What is the language of the text on this page?

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Stephen Ferguson

Quiz: What is the language of the text on this page?

A) German
B) Latin
C) Chinese
D) Turkish

This rare book was brought to our attention by Professor Matthew Grenby of the University of Newcastle, who conducted research at Special Collections in preparation for his presentation at “Books for Children: Transnational Encounters 1750-1850,” a symposium hosted by the Cotsen Children’s Library in 2019. The ‘unintelligible’ scripts prompted some sleuthing by the Cotsen staff. The backstory of this book (Rare Books 2014-0211Q, accessioned in 1904!) is shared at the Cotsen Curatorial Blog, in an essay by Minjie Chen, entitled ‘Opium, Gospel, and the Conquest of the Babel.’ Click to find out the correct answer!

Teaching the SLAVE SHIP

Posted on May 28, 2020 by Eric White

Like many, I first saw this image in my childhood, and I have never forgotten it. However, in retrospect, I do not believe that I was taught the history behind the image correctly – at least, not the whole history.

In a blog entry originally posted in 2017 and recently recirculated widely, Corinne Shutack advocated 75 specific constructive actions in support of racial justice. Among them was the recommendation that parents, teachers, and concerned citizens should encourage their schools to ensure that the topic of slavery in American history is taught correctly.¹ Noting that a correct history is one that listens to many voices from the past, Shutack asked ‘is your school showing images such as Gordon’s scourged back, a slave ship hold, and an enslaved nurse holding her young master?’ The slave ship hold to which she refers is the ‘Description of a Slave Ship’, a powerful image produced as a broadside (a public poster) in London in 1789, as well as its many derivatives. Although these important images do not record the ‘voices’ of the enslaved, they do represent essential eyewitness testimony to the cruel practices of enslavement through the depiction of a slave-trade ship’s cargo hold.

Description of a Slave Ship, 1789 (woodcuts). Oversize 2006-0018E

Educators who wish to display these images in teaching may wish to know that Princeton University Library owns the two earliest original broadsides of the ‘Description of a Slave Ship’, both printed in 1789. They have been digitized and are freely available to all. Two points worth emphasizing to students are the large size of the broadsides, which measure two feet tall, and the ship doctor’s horrifically detailed report, which accompanies the image, but is often left out in textbook reproductions. Here is the link to higher-resolution images of the two broadsides (in the page that opens, the image download button is on the left, below the contents panel next to the two images):

https://dpul.princeton.edu/wa/catalog/qj72p788s

Description of a Slave Ship, 1789 (engraved). Oversize 2016-0001E

Published by British abolitionists in April 1789, the broadsides of the ‘Description of a Slave Ship’ provided the most recognizable, shocking, and unforgettable of all images associated with the Atlantic slave trade. The plans and sections diagram in painful detail how the slave ship Brookes was intended to stow its full capacity of 482 men (in chains), women, and children. In reality, the inhumanity was even worse: up to 609 people were imprisoned within the ship during its two-month journeys from the coast of Africa to the West Indies. The accompanying text refuted the rationalizations of ‘the well-wishers to this trade’ with facts, statistics, and the ship doctor’s gruesome eyewitness report that invoked the reader’s moral duty to take action against ‘one of the greatest evils at this day existing upon the earth’.

Two variants of the original ‘Description of a Slave Ship’ are known, both published in London between 21 and 28 April 1789 (many later reproductions appeared in books). According to minutes of the London Committee of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the printing consisted of 1,700 broadsides illustrated with a copperplate engraving and 7,000 illustrated with woodcuts. Princeton’s engraved version includes some hand-written corrections to the printed text. For the history of these images, we recommend reading Cheryl Finley, Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon (Princeton University Press, 2018). Princeton acquired the engraved version in 2016 as a counterpart to the woodcut version, purchased in 2006 with matching funds given by Sidney Lapidus, Class of 1959.

Please feel free to share these images with teachers you know.

¹ Corrine Shutack, on MEDIUM’s ‘Equality Includes You’ page (August, 2017): https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/what-white-people-can-do-for-racial-justice-f2d18b0e0234

WHAT COULD BE BETTER? Pairing and Comparing the Scheide and Kane Copies of Fifteenth-Century Books

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Eric White

Question: What could be better for the study of early printed books than examining a copy of a rare 15^th-century edition?

Answer: Examining two copies of a rare 15^th-century edition.

Thanks to several formerly independent channels of 20th-century collecting, now united, Princeton University Library’s Special Collections owns multiple copies of more than thirty 15^th-century editions. We do not consider them ‘duplicates’, as that would imply that they are absolutely identical, and that nothing is to be learned from the ‘second’ copy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even if every letter of every word printed on every page were virtually identical (with printing shop corrections and other improvements, this is often not the case), the individual copies would still reflect entirely different histories of readership and survival, preserving unique material evidence that may be crucial to the attentive researcher, or of worthwhile interest to the casual student of book history.

Illustrated below are four examples of 15^th-century editions represented by two copies. In each case, one of the copies was owned by Grenville Kane (1854–1943) of Tuxedo Park, New York, whose fine library of early books and Americana was purchased by the Trustees of Princeton University in 1946, while another copy is in the incomparable Scheide Library, long on deposit in Firestone Library but bequeathed to Princeton University in 2015 by the late William H. Scheide (1914–2014), Class of 1936. The first things that strikes most present-day viewers are the differences in their hand-decoration, and in their various bindings – copy-specific features that were added only after the individual sets of printed sheets were sold to their first owners. Moreover, three of the selected pairs also exhibit distinctive typographic variations, belying the notion that they are ‘duplicates’. Here we offer only the briefest introductions to these pairs of books, which call out for further study and comparison:

Cicero, De Officiis. [Mainz:] Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer, 4 February 1466.

Scheide 31.17

These two small folios, both printed on vellum, are from the second edition of Cicero’s treatise on the honorable fulfillment of moral duties, one of the first Classical works to be published. The Scheide copy, richly illuminated in Franco-Flemish style, is among the most beautiful of the roughly 50 copies that survive. It emerged from the collection of Ralph Willett (1719–1795), whose library at Merly was sold by Sotheby’s in 1813, and later was owned by Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773–1843), and Robert Stayner Holford (1808–1892), of Gloucestershire, respectively. In 1925 Holford’s son sold the book to the Philadelphia bookseller A.S.W. Rosenbach, from whom Gertrude Scheide Caldwell purchased it as a Christmas gift for her brother John H. Scheide in December, 1927.

EXKA Incunabula 1466

Princeton’s other copy, decorated in German style, has been traced back to 1572, when ‘David Weisius’ was recorded as its donor to the town library of Augsburg. This individual was probably David Weiss (1531–1593), Augsburg patrician and town benefactor. It remained in Augsburg until 1798, after which it passed through three important private collections in Moscow.¹ In 1931 the Soviet government sold it through Maggs Brothers, London, to Grenville Kane, whose collection came to Princeton University Library in 1946.

Recent research has led to the important discovery that the pair of painted coats-of-arms on the first page of Princeton’s Cicero refers to the German noble families of Truchseß zu Wetzhausen (left) and Wilhelmsdorf (right). To date, the only known union between these families was the mid-15^th-century marriage of Jakob Truchseß zu Wetzhausen of Dachsbach and Susanna von Wilhelmsdorf.² Their son, Dr Thomas Truchseß zu Wetzhausen (ca. 1460–1523), Dean of Speyer Cathedral, one-time student and later defender of Johannes Reuchlin, and correspondent and host of Erasmus of Rotterdam, was almost certainly the owner of Princeton’s 1466 Cicero.

