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Tag Archives: animals

Book of the Week — A Journey Over Land: from the Gulf of Honduras to the Great South-Sea…

23 Monday Jul 2018

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1735, animals, berries, Central America, chocolate, corn, eggs, Englishman, fowl, gold, Honduras, honey, India, insects, Isthumus of Panama, Jamaica, John Cockburn, lizards, London, map, Mayans, milk, Nicholas Withington, Panama, Pedor Poleas, pirates, plantains, San Pedro Sula, San Salvador, Spaniards, tobacco, travel narrative, vegetation


There needs no Apology in Behalf of Books of this Nature; they have, at all times, been favourably received, and never rejected, but upon plain and undeniable Conviction of Insincerity. They agreeably amuse, and usefully instruct; and are consequently relished by Readers of every sort. They are pleasing to those, who, at every turn, would be surprised with extraordinary Events, unexpected Accidents, and miraculous Deliverances; and acceptable to those, who, moving in a loftier Sphere, are desirous of converting all they know to public Use; and these, regardless of what the former most admire, are particularly sollicitous after Descriptions and Accounts of Persons, Places and things. — from the preface, A Journey Over Land

A Journey Over Land: From the Gulf of Honduras to the Great South-Sea…
John Cockburn
London: Printed for C. Rivington, at the Bible and Crown in St. Paul’s Church-yard, M.DCC.XXXV (1735)
First edition
F1431 C66 1735

This narrative, so fantastic, was long considered to be a work of fiction pretending to be fact. John Cockburn tells a tale of extraordinary and harrowing adventure, beginning when he and his crew were overtaken off the coast of Jamaica by another ship, “…mostly Spaniards, and commanded by Captain Johnson the Pirate, an Englishman, and Pedor Poleas a Spaniard” in 1730. The surviving crew escaped from jail in San Pedro Sula in Honduras, crossed the Isthmus to San Salvador and traveled to Panama overland.

“This was the first setting out of a Journey, as we computed, through an unknown Tract of Land, (at least to us) which took us up ten Months, and I may say some times proved insupportable; for we were all the while exposed to many Dangers, and underwent many Hardships, as was possible for human Nature to sustain.” In his book, Cockburn described vegetation; animals; insects; and wrote short but vivid stories about the governments, dress, characteristics and customs of the descendants of the great Mayan empire and other native peoples (many of whom were at war with each other).

Cockburn mentions food, because it was so scare, continually, writing about corn (“Turtillias,” “Tamawlas”), plantains, fowl, berries, lizards, milk, honey, eggs, and “At last, we spy’d a Lady, in one House, very well dressed, to whom we went and begg’d her Charity. She presently made Chocolate, giving us plentifully of it, which was more acceptable to us at that Time, than Gold…”

Tobacco was second only to chocolate in its desirability: “These Gentlemen gave us some Seegars to smoke, which they supposed would be very acceptable. These are Leaves of Tobacco rolled up in such Manner, that they serve both for the Pipe and Tobacco itself. These the Ladies, as well as Gentlemen, are very fond of Smoking.”

The book was re-printed many times. A folding map depicts Central America and the Isthmus of Panama.

The edition is appended with A Briefe Discoverye of Some Things best worth Noteing in the Travells of… a popular travel narrative by Nicholas Withington, who arrived in India in 1612.

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Stop and Smell the (Arctic) Flowers

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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19th century, Abraham Small, Alaska, American, animals, Arctic, Atlantic Ocean, bookplate, botany, British Royal Navy, Brooklyn, Canadian Arctic Archipelago, climate, Department of Botany, drawings, Elisha Kent Kane, Emily Dickinson, Europe, explorers, Exquimaux, fauna, flora, Fury, George Frances Lyon, Greenland, Gripper, Hecla, Henry Parkyns Hoppner, ice, icebergs, illustrations, Inuit, James Christie, James Clark Ross, James Walsh, John Ross, Keeper of the Herbaria, lichen, London, Lyuba Basin, moss, New York, Nicholas Polunin, North America, Northwest Passage, Norwegian, Oxford, Philadelphia, Roald Amundsen, scurvy, ships, Sir John Franklin, William Edward Parry, William Parry

As if some little Arctic flower
Upon the polar hem –
Went wandering down the Latitudes
Until it puzzled came
To continents of summer –
To firmaments of sun –
To strange, bright crowds of flowers –
And birds, of foreign tongue!
– Emily Dickinson

The Northwest Passage was the name given to the sea route which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific along the northern coast of North America via the waterways in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Toward the end of the 15th century and into the 20th century, colonial powers from Europe sent their best explorers on countless attempts to discover a commercial route, with many failing and turning back and others ending in disaster. The first successful journey was made in 1906 by a Norwegian explorer named Roald Amundsen, completing the passage from Greenland to Alaska.

