Fighting Modern Evils With Old Rare Books

by Stephen J. Gertz

MILLER, Fred S. Fighting Modern Evils That Destroy Our Homes
- A Startling Exposure of the Snares and Pitfals of the Social World
- Vividly Depicting How Homes Are Wrecked and Souls Destroyed
Through Wiles and Trickery of Mystic Cults.
N.P. [U.S. of Canada]: n.p. [the author], n.d. [c. 1913].

In the modern world each footfall is an opportunity to drop into an abyss and snowshoes won't prevent you from sinking into perdition. There is, however, a rich corpus of vintage self-help, instructional and inspirational literature to keep you from drowning in a pool of damnation.

Here's a small selection, from Old New Age, the latest catalog from David Mason Rare Books.

KRESS, Daniel H. The Cigarette.
As a Physician Sees It.
Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publ., [c. 1932].

Modern Evil #1: Cigarettes.

Pacific Press Publishers of Mountain View, California was a Seventh Day Adventist venture dedicated to educational titles on activities that lead to the road to ruin. Get your kicks on Route 666 and experience Hell Before Death.

Here, inside the Los Angeles Coliseum during the 1932 Olympic Games, the U.S. track team doc examines a runner prior to race time. Judging by the expression on the Olympian's face, he's just been diagnosed with Stage-3 lung cancer and congestive heart failure. Will he make it to the finish line?

Not too long after this pamphlet appeared, Big Tobacco would recruit doctors real or otherwise to endorse their products in advertisements, M.D.s who, apparently, had their fingers crossed when taking the Hippocratic Oath.

HORN, M[ildred]. A. Mother and Daughter.
A Digest for Women and Growing Girls,
Which Completely Covers the Field of Sex Hygiene.
Toronto: Canadian Hygienic Products Ltd, n.d. [c. 1940s].

Modern Evil #2: Reckless Teen Behavior.

Young girls - you know who you are - have you no shame? Want to find a good husband? Have children? Lead a long, wholesome life? Listen to your mother! She'll teach you all about the science of keeping clean, healthy, and happy! You'll be miserable but so what? Fun is over-rated.

HALE, Beatrice Forbes Robertson. What Women Want.
An Interpretation of the Feminist Movement.
New York: Frederick Stokes, (1914).

Modern Evil #3: Feminism.

Damned suffragettes were tearing the social fabric in America and England, the contemporary social fabric an easily stained synthetic silk with rough threads; good riddance. 

Actress, suffragist, prolific author and lecturer Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale (1883-1967), niece of J. Forbes Robertson,  the famed London actor and theater manager, was an ardent feminist who married young Wall Street lawyer Swinburne Hale in 1910. He was "won by her speeches…Young attorney began ardent courtship after hearing her espouse woman's cause" (NY Times, April 29, 1910)

"Miss Forbes-Robertson will not give up the stage nor abate her efforts on behalf of the woman suffrage cause after her marriage to Mr. Hale. She has been prominently connected with the campaign for woman suffrage in both England and in this country, where she has been of large service through her platform eloquence.

"She is a finished speaker, and though she has never become associated with the extreme militant suffragettes closely enough to accomplish arrest, she has done a great deal of platform work here and abroad" (Ibid).

The Hales divorced in 1920 and Beatrice returned home to England but continued to visit the United States and remained fully engaged in the women's rights movement.

Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale was, it seems, a bit naive about her sisters in the struggle. Margaret Sanger, in The Woman Rebel,  her law-challenging journal, wrote:

"Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale said at a debate on feminism that she knew of only two feminists who advocated free love and unmarried motherhood, and that they were not suffragists, but anarchists. What a limited knowledge of women Mrs. Hale has! Perhaps after all self respect and morality are confined to the anarchist women!"

What Women Want is a very rare book with only a handful of copies in institutional holdings worldwide. Read the full text here.

VOM BRUCH, Harry W. The Carnival of Death.
Or the Modern Dance and Other Amusements.
Mont Morris, IL: Kable Brothers Co., n.d. [c. late 1910s].

Modern Evil #4: Dancing.

Dancing had been viewed as sinful as far back as the eighteenth century but with the influx of single girls into the urban workforce the perils of the dance hall did a grand jeté into the evangelical congregation with jeremiads aplenty.

The tacit terpsichorean culprit in Carnival of Death is, I suspect, the Black Bottom, which originated in New Orleans in the first decade of the 20th century. Its roots in African-American culture made it Public Enemy #1 amongst the decline of the West set.

Am I alone in mourning the passing of dances with names? The Black Bottom, Charleston, Lindy Hop, Jitterbug, Mambo. Cha-Cha, Merengue, Rhumba, Bossa Nova, the Swim, the Frug, the Shing-a-ling, the Monkey, the Mashed Potatoes, Watusi, Hully-Gully, the Shake, the Twist, the Funky Chicken, Pony, the Loco-motion, the Freddy,  the Bump, the Hustle, Macarena - even those dreaded of all social-banquet dances, the Hokey-Pokey and the Bunny Hop: quick, what's the name of the latest dance of 2012-2013? The Whatever.

ELLESBY, James. A Caution Against Ill Company:
Or, a Discourse Shewing the Danger of
Conversing Familiarly With Bad Men.
London: F.C. & J. Rivington, 1812.
Tenth edition.