Comparison of the Princeton and Scheide copies also reveals several typographic variants, including the presence in the Scheide copy of a four-line Latin incipit, printed in red on the first page, but omitted from the Princeton copy, in which a shorter titulus was written in by hand; numerous instances of each of these contingencies survive. Another striking difference is found on f. 14 verso, where the Scheide copy has the heading printed as usual in red type, while in the Princeton copy, the entire heading was printed upside down – an isolated accident that resulted from one of the many complications of printing with two colors.

St Augustine, De Civitate Dei. Rome: Conradus Sweynheym & Arnoldus Pannartz, in domo Petri de Maximo, 1468.

EXKA Incunabula 1468

This Royal folio is either the second or the third edition of this foundational text of Western Christendom, following the Subiaco edition of 1467 and possibly the Strasbourg edition, datable not after 1468. The first page of the text in the Princeton copy was illuminated in colorful Italian ‘bianchi girari’ style. Interestingly, for the gilt initial G that introduces the words ‘Gloriosissimam civitatem dei’, a woodcut stamp, not printed in other copies, provided black outlines for the illuminator’s work, which continued free-hand into the margin. Several pages bear extensive contemporary annotations. The volume was bound in the 1790s for the British bibliophile Michael Wodhull (1740–1816), and was acquired by Princeton in 1946 with the Kane collection.

Scheide 59.5

By contrast, the copy purchased by John Scheide in 1940, which emerged from the Syston Park Library in 1884 and was rebound in London by Douglas Cockerell in 1903, never received its requisite initials or decoration by hand; indeed, the book reveals virtually no evidence of use by early readers. The copy is nevertheless of considerable interest, as its introductory leaf bears a beautifully written and historically significant gift inscription (below), which records that Nicolò Sandonino (1422–1499), Bishop of Lucca beginning in 1479, presented this book to the Carmelites of San Pietro Cigoli in Lucca in 1491. It is curious that these friars, who disposed of numerous important books during the early 18^th century, seem to have had no use for the bishop’s gift.

The Bishop of Lucca’s gift inscription, 1491.

Leonardo Bruni, De bello Italico adversus Gothos. Foligno: Emiliano Orfini & Johann Neumeister, 1470.

EXKA Incunabula 1470 Bruni

The first book printed in the small Italian town of Foligno was this history of the 5^th-century Goth invasion of the Italian peninsula, compiled in 1441 by Leonardo Bruni. It was published in 1470 by Johannes Neumeister, a peripatetic printer from Mainz who made a career of enticing investors into supporting unsustainable printing ventures. It is bound with another rare Chancery folio, the only copy held in America of Bernardus Justinianus, Oratio habita apud Sixtum IV contra Turcos. [Rome]: Johannes Philippus de Lignamine, [after 2 Dec. 1471]. The rubrication throughout is French, and the bottom margin of the first leaf bears the inscription ‘Jacques le Chandelier, 1550’. This owner is probably to be identified with the contemporary Royal Secretary in Paris by that name. The volume later wandered through a series of distinguished European private libraries and came to Princeton University with the Kane collection in 1946.³

Scheide 40.1

The Scheide copy, illuminated in the Italian ‘bianchi girari’ (white vine) style, is probably the one offered by the Ulrico Hoepli firm in Milan in 1935. It subsequently entered the library of Giannalisa Feltrinelli (1903–1981), an Italian heiress and bibliophile who had homes in Rome, Milan, Geneva, and Stanbridge East, Canada. The book was auctioned at Christie’s in New York on 7 October 1997, lot 19, to H. P. Kraus. When his firm’s inventory was auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York in December 2003, the book remained available and was bought after the sale by William H. Scheide.

In addition to featuring contrasting French and Italian hand-decoration, the two copies are differentiated by variant typesetting in their colophons, which include different spellings of the surname and hometown of Neumeister’s patron, the master of the papal mint in Foligno, Emilianus de Orfinis. Whereas the colophon in Princeton’s copy reads ‘Ursinis Eulginas’, that of the Scheide copy has been corrected to ‘Orfinis Fulginas’ (below).

Ptolemy, Cosmographia. Ulm: Lienhart Holle, 16 July 1482.

The Super-Royal folio ‘Ulm Ptolemy’ of 1482 is famous for its 32 large woodcut maps, including the great double-page ‘World Map’ carved by Johannes Schnitzer of Arnsheim, 26 regional maps based on Ptolemy’s 2^nd-century CE descriptions, and five new maps of Italy, France Spain, Scandinavia, and the Holy Land, based on manuscript projections by the editor of the work, Nicolaus Germanus, a Benedictine monk from the diocese of Breslau who lived and worked in Florence.

EXKA Ptolemy 1482

The Princeton copy, sold by the Rappaport firm in Rome toward the beginning of the last century, came with the Grenville Kane collection in 1946. The Scheide copy, richly hand-colored throughout, was inscribed in 1509 by Johannes Protzer (d. 1528), a scholar and bibliophile of Nördlingen, Germany. It emerged in the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps in the 19^th century and was acquired by John H. Scheide from A.S.W. Rosenbach in 1924.

Scheide 58.6

Although bibliographers sometimes discuss two 1482 Ulm ‘editions’ of this book, in fact there was only one edition, albeit one with many of its maps accompanied by textual descriptions that can appear in one of two or more alternate settings. For example, in the Princeton copy (below, left), the ninth map for Asia is accompanied by text that was composed into columns of 27 lines within a somewhat cramped square-shaped woodcut frame. By contrast, in the Scheide copy (below, right), the same page was composed more spaciously into 30 lines, fitting less tightly into a taller rectangular frame. To date, there has been no conclusive analysis of all the variant pages. Only a systematic comparison of multiple copies will provide a clearer understanding of the production of the 1482 Ulm Ptolemy.

What Could be Better?

Whereas traditional rare book librarianship tended to look upon the acquisition of ‘duplicates’ as undesirable or wasteful, given that precious funds could go toward adding texts that were not already represented in the collection, it is worth considering the special pedagogical and research value of comparing two copies from the same edition side by side. Experienced scholars as well as first-time students can appreciate that the two copies present distinct multiples of the original creation, each one preserving its own archeological record of survival and human intervention. Rubrication, illumination, binding, annotation, censorship, damage, repair, and other reflections of ownership and use offer fascinating traces of their disparate trajectories through history, revealing the many ways in which old books, as Milton observed, ‘are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them’.

Addendum:

Readers may be interested in the Morgan Library’s virtual tour by John McQuillen, “Why Three Gutenberg Bibles?”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIteWBHSa00&fbclid=IwAR2615uiqBWL15HGX8kAnOykQfWUBshMmNUIv1CRI6fBlQ8IvZ6jzz-jbjk

Notes:

¹ Count Aleksei Golowkin (d. 1811) of Moscow, whose gilt coat of arms appears on the front cover of the red-dyed goatskin binding; Alexandre Vlassoff (d. 1825), Imperial chamberlain in Moscow; Prince Michael Galitzin / Golitsyn (1804–1860), also in Moscow, with whose family it remained into the 20^th century.

² Johann Gottfried Biedermann, Geschlechtsregister der Reichsfrey unmittelbaren Ritterschaft Landes zu Franken Löblichen Orts Baunach (Bayreuth: Dietzel, 1747), table 197.

³ Early owners included Paul Girardot de Préfond (during the 1760s) in Paris; Pietro Antonio Bolongaro Crevenna (1735–1792) in Amsterdam; Michael Wodhull (1740–1816) in London; and William Horatio Crawford (1815–1888) at Lakelands in Cork, Ireland. In 1897 it was offered by the Quaritch firm (Catalogue 166, no. 770).

