Primo Copy Of Piranese's Imaginary Prisons $270,000-$400,000 At Christie's

by Stephen J. Gertz

"I need to produce great ideas, and I believe that if I were commissioned to design a new universe, I would be mad enough to undertake it" (Piranese).

A magnificent copy of the scarce first edition of Italian artist and printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranese's (1720-1778) celebrated suite of designs for an imaginary prison, Invenzioni Capric di Carceri (Rome: Giovanni Bouchard, n.d. [c. 1750]) - which has had an enormous influence upon literature - is being offered by Christie's-Paris in its Importants livres anciens, livres d'artistes & manuscrits sale, April 30, 2014.

With all of its fourteen beautifully designed and etched plates in their first impression, second state (except one), before numbering and retouching, on un-watermarked paper, and in excellent condition, it is estimated to sell for $270,000-$400,000.

The plates depict fanciful subterranean vaults and machines somewhat Kafkaesque in nature, with surreal distortion later found in the work of M.C. Escher, featuring bizarre, labyrinthine structures that are chemerical mash-ups of monumental architecture, epic caprices depicting "ancient Roman or Baroque ruins converted into fantastic, visionary dungeons filled with mysterious scaffolding and instruments of torture" (Encyclopedia Britannica).

Only the engravings of Goya and William Blake have inspired writers as much as those of Piranesi's Carceri.  Their roots lie in the theatrical dioramas that Piranese designed for the Galli da Bibiena family of stage set designers in Bologna as well as those for his father, a stonemason.

The rare second edition, later published by Piranese himself with the plates reworked, contains an extra two plates yet here "in Bouchard's edition the plates are more lightly etched throughout with none of the strong contrasts of light and shade seen in the later edition. There is a wonderful simplicity in the design in the early states, and none shows this quality in greater beauty than plate four of the series" ( Hind ).

The haunting, dream-like quality to the plates fired the imagination of the Romantics.

"The fascination of Piranese's Imaginary Prisons for the literary mind is attested by transmutations in story, poem, and essay. In a recent attempt to explain the appeal, Aldous Huxley remarks that the etchings express obscure psychological truths: they represent 'metaphysical prisons, whose seat is within the mind, whose walls are made of nightmare and incomprehension, whose chains are anxiety and their racks a sense of personal and even generic guilt.' Whatever the explanation may be, the influence of the Prisons on writers of the last two centuries, particularly on the Romantics, will one day make a chapter of literary history which will include the names of Walpole, Beckford, Coleridge, De Quincey, Balzac, Gautier, Baudelaire, and doubtless many others" (Paul F. Jamieson. Musset, de Quincey, and Piranese. Modern Language Notes, Vol. 71, No. 2, Feb. 1956).

"Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist...which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever: some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) representing vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, etc., etc., expressive of enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further, and you perceive it come to a sudden abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him" (Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater).

The Plates:

I - Title
II - The Round Tower
III - The Grand Piazza
IV - The Smoking Fire
V - The Drawbridge
VI - The Staircase with Trophies
VII - The Giant Wheel
VIII - Prisoners on a Projecting Platform
IX - The Arch with a Shell Ornament
X - The Sawhorse
XI - The Well
XII - The Gothic Arch
XIII - The Pier with a Lamp
XIV - The Pier with Chains

"One of the greatest printmakers of the eighteenth century, Piranesi always considered himself an architect. The son of a stonemason and master builder, he received practical training in structural and hydraulic engineering from a maternal uncle who was employed by the Venetian waterworks, while his brother, a Carthusian monk, fired the aspiring architect with enthusiasm for the history and achievements of the ancient Romans. Piranesi also received a thorough background in perspective construction and stage design. Although he had limited success in attracting architectural commissions, this diverse training served him well in the profession that would establish his fame" (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

This copy, formerly in the collection of the National Gallery of Art (with small stamp on the back of each plate with stamp cancellation), was last seen at Christie's-London July 2, 2003 when it sold for $140, 506 (£83,650; €101,704).

Grégoire Dupond created the below animated film for Factum Arte, based upon Piranesi's engravings for Invenzioni Capric di Carceri, as a walk through the artist's amazing spaces:

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Congress Establishes The Dollar And It'll Cost You $50,000 - $75,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

The dollar becomes the official coin of the nation in the first printing of An Act Establishing a Mint, and Regulating the Coins of the United States, offered by Swann Auction Galleries in its Printed and Manuscript Americana sale, tomorrow April 8, 2014.

Published April 2, 1792 and certified by the autograph signature of Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State, and with the typed signatures of Speaker of the House Jonathan Trumbull, Vice-President John Adams, and President George Washington, it may be the only complete signed copy extant.

With no signed complete copies seen at auction since at least 1917, and with only two copies - unsigned - recorded in ESTC and OCLC, this one is estimated to sell for $50,000 - $75,000.

Printed on paper made by Henry Schutz in Pennsylvania with his "HS Sandy Run" watermark (the same paper preferred by George Washington for his private correspondence - see Gravell, American Watermarks 164) and published in Philadelphia by Francis Childs and John Swain on five pages on three (here disbound) folio sheets, 15 x 9 3/4 inches, the coinage act created the first United States mint (in Philadelphia), established and defined the currency system of the United States, and set the dollar as legal tender.

The act authorizes the hiring of a mint director, assayer, chief coiner, engraver, and treasurer, and sets the salaries for each.

The ninth clause lists the denominations of coins which can be produced by the new mint. The most important was "Dollars or Units - each to be the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy one grains and four sixteenths of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver."

The other denominations, ranging from ten-dollar gold "Eagles" down through quarter dollars, "dismes," cents, and half cents, are all defined in relation to the dollar.