Modern Evil #5: Bad Men.

Reverend James Ellesby, author of The Sick Christian's Companion (1729) -  no smirking, please; the book is a selection of prayers to endure illness, not a guide for Christians of dubious turn of mind - here cautions against females engaging in casual social intercourse with bad men; it can lead to that other casual intercourse, you know, the one that leads to the streets. From hello to Hell is only one lost virtuous vowel away.

Come on, gals, 'fess-up. Bad men are catnip! This is why, only hours after my Bar Mitzvah, I immediately began riding Harleys without a license, using bad language, smoking, playing pool, hanging-out on street corners, staying up past my bedtime, and generally flouting authority so egregiously that I was routinely remanded by the court to my room without supper. In short, I became a chicklette-magnet, 11 and 12-year old vampettes vying for the attention of this older, thirteen year old man so incredibly wise, so astonishingly smart, so breathtakingly handsome, so overweeningly conceited, and desperate to become an excommunicated Boy Scout but too milquetoast for misdemeanors, much less felonies.

"He's irresistible. He treats me like crap. I'm in love!"

HARRIS, Rev. W.S.. Hell Before Death.
With Illustrations by Paul Krafft.
N.P.: (Luther Minter): n.d. [c. 1908].
By Subscription Only.

Modern Evil #6: Capitalism.

Hell Before Death author, Rev. W.S. Harris, "who has devoted many years in securing better conditions for humanity," writes:

"Under the whip of monopolistic slavemasters, the host of common people, generally known as laborers, are getting deeper into bondage…This movement on the part of Labor was perhaps the most fortunate thing that could have happened; for, if capitalistic oppression had continued unchecked for a few decades more, by this time, the nation would be owned and controlled by a few great moguls, and the great bulk of humanity would be reduced to a new type of slavery even more abject than the kind under which we now suffer" (from the Preface. Full text of Hell Before Death here).

Sure glad that didn't happen.

SOUTHARD, R.E. Problems of Decency.
(St. Louis): The Queen's Work, n.d. [c. 1949].

Modern Evil #7: Indecency.

The Catholic University of America library has 742 publications, pamphlets and magazines from The Queen's Work, a Jesuit publishing house based in St. Louis and the pioneer mass circulation magazine to popularize the Catholic faith.

It was founded and edited by Daniel Aloysius Lord, S.J. (1888-1955), a popular American Catholic writer. Lord became national director of the Sodality of Our Lady in 1926, also serving as editor of its publication, The Queen's Work magazine. He stepped down from editorship in 1948, but continued to write for the magazine for the remainder of his life, producing more than 500 pamphlets, plays, and songs.

In 1927, he served as a consultant to Cecil B. DeMille for his silent film, King of Kings. The advent of talkies alarmed him. "Silent smut had been bad," he would write in his autobiography, Played by Ear. "Vocal smut cried to the censors for vengeance."

In 1929, he began work on Hollywood's Production Code. "Here was a chance," he wrote, "to read morality and decency into mass recreation." He aimed "to tie the Ten Commandments in with the newest and most widespread form of entertainment," aspiring to an ecumenical standard of decency, so that "the follower of any religion, or any man of decent feeling and conviction, would read it and instantly agree."

In 1930, Lord's draft of the Code was accepted by Will H. Hays and promulgated to the studios with only minor changes, but it lacked an enforcement mechanism, and Lord came to consider it a failure. It was only with the mid-1934 advent of the Production Code Administration headed by Joseph Breen that the Code became the law of Hollywood for more than twenty-five years.

Clean up the movies? Sanitized for your protection? Mission accomplished!

GAYNOR, R. Leo. The Mysteries of Luck,
Together With Invaluable Information on the Occult
Science of Astrology, Numerology, Graphology, etc.
N.P. [Canada?}: W.K. Buckley, n.d. [ c. 1936].

All the self-help and inspirational books in the world will not, of course, be of any value whatsoever unless Lady Luck takes a liken' to ya' and makes it all better. But don't tell Dr. Phil.

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Images courtesy of David Mason Rare Books, currently offering these titles, with our thanks.
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Bring Me The Head Of St. Lawrence Of Rome, Patron Saint Of Librarians

By Stephen J. Gertz

Martyrs roasting on an open fire,

Larry's last words bravely won:

Though it's been said many times many ways,

"Stick a fork in me, I'm done."

He's a patron saint of librarians because he sacrificed his life to save Church documents. He's the patron saint of cooks because he knew what it was like to be on the wrong end of a basting brush. And he's the patron saint of comedians because he was dying onstage yet still riffed a wisecrack.

The only Church deacon (of seven) to survive the Emperor Valerian's persecution in 258, St. Lawrence was afterward soon arrested for refusing to turn over Church treasures. By legend he was grilled to death and is said to have had the presence of mind to joke to his torturers, "I'm done on this side; turn me over."

There but for a consonant a myth is born. In the early twentieth century historian Rev. Patrick Healy postulated that the tradition was based upon a simple error. The Church formula for announcing the death of a martyr, Passus est ("he suffered," i.e. was martyred) was mangled, the "P" early lost in transcription, and Assus est - "He roasted" -  became the received truth. Not that Healy's hypothesis was accepted. It threw cold water on St. Lawrence; the faithful prefer the fire.

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend" (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).