What the ’L : an Historiated Initial from the 1540s-1550s

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

This historiated initial ‘L’ appears at the beginning of the edition of Livy’s Decades published by Johann Herwagen in Basel in September 1555. While depictions of playful putti were an established convention of historiated initials, what are we to make of this pair? Well, it turns out that they have been noticed before, appearing for the first time in the 1543 Basel edition of the Fabrica of Vesalius. They dwell there not in isolation but as part of a twenty-three letter suite depicting putti behaving like medical students — vivisecting a pig, snatching corpses for anatomical study, etc. The website of Karger Publishers advertising their newly published English translation of the Fabrica provides detailed illustrations of the suite: http://www.vesaliusfabrica.com/en/original-fabrica/the-art-of-the-fabrica/historiated-capitals.html. Moreover, Karger lists several studies, including one by Dr. Samuel W. Lambert (1859-1942) available in Hathi Trust. A relevant excerpt follows:

Three Vesalian essays to accompany the Icones anatomicae of 1934 / by the late Samuel W. Lambert, Willy Wiegand & William M. Ivins, Jr

Samuel W. Lambert, ‘The initial letters of the anatomical treatise, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, of Vesalius’, in T. A. Malloch (ed.), Three Vesalian Essays to accompany the Icones Anatomicae of 1934 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), pp. 1-24).

Hercules and the Nemean Lion • Lyons, 1490

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

Woodcut on leaf A1 of Raoul Lefèvre Le Recueil des histoires de Troyes (Lyons: Michel Topié and Jacques Heremberck, 10 Oct. 1490). Goff L-114. [Call number (ExI) Item 6921096]. One of nearly 100 woodcuts, some full page in size, many half page. This new acquisition has several 16th / 17th signatures passim, all of the surname ‘de Saumery.’
❧ Killing the Nemean lion was the first labor of Hercules. He holds the lion’s skin which was said to be impervious to weapons. Looking on are his host, the shepherd Molorcus who lived near Cleonae as well as the companion of Hercules, Philotes. Lefevre’s Hercules is a “a medieval knight through and through” (The Classical Tradition [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010], p. 426.) William Caxton’s first major publication was his translation into English of Lefèvre’s Recueil.

A Binding by Thomas Krüger 1580

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

Signed and dated: T.K. 1563. British Museum. Dept. of Prints and Drawings. No. 1867,0713.115

Full length portrait of Philip Melanchton. ‘Modern impression’ print acquired by the British Museum in 1867, of panel signed and dated: T.K. 1563., viz., Thomas Krüger, Wittenberg bookbinder.
British Museum. Dept. of Prints and Drawings. No. 1867,0713.115

Full length portrait of Philip Melanchton. Panel signed and dated: T.K. 1563., viz., Thomas Krüger, Wittenberg bookbinder. Panel stamped in gilt on front cover of blind-tooled pigskin binding of the first Latin edition of the Lutheran Konkordienbuch (Leipzig, 1580). Call number: Ex 5646.604.

From a description of an instance of the use of this panel on a binding at the British Library:

“Thomas Krüger, possibly the son of the binder Nikolaus Krüger of Wittenberg and himself a binder, started work not later than 1560. A number of his panels were signed, either with his full name or with his initials, and some were dated. … The large Melanchthon panel on this binding, dated 1563 and with Cranach’s device at the bottom, … [Ed.: note Cranach’s device: ]… was copied from a woodcut by Cranach dated 1561,showing Melanchthon wearing the same fur-trimmed robe, neckcloth and shoes as on the panel, but with a closed instead of an open book in his right hand and a cap in his left. The face and hair are remarkably alike. The same woodcut served as example for the panels of other Wittenberg binders, such as those signed by Severin Rötter and Nikolaus Müller.” (- Mirjam M. Foot, “A Binding by Thomas Kruger, 1573. ” The Book Collector Vol 30, no. 2 (Summer 1981) p. 232-3. For image see the British Library Database of Bookbindings [link])

The back cover of this Leipzig, 1580 Latin edition of the Lutheran Konkordienbuch (Book of Concord) is stamped in gold with a full length portrait of Martin Luther, a panel also made by Thomas Krüger. Surrounding both panels is a blind decorative roll composed of four portrait heads and three coats of arms. The roll is signed ‘H.B.,’viz., Heinrich Blume, also of Wittenberg. Further details and bibliography about these two panels and one decorative roll are available in the Einbanddatenbanken (EBDB). For Luther, see Zitiernummer EBDB p002949; for Melanchthon, Zitiernummer EBDB p002950 and for roll signed ‘H B’ with four heads and three coats of arms, see Zitiernummer EBDB r000351

❧ Larger images

Full length portrait of Martin Luther. Panel signed T.K., that is, Thomas Krüger, Wittenberg bookbinder. Panel stamped in gilt on back cover of blind-tooled pigskin binding of the first Latin edition of the Lutheran Konkordienbuch (Leipzig, 1580). Call number: Ex 5646.604

Full length portrait of Martin Luther. Panel signed T.K., viz., Thomas Krüger, Wittenberg bookbinder. Panel stamped in gilt on back cover of blind-tooled pigskin binding of the first Latin edition of the Lutheran Konkordienbuch (Leipzig, 1580). Call number: Ex 5646.604

Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s Advice to Bathers (1819)

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

Frontispiece to The Art of Swimming (London: John Bailey, [1819]). Call number: Ex 4244.361. ❧ Captions of vignettes: To Swim Backwards; To Carry the Left Leg in the Right Hand; On the Manner of Diving; To Float with the Face Towards the Sky; To Cut the Nails of Your Toes in the Water.

Titlepage of The Art of Swimming … and Advice to Bathers, by the Late Celebrated Dr. Benj. Franklin (London: John Bailey, [1819]) Call number: Ex 4244 361.

The “Cautions To Learners, and Advice to Bathers, by the Late Celebrated Dr. Benj. Franklin” are “a pastiche of pieces of two of the good Doctor’s letters, one to Oliver Neave written some time before 1769 and the other to Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg of March 1773”

These letters were available in published form during the 18th century: that to Neave, published in Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity. (4th edition, London, 1769), pp. 463-8; and that to Barbeu-Dubourg appeared in an English translation published in the Works of the late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (London, 1793, 1794, 1796, 1799; Dublin, 1793, Dundee, 1796, 1800) (per Edwin Wolf 2nd, Annual Report of the Library Company of Philadelphia for the Year 1980, p.47).

This pastische was first published as such in London by Ann Lemoine in 1798 (ESTC N64777, T216540, and N50903) and was reprinted many times thereafter.

The Princeton copy illustrated here is one such reprint. The date ‘1819’ was assigned by a bibliographer of the literature of swimming, Ralph Thomas, in his Swimming; With Lists of Books Published in English, German, French and Other European Languages [1904], p. 224.

Thomas also notes that this reprint has the ‘objectional interpolation’ – a moniker for nonsense advice thus explained by Thomas: “Unfortunately about 1812 some ignoramus in one of the catchpenny reprints after ‘Then plunge under it with your eyes open’ added ‘which must be kept open before going under, as you cannot open the eyelids for the weight of water above you.’ This nonsense, which at once stamps the writer, and all those who quote it, as ignorant of diving, because it is perfectly easy to open the eyes under water, has been copied from one publication to another, right down to the present day [1904]: nobody ever thinking of verifying the passage, but some of the later writers have refuted the idea.” (p. 188)

Full text of this Princeton copy is available at Hathi Trust.
See http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101050403599

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

Abraham Ortelius presents a book

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

Inscribed at foot of titlepage: Pietate & humanitate venerabli D[omi]no, D[omino] Francisco Superantio Abraham Ortelius dono mittebat. [Abraham Ortelius has sent forth this gift to Lord Francesco Soranzo, venerable master in devotion and in cultured learning.]

❧ Francesco Soranzo (1557-1607) was a Venetian noble who served as ambassador to Spain from 1598 to 1600. • In 1597 in a letter to his nephew, Ortelius described his friend Soranzo: “At Venice, I doubt if I have, among the many friends there, any greater than Francisus Superantius (his venancular name is ‘de la Soranzo’), for I have felt myself to have had his benefits very often.” [Hessels, Epistulae Ortelianae (1887), 303: Venetiis magnum inter ceteros amicum Franciscum Superantium (vulgo de la Soranzo) habeam subdubito, at habuisse me saepius sensi suis beneficiis.] • Not only had Soranzo provided hospitality in Venice to Ortelius, he more notably provided him with books coming from the Venetian publishers. [See Hessels, Epistulae Ortelianae (1887), 85 and 141]. In return Ortelius sent him books. Books marked their friendship and the regularity of exchange was clearly noted. In the same 1597 letter to his nephew, Ortelius remarked further that it had been a while since he had received books from Soranzo and he just didn’t know why – perhaps ‘lost in transit’ he speculated. • This book clearly survived the trip between northern Europe and Italy as well as much between, eventually and arriving in Princeton in the late 1940s as part of the Grenville Kane Collection.
❧ Ptolemy. Geographiae libri octo. Cologne: Gottfried von Kempen, 1584. The first edition of Ptolemy’s Geography with maps by Mercator. Call number: EXKA Ptolemy 1584. Cf. Wilberforce Eames, A List of Editions of Ptolemy’s Geography 1475-1730, (New York, 1886), p. 25-26.
❧ For more on Soranzo see Barozzi, Nicolò, ed. Relazioni degli stati Europei lette al Senato dagli ambasciatori Veneti nel secolo decimosettimo (Venice, 1856) ser.1, v.1, p. 27 ff.

Aristotle on all fronts: Four 18th century editions bound in one volume covering child birth, magic, palmistery, jokes, sex, astronomy, astrology, physiognomy, “monstrous” children and slang words.

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

Bound in first:. Aristotle’s Compleat Master-piece. In three parts dispaying the secrets of Nature in the Generation of Man […] to which is added a treasure of Health; or the Family Physician. Twenty-First Edition. [London]: printed and sold by the Booksellers, 1738. (ESTC N298970, noting ‘Not in fact by Aristotle; the attribution is spurious.’)

Followed by: Aristotle’s Compleat and Experienc’d Midwife. In two parts. I. A guide for child-bearing women in the time of their conception, bearing and suckling their children […] II. Proper and safe remedies for the curing of all those distempers that are incident to the Female Sex […] Made English by W—S—, M.D. The Seventh Edition. London: printed and sold by the Booksellers, [1740?] (ESTC N51114 noting ‘Not in fact by Aristotle; the attribution is spurious.’)

Followed by: Aristotle’s Book of Problems. with other Astronomers, Astrologers, Physicians and Philosophers. Wherein is contain’d divers, Questions and Answers touching the state of Man’s body […]. Twenty-Fifth Edition. London: printed and sold by J.W, J.K, G.C., D.M, A.B, E.M, R.R, J.O. and L, B.M. and A.W, [1710?]. (ESTC N43372 noting ‘Not in fact by Aristotle; the attribution is spurious.’)

And lastly comes: Aristotle’s Last Legacy: or, his Golden Cabinet of Secrets opened for youth’s delightful pastime. I. A compleat English Fortune-Teller. II. The whole art of Palmestry. III. A treatise of Moles. IV. The interpretation of Dreams. V. Observations on the Fortunate and Unfortunate Days. VI. A compleat books of Riddles. VIII. The city and country Jester; being a collection of new and witty Jests, Puns and Bulls. To which is added the Most Compleat Canting Dictionary. Translated into English by Dr. Saman, student in Astrology. Second Edition with the “Canting Dictionary.” London: printed for A. Bettsworth and C. Hitch […], J. Osborn […], S Birt […], J. Hughes […]. [1720?] (Not in ESTC)

All these may be found bound together
at call number (Ex) Item 6748731

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

“New Pictures … from off Wooden Prints … With Verses applicable to each Print” • ca. 1750

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

Happy marriage. (London : Printed and sold by R. Marshall … , ca. 1750). Call number: (EX) Item 6699052q

Description of a Bad Wife. ([London: R. Marshall, ca. 1750]). Call number: (EX) Item 6699048q
• Note at lower right corner, the publisher’s series number ‘[No.I …’

❧ Richard Marshall was a printer, bookseller, publisher of chapbooks and prints, as well as a seller of maps, charts, and prints, who traded at number 4 Aldermary Churchyard, Bow Lane, London, from ca. 1753 to ca. 1785. He published on his own as well as with partner Cluer Dicey. It is from their joint catalogue published in 1764 that we get a glimpse of the publishing context for these two unrecorded prints. The catalogue [digitized copy] offers for sale more than 1000 separate prints arranged by type (copperplate, on the one hand, “wooden (i.e. woodcut) prints,” on the other) and size of paper (Royal, Foolscap, Pott). In addition, to Copper Royals, Foolscap Sheets, Pott Sheets, Perspective Views, and Wood Royals, Dicey and Marshall offered maps, copy-books, drawing-books, histories, old ballads, patters (i.e. verse), collections, Christmas carols, small histories, and small books. • Evidence from both these prints and the catalogue show that the prints were issued in numbered series. In the 1764 catalogue, as number 71 in the ‘Fools-cap Sheets’ series, Dicey and Marshall offer ‘The Happy and Unhappy Marriage.’ Although printed on paper larger than foolscap, the Library’s ‘Happy Marriage’ is perhaps a precursor to the 1764 print. Matching foolscap in size is ‘Description of a Bad Wife.’ • Popular ballads of the day warned of bad wives and extolled those “loving, careful [and] prudent.”

Note: For larger image size, right click image and select “Open image / link in new window / tab.”

Observing an engraver’s workshop in 1623

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

❧ Wolfgang Kilian, citizen and engraver of Augsburg.

❧ “Hard labor conquers difficulty” — Operating the rolling press requires two hands and a foot!

❧ Whereas others in the book trade choose emblematic figures or allegorical symbols for their devices, Wolfgang Kilian (1581-1662) gives us a detailed look into his shop. Depictions of his hard work now are his bona fides, while others prefer allusions to the past.

The full device is on the colophon page of Serenissimorum Austriae Ducum, Archiducum, Regum, Imperatorum Genealogia, à Rudolpho I. Habsburgensi, Caesare, ad Ferdinandum II. Rom. Imp. semper Augustum, &c. Aeri incisa a Wolfgango Kiliano, Eiconographo Augustano. (Augsburg: Wolfgang Kilian, 1623). Call number: (Ex) CS807.F4 M3 1580q

James Asperne, Bookseller • 1816

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

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

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

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

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

The Embleme of Humane Life • 1670

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Stephen Ferguson

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

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

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

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.

Martin Meurisse’s Garden of Logic • 1614

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

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

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

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

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

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

Typewriter Printed Book • First of the Kind • 1919

Posted on December 4, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

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

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

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

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

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

“The part of this pamphlet which is best executed is the little engraving upon the title-page.” – The London Magazine (October, 1772)

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Sir Amorous Whimsy; or, The Disappointed Macaroni. A Poetical Tale.
London, Sold by T. Evans, No. 54, Pater Noster, Row, 1772.
Call number: (EX) 3598.999 v.58 no. 1
Not in ESTC. Only one copy recorded in WorldCat (this copy).

Sultan Sham

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Frontispiece by J. Lewis Marks (c. 1796-1855) for the pseudonymous satirical pamphlet: Sultan Sham, and his seven wives : an historical, romantic, heroic poem, in three cantos by Hudibras, the younger. London : Printed and published by W. Benbow, 1820. Call number: (Ex) DA538.A2 Q4 1820 v.1. no. 13.• The publisher, William Benbow, amply issued popular anti-Regent literature and favored Caroline in disputes with her husband, who became king in 1820. • The ‘Collection Online’ website of the British Museum describes its copy in great detail, but does not provide a digital image.