Prior to Amundsen, notable captains such as John Ross, Elisha Kent Kane, James Clark Ross and William Parry explored separate parts of the Northwest Passage in the first half of the 19th century.  Parry’s first voyage was, without a doubt, the most successful in the search for the passage and his second and third attempts continued to uncover new information about the mysterious archipelago, including research on climate, flora and fauna. In fact, the notes taken by Parry and his shipmates and recorded in three separate journals contributed to crucial research in botany, among other natural sciences.


Journal of a Voyage of the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific
William Edward Parry
Philadelphia: Abraham Small, 1821
First American Edition
G635 P3 A3 1821


Between 1821-1825 three ships from the British Royal Navy, the Fury, Hecla, and the Gripper, took three separate journeys into the Arctic under the leadership of Captain Parry and Captains John Ross and George Frances Lyon. While their expeditions proved to be successful, they were not without tragedy as scurvy became common and ships were often stuck in ice for weeks on end. Narratives of the journeys were published in London and Philadelphia, respectively, with detailed accounts of the days on board as well as their interactions with the Inuit, described as Esquimaux in the journals.


Journal of a Third Voyage of the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific
William Edward Parry
Philadelphia: H.C. Carey I. Lea, 1826
First American Edition
G650 1824 P31


A Brief Narrative of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Reach Repulse Bay
G.F. Lyon
London: J. Murray, 1825
First Edition
G 650 1824 L9 1825


In addition, the journals included spectacular illustrations of the ships amid the looming icebergs and intricate appendices which accounted for the varieties of animals and plants that they encountered along the way. Among one of the shipmates that helped with the drawings and collecting data was Henry Parkyns Hoppner, listed as ‘lieutenant’ on the Griper in the first journal’s roster. Hoppner accompanied Parry on all three expeditions, first as a lieutenant on the Griper and Hecla, and later promoted to second in command on the Fury in the last voyage. Although Hoppner never received the kind of international acclaim as his Captains, his creative and artistic role on board as illustrator and actor proved to leave an impression.

Collection of Plants Found in the Arctic Regions…
Henry Parkyns Hoppner (1795 – 1833)
Publisher not identified, 1821
QK 474 H66

Impressions are also what we find in this small and unassuming book. From each of the pressed flowers, a ghostly accompaniment is imprinted on the opposite page, hinting at traces of life as much from the colorful flowers as from the hands of the shipmate who collected them. Impressions are also present as the handwritten notes inked on the beginning and end pages of the book. With no bibliographic information, we can only look to a small note which describes the book as “a collection of plants found in the Arctic Sections … made by Captain Hopner … 2nd in command of H.M.S. “Fury” … The “Fury” and “Hecla” (Captain Lyon) sailed to discover the N.W. passage May 1821.” Following the description, the book is addressed to Hoppner’s friend James Christie.

Attached to a page, there is also a miniature envelope that holds “moss which Franklin and his party had as their only food.” It is possible that this note alludes to the failed overland expeditions in the Arctic lead by Sir John Franklin between 1819-1822. During this time, Franklin lost more than half of the men in his party to starvation and, in order to survive, the remainder of his crew ate lichen, with some attempting to eat their own leather boots. Furthermore, there were rumors of cannibalism and at least one murder reported.

In addition to the handwritten notes, a bookplate on the first page suggests that sometime during the mid-20th century the book was held in the Department of Botany in Oxford while Nicholas Polunin was the Keeper of the Herbaria, which is now almost four hundred years old. While lecturing at Oxford, Polunin traveled to the Canadian Arctic as a botanist on an expedition that discovered the last major islands to be added to the world’s map.

