Category Archives: Illustrated Books

“Shakespeare Fresh Chiseled”: Adapting Classics for Children

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Pictorial Title Page of Shakespere Fresh Chiselled on Stone. Dean & Son, 1859. (Cotsen 17106)

How do you get children interested in the “classics” — landmark publications that been read by millions of readers, withstood the test of time, and become so well-known that we instantly recognize characters, plots, and quotations?  Who hasn’t heard of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, and who hasn’t heard phrases such as “To be, or not to be…” or “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”?   We don’t have to know the title of the work or the context of a quotation to have a flash of recognition. But this awareness doesn’t happen by magic; it’s learned in various ways.

The question of how to interest young readers in literary landmarks is not a new question — it’s one that that teachers, librarians, and publishers have thought about for centuries.  Publishers have come up with various approaches: graphic novelizations, amusing parodies, greatly abridged versions, books with simplified language (sometimes rendered entirely in words of one syllable), and highly-illustrated adaptations — often brightly colored — where illustration can be more prominent than text.

Shakespere [sic] Fresh Chiseled on Stone, Dean and Son’s 1859 slim publication with just fourteen leaves, is an unusual — and I think unusually clever — variation on the theme of print spin-offs of Shakespeare’s plays. The tone is perfectly set by J. V. Barret’s illustrated title page and facing frontispiece.

Here is a change indeed!  Title page and facing frontispiece.

He depicts a bill-poster who is pasting a broadside bill to a wooden fence, the bill displaying the books’ title and imprint.  He is almost, but not quite done with his work, and a small part of the bill he’s busy papering over is still visible, with the word “read,” this visually rendering the title as Read Shakespere… Or perhaps it’s an injunction: “Read Shakespeare!”?  (We don’t see many people posting bills on wooden fences these days, or many posted advertising bills at all, but they were a staple of cheap nineteenth-century advertising, and something that a reader at the time would instantly recognize as familiar.)  Take a look at some of the other bills on the fence: “No more pills…” “Corns…” — the sort of patent medicine touting that was once prevalent everywhere, including in advertisements at the back of early children’s books.  (John Newbery, the trailblazing children’s book publisher, also sold patent medicines; so the connection between children’s books and patent medicine isn’t as odd as it may seem to us now. These ads were presumably targeted at book-buying adults.)

Here is a change indeed!

Barret’s frontispiece encapsulates the book’s the spirit of lighthearted parody.  A somewhat disheveled sculptor — presumably Barret’s surrogate for himself — is shown chiseling away on a statue of Shakespeare (setting him in stone, you might say) and rendering him as a nineteenth-century gent — and a portly one at that!  The sculptor is shown in color but the unfinished stature isn’t.  Take a look at where Shakespeare hand is.  On the sculptor’s head!  Is the statue coming to life?  Barret’s caption sums up what follows in the book too: “Here is a change indeed”!    (The actual line, from Othello, is spoken by Desdemona, commenting on the change in Othello from affectionate husband to jealous accuser.)

Throughout this little book, Barret continues this pattern of juxtaposing “serious” quotations from Shakespeare’s plays with his own comically-rendered scenes, which refract the lines in a completely different way, and perhaps suggest the ambiguity of language and the malleability of meaning.  Context can change anything.

A line from Romeo & Juliet — “What say you to my suit” — provides a perfect caption for an illustration of a preening dandy in his new suit of clothes as he fishes for compliments.  No matter that the original “suit” was a lover’s marriage suit (made to Juliet’s father by Paris, Romeo’s competition).

What say you to my suit?

Fighting words uttered by one of Juliet’s kinsmen — “A dog of the house of Montague moves me” — take on a totally different meaning when set underneath a picture of young swain being chased away from the “Montague House for Young Ladies” by a yapping lapdog, while the presumed object of his affections peers out from the formidable gate, left ajar.

A dog of the house of Montague moves me!

