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Machines et inventions approuvées par l’Académie royale des sciences, depuis son établissement jusqu’à présent; avec leur description. Dessinées & publiées du consentement de l’Académie, par M. Gallon. Paris, G. Martin [etc.], 1735-77.
MERLIN catalog record. Recently restored through the Adopt a Book Program.
These are selections from Wild Pilgrimage (1932), a wordless novel by Lynd Ward. In this novel, Ward manages two plot threads by color-coding them. The real world is represented in black-and-white woodcuts, while the main character’s inner life is depicted in red and white. Ward's books deal with the role of the individual in society, the identity of the artist, and the hardships and exploitation suffered by the working classes. Ward worked primarily in wood engraving, which allowed for a refined line and detail. His style combines the emotive elements of Expressionism with the monumental, muscular figures of Art Deco. Ward varies the use of space and even the dimensions of his images, providing the reader with a changing experience as pages are turned.
We have a large batch of Adopt a Book materials to feature this time! Thanks to the Friends of the Libraries, our generous donors, and conservator Jim Downey, the fragile, valuable and irreplaceable books in Special Collections can receive greatly-needed repairs and preservation treatment. This program provides the main source of funding for rare book preservation and repair at the University of Missouri Libraries. Since the collections are heavily used, this is a vital service for MU researchers and students.
The books featured below are just a few of the ones that have recently received conservation treatment through this program. Take a look, and consider sponsoring a rare book through the Adopt a Book program website.
Octavio Paz would have been 100 years old on March 31, so we're honoring him and celebrating National Poetry Month with a look at his 1988 collaboration with artist Robert Motherwell. In this volume, the original Spanish poetry is printed in red, with an English translation in black. Paz and Motherwell respond to each other artistically throughout the volume; Motherwell's lithographs are inspired by Paz's poetry, while one of Paz's poems, "Piel, sonida del mundo," is a contemplation of Motherwell's artwork. The book is quite large; the lens cap from our camera is included in one of the images below to indicate scale.
Three Poems / Tres Poemas was published by the Limited Editions Club in an edition of 750, signed by the author and illustrator. Special Collections has copy number 263. MERLIN catalog record.
This week's manuscript is a book of Italian and English phrases that belonged to English merchant Charles Longland, according to the ownership inscription: "Questo libro appartene a mi Carlo Longland, April XXI, 1626." (This book belongs to me Charles Longland, April 21, 1626). Longland was a factor in Livorno in 1651 and died in Florence in 1688. He also assisted with Mediterranean policy under Cromwell and after the Restoration. The text contains numerous Italian phrases with English translations, and a few pages of Italian poetry in the same hand are signed by "Giovanni Aurelio, notario publico de Londra."
Another interesting feature of this manuscript is that someone also inserted a section upside-down, or tête-bêche, in which they describe the voyages of three squadrons of ships. This section is in English, leading us to wonder… Did Longland himself write this? An assistant? Or was it Giovanni Aurelio?
You can browse the entire manuscript in the University of Missouri Digital Library. Many thanks to Wayne Sanders, Head of Cataloging, for researching and making all the discoveries in this post!
Yes, you read that title right – this week we're sharing a selection from the collection of British pamphlets, and it's a sermon claiming that the steam engine was revealed in biblical prophecy. It appears to survive in only a few copies (perhaps unsurprisingly), and this is one of the few in the United States. The author is Tresham Dames Gregg (1800-1881), a militant protestant clergyman who spent much of his career in the Church of Ireland campaigning against Catholicism. Gregg was popular with the working class in Dublin and was consistently at odds with higher-ranking Church officials throughout his career. Although known for his preaching style and his prolific writings, "in his later years he had strange ideas about the rule of the Antichrist, and his own personal immortality" (source).
Gregg's primary idea in this sermon is that various prophetic visions in the Bible are actually descriptions of steam engines. He goes to great lengths to prove this, even paraphrasing the first chapter of Ezekiel, with the famous vision of God's heavenly chariot, to claim that it is in actuality a vision of a passenger train in the far future. But Gregg doesn't end there. He suggests that locomotives on earth are already "partly realized by human skill… why should we not, thus led, be by the divine goodness, at last enabled to construct locomotives that would connect the earth with the other planets?"
