Notes for Bibliophiles

He coulda been a contender!

2009-07-16T11:20:00.008-04:00

In March 2009 the Library of America published a selection of Lafcadio Hearn’s works, edited by Christopher Benfey, entitled Lafcadio Hearn: American Writings. In an interview Benfey stated, “I’m completely convinced that Hearn’s time has come. He famously wrote that he worshiped ‘the Odd, the Queer, the Strange, the Exotic, the Monstrous.’ Such pronouncements have made it easy to dismiss him as some oddball combination of Poe and Gauguin, living in an escapist world of dreams. But what Hearn was really interested in was the astonishing variety of human life.”

Lafcadio Hearn was a mongrel child of the world,—a global villager,—a man unattached to country, kin, or creed. He was a sensitive underdog marginalized for his proclivities from beginning to end. Born Patrick Lafcadio Hearn on June 27, 1850, on the Ionian island of Leucadia just north of Ithaca (of Homeric fame), Lafcadio’s own odyssey would bring him to far shores and settings, both exotic and mundane.

Hearn’s mother, Rosa Antonia Cassimati, was from Cerigo (known to the Greeks as Cythera); his father, Charles Bush Hearn, was an Irish surgeon and officer in the British Army. Their romance was not favored by either of their families. After Charles was re-assigned to the West Indies, he managed to send Rosa and young Patrick to Dublin, where his relations greeted these “gypsy” additions to their household with predictable warmth. An estranged aunt who doted on Patrick took them in, but after Charles finally returned to Ireland and established a little household in 1853 it became clear he had lost interest in Rosa. He took a new military assignment in the West Indies, and by the time he returned in 1856, Rosa had gone back to Greece and left five-year-old Patrick alone with his great-aunt. Charles Hearn annulled their marriage, and the Hearn family hid the boy from his mother when she returned to Ireland to see him.

At age nine or ten young Patrick discovered the library in his great-aunt’s house, and found several books of art containing images from Greek mythology. “How my heart leaped and fluttered on that happy day!” he would later write. “Breathless I gazed; and the longer that I gazed the more unspeakably lovely those faces and forms appeared. Figure after figure dazzled, astounded, bewitched me.” This fascination with the elder gods did not sit well with his aunt, a devout Catholic, who sent him to a boarding school—three quarters monastery and one quarter military academy—run by “a hateful venomous-hearted old maid.” Guy de Maupassant, who attended the school months after Lafcadio left, wrote “I can never think of the place even now without a shudder. It smelled of prayers the way a fish market smells of fish . . . We lived there in a narrow, contemplative, unnatural piety—and also in a truly meritorious state of filth . . . As for baths, they were as unknown as the name of Victor Hugo. Our masters apparently held them in the greatest contempt.”

When he was sixteen Hearn suffered an accident which blinded his left eye, and from then on he would instinctively cover it with his left hand in conversation, or look down or to the left when photographed. Financial troubles forced him to seek schooling in London while living with a dock worker and his wife (distant relatives)—and there he made his first forays into the underside of urban existence, fascinated and repelled by “the wolf’s side of life, the ravening side, the apish side; the ugly facets of the monkey puzzle.” Fed up with his dilatory and dreamy ways, his family gave him a one-way ticket to New York City and told him to make his way to Cincinnati, to another set of relatives who didn’t want the strange young man. Penniless and homeless, he wandered the streets of the river town until he found work doing odd jobs at one of the local newspapers. In October of 1872 he submitted a review of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King to the editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, which became his first signed publication. Thus was born a literary journalist—an intelligent, provocative observer with a ripe facility for language and a penchant for exposing the horror and the humor of everyday urban life.

Christopher Benfey notes, “One of our best current travel writers, Pico Iyer, uses the phrase ‘global soul’ for people who have adapted themselves to our new world of mass migration and globalization. Hearn, it seems ot me, was an early version of a global soul. Born into the British Empire, he experienced firsthand the bitter divisions of the American Gilded Age, and lived to witness the rise of a new power in Asia: Imperial Japan.”

Books by Lafcadio Hearn in the PPL Special Collections

Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1884).

Two Years in the French West Indies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890).

[Japanese Fairy Tales]. The Boy Who Drew Cats (1898), The Goblin Spider (1899), The Old Woman Who Lost Her Dumpling (1902), and Chin Chin Kobakama (1903).

Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Elizabeth Bisland. (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. and The Riverside Press, 1906). [pic of original leaf laid in]

Letters from the Raven: Being the Correspondence of Lafcadio Hearn with Henry Watkin. (New York: Brentano’s, 1907).

The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Elizabeth Bisland. (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. and The Riverside Press, 1910).

An American Miscellany. Collected by Albert Mordell. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1924).

Creole Sketches by Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Charles Woodward Hutson. (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. and The Riverside Press, 1924).

Editorials by Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Charles Woodward Hutson. (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. and The Riverside Press, 1926).

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Intro. by Oscar Lewis. (Tokyo: Limited Editions Club, 1934).

Further Reading about Lafcadio Hearn:

Cott, Jonathan. Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn. (New York: Knopf, 1990).

Murray, Paul. A Fantastic Journey: The Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn. (Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 1997).

Perkins, P.D. and Ione. Lafcadio Hearn: A Bibliography of His Writings. (Tokyo, 1934; reprinted New York: Burt Franklin, 1968).

What Does It All Mean?

2009-07-11T09:17:00.009-04:00

On July 1, The Providence Public Library became a different institution. As has been reported in the news, we have turned over the 10 neighborhood branches to a group calling themselves the Providence Community Library (GIVING them all the books, computers, and furniture in the buildings and leasing those buildings for minuscule sums). While everyone hopes they can make a go of it (because NO ONE likes it when a library closes), there are simply no guarantees. But the branches are now their problem.

The Central Library, where I work, and which contains over 1 million items, has experienced an almost 70% staff reduction, and so a crew of 32 people are attempting, rather valiantly, to do what more than 80 people did a few weeks ago.

So, my posting has slowed down because I have more work to do in general. Readers can add our story to the nationwide plight of libraries--all libraries--no matter what funding streams or sources (private or public) they have, what leadership they are under, or what socio-economic slice of the public they serve.

In this emerging time of trimmed budgets, streamlined functions, and general re-tooling, I am often under a bit more pressure to explain why special collections is still vital--and I suppose I'll be using this blog as more of a think-through-it venue than a "look what I found" dump, which is how it started.

Top of the Heap

2009-07-08T18:50:00.003-04:00

The unofficial motto of the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is “give, get, or get out.” A seat on it will run you at least $10 million. The boards of non-profits in Providence should take note of it, as a sort of stellar goal to which they might aspire. This is the mentality of a serious institution--one which, after 138 years, has an endowment worth several billion dollars, a staff of almost 2,000, generates almost $300 million in revenue per year, is visited by over five million people a year, and can actually claim to be “the most encyclopedic, universal art museum in the world” (bar none).

Of course, “The Met,” as everyone knows it, has been at the pinnacle of New York’s socio-cultural scene for generations, counting among its benefactors old families like Morgan, Rockefeller, Astor, and Houghton. Its challenge now, says Michael Gross, who has charted a fine topography of the major players of the Met’s history in Rogues’ Gallery, is to find the right path to its own identity going forward. It is a challenge shared by many institutions with similar missions—how can an organization based on traditional cultural values and aesthetics make itself relevant as those values and aesthetics morph and change beyond recognition?

Gross had to approach writing Rogues’ Gallery as an investigative reporter does with powerful people unwilling to cooperate. Phillipe de Montebello, who was director of the Met when Gross began his inquiries in 2006, said “the museum has no secrets.” And yet, some months before, the curatorial staff had been told not to speak to Gross. “With the stakes so high and money and egos involved so big,” writes Gross, “the Met has always had to operate in the shade, whether it was acquiring art under questionable circumstances, dealing with donors hoping to launder very sketchy reputations, or merely trying to appear above reproach in a world where behind almost every painting is a fortune and behind that a sin or a crime.”

Excavating the Met’s history in six chapters from 1870 to 2009, Gross reveals the personalities and relationships between donors and directors, curators and dealers, and the city of New York and its cultural crown jewel. It is astonishing what people will do for money, power, and social prominence, and we see a great deal of what they will do in Rogues’ Gallery. In the end, Gross wants the Met to succeed—he is not lobbing stones at the cathedral, but rather revealing what the men and women at the pulpit have been up to behind closed doors.

I Walk the Line

2009-07-07T22:48:00.003-04:00

Conventional wisdom (or, What We Are Taught In Library School) about special collections includes a cardinal rule: the stacks (i.e. shelves) are NOT browseable.

This idea is reinforced with every report of rare book theft and at every conference which touches on security.

What bothers me is that, of all the places in a library, special collections is the place where browsing can generate the MOST inspiration. Especially when you are dealing with the sort of patrons who are using my collections the most: ARTISTS.

An artist, unlike a scholar, does not generally welcome the idea of searching, be it through an online or card catalog. Artists need to SEE what they are looking at, and often need to touch it as well.

What I want is a way to let the patrons browse the books without worrying about security. The few times I have let this happen, controlling it as much as possible, there have been fabulous results--very excited people who revere the materials and respect them for what they are, and use them to further or even engender their creative or intellectual projects.

THAT is the great function of special collections.

My 15 minutes

2009-06-28T00:06:00.005-04:00

A nice article about PPL's special collections in today's Providence Journal (original link followed by text):

Bob Kerr: The third floor is where the treasure is
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, June 28, 2009

http://www.projo.com/news/bobkerr/kerr_column_28_06-28-09_TNERTTD_v13.2bca026.html

Sometimes, it takes an out-of-towner to find the treasures the locals pass by. It takes fresh eyes to see past the familiar, everyday blur. So Piper Smith, a social worker from New York, found the Providence Public Library. Then she found a room on the third floor where a person could get lost for days, maybe weeks. "I love libraries," she told me earlier this week by phone from New York. "And we went up and this man was very kind and we asked if we could look around. He was so welcoming. He showed us all over."

