Recently discovered in the general stacks of Firestone Library:

This volume belongs to Bell’s Circulating Library, containing above two thousand volumes, next door to St. Paul’s Church in Third-Street. Where
sentimentalists, whether ladies or gentlemen, may become readers, by subscribing for one month, three months, or by agreement for a single book. Said Bell hath also very great variety of new and old books for sale; he, likewise, gives ready money for new and old books.

This bookplate appears on the front pastedown of the first volume of Andrew Baxter, 1686?-1750.

An enquiry into the nature of the human soul; wherein the immateriality of the soul is evinced from the principles of reason and philosophy. … . The third edition. To which is added, a complete index.
London : printed [by James Bettenham] for A. Millar in the Strand, MDCCXLV. [1745] [call number:
Ex 5744.155.1745], 2 volumes, together with a 3rd volume being Baxter’s Appendix to the First Part of the Enquiry…. (London, 1750), [call number: Ex 5744.155.1745a]

Chain of provenance from the colonial era down to today:
Bell’s Circulating Library (Philadelphia, fl. 1774-1778) -> Convers Francis, 1819 -> Theological School in Cambridge -> ‘Discarded by Authority of the Andover-Harvard Theological Library’ -> Acquired by Princeton in 1973, classed for the open stacks, then, during reclassification in 2010, it was discovered to have the bookplate of Bell’s Circulating Library, whereupon it was transferred to the rare book division.

Notes:
Very few books remain from Robert Bell’s Circulating Library. (Robert Bell is best known as the printer of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.) Several books from Bell’s Circulating Library are now held by the Library Company of Philadelphia and there is one at Stanford University. These Princeton volumes add a few more examples to the scant number already known.

Sentimentalists were persons of taste and sentiment. In the eighteenth century, the later term was not derisive, rather it pointed to refined emotional thought.

At LCP, the following at from Bell’s Circulating Library: Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, Aristippe, ou De la cour, Leiden, Elsevier, 1658, 2 vol. and two volumes of Pluche’s multi-volume Spectacle de la Nature; or Nature Displayed (Dublin and London, 1740-49) and

At Stanford, James Burgh’s Political Disquisitions (Philadelphia, 1775), formerly owned by Jay Fliegelman. (Call number JFL-276)

Furthermore, the two 1745 volumes at Princeton have annotations in the hand of Convers Francis, dated 1819, the year of his ordination into the Unitarian clergy. He was a senior member of the Trancendental Club.

Click here for a full PDF of this 4 page illustrated newspaper (page size 62 cm x 47 cm).

Recently discovered in an uncatalogued remnant acquired years ago by a now retired curator was this splendid

“Illustrated Guide to the Sights of London … chiefly published to enable foreigners and country visitors to the metropolis to examine its general promenades — its national establishments — its places of popular resort and amusement— its public edifices and its historical curiosities in the short space of one week. It presents to the eye at a glance, and on a single sheet, a vivid panorama of all that is worth seeing. Strangers are recommended to make their starting point on the First Day from St. Paul’s Cathedral.”

Profusely illustrated with one large and 107 small wood engravings, this vade-mecum presents seven single-day walking tours. Clearly, what a vade-mecum sells is the perception of a system collected out of the old and new, the religious and the secular, the mythological and the monumental. It sells the means to an experience that the purchaser would not efficiently have otherwise. It was an ingenious invention, and in the hands of such publishers as John Murray and Karl Baedeker, it provided a steady-selling genre that defined contemporary publishing.

Lastly, observe at end of page 4: “Notice to Advertisers — All Illustrated Advertisements intended for the second and enlarged Edition of the ‘Guide to the Sights of London’ must be immediately
forwarded to the office, 49, Watling street; and as the number inserted will be very limited, the cuts or wood engravings should be confined to the average size.

London— Printed by John Such, of 29, Budge Row, Wailing Street and published by him and William Fitch, of 49, Watling Street, — by either of whom orders and Advertisements will be received.”

Call number: (Ex) ) Item 5833715 • Evidently unique in North America. One other copy known; it is held by the Guildhall Library, London.

