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Tag Archives: United States

Book of the Week — The Architextures 1-7: The Man of Music

13 Monday Feb 2017

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abaca, Anthropology, Belgium, bookbinding, brass, California, Cambridge, Carolee Campbell, clamshell, English, Felix Titling, Fuji Paper Mills Cooperative, Fulbright, Guatemala, history, Ian Robinson, initials, Japan, Jonathan Cape, Katie MacGregor, King's College, kyosei-shi, letterpress, London, London School of Economics, MacGregor/Vinzani, Maine, Meridien, Nathaniel Tarn, Ninja Press, Pablo Neruda, papermaking, Paris, poetry, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Sherman Oaks, Tokuschi-ma, United States, University of Chicago, Vandercook Universal I, Whiting, wood blocks, Yale University

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-cover

“Who are we that fled the thousand lives we did not lead in order to escape the very one life that we were destined for?”

The Architextures 1-7: The Man of Music
Nathaniel Tarn (b. 1928)
Sherman Oaks, CA: Ninja Press, 1999
PS3570 A635 A7 1999

Nathaniel Tarn was born in Paris and lived in Belgium until he was eleven. He studied history and English at King’s College, Cambridge. After returning to Paris he studied anthropology and received a Fulbright grant. He studied at Yale University and the University of Chicago and did his doctoral fieldwork in Guatemala. He then completed his graduate studies at the London School of Economics. Tarn published his first volume of poetry, Old Savage/Young City, in 1964. His next published work was a translation of Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Pichhu, published by Jonathan Cape, in London. He joined Jonathan Cape as General Editor of its international series.

In 1970, he immigrated to the United States, became a citizen, and taught as Visiting Professor of Romance Languages at Princeton University, and later, at Rutgers and other universities.

Of his poetry, Ian Robinson wrote in 1982, “Landscape, geography, and the history and culture of that landscape, that geography, of the societies living there now and that lived there once, all of the present in its present, are the key factors for Tarn.”

The Architextures 1-7 are the first seven from a collection of seventy prose poems.

The book was handset and letterpress printed on a Vandercook Universal I with Meridien type in six colors and 72pt Felix Titling for display and opening initials. Paper is dove-gray abaca, made by Katie MacGregor at the MacGregor/Vinzani papermaking studio in Whiting, Maine. Six-color wood blocks illustrate the text throughout.

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-Title

Ninja Press was begun in 1984 by Carolee Campbell, whose main publishing focus is contemporary poetry. Carolee began her book work as a photographer working with nineteenth and twentieth-century photographic processes. Binding her photograph sequences introduced her to bookbinding and experimental book structures. She then expanded her book work with letterpress printing. Bookmaking opened “the way into contemporary poetry — confronting it for the first time with a directness and penetration she seldom experienced as a reader.” (Ninja Press) All book work from Ninja Press is by Carolee Campbell.

Bound in torched and patinated thin brass boards, with a spine of brass and stainless steel hinges. Issued in a clamshell box covered in black kyosei-shi, a handmade paper from the Fuji Paper Mills Cooperative in Tokushi-ma, Japan. Edition of sixty-five numbered copies, signed by the poet and the bookmaker.

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-quote

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-Spread1

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Book of the Week — Life on the Mississippi

21 Monday Nov 2016

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

f353-c6441-1883-cover

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

——————————–

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

f353-c6441-1883-riverboat

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

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

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

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

f353-c6441-1883-pg441

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

f353-c6441-1883-title

f353-c6441-1883-announcement

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Banned! — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

29 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Alice, Donations

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Alice, Alice Lidell, animals, banned, book collector, bookplates, California, cartoonist, Charles Dodgson, Cheshire Cat, children, China, Christmas, cloth bindings, Cyril Bathurst Judge, donation, fairy tales, fantasy, George MacDonald, gift, gilt, Governor, Harvard, Henry Kingsley, Huan Province, humans, John Tenniel, language, Lewis Carroll, London, Los Angeles, Macmillan, Michael R. Thompson Rare Books, Michael Sharpe, Michael Thompson, pictorial, Punch, story, United States, University of Utah

fish-frog mouse

“Animals should not use human language.”