Polunin was well recognized for his research and publications, specifically Circumpolar Artic Flora which was published in 1959. This book helped inspire James Walsh’ modern herbaria, The Arctic Plants of New York City, which “combines personal letters, poetry, prose essay, scholarly research, botanical exploration and artistic investigation,” of plants gather in Brooklyn, New York. The bibliography includes a reproduction of the index from Polunin’s work, in which the author has marked in red pen the eighty-eight Arctic plants that occur in New York City.

The Arctic Plants of New York City
James Walsh
New York: Granary Books, 2015
QK177 W35 2015

From the publisher’s website: “The Arctic Plants of New York City […] ranges from the Doctrine of Signatures to the sleep of plants, and from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Muir on mental travel to Giacomo Leopardi and Charles Baudelaire on the necessity of illusion for art and life. Interspersed throughout the book are a number of two-page spreads that focus on a single plant, such as Common Mugwort, with a mounted botanical specimen of that plant surrounded by texts drawn from earlier writers on botany and set in verse, creating a field of word-objects interacting with plant-objects. The letters that open the book lead into a prose essay that touches on the souls of plants, their use in medicine and as spurs to mental travel, their transience, their migrations, their meaning.” Written, designed, and letterpress printed by James Walsh, with eighteen botanical specimens pressed and mounted by the author. Bound by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage. Edition of forty copies, 34 of which are for sale.

~Contributed by Lyuba Basin, Rare Books

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Book of the Week — Libri de piscibus marinis in quibus ver piscium effigies

11 Monday Dec 2017

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animals, Aristotle, Bonhomme, fish, Guillaume Rondelet, natural historians, science, scientist


“…in which true images of fish are displayed.”

Libri de piscibus marinis in quibus ver piscium effigies
Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566)
Lugduni: M. Bonhomme, 1554-1555
First edition
QL41 R6

Guillaume Rondelet was one of the first of sixteenth century scientists to break with the eighteen-hundred-year-old tradition among natural historians of quoting or commenting on Aristotle’s knowledge of animals and begin the practice of gathering and reporting information gained firsthand. This book contains accurate illustrations of the egg cases and immature eggs of several fish, based upon Rondelet’s own meticulous studies. The work is an example of the change in attitude about science in the sixteenth century.

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Book of the Week — Athanasii Kircheri Societatis Iesu Magnes; sive, de arte magnetica

05 Monday Jun 2017

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animals, arrows, Athanasius Kircher, electromagnetism, Emperor, engravings, F. Valentini, Ferdinando IV, God, Greek, Hapsburg, hydraulics, Jesuit, lodestone, longitude, love, magnet, magnetism, Mars, Martin Martini, medicine, music, plants, rare books, Roman Catholic, symbol, tides, toys, universe, woodcuts, zodiac

QC751-K58-1654-title
““The highest mountain, the oldest books, the strangest people, there you will find the stone.” — Attributed to Athanasius Kircher

Athanasii Kircheri Societatis Iesu Magnes; sive, de arte magnetica
Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680)
Romae: sumptibus Blasii Deuersin, & Zanobii Masotti Bibliopolarum typis Vitalis Mascarditypis V. Mascardi, MDCLIV (1654)
Third and final edition
QC751 K58 1654

Athanasius Kircher learned Greek and Hebrew at the Jesuit school in Fulda. He continued his scientific studies at Paderborn, Cologne, and Koblenz, taking orders in 1628 as a Jesuit priest. He traveled to Paris, fleeing fighting in Germany, and settled in Rome in 1634. His rigorous scientific curiosity was girded by a mystical conception of natural laws and forces. His methodology ranged from scholastic to hands-on experimentation. He once had himself lowered into the crater of Vesuvius to observe its features soon after an eruption. He was a prolific writer, publishing forty-four books. More than 2,000 of his manuscripts and letters survive. He assembled one of the first natural history collections, housed in a museum after his name in Rome, and later dispersed throughout various institutions.

The third edition of Magnes sive de arte magnetica is the first to appear in folio format. It is virtually a new work, rewritten and expanded from the first edition (1641). This edition is Athanasius Kircher’s largest, most complete, and definitive treatise on magnetism and electromagnetism (a term coined by Kircher in this work), which he conceived as a universal force of nature. Kircher compiled measurements of magnetic declination from several places around the world as reported by Jesuit scholars. One of these, Martin Martini, suggested to Kircher the possibility of determining longitudes by the declination of a magnetic needle, a possibility which Kircher then introduced to the scientific community.

