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Tag Archives: English

Books of the week — Off with her head!

08 Friday Feb 2019

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Anthony Babington, assassination, bibliophile, Brogyntyn, Brogyntyn Hall, Cardinal of Como, cellar, Christopher Barker, confession, Earl of Leicester, Edmund Neville, England, English, execution, Flanders, Harlech Brogyntyn, Houses of Parliament, imprisonment, Jesuit, limp vellum, London, Lord Chancellor, Lord Harlech, manuscripts, Mary Queen of Scots, National Library of Wales, Oswestry, Parliament, petition, poets, Pope Pius V, Ptolomeo Galli, Queen Elizabeth I, recusants, Robert Cecil, Selatyn, seminarians, Shropshire, Sir Robert Owen, St James', Tower of London, Walsingham, Welsh, William Allen, William Crichton, William Parry


“The Queene of Scotland is your prisoner, let her be honorably entreated, but yet surely guarded.” – William Parry

A true and plaine declaration of the horrible…
At London by C. Barker Cum priuilegio, 1585
First edition, second issue

A contemporary report of William Parry’s plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), including an account of his discovery, imprisonment, confession, and execution (2 March 1585) together with documents of the confession of Parry’s fellow-conspirator, Edmund Neville (ca. 1555-ca. 1620), outlining in detail Parry’s plans to kill Elizabeth with his dagger in her private gardens or, failing that, to shoot her at St James’; and Parry’s confession, written by his own hand before Walsingham in the Tower of London.

This is followed by two more letters of confession by Parry, the first addressed to the queen; the next addressed to Burghley and the Earl of Leicester. Also included are documents that further incriminate Parry and provide details of the early stages of his plotting. The first of these is a letter written by the Jesuit William Crichton (from his imprisonment at the Tower) recalling a conversation with Parry concerning the lawfulness of assassinating the queen.

Finally, a letter to Parry by Ptolomeo Galli, Cardinal of Como, in which he approves a letter that Parry had written to Pope Pius V, allegedly offering to assassinate the queen, and for which service the Pope granted him a plenary indulgence. Following the account of Parry’s trial and execution by hanging, the printer has added “A few observations gathered out of the very words and writing of William Parry, the traytour, applied to prove his trayterous coniuration, with a resolute intent, imagination, purpose, and obstinate determination to have killed her Maiestie.” This account of Parry’s efforts implicates the Jesuits, English recusants and seminarians, and the Pope himself.


“But the matter is cleare, the conspiracie, and his traiterous intent it too plaine and evident: it is the Lorde that reuealed it in time, and preuented their malice: there lacked no wil, or readinesse in him to execute that horrible fact. It is the Lorde that hath preserued her Maiestie from all the wicked practises and conspiracies of that hellish rable: it is hee that hath most graciously deliuered her from the hands of this traiterous miscreant. The Lord is her onely defence in whome shee hath alwayes trusted.”

The revelation that Parry conceived of his plan by reading the works of William Allen, English Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, prompted this editorial note: “See how the smoothe words of that Catholique booke are enterpreted and conceived. One Spirite occupieth the Catholique reader with the Catholique writer, and therefore can best expound the writers sence in his readers mouth, even to bee a booke fraught with emphaticall speeches of energeticall perswasion to kill and despose her maiestie, and yet doeth the hypocrite writer, that traitour Catholique, dissemble and protest otherwise.”

The little booklet ends with three prayers for Elizabeth, the last of which “vsed in the Parliament onely.”


“…we gladly acknowledge, that by thy fauour standeth the peaceable protection of our Queene and Realme, and likewise this fauorable libertie graunted unto us at this time to make our meeting together…”



Copie of a letter to the right honourable the…
London: By Christopher Barker, printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie, 1586
First edition, variant
DA356 S27 1586

This slim volume contains printed documents of an exchange between Parliament and Queen Elizabeth on the proposed execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, beginning with a letter to the Earl of Leicester dated November 25th, 1586 and signed by R. C. (Robert Cecil) in which Cecil announces that he has transcribed “the speaches delivered by the Queene’s most excellent maisestie in a late and weightie cause dealt in this parliament” together with the “petitions presented to hir Maiestie and the 12th and 24th of November at Richmond by the Lord Chauncelour and Speaker.”

In the first petition, Elizabeth is urged to take action against the Scottish Queen for her traitorous actions. A number of “divers apparent and imminent dangers that may grow to her Maiesties most royal person and her realme” are enumerated. Chief among these are Mary’s confessed complicity in the plot of Anthony Babbington to assassinate the queen, as well as her intention to return England “into the thralldome of Popish tyrannie.”