Alice’s adventures in wonderland…
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
London: Macmillan and Co., 1866
First published edition

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s now-famous Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was intended solely for Alice Liddell and her two sisters. Dodgson made the story up to entertain the bored children during a series of outings. Alice asked Dodgson to write the story down. Dodgson presented his manuscript to Alice as a Christmas gift in 1864. Friend and novelist Henry Kingsley saw the manuscript and encouraged Dodgson to publish the book. Dodgson consulted another friend, George MacDonald.

Macdonald, a popular writer of fairy tales and fantasy, read the story to his children, who thoroughly approved of it. Macdonald’s six-year-old son is said to have declared that he “wished there were 60,000 copies of it.”

Dodgson prepared the manuscript for publication, expanding the original 18,000 word story to 35,000 words and adding, among other characters and scenes, the Cheshire Cat and “A Mad-Tea Party.”

The first edition included forty-two illustrations by John Tenniel, a cartoonist for the magazine, Punch. The edition of 4,000 copies was released, under the pseudonym “Lewis Carroll,” in time for Christmas in December of 1865, carrying 1866 as the publication date. However, Tenniel and Dodgson disapproved of the quality of the printing. This first printed edition was removed from the market. A few of these printings made their way to the United States.

The book was reprinted and re-released in 1866. By 1884, 100,000 copies had been printed.

In 1931, the work was banned in China by the Governor of Huan Province on the grounds that “Animals should not use human language, and…it [is] disastrous to put animals and human beings on the same level.”

University of Utah copy is in original gilt pictorial cloth bindings. The inside front boards bear two bookplates, one of Harvard scholar Cyril Bathurst Judge (b. 1888), the other of book collector Michael Sharpe. Anonymous donation facilitated by Michael Thompson of Michael R. Thompson Rare Books, Los Angeles, California.

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On Jon’s Desk: A gift from Dr. Ronald Rubin serves as a patriotic reminder

12 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by Jonathan Bingham in Book of the Week, On Jon's Desk

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American Revolution, Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key, Great Britain, James Madison, patriotism, printers, propaganda, Revolutionary War, S. Woodworth & Co., Star Spangled Banner, The Defense of Fort McHenry, The War. Being a Faithful Record of the Transactions of the War between the United States and their Territories and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United States, War of 1812

The War, Title Page

The War, Title Page

Title: The War. Being a Faithful Record of the Transactions of the War between the United States of America and their territories and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Volume 1. Issue Numbers 1 -52, dated 27 June 1812 – 15 June 1813

Printed by: S. Woodworth & Co., New York

Pages: 218

The War, Vol. 1, No. 1, Page 1

The War, Vol. 1, No. 1, Page 1

James Madison has the unfortunate distinguishment of being the first President of the United States to ask Congress to declare war on another nation. In the early nineteenth century the United States struggled as a young nation against more powerful countries for legitimacy. Americans were mostly farmers and, having thrown off the chains of British oppression by winning the Revolutionary War, most returned to their plows. In succeeding in their worthy cause they wounded deeply the pride of the great lion across the Atlantic Ocean. For the British it was a stinging wound not easily forgotten. The American Revolution stopped many infringements in the former colonial states, but Britain continued to teach the traitorous Americans a “lesson” abroad.

In early 1812 the executive leader of the infant nation knew that without further action his country would continue to suffer under economic bondage resulting from Britain’s policies. After diplomatic solutions failed, President James Madison made a report to Congress on the continued abuses laid upon the country by Great Britain and requested the country declare war against the abusers. His request resulted in the War of 1812, a conflict that gave us our national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” and ultimately culminated in greater legitimacy as a sovereign nation.

More than slightly ironic, the United States’ federal government itself at the time fought for legitimacy. The state governments were powerful and for most citizens the necessity for war with Great Britain ended with the winning of the Revolution. Public opinion precluded support for a war because if there is one aspect of war that is constant and unchanging it is that war is expensive. No one wanted to pay for a war. How then would the federal government generate the support necessary to successfully defeat another nation with arguably the most powerful navy of the period? The answer: information. People needed to know why it was important to once again challenge Great Britain and be educated on the stakes of not doing so.

Printers played a crucial role in accomplishing this. They printed and sold newspapers, generating support for the federal government’s decision to declare war on Great Britain. Historians refer to this as war propaganda.

S. Woodworth & Co., Printers

Printer’s Advertisement

The word “propaganda” holds many negative connotations, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and perspective matters. The act of uniting the United States would have been impossible without it. In the first issue of The War. Being a Faithful Record of the Transactions of the War between the United States of America and their territories and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland the editor tells the reader that the object, or purpose, of this publication includes: “To diffuse knowledge in the art of war, by communicating improvements calculated to render courage efficient against the enemy” and “To hand down to posterity the names of those heroes of America, who, by patriotism or courage, will signalize themselves in the present contest.”