"His charred body was claimed by the Christians, and his mummified skull is still in the care of the popes. At the Vatican on the tenth of August every year they expose in its golden reliquary the head of Saint Lawrence that still, in the distorted mouth, in the burned bone of the skull, shows the agony he suffered to defend the archives of the popes" (Maria Luisa Ambrosini and Mary Willis, The Secret Archives of the Vatican. New York: 1996, p. 27).

Another apocryphal story, by way of Father Jacques Marquette, is that St. Lawrence inspired the classic Julie London hit tune Cry Me a River before being beheaded (his likely demise).



It is not true, however, that the story of St. Lawrence inspired Peter Greenaway's  1989 cinematic salute to roast human, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.
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Image of St. Lawrence courtesy of Infolit, with our thanks.
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A Stunning Rare Illuminated Book Of Hours, $13,583 Per Hour

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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An Illustrious Anonymous Author Unmasked

by Stephen J. Gertz

Preview

Anonymous is a perennially busy writer, with a list of books that could span the Equator with enough left over to tie a  sash knot with long tassels. Anonymous writers toil, of course, in anonymity, a sere environment sorely lacking in amity; it's a lonely place. Some authors prefer to write anonymously to protect their reputation in another genre of literature, or because their subject matter is too delicate to risk open attribution.

At this point you may be asking yourself, How can an author be illustrious and anonymous at the same time? I hadn't a clue, so I asked the Rare Book Guy (the Carnac the Magnificent of rare bookmen, Shell's Answer Man to the antiquarian book set), for insight. He held the question, inside an envelope formerly secured within a mayonnaise jar, to his forehead and, after communing with the occult, revealed the answer:

"In a sea of anonymity how can one anonymous author be distinguished from another anonymous author? By gilding the anonymous lily! After all, there's Anonymous and then there's ANONYMOUS. Thus, Anonymous becomes 'Illustrious Anonymous,' 'Best-Selling Anonymous,' 'Critically Acclaimed Anonymous,' etc. That way, the potential reader knows that this Anonymous ain't just another Anonymous from the neighborhood, and the publisher can sleep soundly knowing that sleight-of-hand  will tempt the gullible; Anonymous as sales ploy."

All well and good, RBG, but what about an author so obscure, so beyond recognition that when they look in the mirror even they don't know who they are? Why should a publisher risk money on a complete unknown when Anonymous has such a great track record? Pamela was anonymously published in its first edition of 1740 (dated 1741) and it did wonders for Samuel Richardson's career.

And so I imagine that, faced with Dark Masquerade - a potboiler about a "prominent criminal attorney, well versed in the art of fixing juries," who falls for a debutante that "daring young news photographer" Jimmy Cronin also has eyes for but when Butch and Larry McCabe, fraternal gangsters and disgruntled clients of our prominent criminal attorney, threaten the love triangle, and "an avalanche of masterfully portrayed incidents including a jail-break and the appearance of a mysterious nun on an ocean voyage" ensues - the editor and publisher of New York's Green Circle Books had to make an important decision.

(Your attention has likely been arrested by the sudden appearance of a seafaring nun of mystery and intrigue, and, presumably, a great set of sea-legs. Angel of Death or Angie Dickinson in bride of Christ drag? Or, a character out of Pirandello who accidentally walked into this plot in search of an author named Anonymous but, because the author  was anonymous and not in the phone book, she tramped the earth and sailed the seas an eternal vagabond).

Editor: It's a smash but for a story like this "by Mrs. H. H. Harris and Edward Doherty" doesn't grab. Too polite.

Publisher: Tell me about it. Who are they? Sound like high society yokels to me. "Mrs. H.H. Harris and Mr. Edward Doherty Are Pleased To Announce the Publication of Their New Novel. Tea and Scones Will Be Served Afterward at the Waldorf." I'm thinking pseudonym.

Editor: Whad'ya have in mind?

Publisher: Something punchy, urban, sharp, gritty. "Brick Wall." "Lance Boil." "Duke Street." "Dick Gunn." "Cotton Gin." No, forget "Cotton Gin." Too rural for this caper.

Editor: How 'bout, "Anonymous." 

Publisher: It's been done. 

Editor: I've got it. "Illustrious Anonymous!" 

Publisher: Hmmm. Mystery, prestige, strange oxymoron. It's magic! Could be Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dreiser, the man in the moon! This is why I pay you the big bucks.

And so Mrs. H.H. Harris and Edward Doherty became the "Illustrious Anonymous Author" of Dark Masquerade.

Half of "Illustrious Anonymous Author" actually was somewhat illustrious.

Edward "Eddie" J.  Doherty (1890-1975) was a journalist ("The Star Reporter of America"), novelist (The Broadway Murders: A Night Club Mystery, NY: New York Crime Club/Doubleday, 1929),  and Hollywood writer best known for his screenplay, The Sullivans, which was nominated for 1944's Best Original Story Oscar™Academy Award. A Catholic, he became an ordained priest at age seventy-eight. It is unknown whether a mysterious nun on an ocean voyage was his muse.

Eddie Doherty.

My guess is that he - "a competitive professional, passionate lover, cosmopolitan traveller, enjoyer of the good things in life [who] left the Church in fury and pain but returned later in tears of joy" (Madonna House blurb for his autobiography) - was the pro that helped amateur Mrs. H.H. Harris write Dark Masquerade.

