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~ News from the Rare Books Department of Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah

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Tag Archives: Scott Beadles

Boards: A-Book-Part-You-Never-Think-About-But-Is-Super-Important-Anyway

30 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by scott beadles in Uncategorized

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Antoine Augereau, barf board, Benjamin Eliot, boards, book, bookbinders, bookmaking, Boston, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Colonial America, conservators, Coptic, delaminate, Deseret News, exhibition, felts, fibers, fore-edge, Jim Croft, Jonathan Sandberg, medullary ray, Old Ways of Making Books, paper, paper mill, papermaking, Paris, pasteboard, rare book collections, Samuel Willard, scabbard, scaleboard, Scott Beadles, screen, Simon de Colines, vat, vellum, water, waterleaf, wood, wooden boards, workshop

Judge a book by it’s cover all you want. That cover just keeps on doing what it does best: protecting the book’s text. Covers allows a book to continue to convey information by taking the wear and tear of everyday use. Through the years different materials have been used to cover books.



Coptic Binding
Uncatalogued

Wood. Early books were most commonly covered with wooden boards. Rare Books has several manuscripts with Coptic bindings. These books are well-used, with uncovered wooden boards that are polished by handling, but they are often broken and then repaired with linen thread. The wood is sometimes cut similarly to modern lumber, in a straight line across the log. In the picture below you can see the curve of the tree’s growth rings. Wood is porous and expands and contracts as it takes on or loses moisture from the air. It will expand unevenly around that natural curve, warping and sometimes even cracking the board. The strongest wood boards are cut in a very different way.

Imagine you are looking down on the round end of a log. If you cut this log radially from the center as if it was a pie, two useful things happen. First, boards cut like this (called a quarter cut) resist warping because the grain of the wood is running straight up your board, instead of curving through it. Looking at the boards from the top you see little to none of the curve of the tree’s rings. This board will warp very little as humidity changes. Second, there is a structural feature in wood called the medullary ray. These rays go through the wood from the core out to the bark. They are perpendicular to the main grain of the wood, forming a remarkably durable natural plywood. Many Coptic boards break because they are made with wood that does not have prominent medullary rays.

In the above image, notice the faint curve of the grain near the middle of the left board.

In the image below, we can see the medullary rays and the tree’s grain weaving together. The lighter lines are medullary rays, the darker lines are the tree’s grain creating a strong internal structure.


Handmade book
by Jonathan Sandberg from raw materials
at Jim Croft’s “Old Ways of Making Books” workshop



He kaine diatheke
Paris: [Antoine Augereau for] Simon de Colines, [29 November or 22 December] 1534
BS1965 1534

Pasteboard. All this picky woodwork added complications to the bookmaking process. When bookmakers discovered that they could just paste together paper proofs, misprints, or offcuts to make functional boards, it became common practice to do just that. This has made for interesting discoveries as modern conservators re-bind historical books and find that their boards are made of interesting or rare texts.



Deseret News
By Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Volume 6. March 1856-March 1866
Uncatalogued

Waterleaf. Around the mid-sixteenth century, very soon after pasteboard began to be used, another technique for making boards was developed. If you are familiar with historical papermaking, or you’ve seen our recent paper exhibition, Paper is Fundamental, you know that paper was made by drawing suspended fibers out of a vat of water on a screen, which was then rolled onto a stack of felts. Paper makers found that if they took these raw, wet pieces of paper and compressed them together, it formed a variant of pasteboard that was less likely to separate between pages, or delaminate. Pictured here is a bound volume of the Deseret News from 1856. The very worn board is beginning to delaminate which gives us a great view of individual “pages.” Because the board is never printed on directly and almost always covered, papermakers could include fiber that would normally be unacceptable for papermaking. Here you see small pieces of cloth and thread. Historical bookmaker Jim Croft calls this kind of board “barf board” because of the jumble of reject fibers that go into its production.



