Sir Thomas Phillipps – Illustrations of his distinguishing marks of ownership in books and manuscripts from the Phillipps Library

Posted on November 7, 2023 by Stephen Ferguson

Supplementing examples posted by Peter Kidd on his website ‘Manuscripts/Provenance,’ in the entry for Sir Thomas Phillipps http://www.manuscripts.org.uk/manuscripts/provenance/collectors/phillipps.htm

A. N. L. Munby writes in Phillipps Studies No. 4 (Cambridge, 1956), p. 165

In the 1820s Phillipps commissioned an armorial bookplate, which was however inserted very sparingly in books and manuscripts (fig. 1). Many of the early acquisitions bear a stencilled stamp of his crest, a lion rampant, applied rather crudely to the front paste-down or to the first leaf (fig. 2), and, on the paste-down, in the case of manuscripts, was inscribed the number allotted to the book in the Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum (fig. 3); in most instances this number was repeated on a tiny printed slip glued to the spine (fig. 4). Many thousands of manuscripts are identifiable at sight by their drab buff boards, Phillipps’s usual binding style. (fig. 5) A very large number of the printed books have no identification of ownership by Phillipps other than the small pencilled initials ‘MHC’ at the top of the front paste-down, denoting that the item in question had been entered, but not necessarily printed, in the Middle Hill Catalogue (fig. 6). Many books in the great residue of the library purchased in 1946 by Messrs Robinson have been provided with a discreet armorial label which identifies their provenance (fig. 7)

Figure 1 – Armorial bookplate

Figure 2 – Stencil

Figure 3 – Stencil with number

Figure 4 – Slip on spine

Figure 5 – Middle Hill Boards

Figure 6 – MHC (Middle Hill Catalogue)

Figure 7 – Bibliotheca Phillippica – W. H. Robinson Ltd.

Bookplate of John Rutherfurd (1760-1840)

Posted on November 18, 2022 by Stephen Ferguson

Bookplate of John Rutherfurd (1760-1840) on front pastedown of Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (London, 1759) (Ex 6305.863.11). Rutherfurd has numbered this book as ‘No. 1.’ The ‘Library, College of New Jersey’ booklabel and adjacent markings in ink indicate that this book first came into the Library of Princeton University in the middle of the 19th cent.

Book number 141 in John Rutherfurd’s library: Timothy Dwight, The Conquest of Canaan (Hartford, 1765). (Ex) N-003742

John Rutherfurd (1760-1840) graduated Princeton with the Class of 1776. A lawyer by profession, he served as Senator from New Jersey from 1791-1798. (See his biography in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.) His books were held by the family for many years and then much of his library was sold in a three-part sale by the City Book Auction (New York City) in 1952 (3 pts. in 2).

Other books owned by Rutherfurd —
• No. 5 – [Allinson, Samuel, compiler.] Acts of the General Assembly of the Province of New-Jersey. (Burlington, 1776). Private collection.
• No. 20 – Wallis, John (1616-1703). A Treatise of Algebra, both Historical and Practical. London: John Playford for Richard Davis, 1685. Sold Christie’s London in 2020.
• Number not known – Shaw, Samuel. An Interesting Narrative of the Travels of James Bruce, Esq. Into Abyssinia, to Discover the Source of The Nile. Abridged from the Original Work. New York: Re-printed for Berry and Rogers, 1790. Doyle auctions, lot 166, April 17, 2019.
• Ownership inscription – The Petitions and memorials of the proprietors of West and East-Jersey … New York: Shepard Kollock, 1784. Princeton University Library (Ex 1174.271.2 c.1)

Image courtesy of Joseph Felcone.

The First American Edition of ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ (1767)

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Stephen Ferguson

Recently acquired. The Michael Zinman copy of the first American edition of The Vicar of Wakefield. (2022-0031N). With contemporary signature ‘Sally Walker’ and later signature ‘S.W. Tarleton.’

How do we know that Princeton’s recently acquired Dublin ‘fourth edition’ is indeed the first American edition of The Vicar of Wakefield?

American bibliographer John Alden and Irish bibliographer Mary Pollard have studied this question closely and determined that despite the Dublin imprint, this edition of The Vicar of Wakefield was printed in Boston by the firm of Mein and Fleeming in 1767. Their determination was based on several factors including: one, the font of type used to print the text; two, advertisements published by Mein and Fleming in various Boston newspapers; and three, paper stock. Both have published convincing arguments for this determination.

In brief, the story begins early in 1810, when the patriot printer and printing historian Isaiah Thomas published in his History of Printing in America remarks on Mein’s bookselling practices

‘Some [of his stock] had a false imprint, and were palmed upon the public for London editions, because Mein apprehended that books printed in London, however executed, sold better than those which were printed in America, and, at that time, many purchasers sanctioned his opinion.’ (Thomas, Hist. of Printing in Amer., [Worcester, 1810), I, p.362).

Some 130 years later, bibliographer John Alden picked up on this statement and examined closely, one by one, the imprints of Mein and Fleeming during the years of their partnership, 1767 to 1769. Alden first detailed his findings in a research paper prepared at the University of Michigan in 1940 and then published his work in 1942 in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. In the 1980s, bibliographer Mary Pollard extended Alden’s work and using her knowledge of Irish printing, a topic in which she was an expert, she convincingly assigned the Vicar to the shop of Mein and Fleeming, based on typographic and other evidence. Rather than try to summarize further, I refer you to their respective articles listed at the end of this essay.

While the story of the identification of this false imprint is interesting, equally telling is the tale of the marketing and advertising of this edition of Vicar in Boston. It is the story of a bookseller caught in the vortex of abruptly shifting consumer demands, caused by American reactions to punitive British Parliamentary commercial acts.

Marketing in times of shifting consumer demands –

The Edinburgh-native bookseller, John Mein, arrived in Boston in October 1764. At the time, Boston had about a fifteen printers and booksellers, serving a population of over 15,000. (New York and Philadelphia had larger populations by about 3 to 5,000 more.)

At first, Mein had a bookstall on Marlborough Street where he sold not only books and pamphlets but also Irish linens and “excellent bottl’d Bristol beer near two years old.” By October 1765, he took over the leading bookshop in Boston, the London Book-Store on King Street. Concurrently, he opened a commercial rental circulating library, the first such in Boston. It offered a stock of 1,200 volumes ‘in most branches of polite Literature, Arts, and Sciences,’ at an annual subscription price of £1 8s or a quarterly subscription at 10s 6p.

While the rental circulating library appears not to have continued past May 1767, he maintained the London Book-Store, offering imported books to his Boston clientele. He even conducted an auction of ‘several libraries of curious and valuable books’ in late May and early June 1766. Moreover, he further extended his business by venturing out as a publisher. He was not a printer, so he took a printer to partner for his projects, at first William M’Alpine and later John Fleeming. M’Alpine printed an edition of Issac Watt’s Hymns for Mein in 1766 (ESTC W7723) and a few other works. However, Mein’s partnership with Fleeming was more robust. Together they issued more than 50 separate publications between 1766 and 1769. These locally produced books were offered together with imported stock at Mein’s London Book-Store. Further, Mein and Fleming first began issuing a newspaper, the Boston Chronicle in December 1767.

Alden identified 16 false Mein and Fleeming imprints issued between 1766 and 1768.

How did Mein go about marketing these? We’ll take the case of the Vicar as a case in point.

We first encounter Mein offering the Vicar in 11 September 1766 issue of Boston Evening Post. It appears in subsequent ads in Boston newspapers in following weeks.

But, on 6 July 1767 in the Boston Gazette, Mein steps up his efforts and publishes a long blurb and offers the book at 6s (previous advertisements did not give a price). His ‘blurb’ is worth quoting in full

>> The Vicar of Wakefield. A Tale. Supposed to be written by himself. (Price 6s,) Sperate miseri, cavete felices.

The Vicar unites in himself of the three greatest Characters upon Earth: he has a Priest, an Husbandman, and the Father of a Family. He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey; as simple in Affluence and majestic in adversity. Every reader must be delighted with him for his sincerity, his hospitality, his fervent and overflowing affections, his divine propensity to forgiveness and reconciliation, his unaffected magnanimity in deep affection, and his exemplary moderation when raised to affluence and joy. The Family of Wakefield, in which a kindred likeness prevails of minds as well as of persons, and the other characters introduced are well marked and properly supported, and there are interspersed much rational entertainment, genuine strokes of nature and humour, and pathetic pictures of domestic happiness and domestic distress, drawn from Life, and directed to the heart.

This excellent novel does great honor to the author Dr. Goldsmith, for moral tendency; and for recommending and enforcing in the most exemplary matter, the great obligations of universal Benevolence: the most amiable quality that can possibly distinguish and adorn Human Nature. <<

Mein’s publicity campaign appears to have taken a turn toward larger promotion of the Vicar.

Another of Mein’s false imprints, his edition of Tissot’s Advice to the People … with Regard to their Health, according to Alden, showed a similar pattern of publicity – first just brief statements (in July 1767), then in October 1767, two columns of advertisement. Alden concludes that the earlier ads were for imported editions, but the October 1767 ad is for a new edition, Mein’s own edition with a false London imprint.

It’s entirely possible that Mein’s promotion of the Vicar followed a similar path. The earlier ads (September 1766 ff) were for imported editions, while that fulsomely announced in July 1767 is Mein’s own edition with the false Dublin imprint.

‘Hath Just Imported’ – p. 183 in issue for 2 May 1768 of Mein’s Boston Chronicle. (ExOV 0921.201 v.1)

In Mein’s own newspaper the Boston Chronicle, he continued to advertise the Vicar. For example, in the 2 May 1768 issue of the Boston Chronicle, he prints an entire full page of advertising (3 columns, more than 2600 words) detailing that he ‘Hath Just Imported’ more than 100 separately published titles, falling into the following categories: general interest (52 titles), psalmody (5), law (14), new novels (19), school books and classics (20). He further supplemented his individually named offerings by adding that also on offer were ‘all the lawbooks most in use,’ and ‘also a numerous collection of the best novels and books of entertainment in the English language.’ And among the novels, is listed: ‘Vicar of Wakefield. 2 vols. Moral, entertaining, and pathetic.’ Also in the May 9 supplement, he printed a long excerpt from the Vicar, viz. Chap. 10 of Vol. 2.