Virginia Stallard Harris was the wife of successful Fifth Avenue perfumer and Broadway investor, Herbert H. Harris (1898-1949), whose main claim to theater fame was that Arthur Miller's All My Sons (1947) was "Produced in Association With Herbert H. Harris," i.e. he was the play's financial angel. Dark Masquerade was, apparently, Mrs. Harris' one and only writing credit; I've found no records for her under her name or in variations. She is, however, to the best of my research, the only writer in the English language to ever be formally credited as "An Illustrious Anonymous Author," and so enters literary history as an illustrious anonymous footnote.

• • •

Apologies to the scions of Mrs. H.H. Harris, and Edward Doherty for ripping the veil of anonymity off their illustriously anonymous ancestors. It was a job no one cared about and didn't need to be done. As such, I'm a sap, gulled by the publisher's baloney. It's another bent feather in Booktryst's cap, in cahoots with the U.S. Catalog of Copyright Entries.

A few more words on Eddie Doherty, a very interesting character.

According to his New York Times obit (May 5, 1975), which described him as  "the star reporter straight out of the raffish, fast-talking 'Front Page' set that thrived on scandal...a chronicler of the Jazz Age," the Chicago Mirror declared him "America's Highest Paid Reporter." He earned his reputation as "an ace general assignment reporter" with his coverage of  Hollywood's Wallace Reid and Fatty Arbuckle scandals for the Chicago Tribune. He later moved to New York to join the staff of Liberty magazine. It is during this period that he likely collaborated with Mrs. Harris.  I suspect that Mr. Harris may have invested in his wife's ambition by hiring Doherty for the project.

The Times obit quotes one of his former editors: "'When he's good, he's very, very good. When he's bad, he's lousy.'"

He had studied for the priesthood but the death of his first wife in the flu epidemic of 1918 estranged him from the Church and God. He became a reporter. He ran wild. When his second wife died, c. 1939, he returned to the Roman Catholic faith.

At the time he became a Catholic priest he was married. He was ordained in Israel as a member of the Melkites, a Byzantine order (not tied to the Eastern Church) that recognizes the Pope in Rome as its sovereign but allows married men into the priesthood.

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[HARRIS, Mrs. H.H. and Edward Doherty]. An Illustrious Anonymous Author. Dark Masquerade. New York: Green Circle Books, 1936. First (only) edition. Octavo. 312 pages. Cloth, with dust jacket.

I've found little about Green Circle Books beyond that it was, apparently, an imprint of  former Macaulay executive and New York publisher, Lee Furman, who filed the copyright for Dark Masquerade on August 11, 1936. OCLC notes records for titles published by Green Circle 1936-1937, at which point it seems that the imprint dropped off Earth.

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Dark Masquerade image courtesy of ReadInk, currently offering this volume, with our thanks. Image of Eddie Doherty courtesy of Madonna House.

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When Kerouac Met Dostoyevsky

by Stephen J. Gertz

Jack Kerouac's "Dostoyevsky Mad-Face" by Allen Ginsberg, 1953.

Sometime during March-April, 1949, John-not-yet-Jack Kerouac, 27 years old and living with his parents as "The Wizard of Ozone Park" (Queens, NYC), as his Beat friends referred to him, bought a cheap reprint edition of short stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He annotated the book, and entered his ownership signature.

Dostoyevsky was an important influence on Kerouac; his novel, The Subterraneans, was consciously modeled on Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, one of his favorite books, and there are many references to the Russian author in Kerouac's novels and letters.

Dostoyevsky was something of a guiding literary and philosophical spirit to the Beats (and buddy - Kerouac affectionately called him "Dusty"), and Notes From the Underground, which Sartre considered to be a major forerunner of existentialism, a  handbook of sorts for the Western Man isolated, apart from, and at odds with the culture in which he lives, alienated from the mainstream, an outsider creating and living life on his own terms. Notes from the Underground is the companion piece to Mezz Mezzrow's Really The Blues (1946), the  gospel of hipster-jazz subculture that the Beats adopted as their book of revelations. The two books serve as the liturgy to Beat theology.

In 1949, the year that Kerouac bought this book, he had just completed the legendary road trips with Neal Cassady that began in July, 1947, wrote The Town and the City, was working on Dr. Sax,  and crafting the first draft of On the Road (in its essential religiosity a sort of Brothers Karamazov in a car; Kerouac, a devout, though lapsed Catholic;  a lonely, fallen altar-boy on an odyssey seeking enlightenment, redemption and communion with the Godhead, Brother Cassady his co-pilot and navigator riding shotgun no matter where he sat. On the Road is not about getting kicks on Route 66. Kerouac is an Irish-Catholic Siddartha). 1949 was a key year in Kerouac's journey, and Dostoyevsky was heavily on his mind.

In a letter written to his friend Alan Harrington on April 23, 1949 Kerouac wrote: "I've just read 'An Unfortunate [sic] Predicament,' a long story by Dusty-what's-his-name. I studied it carefully and found that he begins with 'ideas' and then demolishes them in the fury of what actually becomes the story. This letter is a similar venture. However, nothing detracts from the fact that this is a mad letter. 'So be it! So be it!'"