The Peril of the Times Displayed
Samuel Willard
Boston : Printed by B Green & J Allen sold by Benjamin Eliot 1700
BX7233 W4292 P47 1700

Scaleboard. The first paper mill in Colonial America wasn’t established until 1690. Rather than using expensive, imported book boards, bookbinders often used thin scales of wood in their place. These scaleboards, originally called scabbards, were much too brittle for the task of protecting a book, but when covered in paper or leather they made perfectly usable covers. This book was printed in Boston in the year 1700. The leather is now peeling away, allowing us to look at the wood scale beneath. The end grain of the board is visible at the fore-edge and spine of the book, instead of the traditional head and tail. It may be quarter-cut, the end grain shows only a slight curve. The board is a little warped, but the book has been through a lot, and scaleboard wasn’t expected to do the same heavy structural work as early wooden book boards were.

~Contributed by Jonathan Sandberg, Rare Books Assistant, with photographs by Scott Beadles, Rare Books Specialist

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Curtis Census

10 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Publication

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American Indians, copper plates, Curtis Census, drawing, Edward Curtis, etchings, ethnography, field notes, French Impressionists, glass negative, glass positive, gravures, gum prints, handpress, J. Willard Marriott Library, Japanese handmade silk tissues, Mississippi, negatives, nineteenth century, painting, papers, photographer, photogravures, Pictorialism, platinotypes, printing process, rare books, rice paper, Scott Beadles, Seattle, sepia inks, Tim Greyhavens, Tissue, Van Gelder, vellum, watermark

Rare Books is pleased to announce the launch of the Curtis Census, a website produced by Tim Greyhavens for the global community. The J. Willard Marriott Library is one of the institutions that holds an entire set of Edward Curtis’ The North American Indian.

From Tim’s website: “Published by Edward Curtis from 1907 to 1930, The North American Indian was planned to be a limited edition of 500 sets. Due to the extremely high cost of the publication and the prolonged publication cycle, it’s thought that no more than 300 complete or partial sets were finally printed. This census will determine, as accurately as possible, the actual number of complete or partial sets that were printed and their present locations…Although The North American Indian is one of the great publications of all time, there is no definitive answer about how many sets were originally published. Curtis did not keep a master subscription list, and different documentation about the project provides conflicting information.”

Congratulations, Tim, on a great project.

Click here for the website’s biography of Edward Curtis. Curtis was born in 1868. 2018 is the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Click here for the website’s excellent article on Curtis’s The North American Indian.

Visit Rare Books to look at this remarkable set of photogravures.

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN
Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952)
Seattle, WA: E. S. Curtis, 1907-30
E77 C97

A collection of 2,232 photogravures of American Indians taken between 1890 and 1930 and published between 1907 and 1930. A massive project, professional photographer Edward Curtis’ intention was to document every major tribe west of the Mississippi, portraying what he perceived to be a vanishing culture. While he was neither the first nor the last person to photograph the American Indian, he was surely the most prolific. His monumental publication presented to the public an extensive ethnographic study of numerous peoples.

The North American Indian consists of twenty portfolios of photogravures and twenty volumes of field notes bound with smaller gravures. A photogravure is made from a printing process utilizing a copper plate that is made from a glass positive which itself is made from a glass negative. The plate is hand wiped with sepia inks. Excess ink is removed and the plate is forced onto paper with a handpress, capturing all the etched details on the plate. The photogravure produces a soft, atmospheric appearance similar to that achieved by French Impressionist painters. This photographic process, along with drawing and painting on negatives, platinotypes and gum prints, was popular at the end of the nineteenth century. The movement, known as “Pictorialism” was a way for photographers to add personal vision and expression to their works.

The portfolio gravures were printed on three different papers, Van Gelder, a watermarked paper, Vellum, a rice paper, and Tissue, Japanese handmade silk tissues. Forty of the original sets were printed on Tissue, the rest equally split between Van Gelder and Vellum.

Images selected and scanned by Scott Beadles.

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The Melody Lingers On

21 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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1968, book, J. Willard Marriott Library, library, Scott Beadles, Wallace Stegner

Happy 50th Anniversary, J. Willard Marriott Library!

“To erect a great library in the year 1968 is an act of stubborn and sassy faith.” — Wallace Stegner, from his dedication address for the opening of the J. Willard Marriott Library

The melody lingers on.

Long live the book! Long live libraries!

