Weird Books in the Cotsen Stacks!

the bronte castle alphabet

The Bronte Castle Alphabet. [Manteno, Ill.]: [Bronte Press], ©1981. (Cotsen 60766)

Today, we turn the blog over to the one and only Dr. Dana Sheridan,Cotsen’s scrumdiddlyumptious Education & Outreach Coordinator. This post is based on the program that she and Cotsen curatorial assistant, Ian Dooley, dreamed up for the Cotsen Critix based on collections materials. It’s cross-posted on the two Cotsen blogs for everyone’s enjoyment. Take it away, Dr. Dana and Ian!


The Cotsen Children’s Library is part of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University, but it also houses a whimsical gallery space and outreach programs that promote a love of literacy in children. Today, I’d love to share a collections education presentation we hosted for Cotsen Critix, our literary society for children ages 9-12.

cotsen critixThe session was entitled “Weird Books,” and our goal was to give kids a deeper appreciation for the unusual formats books can take. The books were selected and presented by Cotsen’s curatorial assistant, Ian Dooley – a frequent contributor to this blog (here, in fact, is his most recent post on Dickens).

The first book Ian presented was a tiny volume stashed inside a leather-hinged walnut shell. It’s The Bronte Castle Alphabet by Elmira Smith Wilkey (Bronte Press, 1981). The book is a mere 3 cm (1.18 inches) in height!

ian displays miniature bookIn contrast to the miniature book, Ian brought out an extremely oversized one – the aptly titled Let’s Count Big Book (World Book Co., c1953). He discussed how this book might have been used in a classroom, and why it needed to be so large.

let's count big book

(Cotsen 23000)

And what about books that have no pages? While the kids puzzled this question over, Ian brought out two horn books. The first was an Urdu horn book created in Lahore, Pakistan by Mubarak’s Sons Stationers. While undated, it’s most likely 20th century.

urdu horn book

[Urdu paddle hornbook]. Lahore, Pakistan: Mubarak’s Sons Stationers. (Cotsen 151623)

Here’s another, very different horn book. The illustrated blocks on the face of the horn book depict the 6 days of Creation. The illustrations appear to be printed from blocks used in the Coverdale Bible, which means that this object dates back to 1535. The kids were simply stunned by its age.

wooden horn book

[Wooden paddle hornbook. England? not before 1535]. (Cotsen 63377)

And then there are books made out of unusual materials. Such as this metal book, L’Anguria Lirica (Edizioni Futuriste di Poesia, [ca. 1933]). It’s a collection of poetry by Tullio D’Albisola, illustrated by Bruno Munari. The text and illustrations are color lithographed on tin.

l'anguria lirica

L’anguria lirica. Roma: Edizioni futuriste di Poesia, [1933?]. (Cotsen 26541)

Some books might appear normal, but they contain a secret. This 1877 edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Macmillan and Co.) has a hidden fore-edge painting. Fan the pages just so, and you are treated to John Tenniel’s illustration of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (Ian describes the fore-edge painting of this book in much more detail in this post).

alice fore-edge

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. London: Macmillan and Co., 1877. (Cotsen 30998)

And speaking of Alice, Ian thought the kids might recognize this famous artist’s interpretation of the story.

dali alice

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. New York: Maecenas Press: Random House, 1969. (Cotsen 26631)

The melting clock is the giveaway, really. This is a 1969 folio edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Maecenas Press, Random House) with illustrations by Salvador Dali. One very unusual thing about Dali’s Alice is the binding. It doesn’t have one! The chapters float freely apart and are stacked and stored inside a clam shell box when not in use.

Ian also brought out a lift-the-flap book and a book on wheels for the kids to examine. He remarked that while we might not find these formats unusual today, at one time, they would have been extremely novel to young readers. He added that early movable books and shape books like the ones below also helped push the boundaries of what can be traditionally considered a “book.”

early lift the flap book

Die Praxis des modernen Maschinenbaues: Modell-Atlas. Berlin: C. A. Weller, [191-?]. (Cotsen 28687)

a ride to fairyland


A Ride to Fairyland. London: Valentine & Sons, Ltd., [ca. 1915]. (Cotsen 11891)

The presentation’s grand finale was a book so lengthy, we needed to display it on a 6 foot table! It’s The City Park (Viking, 1981), a reproduction of an antique German toy book by Lothar Meggendorfer. The book unfolds into multiple arrangements that can display different scenes and perspectives in a 19th-century city park.

the city park fold out

The City Park. New York: Viking, 1981. (Cotsen Reference PZ7.M5143 Ci 1981)

the city park close upAll in all, “Weird Books” was a fantastic presentation full of surprises and revelations for the kids. Ian was kind enough to stay for 30 minutes after his presentation ended, answering questions about rare books, Cotsen’s collections, his job at the library, and inexplicably, robots. Thanks so much Ian!