Smith was in Providence to visit her twin sons, Raber and Taylor Umphenour, and Raber's fiancie, Jenni Katajamaki. And when Piper and Raber and Jenni met Phil Weimerskirch on the third floor of the library they brought together more than just an incredible mix of surname syllables. They brought together a shared fascination with timeless works on paper.

In Special Collections at the public library, you can pick up a first edition of Charles Dickens' Little Dorritt in serialized format complete with advertisements. There is the history of printing collection and the Irish literature and folklore collection. There are more than 10,000 items on the Civil War and the history of slavery. There are shelves and shelves of whaling logs that tell in very personal and immediate ways of the often brutal life aboard whaling ships on their years-long voyages. In the children's collection, there is a German book with a xylophone inside.

"Row upon row of mind-bending rarity," says Richard Ring of the things that surround him. Ring is director of Special Collections. Weimerskirch is director emeritus and works part-time and is due to be laid off as part of the brutal cuts at the library. Together, they represent one of those wonderful corners of learning that allows us to feel and smell and settle in with the work of centuries.

Ring handed me a small volume titled Traits De Jeu de Dames A La Polonois. It's about the international game of checkers. There are drawings. It was once owned by Marie Antoinette. She held it, and I held it. I'm going back. I want to sit down with a whaling log. But if not for Piper Smith I would have been just another of those people passing by without a clue as to the rich possibilities close by.

Actually, it was her daughter-in-law-to-be that pointed her toward the library. Katajamaki is a graduate in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design. She studies buildings. She considers the public library at Washington and Empire streets one of the most beautiful and well preserved buildings in the city. And she considers Special Collections and all its enriching books special and fantastic. "There was a medieval manuscript," she said. "There are only three in the world. Usually, things like that are under glass. You can't touch them."

Smith contacted The Journal after her visit to the library. She thinks people should be more aware of what's really there. She finds it sad that more people don't use it. She also finds it sad that the library staff, including Phil Weimerskirch, is being so drastically reduced. "He was so kind and generous with his time," she said. While she was there, she looked at a first edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter.

By the nature of its priceless inventory, Special Collections is not a place for school field trips. It's not a drop-in part of the library, although Ring says if he's there and you ask, he'll be happy to show you around. But due to all the staff cuts, he has been given additional duties at the library. An appointment is a good idea. If you go, you will meet a man passionate about the treasure over which he presides. He speaks of the "materiality of books."

It is a small world he works in, says Ring. But it is a very interesting world and one where the gentleman's handshake still means something. There was a Dutchman who had a book that Ring says was worth two times his annual salary at least. And the Dutchman told him to take the book and check it out "It's based on trust," he said.

So, too, is the use of the material in Special Collections. People are trusted to treat the books with respect and clean hands. Ring is never far away. This is his domain. He does everything -- from writing grants to putting books on the shelves. He came to the public library from the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University in November 2007. "I knew we had good stuff here, really excellent stuff."

It is that, all right. This part of the library is a place to stop and slide out a book and think about where it's been as well as what it teaches. There is a feeling of reverence. As we moved among the stacks, Ring took a book from a shelf. It's the memo book of the chief surgeon in the Confederate hospital at Richmond. It tells of the war in a way historians cannot. And it is just one small piece of this quiet, thoughtful place that so enriches its city.

I want to thank Piper Smith for telling me that it's there.

The Press in the United States, Part III

2009-06-20T00:02:00.003-04:00

The following is a transcription (Part III of III) of an article by Lawrence Wroth in his "Notes for Bibliophiles" column in the New York Herald Tribune, which ran 70 years ago.

The Press in the United States: A Perfect Tercentenary Exhibition, Part III (Conclusion)
[September 10, 1939]

In this department for Aug. 13 and 27 we indulged ourselves with the idea of setting up, with books borrowed from many libraries in this country and England, an exhibition of the first and unusual issues of the Colonial American press to celebrate the tercentenary of its establishment at Cambridge, Mass., in 1639. In those two articles we discussed the early presses of Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina. We continue with the story of the other colonies in which the printing press was found before the conclusion of the Revolution.

The press in New Jersey was established in 1754. Its earliest issue was "The Votes and Proceedings of the Assembly of New Jersey" of April, 1754, issued in the year named by James Parker, who had just moved his establishment to Woodbridge, in that colony. Again the Public Record Office in London would have to be drawn upon for a copy of this first New Jersey imprint for display in our exhibition. We have already spoken of Parker in connection with printing in New York, as one of the most skillful and enterprising printers of the colonies.

The press in New Hampshire was begun by Daniel Fowle, a printer of Boston, who, in 1754, issued a pamphlet entitled "The Monster of Monsters," by Thomas Thumb, which was held to reflect upon the Massachusetts Assembly. After his pamphlet had been condemned and burned by the hangman and Fowle had been reprimanded, jailed, and ordered to pay costs, he turned his back upon Boston and settled with his press in Portsmouth, N. H. The earliest issue of his press in that place was the prospectus of a newspaper. No copy of that prospectus is now known, so that the first number of the newspaper itself, dated Oct. 7, 1756, must be regarded as the earliest known production of the New Hampshire press.

A journeyman printer named James Adams, after several years of service, left the firm of Franklin & Hall, of Philadelphia, in 1761, and went to Wilmington, Del., where, soon afterward, he announced that he had published a schoolbook, a ready reckoner, the "Wilmington Almanack for 1762" and a piece called "The Advice of Evan Ellis to his Daughter when at Sea." No copies remain of the ready reckoner or the spelling book, but two at least of the known imprints of Adams's first year are represented by actual copies. Four libraries, among them the Wilmington Institute Free Library and the American Antiquarian Society, are known to possess copies of the "Almanack," and the John Carter Brown Library has a broadside entitled "The Advice of Evan Ellis to his Daughter when at Sea," printed by James Adams in Wilmington, which, in all probability, is from the edition in question. Perhaps the best known issue of the Wilmington press in the eighteenth century was the celebrated "Discovery, Settlement and present State of Kentucke," by John Filson, which James Adams printed in 1784, though the great map of Kentucky that went with it was engraved and printed in Philadelphia.

Though James Johnston went to Georgia in 1762 and received the appointment of printer to that colony, it is probable that he was not equipped with press and type at that time. At any rate, it was not until April, 1763, that he began the publication of a newspaper, and it was only in June of that year that he printed a group of acts of the Georgia Assembly, some of which had been passed four years earlier. It is generally assumed that the first of these to be mentioned in Johnston's advertisement—that is, "An Act to prevent Stealing of Horses and Meat Cattle"—is the earliest Georgia imprint other than the "Georgia Gazette." Copies of this act and of others of the group are found in the John Carter Brown and the Massachusetts Historical Society libraries.

The first press in Louisiana was set up in New Orleans at that critical moment in the history of the colony when France was in process of ceding it to Spain. The earliest piece brought out by Denis Braud, the first New Orleans printer, was a broadside of 1764 entitled "Extrait de la Lettre du Roi, a M. Dabbadie." This was a notification to the Director General of the colony that Louisiana had been ceded to Spain—tragic news for the French settlers of Louisiana. The only known copy of that broadside is described by Douglas C. McMurtrie in "Early Printing in New Orleans" as in the Louisiana collection of Edward Alexander Parsons, of New Orleans. The early history of the press in Louisiana is of unusual interest because of its participation in the political changes of a period through which the country was, in turn, French, Spanish, French and American.

If we are to pay attention to present-day boundaries, the press in Vermont began in Westminster in 1780 with a Thanksgiving proclamation for that year printed by Judah Padock Spooner and Timothy Green. The beginnings of Vermont printing, however, are more interesting than this, for the first Vermont press was actually established in New Hampshire in the town of Dresden, now called Hanover. At that time Vermont was claiming as hers both banks of the Connecticut River, and Dresden lay on the eastern bank of the river, within the debatable territory. Here in the fall of 1778 the newly established Vermont Republic brought Alden Spooner, a printer of New London, and during the next two years that printer took an active part in the struggle of the Vermont settlers against the governments of New York and New Hampshire in carrying on what was known as the New Hampshire Grants controversy. A thanksgiving proclamation dated Oct. 18, 1778, and a sermon preached by Eden Burroughs, entitled "A sincere Regard to Righteousness and Piety," are the earliest known issues of the Dresden press. A copy of the thanksgiving proclamation could be displayed only by courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library, but either the Library of the University of Vermont or the John Carter Brown Library could be called upon to lend a copy of the Eden Burroughs sermon.

A short-lived printing establishment was set up in Florida when, in 1783, William Charles and John Wells, sons of a loyalist printer and newspaper publisher of Charleston, S. C., fled before the American occupation of that city under Gen. Nathaniel Green. Together with many other South Carolina loyalists, they went to the British colony of East Florida and at St. Augustine began the publication of "The East Florida Gazette" in February, 1783. In 1784 two pamphlets are known to have come from the press. Probably the first of these was Samuel Gale's "Essay II, On the Nature and Principles of Public Credit." The other was the "Case of the Inhabitants of East Florida," which is a presentation of the claims to compensation of the loyalists, an unhappy group who had hardly settled and taken up land in East Florida when they found the country ceded by Great Britain to Spain as the result of the Treaty of Paris. It would not be impossible to make a good showing of these early Florida imprints. A few numbers of "The East Florida Gazette," the first St. Augustine newspaper, are found in the Public Record Office, London. The New York Public Library and the John Carter Brown Library have copies of the "Case of the Inhabitants of East Florida." The only known copy of Gale's "Essay II" in the St. Augustine edition, is in the possession of Mr. Thomas W. Streeter, of Morristown, N. J., who also owns a copy of the "Case of the Inhabitants."