(Thanks to Scott Beadles for great photographs)

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Sassy Faith

05 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Physical Exhibitions

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5oth Anniversary, books, faith, Friends of the Library, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jon Bingham, Jonathan Sandberg, libraries, Luise Poulton, Lyuba Basin, rare books, Scott Beadles, Wallace Stegner

“To erect a great library in the year 1968 is an act of stubborn and sassy faith.” — Wallace Stegner, from his dedication address for the opening of the J. Willard Marriott Library

Rare Books joins in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the J. Willard Marriott Library, recognizing the work of the Friends of the Library, past, present, and future, in its charge to keep our collections safe and growing at a time when digital matter consumes students and administrators alike.

Long live the Book! Long live libraries!

J. Willard Marriott Library
Level 1 lobby
Friday, January 5 through Sunday, March 18

Curated by Lyuba Basin and Luise Poulton with help from Scott Beadles, Jonathan Sandburg, and Jon Bingham.

For more information, contact Luise Poulton 

 

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Pioneers of Science — Now Online

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Events

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Antoine Lavoisier, Carl Gauss, Charles Darwin, College of Mines and Earth Sciences, College of Science, Euclid, Frontiers of Science, Galileo, Isaac Newton, J. Willard Marriott Library, Johannes Kepler, Louis Pasteur, Luise Poulton, Marie Curie, Michael Faraday, Pioneers of Science, rare books, Scott Beadles, Special Collections, The University of Utah

photograph by Scott Beadles

“A library is as much a scientific instrument as a telescope.” — Luise Poulton

Pioneers of Science: Ten Thousand Pages That Shook the World now online.

Euclid’s Elements of Geometry was first printed in 1482, just as soon as one of the early masters of movable type figured out how to do it. Not only does the Marriott Library have this first edition, but also first editions of books by other pioneers of science: Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Antoine Lavoisier, Carl Gauss, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, and more. Each of these books has its own story to tell. Together they give insight into the communication, conversation, collaboration, and controversy that made science possible: a revolution that has been going on in print for more than five hundred years.

Presented for the 2017/2018 Frontiers of Science lecture series, College of Science and College of Mines and Earth Sciences, The University of Utah

Luise Poulton, Managing Curator, Rare Books, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah

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Rare Books Goes to Geneva!

06 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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American, Americas, aquatints, Elizabeth Daley, English, fairy tale, Fort McKenzie, French, frontier, German, indigenous, July, Karl Bodmer, Montana, Patek Philippe, Prince Maximilian zu Wied, rare books, Romantic, Scott Beadles, Special Collections Reading Room, watercolors

Tableau_41
“A seemingly idyllic, rarely seen American past comes to life like a fairy tale — some land before time, before film, before death.”

Patek Philippe: The International Magazine used images from the Karl Bodmer aquatints held in the rare book collections for an article in its July 2017 issue. The digital reproductions, especially crafted by Rare Books assistant Scott Beadles for this issue, illustrate “Home of the Braves,” by Elizabeth Daley.

“In the 1830s, when the American West was on the verge of momentous change, a German prince set off to explore the country and its people. He took with him a Swiss artist, whose intricate depictions are the last record [before photography] of a disappearing world.” Swiss-born artist Karl Bodmer accompanied Prince Maximilian zu Wied on his two-year journey across the American frontier, reaching as far west as Fort McKenzie, Montana.

Tableau_5edited

The Rare Books Department holds a set of the eighty-one aquatints produced after watercolors by Bodmer for zu Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America, first published in German in 1839 and later translated into English and French. Rare Books holds first editions of the German and of the English translation.

You can look at the digitized collection here:

Karl Bodmer Aquatints

In this digital format, you can also look at the first German and English editions of zu Wied’s Travels. Better than that, however, you can visit the Special Collections Reading Room and browse the lush, exquisitely detailed aquatints in their original state.

Hardly a romantic fairy tale, the history of indigenous peoples in the Americas is often tragic (they were not saved by a Prince) but always rich in its antiquity and its currency. Bodmer’s aquatints and zu Wied’s Travels are only part of a story worth exploring to your heart’s content in Special Collections.

Patek-Philippe-Cover

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Rare Books Goes to Detroit!

