Monthly Archives: January 2014

James Asperne, Bookseller • 1816

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[Above] Detail of shopfront: Frontispiece to the European Magazine, Volume 69.
Drawn and engraved by Samuel Rawle (1771-1860).

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James Asperne (1757-1820), bookseller and publisher of the The European Magazine. In 1803, he became successor to John Sewell at the Bible, Crown and Constitution, No. 32 Cornhill.

His portrait can be found in the online collections of the National Portrait Gallery.
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp53135/james-asperne

For a description of the Frontispiece, see page 6 ff of The European Magazine Volume 69, January to June at http://books.google.com/books?id=NCkoAAAAYAAJ

1761 • Banning Jesuit books

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Arrêt de la Cour de Parlement, du 6 août 1761.
A Paris : Chez P. G. Simon, Imprimeur du Parlement, rue de la Harpe, à l’Hercule 1761]. Arrêt, with contemporary manuscript annotations, interdicting a list of twenty-four Jesuit books which, in turn, were to be ‘lacerés et brûlés en la Cour du Palais, au pied du grand escalier d’icelui’ in August 1761, having been deemed ‘seditious, destructive in respect to the principles of Christian morals, proposing abominable doctrines not only against the life of common citizens but against the life of the sacred person of the sovereign.’ Call number: (Ex) Oversize Item 6740870Q

The Embleme of Humane Life • 1670

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“For the better direction of the Reader, and greater ease of his Memory, there is at the end of this little Book, a piece of Sculpture, exhibiting the Embleme itself, and a short Explication, by way of Figures, in the Cut, answerable to other in the Leaf next adjoining thereto, the Description of it might be the more familiar.”

— The Life, and Philosophy, of Epictetus. With The Embleme of Humane Life, by Cebes. Rendred into English, by John Davies of Kidwelly (London: printed by T[homas]. R[oycroft]. for John Martyn, and are to be sold at the sign of the Bell without Temple Bar, 1670). Call number: (Ex) B561.E6 E5 1670 copy 2.

❧ For another example of the Tabula Cebetis and further details, see
http://blogs.princeton.edu/notabilia/2012/07/21/tabula-cebetis/ as well as Tamara A. Goeglein, “Early Modern Emblem Books as Memorial Sites,” Princeton University Library Chronicle (Autumn, 2007), p. 43-70.

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Dodona’s Grove: an early English publisher’s binding (1650)

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Copy to come

Dendrologia. Dodona’s grove, or The vocall forest. Second part. By James Howell esquire [London, : Printed by W.H. for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his shop …, 1650.] Call number: RHT 17th-324

The Library’s copy in the Robert H. Taylor Collection is comparable to copies at Folger, University of Pennsylvania, the Bodleian, and the British Library. According to Frank Mowrey (Folger): “One of the earliest English ‘publisher’s’ bindings, decorated with a block specially cut for the book. … [However] this does not mean that the whole edition would have been bound in this way, as was the case with 19th-century and later publisher’s bindings.” ❧ Brown sheepskin over pasteboards with blind, gilt, and silver decoration. Two-line border in blind. Covers blocked in silver with an oval panel of three trees lettered “DODONA’S GROVE” inside a wreath. Red and black sprinkled edges. ❧ The Taylor copy also has contemporary manuscript annotations identifying the original corresponding to each allegorical name.