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Tag Archives: bookstores

A fine piece of early Americana and a very fine gift

20 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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Tags

almanac, American, American Antiquarian Society, American Revolution, Americana, battles, Benjamin Franklin, bibles, bindery, books, bookstores, Boston, broadsides, Caleb Alexander, Charles River, collector, Concord, dictionaries, Dr. Ronald Rubin, English, Greek, Greek New Testament, history, independence, Isaiah Thomas, John Mill, Lexington, literature, London, Maryland, Massachusetts, medicine, music, Newburyport, newspaper, Nova Scotia, Oxford, pamphlets, paper mill, printer, printing history, rare books, Ronald Rubin, sedition, Vermont, Virgil, war, Worcester, Yale University

title

HE KAINE DIATHEKE, NOVUM TESTAMENTUM
Wigorniae, Massachusettensi: excudebat Isaias Thomas, Jun, 1800
Editio Prima Americana

This is the first American printing of the Greek New Testament, considered a milestone in American printing history.

Isaiah Thomas’ printing shop was dubbed “the sedition factory,” during the American Revolution. Thomas moved his press from Boston across the Charles River to Worcester in order to avoid confiscation by British troupes. His press reassembled, Thomas remained in Worcester for the rest of his life, printing the first reports of the battles of Lexington and Concord (“Americans! – – – Liberty or Death! – – – Join or Die!”) and continuing to print until he sold his business in 1802.

Isaiah Thomas was born in Boston in 1749. Thomas was apprenticed to a printer, at the age of six, after the death of his father. He stayed for ten years, then broke his bond and headed to London, much as Benjamin Franklin had done earlier. Thomas got as far as Nova Scotia, where he stayed to print a newspaper. After six months, he was sent packing because of his anti-Stamp Act actions. After another foray, this time to the south, Thomas returned to Boston to set up his own newspaper, The Massachusetts Spy. At the same time, he began what would become a lucrative printing business, which included an almanac and the Royal American Magazine, in 1774.

After the war for independence was won, Thomas built his press into an enterprise that included a bindery, a paper mill and bookstores from Vermont to Maryland. In 1773, he established the first press in Newburyport, Massachusetts, at the request of some of its citizens. He printed books on medicine, music, history, and literature; and printed spellers, dictionaries, and bibles. Caleb Alexander (1755-1828), a graduate of Yale University, worked with Thomas as editor for his first American editions of Virgil and other works in Greek, including He kaine diatheke. Alexander based his edition on a 1707 Oxford edition by English scholar John Mill (1645-1707).

Thomas retired around 1802, about two years after his printing of He kaine diatheke. He spent the rest of his life collecting printed American works – books, pamphlets, broadsides, almanacs, and newspapers. He used these as primary sources for his History of Printing in America, published in 1810. He donated his collection to the American Antiquarian Society, an institution he organized in order to provide a home for print material from early American history.


This is the most recent of numerous gifts throughout the years from Dr. Ronald Rubin, a collector, like Isaiah Thomas, of early Americana and a very fine friend of Rare Books. Thank you, Dr. Rubin!

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A Fulbright Scholar Returns Bearing Gifts

01 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentina, bookstores, Bueno Aires, culture, English, Fulbright Scholar, H. Bustos Domecq, history, Jorge Luis Borges, language, Latin America, literature, Lyuba Basin, Magic Realism, milongas, Para Las Seis Cuerdas, short stories, solidarity, Sur, tango, The Invention of Morel

Rich in imagery and fantastical in nature, La Trama Celeste by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Para Las Seis Cuerdas by Jorge Luis Borges are the two newest additions to the Rare Books Latin American collection.

Every country has a history – that is certain. If we are too young to know our history through life and experience, textbooks can only try to educate us a little further. Unfortunately, the academic rhetoric of such books distances us from the very roots of history, the emotional and personal connections between a country and its citizens where the story of a culture is revealed. This story can only be found within the language of literature.

Recently, I was looking for the story of Argentina. As I walked along the sidewalks of the capital city in the interior province of Córdoba, the modern roads and upscale storefronts clashed with the colonial architecture of the popular Jesuit churches. It was the Jesuit Order which founded the oldest university in the country, and gave Córdoba city the nickname, “The Learned One.”

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In order for me to learn more about this country, I had to explore the hidden nooks and crannies which veered off main roads. These quiet alleyways acted as a personal time machine and led me even further into the history of Argentina, into old bookstores covered in dust and filled with the smell of lingering memories and dreams.

My presence in the small bookstore on Avenida 9 de Julio was initially ignored, much like many of the old photographs and postcards that had been lost or forgotten. I lingered quietly in between the stacks of books for a while, before I decided to formally introduce myself to the two old men drinking mate at the counter.

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“Hola, soy de los Estados Unidos y trabajo con la biblioteca de la Universidad de Utah, en el departmento de los libros raros. Me interesa encontrar primeras ediciones de Borges y Bioy Casares. Pueden ayudarme?”