And boy, did he so be it. The first two pages of An Unpleasant Predicament (1861), one of the stories in the collection, are  annotated by Kerouac, who has written six remarks in the margins commenting on Dostoyevsky's usage and writing.

For example, next to the sentence that begins: "The fact..." Kerouac writes: "Truly 'the fact.' Always fluffs the rest, & gets to the 'fact.'"

Next to the word "fond" Kerouac writes: "fond always gives a batty tone -- just right."

About Dostoyevsky's use of the word "actual" he writes "Dusty's way of being a card."

Commenting on the sentence, "He was a bachelor because he was an egoist," Kerouac writes "A Family man's reflection."

Inappropriate behavior, scandalous activity, moral experimentation, ambiguity, and socio-political and literary polemic set within a mocking, carnivalistic atmosphere characterize this story of three generals' argument of ideas that degenerates when one of them, wishing to test his liberal-humanistic thinking, leaves, crashes the wedding of a subordinate, and gets drunk to satirically disastrous result. This was the Beat's bread and butter at its merriest, stepping on sacred cultural cow-pies, enjoying the squish, and hoping the scent offends bourgeois nostrils.

This copy of Dostoyevsky's short stories is a wonderful personal artifact from Kerouac's developing years as a writer, demonstrating his early literary thinking and roots. The year he bought and read it, the author, the subject - here dawn energetically breaks on the Beats and especially on Jack Kerouac.

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(KEROUAC, Jack). DOSTOIEVSKI, Fiodor [Fyodor Dostoyevsky]. Short Stories. New York and Boston: Books, Inc., n.d. [c. 1940s]. Reprint edition. Octavo. 248 pp. Signed and dated by Kerouac, with his holograph margin annotations in pencil.

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Images from book courtesy of Between the Covers, currently offering this volume, with our thanks.

Photo of Kerouac ©Allen Ginsberg LLC 2010, from Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg. Courtesy of National Gallery of Art.

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Listen to Jack Kerouac recite a three-minute excerpt from The Subterraneans here.

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The Rare Book That Turned Elizabeth I into Queen of Heaven

Yesterday, Queen of England. Today, Mother of God.

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1578 an astonishing book was published in England, astonishing particularly if you were a Catholic. The volume, A Booke of Christian Prayers, contained a frontispiece portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, Britain’s reigning monarch, as the new Queen of Heaven, knocking Mary off the throne.

Further, the book, gloriously decorated with elaborate historiated borders, had illustrations within those borders that might trouble Christians of the Roman stripe. Some border details are distinctly anti-Papist.

The portrait had appeared in the first edition of 1569 yet this new edition was so different in content and appearance that the two editions (both commonly known as Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book) are considered to be separate works. With its historiated borders, their content, as well as the portrait of Elizabeth I, the 1578 is a magnificent and dramatically iconoclastic volume.

This famous woodcut portrait, possibly by lady-in-waiting and court painter Levina Teerlinc,  on the verso of the title-page depicts Elizabeth at prayer. "In an outstanding example of iconoclasm, Elizabeth receives the place of honor  in collections of prayers comparable to the Horae, in which the Blessed Virgin Mary once reigned supreme as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven" (King, Tudor Royal Iconography, p. 114). A prayer of Solomon which forms the epigraph suggests that the queen has supplanted the sage biblical king as wise governor who has re-established the Lord's Temple by imposing a Protestant settlement and bringing peace to Britannia. Down with the Church of Rome; up with the Church of England.

The striking woodcut borders, designed in the manner of Holbein and Dürer, give visual life to the prayers. Arranged in seven successive sections, each follows a different theme in the canon of Elizabethan popular devotional iconography: the life of Christ; the personifications of Christian virtues and vices; the action of Christian virtues in daily life; personifications of the senses; the the Apocalypse; the Dance of Death, and, finally, various elements of Christian eschatology.

The woodcuts are signed, and in three forms: the first series by an unidentified "C.I." and the Dance of Death with a "G" except for the penultimate signed "CT." Artist "G" may be Marcus Gheeraerts the younger.

What makes this book truly remarkable is its place within English printing history. At a time when the English printing industry was distinctly less sophisticated than that on the Continent, this is one of the few English books of the sixteenth century that can proudly take its place amongst the finest examples of contemporary European printing. As such, the book is a magnificent tribute to publisher John Daye's typographical skills.

"Richard Day (b. 1552, d. in or before 1606), printer and Church of England clergyman, was born at Aldersgate, London, on 21 December 1552, the son of the printer John Day (1521/2–1584)... In 1576 Day assisted his father in the printing of, and wrote some of the prefixed verses to, the third edition of Foxe's Actes and Monuments. The following year, on 28 August 1577, he was named as co-patentee when his father secured the renewal of a lucrative patent for the printing of a number of works including the Psalms in metre and the ABC with Little Catechism, although it appears that Richard may have gained his half-share by misleading his father about the terms of the grant.

"Day entered his first book in the company's registers on 28 May 1578, his own translation of John Foxe's Christ Jesus Triumphant. The work was followed by a newly prefaced edition of A Booke of Christian Prayers, Collected out of the Auncient Writers, otherwise known as Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book. He also variously edited, translated, registered, and printed a handful of books over the next two years. However, his father evidently did not allow him to produce any works covered by the 1577 patent, as Richard took to pirating the little catechism and the metrical Psalms. As a result, in 1580 his father, then master of the Stationers' Company, assisted by the company's wardens, entered Richard's premises and took from him the bulk of his books, type, and press. No books were issued by Richard Day after this event.