An exhibition of printing in the colonies would be incomplete without reference to certain foreign presses which operated in different parts of the country, especially in Pennsylvania, where the German element was always strong, and where, toward the eighteenth century came great numbers of French refugees from Santo Domingo. The printing establishment of Christopher Sauer, the elder, was responsible for the publication, in 1743, of "Biblia, Das ist: Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments," the second Bible known with certainty to have been printed in America and the first to be published in a European language. The press of the Seventh Day Baptists Monastery, at Ephrata, Pa., began about the year 1745 a long series of books of great interest in the religious and social history of the Pennsylvania Germans. Among these was "Der Blutige Schau-Platz," printed by the Ephrata brothers for the Mennonites of Pennsylvania. Completed in 1748, this book of 1,512 pages was the largest issue of the press in colonial America.

Among the notable French presses of Philadelphia was that established by Fleury Mesplet in 1774, and used by the Continental Congress for its propaganda addressed to the French of Canada. Later in the century, after the Santo Domingan revolution, the press of Moreau de St. Mery issued a number of extremely interesting political and sociological books. In Philadelphia, and in Boston also, French newspapers were published in the eighteenth century, and many pamphlets of interest to refugees from the West Indies and from France were issued.

The exhibition we have discussed in these three articles in "Notes for Bibliophiles" would represent material of fundamental, social and literary interest in the life and history of the United States, and would celebrate the beginnings of one of the most important present-day industries of the country.

Th Press in the United States, Part II

2009-06-19T23:59:00.004-04:00

The following is a transcription (Part II of III) of an article by Lawrence Wroth in his "Notes for Bibliophiles" column in the New York Herald Tribune, which ran 70 years ago.

The Press in the United States: A Perfect Tercentenary Exhibition, Part II
[August 27, 1939]

In this department for August 13, we proposed to set up an exhibition of first and notable issues of the Colonial American press, celebrating in this way the beginning of printing in the United States by the press established at Cambridge, Mass., in 1639. Because of the wide dissemination of those first issues of the presses of the Colonies, a perfect, or nearly perfect, collection of them could be made for exhibition purposes only in the imagination. It is in the imagination, therefore, that we proceed with our borrowing for the purposes of our display of some of the rarest books known to the collector. We have already brought together, in our earlier installment, the "firsts" of the presses of Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York.

Printing began in Connecticut with the establishment of a press at New London in 1709 by Thomas Short. The first issues of Short's press in that place and year were a separate "Act (for emitting Bills of Public Credit)" and a broadside entitled "By the Honourable Gordon Saltonstall Esq. Governour . . . of Connecticut . . . A Proclamation for a Fast." The first of these could be contributed to the exhibition only by the Yale University Library; the second, by the Massachusetts Historical Society. The most important of the early issues of the Short press and one which would occupy a prominent place in the exhibition is "A Confession of Faith . . . Consented to . . . at Say-Brook September 9th, 1708." This celebrated "Saybrook Platform" was printed in New London in 1710, though it seems likely that its publication did not occur until a year later. Short's successor in New London was Timothy Green, one of whose early publications was the "Acts and Laws of Connecticut" of 1715. Timothy was a descendant of Samuel Green, the well remembered printer of Eliot's Indian Bible and other important works of the Cambridge press. Beginning their devotion to printing with long service to the earliest press of the United States, the Green family is found active in the operation of establishments in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maryland down to the year 1839, almost 200 years of continuous service to the craft by the members of a single family, an unusual American record.

James Franklin's conflict with the Massachusetts authorities, arising out of certain publications in his "New England Courant," was responsible for the establishment of the press in Newport, whither he and his wife, Anne, removed in the year 1727. Their earliest publication of that year, John Hammett's "Vindication . . . of his separating from the Baptists" has disappeared completely from knowledge. The earliest extant Newport imprint, therefore, would be the copy of Poor Robin's "Rhode-Island Almanack for the Year 1728" (printed in 1727), which would be represented in the exhibition by copies from the almanac collections of the Library of Congress and the Boston Public Library. Various libraries would be able to produce works that issued from the Newport press in 1728. The Rhode Island Historical Society has two or three items of that year including James Honeyman's "Faults on All Sides," a copy of which is also found in the John Carter Brown Library. This seems to be the most extensive book up to that time issued from the Newport press.

Printing began in Providence in 1762, when William Goddard established his press there and issued, first, a broadside announcing the fall of Morro Castle at Havana, and second, a circular for a theatrical performance. Neither of these can be shown in the exhibition because copies of them have not been located in any collection of today. The earliest issues of the Goddard press in Providence now to be found are a broadside "In Memory of Obadiah Brown" and a prospectus soliciting subscriptions to the "Providence Gazette," which began publication on October 20, 1762. Both these pieces are known in unique copies in the Rhode Island Historical Society.

The prohibition of the press in Virginia by special orders of the King, in 1682, was effective in its operation for nearly fifty years. It was not until 1730 that William Parks, then public printer of Maryland, added to his duties the same office under the Virginia government and opened an establishment in Williamsburg. His earliest publications were "All the Publick Acts of Assembly in Virginia" of 1730; an edition of "The New Virginia Tobacco Law," and a ready reckoner known as "The Dealer's Pocket Companion." None of these imprints is known today in an actual copy. The earliest of his issues of that year known to exist is the unique "Charge to the Grand Jury" by Governor Gooch, which is found in the Archives of Fulham Palace and, if shown, would have to be loaned to our exhibition by the Bishop of London. The other known publication of that year is "Typographia, an Ode on Printing," by John Markland. This is the earliest American contribution to the literature of typography. The only recorded copy of the poem is found in the John Carter Brown Library. That library could also contribute to the exhibition a copy of the "Virginia and Maryland Almanack for 1732," the earliest extant copy of an almanac published south of Pennsylvania, though Parks began his almanac publishing three years before the date of this item with John Warner's "Almanack for the Year 1729," published in Annapolis in 1728.

The first printers of South Carolina were George Webb, Eleazer Phillips jr., and Thomas Whitemarsh, all three of whom appeared in Charleston at about the same time as the result of actions at cross purposes by the Assembly and the Governor and Council. Late in 1731 a compromise was brought about as the result of which all of the three printers were given employment. Whitemarsh and Phillips established newspapers in 1732, but before this important service had been performed George Webb had brought out at least two pamphlets which must be regarded as the first issues of the press in South Carolina. Copies of these were discovered by Douglas C. McMurtrie a few years ago in England. They comprise a small pamphlet entitled "Anno Quinto Georgii II. Regis. At a Council . . . Tuesday, Oct. 19, 1731," and a broadside proclamation by the governor dated "Nov. 4, 1731." For the exhibition we are discussing it would be necessary to borrow both these pieces from the Public Record Office in London, where we have already found so many unique early American imprints, more especially, of course, such as relate to the governmental affairs of the colonies. Philips and Whitemarsh died in 1732 and 1733 respectively, and after his first publication of 1731, George Webb disappeared from the scene. The press was put upon a firm basis in South Carolina only when Lewis Timothy, a Huguenot who had been a journeyman of Franklin's, went to Charleston in 1733, and took up the work begun by Whitemarsh, a former associate in Philadelphia.

In our display of South Carolina printing we would want to see also "An Essay on Currency," which Timothy published in 1734 and which, until the discovery of the two Webb imprints, was regarded as the earliest issue of the South Carolina press in book or pamphlet form. That work would have to be borrowed for the exhibition from the Charleston Library. The most striking of the publications of the early Carolina press is unquestionably the edition of the "Laws of the Province of South Carolina," compiled by Nicholas Trott and printed by Lewis Timothy in 1736. This was one of the earliest English-American books to be printed with a rubricated title-page.

To secure a proper representation of the work of the first printer of North Carolina, James Davis, of Newbern, it would be necessary again to go to the Public Record Office, that great repository of documents relating to England and her colonies, where would be found his first imprint, the "Journal of the House of Burgesses," of September, 1749. All the North Carolina imprints which antedate the volume containing the Acts of Assembly, published in 1751, are to be found only in the Public Record Office. The "Collection of all the Acts of Assembly of North Carolina," of Newbern, 1751, is the earliest publication of the North Carolina press existing in any considerable number of libraries.

The Press In the United States, Part 1

2009-06-19T23:52:00.006-04:00

The following is a transcription (Part I of III) of an article by Lawrence Wroth in his "Notes for Bibliophiles" column in the New York Herald Tribune, which ran 70 years ago.

The Press in the United States: An Ideal Tercentenary Exhibition
[August 13, 1939]

Many libraries have been putting on exhibitions this year to celebrate the tercentenary of the establishment of printing in the United States at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1639. No library in existence has all the things needed to make a complete showing of first printings in each of the original colonies but it is possible to have a good deal of fun constructing imaginatively the best possible exhibition and, still in the realm of fancy, borrowing for it unique titles from their owners. Such an exhibition could be held anywhere the fancy suggests, but because of the association between the first Cambridge press and the "College," we might plan to set it up in the Treasure Room of the Harvard College Library.

It is impossible, of course, to make such an exhibition perfect, even in dreams. There is no copy known, for example, of the very first thing printed by Stephen Day on his press in Cambridge, that is, the "Oath of a Free-man," the celebrated formulary used by the Massachusetts government which, though a simple broadside, had implications of considerable importance in the political life of the country. The earliest printed form known to us at present of the "Oath of a Free-man" appears in a pamphlet of London, 1647, by John Child, entitled "New-England's Jonas cast up at London."

The second thing printed by the Cambridge Press was an almanac of which also no copy is known to be in existence today. Its third issue, the earliest of which there exists a known copy, has the distinction of being regarded as the first book printed in the United States. This was the "Whole Booke of Psalmes," translated from the Hebrew by a committee of Massachusetts divines and printed in Cambridge in the year 1640. Though one of the most valuable of all books it is not by any means the rarest. Seven public libraries in the United States and England and three private individuals in the United States would be able to contribute eleven copies in varying states of completeness to our ideal exhibition. Without doubt the best copy to display as our beginning entry would be the perfect John Carter Brown Library copy, which first belonged to Richard Mather, one of the translators, and the editor of the volume. Another production of the Cambridge Press which would find place in this exhibition would be a "Declaration of Former Passages and Proceedings betwixt the English and the Narrowgansets," a piece known more popularly as the "Narragansett Declaration," and sometimes characterized as the first historical writing to proceed from the American press.

