Author Archives: Stephen Ferguson

Four Drawings by Renoir

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The Library has just acquired the first illustrated edition of Emile Zola’s famous novel of working class life, L’Assommoir. The novel first appeared in serialized form between 13 April 1876 and 7 January 1877, and sold well. Building on this popularity, the Paris publishers Marpon and Flammarion issued an illustrated edition in 59 parts in 1878. Each part had one illustration, keyed to a particular page. More than ten artists contributed artwork, which was published as a wood engraving. (More than five wood engravers were involved.)

The artists were notable in their day, and, for some, their reputation endured. Among those, the best known today is Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). He contributed four drawings to the project. Illustrated above is that adjacent to page 283, in which the heroine of the novel, Gervaise, and her lover Lantier listen at a café to Mademoiselle Amanda, declared by Lantier to be a “high class singer.” (Click on image for larger view.) Other pages contributed by Renoir are also scenes, indoors or out: page 136, La loge des Boche; page 192, Le père Bru piétinait dans la neige pour se réchauffer.; and page 368, Les filles d’ouvriers se promenant sur le boulevard extérieur. “Elles s’en allaient, se tenant par les bras, occupant la largeur des chausses.” Each work exhibits his painterly, impressionistic line, contrasting sharply with the acute lines of other illustrations by such artists as André Gill (1840-1885) or Maurice Leloir (1853-1940).

The result of this collaboration of artists, wood engravers, printers and publishers was a large, deluxe book with each illustration printed twice: once on a thick stock used also for the text (“papier de Hollande”) and once on China paper, whose soft surface caught shadings of ink more vividly than thick paper. The parts were bound in a red morocco half leather binding by Paul-Romain Raparlier, evidently on the commission of the London bookseller Henry Sotheran. (The names are stamped on the upper left corner of each front endpaper.) The Princeton copy is number 41 of a limited edition of 130 and has the booklabel of Eduardo J. Bullfinch, a lawyer and businessman in Buenos Aires in the first half of the twentieth century.
Call number: (Ex) Oversize 2007-0689Q

Characters of the Present Most Celebrated

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Jessica Grose’s article “Before Lindsay or Paris, There Was Mrs. L_fle: Imagine Lindsay Lohan in 18th-century England” in today’s New York Times details the dish behind the new novel The Scandal of the Season recently published by Princeton English professor, Sophie Gee. The novel is a “a fictionalized account of the true story behind Alexander Pope’s 1712 poem, ‘The Rape of the Lock.’ ” • “The idea of gossip and scandal and celebrity culture that we have today was really coming into being in 18th-century London” notes Prof. Gee. The article is based on Ms. Grose’s interview last month with Prof. Gee in the Library. The color photograph of Prof. Gee was taken at the window of the first floor seminar room in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in Firestone. • During the interview, Prof. Gee showed and discussed the following books from the rare book collections: Characters of the Present Most Celebrated Courtesans Exposed, With a Variety of Secret Anecdotes Never Before Published (London, 1780), The History of Betty Bolaine, the Canterbury Miser, Containing an Account of Her Avarice, Whimsical Amours, and Wonderful Escapes from Matrimony (1805?), Town and Country Magazine (London, 1769 ff) and The Spectator (London, 1711 ff). Some titles, such as The Spectator, have been in the collections for years, but, others, such as Betty Bolaine have been added as part of a recent effort to deepen the literary holdings to include popular and / or ephemeral narratives.

Award to Prof. William Gleason supports purchase of A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery (London, 1837)

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Figures • Upper: Title and price stamped in gilt on front cover. Middle: Title page with verses from William Cowper’s “The Task,” book II, lines 40-45, first published in 1785.
Bottom: Illustrated pages (19 and 51). Click on thumbnail for full-size view.