The tenth clause dictates that each coin bear the word "Liberty," and that the gold and silver denominations read "United States of America" and bear an eagle on the reverse.

The Act, in Section 19, promises a bleak future for those who mess with the mint and its product. "And be it further enacted that if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of the fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same out to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, and if any of the said officers or persons shall embezzle any of the metals which shall at any time be committed to their charge for the purpose of being coined, or any of the coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of the said offenses, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death."

The final clause dictates that "the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars or units, dismes or tenths, cents or hundredths, and milles or thousandths." The U.S. has operated on a decimal system ever since, although the "mille" soon fell into disuse.

Other provisions have been superseded by later acts. Private citizens, for example, with gold or silver bullion lying around the house collecting dust can no longer take it to the bank and have it minted into official coins at no expense.

In passing, it should be noted that the Coinage Act of 1792 was ultimately passed by Congress for the sole purpose of allowing the present writer, 222 years afterward, to capture the grinding consequence in the 21st century of Alexis de Tocqueville's 19th century observation that money-making is the dominant ethic in the U.S.:

Another day, another dolor, the waking-call of the hard-working financially challenged and  depressed citizen with barely two dismes to rub together.

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Images courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.
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A Rare Book's Roll-Call of Dishonest, Immoral, and Unusual People

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1813, James Caulfield published a new, expanded, three-volume edition of his  Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, From the Reign of Edward the Third, to the Revolution, containing 109 engraved plates and 292 pages of accompanying text,  finishing the work originally issued in two volumes 1794-1795 with sixty plates and 214 pages of biographical material.

Caulfield's purpose was to embellish with prints the "twelfth class" section found in James Granger's Biographical History of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution, consisting of Characters dispersed in different Classes (2 vols., 1769), the "twelfth class" being those ‘such as lived to a great age, deformed persons, convicts, &c.’

It is, in short, an illustrated rogue's gallery of the odd, the dubious, the notorious, the eccentric, and the disreputable including:

Mother Damnable, the epitome of ugliness and the cursing, scolding, fuming, fire-flinging shrew not to confused with Mother Louse;

 

Blash De Manfre, the human Trevi Fountain commonly called the Water Spouter, who earned fame for drinking water in large quantities and regurgitating it as various sorts of wine, simple waters, beer, oil, and milk;

Elynour Rummin, the famous Ale-Wife of England, with "nose some deal hooked, and curiously crooked, never stopping but ever dropping; her skin loose and slacke, grain'd like a sacke, with a crooked back," but whose ale was renowned as A-1;

Margaret Vergh Gryifith, who had a six-inch horn protruding from her forehead;

Mrs. Mary Davis, who one-upped Margaret Vergh Gryifith with two horns growing on her head that would shed and grow again;

Francis Battaglia, alas not known as "Frankie Batts," who would devour half a peck of stones within 24-hours and six days later excrete them as sand through a colon with true grit;

John Clavell, the gentleman highwayman who wrote elegant poetry that begged mercy from judges, nobles,  and King, and was the author of A Recantation of an ill-led Life: Or, a discovery of the Highway Law (1627);

Archibald "Archie" Armstrong, the sharp-tongued master of buffoonery while jester to James I and Charles I, who earned renown and fortune as a Jacobean wise-acre, retired and became a loan-shark, and wrote A Banquet of Jeasts. Or Change of cheare: Being a collection of moderne jests. Witty ieeres. Pleasant taunts. Merry tales (1630);

Ann Turner, "a gentlewoman that from her youth had been given over to a loose kind of life, of low stature, fair visage, for outward behavior comely, but in prodigality and excess riotous," and was executed for murder;  

 Innocent Nat Witt, a poor, harmless idiot;

Moll Cut-Purse, "a woman of a masculine spirit and make [who] practised or was instrumental to almost every crime and frolick;"

Roger Crab, the sack-cloth wearing vegan hermit;

Mary Aubrey, who murdered her abusive husband then chopped him to pieces and cast him thither and yon;

Robert Fielding, gambler, bigamist, suspected murderer, and the vainest of all fops; 

Augustine Barbara Venbek, aka Barbara Urselin, whose "whole body and even her face was covered with curled hair of yellow color and very soft like wool";

Mary Carleton, who used more aliases than any knave in the Kingdom, was married three times, robbed and cheated several people, was often taken to be a German princess or at least a woman of quality, and was tried for bigamy and acquitted;

Mull'd-Sack, b. John Cottington, the genius pickpocket and miscreant who, one night while drunk, accidentally married an hermaphrodite named Aniseed-Water Robin (credited with twice impregnating himself and giving birth to a boy and a girl) in Fleet prison, "the common place for joining all rogues and whores together"; and many more.

James Caulfield (1764–1826) was an author and printseller. "Many old English portrait prints were too rare and valuable to supply the extraordinarily large demand for them. To this end, many old plates were republished and many old prints were copied. Caulfield came to specialize in prints illustrating Granger's twelfth class of people—‘such as lived to a great age, deformed persons, convicts, &c.’—whose portraits were very often the hardest to come by. In 1788 he began his work Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters of Remarkable Persons, a series of reproductions of old portrait paintings and copies of rare old or popular prints accompanied by letterpress biographies" (Oxford DNB).

(In a bibliographical aside, Granger's book made fashionable the practice of extra-illustrating historical or topological books, i.e. pasting in illustrations from other sources, which became known as "grangerizing" existing texts).

In 1819 Caulfield further extended his book to include Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, from the Revolution in 1688 to the end of the Reign of George II.

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CAULFIELD, James. Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, From the Reign of Edward the Third, to the Revolution. Collected From the Most Authentic Accounts Extant. A New Edition, Completing the Twelfth Class of Granger's Biographical History of England; With Many Additional Rare Portraits. London: Printed for R.S. Kirby, 1813.