"Despite an attempt by his father in his final years to revoke Richard Day's rights to the 1577 patent, the patent continued in Richard's name until at least 1604 although all printing for it was done by five nominated assigns. Richard died some time before 13 April 1606..." (DNB).

This edition exists in two states. The most readily available, albeit still quite rare, has the Preface signed “R.D.” In the scarcer variant the Preface is signed “Richard Daye.”

“As a repository of traditional iconographical material A Booke of Christian Prayers is unique among publications of the Elizabethan period” (Chew, The Iconography of “A Booke of Christian Prayers"(1578). Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3, p. 293).

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DAYE, Richard. A Booke of Christian Prayers collected out of the auncie[n]t writers, and best learned in our tyme, worthy to be read with an earnest mynde of all Christians, in these daungerous and troublesome dayes, that God for Christes sake will yet still be mercyfull unto us. London: John Daye, 1578.

First edition, the rare variant with Preface signed "Richard Daye,"  Octavo.  [12], [274], [1], [3 as index.], [1, colophon] pp., the pages numbered as 137 leaves. Woodcut engraved title page, woodcut frontispiece portrait of Elizabeth Regina at prayer.  Magnificent,  elaborately historiated woodcut borders designed after Holbein, Dürer, and contemporaries. Text in Roman and Black Letter.

ESTC 6429. Lowndes 1496.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books. Collectors may inquire here.

A tip o' the hat to Peter Harrington.
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Music Writ Large: With Illuminated Choir Books Size Matters

by Linda Hedrick

Initial C:  Monks Singing.  MS. 24, Leaf 3V.
Unknown artist, Italian, circa 1420.
Tempera colors, gold leaf, and ink on parchment.
18-5/16" x 13-5/8"

Picture a dimly lit church.  The scent of incense is in the air, and you hear the sound of chanting. Choristers are clustered in a corner, performing a call and response with one of the monks.  In front of them is a lectern, and on top of it is a huge book.  It is big enough that they all can read it at the same time.  Now swing around behind them and look at the book.  It has large notes, and shows the words being sung.  It most likely has illuminated drawings on it, and if it is an especially fine specimen, it will have a large illuminated initial.

Close-up of monks from above image.

Choirs were an integral part of medieval worship.  Since books were expensive it wasn’t possible for each member of the choir to have their own.  So very large books were made, some beautifully embellished with initials, drawings, borders, and other decorations.  The entire choir was able to read and sing from the one book.

Initial R:  The Resurrection.  MS. LUDWIG VI, FOL. 16
Antonio da Monza, Italian, late 1400s or early 1500s
Tempera colors and gold leaf on parchment.
25-1/4" x 17-1/8"

The books were made by hand, written by a scribe or calligrapher on parchment or vellum.  Their production usually required a team of craftsmen working under a master.  Some were made in scriptoriums, others in artisan workshops.  An illuminator was an artist who decorated the book.  A binder then sewed the sheets together into a book and placed them within a cover.  The production of a book was commissioned and financed by a patron, sometimes the head of a monastery or cathedral.

Initial C:  The Creation of the World.  MS. 24, LEAF 5
Artist unknown, Italian, circa 1420, tempera colors,
gold leaf, and ink on parchment.  18-5/16" x 13-5/8"

Musical chants were an important part of ritual ceremonies.  One of these was the Mass, a public ceremony that included the blessing of wine and bread to be consumed.  Missals, which contained the spoken prayers and chants that priests performed during Mass, were small and portable.  Graduals, containing music and text sung during the year for Mass, became larger as choirs grew in size.

Initial A:  A man singing.  MS. LUDWIG VI 2, FOL. 128V
Artist unknown, Italian, circa 1460-1480.
Tempera colors and gold leaf on parchment.
23-3/4" x 17-5/16"

The Divine Office is a cycle of prayers that are recited each day at prescribed hours.  One of the books used for these is an antiphon.  An antiphon is usually in Gregorian chant, and is a response by a choir or congregation to a text, most often a psalm.  Antiphons are still integral in Greek Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches.

Initial A:  Christ in Majesty.  MS. LUDWIG VI, FOL. 2
Master of Gerona, Italian, 1275-1299.  22-15/16" x 15-13/16"
From an antiphonal; sung on the first Sunday in Advent.

Depending on the age of the book, the musical notation may be in neumes or in square notation.  Neumes are a series of ascending and descending dots and lines.  A neume was a symbol that could signify two to four notes.  Readers could get a sense of the melody and how long each word should be sung with this notation.

From a page of the Stammheim Missal, German, circa 1170s.

The word neumes comes from the Greek word for gestures.  They were placed without staffs.   Since most singers knew the songs by heart, the neumes served as a reminder of the rises and falls of the melody being sung.  So in essence they were a type of shorthand or mnemonic for the melody of a chant.

From a page of a gradual, Italian, circa late 1400s or early 1500s.

Square notation used a four-line staff with clef notes.  Groups of ascending notes were squares, stacked, and read from bottom to top.  Descending notes (sometimes diamonds) were read from left to right.  Square notation became the standard, and is the precursor to the modern notation used today.