“She is obdurate in malice against your royall person, notwithstanding you have shewed her all fauour and mercie, as well in preseruing her kingome, as saving her life, and faluing her honour. And therefore there is no place for mercie; since there is no hope that shee will desist from most wicked attempts…”

The first petition is followed by Elizabeth’s response, in which she promises to give the matter “due consideration” but declines to offer an immediate resolution: “I haue had goode experience and tryall of this world: I know what it is to be subiect, what to be Soueraigne: what to haue good neighbors, and sometime meete euill willers. I haue founde treason in trust, seene great benefits litle regarded, & in stead of gratefulness, courses of purpose to crosse. These former remembrances, present feeling and future expectation of euils, I say, haue made me thinke, An euill, is much the better, the lesse while it endureth: and so, them happiest that are soonest hence: & taught me to beare with a better minde these treasons, then is common to my sexe: yea, with a better heart perhaps, then is in some men.”


“But I must tell you one thing more, that in this last Acte of Parliament you haue brought me to a narowe straight, that I must giue direction for her death, which cannot be to mee but a most grieuous and irksome burthen.”

A few days after this exchange, Elizabeth “in some conflict with herself what to do” asked the Parliament to find “some other way of remedy” than the execution of Mary.

In the resultant second petition (24th November), Parliament announced that further deliberations upon the matter yielded no alternate solution that would ensure the safety of queen and country. The queen was once again urged to authorize Mary’s execution.

Elizabeth, in her second reply, offers “an answere without answere”: “It was of a willing minde & great desire I had, that some other means might be found out, wherein I should have taken more comfort, than in any under thing under the Sunne. And since now it is resolved, that my suretic can not bee established without a Princesse ende, I have just cause to complaine, that I, tho have in my time pardoned so many Rebels, winked at so many treasons, and shoulde nowe be forced to this proceeding, against such a person.”


“…an answere without answere…”

Elizabeth’s equivocal response to the November 24th petition concludes the present work. Soon after, on December 4th, Parliament obtained a public proclamation from Elizabeth of the sentence of death. Mary was executed on February 8th, 1587.

Rare Books copy has contemporary handwritten annotations in the text. In the first, the annotator directs the reader to the confession of Anthony Babington, who had conspired to kill Elizabeth and place Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne. Babington was captured and executed in 1586, the year that this book appeared. Three other annotations give the names of contemporary owners.

A recent owner, Harlech Brogyntyn, one of the barons of Brogyntyn Hall, a mansion in the parish of Selatyn, northwest of Oswestry in Shropshire, England, left the following note on the flyleaf of the current binding. The estate had been a family home since the sixteenth century. A further note, on the second flyleaf states that the book was “found bound in damaged limp vellum in a bundle in the cellar…”

“This volume is of great historical interest in that it shows the pressure put by both Houses of Parliament on Queen Elizabeth to “eliminate” Mary Queen of Scots in the autumn of 1586. (The actual execution took place in 1587.)

The arguments are set-out (1) by [the Lord Chancellor] for the Lords…much perturbed by the revelation of the “Babington” plot…Queen Elizabeth’s characteristic replies are prefaced by a letter signed R. C. to Lord Leicester. Lord Leicester had been in Flanders during these events and this volume was printed by the “official” printer to acquaint him with what had passed in this matter in his absence.

H”

Sir Robert Owen of Brogyntyn (d. 1698) was a bibliophile who followed a family tradition of patronage of poets and collecting printed English literature. Later family members continued collecting early printed books. The library also had a collection of manuscripts, possibly culled from other estate libraries in the surrounding area. The third Lord Harlech gave thirty Welsh language manuscripts to the National Library of Wales in 1934, making it the largest collection of manuscripts in Welsh at that time. The fourth Lord Harlech gave the National Library another fifty-nine manuscript in 1935 and more in 1945. The remaining manuscripts were purchased from the sixth Lord Harlech in 1993.

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Book of the Week — Queen Moo’s Talisman

22 Monday Oct 2018

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Africa, Alice Dixon Le Plongeon, American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal, archaeologist, Asiatic, Atlantic, Augustus Le Plongeon, Brahma, British Isles, brooch, Buddha, cataclysms, Chichén Itzá, Cloverland Magazine, Codex Cortesianus, copperplate, cultural, Daily Mining Journal, dance, earthquake, Egypt, English, Flood, frescos, gold, Greece, Henry Dixon, Ida Simmons, immortality, India, inscriptions, island, jadeite, John Olof Viking, Khans, linguistic, macaw, manuscripts, Maya, Mayan, maypole, Mediterranean, Mexico, Michigan, mural, musci, New York, ocean, pastedown, Peru, Peter Eckler, photographer, Prince Chaacol, printer, prospectus, Queen Moo, Ramayana, rare books, reincarnation, serpent, Siam, songs, Swedish, talisman, The Word, Theosophical Publishing Company, Troano Codex, Uxmal, vocabulary, Yucatan


When grief shall rend thy heart, seek thine own soul;
Shut out life’s din, and find that sacred goal.

Queen Moo’s Talisman: The Fall of the Maya Empire
Alice Dixon Le Plongeon (1851-1910)
New York: Peter Eckler, Publisher, 1902
First edition

Alice Dixon Le Plongeon was an English photographer, amateur archaeologist, traveler, and author. She was the daughter of Henry Dixon, a copperplate printer and photographer.

She travelled with her husband, Augustus Le Plongeon, to Mexico in 1873. They were early excavators of the ancient Mayan sites of Chichén Itzá and Uxmal.

