We recommend — Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children’s Literature

27 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Reading

≈ Comments Off on We recommend — Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children’s Literature

Tags

Alice's Adventures in Wonderand, animals, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Charles Darwin, Charles Kingsley, children, children's literature, elementary education, English, evolution, Francis Hodgson Burnett, Jessica Straley, Lewis Carroll, Margaret Gatty, On the Origin of Species, Rare Books Department, Rudyard Kipling, species, The University of Utah, Victorian, vivisection

Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children’s Literature
Jessica Straley
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016

From the publisher: “Evolutionary theory sparked numerous speculations about human development, and one of the most ardently embraced was the idea that children are animals recapitulating the ascent of the species. After Darwin’s Origin of Species, scientific, pedagogical, and literary works featuring beastly babes and wild children interrogated how our ancestors evolved and what children must do in order to repeat this course to humanity. Exploring fictions by Rudyard Kipling, Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson, Burnett, Charles Kingsley, and Margaret Gatty, Jessica Straley argues that Victorian children’s literature not only adopted this new taxonomy of the animal child, but also suggested ways to complete the child’s evolution. In the midst of debates about elementary education and the rising dominance of the sciences, children’s authors plotted miniaturized evolutions for their protagonists and readers and, more pointedly, proposed that the decisive evolutionary leap for both our ancestors and ourselves is the advent of the literary imagination.

Jessica Straley is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Utah. She has published articles on evolutionary theory, vivisection, and Victorian literature in Victorian Studies and Nineteenth-Century Literature and has contributed a chapter to Drawing on the Victorian: The Palimsest of Victorian and Non-Victorian Graphic Texts, edited by Anna Maria Jones and Rebecca N. Mitchell.”

The Rare Books Department is pleased to have contributed images to this book from its copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865).

: Straley, Evolution, p. 96

: Straley, Evolution, p. 103

: Straley, Evolution, p. 104

: Straley, Evolution, p. 112-113

Congratulations, Professor Straley!

We recommend — Weller Book Works Presents FEATHERS, PAWS, FINS and CLAWS

19 Thursday May 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Events, Recommended Lecture, Recommended Reading

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ancient, animals, Anne Jamison, bears, Charles Perrault, Christine A. Jones, dancing, Danish, European, fairy tales, feast, Fillings & Emulsions, folklorists, French, frog prince, German, Giovannie Francesco Straparola, girls, Grimm Brothers, historical, Hodder & Stoughton, human, Index of Prohibited Books, Jennifer Schacker, Jørgen Engebretsen Moe, Kay Nielsen, Lina Kusaite, Little Red Riding Hood, London, magic, mythology, Norway, Norwegian, ogres, pagan, Passion Flour, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, pigs, princess, punctuation, rare books, rats, Scandinavia, sheep, snakes, Spanish, spelling, stories, treats, Trolley Square, trolls, University of Guelph, University of Utah, Venetia, Venice, vernacular, Weller Book Works, witches, wolves

“It was all as grand as grand could be.”

Feathers, Paws, Fins and Claws
Presentation and Reception
Christine A. Jones and Jennifer Schacker
Weller Book Works
Trolley Square
Thursday, May 26, 6:30PM
This event is free and open to the public

A wide variety of creatures walk, fly, leap, slither, and swim through fairy tale history. Marvelous animals are deeply inscribed in current popular culture — the beast redeemed by beauty, the frog prince released from enchantment by a young princess, wolves in pursuit of little girls and little pigs. Feathers, Paws, Fins, and Claws: Fairy-Tale Beasts presents lesser-known tales featuring animals, wild and gentle, who appear in imaginative landscapes and exhibit a host of surprising talents. The offbeat, haunting stories in this collection, illustrated by Lina Kusaite, are rich and relevant, and provoke the imaginations of readers of all ages.

Editors Christine Jones, University of Utah Associate Professor, and Jennifer Schacker, University of Guelph Associate Professor, chose ten stories that represent several centuries and cultural perspectives on fairy tale animals — rats as seductive as Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf, snakes who find human mates, dancing sheep and well-mannered bears. These beasts move between animal behavior and acts that seem more human than beastly. Each tale is presented as closely as possible to their original print versions, reflecting the use of historical spelling and punctuation.

Join Weller Book Works for a presentation by Jones and Schacker, and an interview by University of Utah Associate Professor Anne Jamison.