20 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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artists' books, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, Book Arts Program, Detroit, Emily Tipps, fire, Lin Charlston, Michigan, peat bog, Scott Beadles, Tate Shaw, Welsh

N7433.4-C435-F7-2011-Sky
“That which is not said aloud often speaks louder (and, in instances, clearer) than that which is.” — from The Cave Protection Act of 2013

Emily Tipps, Program Manager and Instructor for the Book Arts Program is presenting a paper at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment biennual conference, June 20-24, in Detroit, Michigan. The paper examines three artists’ books from the Rare Books Department.

Emily writes:
“The artists’ book is uniquely positioned to articulate narratives of environmental devastation. The power of this diverse medium stems from its rich permutation of form, image, text, texture, scale, and materiality. I examine artists’ books that address particular instances of traumatic environmental change.

Lin Charlston’s Fragment by Fragment: Signs of the Peat Bog Disperse into the Wind is a meditation on a fire that irreversibly damaged a Welsh peat bog. Charlston employs color, a landscapte format, and an attentive typeface derived from fragments of peat exposed by the fire and dispersed by wind — phenomena which scarred the landscape and the ecosystem.

N7433.4-S5416-G76-2013-cover

The Ground by Tate Shaw positions a personal essay detailing the author’s practice of burying and recovering a book — an act of experiment and catharsis — in the ground in rural Pennsylvania, the site of former coal mines and a current center for hydrofracking. The book’s ink jet-printed plates are treated with water to wash out certain areas — a process echoing the erosion of the landscape.

N7433.4-R395-C38-2013-ExteriorN7433.4-R395-C38-2013-Inside

The Cave Protection Act of 2013 by Michelle Ray, concerns the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, where underground fires (a result of mining) opened sink holes into which the town disappeared. The book examines the sense of identity this disappearance gave the community. The book’s visual language is derived from the dryness of a government document, while its structure deals in negative space, holes opening in the pages, and the oulines of houses overlapping like ghosts or the framing of a new subdivision.

Using slides and physical books, I’ll take a closer look at these and other books, which are so effective in conveying tangible and intangible effects environmental destruction can have on individuals, communities, and ecosystems.”

For more about this conference see Rust/Resistance: Works of Recovery.

To read these books go to the Special Collections Reference Room, L4, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah and ask for:

Charlston, Lin. Fragment by Fragment: Signs of the Peat Bog Disperse into the Wind. Shropshire: Charlston Books, 2011 N7433.4 C435 F7 2011
Shaw, Tate.
The Ground.
Rochester, NY: Preacher’s Biscuite Books, 2013 N7433.4 S5416 G76 2013
Ray, Michelle. The Cave Protection Act of 2013. Small Craft Advisory Press and formLab, 2013 N7433.4 R395 C38 2013

Photographs by Scott Beadles

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Seven Pillars of Wisdom — The Book that inspired the movie that inspired the art

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

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A. W. Lawrence, Auda Abu Tayi, Burbank, Columbia Tristar Home Video, Damascus, Emir Abdullah, Feysal, Jidda, Lawrence of Arabia, motion picture, Mukheymer, Nawaf Shaalan, New York, Oxford, Saad el Sikeinj, Scott Beadles, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Shakir, T. E. Lawrence

DesertTriptych

photographs by Scott Beadles. Artist’s statement: “I recall a movie from memory, something I had seen in my childhood, the memory indefinite. My grandfather sat next to me and pointed out the boundaries of the revolt on the map above the sofa, it was always the centerpiece of his discourse. I remember a vacant climate, a vast expanse that even at such a young age was perceptibly inhospitable. The images of the desert have stuck with me, though muddled by time, the purity of the landscape perpetual. In the reconstruction of a past memory, I photographed what I remember through the distance of time. The intent was of the images, to encapsulate a feeling. Shapshots of the Arabian desert, barbarous and beautiful.”

“Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances.”
— T. E. Lawrence

Seven Pillars of Wisdom
T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1935
D568.4 L4 1935

History of the printing of Seven Pillars:

“Text I — ‘…I lost it.’

Text II — ‘…All but one page of this text was burned by me in 1922.’

D568.4-L4-1935-Camel

Privately Printed Texts
Oxford 1922
‘…eight copies were required. Five copies (bound in book form, for the convenience of those former members of the Hejaz Expeditionary Force who undertook to read it critically for me) have not yet (April 1927) been destroyed.’