While studying the artifacts at Chichén Itzá, the Le Plongeon’s pieced together a narrative of Queen Moo (the Mayan word for “macaw”), an ancient Mayan ruler, and her brother and consort Prince Chaacmol (“powerful warrior”). In November 1875, they unearthed a large statue and other artifacts near the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars at Chichén Itzá, including a piece of jadeite that Augustus had set in a gold brooch. Alice wore the talisman for the rest of her life.

A talisman I give thee — jadeite green,
‘Twill ever lend thee intuition keen,
Its wearer may with love herself surround,
For with attractive force it doth abound.
Would one deceive, and traitor prove to thee,
His mind with this thou wilt quite plainly see.
Thro’ centuries this talisman can bind
Two souls — desiring this, the way thou ‘lt find.
But keep it sacredly for thee alone;
If thou lose this a foe will seize thy throne.

Even though the archaeological community was not receptive to the Le Plongeons’ theories about Queen Moo, Alice publisher her epic poem. In the introduction, the author discusses the connections, linguistic and cultural, her husband, made between the Maya empire, Egypt, India, Buddha, Brahma, the Ramayana, the Mediterranean, Africa, Greece, Peru, Siam; and the maypole dance — practiced in the Yucatan and the British Isles.

Referring to the Troano Codex and the Codex Cortesianus, he connected the word “CAN,” “the generic word for serpent,” found inscribed in ancient Yucatan ruins with the Khans of Asiatic nations. Dr. Plongeon interpreted inscriptions in both manuscripts as the story of a great flood caused by an earthquake, submerging a “great island in the Atlantic ocean,” suggesting that the Troano Codex dates the disappearance of the island 8,060 years before the writing of the manuscript. “Judging from Egyptian records, the cataclysms must have occurred between ten and eleven thousand years ago.”

The publisher’s prospectus described the work as “a dramatic…account of events which caused the dismemberment of the Maya empire, according to Maya [manuscripts], mural inscriptions and frescos at Chichén in Yucatan. Interesting data are also given concerning ancient rites and religious ideas of the Mayas, their belief in the immortality of the soul, its reincarnation in human form, and its power to manifest, while disembodied, to those in the flesh.”

At the back of the book is included several songs with music, words by Alice Le Plongeon and accompaniment by Ida Simmons.

Rare Books copy is inscribed by John O. Viking, a correspondent of Alice Le Plongeon’s, on the front free flyleaf, “From/John O. Viking/Ishpeming, Mich./April 30th 08/To Sister Benediction/ 8/28, 1950.”

An autographed letter from the author to Viking dated June 22nd in the original mailing envelope and regarding the purchasing of copies of Queen Moo, some Mayan vocabulary, and a few printer’s errors in her book, A Dream of Atlantis, mounted on front pastedown; a typed letter signed by the author to John O. Viking dated May 6th, 1908 regarding the possible publication of A Dream of Atlantis in the magazine The Word also laid in at rear; typed letter signed by an associate of the Theosophical Publishing Company of New York dated August 25th, 1910 addressed to Viking and informing him of Alice Le Plongeon’s death in original mailing envelope affixed to the rear pastedown.

John Olof Viking (b. 1874) was a Swedish-born writer who settled in Michigan with his family in 1882. He worked as a staff writer for the American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal. His articles also appeared in other publications, including Cloverland Magazine and Daily Mining Journal.  

Frontispiece of the author with tissue guard captioned in red. Further illustrated with thirteen black-and-white numbered drawings and three headpieces. Title-page printed in red and black. Bound in publisher’s gray cloth lettered in gilt on front board and spine. Top edge gilt.

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Banned! — Letters Concerning the English Nation

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

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Alexander Pope, Amsterdam, Bastille, British, Drake Stillman, England, English, Enlightenment, France, Francis Bacon, French, French Parliament, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Italian, John Locke, John Lockman, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, letters, London, Pennsylvania, Quakers, rare books, Roman Catholic Church, tail pieces, University of Toronto, vignettes, Voltaire, William Bowyer, William Penn, William Shakespeare


“The great Freedom with which Mr. de Voltaire delivers himself in his various Observations, cannot give him any Apprehensions of their being less favourably receiv’d upon that Account, by a judicious People who abhor flattery. The English are pleas’d to have their Faults pointed out to them, because this shews at the same Time, that the Writer is able to distinguish their merit.”

Letters Concerning the English Nation…
Voltaire (1694-1778)
London: Printed for C. Davis…and A. Lyon…, 1733
First edition
PQ2086 L4 E5 1733

Voltaire (nee François-Marie Arouet) fled to England after arguing with powerful French political figures. During his exile, from 1726 to 1728, he learned English, reading the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon; and met other British authors such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. The British embraced Voltaire as a victim of France’s political discrimination.

In Letters, Voltaire, with the works of John Locke and Enlightenment authors as his basis, wrote a slur against the French government and the French Roman Catholic Church, calling for political and religious reform. Letters was translated from French into English by John Lockman from a manuscript prepared by Voltaire.