This Monday's manuscript offering is a scrapbook of original sketches and notes by French artist J. J. Grandville (1803-1847), a caricaturist and proto-Surrealist. Grandville was the pseudonym of Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard. Along with cartoonists such as Honoré Daumier, Grandville lampooned the political and aristocratic rulers of France in the pages of Le Caricature and Le Charivari and became well known as a caricaturist. Unlike Daumier, Grandville abandoned political caricature for book illustration after censorship laws were reinstated in 1835. His first book-length work was a satirical study of the class system called Les Metamorphoses du Jour. Grandville’s book illustrations feature elements of the symbolic, dreamlike and incongruous, and they retain a sense of social commentary. His art often blends human features with the characteristics of animals or inanimate objects in order to make a satirical point.
The scrapbook in Special Collections was assembled from clippings and fragments of original notes and sketches; some appear to have been taken from a day planner. A study of the sketchbook was recently published by Clive Getty: The diary of J.J. Grandville and the Missouri album : the life of an opposition caricaturist and romantic book illustrator in Paris under the July monarchy (2010). Special Collections also has several published titles by Grandville, including French and English editions of Les fleurs animées, Un autre monde, and Les métamorphoses du jour.
In honor of Women's History month, this post takes a look at five women printers and booksellers from the seventeenth century in Special Collections. Women during this period sometimes inherited printing offices or booksellers' shops from their fathers or husbands. Once in charge of their establishments, they were able to operate as independent businesswomen, responsible for operations, finances, and the supervision of pressmen and compositors.
The book below was printed by a woman printer for a woman bookseller! Mary Clark was the widow of Andrew Clark, a printer. She maintained a printing business in Aldersgate, London, from 1677 to 1696. Ann Mearn (also spelled Mearne) was part of an influential family of booksellers and bookbinders. Her husband, Samuel Mearne, was a former warden and master of the Stationers' Company, stationer to Charles II. Her sons and husband were part of the group book historians refer to as the "Queen's Binder," known for the high quality and intricacy of their gold tooled designs.
Hannah Allen was born into a family of booksellers and bookbinders, and she married Benjamin Allen, a bookseller, when she was probably in her early teens. After the death of her husband in 1646, Hannah Allen inherited his business. Her name appears on imprints as the proprietor for about five years. She published works by radical puritan authors and worked with a wide variety of stationers, a fact that suggests her press was successful and financially independent. After freeing her apprentice, Livewell Chapman, in 1650, she married him, and her name disappears from the press's imprints. Legally, the business became his upon their marriage, although it's likely she was still involved.
Sarah Griffin had a longer career than Hannah Allen, and rather than being a radical printer, she was at the head of an established printing house founded in 1590. Her mother-in-law, Anne Griffin, was in charge of the business from 1634 to 1643, and she gradually transferred the business to her son Edward (Sarah's husband), beginning in 1638. Sarah in turn inherited the business when Edward died in 1652, and began printing jointly with her son, Bennett, in 1671. She is recorded as a printer in the Stationers' Company records until 1673.
Anne Seile (also spelled Anna and Ann) inherited the bookselling business of Henry Seile when he died in 1661. She published books under her own name until 1667. This edition of Heylin's Cosmography, with its large size and engraved maps, would have been expensive to produce. Anne Seile must have been one of the primary financial backers of this publishing venture, since her name is the only one listed on the engraved title page.
There are works by many other women authors, booksellers, printers, and artists in Special Collections. Come by and take a look!
In honor of St. Patrick's Day, this week's manuscript is by Stopford Brooke, an Irish writer whose humorous poem, "The Bottle," is now part of the Mary Lago Collection. While on a picnic with George and Rosalind Howard, Earl and Countess of Carlisle, Brooke threw a wine bottle into a pond at Hampton Court Palace. The Howards became obsessed with sinking the bottle, but failed to do so.