The dynamic between text and illustration provides some gentle social commentary in other cases.  Ophelia’s line about Hamlet’s strange behavior towards her — “He took me by the wrist and held me hard… and falls to such perusal of my face” — becomes the caption for a scowling eyed beadle accosting a poor waif.  Text and illustration fit perfectly.

He took me by the wrist and held me hard…

Perhaps my favorite illustration is one captioned by a line from Julius Caesar referring to Caesar’s staged public refusal of a king’s crown: “Why, there was a crown offered him : and being offered him, he put it by with the back of his hand, thus.”  A haughty coachman is showing the back of his hand to a crown offered by a mother with a scad of luggage and three children in tow. The play on words is s bit lost on us now, but children at the time would certainly have known meaning of the term — and its old currency value.

A crown offered him … he put it by with the back of his hand.

The scenes are amusing in and of themselves, much in the vein of English satire of the time.  But appreciation of the full irony created by the juxtaposition of illustrations and quotes requires quite a familiarity with Shakespeare’s plays.  (And many of these quotes used are not the most famous of lines either!)  Would children have actually had such a familiarity in the nineteenth century?  In other words, is this book really a “children’s book”?  It’s hard to know for certain.  But Dean was a prolific London publisher of illustrated children’s books in this era.  And Shakespeare was a foundation of both schooling and popular entertainment then in a way it can be hard for us to appreciate now.  Lines were memorized and repeated in school classes. Street theater and cheap chapbook adaptation abounded.  References to the plays and quotations from them abounded not only in “literature” but also in popular reading and commentary as well. And perhaps the idea was to use the brightly-colored, topical illustrations as a means of interesting young readers in Shakespeare’s plays?  Or perhaps the background context might have been provided by a parent, in much the same way that we typically explain the text in picture books to children who are just becoming interested in books.  Children look, they get interested, and they ask questions…  That’s certainly an important part of the key role that illustrated children’s books have traditionally played in presenting “the classics” and stories of all kind.

Bookseller’s ticket (Stassin & Xavier, Paris) on front pastedown of Cotsen’s copy of Shakespere Fresh Chiselled

The illustrations in this little book all seem distinctively “English” in the people and activities presented, as well as in the style of illustration. That’s one of the aspects that holds such interest for us now — they present a window onto nineteenth-century English town life.  But Cotsen’s book has a copy-specific aspect that gave me some pause in thinking about this: a bookseller’s ticket on the front pastedown for a Paris bookseller: Stassin & Xavier.

Why was a book featuring such  “English” illustrations for sale in Paris?  Perhaps a gently satiric picture of English life was seen as potentially appealing to a French audience?  (“Look at those funny Englishmen and women!”)  Some quick online searching for books connected with Stassin & Xavier suggested another reason why they might have stocked a book like Shakespere Fresh Chiselled.  The firm sold or published a number of English language books, including an 1842 edition of Macbeth (a copy of which lives in the Folger Library now).  As their bookseller’s ticket specifies, Stassin & Xavier featured books in a variety of languages, including English, as many “international” bookstores in Europe still do today.   A number of these books appear to have been English-language international travel guides or traveler’s phrase books that Stassin & Xavier co-published with English publishers.  So a book like Shakespere Fresh Chiselled might have been a natural for such an international-language bookstore, a book that would appeal to international travelers looking for light reading for their children (or themselves, while traveling on a bouncing carriage or train) and a book that visually showcased English life to both Europeans interested in England and nostalgic English travelers wanting a slice of home while on the Continent.  As so often is the case with old books, a small copy-specific aspect like a bookseller’s ticket can suggest additional facets to the story a book can tell us, which can, in turn, guide us towards finding out more about the circulation and readership of books.