In this work Kircher included discussions about the magnetism of the earth and heavenly bodies, the tides, the attraction and repulsion in animals and plants, and the magnetic attraction of music and love. He addressed the practical applications of magnetism in medicine, hydraulics, the construction of scientific instruments, and toys. Above it all, God remained the central magnet of the universe.

QC751-K58-1654-Obelisk
Glass spheres contain wax figures incorporating magnets, which can be affected by the large magnet in the base of the obelisk. On the globes are letters and signs of the Zodiac to which the figures point. By manipulating the handle in front of the table skirt, the operator could rotate the central magnet and cause the figures to answer questions or spell out words. The Greek inscription on the ribbon at the top of the obelisk is the Hermetic axiom, “Nature rejoices in Nature.” — p. 275

Illustrated with thirty-two full-page engraved plates and more than one hundred and fifty ornamental woodcuts throughout the text. Title-page printed in red and black. Rare Books copy has odd little hand-inked drawings by a past owner throughout.

QC751-K58-1654-Portrait
The portrait of Ferdinando IV, reigning Hapsburg Emperor, to whom Magnes sive de arte magnetica is dedicated, contains magnetic needles in the shape of arrows, a lodestone, the eye of God, the orb and cross corresponding to the ancient symbol for Mars, and other, even more esoteric, symbols. This engraving embodies the doctrine of Roman Catholic monarchy as a divine institution, and the emperor and his empire as the microcosmic reflections of God and his universe. Ferdinando IV died the year this edition was published, at the age of 21. — Engraving by F. Valentini

QC751-K58-1654-Sunflower
Sundial in the form of a sunflower — p. 508

QC751-K58-1654-pg593
In southern Italy, most commonly in Apulia, dancing the Tarantella cured the tarantulla bite. — p. 593

Recommended reading:

Glassie, John. A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change. New York: Riverhead Books, 2013
CT1098 K46 G53 2013, General Collection, L2

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Book of the Week — An Essay Towards a Real Character…

18 Tuesday Apr 2017

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animals, Bishop of Chester, cryptography, engravings, Gellibrand, grammar, Great Fire of London, John Ray, John Wilkins, Joseph Moxon, language, Latin, letterforms, London, music, Oliver Cromwell, paneled calf, phonetics, plants, printing, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Royal Society, space travel, symbols, theology, Trinity College, typography, University of Utah, vowels, William Harvey, William Lloyd

P101-W4-1668-pg311
“…Letters, the Invention of which was a thing of so great Art and exquisiteness, that…doth from hence inferr the divinity and spirituality of the humane soul, and that it must needs be of a farr more excellent and abstracted Essence that mere Matter or Body…” — John Wilkins

An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language
John Wilkins (1616-1672)
London: Printed for S. Gellibrand, 1668
First edition

John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, was the chief founder of the Royal Society and its first secretary. He was Master of Trinity College. Wilkins was acquainted with many of the great minds of his day: William Harvey, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. He married the younger sister of Oliver Cromwell. In 1662, he lost all of his library and scientific instruments to the Great Fire of London. He was interested in just about everything — from theology to cryptography, music to space travel. He worked on creating an artificial universal language to replace Latin as a means of clearer communication between scholars and philosophers.

In this book Wilkins discussed the origin of language and letterforms, as well as a theory of grammar and phonetics. He classified words by their meanings and assigned each class a set of typographical characters, in an attempt to create a rationally ordered language and system of symbols.

P101-W4-1668-pg186

He divided the universe into forty classes, or categories, and subdivided these, and then subdivided these. To each class he assigned a monosyllable of two letters; to each subdivision he added a consonant; to each further subdivision, or species, he added a vowel. Each letter, or symbol, had meaning.

P101-W4-1668-Faces

John Ray drew up systematic tables of plants and animals for the book. An index was created by Dr. William Lloyd. Joseph Moxon (1627-1691) cut the typographical characters Wilkins proposed for his language. Moxon was the author of Mechanick Exercises, the first comprehensive manual of printing and letter-founding in any language.