New edition, expanded and completing the original two volumes 1794-95. Three tall octavo volumes (10 x 5 7/8 in; 254 x 149 mm). viii, 104; [2], [105]-198; [2], [201]-292 pp. 109 engraved plates (one folding), including engravings based upon the drawings of Marcellus Laroon (1653-1702). Publisher's original blue paper covered boards with white printed spine labels

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Johathan Swift Asks For a Job

by Stephen J. Gertz

A two-page signed autograph letter by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) dated April 15, 1735 to an unidentified Lord (i.e. Lionel Cranfield Sackville, the 1st Duke of Dorset and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1731-1737) is being offered by Nate D. Sanders Auctions in its sale ending January 30, 2014 at 5PM Pacific. The opening bid is $5,000.

With customary wit, sarcasm, irony, and playfulness, Swift, at the time Dean of St. Patrick's Church in Dublin and a political exile, asks the Duke to appoint the son of a local Alderman to Mastership of a barrack at Kinsale, a post that had recently become vacant.

Politics is never far from Swift's mind. A Tory propagandist, he pokes fun at the Whigs. 

The Alderman, "is as high a Whig and more at your devotion than I could perhaps wish him to be." Swift refers to "a Doctor who kills or cures half the city, of two Parsons my subjects as [illegible] who rule the other half, and of a vagrant Brother who governs the North." He also mock-demands of the Duke that he order Lady Elizabeth "Betty" Germain (1680-1769), a friend and close correspondent of both and a very wealthy woman who "uses me very ill in her Letters," to give him a present "worth forty shillings at least."

The letter, here broken-up into paragraphs, reads in full:

My Lord 

Your Grace must remember, that some days before you left us, I commanded you to attend me to Doctor Delaney's house, about a mile out of this Town, where you were to find Doctor Helsham the Physician. I told you they were the two worthyest gentlemen in this Kingdom in their severall Faculties. You were pleased to comply with me, called on at the Deanry and carried me thither; where you dined with apparent satisfaction.

Now, this same Dr. Helsham hath orderred me to write to Your Grace in behalf of one Alderman Aldrich; who is master of the Dublin Barrack, and is as high a Whig and more at your devotion than I could perhaps wish him to be. And yet he is a very honest Gentleman, and which is more important, a near Relation of the [political family] Grattans, who, in Your Grace's absence are governors of all Ireland, and your Vicegerents when you are here, as I have often told you. They consist of an Alderman whom you are to find Lord Mayor at Michaelmas next; of a Doctor who kills or cures half the city, of two Parsons my subjects as [illegible] who rule the other half, and of a vagrant Brother who governs the North. They are all Brethren, and your Army of twelve thousand soldiers are not able to stand against them.

Now, Your Grace is to understand, that these Grattans will shickle to death for all their Cousins to the five and fiftieth degree; and consequently this same Alderman Aldrich being onely removed two degrees of Kindred and having a son as great a Whig as the Father, hath prevayled with Dr. Helsham to make me write to Your Grace, that the son of such a Father may have the Mastership of a Barrack at Kinsale, which is just vacant, His name is Michael Aldrich. Both Your Grace and I love the name for the sake of Dr. Aldrich Dean of Christ-church, although I am afraid he was a piece of a Tory, you will have several Requests this Past with the same Request, perhaps for different Persons, but you are to observe only mine, because it will come three minutes before any other.

I think this is the third request I have made to Your Grace. You have granted the two first, and therefore must grant the third. For, when I knew Courts, those who had received a dozen favors, were utterly disobliged if they were denyed the thirteenth. Besides, if this be not granted the Grattans will rise in rebellion, which I tremble to think of. My Lady Eliz. Germain uses me very ill in her Letters. I want a Present from her, and desire you will please to order, that it may be a seal. Mine are too small for the fashion; and I would have a large one, worth forty shillings at least. 

I had a Letter from her two days ago, and design to acknowledge it soon, but business must first be dispatched, I mean the Request I have made to Your Grace, that the young Whig may have the Barrack of Kinsale worth 60 or 70 lb a year. I should be very angry as well as sorry if Your Grace would think I am capapble of deceiving you in any circumstances. I hope and pray that my Lady Dutchess may recover Health at the Bath, and, that we may see her Grace perfectly recovered when You come over. And pray God preserve and your most noble Family in Health and Happyness.

I am with the highest respect:
My Lord Your grace's most obedient
most obliged, and most humble
Servant  Jonath: Swift.

Historian, playwright and novelist Horace Walpole (1717-1797) wrote of Lionel Sackville: "with the greatest dignity in his appearance, he was in private the greatest lover of buffoonery and low company…" Swift thought him one of the most agreeable and well-informed of men, and the best conversationalist he had ever met. Theirs was a deep friendship based upon a shared point of view and sense of humor.

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Images courtesy of Nate D. Sanders Auctions, with our thanks.
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Scarce True First Edition Of Jefferson's Notes On Virginia $100K-$150K

by Stephen J. Gertz

Title-page.

A copy of the true first edition of Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia (1782, i.e. 1785), one of only 200 that Jefferson had printed for private circulation among his friends and acquaintances, is coming to auction at Christie's-NY December 6, 2013 in its Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts including Americana sale. This copy, which includes text and appendices not present in all copies, is estimated to sell for $100,000-$150,000.

The book, Jefferson’s detailed account of his home state of Virginia, is “a classic statement about the promise and the perils of the American experiment” (Frank Shuffeton). The Notes reflect Jefferson's broad interests, i.e. everything. Embracing topography, natural history, botany, mineral and agricultural productions, manufactures, ethnography, religion, commerce and government, plus a pioneering bibliography of state papers, little about Virginia escapes his notice.