Voltaire wrote about Isaac Newton and his theories in four of the letters. He told the story of the falling apple as the impetus for Newton’s theorem of the law of gravity, the first time this anecdote was told in print.


“…as he was walking one Day in his Garden, and saw some Fruits fall from a Tree, he fell into a profound Meditation on that Gravity, the Cause of which has so long been sought, but in vain, by all the Philosophers, whilst the Vulgar think there is nothing mysterious in it. He said to himself, that from what height soever, in our Hemisphre, those Bodies might descend…Why may not this Power which causes heavy Bodies to descend, and is the same without any sensible Diminution at the remostest Distance from the Center of the Earth, or on the Summits of the highest Mountains; Why, said Sir Isaac, may not this power extend as high as the Moon?”

Voltaire also wrote about William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania as a haven for Quakers.


About this time arose the illustrious William Pen, who establish’d the power of the Quakers in America, and would have made them appear venerable in the eyes of the Europeans, were it possible for mankind to respect virtue, when reveal’d in a ridiculous light…Pen set sail for his new dominions with two ships freighted with Quakers, who follow’d his fortune. The country was then call’d Pensilvania from William Pen, who there founded Philadelphia, now the most flourishing city in that country.”

Letters was published in French in Amsterdam in 1734. It was immediately condemned by the French Parliament. Copies that made it into France were confiscated and burned. A warrant was issued for Voltaire’s arrest. The printer was imprisoned in the Bastille. At the same time, it was a bestseller in England, going through several more editions during the eighteenth century.

It is likely that this English edition was printed by William Bowyer (1699-1777), as the ornaments (the title vignette and tail-pieces) are those used in other of his imprints.

Rare Books copy has the bookplate of Drake Stillman (1910-1993), an emeritus professor of the history of science at the University of Toronto. He published many translations of the works of Galileo and other sixteenth century Italian scientists.

Recommended reading:
Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography
Stillman Drake
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978
QB36 G2 D69, L1

Telescopes, Tides, and Tactics: A Galilean Dialogue about The Starry Messenger and Systems of the World
Stillman Drake
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983
QB41 G178 D7 1983, L1

Galileo: Pioneer Scientist
Stillman Drake
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990
QB36 G23 D67 1990, L1

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Book of the Week — The Peril of the Times Displayed, or, The Danger of Mens taking up with a Form of Godliness…

17 Monday Sep 2018

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1700, Benjamin Eliot, Boston, Concord, demonic possession, Elizabeth Knapp, English, Great Migration, Groton, Harvard College, Increase Mather, Judge Samuel Sewell, King Philip's War, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Bay Colony, New England, Newtowne, Old South Church, piety, Puritans, Salem, Samuel Willard, scabboard, seizures, Simon Willard, Third Church, witch, witchcraft

The Peril of the Times Displayed, or, The Danger of Mens taking up with a Form of Godliness, But Denying the Power of it…
Samuel Willard (1640-1707) and Increase Mather (1639-1723)
Boston: Printed by B. Green & J. Allen. Sold by Benjamin Eliot, 1700
First and sole edition

Born in Concord, Massachusetts, Samuel Willard was the sixth child of the town’s founder, Simon Willard, and his wife, Mary. The Willards were part of what is called the “Great Migration” of English Puritans to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. After first residing in Newtowne, (later Cambridge), the family moved in 1635 to the frontier to settle Concord with the Reverend Peter Bulkeley (1583-1659). Simon Willard died in 1676, serving as a major in King Phillip’s War. As a young minister in the New England backwoods Samuel Willard contended with a notorious case of demonic possession and the destruction of the town of Groton, Massachusetts during King Philip’s War. In 1671, sixteen year-old Elizabeth Knapp, who had been bound out as a servant in Willard’s household, began having seizures. Willard described her fits: “she was scarce to be held in bounds by three or four” and “sudden shriekings…roarings and screamings.”

In 1676 Groton was attacked by 400 natives who burned the town to the ground. Willard moved to Boston. During the next three decades, as pastor of Boston’s wealthy Third (Old South) Church, Willard confronted such threats to the Puritan social and spiritual order as declining church membership, the revocation of New England’s original charter, and the Salem witchcraft trials. Willard argued, regarding the infamous 1662 episode in Salem, that the court’s reliance on spectral evidence, the testimony of accusers who claimed to see the spirits of their attackers, contradicted scripture. Willard was, himself, accused of being a witch, although that charge was never taken seriously. When Judge Samuel Sewell later recanted his part in the execution of the condemned witches, he made his confession to Willard.

Willard published hundreds of sermons and other writings, responding to social, political, and doctrinal controversies by aligning theological rigor with social moderation, attempting to forge strategies by which orthodox Puritanism could accommodate the realities of a changing world. In this sermon, Samuel Willard addresses the decline in religious observance and piety in Puritan New England. This work was printed the same year that Willard was appointed vice-president of Harvard College. A letter by Increase Mather is included in the printing of this work, ironical, perhaps, since following the controversial dismissal of him as president of Harvard a year later, Willard assumed Mather’s duties, although not his official position.

