I’m very pleased to announce our most recent publication, John Piper in the Watkinson: An Illustrated Checklist, produced to celebrate the recent gift of a collection of books and ephemera related to the British artist John Piper (1903–1992) to the Watkinson Library. 

 The catalogue contains an essay by the donor (William J. McGill, Trinity Class of 1957) on his interest in Piper for over three decades, and an annotated list of the entire collection of ca. 200 items.  Designed by Arley-Rose Torsone, the text and full-color illustrations were printed by Finlay (Bloomfield, CT).  The cover, which features a stylized representation of the immense baptistry window of Coventry Cathedral which John Piper designed, was printed in four-color letterpress by DWRI Letterpress of Providence, RI.

 The catalogue was printed in only 500 copies, and will be available soon from our distributor, Oak Knoll Books. (www.oakknoll.com).

Tags: Publications

This new acquisition is cool on so many levels.  I love the binding–so striking–and the fact that it’s an early science fiction novel by John Jacob Astor IV (1864-1912).  Astor was 47 when he went down with the Titanic, although his 18-year-old bride and her unborn son survived.

A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future was published in 1894 in New York.  This is early “steampunk,” a century before it became a genre. 

The novel is set in the year 2088, and explores three utopias–a Christian heaven on Saturn, and Eden-like new world on Jupiter, and a technologically oriented, entrepreneur’s paradise on Earth.  Space travel is possible through “apergy,” a kind of anti-gravity.

One of the most intriguing chapters is “professor Cortland’s historical sketch of the world in AD 2000.”  Remember, this is 1894, twenty years before the start of World War I, and only 30 years after the Civil War.  Astor’s professor interestingly gets the population right–300 million–but the U.S. now includes all of Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America, in ultimate fulfillment of the Monroe Doctrine.  Here’s an excerpt (pp. 39-40):

“Gradually the different states of Canada–or provinces, as they were then called–came to realize that their future would be far grander and more glorious in union with the United States than separated from it; and also that their sympathy was far stronger for their nearest neighbors than for anyone else.  One by one these Northern States made known their desire for consolidation with the Union, retaining complete control of their local affairs, as have the older States.  They were gladly welcomed by our government and people, and possible rivals became the best of friends.  Preceding and also following this, the States of Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America, tiring of the incessant revolutions and difficulties among themselves, which had pretty constantly looked upon us as a big brother on account of our maintenance of the Monroe doctrine, began to agitate for annexation, knowing they would retain control of their local affairs.  In this they were vigorously supported by the American residents and property-holders, who knew that their possessions would double in value the day the United States Constitution was signed.  Thus . . . the Union has increased enormously in power, till it now embraces 10,000,000 square miles [the land area of the Western Hemisphere is roughly 16 million square miles], and has a free and enlightened population of 300,000,000 [the population of the Western Hemisphere is about 860 million] . . . and as a result of modern improvements, it is less of a journey now to go from Alaska to the Orinoco than it was for the Father of his Country to travel from New York or Philadelphia to the site of the city named in his honour.”

Tags: New Acquisition

Today we finished shifting the heavy metal map cases out of the press room, and we are now ready to clean, paint, and otherwise outfit it for production.  Still a long way to go–the Washington press is still in pieces (working on it), and the Vandercook will need some TLC.  But the stage is set, so to speak, and I still have hopes that I’ll get one or both presses in working condition this fall.  The room is small–only about 75 square feet, but we have heavy duty shelving just outside the room for supplies and equipment (paper, ink, furniture, etc.).

Tags: Washington Press

Here is a sweet little item we acquired last week–the only other copies I can find are at Yale and the British Library.

Songbooks like this are truly ephemeral pieces of popular culture, and in the mass are invaluable for the windows to the mores of their times.  We have hundreds of songbooks, both religious and secular, as well as over 25,000 pieces of sheet music in the Watkinson–see our guide here: http://library.trincoll.edu/research/watk/documents/watkguidesmusic.pdf

Of particular interest in this collection to me personally are numbers 12 & 15.  Number 12, “Negro boy sold for a watch” is a 24-line guilty lamentation of a person who sold a boy into the Atlantic slave trade for “this poor simple toy.”  Number 15, “Sailor’s Farewell,” is a sailor talking to potential sweethearts about his actions during the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1807.

Tags: New Acquisition, ornithology

The other really nice item we acquired at auction in June was a bound collection of 30 lithographed, hand-colored prints typical of the product of the town of Epinal, which produced stylized, fanciful, and humorous depictions of various subjects.  Most of these (with one exception) were printed in the town of Epinal  by Pinot, Pinot & Sagaire, and Pellerin.  Pellerin was a printing firm in Epinal, which is east of Paris, that produced distinct images in a simple, fresh, and spontaneous style.  Founded by Jean-Claude Pellerin, in the late 18th century, the firm flourished in the 19th century.  Other Epinal firms like Pinot imitated the style, thus linking the images with the name of the town.  About half of the posters relate to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

Tags: New Acquisition

I love to go to auctions, especially when I find bargains for me or the library.  The best auction for rare books near Hartford takes place periodically in Northampton, MA, and is run by New England Book Auctions (http://www.nebookauctions.com/).  On June 7 my summer intern (studying to be a rare book librarian at Indiana University) and I attended an uncatalogued shelf sale.  Of the five things I acquired for the Watkinson, I am particularly happy about two of them:

The constable’s guide: being a concise treatise on the powers and duties of a constable and collector in the state of New York, by Horace Dresser.  (Binghamton, NY: printed by J. Orton, 1832).

