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Tag Archives: morocco

Book of the Week — Blitz: Letters from London September and October 1940

07 Friday Sep 2018

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aquatints, blitz, box brownie camera, British, cities, drawings, Earls Court, Evelyn Lister, German Luftwaffe, goatskin, Granby Light Italic, Grotesque, Grotesque Italic, hand-coloring, handmade paper, handwriting, letterpress, London, metallic onlays, morocco, Saunders Waterford, Susan Allix


“I will not try to describe the horrid sight of houses spilled across the streets instead of standing upright, of gunfire and screaming and whistling bombs, while we sit in the basement feeling it must be us next.”

Blitz: Letters from London September and October 1940
Evelyn Lister, Susan Allix
London, 2014

On September 7, 1940 the German Luftwaffe began bombing London and other British cities for over 50 consecutive nights.

From the artist’s statement: “As it will never be possible to have this same experience, designing the book seemed sometimes similar to creating an historical novel. Descriptions, film, artifacts and related reconstructions can help to provide brief windows and snapshots of the time…”

From the colophon: “The letters between Mildred, ‘Billie,’ and Evelyn, “Ana,’ are selected from a small collection that came to light when Billie died. They are accompanied here by later prints and photographs. Of the 5 photographs, 3 were taken in the early 1960s with a ‘box Brownie’ camera. The handwriting is reproduced from the original letters. The aquatints, printed in black and brown with hand colouring, are from drawings made at demolition sites and in the underground. The burning and smoking give different results on each copy. The letterpress is hand set and printed in 18pt. Grotesque 215 with 12pt. Grotesque Italic and 18pt. Granby Light Italic. The paper is Saunders Waterford.”

Bound in black goatskin and light brown textured handmade paper, with morocco, reversed leather, and metallic onlays. Issued in slate gray cloth clamshell slipcase. Edition of fifteen copies. Rare Books copy is no. 14, signed by the artist/bookmaker, Susan Allix.


“Earls Court tube is full of poor folk at night, with rugs and eats spread out on the platform; it’s an awful sight as you know how stuffy and dirty the deep undergrounds are, and all the people bring their little children with them.”


“You’ll have some idea of the state of the collapse and debris when I tell you that there are still 4 bodies that they can’t reach…”

Somewhere in the world, something similar is happening now.

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Book of the Week — Tablettes De La Vie et De La Mort

18 Monday Sep 2017

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attorney, bibliophile, ceremonies, Christine A. Jones, Eugène Paillet, fidelity, fleurs de lys, French, Greek, Hebrew, Jean Thomas, Jesuits, judge, King Henri IV of France, Latin, law, Louis XIII, Lyon, Montauban, morocco, ornaments, Paris, Penard Fernández, Pierre Mathieu, quatrains, reception, religion, royal, Royal Historiographer, Société des Amis du Livre, The University of Utah, Toulouse, tragedies, translation, Valence, war, World Languages and Cultures

PQ1820-M28-T11-1629-Cover
“It seems that from a King, the Majesty fades
Without many servants trailing his royalty
It may be grand to engage them in spades
But it is a great pain to depend on their loyalty.”

Tablettes de la vie et de la mort
Pierre Mathieu (1593-1621)
A Paris: Iean Petit-Paz, rue S. Iacques, à l’eseu de Venise, près les Mathurins, MDCXXIX (1629) avec privilege dv Roy
First and only complete edition with Latin translation
PQ1820 M28 T11 1629

Pierre Mathieu studied under the Jesuits and mastered Latin, ancient Greek and Hebrew. When he was nineteen his first tragedy, “Esther” was performed and published in Lyon in 1585. Before his death, Mathieu published four more allegorical tragedies, exploring contemporary issues of war in defense of religion. He studied law at Valence, receiving his doctorat in 1586. He was chosen and sent by the residents of Lyon to King Henri IV of France in 1594 to represent to him their fidelity. A year earlier, he had been put in charge of organizing the ceremonies of the king’s royal reception during his visit to Lyon. In Paris Mathieu became Royal Historiographer and was privileged guest of the royal court and the king. He fell ill accompanying Louis XIII at the siege of Montauban and died in Toulouse.