Jefferson began the work in the spring of 1781 in response to inquiries from the Marquis de Barbé Marbois, Secretary of the French Legation in Philadelphia, on behalf of the French government. Marbois’s queries were forwarded by a Virginia delegate in Congress, Joseph Jones, to Jefferson, the soon-to-be ex-governor.

In May 1781 Jefferson told Marbois that he would provide “as full information as I shall be able to do” (Papers, 5:58), when he had time to fully attend to it.  For many years Jefferson had been “making memoranda about Virginia on loose sheets," and when his term as governor ended he returned to Monticello and dove into the project. By December he'd sent Marbois a draft, advising that it was “very imperfect” (Papers, 6:142).

Over the next two years, Jefferson expanded the notes and sent manuscript copies to a few friends for comment. After embarking for Paris as U.S. Minister, he concluded “I may have a few copies struck off in Paris.” Jefferson hired Parisian printer Philippe-Denis Pierres to produce it.

From Paris, in May 1785, he wrote to James Madison that Pierres “yesterday finished printing my notes. I had 200 copies printed, but do not put them out of my own hands, except two or three copies here, and two which I shall send to America, to yourself and Colo. Monroe...” (Papers, 8:147).

Two years later, in 1787, he authorized his London bookseller, John Stockdale, to publish for general sale a somewhat expanded edition of the work. The last copy in decent condition of that edition sold in 2009 for $18,000 at Sotheby's-NY.

As for this, the true first edition, a copy was last seen at auction earlier this year at Christie's-NY June 21, 2013. Inscribed by Jefferson to David S. Franks, it sold for $150,000. Curiously, that same copy sold seven months earlier at Christie's-NY December 7, 2012 for $260,000. In 2010, The Samuel L.M. Barlow copy, inscribed to Mr. Dalrymple, sold at Sotheby's in 2010 for $300,000.

This copy is in descent from its original owner, Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815), the eminent Philadelphia physician, botanist, and naturalist, with Jefferson's inscription on the verso of the titlepage. It was then in the possession of Edward Harris (his signature at top margin of title-page). From Harris, the book became part of the Jefferson collection of T[homas]. .J[efferson]. Coolidge (1831-1912), great-grandson of the President, a successful businessman who served as United States Minister to France during President Benjamin Harrison's administration, 1889-1893.

Also included in the sale is a signed autograph letter from Jefferson at Monticello dated February 1823 wherein he testifies that copies of Notes on Virginia "are now very rarely found." The letter is anticipated to hammer at $50,000-$70,000. 

It reads in full:

Mssrs. Parsons & Cooley     Monticello Feb. 14. 23.

I have received your favor of Jan. 29 in which you are pleased to request a copy of my works to be deposited in your library. I have never published any work but the Notes on Virginia, of which I have but a single copy, and they are now very rarely to be found. All other writings of mine have been of an official character, and are only to be found among the public documents of the times in which I have lived. TO show however my respect for your request you have been pleased to make, I select one of these, the subject of which is not altogether foreign to institutions like yours, and which was so little adhered by the body for whom it was prepared, that I may truly call it a work of mine. This is a Report on the plan of the university in Virginia, which is now nearly completed, and in the course of a year or two will commence its operations. With this be pleased to accept the assurance of my highest respect & consideration.

Th. Jefferson

This letter was last seen at auction on November 14, 2010 when it fell under the hammer at Skinners for $59,250.
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UPDATE: This, the Benjamin Smith Barton copy of the true first edition of Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, sold for $220,000.
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JEFFERSON, Thomas (1743-1826). Notes on the State of Virginia: written in the year 1781, somewhat corrected and enlarged in the winter of 1782, for the use of a Foreigner of distinction, in answer to certain queries proposed by him.... [Paris: Philippe-Denis Pierres for the author], 1782 [i.e., 1785]. 

First edition, one of only 200 copies printed for private circulation among Jefferson’s friends and acquaintances. With the appendix and additional texts not present in all copies. Octavo (7¬ x 5 in.). Folding table between pp.168 and 169, full-page woodcut of Madison’s Cave on page [35]. Leaves D2 and D3 cancelled.

Bound with an appendix (pp.367-391) containing notes on American Indian tribes by Charles Thomson (1729-1824); Jefferson’s “Draught of a Fundamental Constitution for the Commonwealth of Virginia,” 14pp; and “An Act for establishing Religious Freedom passed in the assembly of Virginia in the beginning of the year 1786,” 4pp.

Contemporary mottled French calf, gilt spine, red morocco spine label, marbled edges, marbled endpapers (front cover nearly detached, joints, corners and board edges rubbed).

Provenance: Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815), the eminent Philadelphia physician and scientist; inscription on verso of title; Edward Harris (signature at top margin of title-page); T.J. Coolidge, bookplate.

Sabin 35894. Howes J-78.

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Read the full text of Jefferson's original manuscript of Notes on the State of Virginia, part of the Thomas Jefferson Papers Electronic Archive of the Coolidge Collection in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
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Image courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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England's Greatest Type Designer Is Not Who You Think It Is

By Stephen J. Gertz

William Caslon, John Baskerville, Eric Gill, and Matthew Carter: these are the names we associate with great British type design. To the top of that list add Richard Austin. Modern typeface design begins with him.

Who was Richard Austin and why are his typefaces so important? And who, by the way, was Richard Austin, wood-cut engraver?

Rich. Austin
Engraver of Dies, Stamps & CopperPlates

Cuts all Sorts of Musick, Engravers Tools, Steel Letters,
& Figures for Letter Founders, Mathematical Instument
Makers, Steel Engravers, & all Arts -
N.B. Copper Plates neatly Printed on the
Shortest Notice.