He continued to advertise it in his twice weekly newspaper during subsequent weeks. The last ‘Hath Just Imported’ ad ran in the issue of the Boston Chronicle for August 29, 1768.

As a book importer, Mein had much to gain by holding fast to the status quo for bringing in British goods into Boston. However, local merchants in reaction to the recent Townsend Acts restricting trade, pivoted in their preferences and started what was called the Non-importation movement. Their insistence was on now on goods made in America.

Change in consumer preference –

Within 13 months, by the fall of 1769, circumstances had radically changed. Despite his own preferences, Mein overhauled his messaging about his stock, and on 26 October 1769 in the Boston Chronicle, he issued a new book stock advertisement, this time headed ‘Printed in America.’

Of the 20, titles in that stocklist, all were books in high demand, each for their own reasons. There were books popular as practical texts (Dilworth’s spelling book, Tissot’s Advice on Health, McKenzie’s Art of preserving health) and books conforming to preferred religious sentiment (Orton’s Memoir of Dr Doddridge, Dr. Fordyce’s Sermons, Tate and Brady’s Psalm book). Others picked up on the political sentiments, such as Dulany’s Considerations on taxes or the pro-American Sermons to Asses, alleged to have been written by Benjamin Franklin. Some were popular entertainment such as Garrick and Colman’s Clandestine Marriage. And there were children’s books, such as Tommy Thumb’s Little Storybook.

And, added to this mix of steady sellers, were editions of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey and Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, both false imprints but at least contextually declaring themselves to be American imprints.

Likely because of loyalist political sentiments, Mein left Boston by 1770 as stated by Isaiah Thomas, or perhaps in the later part of 1769, according to other scholarship.

But, that’s not the end of the marketing of Mein’s ‘Dublin’ edition of Vicar. When one looks closely at Mein’s ad ‘Printed in America’ (including his edition of Vicar) one sees a linked gathering of Mein books, all now claimed to have been ‘Printed in America’ and some with false imprints. The linked network includes Tissot’s Advice, Garrick and Colman’s Clandestine Marriage, Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, Fordyce’s Sermons, ‘Franklin’s Sermon on Asses, etc.

In April 1772, this same linked network of books is advertised by the English booksellers Edward Cox and Edward Berry in the Boston News Letter (April 9), for sale ‘cheaper than can be bought at any Shop in Town.’ In this ad you will find, along with the Vicar, Tissot’s Advice, Garrick and Colman’s Clandestine Marriage, Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, Fordyce’s Sermons, ‘Franklin’s Sermon on Asses, etc.

Clearly, this linked network of stock had been remaindered to these booksellers, who also advertised the Vicar in their stock catalogue of 1772.

Based on available evidence, this is the end of tale of the marketing of Mein’s edition of the Vicar, for within a few years, with the outbreak of war, Cox and Berry resettled in New York, soon to be occupied by the British by the summer of 1776.

Chap. X of Vicar laid side by side with excerpt of the same chapter published in Mein’s Boston Chronicle, Supplement for issue Monday May 9, 1768. (ExOV 0921.201 v.1 and 2022-0031N)

Bibliography

John Eliot Alden, ‘Notes towards a bibliography of Mein Imprints’ (University of Michigan, June 1940) https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003242614

John Eliot Alden, ‘John Mein, publisher: an essay in bibliographic detection,’ Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 36 (1942), 199-214. https://doi.org/10.1086/pbsa.36.3.24293527

Mary Pollard, ‘The First American Edition of ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’’ in Peter Fox (ed.) Treasures of the Library, Trinity College Dublin (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1986) 123-130

Mystery Solved: A Long-Lost Spanish Vocabulario (ca. 1492-93) Comes to Light at Princeton

Posted on November 13, 2020 by Eric White

Alfonso de Palencia, Universal vocabulario (Seville, 1490), EXI Oversize 2530.693q

Many of the most important discoveries in the study of rare books are the results of fruitful collaborations. In this case, we were confronted by an anomaly: Princeton’s copy of the first printed Latin-Spanish dictionary, Alfonso Fernández de Palencia’s Universal vocabulario en latín y en romance, vol. I (Seville: Paulus de Colonia, 1490), which lacks its title page and introductory ‘argumentum’, begins and ends with single printed leaves from an entirely different book – a Spanish-Latin dictionary printed with a slightly larger fifteenth-century typeface:

Universal vocabulario, 1490 (video)

Whereas these stray leaves seem to owe their survival to having been recycled as binding waste that served as protective endleaves for the Universal vocabulario of 1490, there is some question as to how they became available to the eighteenth-century binder, and whether they may have been selected for their lexicographical content. However, a more central mystery remained to be answered: what exactly was the dictionary that provided these long-forgotten fragments?

Princeton fragment 1, verso: ‘Prologo’ to Queen Isabella

Princeton fragment 2, recto: Apuesta–Arcaz

The first fragment, blank on its recto, consists of a short ‘Prologo’ in parallel Spanish and Latin, dedicating a new dictionary to Queen Isabella of Castille and Leon, Aragon, Sicily, and Granada. The second clearly belongs to that dictionary: it contains the Spanish terms Apuesta–Arcaz on the recto and Arco–Arreboçar on the verso (77 terms in total), each with brief Latin definitions that occasionally cite passages in the works of Virgil; the heading ‘dela letra A’ appears in the upper margins. After inconclusive consultations with several experts, the first breakthrough came from Oliver Duntze at the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke in Berlin, the leading research center for the cataloging of fifteenth-century European printing. Duntze was able to provide an almost certain identification of the printers: the types precisely matched those of the Seville press of Meinhard Ungut und Stanislaus Polonus, specifically the state of their types used in 1492.

The date ‘ca. 1492’ was a good match for the status of the royal dedicatee, Queen Isabella (1451–1504), who took the specified title of ‘Reina de Granada’ only after the capture of that territory in January of that year. However, the text contained in these leaves, including the royal dedication, did not match up with any known Spanish dictionary printed during the fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries. None of the bibliographical tools at our disposal or the book historians we consulted could provide an identification of the edition that was the source of these stray leaves; we began to suspect, as had Frederick Vinton, the librarian who oversaw the acquisition of the volume in 1873, that they represented a previously untraced edition – and a potentially important discovery.¹

A turning point came in February 2018, when Dr Cinthia María Hamlin, a specialist in medieval literature from Secrit-CONICET (Argentina’s National Scientific Research Council) and the Universidad de Buenos Aires, visited Princeton University Library’s new Special Collections Reading Room and requested to see several early Spanish books. During her visit I inquired whether it would be a distraction to ask her opinion of the mysterious leaves in the Universal vocabulario of 1490. She quickly became fascinated by them, knowing that one does not encounter pages from an unidentified fifteenth-century Spanish dictionary every day. We agreed that the problem deserved much further research, both for the benefit of European printing history and Spanish linguistic history.

Working from digital images upon her return to Buenos Aires, Hamlin investigated the mysterious dictionary, eliminating all of the candidate texts by Antonio de Nebrija and Fernández de Santaella and analyzing the linguistic characteristics of the limited sample of word definitions that the fragments provided. Within a little over a month she made a startling breakthrough. Following up on a suggestion offered by her colleague Juan Héctor Fuentes, she discovered that an anonymous fifteenth-century Spanish-Latin Vocabulario, known only from a manuscript at the Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial (MS f-II-10), matched Princeton’s printed fragments nearly word for word.²

Colecciones Reales. Patrimonio Nacional. Real Biblioteca del Monasterio del Escorial, f.II.10 (f. 17v).

Princeton fragment 2, verso: Arco–Arreboçar (with Latin definitions similar to those of the Escorial MS).

Thus, Hamlin and Fuentes hypothesized that the long-lost Vocabulario represented by the fragments, datable to 1492-93, was the first Spanish-to-Latin (not vice-versa) vocabulary ever printed, preceding Nebrija’s first Salamanca edition (variously dated between 1492 and 1495, but most likely 1494-95). The two scholars’ discovery has been introduced in the co-authored ‘Folios de un incunable desconocido y su identificación con el anónimo Vocabulario en romance y en latín del Escorial (F-II-10).’ Romance Philology 74/1 (Spring 2020), 93-122, and will be developed further by Hamlin in ‘Alfonso de Palencia: autor del primer vocabulario romance-latin que llego a la imprenta?’ in Boletín de la Real Academia Española (forthcoming in 2021).

After further research, Hamlin concluded that the anonymous author of the Escorial Vocabulario, and, therefore, that of the previously unknown printed edition preserved in Princeton’s binding fragments, was none other than Alfonso Fernández de Palencia (1423–1492), the author of the very same Universal vocabulario of 1490 into which the mysterious Princeton leaves had been bound. As Hamlin notes, Palencia’s Universal vocabulario has many of the the same ‘authority’ quotations, highly similar definitions (especially for toponyms), and several of the terms have the same grammatical explanation and thus almost certainly are the works of the same author. This important discovery, too, will be explored in greater detail in Hamlin’s forthcoming article.

Fifteenth-century Spanish printing of any kind is difficult to come by in libraries outside of Spain. It is even more remarkable to have located traces of a previously unknown Spanish edition of that period. Moreover, it is a signal accomplishment to have been able to resurrect an unknown printing of a previously anonymous work of such importance, in vernacular Spanish, and then to augment our knowledge of that text with both a long-lost royal dedication and a convincing identification of its author, one of the most influential Spanish humanists of the fifteenth century. The fields of printing history and Spanish linguistic history have profited mightily from the collaboration that solved this bibliographical mystery.

More about Princeton’s Universal vocabulario of 1490 (EXI Oversize 2530.693q):

The book consists of vol. 1 only, covering letters A-N. Its gilt red-dyed goatskin binding is probably 18th-century Spanish. The earliest known owner was Richard Heber (1773–1833), the English bibliomaniac; this copy was offered in part 2 of the Heber sales, Sotheby’s (London), June 1834, as lot 4689. In 1873 it was purchased by the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) along with an important collection of old books and Reformation pamphlets owned by Dr. Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg (1802–1872), a noted philosopher and philologist at the University of Berlin and father of a famous surgeon. It is possible that Trendelenburg bought the Vocabulario at the Heber sale of 1834, but there may have been unknown owners between 1833 and 1873.

********************

¹Frederick Vinton, the Librarian of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), inscribed the second fragment “This is a great curiosity. It is part of a Spanish Vocabulary entirely unknown to Bibliographers and must have been printed about the same time as this of Palentia in which the Latin precedes the Spanish.”