This collection of cultivated admonitions was written by Matheiu for Henri IV and then Louis XIII, Henri IV’s son. It is made up of individual parts that were published over a period of sixteen years (the last posthumously) — and were printed alone, in pairs, or all together, often in this irresistible little palm-sized format. Matheiu intended his readership to memorize the three suites, or volumes, each of one hundred quatrains. Attorney Jean Thomas (act. 1645) translated the French into Latin, printed in just this edition.

The present copy belonged to Louis XIII or was for presentation by him. It bears the book plate of Eugène Paillet (1829-1901) and the stamp of one Penard Fernández.

Paillet was a Parisian lawyer and judge and one of the great French bibliophiles of the nineteenth century. He was particularly interested in acquiring a number of different editions of the same work in order to illustrate the history of the publication. He was a founding member of the Société des Amis du Livre in 1874.

The translation of the quatrain above is by Christine A. Jones, Professor, World Languages and Cultures, The University of Utah. She explained that this was a “quick, unpolished” translation “to give the reader a sense of the irony and juicy moral ambiguity of the poems.”

French text facing the Latin translation, ornaments throughout. Each page bears various hand ruled borders in light faded red ink. Bound in contemporary gilt red morocco, chain-and-bloom roll around a central panel diapered with a dotted roll, interstices with fleurs de lys, which also fill the single vertical spine compartment. Marbled pastedowns, all edges gilt.

PQ1820-M28-T11-1629-Pastedown

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Book of the Week — Prologue to the Tales of Caunterbury

21 Monday Aug 2017

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Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, Bishop Fell, C. St. John Hornby, Chelsea, Cicely Barclay, Clarendon Press, Diamond Jubilee, Doves Bindery, errata, Fell, Geoffrey Chaucer, gilt dentelles, gilt tooling, Margie Le Lacheur, matrices, Maunciple, morocco, Oxford, Queen Victoria, Squire, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, The Ashendene Press, The Tales of Canterbury, typefaces, University of Oxford, W. Skeat, William Caxton, woodcuts, zinc cuts

PR1868-P8-S5-1898-Horseman
“For hym was levere have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
But al that he myghte of his freendes hente,
On bookes and on lernynge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf hym wherwith to scoleye.
Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede.”
— Geoffrey Chaucer

Welcome, scholars!

Prologue to the Tales of Caunterbury
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)
Chelsea: The Ashendene Press, 1898
PR1868 P8 S5 1898

This is the ninth publication of the Ashendene Press and the first illustrated work from the Press. It was printed by C. St. John Hornby and his sisters with the assistance of Cicely Barclay for private circulation only, amongst their friends and neighbors. The text is that of the Clarendon Press edition of The Complete Works of Chaucer edited by Dr. W. Skeat, Oxford, 1895. An Errata page, bound in at the front, announces “the lamentable mistake of the Printers the portrait of the Maunciple has been set in the place of the Squire and vice versa,” along with a second “the” on page 13, line 15. The colophon states that the printing began in July and was finished “in December of the year of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria 1897.”

Illustrated with twelve zinc cut reproductions of the woodcuts used in William Caxton’s 1483 edition of The Tales of Canterbury. Typefaces are Fell, cast, as a note “To The Gentle Reader” says, “from the matrices given in about the year 1670 by Bishop Fell to the University of Oxford.”

Rare Books copy bound by Miss Margie Le Lacheur, a student of T. J. Cobden Sanderson, in full green morocco with gilt tooling consisting of a blossom, leaf, and vine pattern on the front cover and spine, gilt dentelles, and boards ruled in gilt. Gilt letters “L” and “M” at the top and “L” and “E” at the bottom of the front board and rear boards. The inside of the back board, in gilt, indicates “M.L – 1900.” Apparently, the book was bound by Lacheur for a family member. All edges gilt. Lacheur was employed by the Doves Bindery. She exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1899. Only three other bindings by Lacheur are known.