Author: Selikovitch, George, 1863-1926. Title: Arabish-Idisher lehrer : ṿeg ṿayzer far di Idishe legyoneren in Tsiyon = Turjumān ʻArabi wa-Yahūdī / fun G. Zeliḳoṿits. Edition: 3. oyflage. Published/Created: Nyu Yorḳ : Sh. Druḳerman, 1918. Physical description: 31 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. Location: Rare Books: Oversize (Exov) Call number: PJ6309 .Z444 1918

Rachel Simon, Senior Librarian and specialist for Middle Eastern languages in the Library, has just published “Teach Yourself Arabic — In Yiddish!” in the most recent MELA Notes: The Journal of the Middle Eastern Librarians Association. [For full text of the illustrated article see: sitemaker.umich.edu/melanotes/files/melanotes82complete1.pdf.] She details the fascinating story of Getzl (George) Zelikovitz (1863-1926), a linguistic prodigy born in Lithuania, educated at the Sorbonne, and served as an interpreter under Lord Kitchener in the Sudan. He settled in the United States in 1887. He remained in the US until his death, working chiefly as a journalist for the Yiddish press in New York and prolifically publishing fiction, poetry and works of scholarship. In 1918, he separately published in Yiddish an instruction book for learning Arabic — certainly a first of its kind and surely the sort of publication that could only come out of melting pot America.

According to Dr. Simon, “The introduction [of Arabish-Idisher Lehrer] explains the purpose and method of the book. Its goal is to teach colloquial Palestinian Arabic—namely, not literary Arabic—to Jewish Legionaries, settlers [kolonisten], merchants, tourists, learned people [maskilim], laborers in Palestine, and maybe even Hebrew teachers abroad. This aim and the target population dictated the method, structure, and style of the book: a practical teaching aid in Yiddish, so that following a short study period the student would be able to talk with Arabs.” (p. 4-5)

She concludes: “The book does make the student somewhat aware of Arab customs, but it reflects more Jewish and Western views and issues. Although it was intended to serve as a guide for Jews as to how to reach out to Arabs, it is more reflective of Western Jews, their beliefs, customs, and modes of expression.” (p. 14-15)

Three books from the Retirement Library of Thomas Jefferson are now held in Firestone: one came as a gift in the 1870s, another was presented in 1905, and the third gift arrived in 1944. Their journey toward Princeton began in Washington in 1829 when Nathaniel P. Poor auctioned the library formed by Jefferson during the latter years of his life.

At Monticello each book had a particular place in Jefferson’s bibliothecal scheme. Central to the scheme was his positing a continuum between book in hand and thought in mind. For Jefferson, mind entailed memory, reason, and imagination. These three faculties were, in turn, mirrored by human endeavors in history, philosophy, and the fine arts. Considered as an outcome of one of these endeavors, any book could be placed within one of these three classes or its sub-divisions. So placing it situated the book both in mind and on the shelf.

Now held at Princeton are auction lot numbers 236, 716, and 753. It’s extraordinary that these three gifts — each received decades apart — today form a pattern: the Library now has one book each from Jefferson’s three major classes.

• Memory / History is represented by


• Reason / Philosophy is represented by

• Imagination / Fine Arts is represented by


[Jefferson’s own handwritten entries in his 124 page library catalogue, now available digitally at the Library of Congress.]

Auction lot number in red crayon on front paste-down. (Ex) 9825.380 • Inscribed by Professor Charles A. Young in 1860, who gave it to the Library in 1905.

Lot number in pencil; Bigelow’s inscription in ink. (Ex) HB871.E93 • Purchased by Andrew Bigelow and sold at his sale in 1877 to a member of the Green Family of Trenton, NJ , who, in turn gave it to the Library in the 1870s.

(Ex)2767.1665 • Pencil note in back of volume 1 details sale of book in 1831. There are two slips of ms. notes initialed ‘V.S.’ and dated ‘Febr 12 [18]32’ mounted on two leaves in companion portfolio. Gift of Henry N. Paul in 1944.

Two works by Songes Philosophiques, Première [-Seconde] Partie. Par M. Mercier. A Londres, et se trouve à Paris, chez Lejay, Libraire, Quai de Gêvres, au grand Corneille. 1768. Call number: (Ex) HX811 .M42

L’anno due mila quattrocento quaranta. Sogno di cui non vi fu l’eguale. Seguito dall’Uomo di ferro. Opera del cittad. L.S. Mercier … Traduzione dal Francese sull’ultima Edizione fatta in Parigi l’Anno VII della Repubb. Francese. Corretta, Riveduta, ed Augmentata dall’ Autore. Prima Edizione Italiana. In Genova. Stamperia de’ Cittad. Domenico Porcile, e C. nella strada della Posta vecchia no. 487. Anno II. della Repubb. Ligure [1798]. Call number: (Ex) 2007-3277N

…………….