The first issue of the publication provides the reader with a brief history in regards to the necessity of the American Revolution. The section ends with the conclusion that the United States’ quick recovery from that war led to its ability to economically compete with Great Britain and consequently caused that nation to become envious. The paper then offers two reports given by President Madison on the acts and injustices committed against the United States by Great Britain.

In issue number two the reader is confronted with examples of acts of patriotism and support. One section with the title “PATRIOTISM” offers an open invitation, almost a challenge, to the reader. One entry reads:

A Call for Patriotic Action

A Call for Patriotic Action

Support for the war did come from the nation’s citizenry and ultimately the United States succeeded in proving its sovereignty.

On September 12th, 1814 Frances Scott Key witnessed an attack on Baltimore, Maryland’s Fort McHenry from aboard a British ship. The next day he wrote a poem he titled “The Defense of Fort McHenry.” It was printed in newspapers. The United States’ victory at Fort McHenry in September 1814 turned the war in its favor. Frances Scott Key’s poem began to be sung set to a popular English tune (“To Anacreon in Heaven”) and in 1931 became our national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Without support-generating propaganda such as The War, the United States may not have won the War of 1812 and we might be singing something other than “The Star Spangled Banner” at patriotic events. The War provides a glimpse into what the leaders of a young nation two hundred years ago needed from the country’s citizens in order to become the nation it is today.

 Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

Editor’s note: Dr. Ronald Rubin has been a generous supporter of the Rare Books Department for years. For more about his donations see Dr. Rubin.

Thank you, Dr. Rubin!

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Journal of the week — Liberator

05 Monday Sep 2016

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art, Communist Party of America, Crystal Eastman, e. e. cummings, eat, Ernest Hemingway, Europe, fiction, Floyd Dell, government, Helen Keller, Howard Brubaker, John Dos Passos, John Reed, Labor Herald, Liberator, Max Eastman, New York, newsprint, poetry, politics, reporting, Robert Minor, Soviet Russia, Soviet Russia Pictorial, The Masses, United States, work, Workers Monthly, World War I

HX1-L5-V.2

“I have to work here but I don’t have to eat here.” — Howard Brubaker (1882-1957)

LIBERATOR
New York: The Liberator Publishing Co., Inc.
HX1 L5

Liberator began publication under the editorship of Max Eastman (1883-1969) in March 1918. Eastman’s sister, Crystal, worked closely with him, and wrote many of the reports from Europe. Liberator was published to take place of the American radical periodical, The Masses, which had been shut down by the United States government in December 1917 as offensive and contrary to mailing regulations during World War I. The Masses was anti-war. Many of its editors and writers contributed to Liberator.

Liberator fused politics, art, poetry and fiction. The international reporting that came out of it was among the best in the United States,  including stories filed by the legendary John Reed (1887-1920) from Soviet Russia. Other contributing artists and writers included e. e. cummings (1884-1962), John Dos Passos (1896-1970), Ernest Hemingway (1999-1961), Helen Keller (1880-1968), and Carl Sandburg (1878-1967). Almost every important radical or liberal literary figure of the time was represented in it.

The Liberator began to take a definite political line. In 1922, Eastman left the Liberator, and the Communist Party of America (CPA) took it over. It merged with Labor Herald and Soviet Russia Pictorial to form Workers Monthly, an organ of the CPA, in November 1924. Prime movers Max Eastman and Floyd Dell (1887-1969) left the editorial board, and Robert Minor (1884-1952) and other closer followers of the Communist line replaced them.

The publication, from its evocative cover art, to the typesetting required to meet the standards of its writers, was expensive to produce. To offset cost, Eastman used cheap newsprint, resulting in a publication that is incredibly fragile. Few copies survive.