Edition of fifty copies, signed and dated by the printer. Rare Books copy is no. 25.

PR1868-P8-S5-1898-Cover

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Book of the Week — Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ kamā kataba Mār Mattay waḥid min ithnay ‘ashar min talāmīdhihi

19 Monday Jun 2017

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Accademia del Disgno, Aleppo, Alessio dra Saggeto, Antonio Tempesta, Antonius Sionita, arabesque, Arabic, Armenian, Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ, bi-lingual, Book of Hours, borders, Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, Christian, College of Sapienza, colophon, Eastern Orthodox Church, Europe, European, Flemish, Florence, font, French, frescoes, gilt, Giorgio Vasari, Giovanni Battista Raimondi, Gospels, Hebrew, Hungarian, Ibrahim Muteferrika, illustrations, Islam, Islamic, Istanbul, Joannes Stradanus, Latin, Leonardo Parasole, mathematics, Matthew, Medici, military, Mohamedan, morocco, movable type, Muslim, Near East, Orientalist, Ottomon Empire, Palazzo Vecchio, peace, Persian, political, Pope Gregory XIII, printing, religious, Robert Granjon, Romae, Roman Catholic Church, Roman type, Rome, Santi di Tito, science, scripture, sprinkled calf, stamps, Sultan Ahmed III, sword, Syrian, translation, typographer, Typographia Medicea, Vatican, Villa Farnese, Waqf, woodcuts

BS315-A66-1591-title
“Ne arbitremini quod ego uenetim ut mitterem super terram pacem; non ueni ut mitterem pacem, sed gladium (“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.)” — Matthew 10:34

Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ kamā kataba Mār Mattay waḥid min ithnay ‘ashar min talāmīdhihi
Romae: in Typographia Medicea, MDXCI
Edicio princeps
BS315 A66 1591

Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ, the first printed edition of the Gospels in Arabic, is the first production by the Typographia Medicea press, a printing house established by Pope Gregory XIII and Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici in order to promote and distribute Christian scripture to the Near East. Two issues of this work were printed, apparently simultaneously. One had Arabic-only text and was printed in an edition of 4,000 copies. The other, here, was printed in Arabic with interlinear Latin, in an edition of 3,000 copies. The Arabic-only edition has the date 1590 on the title-page, but 1591 in the colophon. Allegedly, a few of the bi-lingual copies were published with a preliminary leaf stating, “Sanctum Dei evangelium arab.-lat.” No known copies of this half-title are known to exist and this leaf may never have existed.

With a Latin translation ascribed to one Antonius Sionita, the book was edited by Giovanni Battista Raimondi (1540-ca. 1614), an esteemed Orientalist and professor of mathematics at the College of Sapienza in Rome. Raimondi travelled extensively in the Near East and was knowledgeable, if not fluent, in Arabic, Armenian, Syrian and Hebrew. His fame rests with the editorship of the Typographica Medicea. He and French typographer Robert Granjon, who created the Arabic font used in this work, were both recognized then and now for the earliest and best attempts to print Arabic in Europe.

Illustrated with 149 woodcuts, printed from 68 blocks, engraved by Leonardo Parasole (ca. 1587-ca. 1630). The artist, Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630), studied under Santi di Tito and Flemish artist Joannes Stradanus at the Accademia del Disgno. Tempesta later worked with Stradanus and Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) on the interior decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Tempesta then travelled to Rome, where he fulfilled several commissions, including frescoes for Pope Gregory XIII in the Vatican and panel paintings for the Villa Farnese. Many of the woodcuts are signed with the initials “AT” (Antonio Tempesta) and “LP” (Leonardo Parasole). The illustrations in Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ are excellent examples of Tempesta’s work, noteworthy for their clear composition and narrative of the episodes depicted.

Be that as it may, the illustrations may have played a part in the failure of this book to reach, let alone convince, its intended Islamic audience. Islam forbade religious illustration and these may have made the Gospels appear less than sacred, if not sacrilegious, to Arab Muslim readers.

To be fair, the Christian church had a long tradition of presenting their message with religious illustrations. As far back as the sixth century, Pope Gregory defended the value of such imagery, arguing that pictures were useful for teaching the faith to the unconverted and for conveying sacred stories to the illiterate. According to Bede, St. Augustine introduced Christianity to the heathen King Ethelbert of Kent, upon landing on the British Isles, by presenting a picture of Christ painted on a wooden panel. He then began to preach.

The Pope seems also to have denied the fact that more Christians lived in the Ottoman Empire than in any other European state. The first printed book in Arabic was a Book of Hours, probably intended for export to Syrian Christians. But these Christians were adherents to the Eastern Orthodox Church, not the Pope’s Roman Catholic Church. Christianity was hardly unknown in the predominantly Muslim Ottoman and Persian Empires. The Ottomans were, however, Christian Europe’s major military and political concern.

In addition to printing the Gospels in Arabic, Ferdinando de’ Medici charged Raimondi with printing “all available Arabic books on permissable human science which had no religious content in order to introduce the art of printing to the Mohamedan community.” Despite the superb quality — textually, typographically, and artistically — of its work, the Medici press was an economic failure and went bankrupt in 1610. The fact is that Raimondi displayed little understanding of Islamic culture. Although Raimondi’s selection of publications was not aimed at European scholars, his choices stimulated a study of the Near East in Europe.

It would be more than a century after the Medici Press closed that Ibrahim Muteferrika, a Hungarian convert to Islam, was given permission by Sultan Ahmed III (1673-1736) to open his printing house in Istanbul, in 1729. This was not the first printing press established in the Near East, but it was the first Eastern press to print in Arabic using movable type.

Arabic and small roman type text within double-ruled borders. Colophon and printer’s note to reader in Latin. Colophon decorated with large woodcut arabesque.

Rare Books copy bound in full, eighteenth century, sprinkled calf, with a gilt spine containing two burgundy morocco labels, and decorative gilt borders on the covers. The first leaf is shaved and reinserted on contemporary paper. This leaf contains four Waqf stamps, indicating the authentication of the Arabic translation. As in most copies, our copy lacks a title page. A former owner’s penciled inscription, “Alessio Dra Saggeto/en Aleppo 1871,” is on the free front end paper. Another signature, in ink, is at the top of the back free end paper.

For more on the woodcuts, see Field, Richard S. Antonio Tempesta’s Blocks and Woodcuts for the Medicean 1591 Arabic Gospels, NE662 T45 F54 2001, in the rare book collections.

BS315-A66-1591-colophon

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Book of the Week — Mrs. Delany Meets Herr Haeckel

06 Monday Mar 2017

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Arches, Arches MBM Ingres, artist, Barbara Hodgson, biologist, botanical, Canada, Claudia Cohen, cut-paper, decorations, English, Ernst Haeckel, Europe, German, Gifu, gilt, Hahnemuhle Ingres, hand-colored, handmade, HM Editions, Ingres, initials, Japan, Kiraku kozo, Kitikata, Kozuke, marbling, Mary Delany, microscopic organism, morocco, mulberry, paper, papermaker, Reg Lissel, single-cell, Suminigashi, Turkish, Vancouver, wove, Yatsuo

MreD&HerrHTitle

“Mrs. Delany’s was an age when genteel women, whether amateur or professional, were occupied with crafts, decorative works, design and fine arts. Embroidery, quilling, shellwork, japanning, silhouette making, drawing, painting in oils and watercolours, knitting, sewing, flower making, modelling in wax and clay, miniature painting, and horticulture were among the arts practiced.”

MRS. DELANY MEETS HERR HAECKEL
Barbara Hodgson
Vancouver: HM Editions, 2015
N7433.4 H63 M77 2015

From the publisher’s website: [Mrs. Delany] is an “imagined collaboration between Mrs. Mary Delany (1700-1788), an English widow, woman of accomplishment, and creator of imaginative botanical ‘paper mosaics’ and Herr Ernst Haeckel (1852-1911), a distinguished and controversial German biologist and artist who devoted much of his time to the study and rendering of single-celled creatures.”