Subscribers’ Text I. xii. 26
‘…Beginners in literature are inclined to fumble with a handful of adjectives round the outline of what they want to describe: but by 1924 I had learnt my first lesson in writing, and was often able to combine two or three of my 1921 phrases into one…The Seven Pillars was so printed and assembled that nobody but myself knew how many copies were produced. I propose to keep this knowledge to myself.’

D568.4-L4-1935-Damascus

Published Texts
New York Text
‘Ten copies are offered for sale, at a price high enough to prevent their ever being sold. No further issue of the Seven Pillars will be made in my lifetime.'”

–T. E. Lawrence

D568.4-L4-1935-Jidda

“To bring the information up to date, I add that the remaining copies of the Oxford printed Text of 1922 are still in existence, but will not be made public for at least ten years, and then only in a limited edition…The text of the present edition is identical with that of the thirty-guinea edition of 1926, except for the following omissions…necessary to save hurting the feelings of persons still living…” — A. W. Lawrence

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The movie that inspired the art.
Lawrence of Arabia
Burbank, CA: Columbia Tristar Home Video, 1002
PN1997 L38 2002 ARC

Originally produced as a motion picture in 1962. Directed by David Lean. Starring Alec Guinness, Anthony Quin, Jack Hawkins, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, Omar Sharif, Peter O’Toole. Music composed by Maurice Jarre. Lawrence of Arabia won the Academy Award for Best Picture, 1962.

And one more for good measure:

Z116-A3-R54-1985-Portrait
“He sat, fireless, in very cold weather, wearing a leather, wool-lined flying suit, with the fattest fountain pen I have ever seen — where he got it I don’t know — and wrote in a splendid great Kalamazoo notebook, leather bound and secured with a patent lock that delighted him.”

T. E. Lawrence, Book Designer: His Friendship with Vyvyan Richards
Vyvyan Richards
Wakefield, West Yorkshire: Fleece Press, 1985/86
Z1116 A3 R54 1985

Reprinted from T. E. Lawrence and His Friends edited by A. W. Lawrence, 1937. From the colophon: “…printed in an edition of 250 copies, on Velin Arches Blanc by Simon Lawrence, who also set the 14pt Caslon, at his Fleece Press…200 copies are bound in quarter cloth and Sage Reynolds paste paper over boards, & 50 are bound in quarter sheepskin parchment and paste paper, signed by Peter Reddick, who engraved the frontispiece portrait of T. E. Lawrence. The book was bound in Otley by Smith Settle…”

Z116-A3-R54-1985-Cover

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Book of the Week — Offering Time: Songs

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Amy Hutchinson, Bangladesh, birch, Blue Heron Press, Gitanjali, Indian, Japanese Nishinouchi, Karen Kunc, Lincoln, lyrics, Macmillan India Limited, Madras, music, Nebraska, Nobel Prize in Literature, playwright, poems, Rabindranath Tagore, rabindrasangeet, rare books, Romulus, Scott Beadles, songs, songwriter, Vandercook SP15, woodblocks

N7433.4-K84-O35-2001-Closeup2 copy
“Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song — the joy that makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass, the joy that sets the twin brothers, life and death, dancing over the wide world, the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking and waking all life with laughter, the joy that sits still with its tears on the open red lotus of pain, and the joy that throws everything it has upon the dust, and knows not a word.” — Rabindranath Tagore

Offering Time: Songs
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
Lincoln, NE: Blue Heron Press, 2001
N7433.4 K84 O35 2001

A reader of the New York Times Sunday Book Review wrote (April 16, 2017): In 1913, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore. He was the first non-Western Nobelist. Tagore was a playwright and novelist, but also a musician and songwriter. He composed, music and lyrics, nearly two thousand songs. One hundred of these were collected into Gitanjali and published in 1913. The lyrics were published without music. Western critics called the songs “poems.” It was for this collection of songs that Tagore was recognized with the Nobel prize.

In Bangladesh, Tagore’s opus of songs became known as rabindrasangeet, a musical genre unto itself. Two of his songs were chosen as national anthems. His songs are still sung throughout the Indian subcontinent.