“Fifteen Thousand copies of this Poem were sold in the City of London…”

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Charles H. Wharton. A Poetical Epistle to His Excellency George
Washington, Esquire, Commander in Chief (London reprinted for C. Dilly, in the Poultry; J. Almon, Piccadilly; W. Tesseyman, York; T. and J. Merrill, Cambridge; R. Cruttwell, Bath; and T. Becket, Bristol, 1780). Call number: Kane Americana 1780 Wharton ❧
❧ “The sole motive for republishing this Poem, and adding thereto a sketch of the Life and Character of General Washington (which the Editor now gives to the reader in the plain unaltered narrative of the Author, who is connected and intimate in the family of that great man) is for the charitable purpose of raising a few guineas to relieve, in a small measure, the distresses of some hundreds of American prisoners, now suffering confinement in the gaols of England. The profits arising from the sale of this book will be faithfully appropriated to that purpose; and this the Editor rests assured will be a much stronger incitement for the benevolent and humane to become purchasers of it, than any intrinsic value the performance may demand.” — Advertisement (p.3)

“Fifteen Thousand copies of this Poem were sold in the City of London, in about Three Weeks, at Two Shillings and Sixpence sterling, each, and the Money appropriated to the Benefit of the American Prisoners in England.” — at end of front matter headed “Advertisement to the London edition” in the 1782 Springfield, MA reprinting of this poem. ❧ ESTC records 25 copies. Perhaps some data useful for determining the perishment of printed books over time? If we give credence to the 1782 claim, then the instance of survival for this London edition is 1.7 copies per thousand.

Boston bookseller’s shopfront • 1827

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Depictions of shopfronts usually have the front door closed. Here’s an uncommon glimpse through the doorway — How many figures? One? (The bookseller?) Two? (Customer and child?)

Wood engraving on back wrapper of Sophia Morton (Boston: Bowles and Dearborn, 72 Washington Street, … 1827). Call number: (Ex) in-process.

Books sold by Nath. Crouch: Histories, Admirable Curiosities, Extraordinary Adventures, Unparallel’d Varieties.

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Admirable curiosities rarities, & wonders in England, Scotland, and Ireland, or, An account of many remarkable persons and places, and likewise of the battels, seiges, prodigious earthquakes, tempests, inundations, thunders, lightnings, fires, murders, and other considerable occurrences, and accidents for several hundred years past. Together with the natural, and artificial rarities in every county, and many other observable matters; as they are recorded by the most authentick, and credible historians of former and latter ages; adorned with the lively description of several memorable things therein contained, ingraven on copper plates. By R. B., author of the History of the wars of England, &c. and Remarks of London, &c (London: Printed by Tho. Snowden, for Nath. Crouch, 1683) Call number: Ex 3701.276 vol 1.

London bookseller Nathaniel Crouch (ca. 1640-1725) published his ‘histories’ under the pseudonym R.B. (alluding to Robert or Richard Burton). According to a contemporary, he “melted down the best of our English Histories into Twelve-Penny Books” and became a “Celebrated Author.” His works for the “middling sort” sold well, with some known to have gone into as many as thirteen editions. Thousands of illustrated, cheaply produced copies were issued, but few survive today. In 1918, publisher Charles Scribner II (1854-1930) presented a collection of “Burton’s books” and the Library collocated them at call number Ex 3701.276, subdivided by volume number, as follows:

Vol. 1. Admirable Curiosities. 1682.
Vol. 2. Admirable Curiosities. 10th Ed. 1737.
Vol. 3. England’s Monarchs. 2d Ed… Enl. 1685.
Vol. 4. The English Empire in America. 5th Ed. 1711.
Vol. 5. The English Hero. 13th Ed. [1739]
Vol. 6. Extraordinary Adventures, Revolutions and Events. 3d Ed. 1704.
Vol. 7. The General History of Earthquakes. 1734.
Vol. 8. Historical Remarques and Observations. 4th Ed. 1691.
Vol. 9. The History of The Kingdom of Ireland. 12th Ed. [A much enl. Ed. of 2d pt. of v. 170] 1746.
Vol. 10. The History of The Kingdoms of Scotland & Ireland. 1685.
Vol. 11. The History of The Nine Worthies of The World. 1727.
Vol. 12. The History of The Principality of Wales. 1695.
Vol. 13. The History of The Two Late Kings, Charles The Second and James The Second. 1693.
Vol. 14. The Ladies Glory. 5th Ed. 1781.
Vol. 15. Martyrs in Flames. 1700.
Vol. 16. The Surprizing Miracles of Nature and Art. 2d Ed. 1685.
Vol. 17. Two Journeys To Jerusalem. 1695.
Vol. 18. The Unfortunate Court-Favourites of England. 2d Ed. 1706.
Vol. 19. The Unhappy Princesses. 1733.
Vol. 20. Unparallel’d Varieties. 3d Ed. 1699.
Vol. 21. Unparallel’d Varieties. 4th Ed. 1728.
Vol. 22. The Wars in England. 5th Ed… Enl. 1684.
Vol. 23. Youth’s Divine Pastime. 5th Ed. 1767.
Vol. 24. The Wars in England, Scotland & Ireland … 6th Ed., Rev. and Cor. 1697.
Vol. 25. Historical Remarks and Observations upon the Ancient and Present State of London and Westminster … 5th Ed. 1703.

Martyrs in flames: or The history of Popery. Displaying the horrid persecutions and cruelties, exercised upon Protestants by the Papists for many hundred years past, to this time. In, Piedmont. France, with the massacre at Paris. Orange. Ephemia. Germany. Poland. Lithuania. Italy. Spain, with the bloody Inquisition. Portugal. Holland. Flanders. Scotland. Ireland, with the massacre in 1641. and England. Containing an account of I. The martyrs in the reign of King Henry VIII. and Queen Mary. II. The Spanish invasion 1588. III. The Gun-powder Treason 1605. IV. The fire of London 1666. V. The horrid Popish plot in 1678. VI. The marther of Sir Edmunbury Godfrey. VII. The detectable conspiracies of the Papists, and their adherents against K. William III. 1. By Grandivile a Frenchman. 2. By Charnock, Sir Wil. Perkins, Sir John Friend, Sir John Fenwick, and others, with their tryals and execution[.] Also Gods judgments upon persecutors. With several pictures By R.B. (London: Nath. Crouch, 1700). Call number Ex 3701.276 vol 15. • No copy recorded in ESTC.

For further details see: Robert Mayer, “Nathaniel Crouch, Bookseller and Historian: Popular Historiography and Cultural Power in Late Seventeenth-Century England,” Eighteenth-Century Studies v. 27, no. 3 (Spring, 1994), pp. 391-419.

The Compleat Troller: Original (1682) vs. Type-facsimile (ca. 1772-1790)

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Robert Nobbes (1652-1706?). The Compleat Troller. London, 1682. ESTC R17278. Title page. Call number: (ExKa) Special 1682 Nobbes.	Robert Nobbes (1652-1706?). The Compleat Troller. [London, 1790?]. ESTC R202195. Title page. Call number: (ExKi) SH459.xN6.
Robert Nobbes (1652-1706?). The Compleat Troller. London, 1682. ESTC R17278. Page [1]. Call number: (ExKa) Special 1682 Nobbes.	Robert Nobbes (1652-1706?). The Compleat Troller. [London, 1790?]. ESTC R202195. Page [1]. Call number: (ExKi) SH459.xN6.

Robert Nobbes (1652-1706?). The Compleat Troller. London, 1682. ESTC R17278. Page 78 ff. Call number: (ExKa) Special 1682 Nobbes.

Robert Nobbes (1652-1706?). The Compleat Troller. [London, 1790?]. ESTC R202195. Page 78 ff. Call number: (ExKi) SH459.xN6.