MreD&HerrHPlateVIII

Cut paper image of a microscopic organism affixed to frontispiece with another cut-paper image affixed to the recto of the same sheet; eleven cut-paper interpretations of microscopic organisms tipped on to captioned plates; tipped-in cut-paper initials, numerous smaller cut-paper decorations. The paper cuttings are adapted from Ernst Haeckel’s Die Radiolarien (1862) and Kunstformen der Natur (1899-1904). They are cut from a variety of papers, including Yatsuo, Kozuke, mulberry, Gifu, Kitikata, and Kiraku kozo from Japan; Ingres and unidentified wove from Europe; and Reg Lissel handmade papers from Canada. Some were cut from papers previously marbled in the Turkish or Suminigashi styles. Some were dyed by the papermaker; some were dyed or otherwise hand-colored for this book. The cuttings are mounted on one of Arches text wove (white), Arches MBM Ingres (black) or Hahnemuhle Ingres (black).

Bound in full polished morocco, ruled and stamped decoratively in red and gilt with a gilt-lettered spine by Claudia Cohen. Marbled endpapers. Issued in orange clamshell case with a gilt-lettered spine label.

MrsD&HerrHCover2

MrsD&HerrHMarble

Edition of twenty-five copies plus six hors de commerce, each signed by the author, printer, and binder. Rare Books copy is XXII.

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Book of the week — The Poems of Shakespeare

19 Monday Sep 2016

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Ann Simons, Ashlar Press, Bruce Rogers, Connecticut, Cromwell, Daniel Updike, decorative initials, Frank Altschul (1887-1981), George Lyman Kittredge, Harvard, Jean Hugo, John Macnamara, letterpress, Lucretia type, marbled boards, Margaret B. Evans, morocco, Overbrook Farm, Overbrook Press, poems, printing, Shakespeare, sonnet, Stamford, Thomas Maitland Cleland, Valenti Angelo

Titlepage

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
— William Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII

The Poems of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Stamford, CT: Overbrook Press, 1939
PR2841 A2 K5 1939

Edited by George Lyman Kittredge, Gurney Professor of English Literature, Harvard University.

Overbrook Press was founded by investment banker, civic leader, and bibliophile Frank Altschul (1887-1981), who had pursued printing as a hobby since childhood. In 1934 he was approached by designer Margaret B. Evans, who had been working for Ashlar Press, which was closing. Altschul set up the Ashlar press in an abandoned outbuilding on his 450-acre estate, Overbrook Farms, in Stamford, Connecticut. He hired Evans as designer and compositor and John MacNamara as pressman. Overbrook Press printed an eclectic mix of books, pamphlets, broadsides and ephemera, emphasizing technical expertise and craftsmanship. The press engaged contemporary book designers and artists such as Daniel Updike, Jean Hugo, Bruce Rogers, Ann Simons, Valenti Angelo, and Thomas Maitland Cleland. Overbrook Press closed in 1969.

The Poems of Shakespeare is one of its most ambitious projects. It’s decorative initials were designed by Bruce Rogers. Text handset and letterpress printed in red and black with Lucretia type on handmade Cromwell grey paper. The press offered copies for sale, but most of them were given as gifts by Alschul. Copies for sale to the public were bound in three quarter morocco and slipcased, but more than a third of the edition was never bound, presumably to accommodate individual binding tastes.

University of Utah copy is bound in quarter brown morocco over marbled boards with gilt-lettered spine, issued uncut, in publisher’s slipcase. Edition of one hundred and fifty copies.

Sonnets-spread

Shakespeare is coming! The First Folio arrives at the City Library in October.

 

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Book of the week — Decalogus

15 Monday Aug 2016

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blindstamped, bookbinder, Bridwell Library, Case Western Reserve University, cross, Czech, Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, Decalogus, Dutch, English, French, German, handmade paper, inlays, Italian, Jan Sobota, Jarmila Sobota, Latin, Loket, morocco, Old Testament, Pilzen, Portuguese, Prague, Slovak, Spanish, Switzerland, ten commandments, United States, University of Utah

N7433.4-S657-T46-1999

DECALOGUS
Loket, Czech Republic: Jan and Jarmila Sobota, 1999

The ten commandments of the Old Testament in Latin, Czech, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Slovak designed as a cross.