Another Cambridge book of special significance is the "Book of the General Lawes and Libertyes of the Massachusets" of the year 1648. That cornerstone of the structure of American legal and constitutional publication could be displayed only if the Huntington Library were able to lend its unique copy. John Eliot's translation of the Bible into the Indian language, Cambridge, 1663, marks the high point of the New England effort to Christianize the Indians. Copies of that and of the "Platform of Church Discipline" of 1649 could be borrowed from a good many public and private collections.

When the Cambridge Press went out of existence in 1692 a printing house had already been operating in near-by Boston for seventeen years. Increase Mather's "Wicked Man's Portion," printed in Boston, by John Foster in 1675, is said to be the earliest issue of the press in a city that ranked as the most distinguished publishing center of the country throughout the greater part of the Colonial period. In addition to this book our exhibition would have to show as an important publication of the early Boston press, William Hubbard's "Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians." The presence in this volume of a woodcut map of New England made by John Foster, the printer, gives it consequence as the first illustrated book of the United States.
The dissemination of printing in the United States was by no means regular and orderly in its geographical progress. The establishment of the press in Boston in 1675 was succeeded by the setting up of a press in Jamestown, Virginia, by William Nuthead in 1682. Unfortunately Nuthead was prohibited the exercise of his craft after he had run off a few trial sheets of the Assembly Proceedings. No copies of these are known to exist, and the press of Virginia does not find representation in our exhibition until nearly fifty years later. But the Jamestown printer, William Nuthead, removed to Maryland and established himself as a printer in St. Mary's City. The earliest known product of the Maryland press, a blank form, was printed sometime before August, 1685, and would have to be procured from the Land Office at Annapolis, Maryland.
In order to exhibit an item from the Nuthead Press of greater interest than its legal forms, it would be necessary to borrow from the Public Record Office, London, the only known copy of an important broadside printed by William Nuthead in 1689, entitled "The Address of the Representatives of their Majestyes Protestant Subjects in the Province of Maryland." The Nuthead Press was succeeded by the press of Thomas Reading, who in 1700 published the first Maryland book of collected laws, the earliest work of the sort printed outside Massachusetts, known today by the unique and imperfect copy in the Library of Congress. Reading was followed in Annapolis by the well remembered printer William Parks, afterward established in Williamsburg; and by Jonas Green, whose editions of Bacon's "Laws of Maryland," published in Annapolis, in 1765, is one of the handsomest and most elaborate publications of the Colonial printing house.

The press in Pennsylvania was begun in Dec., 1685, with the printing of William Bradford's "Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense," an almanac which could best be shown in the exhibition by borrowing two copies, that one owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the variant in the private library of Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach, of Philadelphia and New York. The press in Pennsylvania held the premier position among Colonial presses throughout the second half of the eighteenth century.

No exhibition of American printing would be adequate without a representation of the work of Benjamin Franklin. Every one would expect to see displayed a copy of his "Cato Major" of 1744, and since the Historical Society of Pennsylvania has shown by a recent publication the splendid typographical qualities of his Indian treaties it would be necessary to put in a few specimens of those important and handsomely printed documents. An excellent example of the group would be the "Minutes of Conferences, held with the Indians at Harris's Ferry," published by Franklin & Hall in 1757.

It might have been said of William Bradford by his contemporaries that he had the unworldly quality of choosing troublesome friends and remaining loyal to them. Such a comment would arise from the fact that Bradford supported George Keith, the rebel Quaker, in his attacks upon the Pennsylvania ruling organization, and so got into trouble with the government. The feeling of the authorities was so strong against him that when he was released from prison he found it desirable to remove himself to New York, where, in 1693, he established the first press in the small town later to become the metropolis of the country. Because of the difficulty of deciding what was the first issue of Bradford's New York press it would be necessary to display two books in our exhibition. One of these would be a copy of "New England's Spirit of Persecution Transmitted to Pennsilvania . . . in the Tryal of Peter Boss, George Keith, Thomas Budd and William Bradford," a narrative largely prepared by George Keith and today found in several American collections, and "A Paraphrastical Exposition on a Letter from a Gentleman in Philadelphia to his Friend in Boston," a poem by John Phillips directed against Samuel Jennings, who had presided at the Bradford trial. It would be necessary to draw upon the private collection of Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach for the only copy of "Paraphrastical Exposition" known today.

Among the more notable successors to Bradford in New York were John Peter Zenger, whose trial for libel in 1735 was an important incident in the long struggle for the liberty of the press; James Parker, James Rivington and Hugh Gaine. From Zenger's list of publications one would display his "Charter of the City of New York," 1735, and from Parker's the "Charter of the College of New-York in America," as representing works of typographical excellence as well as historical importance.

The Mighty Corliss

2009-06-17T10:25:00.008-04:00

On June 1 we opened a small exhibition of photographs which were printed from a selection (3 dozen or so) of ca. 1900-era glass negatives in our collection. It was written up in several places, including here:

http://thephoenix.com/Providence/Arts/84734-Time-Machines/

The centerpiece is really the Corliss engine, and we have two (2) 1876 negatives which measure 20x24 inches. Here is a scan of one of the prints (all of them were developed by the AS220 Community Darkroom):

We hope at some point soon to create a joint catalog through which we will sell a limited number of prints of these negatives. The two Corliss prints will be issued in a limited run (no more than 20 sets) in an appropriate portfolio box, accompanied by a history of the Corliss engine, which became the signature display in the Centennial Exhibition:
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/ppet/centennial/page1.asp?secid=31

Wild winds and wild men

2009-06-10T12:21:00.009-04:00

Just acquired this nice item--a printed Act (London, 7 April, 1803) allowing whaling vessels involved in the Greenland fishery to complete their crew rosters at certain ports (other than their hailing ports) for the season. This Act was passed in the midst of an uneasy peace between Georgian Britain and Napoleonic France: the Treaty of Amiens was 25 March 1802, and hostilities were renewed on 18 May 1803 (a year later Napoleon would declare himself Emperor).

From the text: "Whereas it may be difficult, in the present circumstances, for the masters or owners of ships employed in the fishery carried on in the Greenland seas and the Davis's Straights . . . it shall and may be lawful for any ship or vessel which is not provided with the full complement of men . . . at the port from which such ship or vessel shall be fitted or cleared out, to proceed from thence to any of the ports in the Forth of Clyde, or in Lough Ryan, or to Lerwick in the Isle of Shetland, or Kirkwall in the Orkneys [etc.]."

According to Basil Lubbock's The Arctic Whalers (1937), "It was the custom for both English and Scottish whalers to recruit the younger members of their crew from the Shetlands and Orkneys, whose natives, besides being naturally hardy, were unequalled as boat men; they were, at the same time, steady, hard-working men, and far less given to drunkenness than either the Scottish or English seamen. At the time . . . of the outward bound whaling fleet Lerwick was probably one of the most lawless town[s] in the British Isles. This period of the year in the Shetlands was noted for what was called its Greenland weather, viz., that of wild winds and wild men."

Cartes de Visite

2009-05-29T15:51:00.005-04:00

A photographic phenomenon that was all the rage in the mid-nineteenth century was the carte-de-visite, with sales running into the hundreds of millions (so a lot of them are still around). The American Museum of Photography has a great exhibition on them here:

http://www.photographymuseum.com/worlds.html

I found two images of a "redeemed slave child" named Fannie Virginia Casseopia Lawrence.

This photograph was taken in Brooklyn, New York,

This one was taken in Hartford, Connecticut.

Close to the bone

2009-05-18T08:11:00.005-04:00

Yesterday we hosted a lively group of collectors of scrimshaw who were attending the annual scrimshaw collector's weekend hosted by the New Bedford Whaling Museum:

http://www.whalingmuseum.org/prog/scrimshawWeekend.htm

Here is an article on their activities in the New Bedford paper:

http://www.heraldnews.com/entertainment/x529241206/Carving-a-niche

Their visit to the PPL to view our modest collection of scrimshaw was a definite success. While most of our pieces have been photographed and put online, the whole point of this sort of event is to put the items into people's hands, for only then can a deep understanding of the artifact begin.

http://www.provlib.org/ri_image/Whaling%20Collection/Sites/pages/specialcollections/nicholsonwhaling/scrimshaw.htm

The Mathers of New England

2009-05-15T09:14:00.019-04:00

One of my favorite bibliographies is a series on the works of the Mather family. Lawrence Wroth gives an admirable summation of the project when he reviewed the bibliography of Cotton Mather published in 1940 in the "Notes for Bibliophiles" column of the New York Herald-Tribune on October 6, 1940 [I've scanned some images from our copy, which was given to us by William G. Mather]:

Some fifteen years ago there was announced a plan for the preparation and eventual publication of a bibliography of the writings of the Mather family of New England. The work was to comprise in six volumes a description of all the titles that came from the pens of Richard, Increase and Cotton Mather, and such of the sons, brothers and cousins of these as might claim to be occasional men of letters. The sponsor of the project was William Gwinn Mather, of Cleveland, owner of the second largest collection of Mather writings in existence; the work of compilation was to be carried through by Mr. Mather's librarian, Thomas J. Holmes, with George Parker Winship as consultant in the planning and execution of the undertaking. Not always are bibliographical projects carried out to the full measure of their original proposals, but in the case of the Mather bibliography it becomes apparent that performance is catching up with promise. In 1931 there was issued in two volumes Mr. Holmes's bibliography of Increase Mather, and now, completing the second stage of the broadly conceived plan, there has appeared in the last month, under Mr. Holmes's editorship, a study in three volumes ($15) from the Harvard University Press entitled "Cotton Mather, a Bibliography of His Works."

