is thought to be have been accomplished between 1905 and 1914. Many aspects of his life are poorly documented. For instance, scholars are unsure whether, when in London, de Sauty worked independently, for the firm of Riviere & Sons, or both. While in London, he may also have been a designer for the Hampstead Bindery and a teacher at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. When he lived in Chicago, de Sauty worked for the hand bindery of R. R. Donnelley & Sons. He signed his work at the foot of the front doublure, if present, and at the center of the bottom turn-in of the front upper board, if not. Works he produced in London are signed "de S" or "De Sauty." Works he produced in Chicago are signed with his employer's name, 'R. R. Donnelly'" (Bound in Intrigue, Harvard Botany Libraries Online Exhibit).

It's as if Theobald consulted with a binder to find the perfect design to capture the patronizing spirit of noblesse oblige.

A truly appropriate binding for The Cave of Poverty might be cataloged as, Contemporary full mouldering and mildewed crushed and trampled upon morocco from a goat that died of starvation for want of food stamps, ruled in blind by the blind, with elaborate excuses in faux gilt, raised hackles, spine compartments as run-down, over-crowded, and pestilential tenements. All edges lead.

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THEOBALD, Lewis. The Cave of Poverty, A Poem. Written in Imitation of Shakespeare. London: Printed for Jonas Browne at the Black Swan...and Sold by J. Roberts..., 1715.

First (only) Edition. Octavo (7 5/8 x 4 1/2 in; 193 x 115 mm). [8], 48 pp. Woodcut head- tailpieces, initials.

In an elegant Art Nouveau binding, c. 1905-1910, by Alfred de Sauty (stamp-signed to upper turn-in) in full emerald morocco with a central panel of inlaid red morocco tulips, dark green morocco leaves, and vines outlined in black, repeated on the rear board. Dual gilt fillet borders. All edges gilt. Gilt ruled turn-ins. Raised bands. Gilt ruled compartments with inlaid dark green morocco leaves. Gilt rolled edges.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books with the exception of the titlepage to Shakespeare Restored, which is courtesy of Terry A. Gray of Palomar College. Our thanks to both.

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Six Sacred Books In Spectacular Bindings

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

Dario Ecclesiatico Para o Reino de Portugal,
Principalmente Para A Guide de Lisboa, Para o Anno de 1822.
Lisboa [Lisbon]: Imprensa Nacional, n.d. [c.1821].

A small cache of Bibles, prayer books, and an octavarium, each in a stunning binding, has recently come to market. Dating from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, the bindings represent some of the finest work performed in Europe, in various styles and using distinctive materials.

Though they tend to be a bit on the precious side, I'm a sucker for a great embroidered binding. The above Portuguese almanac for 1822 is graced with a contemporary armorial design in full white satin, embroidered with silver and gold thread and multi-colored silks in an elaborate scroll pattern, and embellished with small gold spangles and silver leaves. A central Portuguese royal coat of arms with surrounding embroidered laurel leaves catches the eye and holds it. All edges are gilt and gauffered.

The Holy Bible [bound with] The Book of Common Prayer [bound with]
The Genealogies [bound with] The Whole Book of Psalms.
London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1619.

The above early sixteenth century British binding is in contemporary full red satin embroidered with silver thread and colored silks in a floral motif. The central oval sprouts a carnation of embroidered red, green, and yellow silk. The spine compartments feature floral sprays.

Biblia Sacra...Lugduni [Lyon]: Johann Toournes, 1554.

By the time the above Biblia Sacra was published in the mid-16th century, enameled bindings, which appeared from the 11th through the 15th centuries, had become rare as the technique fell into disuse. This example, in contemporary enamelled polychrome calf, with gilt rolled border enclosing red, green, gray, and gilt interlocking strapwork, is remarkable and includes. chased brass corners, and all edges gilt, gauffered, and painted with floral design.

The Book of Common Prayer.
Cambridge: Printed for John Baskerville for B. Dod, 1762.

The above Book of Common Prayer, printed by the great John Baskerville, hounds the eyes in a rococo design of full contemporary green morocco with a gilt-tooled frame featuring gilt-stamped snail, insect, and dragon emblems enclosing a central Christogram of onlaid green, red, and citron morocco. Silver clasps close the book on this binding.

The Holy Bible, Containing the Old Testament and the New...
[bound with] The Whole Book of Psalmes.
London: Henry Hills [and John Field]: Companie of Stationers, 1660-1661.

Holy Bible binding, Batman! Near contemporary black morocco with a divided panel of four corner-pieces and a central pointed oval of onlaid red and citron morocco graces the above English bible from the mid-17th century. The whole is gloriously festooned with gilt tulips, leaves, onlaid flowers, and small massed volutes, and small bird-heads at top and bottom.