The first issue of the first edition appeared without any of the engraved plates. This copy, apparently a second issue, contains all of the plates, although two folded leaves of tables and diagrams that are in other copies are missing. Bound with Wilkins’ An alphabetical dictionary, wherin all English Words According to their various significations, are either referred to their Places in the Philosophical Tables, Or explained by such words as are in those tables. The second work functions as an index to the first.

University of Utah copy bound in contemporary paneled calf with covers ruled in blind.

P101-W4-1668-NoahsArk

“From what hath been said it may appear, that the measure and capacity of the Ark, which some Atheistical irreligious men make use of, as an argument against the Scripture, ought rather to be esteemed a most rational confirmation of the truth and divine authority of it. Especially if it be well considered, that in those first and ruder ages of the World… men were less versed in Arts and Philosophy, and therefore probably more obnoxious to vulgar prejudices than now they are… — John Wilkins

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Book of the Week — De coloribus libellus

05 Monday Dec 2016

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animals, color, color theory, Empedocles, Florence, Florentinae, Isaac Newton, Laurentii Torrentini, Loeb Classical Library, medicine, Neapolitan, philosopher, Piza, plants, Pseudo Aristotle, scientist, Simone Porzio (1497-1554), soul, vellum

qc495-a7-1548-title

“Those colours are simple which belong to the elements, fire, air, water and earth. For air and water are naturally white in themselves, while fire and the sun are golden. The earth is also naturally white, but seems coloured because it is dyed. This becomes clear when we consider ashes; for they become white when the moisture which caused their dyeing is burned out of them; but not completely so, for they are also dyed by smoke, which is black. In the same way sand becomes golden, because the fiery red and black tints the water. The colour black belongs to the elements of things while they are undergoing a transformation of their nature. But the other colours are evidently due to mixture, when they are blended with each other. For darkness follows when light fails. — Loeb Classical Library translation

DE COLORIBUS LIBELLVS A SIMONE PORTIO…
Pseudo Aristotele (384 BC – 322 BC)
Florentinae: ex officina Laurentii Torrentini, 1548
Editio princips

This is perhaps the earliest work on color theory, attributed to Aristotle, who took his ideas from Empedocles and went a step further, creating a base line occupied by seven colors. Aristotle’s base line was applied to all color-systems up to the time of Isaac Newton. His assumption was to represent colors as actual characteristics of the surface of bodies and not as subjective phenomena produced by the eye or in the brain as a result of the properties of light. Aristotle observed colors very accurately, as well as their contrasts. He noted, for instance, that the violet appearing on white wool appeared different when on black wool and that colors appeared different in daylight than in candlelight. Only much later were these phenomena systematically examined and explained.

This edition was translated and edited with extensive scholarly commentary by Simone Porzio (1497-1554), a Neapolitan philosopher and scientist who was a fanatical disciple of Pomponazzi. Porzio eventually gave up lecturing on medicine at Piza and his scientific studies to focus on studying philosophy. Porzio denied immortality in all forms and taught that the human soul is homogeneous with the soul of animals and plants.

Binding is old vellum with a red leather lettering piece.

qc495-a7-1548-pg23

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Banned! — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

29 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Alice, Donations

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Alice, Alice Lidell, animals, banned, book collector, bookplates, California, cartoonist, Charles Dodgson, Cheshire Cat, children, China, Christmas, cloth bindings, Cyril Bathurst Judge, donation, fairy tales, fantasy, George MacDonald, gift, gilt, Governor, Harvard, Henry Kingsley, Huan Province, humans, John Tenniel, language, Lewis Carroll, London, Los Angeles, Macmillan, Michael R. Thompson Rare Books, Michael Sharpe, Michael Thompson, pictorial, Punch, story, United States, University of Utah

fish-frog mouse

“Animals should not use human language.”

Alice’s adventures in wonderland…
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
London: Macmillan and Co., 1866
First published edition

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s now-famous Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was intended solely for Alice Liddell and her two sisters. Dodgson made the story up to entertain the bored children during a series of outings. Alice asked Dodgson to write the story down. Dodgson presented his manuscript to Alice as a Christmas gift in 1864. Friend and novelist Henry Kingsley saw the manuscript and encouraged Dodgson to publish the book. Dodgson consulted another friend, George MacDonald.