‘At the Commencement of our Civil War on that Continent’

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

The anonymous author of these Poetical Excursions in the Isle of Wight (London, 1777) seasons his ‘animated and poetical’ topographical work with political notes. He praises Wilkes: “But on This I will insist: that He has very materially contributed to the Weal of Human Kind, by protracting the Life, and Spirit of the sickly Constitution of England.”(p. 19). He comments on the American rebels in a long footnote on page 37: “I drew this political, and martial Prospect of America, at the Commencement of our Civil War on that Continent. My Opinion of an Individual, or of a State, is not hastily formed; therefore it is nor changed, or influenced by superficial Observation, or false Narrative. I have by no means inferred from some trivial, and temporary Advantages gained by Government on the other Side of the Atlantick, nor from the servile Ostentation of private Correspondence, and Report nor from the pompous Tale of the Gazette, that the Americans are divided in their Councils; that They want Arms, Ammunition, Courage, and the Necessaries of Life; or that any of the Regal Officers deserve the Name of Generals: therefore I do not yet apprehend the Subjugation of our Colonies.” Depicted on the title page is Carisbrooke Castle (here spelled ‘Craisbrook’), prison of Charles I from 1647 to 1648, a meaningful emblem to those with Commonwealth republican leanings like the author. Just so that point is not lost the author adds the caption:

“An awful Pharos to each British King!”

Poetical excursions in the Isle of Wight. London, N. Conant (Successor to Mr. Whiston), in Fleet Street. MDCCLXXVII [1777]. Call number: (Ex) in-process.

The Reviewers Cave • 1768

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

The Reviewers Cave. [Etched by P. J. De Loutherbourg (1740-1812)]. The frontispiece to The Powers of the Pen by Evan Lloyd (1734-1776). Second edition published London, Printed for the Author, … 1768. [Call number: RCPXR 3829.67.373] The etching is described in detail in Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires prepared by Frederic George Stephens, v. 4, no. 4247, (London, 1883). The description begins begins:”An etching showing a vast cave, where, recumbent on clouds overhead, the Genius of Dulness lies fast asleep. Many reviewers sit on benches, nearly filling the cavern; they include an ass who brays …” The description in full:

Frontispiece [larger file]

Description [larger file]

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]

Popular Entertainment • 1891

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Front cover

Back cover

Cooper’s Yankee, Hebrew and Italian Dialect Readings and Recitations.
Compiled and Arranged by George Cooper. New York: Wehman Bros., © 1891. Call number: (Ex) 2006-2272N. Gift of Sid Lapidus ’59.

Publishers catalogues • 19th century Britain

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Exemplars from the 1,800 recently acquired 19th Century British Publishers’ Catalogues, a collection arranged alphabetically by name of publisher in 31 boxes. These exceptional color-printed covers are found in box 25, covering Ward, Lock, & Co. The collection was put together chiefly by London antiquarian bookseller Donald Fraser, a project planned to culminate in a [never] published work titled London Publishers 1770-1880, with an Appendix on Binders’ Tickets, Quentin Books, Ltd. A full listing of the collection is available. [Link to listing.] The call number for the collection is: RCPXR-7017242. [Permalink for the main catalog record for this collection.]

Convicted in the Fualdès affair

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Baptiste Colard, ex-soldat du train, un des prévenus de l’assassinat de Mr. Fualdès. Rouen : Imprimerie de C. Bloquel … , [1817]. 5, [3] p. : port. (woodcut) ; 21 cm. (8vo) Internal caption title: Cause célèbre : assassinat de M.Fualdès. Printed on laid paper. Call number: (Ex) 2012-0169N

For details on this recent acquisition, see
http://www.simonbeattie.kattare.com/blog/archives/749

In the United States, city and country newspapers from Maine to Virginia, such as The New York Spectator and Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy carried news of the trial and the ensuing convictions.

‘Maidenly Writings’ • Parthenicon libri iii • ca. 1606

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

“The writings of the Anglo-Latin poet best known on the Continent in the early seventeenth century were never printed in England. Elizabeth Jane Weston is nowadays completely ignored by literary histories; but in her day, she was widely celebrated and earned for herself the sobriquet ‘the Maid of England.'” — J.W. Binns, Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin Writings of the Age (Leeds, 1990), p. 111. ❧ ❧ Parthenicôn Elisabethæ Ioannæ Westoniæ, virginis nobilissimæ, poëtriæ florentissimæ, linguarum plurimarum pertissimæ, liber I-[III] operâ ac studio G. Mart. à Baldhoven … collectus; & nunc denuò amicis desiderantibus communicatus.Pragæ: Typis Pauli Sessij, [ca. 1606]. Call number (EX) PA8595.W452 P3.

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.

Virgil • 1529

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Bucolica Virgilij cum commento familiari. (This title above a woodcut of Virgil, his patron Pollio, and his patron’s son Saloninus. This scene is framed by four rectangular ornaments in the lower one of which is Caxton’s device.) Colophon: Impressa Londini in jedibus VVinandi de VVorde. Annno (sic) domini M.CCCCC. xxix. ad calculum Romanum. xij. die Martij. Call number: VRG 2945.325.029. Citation: ESTC S95695

This is item 1094 in Bernard Quaritch (Firm).
A Catalogue of books in English history and literature from the earliest times to the end of the seventeenth century
(1922)

Berthold’s Political Handkerchief • 1831

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Berthold’s Political Handkerchief.
No. 1. London, Monday, September 5, 1831.

Henry Berthold led the National Union of Working Classes, aiming at universal male suffrage. He printed his newspaper on cotton to evade the government tax on paper.

“To the Boys of Lancashire. We have no patent for this new pocket handkerchief, because we intend to advocate the interest of the working people, and consequently do not intend to pay any tax for our knowledge to the tyranny that oppresses us. You shall be all as busy as bees if our Whig Taxers do not, by the omnipotence of an Act of Parliament, declare cotton to be a paper, and a handkerchief to be a pamphlet or a newspaper.” ….
… “Cotton For Ever!
Cotton makes very bad paper, as we may see in all that comes from the United States of America; but when finely woven, it is a very pretty thing to print on. See of how much more worth is our news, than that which is printed on paper, as to the fabric on which it is printed. Paper is torn and wasted; but a piece of printed cotton may be read and then used for a thousand different purposes. It is possible, if the ink will wash out, that after six months reading, we may be able to buy back and use over the cotton again. We shall perform wonders with cotton. Truly, knowledge is spiritual and will pervade every thing. Knowledge is power. It makes everything minister to its purposes. What shape will the Whig despotism take to reach us? It is spiritual also; a black spirit. Our spiritualism is from the angels of light, who are clothed in white cotton garments. Every letter is breeched and show us only its face, which may be more appropriately termed the sooty face divine, than that humanity may boast of its human fall divine.” (p. 3)

❧ Berthold’s Political Handkerchief. No. 1, London, Monday, September, 5, 1831. 4 p. ; 44 x 29 cm. Printed on cotton cloth. Binding note: Ex copy: In recessed and padded white cardboard portfolio, in bluish gray cloth clamshell box (51 x 35 cm.). Call number:
(Ex) Oversize 2011-0015E

Rowlandson illustrates Tom Jones

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Stephen Ferguson

Illustration by Thomas Rowlandson for Tom Jones published in Edinburgh by James Sibbald in 1791, volume 1, page 55: Caption: Partridge cruelly accused and maltreated by his Wife & co. [Alternate caption: The astonished Partridge meets the vengeance of the whole sex.] ❧ The Library has long had the 1792 reissue of the sheets of James Sibbald’s 1791 Edinburgh edition. Recently acquired is the 1791 original. Each volume has four plates by Thomas Rowlandson. ❧ Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754. The History of Tom Jones, a foundling. By Henry Fielding, Esq. Edinburgh: printed by and for J. Sibbald, 1791. 3v.,plates; 8⁰. Call number (Ex) 2011-0440N.

