Like the novel itself, the epigraph of The Great Gatsby has achieved mythic status.

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”
– Thomas Parke D’Invilliers

Who was Thomas Parke D’Invilliers? First appearing in This Side of Paradise, he is the poet-companion of Amory Blaine and carried the epithet “that awful highbrow.” Here, on the title page of Fitzgerald’s third novel, D’Invilliers provides paratextual poetry. Custom expects real authors to provide epigraphs. His signed epigraph reverses what we understood him to be when we first met him.

According to the general editor of the Cambridge Fitzgerald Edition, Professor James L.W. West III
“… several times during his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald received queries from people who wanted to quote that epigraph. They wanted to know who T. P. D’Invilliers was, so they could seek permission. But I have never seen, am not aware of, any document in which Fitzgerald says that T.P. D’Invilliers is a fictional character, and that he wrote that epigraph himself.”

A recent gift of a presentation copy of The Great Gatsby provides documentary evidence of what has long been assumed regarding Fitzgerald’s authorship of the epigraph. Moreover, this copy has an added attraction. The presentation inscription is the autograph original of a Fitzgerald poem.

“From Scott Fitzgerald / (Of doom a herald) / To Horace McCoy / (no harbinger of joy)
Hollywood 1939”

Horace McCoy was a novelist and near contemporary of Fitzgerald. McCoy is best known for his novel They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935).

The gift is a legacy to the Library from the Lawrence D. Stewart Living Trust. Prof. Stewart purchased the book in an California bookstore and published his findings in 1957 —- Lawrence D. Stewart, “Scott Fitzgerald D’Invilliers,” American Literature, XXIX (May 1957), 212-213. [Stable URL http://www.jstor.org/stable/2922109.] His article did not reproduce the signed title page nor the autograph presentation.

La Côterie Débouché is a pun on Harriette Wilson’s birth family name of Dubochet. (Henry Heath, del.; Published February 21, 1825 by S.W.Fores, Piccadilly).

❧ In 1825, London publisher John J. Stockdale issued the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson.

It was a sensation. Her story was how she worked her way as a courtesan from want to luxury.
When her fortunes declined, she told all, naming Dukes, Earls, and other well-born with whom she had liaisons.

Stockdale published the Memoirs in parts. The back wrapper of some parts listed the names of aristocrats slated for coverage in the next. For £200 one could purchase removal of his name.

Fragment of back wrapper of part 3 naming those appearing or about to appear in the Memoirs

Stockdale claimed that, within a year, he had published more than 30 editions. Ink machined onto paper begat money.

He, however, was sued in court, more than once. His rivals ripped him off with pirate editions. Meanwhile, Harriette Wilson became rich and famous.

Readers were enthralled or incensed. Sir Walter Scott said “H.W. beats [the memoirs] of Con Philips and Anne Bellamy and all former demi-reps out and out.” “Push any man into the streets in his dressing gown and nightcap and he will be laughed at,” said the London Magazine (1825). The Duke of Wellington, who refused to pay, famously said “publish and be damned.”

Words describing Harriette seem today to be arcane and recherché : ci-devant, semptress, demi-mondaine, demi-rep (abbrev. for demy-reputation), hataera, cocotte, créature, dame de compagnie, femme entretenue, … the list goes on. It was a strain for others to express her liminal world.

Yet her narrative is direct and beguiling. She begins:

‘I will not say how, or why, at the age of fifteen, I became the mistress of the Earl of Craven. Whether it was love, or the severity of my father, the depravity of my own heart, or the winning arts of the noble lord, which induced me to leave my paternal roof and place myself under his protection, does not now much signify ; or, if it does, I am not in the humour to gratify curiosity in this matter.”

In the end, though, we are left with many questions: Is her narrative credible? If it is not credible, then what is it? What prompted her to break the rules and openly name those who could be considered ‘the profligate of the aristocracy’? Is the book libelous?* Could it be protected by copyright?* (*These questions were subjects of court cases at the time.) Was it a promoter of vice? Could it be regarded as prophylactic against vice? Was it just plain blackmail? Or, as one critic has asked recently, can it be regarded as the end of the epistolary novel? These are only a sampling of queries.