Call number for the book: (Ex) 2007-1634N

The Library has recently purchased the rare first edition of an important American slave narrative with funds provided by the President’s Awards for Distinguished Teaching, At Commencement 2006, Prof. William Gleason of the Department of English received the award, which included a portion for Library purchases. He directed the book portion go toward acquiring Moses Roper’s Narrative, first published in London in 1837. Graphic and poignant, the text went through several editions before the Civil War, then was not reprinted again until 1969 when it appeared in the Rhistoric Publications (Philadelphia) Afro-American History series. The text remains in print today.

“A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery (1837) gave the antislavery movement in England and America exactly what it wanted—a hard-hitting tour of slavery as a visitation of hell on earth, conducted by someone who had seen and suffered it all but who had survived to tell his story in a manner likely to evoke both credence and sympathy. The British clergyman who wrote the preface to Roper’s narrative solicited curious and prurient readers by promising them a kind of pious pornography: “There is no vice too loathsome—no passion too cruel or remorseless, to be engendered by this horrid system [of slavery]. It brutalizes all who administer it, and seeks to efface the likeness of God, stamped on the brow of its victims. It makes the former class demons, and reduces the latter to the level of brutes.” The twenty-two-year-old author of the Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper delivered what his white antislavery sponsors desired. The first scene of Roper’s Narrative details in a shocking but deadpan manner how the author, born in Caswell County, North Carolina, the son of his master and one of his master’s slaves, barely escaped death at the hands of his master’s enraged wife. Light-skinned and cooperative as a boy, Moses was trained for the comparatively mild duties of a domestic slave. But when he was sold to a South Carolina cotton planter whom Roper identifies only as Mr. Gooch, teenaged Moses was put to work in the fields, where he was subjected to floggings almost daily. Roper’s portrait of Gooch as an unmitigated sadist gave American antislavery literature the first example of what would become in Stowe’s horrendous creation Simon Legree a distillation of all that black America despised in the arrogant Anglo-Saxon: brutality, violence, hypocrisy, and tyranny.” — William L. Andrews, “General Introduction” to North Carolina Slave Narratives (Chapel Hill, 2003), p.5-7.

Catalogue of the Virgil Collection: a progress report

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Between July 2 and August 21, Professor Craig Kallendorf of Texas A&M University spent nearly every weekday in the Dulles Reading Room examining the Library’s collection of editions of Virgil, the core of which was donated in 1896 by Junius Spencer Morgan, Class of 1888. Morgan regularly added to the collection until his death in 1932. The Library adds to the collection to this day. Kallendorf is preparing a detailed printed catalogue of the collection, the first such since 1956. Each entry gives not only a physical description but also particulars about text and commentary as well as notes, such as details about each book’s former owners. Building on work Kallendorf started nearly eight years ago, he examined more than 700 early printed books, consisting of several dozen 15th century printings, hundreds of editions of the complete works, many finely illustrated, together with numerous translations into English, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, German, Polish, Portuguese, Czech, Greek, Romansch, and Hungarian. Kallendorf expects the manuscript of his catalogue to be ready for his publisher, Oak Knoll Press, about the middle of 2008. His research was supported in part by a grant from the Davies Project.


Junius S. Morgan


Craig Kallendorf

Strange Adventures of a German Female Robinson Crusoe (1780)

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When first published in 1719, Daniel Defoe’s story of castaway Robinson Crusoe was a runaway success. Many translations and imitations of Robinson Crusoe followed. In fact, the progeny was so great that it became a genre unto itself called, in the plural, “Robinsonades.”

Princeton is the sole library listed in WorldCat, “the world’s largest network of library content,” to own a copy of a 1780 German Robinsonade featuring a heroine whose journey is a search as much for love and romance as it is for wealth. The work is entitled Merkwürdige Begebenheiten einiger deutschen Frauenzimmer, welche auf Reisen, sowohl zu Lande als zu Wasser durch Verheyratungen sehr reich und glücklich worden, und durch Ankauf ansehnlicher Güter sich in Niedersachsen niedergelassen aus eigener Erfahrung niedergeschrieben von Holston und Augusta. The actual names of the authors Holston and Augusta are unknown. At left is the frontispiece of the book. Click on it to see details of dress and scenery. For further information about the genre, see Jeannine Blackwell, “An Island of Her Own: Heroines of the German Robinsonades from 1720 to 1800” in The German Quarterly (1985), 58, 5-26.