² Gerald J. MacDonald, Diccionario español-latino del siglo XV: an edition of anonymous manuscript f.II.10 of the Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Transcription, study, and index (New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 2007).

Rare Book Working Group Examines “Her Book”

Posted on October 29, 2018 by Eric White

Portrait of Lady Caroline Lamb, in her Verses from Glenarvon (1819), painted by Eliza Jones. 2018-0034N

The “Rare Book Working Group” (RBWG) at Princeton University Library began its second year of programming by exploring the topic of “Her Book” on October 25, 2018. Eric White, Curator of Rare Books, and Gabriel Swift, Reference Librarian for Special Collections, brought out more than 50 books from the 17th and 18th centuries, each inscribed by an early female owner. The RBWG participants, which included graduate students, faculty, and library staff, discussed the value and implications of this provenance information as historical evidence, and recorded the data for entry into the library’s online catalog — which historically has overlooked much of this kind of evidence.

White and Swift introduced the “Her Book” workshop with examples of women’s early achievements in book production and collecting. These included a copy of De viris illustribus, printed in Florence in 1478 by the Dominican nuns at San Jacopo di Ripoli; book illustrations by Suor Isabella Picini, a prolific engraver at the Franciscan convent of Santa Croce in Venice at the beginning of the 18th century; an unsigned 17th-century English embroidered dos-a dos binding, very probably made by a woman; Lady Caroline Lamb’s presentation copy of her rare Verses from Glenarvon (1819), hand-embellished with her portrait by Eliza Jones (above); and the 1819 auction catalogue of the library of Anne-Thérèse-Philippine, Comtesse d’Yve (1738–1814) of Brussels, whose rich and diverse collection included a copy of the Gutenberg Bible in its original binding (now at Eton College).

New Testament and Psalms (1628). Embroidered dos-à-dos binding. RHT 17th-35

Frances Wolfreston’s copy of Guillaume de Bartas, His Deuine Weekes & Workes (London, 1605). RHT 17th-223

For the longer “workshop” portion of the two-hour session, participants examined a selection of books from the Robert H. Taylor Collection, signed (and occasionally annotated) by the Englishwomen who owned them. These included six titles inscribed “Frances Wolfreston hor bouk [her book],” which Swift brought out in order to highlight the possibilities of reconstructing women’s libraries and reading habits; a scholarly project on this little-known 17th-century owner, led by Sarah Lindenbaum, who first located Princeton’s specimens, is already well under way. See: https://franceswolfrestonhorbouks.com/

The participants also examined Jane Franklin Mecom’s copy of her brother Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments and observations on electricity, made at Philadelphia in America (1769), featured in Jill Lepore’s exemplary study, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (2013).

Jane Austen’s copy of A Companion to the Altar (London, c. 1790). EX 5866.934

In addition to deciphering names (such as Jane Austen’s) written in books, the RBWG also explored larger patterns of book ownership and the scholarly value of mining a broad corpus of evidence. Faculty participant Seth Perry agreed that RBWG workshops offer an excellent opportunity to approach broader questions and find new avenues for research that arise from a rich but often hidden historical record.

Ownership inscriptions in the selected books include:

Jane Austen, April 24th 1794

Fanny Burney

Fanny Anne Burney, from her Grandfather

Anna Seward

[Lady] M[ary] Cowper

Mary Tolson her book [wife of the author, Rev. Frances Tolson]

(continued below)

Margaret Clarke her Book […] Elizabeth Harris

Anne Thomas 173[?] (trimmed; with printed bookplate: “Ann Thomas No. 104”)

Ann Savil Shepherd 1780

Rhoda Spaulding Gaffrey

Jane De L’Angle

Mrs. Mary[?] Leo Feild her Book 1720

Mrs. Audley given to William D[—?] 1833

Ann Goodkind her Book February 2[?]th 1761

Elizabeth Greyon given me by my Aunt Alice Abdy, November the 24 1682

To Mrs. Rose of Kilravock, with Mr. [Robert] Burns’s best compliments

Elizabeth Calldicot

Mary Portmant

Mrs. Eliza Symonds

Mary Luth[?] (trimmed)

Catherine Fleminge Book

Francis Glossop the gift of his Aunt Catherine Gibbs

Mary Ibborson

Elisabeth Dickenson […] Elisabeth Richardson […] Hannah Dickenson […] Mary

Abigail Burby given by Sir Tho Tyrell

Ann Piggot 1700

Euphime Proctor 1769 [gilt leather label]

For the complete RBWG worksheet, see: Her Book – Sheet1

Eric White and Gabriel Swift wish to thank student assistants Jessica Terekhov, Rosamond van Wingerden, and Conner Johnson for their help compiling and organizing the “Her Book” RBWG workshop.

Revolution-Era Textbook ~ A Time Capsule from Princeton’s Past

Posted on October 9, 2018 by Jessica Terekhov

Homeri Ilias, v. 1 (London: Charles Rivington, 1768).

A recent gift to the Princeton University Library opens a time capsule from the university’s remote past. At the dawn of America’s Revolutionary War, when Princeton was still known as the College of New Jersey, at least four students signed their names to a copy of an assigned text. The book, volume 1 of Homer’s Iliad in Greek with parallel Latin text and notes, was printed in London in 1768, the same year that John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, became the university’s sixth president. Used heavily during the 1770s, the book offers today’s Princetonians a lesson in institutional history and a glimpse of the earliest actors involved.

Samuel Whitwell, Jr. was the first of the students to have used the 1768 Iliad. His signature appears on the book’s flyleaf and title page. His father’s name appears in the printed bookplate, pasted inside the front cover, which also bears an inscription by Isaac Tichenor, who presumably inherited the book from his upperclassman. The names of Robert Wharry and William Ross, non-graduate members of the class of 1778, are written on the flyleaf.

The younger Samuel Whitwell, of Boston, was among the students who met John Adams during the latter’s visit to Princeton in August 1774. He completed his degree that year, studied medicine after graduation, and served as surgeon to the 3rd Massachusetts Regiment from 1777 to 1783. Wharry (also Wherry) followed in his footsteps as a surgeon’s mate in a Pennsylvania regiment from 1778 until the end of the war. Little is known of Wharry’s classmate, William Ross.

Isaac Tichenor was perhaps the most active reader and ultimately the most prominent member of the group. The next page of the book, actually a fold-out map of ancient Greece that faces the title page, also bears Tichenor’s signature. His interlinear glosses (his signature appears among the annotations on p. 10), demonstrate his attempts to parse the classical text and render words and phrases into English. Upon graduating in 1775 after two years at Princeton, the Newark native studied law in New York and assisted the Continental Army at the Battle of Bennington in Vermont. The end of the Revolutionary War saw him settled in Vermont, where he pursued a long career in legislature as a state assemblyman, councilor, supreme court justice, and governor, and as a Federalist senator in Congress from 1796 to 1797 and 1815 to 1821.

In politics, Tichenor was (respectfully) nicknamed “Jersey Slick” for his polished appearance and manners, but he and his fellow Princetonians assumed other pseudonyms as members of the Cliosophic Society on campus.[i] “Handel” may have referred to Tichenor’s affinity for music, while Samuel Whitwell borrowed his alias, “Dickinson,” from the first university president.[ii] Robert Wharry was known as “Warren” after the physician, Joseph Warren, a hero of Bunker Hill.[iii]

Tichenor would likely have heard John Witherspoon’s “Address to the Students of the Senior Class,” delivered “on the Lord’s Day preceding Commencement, September 23, 1775.” The president divided his remarks into three branches: “your duty to God, and the interest of your souls”; “the prosecution of your studies, or the improvement of your talents, as members of society”; and “prudence in your commerce with the world in general, your outward provision, and other circumstances in life.”[iv] If his speech differs in tenor – and certainly in length – from a contemporary commencement address, his enforced curriculum at Princeton has little in common – except perhaps rigor – with an average course of study today. A speech Witherspoon delivered in 1772 outlines four years of instruction:

In the first year, [students] read Latin and Greek, with the Roman and Grecian antiquities, and rhetoric. In the second, continuing the study of the languages, they learn a complete system of geography, with the use of the globes, the first principles of philosophy, and the elements of mathematical knowledge. The third, though the languages are not wholly omitted, is chiefly employed in mathematics and natural Philosophy. And the senior year is employed in reading the higher classics, proceeding in the mathematics and natural philosophy, and going through a course of moral philosophy.[v]

Witherspoon added to this the four lectures he delivered annually to juniors and seniors on chronology, history, composition, and criticism and indicated that he would continue to teach French to interested students. Tichenor, then, would have been early in his Princeton career during his lucubrations (imaginably) over Homer.

That the president’s account was unembellished is supported by a letter from an undergraduate to a prospective student during Tichenor’s term at the College. Edward Crawford wrote to his brother, James, who hoped to enter the junior class:

‘The studies you will be examined on…are Virgil, Horace, Cicero’s Orations, Lucian, Xenophon, Homer, geography, and logic. Four books of Virgil’s Aeneid together with the Bucolics and Georgics and four books of Xenophon are only looked for; but I would advise you if you come to college to study the whole of Xenophon…Try to accustom yourself to read Greek and Latin well as it is much looked to here and be accurate in geography; study if you can the five common rules of arithmetic, interest, rebate, equation of payments, barter, loss and gain, fellowship, compound-fellowship, the double rule of three, comparative arithmetic, geometrical progression, vulgar and decimal fractions and the square root.’[vi]

An A.B. candidate at Princeton today, as every undergraduate knows, must fulfill a writing and a foreign language requirement in addition to distribution requirements in seven fields. Homer is no longer mandatory reading, but Isaac Tichenor’s 1768 Iliad survives as a memorable precursor to a standard issue from the Loeb Classical Library.

[Homer. Iliad]. Homeri Ilias graece et latine, annotationes in usum serenissimi principis Gulielmi Augusti, ducis de Cumberland, &c. Regio jussu scripsit atque edidit Samuel Clarke, S.T.P., vol. 1 (London: Excudit Car. Rivington, Impensis J. Pote, [etc.], 1768), 7^th edition. This item from the library of Rev. Alfred L. Baury (1794-1865), Episcopal Minister in Newton, MA, was thoughtfully donated by Caroline Knox of Waltham, MA, with assistance from Nell K. Carlson, Curator of Historical Collections, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, of the Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. It is an outstanding addition to Princeton’s early bibliographical heritage.