Read the tales, feast on treats from Fillings & Emulsions and Passion Flour, and have your very own copy of Feathers, Paws, Fins and Claws signed by the editors.

Rare Books celebrates this publication with its own collection of fairy tales, including:

Le XIII piaceuoli notti del S. Gio. Francesco Straparola di Carauaggion diuise in due libri…
Giovanni Francesco Straparola (ca. 1480- ca. 1557)
In Venetia: 1580
PQ4634 S7 P5 1580

The Pleasant Nights, a collection of seventy-five stories, was first published in 1550 with twenty-five stories. Giovanni Straparola added stories to the next two editions, including what are considered to be the first “fairy tales” printed in a European vernacular. The collection of stories was reprinted in at least twenty-three editions between 1550 and 1620 and translated into German, Spanish, and French within only a few years after the first printing. The book was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1624, for its descriptions and seeming justification of magic.

Several of these tales, such as “Beauty and the Beast” and “Puss-in-Boots,” were retold and made famous by Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers.

East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885)
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1924
PT8802 N813 1924

First published in 1914 as a luxury gift book, East of the Sun and West of the Moon is a collection of fifteen fairy tales gathered by Norwegian folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe in the mid-nineteenth century. The two spent years traveling across Norway transcribing local lore made up of trolls, ogres, and witches from the ancient pagan mythology of Scandinavia.

London publisher Holder and Stoughton chose Danish artist Kay Nielsen (1886-1957) to illustrate their publication of the tales. The book has since become one of the most well-known and well-beloved of children’s books.

We Recommend – Craig Dworkin, CHAP. XXIV

27 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Reading

≈ Comments Off on We Recommend – Craig Dworkin, CHAP. XXIV

Tags

Craig Dworkin, David Wolske, English, ITC Founders Caslon, King's English Bookshop, Laurence Sterne, letterpress, Life and Opintions of Tristam Shandy, ligatures, photopolymer plates, Red Butte Press, Robert Buchert, Salt Lake City, Tryst Press, Utah

Craig Dworkin Reads at King’s English: CHAP. XXIV
Thursday, October 29, 7:00pm to 9:00pm
King’s English Bookshop/1511 South 1500 East/Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.kingsenglish.com/event/craig-dworkin-alkali-and-chapter-xxiv

Craig Dworkin reads from the Red Butte Press publication CHAP. XXIV, at the King’s English Bookshop. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.

In 1761, Laurence Sterne published The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy. Chapter XXV of the fourth volume begins, “No doubt, Sir, – there is a whole chapter wanting here – and a chasm of ten pages made in the book by it.”

A jump in pagination confirms that Chapter XXIV is missing.

Coinciding with the 300th anniversary of Sterne’s birth, Craig Dworkin and the Red Butte Press provided the absent chapter – a single signature designed to fit neatly into the first edition. Dworkin’s interpolated text uses historic English words in which the letters “f” and “s” can be interchanged and remain legitimate. Each sentence is based on grammatical constructions found elsewhere in Sterne’s novel.

The type, ITC Founders Caslon, includes seven pre-existing ligatures and seven bespoke long-s ligatures created by the book designer, David Wolske. The book was letterpress printed from photopolymer plates on handmade paper with a Red Butte Press watermark. A typographically illustrated cover used the placement of each dash that appears in the text and externalizes the 18th century typesetters’ practice of using any available foundry dashes. The varying dash length and humorous interplay of the letters “f” and “s” call attention to potentialities of punctuation, spelling, and meaning.

CHAP. XXIV
Craig Dworkin
Salt Lake City, UT: Red Butte Press, 2013
N7433.4 D95 C43 2010z

Illustrations by David Wolske. Handmade papers by Robert Buchert, Tryst Press. Edition of three hundred and twenty-five numbered copies; twenty-six lettered copies hors de commerce; fourteen deluxe copies individually letterpress-printed with one of the ligatures that appear in the text, housed in custom enclosures.