Master bookbinder Jan Bohuslav Sobota (1939-2012) was born in Czechoslovakia. He studied binding in Pilzen and Prague until 1957. In 1982 he defected to Switzerland. He took his family to the United States in 1984, where he worked as a conservator at Case Western Reserve University before going to Bridwell Library, where he was Director of the Conservation Laboratory from 1990 to 1997. He and his family returned to the Czech Republic in 1997

Handmade paper printed in gold. Bound in pale turquoise morocco with binder’s blindstamped monogram on rear cover, upper cover with colored morocco inlays, comprising a central square cross. Issued in gold pouch. Edition of one hundred copies, numbered and signed by the artists. University of Utah copy is no. 6.

N7433.4-S657-T46-1999-(Lord Thy God)N7433.4-S657-T46-1999-(Czech)

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Book of the Week — The Democratic Book

25 Monday Jul 2016

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administration, attorney, banking, Bay Area, book, cabinet, California Zephyr, Chicago, Constitution, convention, Democrat, democratic, Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, election, endpapers, first lady, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, funeral, Geneva Steel, gilt, Herbert Hoover, judge, morocco, platform, President, railroad, Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Republican, Rio Grande, San Francisco, silk, The Democratic National Convention, Third District Court, train, Utah, vista-dome cars, Wilson McCarthy

JK2313-1936-D38-frontisJK2313-1936-D38-signature

“Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1936

THE DEMOCRATIC BOOK, 1936
Philadelphia?, 1936?
JK2313 1936 D38 oversize

This book was given to delegates at the 1936 Democratic convention, held that year in Philadelphia. It contains information such as the party’s platform, election results, and statements from the President, his cabinet members, other important members of his administration, and the first lady.

This copy belonged to Wilson McCarthy (1884-1956), a judge who sat on Utah’s Third District Court in 1919. He left the bench a year later and earned a fortune as a private practice attorney. In 1926 he was elected to the Utah state senate. A lifelong Democrat, he was appointed by Republican President Herbert Hoover to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932. A year later, he began a career in banking in San Francisco. In 1934, the RFC asked him to take control of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, which had just defaulted on a $10 million loan. It took McCarthy and others nearly two decades to rehabilitate the company. In 1937 alone, $18 million was pumped into the property.

Under McCarthy’s administration the Rio Grande built more than 1100 bridges and laid more than two million railroad ties. By the end of World War II, the railroad’s revenues had increased from $17 million to $75 million per year. During this time, McCarthy anchored the Rio Grande between Salt Lake City (his birthplace) and Denver. Freight time between these two points dropped from 54 hours to just under 24 hours. McCarthy, in conjunction with the Western Pacific Railroad began the “California Zephyr,” a luxury service between Chicago and the Bay Area. He also added the train’s signature vista-dome cars.

In addition to his turn-around of the fortunes of the railroad, McCarthy helped bring Geneva Steel to Utah. On the day of his funeral, every Rio Grande train stopped, their crews observing two minutes of silence.

This book was also published, with some variations, under the title The Democratic National Convention, 1936. The book contains dozens of contemporary advertisements, many in color. Illustrated with nineteen full-page portraits and dozens of in-text half-tones and illustrations, and a facsimile of the Constitution. Bound in full brown morocco gilt, watered silk endpapers, top edge gilt. Limited edition of unknown quantity. University of Utah copy is no. 1464, stamped in gilt “Wilson McCarthy” and signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Gift of Wilson McCarthy.

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Book of the Week – A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade…

18 Monday Jan 2016

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abolition, Abolition Bill, armorial, bookplate, British Empire, British Parliament, De La Cherois Crommelin, endpaper, gilt, House of Lords, letter, morocco, pamphlet, planters, printing press, religious, slave trade, slavery, slaves, The University of Utah, Thomas Clarkson, tree calf, West Indian, William Wilberforce

Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade

A LETTER ON THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE…
William Wilberforce (1759-1833)
London: Printed by Luke Hansard & Sons for T. Cadell and W. Davis, 1807
First edition

“Old concessions are retracted; exploded errors are revived; and we find we have the greater part of our work to do over again.”