Vandermaelen Atlas (1827) • First atlas of the world with all maps on the same scale

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

With funding from the Rare Book Division, the Friends of the Library, and the Historic Maps Collection, in March 2009, the Library acquired a copy of the Philippe Vandermaelen, Atlas universel de géographie physique, politique, statistique et minéralogique . . . (Brussels, 1827), consisting of approximately 380 folio foldout sheets of maps and 40 pages of statistical tables. This is the first atlas to have been printed using lithography; it is also the first to show the whole world in maps using a uniform scale (about 26 miles to the inch).

The atlas was digitally photographed at high resolution in 2010, and is now available in two forms: in the Princeton University Digital Library [link] and on a stand-alone website, which includes a video showing a virtual rotating globe constructed from the Vandermaelen continental maps: the world as it was mapped in 1827 [link].

Monkey Island, Illustrated •1839

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

“This beautiful and romantic islet is situated in the most picturesque part of the Thames, between the Willows and Maidenhead Bridge; it is the favored resort of aquatic parties in the vicinity of Windsor, and is a delightful resting place for those bound to Cliefden, Henley, or Marlow – the woodland beauty of the scenery being unrivalled on the banks of ‘Thames winding stream’. The (third) Duke of Marlborough selected this sequestered spot for the enjoyment of Isaac Walton’s “gentle art”, and embellished it by the erection of two elegant buildings – a pavilion and a temple. The former is decorated by finely-executed paintings of monkeys, in various grotesque and humorous characters (which, with the pavilion, are represented by the drawings), and continue to prove an attraction to the curious…. it is asserted that the whole cost the Duke of Marlborough £12,000. It was purchased by H. Townly Ward, Esq., and is now the property of P.C. Bruce, Esq., of Taplow. The tout ensemble presents an imposing idea of aristocratic grandeur and magnificence.”

Preface to Monkey Island, Illustrated, by a series of Humorous Figures and a View of the Pavilion. From original sketched by M. Penley, drawn on the new patent zinc plates by T. Fairland. Dedicated to the Young Gentlemen of Eton College. Windsor: published by J.B. Brown … ca. 1839. This copy inscribed on front wrapper: “Robert H.J. Heygate from his brothers Frederick & William Heygate, March 28, 1839.” Call number: (Ex) Item 6473315

Trade label: Jacob Kops in Hamburgh bij der mueren.

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

All kinds of East Indian cottons and Dutch linen cambric, linen goods [or linen drapery], calico [or muslin] and white-linen tape for sale: in Hamburg by the wall, at Jacob Kops. [Woodcut prospect of Haarlem above this text.]

[Transcription]
Allerhande ostindische Cattoennen und
hollandisch linwant Camertuch weijs-zweern [i.e. Weisswaren?]
Kattuen und weijslinnen-bant Zu Kauf: in
Hamburgh bij der mueren. bij Jacob Kops.

One of more than 536 trade labels, chiefly for the linen thread trade, pasted into three albums with title Houtsneden door Izaak van der Vinne [Woodcuts by Isaac van der Vinne (1665-1740)]. Call number: (Ex) NC1002.L3 V56f [This label: volume 2, leaf 19.]

Sixteen Humourous Designs • ca. 1840

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

“Thereupon Marcus Curtius, … mounted on a horse caparisoned with all possible splendour, he plunged fully armed into the gulf” Livy, The History of Rome, Book 7, Chapter 6, illustrated in Sixteen Humourous Designs, to Illustrate Virgil, Horace, and Livy. With Mottoes in Latin and English. For Private Circulation Only. [(England), n.p., n.d., c. 1840]. Call number: (Ex) 2009-0431Q

Earliest engraving of Nassau Hall • 1760

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

“Aula Nassovica.” Copperplate engraving, 3.75 x 6.25 inches. Artist and engraver unknown. Illustration opposite p. 104 of New American Magazine, No. XXVII (March 1760), Woodbridge, in New Jersey: Printed and sold by James Parker. Sold also at the new printing-office in Beaver-Street New-York, and by Thomas Coombs, in Front-Street, Philadelphia. Call number: (Ex) 0901.525 ❧ Link to larger file.

Dutch linen trade labels – 18th century

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Wrappers for skeins of ‘nun’s thread’ – a “finer thread, called ounce or nun’s thread, from its having formerly been made by nuns in France and Flanders” (A.J. Warden, The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modern (1867), p. 539). Three examples from more than 536 trade labels, chiefly for the linen thread trade (both export and domestic) pasted into three albums with title Houtsneden door Izaak van der Vinne [Woodcuts by Isaac van der Vinne (1665-1740)]. Call number: (Ex) NC1002.L3 V56f [These wrappers: volume 1, leaf 16.]

Ream wrapper • 18th century Dutch

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Ream wrapper for ‘fine’ (fyn = fijn) grade paper made by Lubertus van Gerrevink. ❧ W.A. Churchill, Watermarks in paper in Holland, England, France, etc. in the XVII and XVIII centuries, (1935), p. 36 describes this as “Garden of Holland, lion alone” and dates his copy at 1749. This ream wrapper is one of more than 536 trade labels, chiefly for the linen thread trade, pasted into three albums with title Houtsneden door Izaak van der Vinne [Woodcuts by Isaac van der Vinne (1665-1740)]. Call number: (Ex) NC1002.L3 V56f [This wrapper: volume 3, leaf 8.]

Sweeney Todd, an edition of the 1880s

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

First two parts of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street [London, ca. 1880]. The Library’s copy is complete in 48 illustrated parts, totaling 576 pages. Call number: (Ex) Item 6220613q.

Rat-Catcher warns Book-pirates • 1768

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

N.B. If any Persons shall Reprint this Book, or offer to Pirate it, they will be Prosecuted according to law, it being entered in Stationers-Hall. ❧
The Universal Directory for Taking Alive and Destroying Rats, and All Other Kinds of Four-footed and Winged Vermin, In a Method Hitherto Unattempted: Calculated for the Use of the Gentleman, the Farmer, and the Warrener. By Robert Smith, Rat-Catcher to the Princess Amelia. London: printed for the author, 1768. Call number: (Ex)SB993.S64 ❧

Concert in Vauxhall Gardens • ca. 1800

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Larger image here

Leaf preceding title-page of New and complete instructions for the hautboy : containing the easiest & most improv’d rules for learners to play : to which is added a favorite collection of airs, marches, minuets, duets, &c. also the favorite rondo performed at Vauxhall by Mr. Fischer. London : Printed & sold at A. Bland & Wellers Music Warehouse … , [1800?] Call number (EX) MT362 .N38 1800q ❧ Scene depicts a concert in Vauxhall Gardens, London. The plate also served as an advertisement for A. Bland & Weller, Piano Forte Makers, No. 23 Oxford Street.

First map depicting only New Jersey to be printed and published in America • 1784

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Larger image here

“State of New Jersey” map (58.5 x 28.5 cm) facing verso of final printed leaf of The Petitions and Memorials of the Proprietors of West and East-Jersey, to the Legislature of New-Jersey New-York: Printed by Shepard Kollock, no. 156, Water-Street., [1784] Call number: Ex 1174.271.2 c.1. Copy with ownership signatures of John Rutherfurd (1760-1840), who compiled the text of Petitions and Memorials.
❧ Joseph J. Felcone in his New Jersey Books 1698-1800 (1992) covers the publishing history of this book (entry 22). He states “It is the first map depicting only New Jersey to be printed and published in America.” Alas, the identity of the mapmaker is not known, but there is evidence to suggest it was John Hills. As of 1991, the original copper plate survived and owned by Howard Sereda of Edison, NJ.