[i] Tichenor, Isaac; 1775; Undergraduate Alumni Records, 18th Century, Box 32; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

[ii] Whitwell, Samuel; 1774; Undergraduate Alumni Records, 18th Century, Box 29; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

[iii] Wharry (Wherry), Robert; 1778; Undergraduate Alumni Records, 18th Century, Box 38; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

[iv] The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon… Vol. 3. Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802. p. 101.

[v] Witherspoon, John. “Address to the Inhabitants of Jamaica, and other West-India Islands, in behalf of the College of New Jersey.” The Miscellaneous Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon. Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1803. p. 349.

[vi] Edward Crawley to James Crawford, Aug. 29, 1774, Presbyterian Historical Society. Quoted in: Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson. Princeton, 1746-1896. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946. pp. 93-94.

~ Jessica Terekhov, PhD candidate in English, is the graduate assistant to the Curator of Rare Books, Princeton University Library

The Only Copy in America of Virgil’s Bucolica [Strasbourg: Heinrich Eggestein, ca. 1473-74]

Posted on March 1, 2018 by Eric White

Vergilius Maro, Publius. Bucolica [Strasbourg : Heinrich Eggestein, about 1473-74] f°. Goff V-203. Oversize VRG 2945.325.001q

Given the rich holdings of Virgil’s poetry in Princeton University Library, one of the world’s foremost repositories of fifteenth-century editions of his works, it is perhaps easy to overlook the collection’s earliest separate edition of the Bucolica, which is one of only five copies to survive and the only copy preserved outside of continental Europe. Written in 42–39 BCE, the Bucolica (Latin ‘On the care of cattle’) was Virgil’s first major work, preceding the Georgics and the Aeneid. The Bucolica consists of ten brief eclogues that evoke the idyllic scenes and daily hardships of rural life within the Roman Empire. The poems were sensationally popular in ancient Rome and have never gone out of favor, as medieval Christians admired Virgil’s mastery of Latin verse and perceived messianic themes in his imagery. Virgil became Dante’s hero, and readers of the Renaissance esteemed Virgil above all other poets. In modern times, improved editions of his works, as well as reliable translations, continue to find a broad readership.

The first printing of the works of Virgil, including the Bucolica, Georgics, and the Aeneid, appears to be the folio edition published in Rome c. 1469 by Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz. Princeton University Library is one of eight institutions to hold that edition, and the only one outside of Europe. The first separate printing of the Bucolica appeared in a smaller quarto format from the Cologne press of Ulrich Zel, c. 1470, which is known in only eleven copies.

Princeton’s earliest Bucolica, from the second separate edition, was printed in Strasbourg by Heinrich Eggestein about 1473-74. It is a slender Chancery folio (30.9 × 21.2 cm) of sixteen leaves in which the poems were composed in a single narrow column of 27 lines per page, spaciously leaded as in a school book. In the past the edition has been dated variously as c. 1468, c. 1470, and c. 1472. The earlier dates are clearly too early, falling before Eggestein introduced his type known as ‘4:99G’, used here, which also appeared in datable editions from 1471 to 1473. The dating of c. 1472 for Eggestein’s Bucolica, cited in most of the prevailing bibliographies, accords with the printer’s chronology but it does not take into account the key evidence of his paper supply. Paul Needham, the Scheide Librarian at Princeton, has determined that the watermarks found in the Bucolica, depicting a Bull’s Head surmounted by a Tau Cross, belong to a Chancery paper stock from Basel that also was used c. 1474 in Valascus de Taranta, Tractatus de epidemia et peste [Basel: Martin Flach, c. 1474]. Needham suggests that the best dating for Eggestein’s Bucolica is therefore c. 1473-74.

Eggestein’s edition of the Bucolica first came to light in 1810, when the French bibliographer Jacques-Charles Brunet (1780–1867) described it in his Manuel de libraire, vol. 2 (p. 648), citing the copy then owned by Comte Léon d’Ourches (1766–1843) of Nancy. The confident attribution in 1810 of an unsigned Bucolica to Eggestein exhibits a precocious knowledge of early Strasbourg typefaces. In the following year that same copy of the Bucolica was sold in the Catalogue des livres rares, précieux et bien conditionnés du cabinet de M. Léon d’Ourches (Paris: Jacques-Charles Brunet, 1811), lot 619, to the Parisian booksellers Guillaume De Bure l’aîné and his two sons; soon thereafter the De Bure frères sold that book to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, where it remains.

Duru’s 1853 binding.

Princeton University’s copy of Eggestein’s Bucolica was the second to emerge, one of only two copies ever to appear on the rare book market. It was first recorded in the German bookseller Fidelis Butsch’s Catalog einer ausgewählten Sammlung von Inkunabeln, literarischen Curiositäten und Seltenheiten (Augsburg, 1851), p. 35. In 1853 it was rebound by the fashionable Parisian binder Hippolyte Duru in brown morocco (goatskin) paneled in blind with darkened fillets, gold corner fleurons, and inner dentelles in gold over marbled endpapers, with all edges gilt.

Duru’s stamp.

Inside front cover.

The Princeton copy also bears the bookplate of the Parisian printer and book collector Ambroise Firmin-Didot (1790–1876), who is probably the owner who brought the book to Paris from Augsburg to be rebound by Duru. In the Catalogue illustré des livres précieux manuscrits et imprimés faisant partie de la bibliothèque de m. Ambroise Firmin-Didot (Paris, 1878), the Bucolica was sold as item 104 to Bernard Quaritch, who offered in his List 327, Latest Purchases (1879), no. 18687. Soon it came into the possession of Rev. William Makellar (1836–1896), a not particularly wealthy Presbyterian minister in Edinburgh who managed to acquire a Gutenberg Bible in 1885. In the Catalogue of the Extensive Library of Valuable Books and Manuscripts of the Late Rev. William Makellar (London, 1898), Sotheby’s sold the Bucolica as lot 3127 to the Piccadilly bookseller James Toovey (1813–1893) for £22; Toovey kept it within his ‘reserve’ collection, most of which his heirs sold to J. Pierpont Morgan of New York in 1899. However, the Bucolica, and many other important editions of Virgil (including the rare first edition of c. 1469), went instead to Morgan’s nephew, Junius Spencer Morgan (1867–1932), an 1888 graduate of the College of New Jersey, which is now known as Princeton University. An outstanding amateur scholar, philanthropist, and collector of art and books, Morgan gave the entirety of his great collection of Virgil editions, encompassing more than 700 titles, to his alma mater over a period of many years. His is the only copy of Eggestein’s Bucolica ever to leave continental Europe.

Junius Spencer Morgan (1867–1932). Princeton, Class of 1888.

Three other copies of Eggestein’s Bucolica have come to light. One is part of a Sammelband of several works preserved at the University Library in Freiburg im Breisgau; another was found at the Cathedral Library in Hildesheim in 1908; a third was identified among the thousands of incunables at the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Mysteriously, as in the Princeton copy, the rubricator of the Munich copy mistook the first word of the Bucolica, ‘[T]ityre,’ and filled in a colored initial ‘S’ instead, so that it reads ‘Sityre.’ With its ample margins and clean white paper, the Princeton copy is perhaps the finest of the five that survive.

Rubricator’s beautiful mistake: S instead of T.

Acquisitions at the Pirie Sale

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Eric White

PRINTED BOOKS ACQUIRED AT THE PIRIE SALE

Stephen Ferguson
Associate University Librarian for Rare Books and Special Collections

“I’d never intended to practice law,” said Robert S. Pirie (1934–2015), a prominent New York lawyer and investment banker. “I wanted to become the rare book curator.” Pirie was the youngest in a cohort of twentieth-century American collectors of early English literature, among whom Robert H. Taylor (1909–1985) was the oldest. Long-time Princeton resident and major antiquarian bookseller John Brett-Smith (1917–2003), although British-born, was also a member of this cohort. There were many commonalities among the three. All had a bond and loyalty to the legendary New York antiquarian bookshop Seven Gables, which supplied each of them with tasteful, distinguished, and provenance-rich copies of major and minor monuments of England’s literary greats. (For more on the Seven Gables cohort, see Nicolas Barker, “Robert S. Pirie, 1934–2015,” The Book Collector 64.2 [Summer 2015]: 202–10.) Furthermore, their collective imagination and achievement projected their reputations beyond the Northeast and clear across to Britain. In some respects, the attainments of two members of this group are preserved in the Princeton University Library. Robert Taylor’s bequest is well known. Perhaps less well known is the work of John Brett-Smith, who, as bookseller and sometimes donor, augmented, supplied, and extended our collections of English literature. Therefore, when the Pirie collection came to auction in December 2015, we had another—and perhaps the last—opportunity to capture some of the glory of this remarkable group of twentieth-century collectors. Guiding our bidding decisions were themes already strong in the Taylor collection: annotated books, books of notable provenance, and extraordinary books signaling the literary taste of early modern England. The fifteen books purchased at the Pirie sale are listed below.

ANNOTATED BOOKS

Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Husbandry (London, 1580); annotated by Gabriel Harvey (1552/3–1631).

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War [in Greek] (Venice: Aldus, 1502), bound with Pausanias, Works (Venice: Aldus, 1516); annotated by Roger Ascham (1515–1568) and Richard Morison (c. 1514–1556) (pictured above).

Ben Jonson, Works (London, 1692), and John Suckling, Fragmenta Aurea (London, 1646); both annotated by Charles Lamb (1775–1834).

Pliny, Epistolae (Venice: Aldus, 1508); annotated by Nicholas Udall (1505–1556).

Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 4^th ed. (London, 1658); annotated by Browne (1605–1682).

Matthias Eberhart, Scholastica (Wittenberg, 1572); annotated by Robert Burton (1577–1640).

Erycius Puteanus, Comus (Oxford, 1634); annotated by Leigh Hunt (1784–1859).

BOOKS OF NOTABLE PROVENANCE

Arthur Duck, Vita Henrici Chichele (Oxford, 1617); with the initials of Isaak Walton (1593–1683).

Michel Montaigne, Les Essais (Paris, 1625); with a note in the hand of Abraham Cowley (1618–1687) and bookplates of later notable owners.

Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum (London, 1626); with supralibros of H[enry] G[oodere] and labels of other owners.

Elkanah Settle, Thalia Triumphans (London, 1717); binding with the arms of Henry Fiennes Clinton, 7^th Earl of Lincoln (1684–1728).

Abbe d’Aubignac, Pratique du théâtre (Paris, 1657); with the signature of William Congreve (1670–1729) on the title page.

William Burton, Description of Leicester Shire (London, 1622); binding with the crest of Robert Glascock.

A MARKER OF LITERARY TASTES

A Sammelband, in a contemporary binding, of eight English translations from Ovid, by George Chapman (1559?–1634), Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), Thomas Heywood (c. 1574–1641), and others, all published between c. 1625 and 1640.

MANUSCRIPTS ACQUIRED AT THE PIRIE SALE

Don C. Skemer
Curator of Manuscripts

The Manuscripts Division acquired three works at the Pirie auction: an Elizabethan prayer book c. 1580; a 1666 scribal copy of “The Second and Third Advice to a Painter,” a text that Professor of English Nigel Smith attributes to Andrew Marvell (1621–1678); and the 1660s memoir of an English woman named Mary Whitelocke. The daughter of London merchant Bigley Carleton, Whitelocke penned a fascinating 175-page memoir of her life and intimate thoughts for her eldest son. She traces her life from the time of her first marriage at the age of sixteen to Rowland Wilson (d. 1650), Member of Parliament, also from a London mercantile family. Whitelocke’s second marriage in 1650 was to the prominent Puritan lawyer, politician, and diplomat Bulstrode Whitelocke (1605–1675), a Member of Parliament and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, with whom Mary had seven children. Much of the memoir relates to Mary’s family, home, and religious beliefs. Particularly interesting is Whitelocke’s poignant account of a miscarriage that occurred during her first marriage. There is some discussion of public affairs and events, particularly in her defense of Bulstrode Whitelocke’s public life. The manuscript has been in private collections since 1860, when it was cited and quoted in a biography of Bulstrode Whitelocke. All three manuscripts have been added to the Robert H. Taylor Collection of English and American Literature (RTC 01).

A Rhapsody of early British Ephemera: 361 General items and 416 Book Trade : Recently acquired and digitized

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

For details about Boulter’s Museum see “Notes on an Eighteenth Century Museum at Great Yarmouth “Museum Boulterianum” and on the Development on the Modern Museum” by Thomas Southwell in The Museums Journal, October 1908, p. 110 ff [link] Call number: (Ex) 2014-0001M Box 1, item 98.

Ephemera published in England, Scotland, and Ireland between ca. 1650 and 1850 : The general collection has 361 printed pieces of ephemera relating to commercial trade, institutional, entertainment, museums, medicine, etc. Not only has the Princeton University Library recently acquired these originals, it also provides:
Electronic access: Inventory list with thumbnails and links to full size images: PDF, 53 pages [link]
Description: 1.1 linear ft. (2 boxes)
Descriptive terms:
• Advertisements, trade labels, and commercial announcements for those enterprising in: Alcoholic beverages, Auctions, Banks and banking, Barbers, Boats and boating, Cabinetwork, Clock and watch makers, Clothing trade, Coaching (Transportation), Concerts, Dentistry, Exhibitions, Groceries, Harness making and trade, Horses, Hotels, taverns, etc, Hotels, Ink, Insurance companies, Iron, Jewelers, Laundries, Lotteries, Millinery, Museums, Paint, Perfumes, Real estate agents, Restaurants, Saddlery, Sewing –Equipment and supplies, Shoe industry, Shoes, Taverns (Inns), and Tea.
• Forms and genres of ephemera such as Blank forms, Clippings, Invitations, Maxims, Military orders, Programs, Receipts (financial records), Satire, and Tickets.
> Call number: (Ex) 2014-0001M

Ephemera from the book trade as well as some library labels and bookplates, chiefly British, 18th and 19th centuries. The book trade collection includes 416 printed pieces of ephemera relating to every aspect of the Book Trade — Booksellers advertisements, Bookbinder’s advertisements, Paper makers, Printers, Stationers, Lithographers, Circulating Library labels and advertisements. Also included are some other library labels and bookplates of individuals. Not only has the Princeton University Library recently acquired these originals, it also provides:
Electronic access: Inventory list with thumbnails and links to full size images: PDF, 36 pages [link]
Description: .9 linear ft. (2 boxes)
Descriptive terms:
• Advertisements: printing, publishing, bookselling, stationery trade, bookbinding, commerical libraries. Library labels, rules and regulations. Bookplates.
• Forms and genres of ephemera such as trade labels, binder’s tickets, bookseller’s tickets, booklabels.
> Call number: (Ex) 2014-0002M

Nicholson’s Circulating Library

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

Booklabel of Nicholson’s Circulating Library on front paste-down of Joseph Harris, The Description and use of the Globes and Orrery. … The Sixth Edition. London: Printed for Thomas Wright, mathematical instrument-maker, at the Orrery near Water-Lane, and E. Chushee, globe-maker, at the Globe and Sun, between St. Dunstan’s Church and Chancery Lane, both in Fleet-Street. 1745.

Instructions on front endpaper for titling the spine-label.

❧ “The principal Circulating Library in Cambridge, is Nicholson’s in Trumpington street. This Literary Repository has been established above fifty years, and may now be considered as one of the first in the kingdom: it is upon a different plan from any other extant ; consisting principally of classical and mathematical books, adapted to the lectures and studies of the University. The immense number of volumes, contained in this Library, is astonishing; for it possess three, four, and even five hundred copies of many publications, some of which are extremely scarce and of great value. The University and town are also accommodated here, with books of amusement and universal instruction: viz. Divinity, Law, Physic, History, Biography, Voyages, Travels, Novels, Romances, ‘Poetry, Plays, &c. &c, &c. in all languages: affording a Library adapted either for the study of the learned, or the instruction and amusement of the public in general. The terms of this Library are: subscriptions 7s. 6d. per quarter; for which sum each subscriber is allowed Fifteen Books at once, to be changed as often as agreeable. Books are also let out, on very moderate terms, by the volume or set, for any length of time. This Circulating Library has received the greatest encouragement from the members of the University, who in general become subscribers on their arrival at college. The number of subscribers in the University, (independent of the town and county) during term, generally exceeds five hundred.” — New Cambridge Guide; Or, A Description of the University, Town, and County of Cambridge (Cambridge: Printed for and sold by J. Nicholson, Trumpington-Street and F. and C. Rivington, St. Paul’s Church-yard, London. 1804) p. 97.

[For the portrait of bookseller and circulating library proprietor John Nicholson (1730–1796), see http://goo.gl/VTQe52 and for particulars about his nickname “Maps” see http://goo.gl/g8qt6H]

Inserted before page 35: Trade advertisement for Thomas Wright and Richard Cushee (d. 1732). Publisher of this 1745 edition, E. Cushee, succeeded Richard Cushee.

Rare Book Division. Call number: (Ex) Item 6813092

Bookplate of Margaretta Elizabeth, Baroness Arden (1768-1851)

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

Bookplate in the Princeton copy of Gianvincenzo Gravina (1664-1718). Della ragion poetica tra’ Greci, Latini ed Italiani. Edited by Thomas James Mathias. (London: T. Becket, 1806) [Call number: (Ex) 2950.406]
❧ This bookplate is not recorded in such standard sources as Franks Bequest: Catalogue of British and American Book Plates bequested to the Trustees of the British Museum (London, 1903). By good fortune, there is tipped in at front an 1806 letter by the book’s editor Thomas James Mathias (1754?- 1835). The letter provides a substantial clue about the name of the bookplate’s owner — Mathias addressees “you and Lord Arden.” The coronet in the bookplate is that of a baron, signaling that “Lord Arden” must be the “Baron Arden” of the day, Charles George Perceval, 2nd Baron Arden (1756–1840). His wife is Margaretta Elizabeth, Baroness Arden, and we can directly see her initials (“M.E.A.,” including those initials reversed) in the monogram below the coronet.

Sylvia Beach and the Bard sharing a goblet of wine

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

In her memoir Shakespeare & Company (1960), Sylvia Beach writes: “I have a treasure too, the bookplate Gordon Craig made for me. Like the least thing he made, his little Shakespeare with bookseller kneeling at his feet is fascinating.”

Gordon Craig, noting shortages due to the war, writes ‘Just a few of your bookplates on gummed paper – a rarety! If you wish for more do find some paper. S[‘il]. V[ous]. P[lait]. 17.4.45 EGC.’

‘At last a nice print of the little nothing —’ (in Gordon Craig’s handwriting).

Sylvia Beach’s handwritten notes on her envelope for the bookplates.

❧ Her bookplate appears in a number of her books held by Princeton in the separately arranged book collection called the ‘Beach Collection.’ For details as to how this collection came to the Library as well as information about her books not held here, see a related blog post “The Dispersal of Sylvia Beach’s Books.”

Further details about this bookplate are in John Blatchly, The Bookplates of Edward Gordon Craig (London, 1997) p. 22 ff.

Originals above are located in the Sylvia Beach Papers (C0108), box 16, folder 28, held by the Manuscripts Division,
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

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

Posted on December 27, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

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.

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

Posted on December 10, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

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

Bookplate • 1582 • Johann Gesswein / Göswein of Schwäbisch Gmünd (Baden-Württemberg).

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

1582 / Γvῶθι καὶ πoίει. / Sum [ex libris] M. Ioannis Gessvvini / Gamundiani.

I am [from the books of] M[agister] Johann Gesswein / Göswein of Schwäbisch Gmünd (Baden-Württemberg).

Virgil. Pub. Vergilii Maronis Opera / una cum annotatiunculis Philippi Melanchthonis.
Tiguri [Zurich]: apud Froschouerum, 1547.
Junius Spencer Morgan Collection (VRG) 2945.1547

Note related bookplate dated 1557 recorded in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:
[Wappen des Johannes Gessuvinus Gamundianus]

Binds & Sells all sorts of Stationary Wares

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

John Dean Book-binder & Stationer at the Sign of Dean Swift in Front Street between Walnut & Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia, Binds & Sells all sorts of Stationary Wares. Journal, Bill-book, Sale-book, Ledger. Adams, Sc.

Trade card of John Dean, mounted on front paste-down of Ledger of the Trustees of the College of New Jersey, May 1st, 1769 (Call number: Mudd Library: AC128, Subseries 1E: Ledgers).