New Nation, New Alphabet: Azerbaijani Children’s Books in the 1990’s

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pages [27-28]. Älifba. Bakı : “Maarif” Näşriyyatı, 1992. (Cotsen 7654952)

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Azerbaijan (once again) declared itself an independent country.1 The image featured above is from a book published just a year later: Älifba (Baku: “Maarif” Näşriyyatı, 1992). It appropriately reflects both the diversity and optimism of the new nation: vignettes of friendly and modern workers separate the National Museum of Azerbaijani Literature in the bustling capital of Baku on the left from a vibrant vista of forest, farmland, and the looming Caucasus Mountains on the right. But Azerbaijani children’s books published during the new nation’s early years reveal more than national characteristics and pride. In their pictures and stories, and even in the characters of the words themselves, they serve to showcase a national identity in transition.

Perhaps the most significant way that Azerbaijani children’s literature contributed to this identity shaping project is by being the very vehicle which would deliver a new alphabet to millions of Azerbaijani children. Just four days after declaring independence on December 21st, 1991, the Azerbaijani Parliament voted to adopt a Latin script for the Azerbaijani language, abandoning the Cyrillic script which had been in use for the last fifty two years. The impetus for this far reaching and momentous change has deeper roots in a history of script changes imposed by Soviet authorities in the first half of the 20th century. Put succinctly by Lynley Hatcher:

After the Soviet Union incorporated Azerbaijan as a republic in 1920, the Soviets initiated a script shift from Arabic to Latin to divide the nation from Iran and its Muslim roots. A decade later, the Soviets forced another shift from the Latin to the Cyrillic script to alienate Azerbaijan and the Turkic republics from Turkey and from each other. Today, after independence in 1991, the pendulum has swung back in favor of the Latin script (Hatcher, p.106).

The First Turcological Congress convened in Baku in 1926 (with representatives from both the new Turkic Soviet Socialist Republics and Turkey).2 Representatives overwhelmingly agreed to adopt modified Latin scripts for Turkic languages, seeking increased literacy and a separation from the associations of Arabic script with the Muslim religion (thus satisfying Soviet authorities). But in 1939, Joseph Stalin changed the policy again. Turkic languages were Cyrillicized in order to distance Soviet Turkic people from a pan-Turkish identity and facilitate the acquisition of the Russian language (and culture).3 But after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan (and other newly independent Turkic nations) finally had the freedom to ask: what kind of identity do we want our language to represent? Azerbaijan (and Turkmenistan) chose the arduous but self determined path of Latinisation, firmly associated with the republic of Turkey. Yet Azerbaijan also utilized this script shift as an opportunity to demonstrate its unique national identity.

Älifba, full title: Älifba: 1 sinif üçün därslik (Alphabet: a textbook for the first year), was one of the first Azerbaijani language instruction course books teaching the post-independence adoption of Latin script for the Azerbaijani language (Sepehri, p.1). It’s front wrapper alone reveals one of the most unique aspects of the Azerbaijani language and its script:

Front wrapper. (Cotsen 7654952)

The first character in the title might be totally unfamiliar to many English speaking readers: “ə”. Transliterated above as Älifba (with an Ä “A-umlaut”), this initial character resembles an inverted “e”. According to IPA standards this character denotes a “schwa” (the mid central vowel sound that is usually unstressed and toneless: think the “a” in “about” or the “u” in “supply”). But in Azerbaijani, the character represents a vowel sound closer to the “a” in “cat” or the “ae” in “archaeology”. Historically this sound was represented in English with the “ash” character (æ), little used today but to purposely invoke archaism (often liturgical).4 Perhaps even more confusingly (sorry), the toneless “schwa” sound is the most common vowel sound in English (though we do not use the “ə” character to represent it), while the ash (æ) vowel sound represented by “ə” is the most common vowel sound in Azerbaijani!