My newly acquired Argentine accent complimented my foreign mystique, and led the owner to realize that I wasn’t merely a tourist passing by. His eyes opened wide and he smiled, directing me to sit in a dusty chair and wait. Espera. I settled in to the soft, velvet cushions, excited by the all the fragile pages of the venerable books around me. That excitement I felt was elevated to extremes when the owner returned with a dozen or more first edition books and set them in front of the chair. Para vos, he said, for you.

One such book was La Trama Celeste by Buenos Aires writer, Adolfo Bioy Casares.

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La Trama Celeste
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Buenos Aires: Sur, 1948
First Edition

In Memory of Paulina:
I always wanted Paulina. In one of my first memories, Paulina and I are hidden in a dark gazebo of laurels, in a garden with two stone lions. Paulina said to me: I like the blue, I like the grapes, I like the ice, I like the roses, I like the white horses. I understood that my happiness had begun, because in these preferences I could identify myself with Paulina. It seemed so miraculous to us that in a book about the final meeting of the souls in the soul of the world, my friend wrote in the margin: Ours already met. “Ours” at that time, meant hers and mine.

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Translated into English as The Celestial Plot, this collection of short stories was first published in December 1948. By this time, Bioy Casares had already made a name for himself with the release of his novella The Invention of Morel (1940). In addition to his renowned literary works, his fame was elevated by his longstanding friendship with the Argentina’s literary hero, Jorge Luis Borges.

While both working with Sur magazine in the early 1930’s, the two writers met and before long transformed their friendship into a series of collaborative works, often published under the name of H. Bustos Domecq. Over the years, Bioy Casares and Borges, among others, worked to develop the growing genre of philosophical literature in Latin America, sometimes vaguely defined as Magic Realism, connecting dreams and reality through mazes, mirrors and memories, while consistently begging the question of identity.

Within an elite circle of intellectuals, the famous fantastical writers might have seemed impervious to the desolate reality of political, economic and social decline outside the walls of the publishing house. However, it was never too far from reach. Between the lines of their collected literary works the influence of their country’s politics can easily be seen.

In Borges’ collection of poetry Para Las Seis Cuerdas (For the Six Strings) the history of Argentina is depicted in a series of 11 milongas, folkloric songs written in the style of the famous Argentine tango.

borgescover

Para Las Seis Cuerdas
Jorge Luis Borges
Illustrated by Héctor Basaldúa
Buenos Aires, Emecé Editores, 1965
First Edition
Edition of 3,000

Someone Speaks of the Tango
Tango that I have seen dancing
Against a yellow sunset
By those who were able
Of another dance, that of the knife.

Tango from that Maldonado
With less water than mud;
Tango whistling in passing
From the side of the car.

Carefree and loose,
You always looked straight ahead,
Tango you were the one
To be a man and to be brave.

Tango you were happy,
Like I have been as well,
According to my memory,
Which is a little forgetful.

Since that yesterday, how many things
Have happened to us both;
The games and the regret
To love and not be loved.

I will have died and you will continue
Bordering our life;
Buenos Aires does not forget you
Tango that you were and will be

borgesspread

The tango is just one of the cultural phenomena written within Argentina’s diverse history, a history which asks all those who are part of it, or wish to study it, to participate in a continuous conversation. This conversation must include many countries, cultures and languages. Unlike common textbooks, the language of literature provides us with the key to get the very core of history and culture. Unlike textbooks, literature helps define solidarity and shows us how similar we truly are.

Contributed by Lyuba Basin, Rare Books Assistant and graduate student in World Languages and Culture at the University of Utah, who also provided the translations.

Editor’s note: Welcome home, Lyuba and thank you for your gifts!

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Rare Books goes to Argentina!

22 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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Tags

Argentina, artists' books, bookstores, bookworm, characterization, Comparative Literature/Cultural Studies, creative writing, creativity, English, Faulkner, fight, Fulbright Scholarship, Hemingway, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jonathan Safran Foer, La Lucha, language, Latin America, libraries, literary analysis, literature, Luise Poulton, Lydia Davis, Lyuba Basin, magical, materiality, rare books, Rare Books Classroom, Rare Books Curator, Rare Books Department, setting, short story, story, strikes, students, teachers, teaching assistant, text, textbooks, Universidad Nacional de la Pampa, University of Utah, UNLPam, whiteboard, Wolfe

“Rare Books helped me develop a different perspective on literary analysis.” – Lyuba Basin (Class of 2015 and graduate student in Comparative Literature/Cultural Studies, The University of Utah)

Lyuba Basin, former Rare Books Curator, writes from Argentina, where she is spending eight months on a Fulbright Scholarship.

“Today marks 12 weeks in Argentina. When I look back at it now, it seems like nothing. Yet, I can clearly remember the daily struggle of trying to adapt to this new culture, to adjust my ears and tongue to this new language, and to push aside the loneliness that often attached itself to my mind when I felt so far away from home. Despite the struggles and the cultural differences, I have relished my position as a teaching assistant at the Universidad Nacional de La Pampa. Unlike the large campus back home, UNLPam is a small and simple building located in the very center of the small and simple city. Standing only five stories tall, it blends in with the other shops and apartments located around the plaza; but what makes it distinct is the colorful murals that decorate the entrance and the classrooms inside. On top of that, the students and teachers, with their weekly strikes, create a sense of theatrics, a performance we call La Lucha, the fight.