It's from the Restoration workshop known as the Naval Binder for its work done for the Navy Office in the 1670s - 1680s. Samuel Pepys, Chief Secretary to the Admiralty, commissioned some of the bindery's best work when he wasn't scribbling in his diary.

Octavarium Romanum, sive Octavae Festorum.
Venice: Nicolaum Pezzana, 1755.

This finely bound Venetian octavarium (a religious office-book containing lections, etc., for use within the octaves of festivals.) with its wide outer border and tooling, is suggestive of Neapolitan binding and was possibly wrought by the Salvioni workshop,

It features contemporary full marbled brown calf over pasteboard, elaborately gilt-tooled with gilt-tooled border enclosing a frame of gilt tools painted in silver, black and azure that presents an inner panel with central painted cross-hatched diamond surrounded by small massed gilt tools and ribbons. All edges are gilt and gauffered.

The supernal bindings to these sacred books are enough to bring the faithless to their knees.

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All images courtesy of James Cummins, Bookseller, currently offering these items, with our thanks.
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A 19th Century Emily Post On Laughing Gas

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:30:00 +0000

by Stephen J. Gertz

When a book purporting to be a guide to proper etiquette presents with a titlepage depicting a gentleman hogging all the chairs in the room as he tips backward on one, his feet upon another, hat and gloves planted on yet one more, his right arm casually draped over his chair's arm, cigarette dangling from his lips as he casually reads a volume that is clearly not the Bible (a book traditionally requiring both hands to read), we know that we are dealing with not just any ol' book of etiquette.

Should you get into a Row leave your friend to fight it out,
being cursed low to be seen fighting in the Street.

Here we are confronted by an author, vintage early nineteenth century but influenced by the Punk Movement of the twentieth century, "a shadowy figure" who has flipped the bird to the Queen's propriety. Call it The Anarchist's Guide To Manners; or, Social Grace Gets the Shaft, Gentility Takes a Dive, and the Class System Drowns.

Servants should never condescend to notice
tradespeoples' Wretches, as it shows a want of dignity.

An anonymously written and illustrated satire in panorama format with hand-colored engraved title-page, and twenty-three hand colored and captioned engraved plates without imprint, the only clue to its authorship is the signing, "HH," found on some of the plates.

There are some Old People who affect a dislike for
Tobacco Smoke when at Meals. Stuff!
You may as well object to the smell of the Meat!

Who is "HH," this beau-jester undermining interpersonal relations, Western Civilization and all it stands for? Hans Holbein? Humbert Humbert? Hubert Humphrey?

Publicans should never forget to taste their Customers
Liquor first - it looks friendly and condescending.

The Shadow knows:

Wha a Goth he must have been who call'd fashion a
foolish thing. How foolish a Man wold look out of it!!

"Henry Heath (fl. 1822–1842), caricaturist, is a shadowy figure. Because of a similarity in style between William and Henry Heath and their collaboration on three prints, it has been suggested that they were related, even as brothers (George, Catalogue, 9.liv). Henry Heath etched theatrical portraits from 1822 and both social and political caricatures from 1824, his work being published by Fores and Gans. In 1831 he started to imitate the political caricatures of HB, changing from etching to lithography and adopting the monogram HH. About this time various sets of his comic vignettes in the manner of George Cruikshank were issued and were collected in 1840 under the title of The Caricaturist's Sketch Book; in the 1830s he also drew cockney sportsmen, following the example of Robert Seymour. One cartoon by him was published in Punch in 1842. In the same year he drew some amusing caricatures of Queen Victoria's visit to Scotland, after which, according to M. H. Spielmann (The History of Punch, 1895, 452), he emigrated to Australia. Dorothy George called him ‘a competent and versatile but very imitative caricaturist’ (George, Catalogue, 10.xliv)" (Oxford Online DNB).

Grimacing behind a visitor is esteemed
excessively well-bred in young Ladies

In its irreverent attitude and inversion of acceptable behavior, Heath's The Book of Etiquette is on a par with Pierre Loüys Manuel de civilité pour les petites filles à l'usage des maisons d'éducation, a book of etiquette for young girls to assist in reaching their potential on the expressway to erotic fulfillment and eternal damnation.

Perhaps this book of demented etiquette was, indeed, written by Humbert Humbert before he met You-Know-Who.

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HEATH, Henry. The Book of Etiquette. London: T. McLean, [ca. 1830].

First edition. Octavo (6 7/8 x 3 7/8 in; 175 x 98 mm). Hand-colored engraved title-page, and twenty-three hand colored and captioned engraved plates, mounted on stubs, without imprint as issued but some carry the initials "HH."

Abbey, Life in England, 513.

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Images coutrtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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The Story Of Nobody, By Somebody, Illustrated By Someone

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

The Original Story Of O.

Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit
(From Nothing Comes Nothing).

Since Nothing is with Nothing fraught
Then Nobody must spring from naught.