To see more books from the Cotsen stacks, visit our virtual exhibitions!

Curator’s Choice: A .J. F. Freville’s French Puzzle-picture Alphabet

When people ask me to name my favorite book in the collection, there’s never have a good answer on the tip of the tongue.  But If a heartless desperado were holding my cat for ransom and the conditions for her release were to name to a favorite book, I might be able to do it as long as I stuck to alphabet books.

One of my favorite alphabets is L’alphabet personnife ou Les lettres rendues sensibles par les figures de 25 enfants in action et portant le nom des 25 lettres elles-memes  [The Personified Alphabet or the Letters Animated by the Figures of 25 Children in Action Bearing the Names of the Letters].  Cotsen just purchased the first edition of 1801, where it joins a copy of the 1809 third edition.

7307668tp151195tpIts author, the teacher Anne-Francois-Joachim de Freville, is a rather interesting person, even if he is not an immortal of French children’s literature.  Freville’s most famous works were two collections of anecdotes about extraordinary real children.  Vies des enfans celebres (1798) included the story of Irish youngster Volney Becker, who saved his father from a shark and was bitten in half while being lifted to safety on a boat.  Vies circulated in English translation under the title The Juvenile Plutarch between 1801 and 1820. The second collection, Beaux traits du jeune age (1813), closes with an ambitious proposal for a pantheon to be built to honor the memory of notable children.  He was arrested for Jacobin sympathies during the French Revolution but acquitted by the tribunal and kept his head. During the Directory, he continued to produce books that incorporated a range of educational games like the one below designed to turn children into active participants in their education.

freville jeu

A.-F.-J. Freville, Jeu d’alphabet, chiffres, et symbols.

L’Alphabet personnifie is perhaps the most ingenious and charming of them all and its design suggests that Freville was no ordinary teacher.  Like many enlightened educators who came after John Locke, Freville tried to invent ways to reduce the drudgery associated with learning to read.  Of course, he recommended using illustrated texts for that purpose, but on a different and more ambitious plan.  While it was true that children enjoyed illustrated alphabets of  animals in their primers, he observed,  they usually retained more information about the animals’ appearance and characteristics than they did of the letters of the alphabet, the real object of the exercise.

A better approach, Freville argued, was to anthropomorphize the letters, because children would take greater interest in the symbols if they resembled children the same age as themselves engaged in enjoyable activities (the different costumes and hats were also supposed to be a source of amusement).  The skillful use of alliteration increased the fun of learning, as well as an way of organizing the visual material so that it was more likely to impress associations on children’s minds.  Verbs are the heart of Freville’s method, which is somewhat unusual, as alphabets are more likely to focus on  substantives or nouns rather than actions.

Here is the letter “A,” impersonated by a boy watering [arrose].  When the children turn to the description of the plate, they will discover that it contains other objects beginning with the letter A: “Le petit Arlequin, arrose un Artichaut, fleuri dans son jardin” [Little Harlequin waters an artichoke blooming in his garden].   But if they look at the picture again, they will find even more objects whose names begin with “A” the description omits–“abeille” [bee] and “arraignee” [spider] to mention just two.  The engraver signed his name below the greenery in the lower right and I think it says “J. Le Roy.”

151195leaf1This being a French alphabet, the pleasures of the table must be shown.   Here is “B” for “boit” [drink] and “M” for “mange” [eat].

151195leaf2151195leaf13And the noblest of the fruits also makes an appearance in “V” for “vendange” [grape harvest].  More French fruits can be seen in a previous post on a new acquisition.

151195leaf22Plenty of ways to work off the food and drink are also illustrated, such as “H” for “hache” [chop] and “N” for “nage” [swim].

151195leaf8151195leaf14The boy is also shown practicing his handwriting in “E” for “ecrit” and playing in “J” for “joue.”151195leaf5151195leaf10The two editions are not identical.  A careful comparison established that the reading exercises had been revised, but the differences are to complicated to describe here. A more amusing change was made to the plate for the letter Z.  In the 1801 edition, “Z” pursued the zebra through the woods completely naked, whereas in the 3rd edition, he is draped in a diaphanous robe for the hunt, still with no shoes.

7307668leaf25151195leaf25

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps the revised plate is having a little fun at the expense of the merveilleuses, the fashion victims of their times, who fancied dresses so sheer that they left very little to the imagination….

1799-Cruikshank-Paris-ladies-full-winter-dress-caricature

An English satirist like Isaac Cruikshank was probably not the most objective observer of French fashion…