This reminded us of Karen Kunc’s Offering Time, a brilliant book designed to be hung, printed on one side of a single sheet made of several sheets glued together, folded to form pages.

From the colophon: “These prose translations were made by Rabindranath Tagore from his original Bengali songs, published in 1913, and in current publication by Macmillan India Limited, Madras. The text is 11 point Romulus, printed on a Vandercook SP15. The paper is Japanese Nishinouchi, and the woodblocks are birch. The production was greatly assisted by intern Amy Hutchinson throughout the fall, winter, and spring amid classes and entwining projects. All of the printing and production was done at the UNL studio of Karen Kunc…marking the millennium…edition of 50 impressions…”

Rare Books copy is no. 31, signed by the artist, Karen Kunc.

N7433.4-K84-O35-2001-Closeup1 copy

N7433.4-K84-O35-2001-Hanging

Photographs by Scott Beadles

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On Jon’s Desk: The Generall Historie of the Turkes, a beautiful book linking the past and the present

29 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by Jonathan Bingham in On Jon's Desk

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Adam Islip, Benjamin Heywood Bright, Christian, Constantinople, European, Harold Greenhill, Jean Jacque Boissard, Jon Bingham, Laurence Johnson, London, Lord Byron, Middle East, Muslim, Ottoman Empire, Richard Knolles, Samuel Johnson, Scott Beadles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, Vitae et Icons Sultanorum, William Shakespeare

 

photograph by Scott Beadles

photograph by Scott Beadles

“What small assurance there is in mens affaires, and how subject unto change even those things are wherein we for the most part repose our greatest felicitie and blisse, (beside that the whole course of mans fraile life, by many notable examples well declareth) nothing doth more plainely manifest the same, than the heavie events and wofull destructions of the greatest kingdomes and empires: which founded upon great fortunes, increased with perpetuall successe, exalted by exceeding power, established with most puissant armies, wholesome lawes, and deepe counsel; have yet grown old, and in time come to naught.”

– Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes

Title: The Generall Historie of the Turkes, from The first beginning of that Nation to the rising of the Ottoman Familie: with all the notable expeditions of the Christian Princes against them

Author: Richard Knolles

Printed: London, by Adam Islip, 1603

First Edition

Call Number: DR439 K74 1603

Title page of The Generall Historie of the Turkes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are so many books in the world. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some people like bright, new books. Others like old, worn books. As much as I would like to say that I love all books I have to confess that books with a little experience draw me in more. They feel tried and tested to me. The best books in my book are those with at least a couple of centuries behind them. With that in mind you will understand the enchantment I have found myself under recently with a most wonderfully old book. It is a marvelous specimen from the early 17th century.

Printed in London by Adam Islip (d. 1639), this book was bound in brown calf leather, which must have been rich and sensual to the touch earlier in its life. The book now wears this leather like armor that has seen some tough days on the battlefield. Somehow, despite the cracks where the boards meet the spine, it is still elegant. Although the slightly decaying leather may leave a minor brown smudge on an unsuspecting viewer’s shirt, the outer accoutrements remain steadfast in their dual missions of beauty and protection. The front and rear covers offer to the viewer a framed pattern blind-stamped into the leather.

photograph by Scott Beadles

Along the spine large raised bands fit perfectly in the hand, but more importantly, these bands are the anchors for a hand-sewn binding that has lasted for centuries. Lifting the front cover, the board is heavy; not just a little heavy, but seriously heavy. Lifting the front board is like lifting a draw bridge. It is a reminder that this cover protects something worth protecting and warns the reader not to pass lightly.

The book itself is also heavy. Consisting of 1,152 pages, this book was not meant for fanciful entertainment while traveling. At approximately twenty-three centimeters wide, thirty-two tall, and eight deep, its size confirms that this book is profound and consequential. The reader opens to the title page and finds there an elaborate copper-plate engraving, drawing him in. We have Laurence Johnson (“Sculpsit,” Latin for “he engraved, carved, or sculpted it”) to thank for this image, wherein we see noblemen, one on each side of the page. On the left stands a European and on the right an Ottoman Turk. The beauty of this page makes the reader want to linger, but it is quickly observed that the font on the subsequent pages is delightful and there are many more engravings to examine throughout the book.

