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Tag Archives: childhood

Book of the Week — Life on the Mississippi

21 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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American, American Civil War, booksellers dummy, Boston, childhood, England, greed, gullibility, James R Osgood, life, Mark Twain, Mississippi River, New Orleans, Ohio River, railroads, rare books, Samuel Clemens, St. Louis, steamboat, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, typewriter, United States

f353-c6441-1883-cover

“Look at me! I’m the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother’s side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar’l of whiskey for breakfast when I’m in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I’m ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood’s my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!—and lay low and hold your breath, for I’m bout to turn myself loose!”

——————————–

“I became a new being, and the subject of my own admiration. I was a traveler! A word never had tasted so good in my mouth before. I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since. I was in such a glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me, and I was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had hardly a trace of contempt in it.”

f353-c6441-1883-riverboat

Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1883
First American edition, first state
F353 C6458 1883b

During an 1872 visit to the American Midwest, Samuel Clemens was “struck by the great diminution of steamboat traffic on the Ohio River and became anxious to document the steamboat era before it vanished altogether….” Life is his memoir of his youthful years as a “cub” pilot on a steamboat paddling up and down the Mississippi River. He used his childhood experiences growing up along the Mississippi in a number of works, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but in Life, thoroughly described the river and the pilot’s life prior to the American Civil War.

Clemens wrote of his return to the river, traveling on a steamboat from St. Louis to New Orleans. He described the competition from the railroads; the new cities; and a world of greed, gullibility, and bad architecture. Clemens considered Life his greatest work, in spite of the fact that he attempted to rewrite it immediately after publication.

This is believed to be the first literary work composed on a typewriter. It was published simultaneously in the United States and England. Illustration on page 441, showing Mark Twain in flames, which was omitted at the request of Mrs. Clemens in further printings of the same date.

f353-c6441-1883-pg441

Sold by subscription only, Rare Books has a booksellers dummy for this subscription. University of Utah copy in library binding.

f353-c6441-1883-title

f353-c6441-1883-announcement

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Book of the Week – Cause and Effect

21 Monday Mar 2016

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abaca, accordion structure, Alabama, book arts, childhood, cotton, drum leaf binding, Gordo, hemp, Jessica Peterson, letterpress, microfilm, New York, newspaper, paper, photo-polymer plates, printed, race riots, Rochester, Sarah Bryant, The University of Alabama, The University of Utah, trompe-l'oeil, Vandercook SPO-20

N7433.4-P475-C38-2009-RaceSpread

“Sing a song full of the faith that the dark
past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the
present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new
day begun
Let us march on ’til victory is won.”
— James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

CAUSE AND EFFECT
Jessica Peterson
[Alabama: J. Peterson], 2009
N7433.4 P475 C38 2009

A relocation to Alabama causes the author to re-examine her childhood in Rochester, NY, particularly with respect to the impact of the 1964 race riots. From the colophon: “…researched, written, designed and printed by Jessica Peterson…The content was letterpress printed using photo-polymer plates on Sarah Bryant’s Vandercook SPO-20 in Gordo, Alabama…completed in fulfillment of my MFA in Book Arts from The University of Alabama, April 2009.” Illustrated with printed trompe-l’oeil style newspaper and microfilm clippings. Printed on cotton, abaca, and hemp paper. Accordion structure in drum leaf binding. Edition of fifty-five copies. University of Utah copy is no. 38.