Engraved by Dunlap Adams, “Engraver in Front Street between Chesnut and Walnut streets,” as per his advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette, September 6, 1764.

Further details: Francis James Dallet, “A Colonial Binding and Engraving Discovery: the College Ledger of 1769,” Princeton University Library Chronicle, v.31, no.2 (Winter, 1970) [link to issue]

Supralibros: Camille Aboussouan

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Supralibros of Camille Aboussouan. His books sold at Sotheby’s (London) 17th and 18th June 1993, The Library of Camille Aboussouan. His vita is available from UNESCO. He served as ambassador from Lebanon to UNESCO. Earlier this year, his death was announced [19/01/2013] by the Lebanese embassy in Paris.

Supralibros on front cover of Andrea Alicati, Emblemata (Paris, 1602). Call number (EX) N7710 .A35 1602.

Wisbech Literary Society • 1781

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

On front pastedown of: Charleton, Walter, 1619-1707. Enquiries into human nature, in VI. anatomic praelections in the New Theatre of the Royal Colledge of Physicians in London. London, printed by M. White, for Robert Boulter, 1680. Call number (Ex) 89541.251

Founded in 1781, the catalogue of the Society was recently reissued by the Cambridge University Press.

Booklabel • Margaret Harrington • October, 5th. 1694

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

“Margaret Harrington” and the date “October, 5th. 1694” printed in letterpress within a frame of woodcut flowers emerging from two vases with a crown and crossed sceptres at the center top. Her booklabel as rear pastedown.

Her booklabel as front pastedown.

Woolley, Hannah, fl. 1670. The Queen-like closet, or, Rich Cabinet: Stored with all Manner of Rare Receipts for Preserving, Candying and Cookery, very pleasant and beneficial to all ingenious persons of the female sex: to which is added a supplement, presented to all ingenious ladies, and gentlewomen. The Third Edition. London : Printed for Richard Lowndes at the White Lion in Duck-Lane, near West-Smithfield, 1675. Call number (EX) 2013-0156N.

This label is not recorded in Brian North Lee Early Printed Book Labels: a Catalogue of Dated Personal Labels and Gift Labels Printed in Britain to the Year 1760 London, 1976.

Bookplate: Luton Library

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Arms of John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute (1793-1848). Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire was one of his four major seats. ❧ Franks 28448 (Stuart, Marquess of Bute.) Luton Library. (Arms. Stuart with North on an escutcheon. John, 2nd Marquess, married 1818 as his 1st wife Maria, daughter of George Augustus, 3rd Earl of Guilford. She died 1841.) ❧ On front pastedown of Junius, Hadrianus, 1511-1575. Batavia. Lvgdvni Batavorvm: ex officina Plantiniana, apud F. Raphelengium, 1588. Call number: (EX) 2007-0536N

Bookplate of the Inner Temple Library • ca. 1760-70 • Ja[me]s Kirk, del. et sc.

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Bookplate (ca. 1760-1770) of the Inner Temple Library, together with two ownership stamps and one release stamp (“Inner Temple Library, Sold by Order, 1850”) in volume 14 of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (London, 1684). Call number: Ex 8001.793 vol. 14.

Harrison Gray Otis 3rd (1822-1884) • Bookplate

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

On front pastedown of
Muret, Marc-Antoine, 1526-1585. Commentarii in Aristotelis X. libros Ethicorvm ad Nicomachum, & in Oeconomica : Aristotelis Topicorvm libri septimi et in evndem Alexandri Aphrodisiensis commentarij interpretatio. Commentarivs in Lib I et II. Platonis de Repvb. Notae in Cypropaediam et Xenophontis … Ingolstadij, Excudebat Adam Sartorivs, 1602. Call number (EX) 2599.828

Harrison Gray Otis 3d, b. 1822, Harvard LL.B. 1842. After fighting a duel in Washington in 1844 with one Schott, he settled in Thun, Switzerland.
Married Mary West. [Three children: • Harrison Gray Otis IV b. 1857 Bethany PA (Otis family summer home), d. sometime after his last recorded passport application dated 1897 • Arthur Otis b. 1860 Bethany PA, d. unknown. • Blanche Bordman Otis b. 1863, d. 1921] HGO 3d d. in Switzerland 1 April 1884.
❧ [Sources: S.E. Morison, Harrison Gray Otis (1969); Application for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution submitted by Arnim Edward Louis Otis Muller (grandson of HGO 3d); 1870 US Census; US Emergency Passport Applications (Issued Abroad), series for 1877-1907]

Fore-edge painting • Ravensworth Castle • Gateshead-on-Tyne

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Now in ruins, Ravensworth Castle in County Durham was for several centuries the seat of the Liddell family. ❧ This painting decorates the fore-edge of a 32 cm tall copy of the Carmina of Horace printed in Strasbourg in 1788. Judging from the build-out depicted, this painting likely dates from the second quarter of the 19th century. ❧ This copy also has the armorial bookplate of Ravensworth Castle (Franks 18291). Call number PTT 2865.1788.2q.

Over-wrap • early 19th century American binding repair

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Binding reinforced and / or repaired with an over-wrap. Partially removed subscription or circulating library label suggests this copy endured regular use.
❧ Foster, Hannah Webster, 1759-1840. The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton; a Novel; Founded on Fact. Boston, Printed by Samuel Etheridge, 1797. Call number: (Ex) PS744.F7 C6 1797. [This copy also has a early handwritten listing identifying the actual names for the three principal characters.]

Bookplate of Sir Edward Bysshe

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Anonymous armorial bookplate of Sir Edward Bysshe (1615-1679).
Arms: Bysshe and Clare, quarterly dimidiated, impaling Green. Sir Edward Bysshe, Garter King of Arms, married Margaret, daughter of John Green of Boyshall, co. Essex; died 1679. Motto: Prudens Simplicitas.

Egerton Castle, in his English Book-Plates (London, 1893; p. 52) categorizes this plate as of the Carolian style, dates it to 1655, and describes it as “an indented, cusped and slightly scrolled shield, encompassed by palms tied together, wreath-like, by ribbands that interlace with the motto scroll, the whole contained within a line frame.” He illustrates it on p. [49].

This exemplar (11 x 6 cm) is mounted on the recto of front free endpaper facing the titlepage of Sir William D’Avenant (1606-1668), Gondibert: an Heroick Poem, London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb for John Holden, and are to be sold at his Shop at the sign of the Anchor in the New-Exchange, 1651. Call number: RHT 17th-149

Original 18th century circulating library wrappers

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

George Buchanan (1506-1582). The History of Scotland, from the Earliest Accounts of that Nation, to the Reign of King James VI. translated from the Latin of George Buchanan. In two volumes. Edinburgh: Printed by A. Donaldson and J. Reid. for Alex. Donaldson, 1762. Call number: (EX) Item 6427104. ❧
Provenance: Lot 279, sold at Bloomsbury Auctions (London), 14 December 2011. Also, in 1991, these were sold at Bloomsbury, June 13, 1991, lot 362, to Simon Finch. ❧ The British Library holds A Catalogue of Hargrove’s Circulating Library at Harrogate (York: W. Blanchard, 1801).

Beatniffe’s Circulating Library, Norwich

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Richard Beatniffe (Norwich, Norfolk) was active in the trade from 1763-1818 as bookseller, bookbinder, printer, music seller, and, during the 1770s, as owner of a circulating library. This label appears on the front pastedown of each volume of The History of Sir William Harrington Written Some Years since [by Thomas Hull] ; and Revised and Corrected by the late Mr. Richardson. London : Printed for J. Bell, at his extensive Circulating Library near Exeter-Exchange in the Strand, and C. Etherington at York, 1771. Call number: (Ex) 3792.95.3455 1771. ❧ [Type area measures 7.3 cm wide by 12.6 cm tall. Leaf size varies but the norm is 9.7 cm wide by 16.5 cm tall.] ❧ Earlier in 2012, the Library added a collection of 21 books from early English circulating libraries. Searching the phrase “Libraries, Subscription” in the main catalog returns records for these new additions together with more than 40 others already in the collections. Also searching the phrase “Library copies (Provenance)” returns more than 70 entries, many for books once in a circulating library.

Bookplate of Johann Christian Georg Bodenschatz (1717-1797)

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Bookplate of Johann Christian Georg Bodenschatz (1717-1797), German Protestant theologian. Dated both by engraving and in ink “An: 1738.” In his copy of three works by Johannes Leusden (1624-1699) bound together: Philologus Hebræus : continens quæstiones Hebraicas, quæ circa Vetus Testamentum Hebræum fere moveri solent Ultrajecti [Utrecht] : Ex officinâ Francisci Halma, 1686. [with] Philologus Hebræo-Græcus generalis : continens quæstiones Hebr[a]eo-Gr[a]ecas, quæ circa Novum Test. Græcum fere moveri solent Lugduni Batavorum [Leyden] : Apud Jordanum Luchtmans, 1685 [with] Philologus Hebraeo-mixtus : unà cum spicilegio philologico, continente decem quæstionum & positionum præcipuè philologico-Hebraicarum & Judaicarum centurias Ultrajecti [Utrecht] : Ex officinâ Francisci Halma … , 1682.
Call number (EX) 2005-0401N. The book’s owner immediately prior to Bodenschatz was Gustav Georg Zeltner (1672-1738). Both front and back endpapers have early handwritten extensive notes in Hebrew and Latin.

Castle Forbes Library

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Books from this library were sold in London on 21st July 1993. See: Sotheby’s (Firm) The Library of the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Granard:extracted from Castle Forbes, County Longford … (London, 1993).

Left: Bookplate of Castle Forbes Library • Right: Anonymous armorial bookplate of
George Forbes, 6th Earl of Grannard (1760-1837) [Arms. Forbes impaling Rawdon. In 1779, he married Selina Frances, daughter of John 1st Earl of Moira] Franks 10892.

Crest of George Forbes, 6th Earl of Grannard (1760-1837). For further details see
British Armorial Bindings: http://armorial.library.utoronto.ca/stamp-owners/FOR001 • Other marks of ownership for this library are illustrated in the sale catalogue. ❧ ❧ Sources of these examples: Gay, Sophie, 1776-1852. Laure d’Estell par Mme. ***. Paris: Ch. Pougens, an X (1802). Call number (EX) PQ2260.G25 L38 • Minutes of evidence taken before the Committee for privileges, on the Earl of Berkeley’s pedigree, in the year 1799. (London) 1811. Call number (Ex) Item 6375489q.