During the spring of 2012, Princeton acquired a Harriette Wilson collection, which does answer some questions concretely and may provide answers for many others. It is a collection of virtually all the editions of her Memoirs published during her lifetime (she died in 1845). Among other questions, these will allow us to answer the question as to what authentic editions looked like and how piracies appeared physically. Added to these editions are translations as well as some wonderful popular broadside précises of her Memoirs, together with a number of contemporary illustrations both serious and in the classic British satiric tradition, some companion works (e.g. Confessions … Written … in Contradiction to the Fables of Harriette Wilson by Julia Johnstone, also a courtesan, part rival, and niece of Harriette), and, finally, editions of Harriette’s novels published after the Memoirs. The novels include London Tigers and Paris Lions. (1825), Clara Gazul, Or, Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense (1830), and Lies (1830) (only copy recorded; more later on that.)

The collection was put together by Stephen Weissman (Ximenes Rare Books, Kempsford, Gloucestershire). The books are rare in the market; it took him several decades to assemble the collection. A list of the holdings of the collection is available. The list includes Mr Weissman’s bibliographical descriptions of the various editions issued by Stockdale and his rivals, William Benbow, Edward Thomas, Thomas Douglas, Edward Duncombe, and others.

As of March 15, 2013, all books have been catalogued and are accessible via the
main catalog. The prints are in the process of being catalogued.

A recent acquisition, this catalog describes the East India Company’s tea sales in March of 1785 – a year of great changes for the British tea trade. This sale was among the first to follow the Commutation Act of 1784. For years, and specifically over the last decade to help finance the war against America, taxes on tea had been continuously raised until they reached an exorbitant 119%. As a result, the high tax fostered widespread tea smuggling as well as unreliable quality. Introduced by William Pitt the Younger, the Commutation Act reduced the tax on tea to 12.5% thereby effectively ending the tea smuggling and establishing a monopoly on tea importing for the struggling East India Company.

Catalogs were produced before the quarterly sales for buyers to review the available tea and its condition. This catalog from the second March sale of 1785 features Hyson and Souchong tea. A key in the front of the catalog decodes the symbols next to the tea lots from various ships that had returned from China. Quality ranges from “musty and mouldy” to “superfine”. Additional symbols noted the leaf size, smells and other conditions such as “woody” or “smoakey”. Space was available on the right side of the lot listings to be filled in with manuscript annotations detailing the ultimate price and buyer. (Princeton’s copy is completely filled in, presumably by “J. Williams” whose signature is on the back cover and whose initials are on the front cover.)

“A monumental historical and genealogical work presented to John George (1525-1598), Elector of Brandenburg, a member of the House of Hohenzollern, and Augustus I (1526-1586), Elector of Saxony, of the House of Wettin. The work relates the genealogy of Christ and the Judean kings, and the union of Monarchy and Christianity in general, with the understanding of monarchy as seen in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. As such the major empires of known history is envisioned as elements of a statue, cf. Daniel´s interpretation of Nebuchadnessar´s dream, in which he sees a statue made of gold, silver, copper, iron and clay, illustrating the four empires. The main texts of these chapters are accompanied by genealogical lists of virtually every ruler, by then known, of the empires in question, and forms a more or less complete historical line from biblical Nimrod up till the then contemporary emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Rudolph II (1576-1612). It also contains a brief chapter on the Ottoman empire and its genealogy, since the Holy Roman Empire, of which Brandenburg and Saxony formed and important part, was on the brink of war with the Ottoman Empire at the time. The last part of the book is concerned with the genealogy of the Saxon Electorate, and its relation to the Kings of France, the Dukes of Savoy and the Margraviate of Montferrat. In full, the book forms a both religious and historical masterly treatment of monarchy and the monarchical ruler and its association with divine power, based on the before mentioned imagery of the Book of Daniel. In addition, it can be seen as a rethinking of the position and power of the German Electors to whom it is presented, since the Reformation, in which an older relative of Augustus I, Frederick III The Wise (1463-1525), played an important role, had taken place less than 70 years earlier” (Text supplied by Kaabers Antikvariat [København])