HX1-L5-V.2-Spread20

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Book of the week — Decalogus

15 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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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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Looking forward to — Book Arts Program workshop, “The Practice of Ukiyo-e Woodblock”

28 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Workshop

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barrens, Book Arts Studio, brayers, brushes, calligraphy, Cleveland Museum of Art, Connecticut, copperplate engravings, Daniel Kelm, Fogg Museum, Francis Willughby, Franklin Nichols Woodworking, Gerald Lange, handmade, Harvard University, Henryk Goreski, ink, J. Willard Marriott Library, Japan, Japan Foundation, Japanese paper, John Wareham, Keiichiro Uesugi, Keiji Shinohara, kozo paper, Krystyna Carter, Kyoto, Library of Congress, Middleton, Milwaukee Art Museum, Osaka, pallet knives, Paul Shaw, poetry, Polish, polymer plates, presses, printing, printmaker, rag papers, Robin Price, triptych, Ukiyo-e, United States, University of California, Wesleyan University, William Everson, woodblock, woodcut

The Practice of Ukiyo-e Woodblock
Keiji Shinohara, instructor

August 5-6
Friday & Saturday, 10:00-6:00
Book Arts Studio, J. Willard Marriott Library, Level 4
Registration for this workshop is closed.

Leave the brayers, pallet knives, rag papers, and presses behind, and journey eastward. With brushes and barrens, master printmaker Keiji Shinohara guides participants gently through the traditional Ukiyo-e technique of woodblock printing on Japanese papers. As new practitioners, participants have time to carve small, simple blocks using one or two colors. The focus of the workshop is on observance and practice of process rather than on a producing a masterful print.
– – – – –
Keiji Shinohara was born and raised in Osaka, Japan. After 10 years as an apprentice to the renowned Keiichiro Uesugi in Kyoto, he became a Master Printmaker and moved to the United States. Shinohara’s nature-based abstractions are printed on handmade kozo paper using water-based pigment onto woodblocks in the ukiyo-e style–the traditional Japanese printmaking method dating to 600 CE. Though Shinohara employs ancient methods in creating his woodblock prints, he also diverges from tradition by experimenting with ink application and different materials to add texture to his prints. He is currently teaching printmaking at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and has been a visiting artist at over 100 venues and 30 solo shows. He has received grants from the Japan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and his work is in many public collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Library of Congress.

Rare Books is pleased to support the Book Arts Program with its collections.

N7433.98-A48-1996

Altar Book of Gorecki
Middleton, CT: Robin Price, Publisher, 1996

Inspired by a 1992 recording of Henryk Goreski’s Symphony No. 3. English translation by Krystyna Carter. Calligraphy of Polish lyrics by Paul Shaw. Bird illustrations are from seventeenth-century copperplate engravings by Francis Willughby. Photographed by John Wareham, the illustrations were digitally adapted and made into polymer plates by Gerald Lange. Woodcut designed and carved by Keiji Shinowara. Triptych structure with the consultation of Daniel Kelm. Box design and construction by Franklin Nichols Woodworking. Designed, printed and bound by Robin Price. Edition of sixty copies.

PS3509-V65-R38-1998-Bird-Spread

PS3509-V65-R38-1998-Socket-Of-Consequence

Ravaged With Joy
William Everson (1912-1994)
Middletown, CT: R. Price, 1998
PS3509 V65 R38 1998

A record of the poetry reading at the University of California, Davis, on May 16, 1975. Woodcuts by Keiji Shinohara. Issued in slipcase. Edition of one hundred and fifty copies, signed by the artist. University of Utah copy is no. 62.

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ذکری شکسپير

27 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Events

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Aḥmad Zakī Abū Shādī (1892-1955), Annie Bamford, Arab, Arabic, Arabic literature, beekeeping, Cathy Rockwell, Egypt, Egyptian, England, Khalil Mutran (1872-1949), London, Marriott Library, National Poetry Month, physician, poet, Poetry Society, quatrain, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, sonnet, Special Collections, United States, William Shakespeare

PJ7808-S5-D55-1926-portrait

“o Prince of Poetry”

Dhikrá Shaksipīr
Aḥmad Zakī Abū Shādī (1892-1955)
Egypt: al-Maṭbaʻah al-Salafīyah, 1926
First edition
PJ7808.S5 D55 1926

The Egyptian poet Aḥmad Zakī Abū Shādī was a man of many talents. Not only was he renowned as a poet and man of letters, he was also trained as a scientist and physician, and he was fascinated by beekeeping, founding professional beekeeping associations and publishing numerous works on the subject. Besides his native Egypt, he had connections to both England and the United States. He lived in England, where he earned his medical degree, from 1912-1922. In 1920, he married an Englishwoman, Annie Bamford, returning with her to Egypt 1922. Following her death in 1946 he emigrated to the United States, where he continued to be active in the fields of Arabic literature and beekeeping until his untimely death of a stroke in 1955. His private papers and many of his books are now housed in the Marriott Library Special Collections (Ahmed Zaki Abu Shadi papers, 1892-1955).