Dedication page of The Generall Historie of the Turkes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the reader opens this book the smell of it cascades gently over him or her. It is not an unpleasant smell, despite the book’s age. Rather, it is a wonderful smell. It is the smell of leather and paper that have soaked in their surroundings for four hundred years. This book has a clean mustiness that tells the story of owners who have lovingly cared for it through the long years since its printing.

The University of Utah’s copy was part of the Benjamin Heywood Bright library, which was auctioned by Sotheby’s in 1845. Bright, who became a well-known antiquarian and authority on Shakespeare, began collecting around 1809. Sometime in the 19th century, the copy became the property of Harold Greenhill, as evidenced by his bookplate.

Book plate present in The Generall Historie of the Turkes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just as the physical features of this book indicate, the subject matter is a weighty one. Written by Richard Knolles in the last decade of the 16th century, The Generall Historie of the Turkes is recognized as a major historical treatise. Written in English rather than the more scholarly and academically accepted Latin, the treatise consists of a compendium of accounts by historians in the 14th through 16th centuries. Like most European historians of the day, Knolles relied on earlier European works for his information and much of his viewpoint. He relied most heavily on Jean Jacques Boissard’s Vitae et icons sultanorum (1596), from which were copied twenty-eight engraved portraits of Turkish sultans, their wives, and European kings.

Copper plate engraving illustration of Turkish Sultan and Sultaness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Knolles strongly edited the accounts, however, which resulted in the reader fully experiencing a propagandist diatribe throughout. The fact that Knolles chose to publish the work in English rather than Latin is noteworthy. It suggests the intent to reach a large audience and to sway public opinion. Due to the work’s role as a propaganda device it was important for common people to be able to understand it. The treatise was indeed influential. Later writers, such as Samuel Johnson and Lord Byron, read and commented on Knolles’ work. It is also widely accepted that The Generall Historie of the Turkes influenced Shakespeare’s writing.

Knolles’ Generall Historie was certainly a success, running through new editions seven times between 1603 and 1701, most with varying additions and abridgements. The first edition probably consisted of between 1250 and 1500 copies, the maximum number of copies allowed by a 1587 regulation.

The text itself, twelve years in the writing, demonstrates British animosity towards Islam. For example, author Richard Knolles refers to Muslims as “slothing and effeminate.” Knolles wrote this work to acquaint English Christians with an enemy. His demonization of the Turks made this hostility a religious struggle as much as a struggle for world position and power. During the 16th century, more works regarding the Ottoman Turks were written than on the “New World.”

Image of opening lines of The Generall Historie of the Turkes.

 

 

 

 

History repeats itself. However, each generation, I would hazard to generalize, feels as if it is forging ahead into uncharted territory. If a person (a pesky historian or even a curator of rare books) were to point out a historical example which perhaps might support an argument regarding the nature of history and its cycles, others may be quick to point to all the ways in which current events differ from those contained in the historical example. The Generall Historie of the Turkes is a marvelous portal which allows us to view how many of the modern western world’s most difficult issues were being treated at the turn of the 17th century.

In 1453 Constantinople, the capital city and last hold-out of the Eastern Roman Empire, fell to the Ottoman Empire. To put it mildly, this did not please the western Europeans. To turn this into an almost unforgivably simple tale, the Westerners (predominantly Christian) traveled to the Near East (what we now often refer to as the Middle East) and began to carve out little kingdoms for themselves. Religion played an important role in the impetus for these actions. Some may claim that today the impetus is oil, but religion or oil makes not a lot of difference in the grand scheme of things. The bottom line is, westerners (Europeans) showed up in the Near East and started telling the local people how things would run. Naturally, this (then as it is now) was hard for the local people to accept, so they pushed back. In the 15th century they pushed back right into Europe. In the 21st century it is no different. These two cultures have clashed repeatedly over centuries, and so it is that a four hundred year old book acts as a portal that looks suspiciously like a mirror.

I love that the physical attributes and the subject matter of this book are so at odds. This finely crafted, beautiful book is the physical medium of an aggressive topic. History is anything but pretty, yet the books (at least in this case) containing it can be. Perhaps that is not without intention. It just goes to show, you can’t judge a book by its cover.

~ Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

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