Loren Faust. Anatomia Statuae Danielis. Kurtze und eigentliche erklerung der grossen Bildnis des Propheten Danielis, Darin ein historischerausszug der vier Monarchien / und aller ihrer HeuptRegenten / auff die glieder des Bildnis / ober eines menschlichen leibes gerichtet / und sonderlich vom angang und fortpflantzung des Reichs Jesu Christi / ordentlich mit gemisser jahr rechnung bereichnet. Beneben Christlicher erinnerung und erklerung der Genealogien, und Fürstlichen Stammbaums der hochlöblichen Herzogen zu Sachsen etc. Als zu einem Extract und Memorial solcher ganzen historien / neben etlichen zugerichten Tafeln / mit lust und nuss zugebrauchen. Aus allen fürnembsten und bewertisten Chronicis und gelerter leut schriften mit trememsleis zusammen gezogen – Durch – Laurentium Faustum, Pfarrern unter der Meisnichen Thumbpropstey / zu Schirmenitz. Anno Christi M.D. LXXXVI (1586).
Colophon: Leipzig / Bey Johann Steinmann M.D. LXXXV (1585). 8°. [28]+404+[8] pages. With four folded plates. Call number: 2009-1746N. Digital scans of the other plates listed at http://goo.gl/U9zzH

British antiquarian bookseller Simon Beattie recently posted:

« Moscow reads New York »

« 1927 saw two Russian translations of The Color of a Great City (1923), Dreiser’s classic memoir of early twentieth-century New York: this one (Gosizdat’s), by Pyotr Okhrimenko, and one for “Mysl’” (Kraski N’iu-Iorka) by V. P. Steletsky. What was particularly nice about this copy was that it still had its original dust-jacket:

Pyotr Okhrimenko (1888-1975), a translator for the Komintern, produced numerous translations of American literature in the 1920s and ’30s: Jack London, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson. A staunch Tolstoyan, he had decided to emigrate to America after the 1905 Revolution. But he was unable to find work, so he asked Tolstoy himself for help and was provided with a letter of recommendation to Thomas Edison, who took him on in one of his factories. He returned to Russia in 1911.

Dreiser, alongside Mark Twain, was to become the most popular American author in Russia, hailed by Soviet reference works and critics as the foremost ‘progressive’ American writer of all time. In 1950, when Goslitizdat announced a twelve-volume edition of Dreiser’s collected works was to be published, in a staggering 900,000 copies, subscriptions sold out within days.»

❧ This copy is now in the collections of the Library:

Author: Dreiser, Theodore, 1871-1945.
Uniform title: [Color of a great city. Russian]
Title: Nʹi︠u︡-Ĭork / Teodor Dreĭzer ; perevod s angliĭskogo P. Okhrimenko.
Published/Created: Moskva : Gos. Izd-vo, 1927.
Physical description: 125 p. : ill. ; 19 cm.
Location: Rare Books (Ex)
Call number: Item 6211357

Special funds available at the end of the fiscal year made possible two major acquisitions: the first and second editions of De humani corporis fabrica by Andreas Vesalius, published 1543 and 1555 respectively. This towering monument in the history of science has long been lacking in the Library’s collections. If Princeton had a medical school, there might have been an early organizational imperative to obtain this work marking the beginning of modern anatomical studies, but the University has no medical school. Growing campus interest in the history of science during the past several decades has involved classroom presentations of original editions of important landmarks of science already held by the Library, such as the De revolutionibus of Copernicus (1543). Those presentations well demonstrated our wealth of such key books in the mathematical and physical sciences, but they also showed up that we lacked the some equally revolutionary work in medicine. These two new acquisitions unquestionably strengthen our ability to bring into the classroom virtually all the monumental works marking the beginning of the modern science during the Renaissance.

Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica(Basle, 1543) [Call number: (Ex) QM21 .V418 1543f]. Some notable aspects of this copy: 1) Leaf M3 (“Venarum, arteriarum, nervorumque omnium integra delineatio”) has eight contemporarily-colored figures of organs mounted on recto and verso, providing a three-dimensional perspective of the human anatomical figure. And, 2) bound in contemporary German calf over wooden boards; spine in six compartments; covers show seven vertical rows with alternating motifs of married couple and of lamp flanked by chalices; outer border shows rosettes and floral motifs; vestiges of catches and clasps at fore-edge.

Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica(Basle, 1555) [Call number: (Ex) QM21 .V418 1555f]. Bound in 17th century Dutch paneled vellum. Armorial bookplate of Sir William Sterling-Maxwell (1818-1878) on front pastedown; his “Arts of Design” bookplate on back pastedown.