Richard Austin (1756-1833), type-cutter, created the types for Bell & Stephenson's British Letter Foundry in 1788, as well as types for other foundries. In 1812, Austin produced the types known as Scotch Roman. He also perfected the revolutionary Porson Greek typeface of Cambridge University Press. He established the Imperial Letter Foundry in 1815. Richard Austin, "who changed the whole character of Type Founding from the old face style (as it is now termed), with its disproportionate letters and long s's, into the truly elegant characters of the present day" (James Mosley) was the father of modern English typefaces. To his everlasting credit, he killed the traditional f-like long "s" that bedevils modern readers of eighteenth century and earlier texts in english.

His son, Richard Turner Austin (1781-1842), was a prolific wood-cut engraver. It was once thought that Richard Austin, typeface designer, and Richard Austin, wood-cut engraver, were one and the same person. Alastair M. Johnston, in his new book, Transitional Faces, sets the record straight.

This is the first full-length study of the Austins and their place within British printing and publishing history. Based upon previously unpublished material, Johnston, the printer and publisher (of Poltroon Press in Berkeley, California), has written a rich, vibrant, and engaging account of the Austins, their times and the milieu within they lived and worked.

This exhaustive investigation, which includes 158 pages of text plus an illustrated survey of Richard Turner Austin's engravings (with 130 examples) and appendices totaling an additional 205 pages, might, as is so often the case with scholastic work on a somewhat obscure subject, be an arid affair, desiccating the frontal lobes of readers. Fortunately, Mr. Johnston (a contributor to Booktryst) is incapable of producing such a work. His analysis of type design and its particulars, which might otherwise cause eyes to glaze, is, in Johnston's narrative, enlivened by his liberal wash of colorful detail and vivid characterization of people and places. 

The book's title, Transitional Faces, refers to British printing during the Georgian era when type-designer Austin flourished. The British government, protective of industry, had prevented foreign craftsmen from working in the trade but their skill could not be ignored. The French were doing marvelous things and their influence upon type-design in Britain was enormous. Richard Austin's incorporation of French type aesthetics into British design, "began an era in English type founding (referred to as 'transitional' by Updike, II, 116, 142), a glorious but short-lived time of harmonious types that had the larger-on-the-body proportions of the Romain du roi with the modeling of Baskerville but with more color and fine serifs…'it represents in fact our first independent design,' said [Stanley] Morison, 'owing only its scale to continental models…the type possesses a harmony in serif formation as between roman and italic not possessed by the French type.'"

It's impossible to discuss the career of Richard Turner Austin, the wood-engraving son of Richard Austin, without surveying the work of the great Thomas Bewick and the world of eighteenth century wood-cut book illustrations. Johnston has, thankfully, devoted an introductory chapter to printed eighteenth century art to prime us on Austin Jr.

Because of Thomas Bewick's influence on wood-cut illustration, Richard Turner Austin is often presumed to have been a pupil or apprentice of his; Austin hewed closely to Bewick's style in his natural imagery. Indeed, many of Austin's unsigned blocks have been attributed to Bewick. and, too, much of Austin's early work copied stock blocks or the work of Bewick. For this reason, early historians neglected him.

But Austin Jr. made connections and was soon executing engravings after paintings by William Marshall Craig (c. 1765-1828). In 1819 he moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he worked consistently for the next ten years, his blocks, alas, unsigned. We know he did the work simply because, as Johnston points out, there were no alternative engravers who might have produced the scores of woodblocks that suddenly appeared in the "Athens of the North."

Yet by 1839, Richard Turner Austin's reputation and work were in critical decline. His wood-cuts, rarely signed, slowly fell from notice and he became a footnote in wood engraving history.

It's a direct line from Richard Austin Sr. to W.A. Dwiggins, the great twentieth century typeface designer. In 1939, Dwiggins modeled his Caledonia for linotype after Austin's Scotch Roman. Austin's Bell and Scotch Roman faces were major influences upon Matthew Carter's digital typefaces.

"Thus," as Johnston concludes, "the essence of Austin, diluted somewhat by modern technology, is still a part of our typographical experience."

With Transitional Faces Alastair Johnston has resurrected the lives of the father and son, and reevaluated their careers. The Austins now take their rightful place in the history of British printing and engraving.

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JOHNSTON, Alastair M. Transitional Faces. The Lives & Work of Richard Austin, Type-Cutter, & Richard Turner Austin, Wood-Engraver. Berkeley: Poltroon Press, 2013. First edition. Octavo. x, [2],, 387, [1] pp. Illustrated throughout. Burgundy cloth, gilt lettered. Illustrated endpapers. Dust jacket.

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A Nation Of Political Fools, 1713 Edition

by Stephen J. Gertz

 

"Although this Island of Folly cannot be found on the map, you will have no difficulty in guessing its real name and location by observing its mores and inhabitants" (Preface).

 In 1713,  A New Voyage to the Island of Fools was published, an  anti-Utopian satire of England's Tory government disguised as a voyage of exploration led by a Venetian nobleman. Pseudonymously written, it has been variously attributed to Jonathan Swift, Edmund Stacey, or Edward Ward. 

By 1713 the Tory party had dominated Parliament for the three preceding years and had made further gains in the current year's elections. Prime Minister Robert Harley, appointed after the downfall of the Whigs in 1710, attempted to pursue a moderate and non-controversial policy, but had  to contend with extremist Tories on the backbenches who were frustrated by the lack of support for their legislation against dissent. 

In five letters, the primativist narrator of ...the Island of Fools observes and reports on the mores of a nation in a sad state of affairs.