Call number for the book: (Ex) 3459.68.363

Brayton Ives, collector

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Brayton Ives (1840-1914), Civil War general, president of the New York Stock Exchange, and railroad president, formed a library on the model of those from which he obtained his books: Sunderland, Hamilton Palace, Beckford, Syston Park, and Woodhul. The auction of his collection in 1891 was said at the time to be the “greatest sale of books ever held in America.” In the sale catalogue, Ives noted that three of his books, the Gutenberg Bible, the Virgil of 1470, and the Homer of 1488, “will command forever the admiration and respect of educated people as the worthy objects of the highest form of skillful and conscientious typographical work.”

Remarkably, these three books are now at Princeton, having arrived at different times. First was the 1470 Virgil, purchased by Junius Spencer Morgan after the auction and given to the Library in 1895. Ives’s 1488 Homer was bought by Robert Hoe and then acquired by Cyrus McCormick, Class of 1879, at the Hoe sale in 1911; McCormick’s widow gave the volume to Princeton in 1948, twelve years after her husband’s death. When William H. Scheide moved his family library to Princeton in 1959, he brought with him Ives’s Gutenberg Bible.

Newly catalogued • Hodder and Stoughton dustjackets

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Wrappers of books published by Hodder and Stoughton Limited (London, 1900-1940)
Call number: (Ex) 2010-0025E

Freshest advices! A complete listing of this collection is now available (4 August 2008).
See http://libweb2.princeton.edu/rbsc2/misc/H-S-summa.pdf

A collection of approximately 1200 wrappers and dust jackets, in albums and loose [viz. 2 vols. and 3 boxes], originally part of the publisher’s archives. Items mounted on leaves, arranged as follows:

[H&S vol 1] Bound in brown cloth, Guildhall Library shelfmark on spine: Ms 16346A vol 1, ca. 1920-40: books at 9d, also (inverted at end) at 2s; [H&S vol 2] Bound in brown cloth, Guildhall Library shelfmark on spine: Ms 16346A vol 3, ca. 1920-40: books at 2s, also (inverted at end) at 2/6, 3/6 and 5s.; [H&S box 1 – unit 1] Leaves (brown) with wrappers for books at 2s “Yellow Jacket” series, leaves numerated in white 1 to 50, probably ca 1920-1940 [approx. 53]; [H&S box 1 – unit 2] Leaves (brown) with wrappers for books at 3/6 and 2s, leaves numerated in yellow 2 to 71, leaves 2 to 51, books at 3/6, leaves 52 to 71, books at 2s Probably ca 1920-1940 [approx 60] ; [H&S box 2] 38 leaves (white) with wrappers for books at 1s. 2s, 2/6, 6s, leaves numerated and not numerated [approx 75]
[H&S box 3 – unit 1] Leaves (brown) with wrappers for books at 3/6, some “Yellow Jacket Western” series, leaves numerated in yellow 52 to 58 [approx. 18]; [H&S box 3 – unit 2] Leaves (brown) with wrappers for books at 9d and unpriced, leaves numerated in white: 25, 10[1], 10[2], 113 [approx. 12] ; [H&S box 3 – unit 3] 18 leaves (brown) with wrappers for books at 9d and various prices, leaves not numerated — [approx 70] ; [H&S box 3 – unit 4] 45 torn fragments of leaves (brown) with wrappers for books at 9d and various other prices [approx. 45]; [H&S box 3 – unit 5] 26 cut fragments of leaves (brown) with wrappers for books at 9d and various other prices [approx. 26] ; [H&S box 3 – unit 6] 23 unmounted wrappers [23]
Provenance: Princeton collection formerly on deposit at the Guildhall Library, London. In March 2001, Hodder and Stoughton withdrew these and eventually sold them. Princeton purchased this lot from a Boston bookseller in April, 2007.