Armorial Bookplate: William Trumbull, Esqr.

Posted on June 2, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Armorial bookplate of William Trumbull, Esqr. [Franks 29899].
❧ Bookplate of William Trumbull (1708-1760), son of Sir William Trumbull (1639-1716) Secretary of State and bibliophile.

The Trumbull books were consigned to auction by the 8th Marquess of Downshire (d. 2004; obit.). The dispersal of the Trumbull books, extracted from Easthampstead estate, near Bracknell, was distributed across six sales, during 1990 and 1991, as follows:
❧ 1. Atlases, travel and natural history … : days of sale: Thursday 21st June 1990 …, Friday 22nd June 1990 …; Sotheby’s …, 34-35 New Bond Street, London. … the Property of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Downshire: Lots scattered throughout. Cf. lots 356, 360-63, 365-67. ❧ ❧ 2. English Literature and History: Including Books from the Library of the … Marquess of Downshire, Thursday 19th July 1990 .. Sotheby’s …, 34-35 New Bond Street, London. Lots 29-36, 47-50, 358-60, 381-95 [30 lots]. ❧ ❧ 3. Books and maps : Sotheby’s London [sale held during four days] 22nd-23rd October 5th – 6th November 1990. On the fourth day of sale: Tuesday 6th November 1990 lots 965-1232 were sold. These included “The Property of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Downshire Various Subjects including Science and Medicine,” Lots 910-964 [54 lots]. ❧ ❧ 4. Continental and Russian books and manuscripts, science and medicine … : day of sale: Tuesday 20th November 1990 …; Sotheby’s …, 34-35 New Bond Street, London. … the Property of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Downshire: Lots 223-227, 329-332 [9 lots]. ❧ ❧ 5. English literature and history … : Thursday 13th December 1990 …; Sotheby’s …, 34-35 New Bond Street, London. … the Property of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Downshire: Lots scattered throughout, e.g. 353. ❧ ❧ 6. Printed books and maps: 5. and 19. February 1991. Sotheby’s … London. …. the Property of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Downshire: Lots 687-762 [75 lots].

Bookplate in: John Kersey, Title: The Elements of that Mathematical Art Commonly called Algebra, Expounded in Four Books. London, Printed by W. Godbid, for T. Passinger and B. Hurlock, 1673-1674. Call number (Ex) QA33 .K4 1674q. (Sotheby’s, London, Feb. 19, 1991, lot 727).

Bookstamp: Bibliothèque de Tsarskoe Selo

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

In 1938, the Library purchased from New York bookseller Maurice Sloog “more than 600 volumes of early nineteenth century fiction … from the Imperial Library at Tsarskoe-Selo. Most of the books have the stamp of the Imperial Library, and some bear the bookplate of Alexander III. Another plate with the words “Bibliothèque de Tsarkoe-Selo” indicates that the books came from that section of the private library of Nicholas II which was housed in the Alexander Palace.” Further particulars given in the following article, here quoted above: Albert E. McVitty, Jr. ’32 “Books from Tsarskoe-Selo, Nineteenth Century French Novels, Bearing Imperial Bookplates, Now at Princeton” in the Princeton Alumni Weekly XXXVIII, 27 (April 15, 1938), pp. 1-2. ❧ News of the accession also published in The New York Times, May 10, 1938 [link to article]

❧ Example above on half title of Bantysh-Kamenskīĭ, D. N. (Dmitrīĭ Nikolaevich), 1788-1850. Siècle de Pierre-le-Grand; ou, Actions et hauts faits des capitaines et des ministres qui se sont illustrés sous le règne de cet empereur; tr. du russe … par un officier russe, avec des remarques explicatives du traducteur … A Moscou, S. Selivanovsky, 1822. Call number (EX) 1627.168.144 vol. 1.

Bookplate of an “Anglus Americanus”

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Pasted onto the inside front board of Jethro Tull (1674-1741), The Horse-Hoing Husbandry: or, An essay on the principles of tillage and vegetation. Wherein is shewn a method of introducing a sort of vineyard-culture into the corn-fields, in order to increase their product, and diminish the common expence; by the use of instruments described in cuts. By I. T. London, Printed for the author, 1733.
Call number (EX) S603 .T92 1733q. ❧

This plate is dated in manuscript at the corners “1740”. Another example is known dated “1743”.

There has been some confusion as to which Dudley Woodbridge owned this plate. Was it Dudley Woodbridge, born 1677, Harvard class of 1696, died 1720, who served as Director General of the Royal Assiento Company of England? Or was it the plate of his son, the Reverend Dudley Woodbridge, who served as Rector of St. Philips, Barbados,
born 1706, matriculated Magdalen College, Oxford 1723, and his will dated 15 March 1747/8 and proved 14 February 1749/50?

The dispositive evidence may be the use of the epithet “Anglus Americanus”. The only other recorded use on this epithet on a bookplate is that of Jeremiah Dummer (1681–1739). According to Calhoun Winton, “Jeremiah Dummer: The ‘First American?'”
William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 26 (1969): 105-8, Dummer made a point of announcing his American origins to the English and other Europeans he encountered during his many years overseas. In his will, dated 7th June, 1738 Dummer left to “Dudley Woodbridge of
Barbadoes, £50, for the pleasure I had in his company when in England.”

Of the two, father and son, only the son, the Rev. Dudley Woodbridge was alive in 1738. Clearly he was well acquainted with another “Anglus Americanus” and evidently wanted to show his communal association.
❧

Example of Dummer bookplate from Charles Dexter Allen, American Book-Plates (London, 1895).

Bookplate designed by Ze’ev Raban

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Bookplate designed by Ze’ev Raban. “From the books of Batya and Shlomo Greenberg.” On front pastedown of Rebecca Gratz (1781-1869). Letters …,edited, with an introduction and notes, by Rabbi David Philipson. (Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1929). Leonard L. Milberg Collection of Jewish American Writers, given in honor of President Harold T. Shapiro. [Call number (Ex) F158.9.J5 G7 Milberg JAmW.] ❧ This bookplate is also illustrated on page 14 of Not for myself alone : celebrating Jewish-American writers, October 21, 2001-April 21, 2002 : from the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Collection of Jewish-American Writers. [Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Library, 2002]. ❧

Armorial bookplate dated 1739: Francis Massy, Esq. of Rixton, Lancashire

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

“Francis Massy, lord of the manors of Rixton and Glazebrook, born 1703, and who died unmarried 28 September 1748, when the family became extinct. By his will, dated 27 February, he left his estate and effects to his kinsman George Meynell of Yorkshire.” – Remains Historical & Literary Connected with the Palatine Counties of
Lancaster and Chester. Published By The Chetham Society. Vol. CX. (1882), p. 224.
❧ Bookplate signed “I. Skinner, Bath, sculpt.” Jacob Skinner was active between 1732 and 1753.
❧ The Massy bookplate is on the front pastedown of Gabriel Harvey’s copy of Livy (Basle, 1555). Call number (Ex) PA6452 .A2 1555q. A complete digital scan of this remarkable annotated book is available here, however, the scanning project did not include full coverage of this piece of ownership evidence.

Armorial bookplate: Valentin Ferdinand von Gudenus (1679-1758)

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Armorial bookplate of Valentin Ferdinand von Gudenus (1679-1758). Engraving signed “A. Reinhardt” (likely to be ‘the elder’, ca. 1676-1742). Pasted on verso of title page of Hugo Grotius, Annales et historiæ de rebus Belgicis. Amstelædami, ex typographejo Joannis Blaeu, MDCLVII. [1657]. Call number (GAX) 2004-1243q ❧

Ex Libris Adr. Jos. Havé

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

❧ Ownership stamping of Adrien-Joseph Havé (1740-1817) on spine of: Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d’, 1723-1789. La contagion sacrée; ou, Histoire naturelle de la superstition. Ouvrage tr. de l’anglois. … Londres, 1768. (Ex) BF1410.xH6.
For details on Havé, see entry above from Jadart (H.) Les Bibliophiles Remois, leurs Ex-Libris et fers de reliure (1894).

Formerly owned by Sir Hans Sloane

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Earlier today researchers with the Sloane Printed Books Project confirmed that the Princeton copy of G. Lockhart, Memoirs concerning the Affairs of Scotland (London, 1714; call number RCPXR 14825.592.11) is from his library. The project’s website explains a number of ways to recognizing his books, cf. “Identifying Sloane’s books.” The bookstamps “Mvsevm Britiannivm” and “British Museum Sale Duplicate 1787” are one instance of evidence (verso of title page showing through.) However, key evidence is that Sloane’s manuscript catalogue lists this work (vol. 5 f 232 r) as “a 2015.” At the foot of the title page the “a” and the “2” are visible. ❧ Other embossements and markings signal Princeton’s accession of this book in the 19th century. ❧

Booklabels of James Toovey († 1893)

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

❧ Oval book label printed in gilt: Burnham Abbey Bucks; monogram within ‘IT’ with a cross, on front paste-down of Virgil. Opera.
Rome : In domo Petri de Maximo [Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz], 28 Feb. 1469.
Junius Morgan Collection (VRG) 2945.1469q

❧ Circular book label printed in gilt with monogram ‘IT’ with a cross, surrounded by wreath and scroll with motto “Inter Folia Fructus.” On front paste down of Constitutions des treize États-Unis de l’Amérique.
A Philadelphia et se trouve a Paris, : P. D. Pierres, imprimeur. ; Pissot, pere & fils, Libraires, 1783. Call number (EX) 7583.01.267.11 copy 1. This copy presented by Junius Morgan, accessioned 10 May 1897.
❧ ❧
For more on Toovey see W. Roberts, The Book-Hunter in London (1895), page 253 ff

John Boyle, 5th Earl of Orrery (1707–1762)

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Bound in vellum stained green

A Collection of the State Letters of the Rt. Hon. Roger Boyle, the first earl of Orrery (Dublin, Printed by and for G. Faulkner, 1743). Call number (Ex) 1473.16.691.
❧ With his badge: “O” surmounted by an earl’s coronet stamped on spine:

For further details, see British Armorial Bindings, http://armorial.library.utoronto.ca/stamp-owners/BOY003