Palace of Wisdom • ca. 1680

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

“Tabula VII” of a suite of 17th century engravings graphically representing contemporary science and philosophy. In addition to both historic and allegorical figures there are a number of renderings of scientific instruments: barometers, thermometers, clocks, scales, hygrometers and chemical apparatuses.
Palatium sapientiae. Parisiis: Apud Stephanum Gantrel Via Jacobea sub signo Sti. Mauri, [ca. 1680]. 26 plates including engraved title-page. Call number: (EX) 2011-0248Q

Contes pour les Bibliophiles • 1895

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Contes pour les Bibliophiles par Octave Uzanne & Albert Robida.
Paris: Ancienne Maison Quantin, Librairies-Imprimeries Reunies, 1895.
Call number: (Ex) 3295.27.326q. Front cover illustration by George Auriol.

Tabula Cebetis

Posted on July 21, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Justus Velsius (1502-1582). In Cebetis Thebani Tabulam commentariorum libri sex
(Lyon, 1551). Call number: 2011-0654N

See a brief description of the Tablet of Cebes.

The Heldenrüstkammer of Archduke Ferdinand II in Schloss Ambras

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

“A catalogue of the Heldenrüstkammer of Archduke Ferdinand II in Schloss Ambras, the first collection of armour formed for historical reasons in the first purpose-built museum North of the Alps.” The work illustrates 125 suits of armor, one per plate. Its full title runs to 133 words. What follows is a rendering of just the first portion of the full title: “Most true images of the most august emperors, the most serene kings and archdukes, of the most illustrious princes, as well as earls, barons, nobles, and other eminent men, who were either the commanding leaders in war or within their realms performed admirably…[together with] succinct descriptions [of their achievements].” (Sometimes this work is referred to as the “Armamentarium Heroicum,” Latinizing the German for “Heroes Armory.”)
❧ This tour-de-force of Baroque illustration was complied by Jakob Schrenk von Notzing with plates believed to be by the engraver Dominicus Custos. The book was published in Innsbruck in 1601. This date in the Princeton copy has been revised by means of a handstamp to read “M.DC.XIX.” The Library’s copy is bound in contemporary calf and is stamped with the name and arms of its first owner: Hector Le Breton, seigneur de la Doineterie, who held public offices during the reigns of Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV. In 1615 he succeeded his cousin as roi d’armes de France.
❧ Call number; (Ex) D106 .S3f. Purchased in 1983 from Robin Halwas (antiquarian bookseller, London; his catalogue 3, number 79).
❧ Cf. Elisabeth Scheicher, “Historiography and Display: The Heldenrustkammer of Archduke Ferdinand II in Schloss Ambras.” Journal of the History of Collections 2 (1990): 69-79.

The Poetical Library • Advertised June 1838 • Including Gems from American Poets

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Purchased in March 2012 from E.M. Lawson & Co. (Antiquarian Booksellers), East Hagbourne, Nr Didcot, Oxfordshire. Call number (Ex) Item 6324773

Herr Heinrich Haag the Elastic-Skin Man

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Herr Heinrich Haag the Elastic-Skin Man. New York: N.Y. Popular Publishing Company, [ca. 1880]. Call number (Ex) Item 6221469
❧
[title page transcribed] Life and Adventures of Herr Heinrich Haag the Elastic-Skin Man. Being a clear and concise account of the history of this remarkable personage, his birth and early life, how his skin made him famous, his travels throughout Germany, how became a puzzle to the doctors, his exhibitions before the crowned heads and notabilities of Europe, and who is pronounced by all th leading physicians and surgeons of Europe and America to be the most wonderful phenomenon that medical research and science has ever discovered. New York Popular Publishing Co. Main office, 37 Bond St. Coloring, printing and engraving dep’ts, 18 Rose St. A.J. Dick, E.J. Stecher, proprietors.

Fencing illustrated in 1675: “To avail themselves of the true skill”

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Marco Orozco, engraver. “En
el mapa, que mira esta plana se delinean todas las formas
especulativas, que dan luz a la practica, para valerse de la
verdadera destreza con todo genero de armas, y contra
todas naciones.” Large engraved plate bound before f. 69 in
Perez de Mendoza
y Quixada, Miguel. Resumen de la
vera destreza de las armas en treinta y ocho
asserciones.
Madrid: Francisco Sanz, 1675.
Call number (Ex) Item 5785695
❧

Pictorial Embellishments for the New Year

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Stephen Ferguson

Large, readable digital file of this single sheet advertisement is also available.

Benjamin Henry Day was publisher of Brother Jonathan from 1852 to 1862. Publication dates of the “cheap books for sale” suggests that this advertisement was issued early during Day’s tenure as publisher.

The Library has recently built up a collection of 15 issues published in this newspaper’s lavishly illustrated extra “Pictorial Jubilee.” New York, 1851-1861. Usually issued twice yearly: July 4 as well as Christmas and New Year’s. A typical opened issue measures 29 x 42 inches. Call number for the advertisement and the collection of fifteen: (Ex) Flat files A floor. ‘Brother Jonathan’

Book and news pedlar, ca. 1644

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Frontispiece to: [Masen, Jakob] Wolverdientes Capitel welches neulich die beyden
weitbeschrienen Jesuiten. 1644. [(Ex) AP1 .F64q, item 303]

Leary’s Bookstore, Philadelphia, ca. 1880

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Leary’s bookstore stocked used and antiquarian books,
illustration on rear pastedown of blankbook issued by the firm ca. 1880.
Call number for blankbook: (MSS) C0938 (no. 62)

To all lovers of angling

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

To all lovers of angling: Gregory, fishing-tackle maker, at the Dial and Fish, opposite St. Clement’s Church in the Strand, London, makes and sells all sorts of multiplying and stop wheels
[London? : s.n., 1773?]
Notes: Broadside advertisement, 28 cm tall
Princeton copy dated by hand on verso: April ye 7th 1773.
Call number: (ExKi) SH453 .G73 1773

Higher resolution image available at
http://goo.gl/AboLa

Girl who reads sensation story papers

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Title: The girl who reads sensation story papers : [broadside sheet]
Published/Created: [s.l., circa 1891]
Description: 1 sheet : ill. ; 37 x 23 cm.
Notes: First line: How charming the girl who endlessly glories.
Provenance: Written in blue pencil: “No harm inteded [sic].” Accompanied by envelope addressed to Miss M. C. Mershon, Princeton, N.J. with postmark 1891.
Source of acquisition: Purchase; J. Howard Woolmer, 2005.
Subject(s): Sensationalism in journalism –United States.
Youth –Books and reading –United States.
Form/Genre: Broadsides, Story papers
Call number: (Ex) Broadside 382

Published ca. 1891.
Higher resolution image available here
http://goo.gl/98GuB

The Country Book-club 1788

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Stephen Ferguson

Illustrated titlepage:
Shillito, Charles.
The country book-club. A poem.
London, 1788.
Illustration on t.-p. etched by Thomas Rowlandson.
Call number: (GA) Rowlandson 1788
Call number: (RCPXR) 3930.12.327
Excerpt: “The rural bookseller of aspect pale, And bent with age, comes
tott’ring down the vale… Who but has heard his tale, so often told, Of famous men,
whose names he once enroll’d. How those illustrious members spoke and thought,
What ale they tippled, and what books they bought.”

2 Johann Gottfried Biedermann, Geschlechtsregister der Reichsfrey unmittelbaren Ritterschaft Landes zu Franken Löblichen Orts Baunach (Bayreuth: Dietzel, 1747), table 197.

² Johann Gottfried Biedermann, Geschlechtsregister der Reichsfrey unmittelbaren Ritterschaft Landes zu Franken Löblichen Orts Baunach (Bayreuth: Dietzel, 1747), table 197.