Initial E:  The Prophet Isaiah.  MS. 97, leaf 3V;
Bohemian, circa 1405.  Tempera colors, gold leaf,
and gold paint on parchment.  22-3/8" x 15-13/16"

Many of these religious volumes are difficult to read, due to the lettering style and the abbreviations.  Although printed books were introduced in the mid-fifteenth century, the production of handmade books continued for approximately another century.

Illuminator known as the Master of Gerona.  MS. LUDWIG VI 6.
Italian, late 1200s.  Tempera colors, gold leaf, and
ink on parchment.  22-15/16" x 15-13/16"

The illuminated initial usually came at the beginning of a passage or a paragraph.  These letters were both a source of beauty and served to help the choir to find their place.  (Remember those dimly lit churches!)  It was common for a “V” to be written as a “U”, and vice versa.

Close-up from a page from a gradual illuminated by Antonio da Monza.
Italian, late 1400s or early 1500s.  MS. LUDWIG VI 3.
Tempura colors, gold leaf and ink on parchment.  25-5/16" x 17-1/8".

These beautiful volumes were made and used in Europe beginning around 500 C.E., and in some areas their use continued into the early part of the 20th century.  They serve as historical documents revealing to us the songs that were sung, the production methods of books, and many of the illustrations provide a glimpse into the life of their respective eras.  A rare chance to relive an ancient past.

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All images courtesy of the Getty:  © 2010 The J. Paul Getty Trust. All rights reserved

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Collecting Nurse Jackie’s Patron Saint: The Urtext of Memoirs

Suddenly, It's St. Augustine!

That exclamation is neither a message from the Florida Board of Tourism nor the title of a wacky, new sit-com about a talking St. Bernard with identity issues.

It is, rather, notice that recently, within the space of three days, I was struck by a cluster of references to the man who wrote the first memoir extant, the father of all autobiographies, St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. 

First, I'm skimming through The Erotic Revolution by Lawrence Lipton (1965), "An Affirmative View of the New Morality," i.e. the sexual revolution of the Sixties, and my eye falls upon a single mention of St. Augustine on page 117.

Then, while rereading a fascinating phenomenological study of sexual arousal versus ordinary experience, Smut: Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology by Murray S. Davis (University of Chicago, 1983), I'm struck by references to Augustine again (and again).

Next, I received, unsolicited, Collecting the Confessions: Selections from the William M. Klimon Collection of St. Augustine's Confessions, a check list of books with introduction by Klimon, published to accompany an exhibition, Oct. 9-20, 2006, held at the Jeanne M. Godschalx Gallery at St. Norbert's College in De Pere, Wisconsin.

Finally, via Netflix, I caught up to Nurse Jackie, the cable series starring Edie Falco as a nurse erratically driving, with dark detours, on the road to sainthood. Within the first two minutes of the show's first episode, Nurse Jackie, in voice-over narration, declares who she is by acknowledging by name and citing Augustine: "Please God, let me be good - but not yet," a neat paraphrase from Book Eight, Chapter Five of the Confessions of Saint Augustine.

I happen to know whence Nurse Jackie's citation because I, too, like William Klimon, have an attraction to Augustine, having read the Confessions and City of God, as well as the works of Thomas Aquinas during a sojourn in the wilderness when I was reading all manner of religious texts - Christian, Judaic, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, pagan, you name it - in an effort to read my way out of the jungle I then found myself in. I've also, over the years, studied Western sexuality and mores, and you cannot do that without coming to terms with St. Augustine, who, whether you agree with him or not, has been the primary influence in Western culture upon sexuality and how we think about it. Reject with all your might Augustine's thoughts on sex and you still are influenced by them; the stronger the aversion, the more powerful the grip - which sort of sums up Augustine's personal struggle before his final, full acceptance and embrace of Catholicism.

That wresting match - "the impulses of nature and the impulses of the spirit are at war with one another" (B. 8, Ch. 5) - popularly centers around sin and the "the lower self." In other words, those parts of the Confessions that contain hot-parts, specifically discussion of the human hot-parts, which behave independently from will and desire, i.e. the mystery and wonder of a man's penis rising and falling beyond conscious control. Grossly simplified, from this observation evolved Augustine's philosophy of free-will and original sin.

I interpreted these references as signs to be obeyed but not as a call to conversion. Rather, as an omen to write about William Klimon and how a collector can focus upon collecting one specific book in as many editions as can be found, and by so doing provide an important contribution to our understanding of the book.

"As a longtime student of and collector of the literature of Catholic conversion, it is natural that I should have been attracted to St. Augustine's Confessions. It is, of course, the Urtext of that particular genre. I've known about the book for as long as I can remember but my bibliographic interest in the work was limited until the fall of 1990 when I participated in a reading seminar with the classicist Danuta Shanzer at Cornell University...Coincident with that seminar was the publication of a new English translation of the Confessions...The fact that a fresh translation of such an established work...was possible interested me greatly, and from that point on I kept my eyes open to watch for other translations" (Introduction to Collecting the Confessions).

Intrigued by the translation tradition but frustrated that the scholastic community appeared to ignore study of the translations of the Confessions, Klimon made it his business.