"Nobody knows the trouble I've seen..."

But Nobody's not talking so we have to depend upon Something Concerning Nobody (1814), a curious satire edited by Somebody, and delightfully illustrated by Someone, for answers. Nobody has nothing to worry about in this testament to his non-existence; Nobody, it turns out, lives. It's Being and Nothingness without the annoying phenomenological ontology, cut-to-the-chase existentialism. Nobody, it turns out, is somebody and nothing to sneeze at.

Nobody's afraid of him.

Somebody, Nobody's biographer, begins with a Dedication to the object of his essay: "I...content myself with courting Nobody's applause, whose patronage I can at all times command, heedless of public approbation," signing it, "With all due deference, Sir, Your most obsequious And very humble servant, Somebody."

Nobody at the door.

It is Nobody's curse that he has no body,
simply head, arms and legs.

Somebody did his homework. It's a difficult task to trace the lifetime of "the renowned Mr. Nobody, whose existence was not only anterior to Adam's wearing green incomprehensibles, but even before the sun, moon, or stars moved in the realms of endless space." With this statement, Somebody moves from existential philosophy into modern theoretical physics and the mind-bending consideration of something out of nothing, somebody out of Nobody, and chaos theory.

Somebody consulted "The Chronicles of Chaos, a volume so vast and intricate that few heads can even think upon the subject without becoming moon-struck; or, to speak more comprehensively, bereft of their wits." The work of Doctor Dennis O'Dunderum, Doctor Brady O'Blunder'em, and the compendium of Doctor Wiggins Wig-all ("published in folio, Basel edition, vol. 192, page 1379, beginning at line 106") was also studied.

A domestic scene: Nobody at home.

"Ever since we were urchins at school we recollect the mischief that Nobody did. We find, however, by Somebody, that Nobody is more amusing than we suspected; though we fear, if we inquire for Somebody, as the author of Something about Nobody - nobody will own it. This piece, 'a trifle light as air,' will amuse in spite of criticism - not as a literary bagatelle, but as a 'Picture Book.' Nobody perhaps will know so much of the letter-press part as ourselves; nor will any body believe that Nobody goes to Paternoster Row, nor that Nobody travels.

"'On his way from the city towards the west end of the metropolis, our Nobody, instead of passing along St. Paul's Curchyard, though for to be godly, and therefore proceeded by the way of Paternoster Row, the renowned mart of literature, in order to take a peep at the liberal GENTLEMEN booksellers of the present era.'

"Winners will be laughers whether booksellers or authors, for which Nobody will blame them; and if Somebody's book 'goes off' well, buyers will laugh at Nobody" (The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature, 1814, Article 20, p. 218).

Somebody & Nobody

Who's responsible for this work of mind-warping whimsy? Who is the Somebody behind Nobody?

William Henry Ireland (1775 - 1835) is the pseudonymous Somebody. He is known as a poet, writer of gothic novels, and histories. But his primary claim to fame is as the Thomas J. Wise of his time.

"Perhaps the most brazen literary forgeries of all were those of William Henry Ireland. William Henry Ireland was born in London in 1777, the son of Samuel Ireland, a self-taught artist who had achieved considerable commercial success with a series of illustrated travel books. Samuel Ireland also fancied himself an antiquarian. He collected books and artwork and had an enthusiasm for William Shakespeare which bordered on idolatry. His devotion was such that he read nightly to his family from the works of Shakespeare and sought memorabilia and artifacts relating to the Bard. During a research trip to Stratford, for what was later published as Picturesque Views on the Upper, or Warwickshire Avon (1795), Samuel Ireland is alleged to have been duped into purchasing such fraudulent artifacts as a purse and chair formerly belonging to Shakespeare. His son William accompanied him on this trip and was able to witness firsthand his father's passion and, perhaps gullibility, towards any and all things relating to Shakespeare.

"William Henry Ireland, like his father, was an avid reader and a collector of books and antiquities. His biographers suggest he was also familiar with James Macpherson's Ossian poems and with the life and work of Thomas Chatterton. At some point, the younger Ireland apparently decided to emulate these two figures in an effort to satisfy his father's desire to obtain a document in Shakespeare's handwriting...

"In December 1794, William Henry Ireland informed his father that he had discovered a cache of old documents in the possession of a wealthy acquaintance. Among them was a deed bearing the signature of William Shakespeare which he accepted as a gift from his friend on the condition that it remain anonymous. William in turn gave it to his father who was beside himself with joy at his son's discovery. William had satisfied his father's lifelong dream to possess an actual specimen of William Shakespeare's signature" (William Henry Ireland and the Shakespeare Fabrications, University of Delaware Special Collections).

Nobody scents it.

And what of the anonymous artist who has so keenly captured the essence of Nobody with nothing to go on?