The inhabitants of Stultitia, the island of fools, were not "Stultitian [that is, foolish] by nature, but by practice," we are told. Foolishness is considered a moral failure and here refers to the vices that consumed the nation. "Slaves of sentiments, inclinations, interest, avarice, ambition, and desire for vengeance and of 'fantasies,' the Stultitians are suckers for adulation, flattery, false evidence, crime, rebellion, cheating, treason, rioting, prostitution and 'all manner of wickedness and folly'" ((Braga, The Rationalist Critique of Utopian Thinking, University of Bucharest Review, Vol. I. 2011, no. 1, p. 128).

Obsession with superstitions and collective illusions is the cause of human corruption, according to Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, and the Stultitians enjoy a surfeit of superstitions and collective psychoses. "In order to impinge them to riot or rebellion and to any action in general, it is enough to excite their fancy with a few new Notions or Projects that they will embrace without giving the least thought about their Truth, Reason or their Probability." Imaginary “epidemical pseudosciences”  lie at the core of the Stultitian mind-set.

"During the 17th-18th centuries, the pressure exercised by combined critiques due to religious ideology and later on by rationalist mentality rendered utopias suspect to the eyes of many authors. Christian counter-utopists, ranging from Joseph Hall to Jonathan Swift, accepted and adopted the dogmas related to the Lost Earthly Paradise and Man’s Cursed City, transforming the utopian space into hell on earth, into monstrous kingdoms that would rival Dante’s circles.

"In turn, humanist counter-utopists, skeptical regarding man’s capacity of establishing a perfect society, found other means of expressing their incredulity as well as sarcasms. They imagined madmen islands and kingdoms of fools, demonstrating, by reductio ab absurdum, that the application of the ideals of reason to social programs would only lead to nightmarish societies" (Ibid.).

Slings and arrows from satirists skewering the Tories did not change a thing. Their government remained popular with the electorate for its effort to end the War of the Spanish Succession and ratify the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. 

As for Jonathan Swift being the author of this pamphlet, not true. At this point, Swift, who, as a political pamphleteer simultaneously played tennis on both sides of the net, had permanently moved from the Whig to the Tory party, joining its inner circle: he was a one-issue voter and found Tory policy on the Irish clergy in agreement with his own sympathies as an Irishman. Edmund Stacey, author of The Parliament of Birds (1712), also published by John Morphew, is the likeliest suspect, though Edward Ward is given credit in a manuscript annotation.

Those on the Right or Left seeking ammo in this satire will find it; Right and Left politics as we understand it today did not exist at that time - ideology was fluid and not as sharply defined as now -  It was in the post-Revolution French Assembly that those political directions were established: monarchists sat on the right, republicans on the left side of the Assembly's aisle. Contemporary American Conservatives may plotz to learn that in the 18th and 19th centuries Liberal Conservatism was, far from an oxymoron, a recognized, respected and viable political viewpoint.

The enduring lesson here is that utopias look good on paper but are a disaster in practice, no matter the ideology. Heaven on earth is an impossibility, whether as an ideal society in which government plays no role at all in the lives of its citizens and taxes are non-existent, or an ideal where the government will help the vulnerable from birth to death if necessary at a price shared by all good citizens. It's always a fool's game. People tend to get in the way when a perfect world is pursued; your perfection is my purgatory. One man's sage is another man's fool.

The population of the Island of Fools is exploding yet it's a protean destination resort and can accommodate all who wish to vacation in folly and call it wisdom.

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[UTOPIAN SATIRE]. A New Voyage to the Island of Fools, Representing the Policy, Government, and Present State of the Stultitians. By a Noble Venetian. Inscib'd to the Right Honorable The Lord Fernando. Translated from the Italian. London: John Morphew, [September] 1713. Attributed to Swift (in Wrenn catalogue) but not in Teerink.  Octavo (188 x 118 mm). [2], 62 pp. Wrappers.

A second edition was issued in 1715.

Claeys, Utopias of the British Enlightenment, p. xxix. Letellier, The English Novel 1700-1740, p. 336.

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Image courtesy of Christie's, which is offering this title in its Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts sale November 15, 2013. With our thanks. 

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The Amazon Of The American Revolution

by Stephen J. Gertz

I "burst the tyrant bounds which held my sex in awe."

The Female Review: or, memoirs of an American young lady whose life and character are peculiarly distinguished - being a Continental soldier (for nearly three years) in the late American War, during which she performed the duties of every department into which she was called with punctual exactness, fidelity, and honor. By a citizen of Massachusetts. Portrait engraved by Graham. Dedham: Printed by Nathaniel and Benjamin Heaton, for the author, 1797.

"The subject of this memoir was born at Plympton, Mass. in 1760. Disguised as a man, she enlisted in the Revolutionary Army (Fourth Mass. Regiment) under the name Robert Shurtleff, and was wounded in a skirmish at Tarrytown, N.Y. She was also present at Yorktown" (From a Boston bookseller's catalog c. 1916).

"There are few cases known to history, of women serving as soldiers, without discovery of their sex, but all, save our heroine, were in foreign armies: she remains the only one known to our own army, until 1861-65, when according to Mrs. Livermore's My Story of the War [Hartford, Conn.: A.D. Worthington and Company. 1888], there were many in the Union Army, by one unnamed authority almost four hundred - though of course none were enlisted if their sex was known.

"It is admitted that there were two women in Washington's army who did soldier's work - Molly Pitcher of Monmouth, and Margaret Corbin of Fort Washington - But theirs was but a 'service of occasion,' and they were not regularly enlisted, as was Deborah Sampson" (Editor's note to 1916 edition).