Rare Books copy bound in contemporary American speckled sheep, ruled in blind, over thin wooden boards, called “scabbard.”

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Book of the Week — Duineser Elegien

10 Monday Sep 2018

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abstractions, alchemy, angel, birth, Castle of Duino, Count Harry Kessler, Cranach Press, crush, destruction, discontent, disdain, driven, E. Prince, Edward Johnston, Edward Sackville West, endure, English, Eric Gill, fugitives, G. T. Friend, Gaspard and Aristide Maillol, German, Germany, Hans Schulze, heart, Hogarth Press, humanities, Insel -Verlag, italic type, itinerants, landscapes, Leipzig, London, Maillol-Kessler paper, Max Goertz, metaphysical, Rainer Maria Rilke, sobs, Tavistock Square, terrible, terror, visions, Vita Sackville-West, Walter Tanz, watermark, will, Willi Laste, wood initials


Who would give ear, among the angelic host,
Were I to cry aloud? and even if one
Amongst them took me swiftly to his heart,
I should dissolve before his strength of being.
For beauty’s nothing but the birth of terror,
Which we endure but barely, and, enduring,
Must wonder at it, in that it disdains
To compass our destruction, every angel
Is terrible, and thus in self-control
I crush the appeal that rises with my sobs.

Duineser Elegien
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
London: Printed for the Hogarth Press, 1931
First edition in English

From the translator’s note: “Something remains to be said of the actual content of the poem (for it is really a single poem in ten sections). This is admittedly exceedingly complex and arcane, and will not yield to a first, or even to a second reading. For Rilke’s poetry is of the metaphysical order and consists for the most part of an elaborate alchemy of hypostatised ideas, in the expression of which the invention of grammatical quips and subtleties plays…is an important part. His imagination seems naturally to have dealt in visions of embodied abstractions, and…he pushed the vision as far as possible, creating detailed landscapes and humanities of abstract categories…”


But tell me, who are these itinerants,
These fugitives more hasty than ourselves,
Urgently driven from the start, — by whom?
To gratify what discontented will?

From the colophon: “Count Harry Kessler planned the format of this volume. Eric Gill designed and himself cut on wood the initials. The Italic type was designed by Edward Johnston and cut by E. Prince and G. T. Friend. The paper was made by a hand process devised in joint research by Count Harry Kessler and Gaspard and Aristide Maillol. The book was printed in the winter and spring of 1931. Count Harry Kessler and Max Goertz supervised the work of setting the type and printing. Compositors: Walter Tanz and Hans Schulze. Pressman: Willi Laste.

The book was printed for the Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square, London W. C. 1, and both the English and the German texts were reproduced by the courtesy of Insel-Verlag in Leipzig who are also the Agents for the book in Germany.

The whole edition consists of two hundred and thirty numbered copies for sale on handmade Maillol-Kessler paper with the watermark of the Cranach Press, and signed by the translators; and eight numbered copies on vellum for sale with hand-gilded initials, signed by the translators. This is copy Nr. 63.”

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Book of the Week — Platōnos epta eklektoi dialogoi

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

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booksellers, boycott, Dublin, English, English Copyright Act, gilt device, Greek, Ireland, Irish, Joseph Leathley, leather, London, Plato, raised bands, sprinkled calf, Trinity College, University of Utah


“Books are immortal sons defying their sires.” — Plato

Platōnos epta eklektoi dialogoi
Plato
Dublinii: E typographia academiae, MDCCXXXVIII [1738]
PA4279 A3 1738

This is the first book printed at Trinity College’s printing house, built in 1734, and the first complete Greek text printed in Ireland. Thirty copies were printed on large paper and specially bound as gifts for important people, while the remaining seven hundred and fifty copies were awarded as prizes for the best answers at examinations.

This copy was presented in 1752 and was likely bound at Joseph Leathley’s Binder. The style is similar and the leather identical to many of this shop’s bindings.

In 1735, London booksellers lodged an official complaint that the Dublin book trade was undercutting London book-prices. Given the choice of a London “original” or a Dublin reprint at the same price, Irish readers often chose the former, except in times of patriotic boycott of English goods. The driving force behind choice, however, was cost. Foreign and colonial customers also preferred London imprints, but only if Dublin imprints were equally priced.

English booksellers objected to Dublin booksellers for the obvious: they spoiled the market for English editions in Ireland, and illegally imported copies threatened sales in English provinces and, to some extent, in English colonies. In 1709, the English Copyright Act allowed the reprinting of works first issued in other countries. This opened the trade considerably for Dublin printers. Throughout the 18th century, London booksellers resented the ensuing competition and often accused Dublin of piracy.

While this edition was clearly not a threat to retail commerce, Trinity College’s printing house took jobs away from English printers.

University of Utah copy bound in contemporary sprinkled calf with gilt device of Trinity College on both covers; gilt spine with raised bands, decorated with star, spade, and wavy line tools. Edition of one thousand copies.