George Moutard Woodward (1760?-1809), “caricaturist, son of William Woodward of Stanton Hall, Derbyshire, was born in that county about 1760. He received no artistic training, but, having much original talent, came to London, with an allowance from his father, and became a prolific and popular designer of social caricatures, much in the style of Bunbury, which were etched chiefly by Rowlandson and Isaac Cruikshank. Although their humour was generally of a very coarse and extravagant kind, they display a singular wealth of imagination and insight into character, and some are extremely entertaining. Among the best are ‘Effects of Flattery,’ ‘Effects of Hope,’ ‘Club of Quidnuncs,’ ‘Everybody in Town,’ ‘Everybody out of Town,’ and ‘Specimens of Domestic Phrensy.’ Woodward…was of dissipated and intemperate habits, spending much of his time in taverns, and died in a state of penury at the Brown Bear public-house in Bow Street, Covent Garden, in November 1809” (Oxford DNB).


Nobody arrested in his Minority.A case of arrested development.		.

It is ironic that the man who forged Shakespeare would make much ado about Nobody.

In the modern world, the subject of something about Nobody was revisited by one of America's lesser known philosophers, from the Steubenville, Ohio, school of thought.

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[IRELAND, William Henry]. [WOODWARD, George Moutard, illustrator]. Something Concerning Nobody. Edited by Somebody. Embellished with Fourteen Characteristic Etchings. London: Printed for Robert Scholey, 1814.

First edition. Octavo (7 3/8 x 4 7/8 in; 188 x 125mm) . xv, 191 pp. Fourteen hand-colored engraved plates.

Regarding authorship, see British Museum N&Q, 4th ser., VII, 474.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Booktryst Takes A Break

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:48:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

Booktryst takes a break this week to eat more white bread, be shocked, say hello to Mummy and report on the bomb in our house, consider the terrible price of Rochelles's bigger boobs, and continue our journey on the gateway to Hell.

We shall, like MacArthur, return, after our splendid vacation-tour from Peak Experiences reenacting the Bataan Death March.

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Three Strange And Beautiful 16th Century Fantasy Maps, Another From 1617

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen J. Gertz) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:30:00 +0000

By Stephen J. Gertz

MUNSTER, Sebastian. [Europe depicted as a Queen].
Basel, c. 1580. German edition. Colored. woodcut (260 x 160mm).
MCC I: 6.

During the late sixteenth century, a few cartographers designed and published a handful of maps with anthropomorphic countries and continents, with animal as well as human forms.

Sebastian Munster's created this famous example, a map of Europe that depicts the continent as a queen. The head represent Iberia, Denmark the left arm and Italy the right with Sicily an orb in her hand. The British Isles are shown, but not integrated into the figure. The map originally appeared in Munster's Cosmographei (1550).

BÜNTING, Heinrich. Asia Secunda pars Terræ in Forma Pegasir.
Magdeburg, 1581. German edition. Colored woodcut (300 x 370mm).

In the famous fantasy map depicting Asia as Pegasus, the winged horse of Perseus, the head is Turkey and Armenia, the wings Scythia and Tartary, forelegs Arabia, hind legs India and the Malay Peninsula. The map appears in Bünting's Itinerarium, in which the author, a theologian, rewrote the Bible as a travelogue, with other fantasy maps including the World as a cloverleaf.

BÜNTING,H. Die gantze Welt in ein Kleberblatt
Magdeburg, ca. 1581. Colored woodcut.
Shirley, World 142.

And here it is. This extraordinary curiosity is referred to as the Clover-leaf, for obvious reasons. Heinrich Bünting's design was inspired by the trefoil form of the arms of Hanover, his native town. Despite the map's unusual appearance the fact that Jerusalem appears at the centre leans strongly on the tradition of medieval world maps. Bünting's work Itinerarium Sacrae Scriptura...was essentially a theological commentary with other maps of great curiosity.

VAN DEN KEERE, Pieter. Leo Belgicus.
Amsterdam, 1617. Colored engraving.
Van der Heijden, Leo Belgicus 4.2.

Pieter Van Den Keere's Leo Belgicus is, perhaps, the most celebrated example of cartography as patriotic expression. The lion had long been a national symbol of Holland and Belgium. Indeed, most of the coats-of-arms of the countries' seventeen provinces feature a lion. The map was a statement of unity, since at the time the seventeen provinces comprised a single nation, although under the control of Spain.

Van den Keere (Kaerius) was one of the most skilled Flemish engravers of the early seventeenth century. The Leo Belgicus is perhaps his finest work, its rich ornamentation includes three couples along the bottom in the characteristic dress of Friesland, Holland, and Belgium.

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First three images courtesy of Altea Gallery Antique Maps, Sea Charts, Atlases & Globes, with our thanks.

Image of Leo Belgicu courtesy of Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, with our thanks.
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