In a brief work of 1927, "The Mather Literature," Mr. Holmes presented eloquently a justification of the task to which he had set his hand. The Mathers were the apologists of New England Congregationalism, and that institution was the mold in which were set the life and thought of the Puritan commonwealths. The study of the works of that family of writing men was important to the understanding of New England's contribution to American culture. Upon that basis the Mather bibliographies were conceived.
Those who have made use of Mr. Holmes's "Increase Mather" have come to regard that book almost as the classic example of the manner and degree in which bibliography may serve the study of history. That estimate of its worth, expressed more than once and by many scholars in recent years, may be repeated as a comment upon his newly published bibliography of Increase's son. In its highest employment, bibliography is not a mere listing and describing of titles, but a process in the study of texts. It involves consideration of the history of those texts as expressions of the human spirit, and calls for the minute examination of the forms in which the texts have been transmitted. In purpose and accomplishment the Mather bibliographies fulfill the requirements of this definition to an extent that puts them close to the top in the list of American essays in literary history.

The text of the Cotton Mather bibliography is supported by aids to its use in the form of lists of owners, tables of symbols, tables showing the relative strength of the twenty largest Mather collections, a chronological list of the writings, appendixes, and indexes in several kinds. The bibliographical descriptions of each of the 468 editions and issues of the writings follow the approved method, and the locations of known copies placed after each title rest upon a canvass of eighty-five libraries and private collections of the United States and England. These, of course, are the elements expected in any full-dress bibliography. Here they assume a special character because in recording the features of a book Mr. Holmes has the faculty of giving weight to the minute while avoiding the trivial, and his knowledge of the processes of bookmaking add a special authority to his collections and his analyses of irregularities. The characteristic of his work most to be praised, however, is the vital quality of the annotation with which the entry of each title concludes. The scale upon which his sponsor has planned the bibliographies permits Mr. Holmes space for extended extracts from the books themselves, from the Cotton Mather Diary and from a large number and variety of contemporary and modern sources. By these and by his own reflective comment he seeks to re-create the conditions and circumstances which brought the work into being, to relate it to the life of the community in which it was written and published, and to show its place in the life and development of the author himself. The work thus becomes an entity that stands by itself as a new element in American history.

Not every reader of today appreciates, or wants to learn to appreciate, the importance of the purely religious and ecclesiastical writings of Cotton Mather. Students of his period, however, realize that the attempt in these and similar writings to justify the ways of God to man formed the hard core of New England's intellectual development. It was also an element of relaxation in the lives of the people, the intellectual pastime as well as the serious business of a community which for a time based its political state upon its ecclesiastical and doctrinal system. Cotton Mather made the last stand of the hierarchy against a levelling spirit in the citizens which was slowly creating resentment against ecclesiastical dominance in public affairs, but he recognized that an age of new conceptions in science could not tolerate a state of changelessness in social conditions.He remained an old-fashioned Calvinist, but he saw that religion "had become much more a matter of practical conduct and of tangible results than abstract contemplation of a transcendent divinity." He was ready to cast out the old scholastic logic, but he could not recommend the use of Locke's "Essaye of Humane Understanding." As his grandfathers had done he hated and fought the Arian and Arminian heresies, but he contravened the dearest principles of the older generation by advocating in church practice the free and open communion of all Christian people. An upholder of the older order in matters of doctrine, he not only accepted the new experimentation in science but advanced more than half way to meet it. He uttered no effective protest against the witchcraft madness, but he made smallpox inoculation a common practice of his community in the face of learned opposition. These elements in the complex personality of Cotton Mather are brought by Professor Perry Miller in the note which he has provided for Mr. Holmes's entry of the "Manuductio ad Ministerium" of 1726.

It stands out in Mr. Holmes's annotations of the several titles that the student of American historiography must take into account the contributions of Cotton Mather to the New England record.
The "Magnalia Christi Americana: or the Ecclesiastical History of New England," of 1702, is perhaps the most ambitious American literary production of the Colonial period. One would even call it a great book except that it lacks the quality of magic which inheres in great writing, the quality that sends us back to Fuller's "Worthies of England," an analogous work, simply to taste the flavor of words and to wonder again at the depth of richness the human mind can attain.

Mr. Holmes has been fortunate in his collaborators. Perry Miller's note on the "Manuductio" has already been mentioned. The "Christian Philosopher," which represents "the first extensive use of Newtonian ideas in the American colonies" carries a note on the sources of the book by Theodore Hornberger, of the University of Texas. Kenneth B. Murdock, of Harvard, who has written the life of Increase Mather and is the authority on the biography of the Mathers, evaluates the "Magnalia" and urges, persuasively, greater attention to it as a book to be read for enjoyment. Lloyd A. Brown, curator of maps in the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan, comments with the peculiar erudition of "map-men" upon the map of New England that accompanies the "Magnalia." A catalogue of known Cotton Mather manuscripts is supplied, with commentary, by William Sanford Piper; Mather's newspaper contributions have been listed by the late George Francis Dow; and the full indexes of the book made by George W. Robinson.

It has been the intention of this review to imply that the Holmes bibliographies of Increase and Cotton Mather are not far from being the chief monuments of American bibliography. Perhaps it is better that the words should be said forthrightly. Our admiration for the knowledge, skill and noble industry of Mr. Holmes is unbounded. We join him in thanking Mr. Mather for the twenty years of support of the project that has resulted in the two bibliographies, and finally we express our appreciation of the manner in which the Harvard University Press has carried through a difficult and complex piece of bibliographical printing.

Launch of Occasional Nuggets

2009-05-09T13:21:00.003-04:00

Dear fellow bibliophiles:

I am pleased to announce the launch of Occasional Nuggets, a modest but gratifying serial publication of bookish interest, each issue of which is intended to “bring to light a gem from the special collections of the Providence Public Library.”

Our first issue (Spring 2009) features a set of four Japanese fairy tales written by Lafcadio Hearn and printed in Tokyo from 1898-1904, on crêpe-paper and bound in silk thread in the Japanese (accordion) fashion. The issue begins with a short introduction on Hearn’s life and career, and a reprinting (including a few scans of the original illustrations) of one of the tales—The Boy Who Drew Cats, in which a young and sensitive boy is saved by his art. Also included is a bibliography of books by Hearn in special collections, and suggestions for further reading.

One of our generous volunteers, Meg Turner (RISD ’08), a graphic designer and an instructor at the AS220 Community Printshop, scanned ornaments from the many specimen books in our Updike Printing Collection to design the cover. Two hundred covers were letterpress printed in red & black at the AS220 Printshop. The internal pages were printed in-house on PPL’s laser printers, and so the work embodies printing technologies from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries.

The cost of the production of this first issue (a scan of the cover is attached) of 200 numbered copies has been borne by the Library, but to continue it for the next three issues we need the support of subscribers. We are offering four (4) issues this year (spring, summer, winter, fall) for a subscription price of $15.00, which will cover only our production costs.

The larger purpose of this publication, of course, is to promote the appreciation and support of the special collections at PPL. To this end, on the final pages of each succeeding issue, we would like to list those who have (during the year of publication) decided to give beyond the subscription price to the following levels of support:

Apprentice printers: $5 to $49
Journeymen printers: $50 to $99
Master printers: $100 to $199
Patrons: $200+

All funds we receive beyond those necessary to produce the Occasional Nuggets will be used solely to acquire for, and to conserve the items within, the D. B. Updike collection on the history of printing.

If you are interested in subscribing to this first year of the Occasional Nuggets, please reply by e-mail to rring@provlib.org with your preferred postal address. Please ALSO indicate if you are willing to donate above the subscription price at any of the aforementioned levels, as this may reduce the number of subscribers we require in order to produce the next three issues.

We are not asking for any money at this time—only an expression of interest in the form of the promise to subscribe and/or donate. If (and only if) we receive enough promised subscriptions—or the equivalent in promised subscriptions & donations—we will send those people a copy of the first issue with an invoice, and proceed with plans to produce the next three issues.

If we do NOT receive enough promised subscriptions (or its equivalent, as stated), we will send copies of the first issue FREE to those who did promise to subscribe, with our thanks for their time and interest. Please write or call if you have any further questions about this offer.

The Special Collections department houses over 40,000 books, posters, pamphlets, photographs, broadsides, manuscripts, and other artifacts which, by virtue of their individual or collective significance, require a higher level of security and interpretive context than other collections in the PPL. Our goal is to preserve, augment, and provide access to these collections to the public in perpetuity. Thank you for your support.

Richard J. Ring
Special Collections Librarian
401.455.8021

Sammelband of Lincolniana

2009-05-09T10:20:00.007-04:00

We have some 350 bound volumes containing about 4,000 pamphlets and other printed ephemera related to slavery and the Civil War in the Harris collection.

There are dozens of bound volumes of separately issued pamphlets relating to Abraham Lincoln, many of them sermons and eulogies delivered in the wake of his assassination (he was shot on April 14, and died the morning of April 15, 1865). To give a sense of what is in them, a listing of the contents of ONE of them is below (in order of their binding). Shown here is the bottom of the volume to illustrate the concept of "sammelband" (a bound collection of separately issued items) and the first pamphlet's title-page. Notice the 10th and 12th pamphlets were published in Rhode Island.

1. George Bancroft. Éloge funèbre du Président Abraham Lincoln prononcé en séance solennelle du Congrés des États-Unis D’Amérique . Brussells, 1866.

2. George Bancroft. Abraham Lincoln. A memorial address. Delivered by invitation of Congress . . . February 12, 1866. London, 1866.

3. The Pulpit & Rostrum. Contains an “Oration” by George Bancroft, “The Funeral Ode” by William Cullen Bryant, the text of the “Emancipation Proclamation” and his last inaugural address by Abraham Lincoln, and a portrait of Lincoln. New York: June 1865.

4. Hon. Alex H. Bullock. Abraham Lincoln: The just magistrate, the representative statesman, the practical philanthropist. Worcester (Massachusetts), 1865.

5. Rev. William L. Chaffin. The President’s death and its lessons. A discourse on Sunday Morning, April 23d, 1865, before the Second Unitarian Society of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, 1865.

6. Rev. James Cooper. The death of President Lincoln. A memorial discourse, delivered in the Berean Baptist Church, West Philadelphia, on Sunday, April 16, 1865. Philadelphia, 1865.

7. Rev. R. S. Cushman. Resolutions and discourse, occasioned by the death of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, who died at Washington City, April 15, 1865. Manchester (Vermont), 1865.