❧ Inscribed on front free endpaper: “Orrery. Leicester Fields. Feb: 8th 1750-51”

❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧

Horace
Call number (PTT) 2865.321.241.
A nonce volume bound for John Boyle, Earl of Orrery, for his literary endeavors.
Bound in calf with spine title “Orrery’s Odes of Horace & Co.” Signed on front free endpaper “Orrery. Caledon: October 17th, 1746.”
❧ Bound together in this volume are interleaved copies of his First Ode (ESTC T35560), Pyrrah (ESTC T46133), and Poem to the Memory of Edward Sheffield (ESTC T42559) as well as 23 blank leaves at front and 23 blank leaves at back. Some of the interleaves have his autograph comments on the facing text. Moreover, on pp. 2-8 of front blanks: his two autograph poems: 1) “Translation of a Copy of Verses in Mr Waller’s Poems, entitled On my Lady Isabella playing on the Lute” (in Latin with Waller’s poem in English on the facing page) and 2) “Lusus Pilae amatorius. Petronii Afranii” with “Imitated. 1727” on the facing page. On p. 1 of back blanks: his autograph poem (English): “To Mr Rysbrack. On his Buste of **********”.
❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧

Ange Goudar (1720-1791).
Pensées diverses. A Londres, chez Mr. P. Vaillant in the Strand. Chez Mr. W. Meyer in Mays-Buildings. Chez Mrs. Nutt at the Royal-Exchange. Chez Mr. Jollife in St. James-Street. Chez Mr. G. Jones in Ludgate-Street, 1750. ESTC T109290. Call number: Ex 3255.5417.371

Bookplates ❧ In A Collection of the State Letters

His bookplate dating to 1751 or later;
John succeeded his father as fifth earl of Orrery in 1731 and his kinsman as fifth earl of Cork in 1751.

❧ ❧ In The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. (London, 1616) Call number (EX) 3806.1616q

His bookplate with arms of Boyle impaling Hamilton to commemorate his marriage in 1738 to Margaret, the only daughter of John Hamilton, Esq., of Caledon, co. Tyrone. and his initials “I.O.” to left of coronet. ❧ For further details about his bookplates see: Journal of the Ex Libris Society vol. 7 p.57 for “Notes on some Boyle bookplates” at
http://goo.gl/YjiKj

❧ His sale: Catalogue of the valuable and extensive library and collection of autograph letters of the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Cork and Orrery removed from Marston, Frome which will be sold by auction by Messrs. Christie, Manson & Woods at their great rooms 8 King Street, St. James’s Square on Tuesday, November 21, 1905 and two following days at one o’clock precisely. London: Printed by William Clowes and Sons. [1905]. 736 lots, mostly itemized.

Supralibros of Jean de la Rochefoucauld, abbé de Marmoutiers (d. 1583).

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Paolo Emili(d. 1529).
De rebvs gestis francorvm libri X. Anoldi Ferroni… De rebvs gestis Gallorum libri IX ad historiam Pauli Aemylii additi, Chronicon I. Tilii de regibvs francoribii, a Pharamundo usque ad Henricum II. Paris: apud Vascosanum, 1555. Call number: (Ex) 1508.324.

Also on the front pastedown:
18th century armorial bookplate: “Du Comte Antoine Facipecora Pavesi Sus-Intendant génèral des Eaux dans la Ville, et Duché de Mantoue.” See:
Jacopo Gelli, 3500 ex libris italiani (Milan, 1908), p. 156.

Edward Irenaeus Stevenson. His Book.

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Bookplate of
Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson (1858-1942) ❧ Signed at lower left: EIS del[ineavit]. 1891. ❧ Inscribed on open book: φρονιμος οι όφεις = wise as serpents (cf. Matthew 10:16). Apple in the mouth of the snake inscribed “eritis sicut deus” (“You shall be as god” cf. Genesis 3:5)
❧
On pastedown: Armorial bookplate of Syston Park Library, that of Thorold, John, Sir, 9th bart., 1734-1815 and his son John Hayford Thorold, 10th bart., 1773-1831 of Syston Park, Grantham, Lincs. Also visible is lower portion of the booklabel of Grenville Kane (1854-1943)
❧
In: Marcus Junianus Justinus, Pompei Trogi externae historiae in compendium ab Iustino redactae. Venice: Aldus Manutius and Andreas Torresanus, de Asula soc., January 1522. Call number: (ExKa) Special 1522 Justinus ❧This copy sold at auction of books from the Syston Park Library by Sotheby (London), 12 Dec. 1884, lot 1077, to Sabin, for 18 shillings.

Claude Crespigny of the South Sea House

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Claude Crespigny of the South Sea House
[This post first published in December 2011. Revised May 2013]
❧ Armorial bookplate, signature, crest, cipher, inscription. ❧
Sir Claude Champion de Crespigny (1706-1782). At death, he left his library to his great nephew, Hugh Reveley (1772-1851) whose signature is in pencil on recto of the free endpaper. ❧ On spine is Crespigny’s cipher (interlaced C’s) and crest (On a chapeau, gules, turned up, ermine, a enhit arm erect, holding a broad sword, proper). ❧ Inscribed on pastedown: “This book was given me by the Hon.ble John Spencer Esq.r A.o 1745.”
❧ Johann Heinrich Cohausen (1665-1750). Hermippus redivivus : or, The sage’s triumph over old age and the grave. Wherein, a method is laid down for prolonging the life and vigour of man. Including a commentary upon an antient inscription, in which this great secret is revealed; supported by numerous authorities. The whole interspersed with a great variety of remarkable, and well attested relations. London : Printed for J. Nourse, 1744. Call number: (Ex)3437.93.345.6

Thomas Frewen, of Lincoln’s Inn, in the County of Middlesex, Esqr., 1711.

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Bookplate: Thomas Frewen, of Lincoln’s Inn, in the County of Middlesex, Esqr., 1711.
Citation: Franks 11412. [(Arms. Frewen quartering Scott,
Longhurst and Wolverstone.]
❧ This is Thomas Frewen (1687-1738), according to ESTC T132060, copy held at Ham House.
Source of this bookplate: Call number (Ex)3826.36.333.14q. [Fables of Aesop, London, 1699]

Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (b. 1756, d. 1829)

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Bookplate and bookstamp of
Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (b. 1756, d. 1829). More than 40 of his books in the Library, many including with a presentation inscription from the work’s author. Evidently this plate (“The Honourable Francis Henry Egerton, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, &c, &c, &c”) dates from his years in Paris, after 1802. A number of books also carry the red stamp ‘Ashridge Library,’ perhaps indicating that these came to England and were kept at Ashridge House, the Egerton family seat in Hertfordshire. To find these 40+ books, search in the main catalogue: “Bridgewater, Francis Henry Egerton, Earl of, 1756-1829, former owner.”

1752 Irish prize binding

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Prize bookplate from Trinity College, Dublin to William Stopford, presented by Brabazon Disney, at the beginning of Michaelmas Term, 1752. Armorial stamp of Trinity College, Dublin, on front and back covers.

According to William B. Todd in “Note 571 Academic Prize Books” (Book Collector 49:3 (Autumn, 2000) p. 442-444, William Stopford in the same year was also awarded as a prize book: Juvenal & Persius, Dublin, 1746. (Illustrated in Prof. Todd’s 1961 catalogue Prize Books)

Terence. Comoediæ. (Dublin: Typographia Academiæ, 1745)
Call number (Ex) Item 6201299

Bookplate of Cha: Read of New Jersey, Esq.

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Bookplate on front pastedown of
Lilly, John, 18th cent.
Modern entries: being a collection of select pleadings in the Courts of King’s Bench, Common Pleas and Exchequer. Declarations, Pleas in Abatement and in the Bar, Replications, Rejoinders, etc. Demurrers, issues, verdicts, judgments, forms of making up records of Nisi prius, and entring of judgments, etc. in most actions. Many of them drawn or persued by Mr. Broderick … and other learned Counsel. As also special assignments of Errors, and Writs and Proceedings thereupon, both in the said Courts and in Parliament. With the method of suing to and reversing outlawries by Writ of Error or otherwise. To which is added a collection of writs in most cases now in practice, by John Lilly.
[ London] In the Savoy: Printed by Henry Lintot, 1741. Call number: (Ex) 7891.586q

“Read, Charles, lawyer, jurist, founder, was born Feb. 1, 1715. in Philadelphia, Pa. His father, of the same name, was mayor of Philadelphia in 1725, sheriff of the county in 1729-31, collector of excise in 1725 34, About 1760 he became an associate justice of the supreme court of New Jersey, which office, as well as that of collector, he held till the revolution, acting for a time as chief justice in 1764, He was several times mayor of Burlington. He was chosen colonel of a regiment of militia in 1776. He was one of the founders of the American Philosophical Society. He died about 1780 in North Carolina.” – Herringshaw’s National Library of American Biography (1914), p. 560.

Ellen Gordon Craig – bookplate

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Bookpate with initials ‘N C’. This is Ellen Gordon Craig (1904-75), always known as Nelly, Edward Gordon Craig’s daughter by Elena Meo. This bookplate is the work of her brother, Edward Anthony Craig (1905-1998) whose working name was Edward Carrick. Cf. John Blatchly, “Bookplates and Devices by the Later Craigs,” The Bookplate Journal, New Series, Voll. 1, No. 2, September 2003, p. 75 ff. Note exemplar 11 on p. 78.
Petrarca, Francesco. Le Rime di Francesco Petrarca. Firenze, g. Terni, 1854. Call number: Ex 2012-0032S. Front paste down inscribed in pencil ‘N. Gordon Craig [19]38’.

Trotter family library copy • armorial bookplate with motto: In promptu

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Trotter family library copy • armorial bookplate with motto: In promptu
Inscribed: ‘I bought this book from Jo[h]n Vallange meerly for ye Style w[hi]ch being affected pedantical & Latinized was it would seem the mode in these times wherein it was writt.’ This is evidently by John Trotter, d. 1718, whose similar inscriptions of provenance appear on a number of books he purchased between the 1690s and 1707.
Baron, Robert, b. 1630.
Erotopaignion, or, The Cyprian academy.
London, Printed by W. W. and are to be sold by J. Hardesty, T. Huntington, and T. Jackson, 1647.
Call number: (Ex) 3620.64.332