Among such books is “Dhikrá Shaksipīr,” whose title translates as “Remembrance of Shakespeare.” In his introduction, Abu Shadi explains that it is a collection of three poems that he composed at the invitation of the Poetry Society in London to celebrate the eventual reopening of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre that had burned down in 1926. He says that the Society had invited poets from around the world to participate in this. Based on the Society’s guidelines, the three poems are: A sonnet ; a quatrain suitable for posting on the wall of the Theatre ; and an unrestricted poem. This last one is a long ode in traditional Arabic poetic style in praise of Shakespeare.

In his introduction, Abu Shadi concludes with the statement that he is having this work privately published [in Egypt] to make it more accessible to the Arab reader. He laments that Arabic speakers who do not know English are missing out on Shakespearian literature, and he urges that they search out and read Arabic translations of Shakespeare’s works, and recommends in particular those done by the Egytian poet Khalil Mutran (1872-1949).

PJ7808-S5-D55-1926-title
PJ7808-S5-D55-1926-quatrain
“Diverse minds that tell of your guiding light humbly approached you, o Prince of Poetry
For the Theatre, despite its burning, due to your unique spirit remains a marvelous achievement for all eternity
Look, then, at the thousands gathered, whether in body or in spirit
They listen to great wisdome, sanctify8ing in you your genius; thus finding the good fortune of those who adore.”

Contribution and translation by Cathy Rockwell, Special Collections Middle East Cataloger

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

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We recommend — Utah Calligraphic Artists presents…

21 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Events, Recommended Lecture

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Ameriprise Financial, Australia, Brigham Young University, Canada, Harold B. Lee Library, Heritage Edition of St. John's Bible, Japan, Judith Sommerfeldt, lecture, lettering arts, Medtronics, Saint John's University, Special Collections Department, St. John's Bible, United States, University of Minnesota, Utah Calligraphic Artists, Westlaw

Special Treatments Illuminations from the Wisdom Volume

Special Treatments Illuminations from the Wisdom Volume

The Utah Calligraphic Artists guild is pleased to host an evening lecture with Diane von Arx, one of three American calligraphers invited to be part of the artistic team for the St. John’s Bible project.

Thursday
May 5, 2016
7PM
Utah Cultural Celebration Center
1355 West 3100 South
West Valley City, Utah

Diane von Arx worked as an illuminator on the St. John’s Bible and was also responsible for the design and completion of the Book of Honor, the donor volume for the collection. She is a renowned calligrapher and graphic designer of corporate resolutions and documents of recognition. Her corporate clients include Target Corporation; General Mills, Inc.; University of Minnesota, Westlaw, Medtronics, Ameriprise Financial, and Saint John’s University. She has taught lettering arts throughout the United States, Canada, Japan, and Australia.

Diane’s lecture will focus on her experiences working on the St. John’s Bible. The Special Collections Department of BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library will display two volumes of their Heritage Edition of the St. John’s Bible at the lecture. Refreshments and an opportunity to talk to Diane follows the presentation.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information please contact Judith Sommerfeldt judithsommerfeldt@comcast.net

alluNeedSingleLine

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Book of the Week – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn…

01 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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American, banned, Chatto & Windus, England, Ernest Hemingway, first English edition, immorality, libraries, literature, London, Mark Twain, novels, pictorial cloth, profanity, publisher's advertisements, schools, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, United States

Adventures of Huckleberry FinnAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, frontispiece, title-pageAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ch XII

“I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right, then, I’ll GO to hell.’”

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN…
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
London: Chatto & Windus, 1884
First English edition

Written over an eight year period, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was at first blasted by the critics for, among other things, “blood-curdling humor,” immorality, coarseness, and profanity. The story is still banned by libraries and schools in the United States. Nonetheless, it is one of the defining novels of American literature. Ernest Hemingway said of it, “All modern literature comes from [it]. It’s the best book we’ve had…There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” It was published in England a few months before the American edition was published. Publisher’s advertisements in the back of this copy are dated October 1884. This copy is thread-sewn, one of two states of gatherings for the first English edition. Bound in original gilt-and black-stamped red pictorial cloth.

 

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