Deborah Sampson (1760-1827) was born the daughter of impoverished farmers who claimed distinguished lineage from the early Pilgrims. Bound out as an indentured servant as a child, she became literate and taught school for six months after her indenture ended in 1779. She was five feet seven inches - tall for a girl of that era - and, according to observers, possessed a sturdy physique and was strong.

"A more headstrong and even reckless aspect to Sampson's nature appeared during the year 1782. Inspired by the events of the American Revolution, she dressed in men's clothing and enlisted in the Massachusetts militia forces under the assumed name of Timothy Thayer. Caught soon afterward and exposed as a woman masquerading in men's clothes, she was forced to yield the bounty money that was customarily paid to enlistees during that period of the revolutionary war. Unhindered by this initial setback, and rejecting a suitor who was favored by her mother, Sampson dressed in men's clothing once again and on 20 May 1782 enlisted in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, under the assumed name of Robert Shurtlieff (given variously in other sources as Shirtliff, Shurtleff, or Shirtlief). Mustered in Worcester, Massachusetts, on 23 May 1782, she marched southward to West Point, New York, as a member of the Continental army.

"Sampson saw considerable action during her year and a half in the American forces (20 May 1782-23 Oct. 1783). She took part in a battle against American Loyalists near Tarrytown, New York, where she was wounded in the thigh. Treated by a French surgeon in the American army, she extracted a musket ball from her thigh [with penknife and needle] rather than have her gender discovered. Around this same time she suffered the indignity of having the First Baptist Church of Middleborough, Massachusetts, sever its connections with her, citing her 'very loose and unchristian like' behavior" (American National Biography).

She continued her service in the Continental Army through war's end. For a brief period immediately afterward she continued to pose as a man, under the name Ephraim Sampson. But in 1784 she married Benjamin Gannett, settled down, and bore three children. Sampson suffered from the effects of her war wounds, and experienced financial difficulties.

She solicited assistance from her friend and neighbor in Canton, Massachusetts, Paul Revere, who wrote letters in her behalf, and may have provided direct financial support. Sampson was placed on the pension list of the United States in 1805 (retroactive to 1803) as the result of her petitions and the pleading of Revere.

Title page, 1916 reprint, Tarrytown, N.Y. : William Abbatt.

The diary she kept of her exploits as a soldier was lost when, returning to West Point, the boat she was in capsized. She told her wartime stories to Herman Mann, a printer, publisher, and editorial writer for the Dedham. Massachusetts Village Register.

"He interviewed her, and after much persuasion she agreed to let him write her story, with his promise that she would have the final say…but  there is reason to believe that Deborah never did get final review. Mann arranged for a list of subscribers to pay costs and promised Deborah a share of the profits, but it seems she did not receive much of these. He commissioned Joseph Stone of Framingham, Massachusetts, to paint Deborah's picture for a frontispiece for the book" (Bohrer, Glory, Passion, and Principle: The Story of Eight Remarkable Women at the Core of the American Revolution, p. 208).

Mann was loose with facts, added his own "moral reflections," and with his own vivid imagery and fanciful hyperbole related her experiences. As a result, the book is now considered to be more the product of his pen than Sampson's direct memories; his words, not hers. Mann even spelled her surname incorrectly: it is "Samson," no "p."

A more accurate recounting of Deborah Samson's exploits can be found in The Women of the American Revolution by Elizabeth F. Ellet (NY, Baker and Scribner, 1848). In the Preface, Ellet notes, "I have been told that the Female Review about this heroine was not in any measure reliable and that Deborah Samson repeatedly expressed her displeasure at the representation of herself which she did not at all recognize. The following facts respecting her I received from a lady who knew her personally and has often listened with thrilling interest to the animated description given by herself of her exploits and adventures."

In 1802 Deborah Samson began public speaking to theater audiences in New England and New York; she was the first professional woman lecturer in the United States. Billed as "The American Heroine" and wearing a blue and white uniform and armed with a musket, she performed military manual exercises while relating how she had 'burst the tyrant bounds which held my sex in awe.' The remainder of her life was uneventful.

"Sampson's wartime service was both sensational and remarkable. The activities of this American 'Joan of Arc' were in many ways more extraordinary than the heroics of persons such as Betsy Ross and Molly Pitcher. First, Sampson's military service was reasonably well documented; second, she took obvious pride and pleasure in both her service and in the manner of her disguise; and third, she attracted the attention of a revolutionary notable, Revere. Even in her own day, a Massachusetts newspaper marveled at the story of a 'lively, comely young nymph, nineteen years of age, dressed in man's apparel,' serving in the armies of the revolutionary cause" (Davis, "A 'Gallantress' Gets Her Due: The Earliest Published Notice of Deborah Sampson," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 91, no. 2 (1981): p. 322). "As was the case with many heroes and heroines of the Revolution, Deborah Sampson Gannett's name faded from the public memory by the mid-nineteenth century" (American National Biography).

Lost in obscurity Deborah Samson was rediscovered by the feminist movement during the late 1960s. In 1983 Deborah Samson was formally proclaimed "Official Heroine of the State of Massachusetts."

The first edition of The Female Review is quite rare; according to ABPC only two copies have come to auction within the last thirty-seven years. Only one copy of the 1866 reprint has seen the auction rooms during the same period. There are no copies of the 1797, 1866, or 1916 (with biographical corrections) editions currently being offered by anyone, anywhere in the world; the book is as scarce as can be.

But for those interested in reading this tale of the American Revolution's amazon in male drag the full text is available online.

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[SAMPSON, Deborah] [MANN, Herman]. The Female Review: or, memoirs of an American young lady whose life and character are peculiarly distinguished - being a Continental soldier (for nearly three years) in the late American War, during which she performed the duties of every department into which she was called with punctual exactness, fidelity, and honor. By a citizen of Massachusetts. Portrait engraved by Graham. Dedham: Printed by Nathaniel and Benjamin Heaton, for the author, 1797.