N7433.4-P475-C38-2009-InnerCity

N7433.4-P475-C38-2009-map

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A Gift from the Past – A story from one of our readers

25 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by scott beadles in Uncategorized

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Albuquerque, American Legion, Amherst, attorney, bibliophile, Charles Scribner's Sons, childhood, Dallas, Depression, Dred Scott, Eugene Field, Fannie Smith, folk songs, fugitive slave, hero, initial, legends, Los Angeles, Luise Putcamp jr, lullabies, Massachusetts, Maxfield Parrish, migrant workers, Missouri, New York, newspaperman, Pecos, Placitas, poems, rare books, San Francisco, San Leandro, Sarmento, Texas

PS1667-P6-1904-pl28
Poems of Childhood
Eugene Field (1850-1895)
New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1904
PS1667 P6 1904

Newspaperman Eugene Field was born in Missouri. His father, an attorney, successfully defended Dred Scott, a fugitive slave. Field’s mother died when he was six. He and his younger brother grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, cared for by a paternal cousin. Field was the father of eight children. He worked for the St. Louis Evening Journal, St. Joseph Gazette, St. Louis Times-Journal, and the Kansas City Times. He wrote a column for the Chicago Morning News until his death. On the one hand a sharp satirist, on the other Field wrote sentimental verse. He is best known for “Little Boy Blue” (1888), a poem memorized by thousands of school children for many decades. He published several books of verse, some specifically about childhood. With Trumpet and Drum (1892), included “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” and lullabies, legends, and folk songs from different countries, a study of particular interest to him. Love-Songs of Childhood (1894) included “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat.” Field, a bibliophile, collected rare and unusual books of beauty. He also made his own books, often rubricating the first initial of a poem with various color inks. Much of his published work was illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, including this popular collection of his poetry.

“A Gift From the Past”

Night was coming on.

The old car carrying the parents and their three stairstep children was headed south, down the highway from San Francisco. No destination. No money.

The year was 1933.

The hand-lettered sign stood in front of an orchard near San Leandro. Fruit Pickers Wanted. The dad pulled into the yard and knocked at the house door.

Three children? They’ll stay out of the way. There’s a house you can use.

We piled out of the car. With broom and mop and rags the parents soon had the corners of the two-room house swept, the worn linoleum clean, the gas-burner stove sanitary.

The mother told the orchard owner, Mr. Sarmento, that she had no money for food. He gave her an advance on fruit picker pay. She loaded up on staples. A roof! Food money! In an exuberance of relief, she made pies from peaches gleaned from beneath a nearby tree and gave one pie to the Sarmentos.

Migrant workers. Anglo braceros. 

After the fruit was picked, the Sarmentos found more work around the orchard for the parents. For the three kids, it was an idyllic time.

The oldest daughter spent much of it perched in a big old tree behind the Sarmento house, reading the few books salvaged in an earlier hegira from Los Angeles.

The big, beautiful books were presents from The Aunt Who Always Gave Books, Aunt Fannie Smith, in Dallas.One of them was the 1904 edition (still going in 1932) of Eugene Field’s Poems of Childhood with illustrations by Maxfield Parrish.
PS1667-P6-1904-frontis

Even at eight years old, this daughter knew that most of the poems were a mediocre mishmash. Mostly she immersed her mind in the Maxfield Parrish pictures that transported her so far from drab surroundings.

But there was an old faithful, “Just Fore Christmas.” How often she’d heard her Daddy Bill recite that!
“Father calls me William, sister calls me Will,
 “Mother calls me Willie but the fellers call me Bill.”
 
    PS1667-P6-1904-spread116-117
 
And she did memorize the lugubrious “Little Boy Blue.”

Over in Texas, the boy who would grow up to marry her would memorize it, too. He got an American Legion medal for making the best grades of any elementary school kid in Pecos. He blew the last lines in reciting “Little Boy Blue” but he was a hero, anyway.

The girl’s family left the Sarmento orchard behind and went on to other Depression Day adventures. Books and other treasures were left behind or lost in unpaid storage.

Fast forward to the late 1980’s, in Placitas.

From one of those bookfind places, the aging Depression child was able to buy, for $35, a battered copy of the memory-laden old book.

And this year, Scribner’s reissued Poems of Childhood. The Maxfield Parrish illustrations look true to the original.

Now the next generation (and the next) can wince at the poems and marvel at the illustrations.

Albuquerque, NM 1996
Luise Putcamp, jr.
PS1667-P6-1904-swing

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