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I have come to realize that this fight, while manifesting in a variety of ways, is universal. The fight to grow up, to succeed, to get ahead, to make ends meet. I see the same look of desperation in the eyes of my students that I had just one year ago. It is the same look of fear as they sit and wonder “What I am going to do with my life?” I look back in silence, because I’m afraid to tell them that after graduation, you probably still won’t know. I look back with the same question in my mind. However, of all the things I don’t know, I do know this: there will always be a constant in my life, regardless of where I travel or how far.

My love of literature.

As an English language teaching assistant at UNLPam I have transformed into a self-proclaimed literary expert. Of course, expertise is relative when you are one of two native English speakers in a university of thousands. Nonetheless, I am proud of the insight I have been able to provide and glad to see my bookworm tendencies finally come to fruition. I have been lucky enough to teach my students short stories by some great classics, such as Faulkner, Hemingway and Wolfe.
PS3511-A86-T6-1957-coverPS3511-A86-I5-1948-coverPS3511-A86-H38-cover
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But what makes the experience all the more fulfilling is being able to introduce new, contemporary literature into the classroom, with works by Lydia Davis and Jonathan Safran Foer, demonstrating to the students the diverse ways we can use and play with language.

As my lesson plans evolved I realized that the students did not have the same exposure to literature as I was fortunate to have back home. With only three small bookstores, two libraries, and no access to online orders, contact with literature outside of Latin America is quite difficult.

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In order to expand my students’ horizons I had to think creatively. Luckily, I still had an amazing team back home to help me out. The Rare Books Department at the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, was where I learned how to truly appreciate literature, and now I hope to share that with my students, and hopefully with the University of La Pampa as a whole.

In my most recent lecture, I decided to focus on my time as a Rare Books employee and remembered the presentations Luise Poulton gives on the ‘Materiality of the Book’. So I reached out and desperately asked Luise for help. I wanted to introduce the topic of Artists’ Books and explain why materiality could be as important to consider in the process of creative writing as characterization or setting. Using my own book arts project as an example and Luise’s notes from the Rare Books Classroom whiteboard, I was able to illustrate the magical thing that occurs when text becomes material. I was ecstatic to find the students wide-eyed with amazement, none of them having seen or even heard of such things before. Students excitedly came to me after class to discuss ideas, and even the professor encouraged them to develop their own creative interpretations for the short story assignment ahead.

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Working in Rare Books taught me that there is not just one way to tell a story; that creativity does not have to be stifled by what we learn in tedious textbooks. I was able to share what I have learned and bring it all the way to Argentina, changing the perspectives of fifteen students and one professor. While it seems like a small number now, I know that the experience I have passed down will continue to flow, from student to student, year to year, until the Universidad Nacional de La Pampa has a Rare Books department of its own.”

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Book of the Week – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

08 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Tags

advertisements, American, bookstores, British, California, Canada, copyright, England, frontispiece, Hartford, London, manuscript, Mark Twain, piracy, prospectus, royalties, Samuel Clemens, San Francisco, subscription, Tom Sawyer, typewritten, United States, unpublished


The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Hartford, CT: American Pub. Co.; San Francisco, CA: A. Roman, 1876
First American edition, first printing
PS1306-A1-1876

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote three different versions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer between 1872 and 1875 before it was first published in London in June, 1876.

Many American authors preferred to have their books published first in England, since that was the only way to secure British copyright. First printings in England, and then the United States, usually occurred only a couple of months apart. In the case of Tom Sawyer, the delay was longer, frustrating Twain. Too much of a delay often resulted in piracy, which is exactly what happened in the case of this work. At least one pirated edition surfaced in July in Canada.

Twain believed that the delay and the piracy caused him loss in royalties. Tom Sawyer was reviewed unfavorably in the London Examiner, the day it came out. A July review in the literary magazine, The Atheneaum, was more kindly.

In December 1876, Tom Sawyer was printed in the United States and sold by subscription only. This was a common method of book distribution in the United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Book agents would cross the country with a publisher’s prospectus, selling and placing orders for as yet unpublished titles. Once the title was released the books would be delivered directly to subscriber’s homes. Only later editions were available in bookstores.

Tom Sawyer was not an immediate success. The American publisher sold only 24,000 copies in its first year. The pirated edition was not the only reason for poor sales. One book agent in California complained that the story, at only 274 pages, was not long enough. Potential subscribers apparently felt the same way.

Twain typed the manuscript for Tom, and later claimed that it was the first typewritten manuscript. Historians, however, believe that this distinction goes to Twain’s Life on the Mississippi. The frontispiece of the first American edition was drawn by Twain. Publisher’s advertisements, dated Dec. 1, 1876 on two leaves in back.

 

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