8. Rev. Edward F. Cutter. Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln, delivered at Rockland, Maine, April 19, 1865, by request of the citizens. Boston, 1865.

9. Rev. Henry Darling. Grief and Duty. A Discourse delivered in the Fourth Presbyterian Church, Albany, April 19, 1865, the day of the funeral obsequies of President Lincoln. Albany, 1865.

10. Rev. Sidney Dean. Eulogy on the occasion of the burial of Abraham Lincoln, delivered in the City Hall of Providence, April 19, 1865. Providence, 1865.

11. Minister James DeNormandie. The Lord Reigneth: A few words on Sunday morning, April 16, 1865, after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Portsmouth (New Hampshire), 1865.

12. Rev. Richard B. Duane. A Sermon preached in St. John’s Church, Providence, on Wednesday, April 19, 1865, the day appointed for the funeral obsequies of President Lincoln. Providence, 1865.

13. Rev. David Dyer. Discourse occasioned by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, delivered in the Albany Penitentiary, a military prison of the U.S., Wednesday, April 19, 1865. Albany, 1865.

14. Charles M. Ellis, Esq. The memorial address on Abraham Lincoln, delivered at the Hall of the Mechanic’s Institute, St, John N.B., June 1, 1865. Boston, 1865.

15. Frederick Frelinghuysen, Esq. Obsequies of Abraham Lincoln, in Newark, N.J., April 19, 1865. Newark, 1865.

16. Hon. Leonard Myers. Abraham Lincoln. A memorial address delivered . . . June 15, 1865, before the Union League of the Thirteenth Ward. Philadelphia, 1865.

17. Rev. H. E. Niles. Address . . . on the occasion of President Lincoln’s funeral obsequies in York, PA. York, 1865.

18 & 19 [two issues]. Charles Sumner. The Promises of the Declaration of Independence. Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln, delivered before the municipal authorities of the city of Boston, June 1, 1865. Boston, 1865.

20. Rufus P. Tapley, Esq. Eulogy of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States . . . April 19, 1865, at Saco, Maine. Biddeford (Maine), 1865.

21. Hon. Thomas Williams. Eulogy on the life and public services of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United States, delivered by public request, in Christ M. E. Church, Pittsburgh, Thursday, June 1, 1865. Pittsburgh, 1865.

Passionate collector of Lincolniana

2009-05-08T13:33:00.003-04:00

Osborn H. Oldroyd.
The Lincoln Memorial: Album Immortelles.
New York, 1883.

Sergeant Osborn Oldroyd, whose initials spell OHIO, was only nineteen years old when he enlisted with the 20th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He joined the Union Army at Camp Chase, Ohio, on October 15, 1861, and was mustered out of the same camp on July 19, 1865. During the years he spent in the Union Army, he recorded historical data as well as personal observations of the war. His book, A Soldier's Story of the Siege of Vicksburg, published in 1885, gives a sixty-five day account of the Vicksburg Campaign.

Following the war, Oldroyd returned to Ohio where he was Steward of the National Soldiers' Home in Dayton, Ohio. During this time, Oldroyd began to actively pursue a hobby that he had begun as early as 1860, collecting Abraham Lincoln memorabilia. What started as a simple hobby eventually turned into an all-consuming passion. The volume shown here was published to promote this collecting.

Oldroyd and his family moved to Springfield, Illinois, and soon rented the home of President Lincoln. In 1884, he turned the home into The Lincoln Museum, charging the public to view the Oldroyd Lincoln Memorial Collection. The museum was a successful venture and his collection continued to grow in size. In 1893, after the Lincoln home was donated to the State of Illinois, he moved his mammoth collection to Washington, D. C.—to the Petersen House where Abraham Lincoln died. With the permission of the government, Oldroyd and his family lived in this home rent-free. The price for viewing his Lincoln memorabilia was twenty-five cents. In 1917, he wrote and published The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, detailing the murder and death of his hero. Overnight, the book became one of the best sellers of the time. In 1925, in failing health, Oldroyd sold his entire collection of Lincoln memorabilia, including rare books, photographs, mementos, and Lincoln's original furniture, to the government. After years of offers and counter-offers, the government finally purchased the entire collection for the sum of $50,000.

Ancient law book

2009-05-05T16:25:00.013-04:00

While shelving some books today I found a small volume (6 inches high) bound in brown leather with the spine title "Boke of Presidents 1555". Wondering what the heck a 16th century book about presidents was about, it became clear upon opening it that I had an early English law book about precedents, and I was thrilled. I like books which were generated to assist readers in their every day living, and this guide to the laws governing business practices is a great example of an early self-help book. After a quick check of the Dictionary of National Biography in our reference collection, and a scan of the index of Holdsworth's magisterial History of English Law in our Edwards Legal Collection, I discovered the following.

The compiler is Thomas Phayer (or Phaer, ca. 1510-1560), a lawyer, physician, and translator who was educated at Oxford and Lincoln's Inn. The book was intended as a guide to legal precedents for "every man to knowe." In it was "comprehended the very trade of makyng all maner evydence and instrumentes of Practyse."

According to Holdsworth it "was a comprehensive collection of all manner of documents, including, besides conveyances, bills and answers in Chancery, letters of safe conduct, and letters of testimony. With some eloquence and some truth the author sets forth the need which existed in his own day for such collections":

"Every person that can wryte and reade and entendeth to have any thynge to do amonge the common weal must of very neede, for his owne advantage, applie his mind somewhat unto this kynd of learning . . . It shewith the makyng of those thynges, whereupon dependeth the welth and lyvynge of men, without which thynges there can no tylte lawfully be claymed, no landes nor houses purchased, no right recovered agaynste false usuerers, no sufficient testimonye of the actes of our ancestours, finally no man can be sure of his owne livelod without helpe of evidence which, as a trusty anker, holdeth the right of every man's possessions safely and surely agaynst al troubles and stormye tempestes of injuries, not of men only, but of time also the consumer of al."

The Symbolism of the Altar Book, part II

2009-05-01T12:30:00.019-04:00

For the great festivals the effect would have been somewhat marred by putting shields upon the large initial letters, and so these have been used on some other letter—at Christmastime for the second collect for Christmas Day, which bears the Latin work for “I rejoice,” which happened to be the heraldic motto of one of the compilers of the book, whose birthday fell on Christmas Eve. For Saint Stephen’s Day there is a stone, emblematic of the manner of his martyrdom, hung upon its shield. For Saint John the Evangelist, his emblem of a cup and serpent. For the Innocent’s Day, a sword. For the Sunday after Christmas Day, the Name of Jesus, which is alluded to for the first time in the Gospel for the Day. For the Circumcision, the monogram, “IHS,” alluding to the first suffering undergone by our Lord for men. For the Epiphany, the Epiphany star; and for the First Sunday after Epiphany, which is in its octave, the same. For the Second Sunday after Epiphany, the three crowns, symbolic of the three kings, who brought their Epiphany offerings to Christ; and for the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, gold in the form of a church, or shrine; frankincense; and the branch of myrrh, being the three Epiphany offerings of the three kings. The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany shows again the Epiphany star; and the next Sunday, which is the third Sunday before Lent, and begins the preparation for it, together with the Second Sunday before Lent and the First Sunday before Lent, have three figures, emblematic of different parts of penitence—prayer, almsgiving, and repentance. The various Sundays of Lent, and the days of Holy Week have the instruments of our Lord’s Passion, while for Good Friday our Lord’s title of “The Lamb of God” is put upon the shield.

For the second Communion of Easter Day are shown the three Marys, while for the Monday and Tuesday in Easter Week the shield bears the Greek terms for “Jesus Christ, Conqueror of Death.” The Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Sunday after Easter bear emblems of immortality, the pelican, butterfly, phoenix and peacock. The Sunday after Ascension-Day has the eagle, who mounts to the sun, and the Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun Week, the Pentecostal flames of fire.

The First Sunday after Trinity, which is in the octave of Trinity Sunday has three intertwined rings, and the twenty-four Sundays after Trinity have upon their shields the three virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity; the four cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude; the gifts and fruits of the Spirit—Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Faith, Fear, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Gentleness, Meekness, etc.; while the final Sundays after Trinity has these virtues summed up in the “Duty toward God” and the “Duty toward our Neighbor” in which all these virtues have their sphere of action.

The collects for the saints’ days have upon their initials the symbols of the saint to which they refer, like the lion for St. Mark, the keys and cock for St. Peter, the Mount of Transfiguration for the festival of the Transfiguration, the scales and dragon for St. Michael.

The Holy Communion has no symbolism of this sort, with the exception of the phrase beneath the picture of the Crucifixion, which reads, “And I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men unto Me.” For the Occasional Offices, at the end, the initials bear scrolls with the various titles of Christ, —for instance, for The Communion of the Sick, “Savior;” for The Visitation of Prisoners, “Redeemer;” for Thanksgiving Day, “Mighty God.” While for the Ordering of Deacons, Priests, and Bishops we have the title of the three-fold ministry of Christ, as “Prophet,” “Priest” and “King.” For the final office, which is for the Consecration of a Church, we have the word, “Emmanuel,” signifying “God with us.” The colophon bears these words, “To the glory of the Most Holy and undivided Trinity, One God, blessed forevermore. Alleluia.” The arms are those of the two makers of the book, and the motto underneath reads, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy Name give the praise.”

The seals on the binding represent the two parts of the sacrament—the Agnus Dei on one side, and the Pelican feeding her young on the other. The motto around the Lamb is as follows: “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” That around the Pelican reads, “For whosoever does according to the will of God, he is the son of God.” —D.B.U.

Happy Birthday Mr. Shakespeare

2009-04-23T20:46:00.016-04:00

In honor of the Bard's birthday (April 23, 1564), I thought I'd post a few notes on his most famous book, published seven years after his death (1616) in 1623--a collection of his plays often simply referred to as the "First Folio."

Although not a scarce book, it is certainly rare and desirable--about 230 copies are extant. The Folger Shakespeare Library has over 80 copies. A complete copy sold in 2006 for a bit over $5 million.