Songes Philosophiques contains ten philosophical dream sequences, eight of which were reused in Mercier’s Mon bonnet de Nuit, 1784-1785 and seven of which were used in his landmark utopia L’An deux mille quatre cent quarante, 1785. This practice of borrowing and rebranding his own work was very much part of what became Mercier’s distinctive style. — Amanda Hall

‘He published prodigiously by recycling passages from one book to another and stretching essays into multivolume tracts. His major works – L’An 2440, Tableau de Paris, and Mon Bonnet de Nuit – therefore have a formless character. They are composed of short chapters on a wide variety of subjects, which Mercier cobbled together without worrying about narrative coherence. When a book caught on, he expanded it, cutting and pasting and fighting off pirates as he advanced from one edition to the next. The result was never elegant, but it often had a gripping quality, because Mercier knew how to observe the world around him and to make it come alive in anecdotes and esays. There is no better writer to consult if one wants to get some idea of how Paris looked, sounded, smelled, and felt on the eve of the Revolution’ (Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers, 1996, p. 118).

…………………….

First edition in Italian of Mercier’s famous utopian novel L’an 2440. Placed on the Index on 26th August 1822. Only copy recorded to be in an American library.

‘The translator was thought to be Filippo Castelli’, writes Everett C. Wilkie, ‘however, in his Saggi di Eulogia, Genoa, 1838, he himself takes credit for having translated only ‘L’Homme de Fer’. One possibility for the translator of L’An 2440 is Elisabetta Caminer, who translated several of Mercier’s dramas into Italian … Nevertheless, Caminer had died in 1796, two years before this translation appeared. However, this translation has one of the hallmarks of her work, liberties with the original text; and her other translations of Mercier’s works show her sustained interest in his writings. One can speculate that she was the one who began the translation, finishing only a part of it before her death. Castelli might well have finished the translation and gone ahead to do ‘L’Homme de Fer’, which was the last part of the book. Castelli was in Genoa at this time and was active translating other French works into Italian’

Everett C. Wilkie, “Mercier’s L’An 2440: Its Publishing History During the Author’s Lifetime,” in the Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol. XXXII, 1984, p. 393.

Sunday, April 5th’s New York Times Book Review includes a notice of the following by Professor Donna Dennis of Rutgers School of Law — Newark:

Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Its Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century New York
(Harvard University Press, 2009). [See announcement and excerpt (pdf)]

In preparing her study, Professor Dennis used the Library’s copy of Venus’ Miscellany.
New-York : J. Ramerio & Co., [alias for George Akarman]
“A weekly journal of wit, love and humor.”
Editors: Ramerio & Clarke, <1857>.
Library has issues for May 9, 16, 23, 30,
June 6, 20, 27, July 4 and 11, 1857.
Location: Rare Books (Ex)
Call number: Dulles drawer E2

Electronic access (pdf, large file)

“By the mid-1850s, working out of a series of offices in the vicinity of Nassau Street, [George] Akarman was well on his way to becoming one of the century’s largest producers of pornography, second only to a legendary publisher of bawdy books named William Haines.” (p. 5)

“In 1856, for instance, Akarman decided to launch a new venture, a highly risky, innovative periodical called Venus’ Miscellany. Calculating that he could not sell the magazine in New York without triggering prosecution for obscenity, Akarman planned to market it solely to an upscale audience of out-of-town subscribers, the sort of people who possessed the financial resources and sophistication to negotiate mail-order subscriptions and purchases.” (p.6-7) He told his readers he intended to put the paper “entirely into a subscription circulation, which will insure it to those who want it, and keep it from who do not want it.”
(Venus’ Miscellany, Jan. 31, 1857, p. 3)

The index to Licentious Gotham gives the following entries for this ‘weekly journal’: Venus’ Miscellany (magazine), 6, 7, 109, 170-182, 197, 207; contraceptives advertised in, 171-172; “flash” weeklies compared with, 187-188; letters from female readers, 175-179; mail-order sale of, 182-190, 198; prosecutions involving, 190-192, 194; “racy” reading materials advertised in, 173, 174; story excerpts from, 259