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Ioyfvll newes out of the new-found vvorlde [order]

03 Tuesday Jul 2018

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American, Americas, apothecaries, armadillos, Atlantic, Bonham Norton, Book Arts Program, bookseller, botanists, Bristol, British, calf, cancer, cassava, cigars, cocoa, common cold, cure, De Jonge Amerikaan, disease, docks, English, entrepreneur, Europe, ginger, gold, handmade, herbs, Indians, Inquisition, iron, John Frampton, Jonathan Sandberg, London, medicine, merchants, minerals, monks, Native American, nephrite jade, Netherlands, New World, Nicolás Bautista Monardes, nicotain, papermaking, papers, paradise, physician, plant, poison, print culture, quinine, rhubarb, sasparilla, sassafras, Seville, silver, smoking, soldiers, Spanish colonies, syphilis, tobacco, tobaco, trade, vernacular, woodblock, woodcuts


“This is the substance which I haue gathered of this hearb, so celebrated and called Tobaco for that surely it is an hearb of great affirmation for the excellent vertues that it hath…”

Ioyfvll newes out of the new-found vvorlde
Nicolás Bautista Monardes (ca. 1500-1588)
London: E. Allde, by the assigne of Bonham Norton, 1596
Third English edition

Translated by John Frampton (fl. 1577-1596) from several treatises first published in 1565 by Nicolás Monardes, the son of a bookseller, and a distinguished physician of Seville. Monardes, who never traveled to the Americas, wrote several treatises  on healing, medicine, and trade with the Spanish colonies on the Atlantic. He learned most of what he wrote about from spending time at the Seville docks, where he gathered information from sailors, soldiers, merchants, monks, royal officials, and even women.

Monardes described the cultivation and use of quinine, sassafras, cassava, rhubarb, ginger, and sasparilla. He wrote about cocoa, armadillos, minerals and metals (iron, silver, nephrite jade), and diseases like syphilis.

He wrote a lengthy description of an American plant introduced to Europe, calling it “tobaco” or “nicotain,” which he claimed was an antidote to poison. He wrote of more than twenty conditions, including the common cold and cancer, that could be cured with the use of tobacco.

“The Indians of our Occidental Indias, doo use the Tobaco for to take away the wearinesse, and for to make lightsomnesse in their Labour, which in their Daunces they bee so muche wearied, and they remaine so wearie, that they can scarcely stirre: & because that they may labour the next day, and returne to do that foolish exercise, they receiue at the mouth and nose, the smoke of the Tobaco, and they remaine as dead people: and being so, they be eased in such sorte, that when they be awakened of their sleepe, they remaine without weariness, and may return to their labour as much as before, and so they doe alwaies, when they have need of it: for with that sleepe, they do receiue their strength and be much the lustier.”

John Frampton, a Bristol merchant, had been imprisoned by the Inquisition. He translated several Spanish texts about the New World while in confinement. The British looked upon the New World as long-lost paradise with its vegetative bounty and ancient wisdom regarding human ailments, beneficial not just for its precious metals but for its plants. Being published in the vernacular, first in Spanish, then in English, meant that common readers, along with botanists and apothecaries, bought the publications. Frampton, ever the entrepreneur, re-titled the work “joyful news,” counting on brisk sales of the book and the trade in plants from the Americas. The “trade” print culture disseminated new data targeted toward popular practicality but also imagination, circulating news of an “other” ready reality just waiting ’round the bend. Such was the miracle of discovery, such was the miracle of plants, such was the miracle of print.

Illustrated with twelve woodcuts depicting herbs and plants. Rare Books copy bound in 19th century calf, ruled in gold.


De Jonge Amerikaan
Netherlands, ca. 1800
NE1154 J66 1800z

Woodblock depicting a Native American in a feather headdress and loincloth smoking a long clay pipe in a coastal setting with two ships behind him. Around this scene are a crown, trident, winged-staff, cigars, snuff jar, tobacco leaves and baled tobacco. It is likely that this woodblock was printed on paper used for tobacco wrappers, a practice that began as early as 1660 in Holland, one of the world’s great shipping centers.

Below are three prints made by Jonathan Sandberg using the woodblock, demonstrating different papers, including a paper handmade by students in last spring’s papermaking class offered by the Book Arts Program.



On July 1, 2018 The University of Utah went tobacco free and said farewell to its last cigarette.

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Stop and Smell the Flowers

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by scott beadles in Uncategorized

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Alaska, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Asia, Australia, Bill Edwardes, botany, climate, commerce, découpage, E. C. Alexander, endangered, English, Europe, flora, flower specimens, flowers, France, French, German, Germany, Hebrew, herbaria, Holy Land, International Pressed Flower Art Society, J. Willard Marriott Library, Japan, Jerusalem, Joyce Fenton, Lyuba Basin, May, Mexico, Middle East, nomenclature, olive wood, Oshibana, plant species, poppies, Pressed Flower Craft Guild, pressed flowers, repository, Russian, Ruth Miller Staats, Samurai, San Francisco, seeds, Silk Road, sunflowers, taxonomies, The Popular Bookstore, The University of Utah, tourism, United Kingdom, United States, Valdez, Valdez Museum Historical Archive, vegetation, Worldwide Pressed Flower Guide

“But I must gather knots of flowers and buds, and garlands gay;
For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.”
–  Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The May Queen”

When was the last time you stopped to smell the flowers? I did it just two days ago, when the purple and white lilac bushes in front of my house produced such an aroma after the rain that I had to stop in my tracks to take it in. Some days I’ll pick the poppies and sunflowers that grow wild in the backyard and set them in a vase on the kitchen table, and if I’m feeling particularly extra, I will even go out and buy an arrangement to add some oomph to the room.