John Heminges and Henry Condell (fellow players in Shakespeare's company of the King's Men) were the only surviving people named in Shakespeare's will in 1619, and they took responsibility for putting the book together. They decided what to include and exclude, chose which printed editions and manuscripts were to be sent to the printer, and determined the order and categories by which they were arranged. Troilous and Cressida, for example, appears to have been printed from a copy of the 1609 quarto on which over 500 changes (some substantial) had been marked—an average of one change every two or three lines.

Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount began printing the folio in early 1622, and it was finished in November 1623 (ca. 22 months). The run was most likely 750 copies. Jaggard was printing three other folios simultaneously, as well as various job-printing projects. There were at least 100 instances of the press stopping for corrections (not including the proofing), according to Charleton Hinman's magisterial 2-volume work on the subject. Hinman compared 55 copies at the Folger and noted over 40,000 variants, proving that no two copies of this "machine-made" book were exactly alike. The paper was imported (as most was, pre-Restoration), probably from Normandy. This was the first book printed in folio format (essentially the largest kind of book produced for general consumption) in England to be totally devoted to plays. Paper was at least 50% of the total investment in a book in the hand press period, 1455-1800. Ben Johnson’s 1616 folio, which included plays and other works, was criticized—although a commercial success—for printing drama in such a “wasteful” format.

The First Folio contained 36 plays, 18 of which had never before been printed (including Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest)—all of the traditionally accepted dramatic canon is included, with the exception of Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen (a collaboration with John Fletcher).

The earliest owners were noblemen and commoners of standing (earls, bishops, barons, knights, lawyers, town officials, university dons, gentlemen), and the edition sold out in less than a decade. It's price at publication was between 10 shillings and £1, depending on the binding (from disbound to leather)—about $150 to $300 in today's money.

A 1611 deposit agreement between the Bodleian (Oxford) and London booksellers provided them with a copy, which they sold as a duplicate in the 1660s after obtaining a Third Folio (1664/5); this same copy was bought back in 1905 (a costly weeding decision).

The PPL does not have a First Folio, but we would definitely accept one as a gift (LOL).

The Symbolism of the Altar Book, part I

2009-04-23T16:38:00.023-04:00

The Altar Book
From the Providence Journal, September 17, 1922:

"When Daniel Berkeley Updike went from the desk of the Athenaeum Library to learn the trade of printing at the Riverside Press, he took with him a definite ambition, high ideals, the good wishes of a few men and women of very sound judgment, and an intimate friendship. The friend [Harold Brown], when Mr. Updike started his own Merrymount Press in 1893, could easily have paid all the bills but if he had done this, the experiment begun by this press would have lacked all its significance. Instead of doing this, he gave the support of enthusiastic confidence and personal co-operation in the undertaking, sharing in the consideration of all its plans and helping to decide on all doubtful problems until his untimely death [1900]. It was much more than his money that carried through to a triumphant issue the Merrymount's first, and still one of its most notable, achievements, the Altar Book, finished at Easter AD 1896 by Daniel Berkeley Updike and Harold Brown.

Updike set the type at the Merrymount Press in Boston, and 350 copies were printed by De Vinne (New York) in red and black on handmade paper. Illustrated by Robert Anning Bell within borders designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (who also designed the woodcut initials), the Altar Book was hailed on both sides of the Atlantic. According to Martin Hutner, “this was the work which, at the height of the excitement generated by the Arts and Crafts movement in both America and Europe, gave Updike an international reputation at the age of thirty-six.”

The following words by Updike appear on four typewritten pages, initialed “D.B.U.” in Updike’s hand, in Harold Brown’s copy at the John Carter Brown Library:

Symbolism of the Decorations of the Altar Book

The symbolism of the Altar Book is as follows:

On the title-page is a coat of arms engraved by Sherborn, of London, with the following motto beneath it: “There is a river the streams of which make glad the city of God, Alleluia! Making holy the tabernacles of the most High. Alleluia! Alleluia!” Above is a motto, “Behold the Lamb of God.” The lamb is represented on the shield standing on a mount, from which four streams issue through the walls of a city. The river and the lamb are typical of the two parts of the Sacrament. The shield is surmounted by a mitre of the English shape, and on one side is an archiepiscopal cross and on the other a shepherd’s crook.

An elaborate system of symbolism is carried out throughout the entire book. The pictures for the festivals of Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Whitsun Day and Trinity are devoted to representations of the mysteries which these days commemorate.

The first picture is of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, which was the Old Testament type of the Crucifixion. This verse is upon a scroll beneath it, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” This is typical of the healing which the Isrealites found in looking at the lifted serpent for material ill, as the Christian finds healing for spiritual evil in the lifting up of our Lord.

The borders for the festivals contain symbolism in but two cases—those for Easter and for Christmas. For Christmas owls, bats and moles are introduced into the design, typical of the blindness of the Old dispensation, and on scrolls are introduced the names, first of the four patriarchs, Adam, Abraham, Moses and David; the four major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, David and Ezekiel; and the five Sybils, as representing the groping of Pagan antiquity toward righteousness. The same names of sybils were chosen by Michael Angelo for his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.
For the Easter border are introduced peacocks, which are the symbols of the Resurrection. As antitheses to the three groups of names in the Christmas border, are introduced three groups of persons, in the New Dispensation, namely, the four doctors, Saint Athanasius, Saint Augustine, Saint Chrysostom, and Saint Jerome; the four Evangelists; and Saint Mary, the Virgin, Saint Mary, wife of Cleopas, and Saint Mary Magdalene, as types of Christian womanhood.

The large initials beginning the collect for each Sunday have upon them shields, the shields bearing a Latin word and a symbol indicative of the season in which the Sunday occurs, for instance, the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Sundays in Advent have from time immemorial been devoted to the consideration of the four last things, Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell.

On shields hung upon the initials for these Sundays—for the first Sunday is a trumpet, with the word, “Death;” the second, “Judgment,” with a lantern, which is indirectly a reference, too, to the collect, which is upon the use of the Holy Scriptures, and which is reminiscent of the phrase in the Psalms, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet;” on the third, “Heaven,” with the figure of a cock, symbolical of watchfulness; and on the fourth, “Hell,” with a rising sun, indicative of the coming of Christ at Christmas. [to be continued]...

Handy handbook for colonial business archives

2009-04-04T11:02:00.019-04:00

Historians know that there has been a "global economy" for centuries, although that fact often escapes the mass culture. Yesterday I came across this accounting textbook which was a standard in its time (ca. 1760-1800), initially published by its author, John Mair (1702-1769) as Book-keeping methodiz'd and later Book-keeping moderniz'd (this is likely the 1773 edition, but lacks the title-page).

If you are doing research that includes examining colonial business records, which can reveal a great deal about people and society, this is a sort of road map to those documents. The student or amateur researcher opening a box of colonial-era financial records will be faced with so much meaningless paper, unless s/he knows what they are and why they were generated by the business. Mair defines the various documents produced in the course of business (day-book, waste-book, cash-book, invoice-book, sales-book, ledgers, journals, books of commissions, wares, consignments, etc.), specimens of bills of exchange, promissory notes, and legal forms (charter party, bonds, letter of attorney, bills of lading, insurance policies, affidavits, etc.).

In terms of American history, Mair's book is interesting because he has chapters devoted to "the produce and commerce of the sugar colonies" and "the produce and commerce of the tobacco colonies," wherein he explains wharf and plantation accounts, as well as accounts kept by storekeepers in Virginia and Maryland. There is also a 13-page "merchant's dictionary" at the end, explaining commonly used terms.

According to McCusker & Menard's seminal text on the subject (The Economy of British America), book-keeping manuals such as Mair's were very popular and literally used to pieces by businessmen in North America. An excellent example of a locally held copy owned by a colonial merchant is at the Rhode Island Historical Society, and is Obadiah Brown's copy of Charles Snell, A Guide to Book-keepers (London, 1709). Here is their record of it:

http://isis.minisisinc.com/scripts/minisa.dll/4/1/1/9065?RECORD&UNION=Y

For the bibliophile, I can tell several things about Mair's book that no digitized copy would yield, by the way. It was bound in January 1911 by F. J. B. & Co. (this from a binder's stamp on the rear free end paper). The former call number embossed on the binding is "7079.1", which is the old classification devised by our first librarian, William E. Foster (who served 1877-1930). Foster developed it just as Dewey was developing his system in the 1870s. This number allows me to know that this book has been in the Library for over a century--it appears in our printed catalogue of 1892. The accession number (in red ink, written on the verso of the first extant page) is 3696, and according to our first accession book, came from the Providence Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers (chartered 1789), one of the charter groups which formed the PPL.

Confidence in Paper

2009-04-02T13:41:00.008-04:00

Just catalogued in special collections, and I wanted to throw it up in honor of this wonderful, crushing economy. This is An act to provide a national currency, secured by a pledge of United States bonds, and to provide for the circulation and redemption thereof. [32pp.] WITH Instructions and suggestions of the Comptroller of the currency in regard to the organization and management of national banks. [24 pp.]. (Washington DC, 1864). Loose forms (blank, engraved) are also tucked in, docketed for ease of filing: "Certificate of Officers and Directors"; "Oath of Directors"; "Certificate of Organization"; and "Articles of Association".

This is from the Treasury Department's history of US currency:

"By 1860 more than 10,000 different bank notes circulated throughout the country. Commerce suffered as a result. Counterfeiting was epidemic. Hundreds of banks failed. Throughout the country there was an insistent demand for a uniform national currency acceptable anywhere without risk.

In response, Congress passed the National Currency Act in 1863. In 1864, President Lincoln signed a revision of that law, the National Bank Act. These laws established a new system of national banks and a new government agency headed by a Comptroller of the Currency. The Comptroller's job was to organize and supervise the new banking system through regulations and periodic examinations."

30 Vicodin a day

2009-03-31T16:29:00.007-04:00

The patient is twenty-nine. She is intelligent and articulate, comes from a good middle-class family (her father is a lawyer, her mother a professor), and has been to college. She has no job, lives with a deadbeat boyfriend, and takes thirty Vicodin a day when she can get it. She wants to quit.