First edition. Twelvemo. xv, [16]-258, [8] pp. Frontispiece portrait by Stone, engraved by Graham.

Sabin 44314.

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Common Sense Costs $545,000 In 21st C. America

by Stephen J. Gertz

An extraordinary association copy of the scarce first edition, first issue, of Thomas Paine's iconic anti-monarchical pamphlet, Common Sense (Philadelphia: Robert Bell, 1776), sold at Sotheby's - New York on Tuesday June 4, 2013 during its Library of a Distinguished American Collector sale. Estimated to sell for $400,000 - $600,000, the hammer fell at $545,000, including buyer's premium.

The first page of the text bears a hastily written note by founding patriot Henry Wisner (1720-1790), a representative from Goshen, New York to the Continental Congress from 1775 to 1777.  He fully supported the Declaration of Independence although he was not present to vote on or sign the document. He served in various military and political capacities during the Revolution, supplied the Continental Army with gunpowder and weapons, and was instrumental in the laying of the two Great Chains across the Hudson River in 1776.

Addressed to John Mckesson, another founding patriot, a prominent figure in New York politics, and Secretary of the Committee of Safety for New York, Wisner's inscription reads: "Sir I have only to ask the favour of you to Read this pamphlet, consult Mr. Scott and such of the Committee of Safety as you think proper particularly Orange and Ulster [Wisner owned four powder mills in these New York counties] and let me know their and your opinion of the general spirit of it. I would have wrote a letter on the subject but the bearer is waiting. Henry Wisner at Philadelphia to John McKesson at New York."

Though undated, it is clear from the content of Wisner's note that this copy of pamphlet was sent to  McKesson months before the vote on the Declaration of Independence, perhaps even shortly after its publication.  McKesson duly received the pamphlet and signed his name on the title-page.

This is a famous copy, noted in Moncure Daniel Conway's chapter on Common Sense in his The Life of Thomas Paine: With a History of His Literary, Political, and Religious Career in America, France, and England (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons/The Knickerbocker Press, 1892). After citing Wisner's inscription Conway continues:

"In pursuance of this General Scott suggested a private meeting, and McKesson read the pamphlet aloud. New York, the last State to agree to separation, was alarmed by the pamphlet, and these leaders at first thought of answering it, but found themselves without the necessary arguments. Henry Wisner, however, required arguments rather than orders, and despite the instructions of his State gave New York the honor of having one name among those who, on July 4th, voted for independence" (p. 62).
 

"Of the paramount influence of Paine's Common Sense there can indeed be no question.  It reached Washington soon after tidings that Norfolk, Virginia, had been burned (Jan. 1st) by Lord Dunmore, as Falmouth (now Portland), Maine, had been, Oct. 17, 1775, by ships under Admiral Graves. The General wrote to Joseph Reed, from Cambridge, Jan. 31st: 'A few more of such flaming arguments as were exhibited at Falmouth and Norfolk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning contained in the pamphlet Common Sense, will not leave numbers at a loss to decide upon the propriety of separation" (ibid pp. 61-62). 

Common Sense is of the utmost rarity with only three other complete copies (with all prelim and end leaves, and no facsimiles) of the first edition, first issue, in decent condition selling at auction since 1945: one in 1967, another in 1975 with a defective title-page, and the Engelhard copy, which sold for $110,00 in 1996.

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[PAINE, Thomas]. Common Sense; addressed to the inhabitants of America, on the following interesting subjects. I. Of the origin and design of government in general, with concise remarks on the English Constitution. II. Of monarchy and hereditary succession. III. Thoughts on the present state of American affairs. IV. Of the present ability of America, with some miscellaneous reflections. Philadelphia: Printed, and sold by R. Bell in Third Street, 1776. Twelvemo. [4], 77, [1] pp.

Bristol  B4309. Gimbel CS-1. Church 1135. Shipton & Mooney 43120. Adams, T.R. American Pamphlets 222d. English Short Title Catalog,; W32284.
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These Vintage Shoes A Tiffany Lamp Unto Your Feet

by Stephen J. Gertz

Say hello to the Karl Friedrich Schoensiegel Schuhmuseum in der Mappe (The Shoe Museum in Portfolio), an extensive archive of original watercolors, drawings, autograph manuscripts, and scholarly materials related to shoes and their historical and cultural significance by Schoensiegel, the Munich-based, erudite connoisseur of vintage footwear from around the world.

Schoensiegel was the most distinguished collector of such material during the first half of the twentieth century.

The collection is being offered by Librairie Jean-Claude Vrain of Paris.

The collection was last seen at Bonham's on June 22, 2011; the hammer fell at $42,700 including buyer's premium.

 

The archive is comprised of 349 watercolors, here sampled, and is grouped into several geographic and historical sections: Asia, Africa, America, Australia, and Europe; in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth centuries. Each watercolor is vivid, bright and clean.

Schoensiegel visited museums throughout the world and made sketches of each interesting shoe he came across, later developing the sketches into fully-developed watercolor drawings. The Schuhmuseum in der Mappe was exhibited in Berlin in 1939.

The shoes, alas, are not rated for comfort or practicality, though it doesn't take a genius to understand that if you have to walk in what appear to be Viking boats with bows curved upward to Valhalla or tie the toes of your shoes to your knees, a casual passeggiata through the streets of Siena - or anywhere else - will be a challenge without a podiatrist or cobbler following in your wake.

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All images courtesy of Librairie Jean-Claude Vrain, with our thanks.
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Of Related Interest:

Vintage Shoe Art Walks The Runway At Bonham's.

Confessions Of A Vintage Shoe Fetishist.
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