Although my allergies have been getting worse and worse every year, my enthusiasm for flora has yet to subside. I’ve been enjoying the slower campus days at The University of Utah, when I can wander around outside the library and take in all of the new blooms. I am always impressed with the assortment of flowers lining the pathways, some of which I recognize as native to the state, while others look unfamiliar, yet still alluring.


 

Natural Flowers of the Holy Land
Jerusalem, 1900s
QK 378 N37 1900z


We might find flowers attractive for a number of reasons ranging from color, shape, texture or smell, but did you know the craft of pressing flowers is actually an ancient art that dates back to 16thcentury? It is said that Samurai warriors in Japan once practiced this art, called Oshibana, as part of their discipline to promote patience and harmony with nature, as well as to enhance their powers of concentration.

The art of drawing with petals gradually spread from Asia to the Middle East along growing trade networks of the Silk Road. One outcome of this global commerce and tourism were elaborate souvenir books, popular in the late 19th century, Jerusalem. Different renditions of Flowers of the Holy Land combined photographs of holy sites in and around Jerusalem with pressed flowers gathered from those sites. These flowers were artistically formatted, bound between olive wood covers, and included translations from Hebrew into French, German, English and Russian, as they were sold to visitors coming from different parts of the world.


 

 

Flowers of the Holy Land
Jerusalem, 1900s
QK89 F56


Around the same time, botanists in Europe began systematically collecting and preserving flower specimens from all over the world. No longer a simple art form, the pressed plant books allowed scientists to study the flora of other countries and understand the variety of plant taxonomies, geographic distributions, and to develop an efficient and stable nomenclature. Furthermore, the books are able to preserve a record of change in vegetation over time for future scientists who are tracking changes in climate and human impact. Some books can even be viable repositories, holding seeds of extinct or endangered plant species. These specimen books, or herbaria, are not just pretty to look at for they contain crucial knowledge on every page.


 

A Collection of Wild Flower of California
E.C. Alexander
San Francisco: The Popular Bookstore, 1895
QK 89 A375


Anyone can gather flowers and create their own pressed flower book. Like Ruth Miller Staats, a resident of Valdez, Alaska who sold cards, artwork and booklets of pressed flowers to tourists during the 1930s and 1940s. Although Ruth had been paralyzed from the waist down following an airplane crash (she had sustained a double compound fracture of both legs, fracture of the pelvis, and a fractured lumbar vertebrae), her friends and neighbors gathered flowers for her to compile the pieces. Many of her items can now be found in the Valdez Museum Historical Archive.

Wild Flowers of Alaska
Ruth M. Staats
Valdez, Alaska, 1930s
QK 89 S73


The craft of pressing flowers can also extend beyond books. Petals and leaves can be applied to trays and other wood furnishings using the technique of découpage. Those who have a deep interest in the art can join the Pressed Flower Craft Guild, founded by Joyce Fenton and Bill Edwardes in 1983. Other organizations include the International Pressed Flower Art Society and the Worldwide Pressed Flower Guild, with members coming from countries such as Japan, Mexico, France, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom and United States.

So come by and smell the flowers and allow yourself to appreciate the little things in life. Reflect on what is beautiful, fragile and simple, such as this small collection of books.

~Contributed by Lyuba Basin, Rare Books

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The Great American Read

22 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Events, Recommended Reading

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Adolfo Bioy Casares, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, American, Ayn Rand, banned, Barrington J. Bailey, Bob Johnson, book collecting, Boston, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Cold War, D. H. Lawrence, dust jackets, Ecclesiastes, English, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frankenstein: or, Greek, Heinemann, Henry Miller, Holden Caulfield, Houghton Mifflin Company, J. D. Salinger, J. R. R. Tolkien, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jack London, James Agee, Kurt Vonnegut, literature, London, Luise Putcamp, Luise Putcamp Johnson, Margaret Atwood, New York, novel, Pan, Philip K. Dick, protest, rare books, Ray Bradbury, reading, rebellion, Robert A. Heinlein, Robert Hersel Johnson, Scribner, Second World War, Special Collections, the 100 list, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Great American Read, The University of Utah, Thomas Wolfe, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, Ursula K. LeGuin, Wilkie Collins, William Kennedy, William Saroyan

Luise Putcamp and Bob Johnson, reading

“It’s up to you how you waste your time and money. I’m staying here to read: life’s too short.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

Rare Books salutes The Great American Read by inviting you to visit the Special Collections Reading Room on level 4 of the J. Willard Marriott Library to hold first editions of some of the classics included on the 100 list.



Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World

“My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books…”



Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus

“My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading.”



Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“‘…and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversation?'”



The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music—the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy.”



The Call of the Wild
Jack London (1876-1916)
London: Heinemann, 1903
First English edition
PS3523 O46 C3 1903b

“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called — called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”



The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
New York: Scribner, 1926
First edition, first issue
PS3515 E37 S9 1926a

“’No; that doesn’t interest me.’
‘That’s because you never read a book about it.’”

The Sun Also Rises was published on October 22, 1926 in a first printing of 5090 copies. A second printing of 2000 copies was issued in November of that same year. By mid-December both printings had sold out. By 1961 the novel had sold more than one million copies.

The first issue of the first printing is noted by these factors: “stopped”, p. 181, line 26 is misspelled “stoppped;” and a quote from Ecclesiastes regarding vanity is on page [viii].

The University of Utah copy has the first issue dust jacket with the error “In Our Times” instead of “In Our Time” on the front panel. This is one of the two most rare and desirable dust jackets in twentieth-century American literature book collecting, the other being the dust jacket from the first issue of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The dust jacket was printed in gold, black, and tan, with a gold apple on either side of the title and beneath it the figure of a drowsing woman clothed in the style of Greek antiquity. A Pan’s pipe lay near her sandaled foot and another gold apple rested in the palm of her left hand. At the bottom, Hemingway was identified as the author of In Our Times [sic][ and The Torrents of Spring.



Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger
Boston: Little, Brown, 1951
First edition
PS3537 A426 C3 1951

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”

A twentieth century American classic, Catcher in the Rye was extremely popular at the time of its publication, especially with young readers who strongly identified with the yearning for lost innocence by the novel’s narrator, Holden Caulfield. The novel added to a budding literary, musical, and artistic theme of youthful rebellion.

Catcher, however, raised a gentle voice of protest over growing militant rhetoric. Published after the triumphant yet devastating Second World War and during a pseudo-peace labeled “the Cold War,” youth in the fifties began protesting what they viewed as the failures of the adult world. Anger, contempt, and self-pity were prevalent in many works of the era, but Catcher captured a much more telling view of the era’s stresses with it’s decent but completely and genuinely perplexed teenager.

The book has been banned repeatedly from various school curricula from the time it was published to the present day.



Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986
First American edition
PR9199.3 A8 H3 1986

“On the floor of the room there were books, open face down, this way and that, extravagantly”



The Rare Books staff offers these suggestions for summer reading, based on the criteria The Great American Read used to gather its 100. The five of us each chose five books. From those the editor savagely (as editors do) and without apparent rhyme or reason (and she will never tell) whittled the list down to this, in alphabetical order by author. Copies may be found in the General Collection on level 2 of the J. Willard Marriott Library.

James Agee, A Death in the Family (1957)
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine (1957)
Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel (1940)
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (1859)
Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1997)
Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (1959)
M. M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions (1978)
William Kennedy, Ironweed (1983)
D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934)
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)
William Saroyan, The Human Comedy (1943)
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937)
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (1963)
Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again (1940)

What do you suggest?

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We recommend — Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo Venture

08 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Reading

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architect, Berlin, English, Ernst Wasmuth, Europe, European modernism, Frank Lloyd Wright, German, Jack Quinan, overlays, Pomegranate Communications, portfolio, prints, San Francisco, Special Collections, Taylor Wooley, United States, Wasmuth Portfolio


“Between 1906 and 1909 he designed more than one hundred buildings…But after he initiated an affair with one of his clients, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, he ended up abandoning his family and his practice in 1909. Cheney and Wright traveled to Europe, where the architect produced in 1910 a large portfolio of lithographs entitled Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright [Executed Buildings and Studies by Frank Lloyd Wright] for the German publisher Ernst Wasmuth. That elegant summation of his early architectural production significantly influenced the course of European Modernism…”

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo Venture: From the Larkin Building to Broadacre City, A Catalogue of Buildings and Projects
Jack Quinan
San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, Inc., 2012
NA737 W7 Q56 2012, General Collection, Level 2

Rare Books contributed several images to this book.

We invite you to Special Collections to look at:

Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe…
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)
Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1910
NA737 W7 A28

The Wasmuth Portfolio was a collaborative effort between Ernst Wasmuth, a Berlin publisher and Frank Lloyd Wright. It was Wasmuth’s idea to publish a complete folio of Wright’s work to date. The project was completed during Wright’s first trip to Europe in 1909 and published in 1910-11. The collection of Wright’s houses and commercial buildings received far more attention and praise in Europe than in the United States. Contemporary architects called it “the most important book of the century.” The portfolio consists of one hundred and thirty-one prints and overlays with accompanying text in English and German. A letter from Frank Lloyd Wright to Taylor Wooley, dated 1911, suggests that six hundred and fifty copies were produced for this edition.

View a digital copy of our portfolio here.

See an article using our portfolio here.

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