“Eleven million Americans take opiates for nonmedical, recreational purposes,” says Dr. Michael Stein, a physician in Providence and a professor of medicine at Brown University. One of these is Vicodin, which was the most prescribed medication in the United Sates in 2008. Stein has been treating addiction for over twenty years, and in The Addict he distills that experience into a book which is part memoir and part case study.

In 2005 Lucy Fields (a pseudonym) sought help with her addiction to Vicodin, and Dr. Stein was one of the few physicians in the region licensed and trained to treat opiate-dependant patients with a drug called buprenorphine. “Buprenorphine shares a basic atomic structure with opiates,” Stein explains, “but does not get the user high because its chemical properties are different.” It “quells the craving” so that the user can escape the calling of the habit.

Dr. Stein recounts Lucy’s visits over the course of a year, from the start of treatment, through a relapse, and into recovery. He also folds into the mix his own philosophy and compassion, sprinkled with anecdotes from a career devoted to the treatment of addiction, from his time as a medical student in the wards of Harlem Hospital to his current practice in Providence.

An addiction to Vicodin (or its opiate relatives Percocet, codeine, and OxyContin) is often the result of a legitimate prescription for pain. It is frighteningly easy to see the slippery trail of causality which can seduce a “normal” person into an addiction to opiates. For Lucy, however, we eventually learn that her use of drugs and alcohol began when she was thirteen. Its cause was a shattering emotional trauma which, once revealed, makes us wonder how she could have avoided seeking an escape in such a way.

Dr. Stein admits that “my purpose is not a life of self-sacrifice,” and that “outside the hospital, I am not fearless nor particularly altruistic. I do not go into the destitute corners of my hometown to rescue the drug users.” It’s nice to hear a doctor admit this, because it reveals and humanizes the man who wears the white coat. But of course, Stein has devoted his every working day to helping people, so perhaps we can disregard the self-deprecation and value his service all the more for his honesty.

The Addict is a quiet and determinedly hopeful book about humanity, viewing addiction as it does in a highly compassionate light. “When a patient calls herself an addict, she is honoring her reality,” says Stein. In writing this book he has honored the reality of the struggle of his patients who suffer from addiction.

From one colonial printer to another

2009-03-28T12:07:00.040-04:00

For those who love the history of printing, here is a shiny nugget indeed. A LONG letter from Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831), scholar-printer of Worcester, Mass. to his colleague, John Carter (1745-1814), who had apprenticed to Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia and later became a printer in Providence. The date is April 5, 1800. The subjects are friendship, retirement, and succession:

My good friend:

I am favored with yours of the 29th ult.--True as you observe, "our correspondence has suffered a long Embargo:- I am happy you have taken it off, but regret my want of energy to make previous attempt. I had often thought of writing to you, and many times felt a strong desire of visiting you--but the troubles and cares of life prevent us from doing many things which would afford us real pleasure--I assure you I will not be deficient, now our correspondence is renewed, in continuing it.

An old friend, or acquaintance, especially at the period of life to which we are arrived, seems more precious to us, than those of recent standing--the cause is obvious --the mind looks back to past times--it points to our first knowledge of each other, and measures the circuit of our acquaintance. Every old friend we lose enhances the value of those who remain, and causes us to reflect, how few of those whom we were familiar with thirty years ago, are now among the living--alas! They are chiefly numbered with the dead! And soon we must follow them. I have often had that passage from the sacred Book most forcibly brought to my mind--"The Fathers! --Where are they?--and, the Prophets!--Do they live forever?"

I do not mean, my friend, to give you a gloomy sermon in return for your pleasant and enlivening letter. The ideas arose and I could not reject expressing them, or reflecting that all of our profession in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, who were doing business when we began, are now at rest from their labors--none alive but our friend Mr. Goddard, of course we are the three oldest printers in the three states just mentioned. I am much pleased with your promise of visiting me with him. Let us meet, and once more take each other by the hand--it may add to our felicity--it most assuredly will to mine. Present him with the "homage of my respects," for most sincerely do I give it. Tell him I rely on your visit--let it be soon, and give me notice a few days previously to your setting off for Worcester, that I may not be from home, and lose the pleasure I now anticipate. We will go together to Brother Mycall's, where we may be assured of being electrified should we need and wish it. Mrs. T. presents her respects--she will be happy to see you and our friend Mr. G.

You have had, as you observe, "a pretty long printing career," and I think with you, it is time for you to retire--i.e., to shift the ground, and free yourself from confinement to business, especially that part of it which respects a periodical publication. But you must prepare yourself for this change. Old habits, good or bad, are not easily thrown aside. Before you quit your present business have a plan fixed for the employment of your time, and then immediately from the old to the new love. Men who have been in active business for a number of years, suffer more from such a change as you contemplate than they are aware of, unless they duly prepare for it. Nothing, you know, is more deceptive than the imagination; we fancy a thousand pleasing scenes await us when we quit the cares and buzz of business; but we realize but few of them. When we are advanced far in life, we have not time to meet the gradual progress of preparation for the enjoyment of other scenes than those we have been long accustomed to, and this preparation seems essentially necessary to a satisfactory enjoyment of an essential change in our mode of life. We must be fitted for whatever state we wish to be in, if we expect to be happy in that state.

About six years since, I gave up the whole of my printing business, in this place, to my son. I was tired of it, and thought of many things I could substitute from which I should divine more satisfaction--the difficulty lay in setting about them--I did not know how to begin. In fact, I meet with so many difficulties, which I had not foreseen, that most of my ideal pleasures are yet to come, if they come at all.

On the whole, my good friend, I would advise you, to retain some control over your business--get a good partner if you can; let him take the care off your hands, and that part of the management particularly that is most irksome to you. You can then employ yourself as your inclinations may lead you, can go only as you please to your office, and amuse yourself there or abroad as your feelings may dictate.

I write hastily, and find I have not expressed my ideas clearly. I am too lazy to arrange them better on paper at this time, or to rewrite and correct; but when I have the pleasure of seeing you, we can say more to the purpose, on this subject, in one hour, than I should write in a day.

Mr. Manning, I should think, would be a good man for your purpose--I do not know the state of his present business, but I will enquire if you wish it--or do anything in my power to serve you respecting the object you have now in view.

It is difficult to obtain young men of "ability and integrity" who have been bred to our business--I believe, however, there are some at Boston that might answer your purpose. Shall I enquire?

I wish you had been a little more particular in your enquiry, "What is the present need for foraging in the printing business 'for' others?"--Do you mean as partners?--or, to take your materials, and you to furnish a certain quantum of work yearly, they to find all the labor and consumable articles, and do the work for you at a certain rate? The latter is the mode in which T. & A. have work done in their office at Boston.

I hope by this time, you can walk without "limping." Be not discouraged--we are all subject to perverseness of some kind or other. We, the Federalists of this state, hobble a little today from the result of the election yesterday--but I doubt not that we shall bear it with fortitude.

Adieu!--let me hear again from you. With much esteem, your friend and humble servt., Isaiah Thomas.

Fabulous Keepsake of the Newton Sale

2009-03-27T11:09:00.042-04:00

In 1961, Thomas R. Adams (JCB Librarian from 1957-1982) gave the PPL a collection of 115 items relating to "Uncle Eddy," or as most of us know him, A. Edward Newton. Newton was a great friend to Tom's grandfather (John Stokes Adams) and supporter of his father (Randolph G. Adams, who ran the W. L. Clements Library at the U. of Michigan from 1923-1951).

Alfred Edward Newton (1864-1940) was a Philadelphia businessman, book collector, and the most popular writer of his age of books about literature and the joys of book collecting. After Newton died his library of over 10,000 books and manuscripts was put up for auction at Parke-Bernet Galleries by his son, E. Swift Newton. The auction was held over three days in April of 1941 and brought in $376,560 (about $5 million today). The auction catalogue was issued in three volumes; the first volume bore a picture of the collector, and each of them featured a panoramic view of his house (Oak Knoll) and his library on the endpapers (the latter shown here with his son, E. Swift Newton, sitting). For a good article on the sale, see http://www.fabsbooks.org/newton.html and http://www.fabsbooks.org/newton2.html.

On the night of the first part of the auction (April 16th) at 10:45pm, Swift Newton and his wife held an informal reception and supper for sixty-two guests at the St. Regis Hotel (5th Ave & 55th Street). Shown here is one of the invitations, which included the guest list, the menu, and the following words by Swift Newton:

"Around this table this evening are gathered many of Father's oldest and best friends; some were his closest business associates, some were his closest friends in his book world . . . I cannot help thinking how right Mr. Swann was some years ago when he advised Father against selling his library during his lifetime. If i feel something has gone out of my living, something that has really, in point of fact, only occupied my attention since his death, imagine how he would have felt had this sale taken place while he was living and he had had to be the host of tonight! . . . As a final word of welcome, we suggest that formal speeches be tabooed . . . [but] that the Quaker Meeting formula be adhered to in only one way: when the spirit moves anyone present, let the rest of us listen with affectionate interest."

The most interesting item (to me) that we have related to the sale is a souvenir album, inscribed by Swift to John Stokes Adams, 1864-1954, father of Randolph Adams and prominent Philadelphia attorney. The inscription reads, "Uncle John Adams: Although we understand each other in the matter of book collecting (with apologies to Randy) perhaps you will, however, accept this souvenir with the compliments and affection of the son of your oldest friend. E. Swift Newton. Oct. 6, 1941."

There are 17 photographs in this book, some of them picturing the biggest names in the rare book field. This first picture is of the auction room. The second shown here is of (left to right) John Fleming, A. S. W. ("Rosy") Rosenbach, and Lessing J. Rosenwald, all at or near the top of their game. Also pictured in the book are folks like Belle DaCosta Greene (Pierpont Morgan's librarian), Arthur Swann, Christopher Morely, Gabriel Wells, and Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. (who would, a year later, endow the Houghton Library at Harvard).