One of my favorite class of book is the handbook or guide which was used by someone as a fundamental reference in the course of their work.  Horace Dresser (1803-1877) was one of the first lawyers in New York to defend and assist fugitive slaves.  He also wrote on constitutional questions, and a book on the “American Rebellion.”  In this work, he states that “the law pertaining to the office of constable has hitherto remained scattered through so many volumes, that … a sort of digest of the law relative to this office, with the forms adapted to its requirements, seemed …. a desideratum.”

The second purchase will be described in another post…

Today the sign company applied the lettering to the wall behind the new Audubon case. 

Then several guys from Facilities arrived to help move it off the pallet on which it was shipped, and into place. 

Volume I was placed in its new home for the next two years (we will begin turning one page a week in September, and it will take roughly 9 years to get through the entire set).

This summer, we will install parquet flooring around the case, which will finish the installation.

We just acquired an original pencil sketch by the artist-naturalist Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874-1927), which came in last week.  It is of a Cooper’s Hawk, and on the back is a certification of authenticity signed by Margaret S. Fuertes (nee Sumner), dated 1927.  Cornell, where Fuertes was educated and later taught, holds his personal papers and the majority of his artwork–at least half a dozen other sketches of a Cooper’s Hawk can be found there:  http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/Fuertes2000/fuertes.asp

Arthur A. Allen, in the Dictionary of American Biography, wrote of Fuertes:

“When examining a bird, his concentration was supreme; he was oblivious to everything about him; and during these moments, apparently, details of pose and expression were so fixed in his mind that years afterwards he could reproduce them with his pencil and brush without the slightest hesitation. “

Tags: New Acquisition

We recently acquired a first edition of Louis Pendleton’s The Sons of Ham: A Tale of the New South(Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1895) as part of our Roberts Brothers collection.  A fascinating bonus includes a letter by Pendleton to the publishers, which I have transcribed below next to the image of its first page.

Louis Beuregard Pendleton (1861-1939) was a Georgia-born author and journalist who became a printer and assistant editor of the Valdosta Times at the age of nineteen.  After two years in a small religious college in Philadelphia he joined a medical publishing house in that city where he worked for seven years, studying languages and writing for periodicals in his spare time.

The New York Times reviewed the book on March 3, 1895 (“A story of the South of To-day”), and had this to say:

” . . . Mr. Pendleton introduces many purely Southern themes.  His description of a tournament is excellent.  Possibly this rare show was taken from the jousts at Eglington Castle in 1840.  Perhaps occasionally something like the tournament still exists in remote portions of the South.  Reba Lawrence is the poor white girl of good family beggared by the war.  It is in the discussion of the status of the negro that the chief interest in the story is found.  Every now and then this momentous question is raised.  The colored brother, being no longer a political factor, has been of late left entirely to his own resources.  Will the time ever come when the suggestions of the theorists will be practically carried out?  And this is nothing else than the removal of the negro from the South and forcing him, nolens volens, to return to Africa.  These and other topics are ably treated by the author.  Most particularly has Mr. Pendleton a thorough acquaintance with those battling elements which belong exclusively to the Southern States.”

Here is Pendleton’s letter to the publishers, dated 26 January 1895:

Gentlemen:  Thanks for the information contained in your letter of yesterday.  I am glad you will make an effort to get the “Sons of Ham” taken up in England.  If you fail, I hope you will anyhow send a copy to a few of the English reviews as the Saturday, etc.  The English might be less inclined to criticize the book than either Northern or Southern folk over here. 

I think it would pay to send the book to a larger number of prominent Southern newspapers than you usually include in your list.  The Atlanta Journal has already announced the book, stating that its appearance would be awaited with interest (would also pay to send a copy to several leading new church journals).

As I can not take charge of the dozen author’s copies under the circumstances (I sail by the Etruria for Liverpool Feb. 2), will you kindly have them mailed for me and render a bill of the postage & send one copy to each of the following: 

• Rt. Rev. W. H. Benade, 1935 Fairmont Ave., Philadelphia, Pa.
• Rt. Rev. W.F. Pendleton, 707 Corinthian Ave.,  [Philadelphia]
• Rev. C.T. Ashner [?], 828 North 28th St.,  [Philadelphia]
• Miss M.Z. Pendleton, 1815 North St.,  [Philadelphia]
• Rev. N.D. ” [Pendleton], Oak Glen, Cook Co., Ills. [Illinois]
• Miss Pendleton, [Oak Glen, Cook Co., Illinois]
• Mr. C. R. Pendleton, Valdosta, Georgia
• Mr. A. J. ”  ”  ” [Pendleton, Valdosta, Georgia]
• Miss E.T.  ” ” ” [Pendleton, Valdosta, Georgia

And if you can get it there by about the 7th of March, send one copy to one c/o Academy Book Room, Mr. Posthuma, Burton Road, Brixton, London, SW.