Email: ferguson@princeton.edu

Recently acquired • Angelo Decembrio, De politia litteraria (1540)

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Purchased in spring 2007 with funds provided by the Friends of the Princeton University Library. Professor Anthony Grafton’s comments on this book: “The Milanese humanist Angelo Decembrio provides in his De politia litteraria a uniquely vivid, if fictionalized, record of literary life at the court of Ferrara in the age of Leonello d’Este. His court was the favorite habitat of the great humanist teacher Guarino of Verona; the architect, humanist and theorist of the arts Leon Battista Alberti; the poet Tito Vespasiano Strozzi; and many other scholars, writers, and erudite soldiers of fortune. In Decembrio’s unique dialogues we listen to these men debating the value of ancient and modern poetry, discussing the quality of Flemish tapestries and other works of art, examining the Egyptian obelisk that still stands in Vatican City in the Piazza S. Pietro; and describing the ideal renaissance library and how it should be kept. The text has fascinated students of the Renaissance for the last century and more, and parts of it have been edited (the one on the obelisk, for example, by Brian Curran, now of Penn State, and myself; that on works of art by Michael Baxandall).

“In collaboration with Christopher Celenza of Johns Hopkins, I plan to edit and translate parts of this text, … But it won’t be an easy text to edit. Decembrio’s work survives in two distinct recensions: one preserved in a Latin manuscript in the Vatican, of which we have a full copy; the other in two printed editions based on a manuscript stolen from the Vatican in 1527 and now lost. The differences are multiple and subtle, and the supposedly critical edition that appeared four years ago in Germany is very problematic. We [can] collate the divergent texts far more easily [now that] Firestone ha[s] both printed texts.

“The edition itself is of considerable interest, moreover: its title page illustration is a spectacular rendering of learned conversation, one of the most brilliant ones of this period, and the text it offers is curious in many respects.”

Email: ferguson@princeton.edu

Call number for the book: (Ex) Oversize 2008-0435Q

New Acquisition • The Library of William Chauncey Fowler (1793-1881)

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From a descendant, the Library purchased the remaining personal collection of Noah Webster’s son-in-law, William Chauncey Fowler, professor, clergyman and legislator. The 311 titles come to a total of 392 volumes and include books on a wide variety of subjects as well as his personal, marked-up copies of his own works also ranging widely in subject, from anti-slavery to what sorts of books young people should read. Also included are two books formerly owned by his father in law, one of which, Jeremy Belknap’s American Biography (1794), has Webster’s annotation contradicting the author. In addition, because the Fowler family was a share holder in one of the earliest public libraries founded in the United States – the Book Company of Durham, Connecticut (founded 1733), they obtained a number of books from the Library’s stock when the company was dissolved in 1856 and the members voted “to divide the books by auction.” These are variously marked “Book Company of Durham, new library” or “Durham, new library” and include stock numbers (with date of accession as inscribed): 26, 35 (“1789”), 38, 45, 47, 71 (“1791”), 72-76 (“Jan. 3, 1792), 78 (“Jan. 1793”), 86 (“presented by Dr. Stiles, April 8, 1793”), 88 (“presented by Dr. Stiles, April 8, 1793”), 96, 97 (“A.D. 1795”), 101 (“A.D. 1795”), 108 (“1795”), 110 (“A. D. 1795”), 114 (“A.D. 1796”), 129 (“March 5, 1798”), 132, 142-144 (“1800”), 192 (“June 5th, 1812”), 199, 201, 202, 212 (“Jan’y, 1817”), 216, 224, 225, 229, 256, 257, 258, 279, and 286. One book with no stock number is marked “Ethosian Society, Durham, Conn.,” a debating society with a library known to have been formed in 1783 and dissolved in 1793. Few libraries of nineteenth century professors are traceable as a collection today. Equally few are gatherings of books known to have been in one of the thousands of social libraries active in ante-bellum America. Historians of reading are eager not only to know what those books were but to actually examine such documented survivors as these.

Email: ferguson@princeton.edu