In Azerbaijan, this character has a history of continued use through the script changes of the 20th century demonstrating a nationally unifying representation of Azerbaijani identity. During the most current script change in 1991, Ä “A-umlaut” was briefly considered because it more closely aligns with Turkish letter encoding and can be found in most character sets. But putting two dots above your most commonly occurring vowel proved cumbersome for the written language (as opposed to its typed version). So one year later “ə” was reintroduced. Essentially then, the character “ə” has been used in each of the three script changes initiated since the replacement of Arabic script: initially with the first Latin script introduced in 1926, carried through Cyrillization from 1938-1991, and maintained as a distinct character differentiating the Azerbaijani alphabet from “standard” Turkish. Along with the characters “q” and “x”, “ə” represents a phoneme in Azerbaijani that distinguish the alphabet and language from the “standard” Turkish alphabet. This gives the alphabet itself a uniquely Azerbaijani character (the character ğ is pronounced differently for Azerbaijani and Turkish).

Yet Cyrillic script has left a lasting mark on Azerbaijan. Considering that this script was in use for most of the 20th century, Cyrillic letters dominate not only much of the country’s literature but much of its written infrastructure as well. Even after the official shift to Latin script in 1991, children’s book publishers like Gänclik (Ҝәнҹлик) were still producing Cyrillic script children’s books the following year:

Page [14], a “gəmi” (ship) from Işılda-böcak. Bakı: Gänclik, 1992. (Cotsen 7494222)

Though some children’s book publishers seemed initially reluctant to begin the change to Latin script, Azerbaijani children’s books would be ultimately instrumental for facilitating this script shift. Two years after the publication of Işılda-böcak, Gänclik was producing titles like Gülçiçäk (based on a Tatar folk tale) in Latin script:

front wrapper, Gülçiçäk: Tatar xalq nağılları. Bakı: Gänclik, 1994. (Cotsen 7658006)

In this same publication Gänclik didactically contributed to the transition towards Latin script by providing a transliteration table for its young readers:

back wrapper. (Cotsen 7658006)

Through the 1990’s and early 2000’s Cyrillic script was still in use for newspapers, shops, and restaurants. Only in 2001 did then president Heydar Aliyev declare “a mandatory shift from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet” (Hatcher, p.113). The transition has progressed slowly. The two scripts have effectively existed side by side and as a result many Azerbaijanis are literate in both. But as the country and its language transition into the 21st century, Cyrillic script (and its associations with a Russified/Soviet identity) has become increasingly marginalized. As Azerbaijani’s exercise their independence, the unique representation of their language reflects a transition to a new independent identity.

Though seemingly unimportant and relegated to “mere” children’s instruction, alphabets are demonstrably powerful political tools which impact the identities of those who use them (alphabets influence all of us who are literate through subtle historical and social associations). Like in all other countries the story of Azerbaijan’s alphabet reflects the history of its identity (whether self determined or imposed). Few other countries (perhaps only Turkmenistan, another former “Turkic” Soviet state) have been subject to such rapid and far reaching script changes as Azerbaijan. This unique fluctuation is fertile ground for researching how alphabets and children’s literature are utilized for identity formation and the propagandizing of certain associations.

page [10], the canavar (wolf) from the Gülçiçäk folk tale. (Cotsen 7658006)

References

Hatcher, Linley. Script change in Azerbaijan: acts of identity. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2008(192).

Sepehri, Abazar. An Azerbaijani Reader In the New Alphabet. Austin, Texas: A. Sepehri, 1994.

 

  1. To learn more about the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic’s brief independence during the Russian Civil War and the early history of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic see my other blog post: Picturing Progress. ↩
  2. Contrary to popular belief, Turkey was not the first country to institute a Latin script for a Turkish language. It would not adopt Latin script until 1928. ↩
  3. Other minority identities within the Soviet Union that were already perceived as sufficiently Russified or Western would not see their languages Cyrillicized. Conspicuously, the very distinct scripts of Azerbaijan’s neighbors: Georgia and Armenia were never altered by Soviet authorities. ↩
  4. For those interested in an even deeper history of alphabets: the grapheme “æ” takes its name “ash” or “æsch” from the even earlier Anglo-Saxon futhorc rune “ᚫ” denoting the same sound (and whose name means literary “ash tree” which the rune superficially resembles). ↩