"Why is any of this important? Because the work of bibliographers and book historians during the last several decades has helped clarify the notion that our understanding of texts cannot be divorced from the questions of editions and translations, or even from the physical elements of the books themselves. If we want to understand Augustine, and particularly if we want to understand his effect on Christian thought and culture for the next millennium and a half, we have to investigate not just the texts in isolation, but how and what people actually read. And to do that, we've got to have access to the various editions and translations - but first someone has to collect them" (Introduction).

And there, in his last sentence, is the reason why book collectors, particularly those with a passion in an untilled area of scholastic inquiry, have been and remain key contributors to the study of books and the world from which they emerged.

So, what can happen when a person reaches their book collecting goal?

"As of the end of last year," Mr. Klimon responded to me, "I have given the entire collection to St. Norbert College. There were approximately 144 different editions, probably about 50 different translators or editors--plus works of scholarship, bibliographies and readers' guides, and one LP record of Louis Andriessen's De Tijd (Time) [Amsterdam: Donemus, 1981. LP and liner notes. Performed by Ensemble of the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw]. Notable in one of the later tranches were a 1589 Latin edition from Rome and the second edition of the first printed (anonymous) German translation (Frankfurt, 1760).

"Although I never bought one, during my time as an Augustine collector I was offered or had the opportunity to buy 3 different copies of incunable editions (there were 4 incunable editions of the Confessions altogether, which I assume makes it a pretty popular 15/c printed text). I do wish I had pulled the trigger on at least one." (The collectors' and rare book dealers' common lament)

And so this collection, which grew from one man's passion to amass the only collection of Augustine's Confessions in translation in the world, will now be available to scholars.

Collecting a single book is not unusual at all. Five years ago, I examined a collection of every edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin the collector could track down, including translations into just about every language you can think of (and some you can't). One collector I know has amassed every edition of De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, including an edition/copy presented to Ulysses S. Grant by the publisher. Love Alice in Wonderland? Then collect every edition you can lay your hands on; most will be relatively inexpensive and you'll have a lot of fun.

Rare book dealers are often asked by neophyte collectors, "What should I collect?" The question presupposes that there are "right" books and there are "wrong" books to concentrate on. There are no wrong books. The right books to collect are, quite simply and always, the ones that are meaningful to you regardless of collecting trends. Follow your book-bliss.

Here's an area of book collection that no one that I am aware of has yet to focus upon: Collecting the modern memoir, arguably the most popular genre in non-fiction today, a form seemingly irresistible to writers, publishers, and readers, and one that tells as much about us as consumers of such and the culture that spawns so many by so varied a group of memoirists, as it does about the people who write them. We are enthralled by tales of overcoming odds, and of fall and redemption; they are routine best-sellers. Following the Augustinian formula, it helps to have erotic bats in the belfry that screw-up one's life, if not enjoyment (deliver me from evil but not until I'm completely fed up with it). All too often, alas, it's the memoirist dancing the Limbo - "How low can you go?" Pretty low, it turns out but not so low: Soon, another memoirist will raise the ante with a "top this!" tale of rock-bottom. And that memoir will be topped, again.

A modern memoirist at work.

At it's purest, the memoir provides its writer with a means toward self-understanding that, ideally, informs the reader to a similar end; the best are unburdening prayers leading to a satisfying amen by the reader. All too often, however, the modern memoir is a flag staked into the ground simply asserting, I am here!, and it may be that, in a culture that celebrates individuality and freedom yet actually affords less and less (an endless array of consumer choices is not a means to genuine self-expression and individuality), the assertion becomes a rallying cry, the memoirist's story a declaration that we are each unique human beings, dammit, not blank faces in a formless crowd; we are individuals with stories to tell that must be told, even if they're bogus (think James Frey's A Million Little Slices of Baloney). In this sense, even the worst are political statements.

But for honest, profoundly in-depth, sincere self-examination and prayer within which emerged a moral philosophy that has influenced every single person in the Western world ever since, look no further than than this book, No memoir/autobiography is as important and consequential as the Confessions of St. Augustine.
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The first English translation of St. Augustine's Confessions was done by Sir Tobie Matthew, a Catholic convert and secret Jesuit priest, and published in 1620. The 1631 translation by Anglican priest, William Watts, his answer to Matthews, remained the standard English Protestant edition until Edward Bouverie Pusey's revision of 1838, and is still in print as the English version in the Loeb Classical Library's bilingual edition.

[MATTHEW, Sir Tobie, trans.]. The confessions of the incomparable doctour S. Augustine, translated into English. Togeather with a large preface, which it will much import to be read ouer first; that so the book it selfe may both profit, and please, the reader, more. [Saint Omer: English College Press] Permissu superiorum, 1620.

[WATTS, William, trans.]. Saint Augustine's Confessions translated: and with some marginall notes illustrated. Wherein, divers antiquitites are explayned and the marginall notes of former Popish translation answered by William Watts...London: Printed by John Norton, for John Partridge..., 1631.

I am the proud possessor of a copy of the now scarce yet always worthless 29th printing of the Penguin Classics paperback edition, this 1961 English translation of the Confessions by the deadly translator and bibliographer, R. S. Pine-Coffin, whose other claim to fame is as author of the Bibliography of British and American Travel in Italy to 1860 (Florence: 1974-1981), a key reference you'll never use - until you have to. Then, you'll scream if you can't access it.
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Thank you to William M. Klimon.