We recommend – Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness

25 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Reading

≈ Comments Off on We recommend – Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness

Tags

citizenship, history, Mitt Romney, Mormon, Mormonism, Mormons, New York, Oxford University Press, polygamy, Protestant, race, racial, religion, The University of Utah, United States, W. Paul Reeve

Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness
W. Paul Reeve
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015

The Protestant white majority in nineteenth-century United States was convinced that Mormonism represented a racial – not merely religious – departure from the mainstream and they spent considerable effort attempting to deny Mormon whiteness. Being white equaled access to political, social, and economic power, all aspects of citizenship in which outsiders sought to limit or prevent Mormon participation. At least a part of those efforts came through persistent attacks on the collective Mormon body, ways in which outsiders suggested that Mormons were physically different, racially more similar to marginalized groups than they were white. Medical doctors went so far as to suggest that Mormon polygamy was spawning a new race. Mormons responded with aspirations toward whiteness. It was a back and forth struggle between what outsiders imagined and what Mormons believed. Mormons ultimately emerged triumphant, but not unscathed. A portion of the cost of their struggle came at the expense of their own black converts. Mormon leaders moved away from universalistic ideals toward segregated priesthood and temples, policies held firmly in place by the early twentieth century. So successful were they at claiming whiteness for themselves, that by the time Mormon Mitt Romney sought the Presidency in 2012, he was labelled “The whitest white man to run for office in recent memory.” Mormons once again found themselves on the wrong side of white.

W. Paul Reeve is Associate Professor, History, The University of Utah.

We recommend – Fantasies & Hard Knocks

29 Friday May 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Reading

≈ Comments Off on We recommend – Fantasies & Hard Knocks

Tags

Alabama, Anthony Burgess, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Biblioteca di via Senato, Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama, Brendan Gill, C. F. Cavafy, Cottondale, Dana Gioia, Ecuador, Ex Ophidia, Ex Ophidia Press, Fantasies & Hard Knocks, fine press, Fulvio Testa, handpress, Italo Calvino, Italy, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jack Spicer, John Cheever, Jorge Luis Borges, Milan, New York, Oregon, Paul Zweig, Plain Wrapper Press, Port Townsend, printers, Quito, R. B. Kitaj, rare books, Richard-Gabriel Rummonds, Rome, San Francisco, Special Collections, University of Utah, Verona

FANTASIES & HARD KNOCKS: MY LIFE AS A PRINTER
Richard-Gabriel Rummonds (b.1931)
Port Townsend, OR: Ex Ophidia Press, 2015

Richard-Gabriel Rummonds is recognized as one of the world’s pre-eminent handpress printers of the late twentieth century. For nearly twenty-five years, using the imprints of Plain Wrapper Press and Ex Ophidia, he printed and published illustrated limited editions of contemporary literature on iron handpresses, primarily in Verona, Italy and Cottondale, Alabama. Rummonds’ work has been exhibited in Rome, New York, and San Francisco. In 1999, a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Biblioteca di via Senato in Milan, Italy. His books are held in museums, libraries and private collections worldwide.

Rummonds was appointed founding director of the MFA in the Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama in 1984. He has taught workshops around the world, including the University of Utah.

Fantasies & Hard Knocks, “embellished with over 450 images [most in color] and 65 recipes,” is a candid autobiography chronicling the printing and publishing of Rummonds’ pieces issued with Plain Wrapper Press and Ex Ophidia imprints.

In 1966, Rummonds founded Plain Wrapper Press in Quito, Ecuador, moving it to Verona, Italy in 1970, where he mastered his craft on nineteenth-century handpresses and established a worldwide reputation for excellent fine press productions. In 1982, Rummonds established Ex Ophidia in Cottondale, Alabama.

His memoir is filled with deeply personal anecdotes of working closely with many of the most acclaimed and renowned authors and artists of the time, including Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Burgess, Italo Calvino, C. F. Cavafy, John Cheever, Brendan Gill, Dana Gioia, Jack Spicer, Paul Zweig, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Fulvio Testa, R. B. Kitaj and others.

Rare Books, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library holds a significant archive of the works, library, and ephemera of Richard-Gabriel Rummonds.

OPEN BOOK

~ News from the Rare Books Department of Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah

Category Archives: Recommended Reading

We recommend — Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children’s Literature

Like this:

We recommend — Weller Book Works Presents FEATHERS, PAWS, FINS and CLAWS

Like this:

We Recommend – Craig Dworkin, CHAP. XXIV

Like this:

We recommend – Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness

Like this:

We recommend – Fantasies & Hard Knocks

Like this:

Recommended Reading — Otto Ege’s Manuscripts

Like this:

Recommended Reading — The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: