Charles Clark (1806-1880) of Great Totham Hall, and Heybridge, Essex

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Booklabel, front cover and initial page of “Scrap Book on Aerostation,” complied by the antiquarian book-collector, amateur printer, and farmer Charles Clark (1806-1880) of Great Totham Hall, and Heybridge, Essex. [Call number: (Ex) TL618 .S37q]

❧ Clark is the focus of a book history research project conducted by Carrie Griffin, Teaching Fellow, University of Bristol, & Mary O’Connell, Leverhulme Visiting Researcher, School of English, University of St Andrews. They present their findings in the blog “Finding Charles Clark 1806-1880. Not just another book collector.” [Link]

❧ Recently they posted a short, engaging essay [Link] about Clark’s “Aerostation” compilation, a work consisting of approximately 46 pages of engravings, newspaper clippings, broadsides, songs and handbills on ballooning, dating from 1769 to the late 1820s, including as well material on the activities of balloonists Charles Green, the Montgolfiers, James Sadler and John Wilkes.

Mrs Jane Mecom, Her Book • 1769

Benjamin Franklin. Experiments and observations on electricity, made at Philadelphia in America, by Benjamin Franklin, L.L.D. and F.R.S. To which are added, letters and papers on philosophical subjects. The whole corrected, methodized, improved, and now first collected into one volume. London: Printed for David Henry; and sold by Francis Newberry, MDCCLXIX.

Benjamin Franklin. Experiments and observations on electricity, made at Philadelphia in America, by Benjamin Franklin, L.L.D. and F.R.S. To which are added, letters and papers on philosophical subjects. The whole corrected, methodized, improved, and now first collected into one volume. London: Printed for David Henry; and sold by Francis Newberry, MDCCLXIX. Call number: (Ex) QC516 .F852 copy 2.

“Franklin sent his sister a copy from London on February 23, 1769, writing, ‘There has lately been a new Edition of my philosophical Papers here. I send Six Copies to you, which I desire you would take care to have delivered as directed. There is one for your Trouble.’ Jane’s copy of this edition is housed at [the] Princeton [University] Library. It is inscribed ‘[Mrs] Jane Mecom, Her Book.” [Franklin biographer, Carl] Van Doren probably acquired this book in the 1930s; it went to Princeton with Van Doren’s papers following his death in 1950.” — Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (New York: Knopf, 2013), p. 315 (part of ‘Appendix F. Jane’s Library,’ p.312 to 323)

Jill Lepore adds “I have been able to locate five volumes inscribed with her name: … [Experiments being one of the five] … I have no reason to suppose these five volumes are the same five volumes found in her house at her death. Her letters reveal her to have either owned or read a wealth of books, magazines, and newspapers …” (p.313)

Martin Meurisse’s Garden of Logic • 1614

 Artificiosa totius logices descriptio. Author/Artist: Meurisse, Martin, 1584-1644. Published/Created: Paris? : s.n., 1614?  General: 1 sheet ([1] p.) : ill. (etching) ; 60 x 40 cm. (plate mark 56 x 37 cm.)  Notes: Dedication signed: F. M. Meurisse.  At foot of sheet: De hac Thesi horis et dieb[us] solitis respondebunt fratres logici in Conventu fratrum minorum Parisiensium a Calendas Iunij ad Calendas Augusti Anno Domini MDCXIIII.  Two sheets pasted together, with the coat of arms of J.A. de Thou and the Franciscans, dedication to Thou and title on the upper half, and elaborate emblematic illustration below.

Artificiosa totius logices descriptio. [‘Artful
description of logic in its entirety’] [by] Martin Meurisse, 1584-1644.
Published: Paris: s.n., 1614
Description: 1 sheet ([1] p.) : ill. (engraving) ; 60 x 40 cm. (plate mark 56 x 37 cm.)
Notes: Dedication signed: F. M. Meurisse.
At foot of sheet: De hac Thesi horis et dieb[us] solitis respondebunt fratres logici in Conventu fratrum minorum Parisiensium a Calendas Iunij ad Calendas Augusti Anno Domini MDCXIIII. [‘The logician brothers will respond to this thesis in the Convent of the Friars Minor at Paris at the usual hours and days from the calends of June (first day) to the calends of August in the year of our Lord 1614.’] • Two sheets pasted together, with the coat of arms of J.A. de Thou and the Franciscans, dedication to Thou and title on the upper half, and elaborate emblematic illustration below. Call number: Princeton Univeristy Library. Rare Book Division: (EX) Broadside 119
For large image: https://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/Misc/Art_tot_log_des/atld.jpg

For an admirable study of this wonderful artifact of 17th century learning, see Susanna Berger, “Martin Meurisse’s Garden of Logic” in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume LXXVI (2013), p. 203-250. [Link]

“It is not in the power of the keeper of a lottery-office to command success”

State Lottery 1761. ... Sold and Registered by  A. and C. Corbett, Booksellers, at their Correct State Lottery Office, .. at Addison’s-Head, directly facing St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet-Street.   Not recorded in ESTC.  Tipped onto final page of A new and easy method to understand the Roman history ...  translated from the French, with very large additions and amendments, by Mr. Tho. Brown.(London, 1748). Call number (Ex) 2012-0846N

State Lottery 1761. … Sold and Registered by A. and C. Corbett, Booksellers and Publishers, at their Correct State Lottery Office, .. at Addison’s-Head, facing St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet-Street. Broadside not recorded in ESTC. Tipped onto final page of A New and Easy Method to Understand the Roman History … Translated from the French, with very large additions and amendments, by Mr. Tho. Brown.(London, 1748). Call number (Ex) 2012-0846N

1808, May 8. Died, Sir Charles Corbett, bart. one of the oldest liverymen of the company of stationers, aged about 76. He was, in the outset of life, well known as a bookseller, opposite St. Dunstan’s church; where he afterwards kept a lottery-office; had dame Fortune at his command; and used to astonish the gaping crowd with the brilliancy of his nocturnal illuminations. But it is not in the power of the keeper of a lottery-office to command success. A very unfortunate mistake in the sale of a chance of a ticket, which came up a prize of £20,000, proved fatal to Mr. Corbett, and was with difficulty compromised, the chance having fallen into the hands of Edward Roe Yeo, esq, at that time M.P. for Coventry. Some years after, the empty title of baronet (a title, in his case, not strictly recognised in the college of arms) descended to Mr. Corbett, which he assumed, though he might have received a handsome douceur from some other branch of the family if he would relinquish it.—Melancholy to relate! the latter days of this inoffensive character were clouded by absolute penury. Except a very trifling pension from the company of stationers, he had no means of subsistence but the precarious one of being employed, when his infirmities and bad state of health would permit him, in a very subordinate portion of the labours of a journeyman bookbinder.” – Charles Henry Timperley, The Dictionary of Printer and Printing, with the Progress of Literature (London, 1839) p. 832

❧ There is a copy of Ann and Charles Corbett’s lottery broadside for the year before (1760) held at OSU. [Link]

Booklabel: Simon Villers, His Book, Coventry, April 12, 1763, pasted onto inside front board of  A New and Easy Method to Understand the Roman History ...  Translated from the French, with very large additions and amendments, by Mr. Tho. Brown.(London, 1748). Call number (Ex) 2012-0846N

Booklabel: Simon Villers, His Book, Coventry, April 12, 1763, pasted onto front free endpaper of A New and Easy Method to Understand the Roman History … Translated from the French, with very large additions and amendments, by Mr. Tho. Brown.(London, 1748). Call number (Ex) 2012-0846N

Typewriter Printed Book • First of the Kind • 1919

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“It was bound to come. With the holiday season approaching, with book-lovers looking forward to new fiction, to special editions and illuminated texts, with nearly all the book and job compositors in New York City anticipating the festive season by beginning their “vacations” a few months earlier than ordinary people, and with pressmen “locked out” because of secession, something just had to be done to fill the want created by type that would not be set and presses that would not turn. So, enter the first book ever printed without the aid of typesetters or regular pressmen.

“It is “Piggie,” in itself an unusual book in that it romances so whole-souledly about hogs that one turns page 300 undecided whether to characterize it as the Pollyanna of the Chicago stockyards or as a post-bellum impressionistic conception of the true, inward piggishness of man. …” [Link to the complete article in 30 November 1919 issue of The New York Times]

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“A novelty of book making. This book was written with a typewriter, the typewritten pages were photographed, and the book printed from the photographic plates. This was made necessary by a strike in the printing trades of New York, which prevented publication of books in the usual manner. The book is a pleasing innovation of permanent value, and perhaps may be the forerunner of the form in which all books of the future will be issued.” – Dustjacket of Piggie (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1919).

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For more on ‘typewriter printed books’ see Printing without Type-setters, a composite volume of three numbers of the Literary Digest and other matter relating to the printers’ strike in 1919, gathered by Byron A. Finney, reference librarian emeritus at the University of Michigan. (Prime example of library use of the ‘typewriter printed book’ and still very valuable: Dictionary Catalog of the Research Libraries of the New York Public Library, 1911-1971 (G. K. Hall, 1979) in 800 volumes. It replicates the unique typewritten cards once filed alphabetically in thousands of wooden catalog drawers now vanished from the third floor of the Schwartsman Building.)

❧ Call number for the Princeton copy of Piggie is: (Ex) Item 6763728.

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Revival of Self: an Original Comedy, first published in 1856

Now
Sidney Frances Bateman’s 1856 play “Self,” at the Metropolitan Playhouse, offers timeless humor centered on social climbers.
❧ Review and picture in The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1fN1vvi

Then

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Self: an original comedy, in three acts by Mrs. Sidney F. Bateman; to which are added, a description of the costume, cast of the characters, entrances and exits, relative position of the performers on the stage, and the whole of the stage business. (New York: Samuel French [1856]) Call number: Princeton University Library, Rare Book Division, TC023 (Playbooks Collection) Box 8.
      Note: This copy marked for the part of “Aunt Chloe: an old colored Nurse.”