William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) began their mutual battle against the British Parliament toward the abolition of slavery in 1787. In 1791, they were defeated by the interests of West Indian planters. In 1806, Wilberforce and Clarkson began the fight again. In A Letter, Wilberforce described the evidence and arguments against the slave trade that he had accumulated over the course of two decades. It was published on January 31, 1807. On 25 March 1807 royal assent was given to a bill abolishing slave trade with the introduction of the Abolition Bill in the House of Lords. It was the first major victory for the abolition movement. The bill was carried by 267 votes. According to an account by Clarkson, the house rose to its feet and cheered. The victory represented a battle carried on through word of mouth and the printing press. But the war to abolish slavery was far from over. Wilberforce continued to work to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire. The fight did not conclude until July 26, 1833, when Parliament voted to abolish slavery. Wilberforce died three days later. University of Utah copy has armorial bookplate of “Sam. De La Cherois Crommelin” and family signature on endpaper. Bound in contemporary tree calf, gilt flat spine with black morocco label.

alluNeedSingleLine

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Book of the week – De rerum natura

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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afterlife, Alexander Pope, biblical, blind-tooled, blindstamped, body, British, Cambridge, Church of England, classics, Constance, De rerum natura, decoration, engraved, Epicurus, fire, folio, French Revolution, frontispiece, Fulda, Germany, Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Gilbert Wakefield, gilt, gods, government, Greek, Hamilton, Homer, Horace, Jesus College, Londini, Lucretius, mathematics, ministry, morocco, mortal, nature, New Testament, pamphlets, poem, poet, portrait, punishment, rules, scholar, soul, Titus Lucretius Carus, tragedies, Tuscan, Unitarian, vicar, Virgil, Wa, Wakefield, world

PA6482-A2-1796-v.1-portraitPA6482-A2-1796-v.1-titlePA6482-A2-1796-v.1-pg1

DE RERUM NATURA LIBROS SEX, AD EXEMPLARIUM…
Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BCE – ca. 55 BCE)
Londini: Impensis editoris, typis A. Hamilton, 1796-7
PA6482 A2 1796 oversize

De Rerum Natura is the only surviving work of Lucretius. Only one manuscript copy of it is known to exist. This manuscript was found in 1417 in a monastery at Fulda in Germany by Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, a Tuscan secretary to a church general council at Constance.

It is a didactic poem of 7,400 lines in six books, in which the poet expounds on the world view of the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus. The object was to abolish belief that the gods intervened in the world and that the soul could experience punishment in an afterlife. Lucretius demonstrated that the world is, instead, governed by mechanical laws of nature. He described the soul as mortal and posited that it perishes with the body.

This is the first edition of the “Wakefield” edition, the edition by Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801). Wakefield was a biblical scholar. The son of a vicar, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, through a scholarship. He studied mathematics and the classics. Although he took orders, he left the ministry and the Church of England and became a Unitarian. He earned his living as a tutor while writing controversial pamphlets attacking the government. He was imprisoned for two years for the publication of a pamphlet titled, “A Reply to some Parts of the Bishop of Landoff’s Address,” in which he defended the French Revolution. To support himself, he published a translation of the New Testament (1792), companion editions to Horace (1794) and Virgil (1796), an edition with commentary of Greek tragedies (1794), an annotated edition of Alexander Pope’s Homer (1796), and this, his Lucretius. He published his De Rerum Natura at his own expense.

The book established Wakefield as a leading British scholar. The large paper, folio edition was mostly destroyed by a fire in the printing-office in which they were stored.

Engraved portrait of Gilbert Wakefield on frontispiece. Bound in contemporary straight-grained black morocco, panelled covers with broad blind-tooled borders and gilt edges, spine with broad gilt rules and blindstamped decoration. Edition of fifty copies.

 

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