The text below is adapted from Byrd Pinkerton’s WPRB blog posting and links to the audio interviews that Byrd conducted with Andrea Immel, Cotsen Curator, in June and July, 2013, with additional photographs taken by Byrd of the items discussed. (Byrd Pinkerton ’15 is a German major who works for WPRB, the Princeton student-run radio station.) A Closer Look at Cotsen’s Collection: Audio Interviews with Cotsen’s Curator by Byrd Pinkerton

It’s easy to experience the Cotsen Gallery, with its giant indoor tree and little cottage. But behind the gallery’s glass wall, there are thousands of books–some tiny, some massive, some gilt or marbled. That’s just a fraction of the collection, since more books (and dolls and lantern slides and board games and toy theaters…) are hiding out elsewhere in the vaults of Firestone.

And though they can’t be climbed on or played with in quite the same way as the Gallery furniture is, these treasures are accessible too. This summer, Princeton student and Cotsen staffer Byrd Pinkerton began a series of radio stories on different objects from the Cotsen Collection, which are now posted on Princeton’s WPRB Station blog.

In each piece, she talks to Cotsen Curator, Andrea Immel about an item, its history, what we do or don’t know about it, and why it might be interesting to researchers. The audio is complemented with text and photographs, but listeners can also page the items themselves and enjoy them in the reading room.

Paper People in the Cotsen Library

Paper dolls at a war conference
(“The Paper People”)

Taken literally, the phrase ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ usually applies to your average book in a bookstore. It also applies, however, to rare books.

When I first decided to highlight pieces of Cotsen Library’s rare book collection for this series, I was eager to talk about some of the showier items the collection has to offer-Queen Elizabeth’s Latin grammar book, the Beatrix Potter original letters or elegant Spanish toy theaters from the 1930s.

Instead, Andrea and I decided to begin with The Paper People an unassuming text, printed and cloth-bound in the 1800s, and see what the information that can be gleaned from the contents, the cover, the catalogue of advertisements, and even the end-papers.

Hear the audio interview, with illustrations, on WPRB blog site.

Jeu de Cavagnole

French game “Jeu de Cavagnole” inside its box. [Paris : Aufrère, between 1770 and 1780] (Cotsen)

I’m not a fan of bingo. I would go so far as to say that I strongly dislike it. But even I was delighted to play with this 18th century pre-cursor to the game, the French Jeu de Cavagnole.

During our interview, Andrea and I walked through the complicated apparatus of the game, all kinds of ivory spindles, cages and beads with scrolls…

One of the biggest differences between this game and your average bingo experience is the game board. Jeu de Cavagnole decorations have nothing to do with the gameplay at all. They’re just conversation pieces, designed to move the experience beyond simple gambling.

Hear the audio interview, with illustrations, on WPRB blog site.

A is for Alphabet

Panorama cylinder strip. Panorama of the Letters of the Alphabet. [England?: between 1820]. (Cotsen 26983)

Once we figure out that LMNO isn’t all one letter and S, C and K stop seeming quite so redundant and confusing, we generally don’t spent a lot of time learning the alphabet.

Still, whether we’re thinking about it or not, there’s a new line of alphabet teaching tools for every generation of kids: alphabet puzzles, alphabet blocks, songs and poems and books with associative word pictures.

This week, my conversation with Andrea was all about alphabets throughout the ages. While we’re probably not going to learn a whole about the alphabet itself from these games and books, it turns out that they can tell us a lot about us: the most common parts of our day-to-day, the moral values we want to pass down to our children, even our sense of humor.

Hear the audio interview, with illustrations, on WPRB blog site.

The disreputable printer Jemmy Pitts was highlighted in the post for Twelfth Night 2013, but he was not the only no-good early nineteenth-century job printer in the seedy Seven Dials district near Covent Garden in London’s West End. Seven Dials marked the convergence of Little and Great White Lyon streets (now Mercer), Little and Great Earl (now Earlham), Little and Great St. Andrews (now Monmouth), and Queen (now Shorts Garden).

Seven Dials was also home to Jemmy Catnach (1791-1841), who was vilified quite correctly for catering to the reading public’s insatiable appetite for rude ballads, accounts of violent crimes, sensational divorce cases, etc. He was the subject of the chapter “Catnachery, Chapbooks & Children’s Books” in Percy Muir’s Victorian Illustrated Books (1971). Muir, who knew how to turn a phrase, damned Catnach for having printed his stuff with “mean and old typefaces” and adorning them with blocks “worn to a degree of indecipherability that hid their almost complete irrelevance to the text they were supposed to illustrate.” Never one to mince words was Muir.

In Cotsen there’s a stout volume consisting of thirty-odd pamphlets, many issued by Catnach, which make a liar out of Muir. Bound in are several titles in the so-called Catnach “series” of Large Books. Here is a typical list, from the rear cover for Little Tom Tucker, [ca. 1835?].

Little Tom Tucker. London: J. Catnach, [between 1813 and 1838]. (Cotsen 5038)

The advertisement gives no clues as to the production values of the pamphlets. If Muir is to be believed, then it should be taken for granted that a job printer like Catnach always produces a shabby product with the tell-tale signs of recycled cast-off type and blocks from other prints.

Given Catnach’s reputation for slipshod design, these delightfully exuberant covers on the nursery favorites in the Large Books come as a quite a surprise, with not a broken font to be found.

Mother Goose and the Golden Egg. London: J. Catnach, [ca. 1825]. (Cotsen 8793)

The style of the typefaces and wood-engraved blocks suggest the Large Books must have been issued relatively late in Catnach’s long career.

A Visit to the Zoological Gardens. London: J. Catnach, [ca. 1825]. (Cotsen 5035)

Dame Trot and Her Comical Cat. London: J. Catnach, [ca. 1825]. (Cotsen 5035)

But once a rogue, always a rogue. The rear cover of another Large Book in the Cotsen volume is illustrated with a block John Bewick made for the frontispiece of Richard Johnson’s False Alarms (London: E. Newbery, ca. 1787). And where did old Jemmy come by the block? Was it purchased from John Harris, Elizabeth Newbery’s successor, or his son, John junior?

A fine puzzle for someone interested in learning more about the largely neglected children’s books published early in Victoria’s reign…

Cotsen Children’s Library

Princeton University

Category Archives: 19th century

A Closer Look at Cotsen’s Collection: Audio Interviews with Curator Andrea Immel by Byrd Pinkerton

Paper People in the Cotsen Library

Jeu de Cavagnole

A is for Alphabet

James Catnach’s Fancy Chapbooks in the Series of Large Books