Macdonald, a popular writer of fairy tales and fantasy, read the story to his children, who thoroughly approved of it. Macdonald’s six-year-old son is said to have declared that he “wished there were 60,000 copies of it.”

Dodgson prepared the manuscript for publication, expanding the original 18,000 word story to 35,000 words and adding, among other characters and scenes, the Cheshire Cat and “A Mad-Tea Party.”

The first edition included forty-two illustrations by John Tenniel, a cartoonist for the magazine, Punch. The edition of 4,000 copies was released, under the pseudonym “Lewis Carroll,” in time for Christmas in December of 1865, carrying 1866 as the publication date. However, Tenniel and Dodgson disapproved of the quality of the printing. This first printed edition was removed from the market. A few of these printings made their way to the United States.

The book was reprinted and re-released in 1866. By 1884, 100,000 copies had been printed.

In 1931, the work was banned in China by the Governor of Huan Province on the grounds that “Animals should not use human language, and…it [is] disastrous to put animals and human beings on the same level.”

University of Utah copy is in original gilt pictorial cloth bindings. The inside front boards bear two bookplates, one of Harvard scholar Cyril Bathurst Judge (b. 1888), the other of book collector Michael Sharpe. Anonymous donation facilitated by Michael Thompson of Michael R. Thompson Rare Books, Los Angeles, California.

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

27 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Reading

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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

Dustjacket

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!

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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

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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-Cover

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.

Feathers-Paws-Fins-Spread


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

PQ4634-S7-P5-1580-title

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.


PT8802-N813-1924-Bear

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.

PT8802-N813-1924-pg23
PT8802-N813-1924-pg44

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Book of the week — Kuthan’s Menagerie Completed

18 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ Comments Off on Book of the week — Kuthan’s Menagerie Completed

Tags

animals, anteater, booksellers, Canada, clamshell, colophon, debossed, endsheets, Felicity Reid, flamingo, folio, George Kuthan, Golden Hind laid paper, Heavenly Monkey, Japanese paper, landscape, linocuts, monkey, Nevermore Press, Paris, peacock, penguin, Perpetua, preface, racoon, Robert Reid, Simone Mynen, St. Armand handmade paper, Stephen Lunsford, title page, University of Prague, University of Utah, Vancouver, Vancouver Zoo, waste sheets, William Hoffer

“In the zoo we see, on a small scale, how different all animals are from each other…We have to live together whether we like it or not.”

NE1336-K87-A4-2003-Penguins

KUTHAN’S MENAGERIE COMPLETED
George Kuthan (1916-1966)
Vancouver: Heavenly Monkey, 2003

Descriptive text about six animals – a raccoon, flamingo, anteater, penguin, monkey and peacock – each representing a different part of the world and each viewed by the artist at the Vancouver Zoo. Illustrated with multi-color linocuts by George Kuthan. Kuthan studied art at the University of Prague and in Paris before he moved to Canada.

Kuthan’s Menagerie of Interesting Zoo Animals was first published in an edition of one hundred and thirty copies by Nevermore Press, a single private enterprise by Robert and Felicity Reid, in 1960. Sixty of these copies were bound in quarter leather and Japanese paper over boards. Kuthan and the binder both died soon after this first publication. The remaining sheets were left unbound and unsold. Vancouver booksellers Stephen Lunsford and William Hoffer bought the unbound copies from the original binder’s estate in the late 1980s.

Heavenly Monkey issued the remaining sheets within a sheet of yellow Japanese paper (which served as the endsheets for the bound edition). New content (a title-page, preface and colophon) was set by hand in 18 pt. Perpetua and printed on blank and waste sheets of the original Golden Hind laid paper. The whole is in an outer wrap of St. Armand handmade paper and housed in a custom clamshell box covered in red Japanese fabric, with printed debossed paper labels, designed and made by Simone Mynen. The work is comprised of sixteen sheets loose, printed landscape on one side and folded folio, plus three sheets of additional matter. Printer Robert Reid explained that the folded sheets helped solve two problems: the translucent quality of the paper and to add to the bulk of the book when bound. Edition of fifty copies. University of Utah copy is no. 7, signed by Robert Reid.

NE1336-K87-A4-2003-Monkeys

NE1336-K87-A4-2003-Raccoon

 

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