Books that Build Bodies: Gymnastics and Physical Culture in the 19th Century

Simon Biles at the 2016 Summer Olympics

Collecting illustrated books on sports has never been a priority at Cotsen, but the research collection contains a wealth of material about the history of physical culture since the late 18th century.  But I had no idea how many until I started researching this post, which describes a sample of books and prints from Europe and the Far East.  They reveal a great deal about what kinds of activities were considered beneficial for young people,  expectations for boys versus girls, attitudes towards display of individual bodies and collective identity, and the different conventions for representing athletic prowess.

J. C. F. Guts Muth laid out a system of purposeful physical activity in Gymnastic fuer die Jugend (1793) and it is widely credited as one of foundational works of modern European physical culture. (It was came to Cotsen with the en bloc purchase of Kurt Szfranski’s  remarkable children’s book collection in the late 1990s.)  Guts Muth, who was a teacher at the famous progressive school Christian Gotthilf Salzmann founded in Schneptenthal, is also considered to be one of the fathers of modern gymnastics, along with his fellow countryman Friedrich Ludwig Jahn.  Guts Muth categorized gymnastic exercises as either natural, or those designed to keep the body healthy and strong and the artificial, the non-utilitarian physical activities that evolved into modern artistic gymnastics.

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J. C. H. Guts Muth, Gymnastik für die Jugend. Schnepfental: Buchhandlung der Erziehungsanstalt, 1793 (Cotsen 40334). The frontispiece designed by Lips, shows naked adherents of Hygeia, or Health, circling around her statue.

Within a decade A. Amar Durivier and L. F. Jauffret,  an author of highly innovative children’s books during the revolutionary period, brought out a free French translation of Guts Muth.

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J. C. F. Guts Muth, La gymnastique de la jeunesse. Adapted by A. Amar Durivier et L. F. Jauffret. Paris: A. G. Debray, 1803 (Cotsen 703). The fully clothed French lads look frivolous compared to the serious, naked boys in the German original.

Three years before that, Joseph Johnson, the radical London publisher issued an English-language translation, which is is sometimes attributed to Wollstonecraft, who translated Salzmann’s Elements of Morality.  The Hygeia frontispiece has been replaced with a copy of folding plate that appears at the very end of the 1793 German edition.

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J. C. F. Guts Muth. Gymnastics for Youth. London: J. Johnson, 1800 (Cotsen 291). On the title page, the work is incorrectly attributed Salzmann, the headmaster of the school where Guts Muth taught and the error still persists. This copy came from the collection of the great children’s book collector Edgar Oppenheimer.

While Johnson’s engraver (thought by some to be William Blake) copied Lips’ engravings faithfully, the same cannot be said of the French engraver. Overall the quality of his work is much more schematic.  In certain plates, he combined the subjects of two of Lips’ plates into one new composition, reducing the number of figures and making little attempt to retain all the fine details.

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The plate facing p. 510 in the 1793 edition of Guts Muth (Cotsen 40334). Are the boys wearing some kind of padding in the seat of their pants to break any falls?

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Plate II from the adaptation of Guts Muth by Amar Durivier and L. F. Jauffret (Cotsen 703).

I was delighted to find a copy of the 1804 improved third edition of Guts Muth in the collection.  At 20 cm. high, it is 3.5 centimeters taller than the first edition.  All the plates by Lips are gone and twelve plates in a radically different style by Guts Muth himself inserted.  Where Lips artfully arranged groups of boys into compositions of boys, Guts Muths drew schematic diagrams of individual boys practicing specific exercises.

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Lips’ plate illustrating activities to improve balance facing p. 401 in the 1793 edition of Guts Muth (Cotsen 40334).

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The author’s illustration of boys climbing ropes facing page 312. J. C. F. Guts Muth, Gymnastick für die Jugend. Zweyte vermerhte Ausgabe. Schnepfenthal: der Buchhandlung der Erziehungsanstalt, 1804. (Cotsen 33248)

A few plates do illustrate multiple activities, such as this one on pommel horse exercises.

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Guts Muth’s illustration of moves on the pommel horse (with tail) facing page 229 in the 3rd edition of 1804 (Cotsen 33248).

As the century progressed, illustrators did not necessarily copy the master.   In the first plate below, complicated moves on the pommel horse are demonstrated by stick figures, while the second in the style of a slate drawing shows boys working on the bar and the rings.

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Peter Parley’s Book of Gymnastics. London: Darton and Clark, ca. 1840 (Cotsen 83636). This work is dedicated to the boys of Great Britain “the future sinews of the state.”

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Plate III by N. W. Taylor Root for School Amusements: or How to Make the School Interesting. New York: A. S. Barnes & Burr, 1860. (Cotsen 30641)

All this manly activity gives the impression that the early proponents of physical culture excluded girls from the pursuit of strong, healthy bodies, but this was not so!  But determining who was responsible for which manual addressing the needs of young ladies is a bibliographic puzzle, which someone else will have to solve.   From what I can tell, Phokion Friedrich Clias resided in England between 1822 and 1825 and through his inspired teaching established the Guts Muth system.  Both a Signor Voarino and Gustavus Hamilton, a self-styled “Professor of Gymnastics,” claimed to have  been employed by Clias, and in 1827 both of them published works on gymnastic exercise for ladies.  Voarino was accused of having lifted his material without significant alteration from Clias’ work on gymnastics for males.  The plates in the young ladies section of  Hamilton’s treatise look exactly like the ones in Calisthenie, ou Gymnastique des jeunes filles published 1828 in Paris, which may be a translation of a work by Clias originally written in German.   It’s enough to make your head spin, so now let’s see what these authors thought girls were capable of.

The frontispiece of Calisthenie ou Gymnastique des jeunes filles shows girls performing a popular activity that went by the name of flying or giant steps.  It was also recommended for boys and would have provided quite an upper body workout.  The second plate shows wand exercises, which if less strenuous that running around the pole, would have helped to keep shoulders flexible and limber.  The third plate shows a young lady taking a little hop to mount the horizontal bar.

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“Pas volant ou l’enjambee du geants” from Calisthenie ou Gymnastique des jeunes filles. Paris: Audot, 1828. (Cotsen 33230)

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Plate XXXVII from Gustavus Hamilton, The Elements of Gymnastics for Boys and of Calisthenics for Young Ladies. New edition. London: A. K. Newman and Co., 1839 (Cotsen 15347). The Science and Art Department of the Educational Library deaccessioned this copy at some point.

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Plate XXXIX in Gustavus Hamilton’s The Elements of Gymnastics (Cotsen 15347).

Such was the Interest in early nineteenth-century German physical culture that it eventually emerged in Meiji Japan.  The beautiful Japanese print below documents the introduction of all kinds of competitive games and group sports from the West.  In the late nineteenth century, lawn tennis, croquet, cricket, field athletics, football, and baseball, were all integrated into the Japanese school curriculum.  Notice that the boys are working out in a mixture of traditional Japanese and modern European garments.  The ones in the first two rows are using various sorts of equipment, while the ones in the back seem to be stretching or sprinting.

Kinitoshi Baiju, Gakko taiso undo no zu [Illustrated picture of school gymnastic exercises]. Illustrated by Kiyoshuke Yamamura. Tokyo: Tsutsumi Kinchibei, 1886 (Cotsen 101304). This print consists of three panels, each 36 x 25 cm.

To bring this very selective survey full circle, here is a 1977 picture book, Children Love Sports, which appeared in 1977 when China was emerging from the long shadow of the Cultural Revolution (thank you Minjie!). This picture book’s celebration of Chinese  boys and girls from different ethnic minorities competing to win perfectly reflects the modern ideal of the power of sports to unify and strengthen minds and bodies.

Its full-color illustrations (reproduced here from the more handsomely produced English translation for overseas readers) show children of different Chinese ethnic minority groups participating in all kinds of sports–some mainstays of international athletic competition, such as running, high jump, and basketball, others closely associated with particular cultures, such as wrestling with Inner Mongolia or shooting on horseback with Tibet.  Children in their gorgeous traditional costumes mingle in the spirit of friendly competition, reflecting pride in a unified, diverse Chinese citizenry, while also reminding us of the Games’ opening spectacular.  Another remarkable thing about the book is that girls are portrayed prominently as active participants. In a foot and a horse race, a slender Kam (侗族) girl and a daring Kazakh girl rider have both sprinted ahead of boy competitors.


If this post doesn’t inspire you to get out and move, nothing will.  When you get back from the gym, take a look at Cotsen’s virtual exhibition about swimming 

Notes from a Summer Traveler in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi

Part II: Children’s Books and Reading: A Photo Album

Part II of my travel notes annotates photos of my delightful encounters with children’s materials, reading, and entertainment outside the USA. I stayed in Shanghai for several weeks between two children’s literature symposiums that I attended in June and July. (The subtropical city oscillated between relentless, all-day rains and sweltering blaze. Unless part of your goal is to lose weight by taking long walks in what feels like free sauna offered by nature, I do not recommend these months as the best time for visiting Shanghai.) Thanks to the itinerary that was kindly arranged for me by the University of Leeds, I had the unexpected luck of spending a few eye-opening hours at Abu Dhabi International Airport during my connecting flight from Shanghai to Britain.

Shanghai, China

The Bund, Shanghai

A night view from the Bund, Shanghai (June 2016).

Shanghai is historically the center of the publishing industry in China. Except for the disruption of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Shanghai dominated the publishing of Chinese comic books and books for youth during the twentieth century.

Shanghai Library

Shanghai Library, Confucius

View from the lobby of the Shanghai Library through large windows into a peaceful back garden, where a statue of Confucius stands as a symbol of great learning.

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An exhibition on the impact of the earliest Disney films on popular culture in Shanghai. Photo taken at the Shanghai Library, June 13, 2016.

The first Disney theme park in mainland China was opened in Shanghai on June 16, 2016, causing plenty of sensation among the locals. Drawing on its rich Republic of China collection, the Shanghai Library offered a timely exhibition on the history of how Disney animated films swept over Shanghai as early as the 1930s and became an integrated part of Chinese popular culture.

Shanghai Book City

Shanghai Book City

Shanghai Book CityShanghai Book City, as its boastful name promises, is the largest bookstore in Shanghai and takes up seven massive floors. The sixth floor is dedicated to children’s materials, offering books, toys, as well as game areas, programming space, and a newly opened fee-based subscription library of picture books. The most prominent format on display is large, colorful picture books, spreading over half of the entire floor. Text-oriented books for older readers and teens are tucked away on the side. The layout has reversed what it was like a decade ago, reflecting major growth in the translation, publishing, and consumption of picture books for preschoolers in China since 2000. Chinese children’s books used to target young independent readers mainly. Should a parent bring a toddler to the store ten years ago, they would have had to choose from only a couple rows of picture books shelved in a tight corner.

The Former Residence of Comic Artist Zhang Leping

Zhang Leping, Sanmao

Right: The Wanderings of Sanmao the Vagrant (三毛流浪记) by Zhang Leping. Shanghai: Min li shu dian, 1950. (Cotsen 91127876 Vol. 4)

Numerous Chinese authors and artists who wrote and illustrated children’s literature were based in Shanghai. Among them was Zhang Leping (1910-1992), arguably the most successful Chinese comic artist during the twentieth century. His former residence has been made into a modest museum free to the public. Adorning the yard of his house is a sculpture of Sanmao, the three-haired protagonist of Zhang’s nearly wordless comics series. The sculpture is based on a panel from The Wanderings of Sanmao the Vagrant, in which the orphaned and homeless boy is constantly in search for food, clothing, and shelter while trying to survive in a postwar Shanghai. He unknowingly joins a gang of thieves and receives an over-sized gown to cover his naked body. In the most economical visual language of comics, Zhang exaggerates the length of time it takes a scrawny Sanmao to finish buttoning the large garment. The boy’s visible awkwardness in putting on the gang member’s clothing, as the story unfolds, foreshadows how his kindness and empathy would make him an “incorrigible” misfit in the criminal group.

Zhang LepingThis is the study where the late comic artist Zhang Leping, dubbed “Father of Sanmao,” worked and received visitors after 1950. Interestingly, the two most important works of Zhang, Sanmao Joins the Army (三毛从军记, 1946) and The Wanderings of Sanmao the Vagrant (1947) were both created before he moved into this seemingly spacious and comfortable house. Not that the house was at fault, but perhaps more of an indication that even an enviable material condition for creative work could not mitigate the post-1949 constraints on intellectual and artistic freedom in China.

If you are as hapless a tourist as I was and will visit the museum in the unwelcoming hot season, I have a gentle reminder for you: arm yourself with mosquito repellent before entering the vicinity. The blood-suckers outside Zhang’s residence were so ferocious that the security guard had a free bottle of spray ready for visitors. The staff warmly told me to help myself with the chemical, because this was “on taxpayers.” The experience increased my admiration for Zhang Leping even more, as I imagined the artist might have had to endure the same attacks every long summer.

Folk Art

A Chinese shadow theatre at the Qibao Shadow Play Art Gallery, Shanghai. (photo courtesy of Dr. Yeojoo Lim)

A Chinese shadow theatre at the Qibao Shadow Play Art Gallery, Shanghai. (photo courtesy of Dr. Yeojoo Lim)

A small shadow play museum is located in Qibao Old Town, a tourist attraction in a suburban district of Shanghai. A spider web of metro system that has been continuously expanded over the past two decades makes the old town, once a remote part of Shanghai, easy to reach. The shadow play museum displays shadow figures and related artworks that were an important part of folk life in rural Qibao between the late Qing dynasty and the Republic of China. (Princeton University has held an exhibition of Chinese shadow figures and maintains a database of digitized shadow figures images.)

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Shadow figure Monkey King from Journey to the West, exhibited at the Qibao Shadow Play Art Gallery.

dough figurine Monkey KingI could not resist another opportunity to document the prevalence of Monkey King in Chinese folk culture. This was an edible dough figurine of Monkey, freshly kneaded, shaped, and sold at a shop in Qibao. The dough should taste sweet, but I would not dream of gobbling up the trickster. He is famous for turning into a tiny mischievous bug and making you regret and consent to whatever unpleasant demand he shouts out gleefully from inside your belly–to surrender your magic heirloom fire-extinguishing fan, or to give him the password of your smart phone, for example.

Kids Still Read Today

young readers in a Shanghai district public libraryYes, they do. I spied on them in the children’s reading room of a district public library in Shanghai on a hot, hypnotizing Saturday afternoon in June. Children and teens read, took notes, did homework, and some of them also couldn’t stop checking their smart phones. The plastic chairs were hard; the reading tables were plain; and the seating was a bit crowded. A quiet afternoon in the cool public library, however, was still a pleasant escape for those lucky children who happened to live close by. Many Chinese families, even if they own air-conditioning at home, reserve the machine for the most unbearable heat waves. Free air-conditioning alone makes a trip to the public library worthwhile.

Children’s clay art displayed in the Minhang District Library, Shanghai.

young readers in the subway, ShanghaiThese two young school girls, engrossed in children’s books on paper in the subway, were in the minority among an army of adult passengers who were equally engrossed in (or possessed by) their smart phones.

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Abu Dhabi was the first city where I stopped (at its international airport anyway) during my 30-hour, door-to-door journey from Shanghai, China to the University of Leeds campus. I didn’t expect to walk off the jet bridge into a library, newly opened in April 2016.

“Enjoy your favourite book at Abu Dhabi Airport Library.”

reading area, Abu Dhabi International Airport“This area is for reading only.”–A signage erected in the prime seating area of the airport, granting readers the privilege of enjoying comfortable chairs, shelves of books, and natural light.

board book in ArabicLet’s see what books we have got here. A board book features a Muslim woman on the page, and the Arabic text goes, “Mama said, ‘Tomorrow will be Eid.'”*

picture book in ArabicThe picture book might have been a translated work. (Forgive me for being illiterate in Arabic. Please share in the comment box what you know about the two books above.)

Read and RiseArabic-English bilingual slogan “Read and Rise” on a column. In the Arabic parallel text, “naqraʼ li-nartaqī,” there is alliteration at the beginning of each verb, and the roots of the verbs have similar sounds: qaraʼa and raqiya. Kudos to whoever designed the slogan for achieving alliteration in two distinct languages simultaneously. The literal meaning of the Arabic passage is “let’s read so that we may rise.”

quote from Sheikh ZayedA quote that puts great value in education, from the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who was the driving forces behind the formation of the United Arab Emirates and its first president, 1971-2004.

quote of Sheikh ZayedAnother quote of Sheikh Zayed, “The education of our people as a goal in itself is a great wealth in which we take pride, for knowledge is the wealth on which we are building our future.”

magic lampDue to a mistake I will not relate here, I failed to bring back a genie when the golden opportunity presented itself.

camelsI was also unable to bring back any of these desert friends, cheerful or aloof, as a reminder of my summer travel. Regardless, next time I see a chance to rate libraries, I will not forget to vote Abu Dhabi as the most hospitable airport library.

*Acknowledgment

My heartfelt thanks to Dr. Denise L. Soufi, a Middle Eastern expert, for graciously deciphering and explaining the Arabic text for me in preparation for this photo essay. All errors are mine.