Quantcast
Channel: Antipodean Footnotes
Viewing all 73 articles
Browse latest View live
↧

The Hillside Railway Workshops' Library

February 3, 2013, 8:39 pm
$
0
0
[First, an apology to subscribers who received my previous 'post' that was nothing but a string of letters and numbers in the title. It was part of Technorati's blog verification process.]

In April 2012 KiwiRail announced that it was putting Dunedin's Hillside Railway Workshops up for sale. Seven months later, staff redundancies were made and part of the business was sold. The rest of the plant is to close with the loss of ninety jobs.

This is a sad end to an enduring and historic company, and sadder still for the people out of work. Established in 1874, Hillside was once the largest railway workshop in the South Island of New Zealand, employing more than 800 workers by 1935. Its men were well looked after. The company encouraged its employees to further their education by subsidising night classes at the Dunedin Technical School (est. 1889), later named the King Edward Technical College. Hillside had its own ambulance division, a sporting team, a Sick and Benefit Society, and a social and dining hall. There was also a substantial library.

From The New Zealand Railways Magazine 3:4 (Aug. 1928)

Opened in 1884 with just two boxes of books, the Hillside Railway Workshops' Library grew to 15,000 volumes by 1928.* The library was more than technical manuals, engineering books, and related trade journals. In fact, according to a copy of the 1913 Hillside library catalogue held by the Dunedin City Library, just 208 of the 13,005 entries fell under the heading of 'Engineering (&c)' at the time.

Late nineteenth-century and contemporary fiction formed the largest portion of the collection, accounting for just over 11,000 entries; clear evidence that the library was for the leisurely enjoyment of the employees and their families, rather than a working library for consultation. In addition to works of fiction and books on engineering, the catalogue records titles in a variety of other subjects, from astronomy, biography, and electricity, to mining, poetry, and travel.

There is also a section headed 'Miscellaneous Subjects', which includes a diverse range of books from Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and F. D. Maurice's Religions of the World, to Margaret Sangster's Winsome Womanhood and A Shorter Working Day by R. A. Hadfield and H. D. Gibbin. There are other titles on workers' rights and interests besides A Shorter Working Day listed in the miscellaneous sequence, which suggests a rather progressive atmosphere.

An Uncertain Fate
What happened to the Hillside collection?

Some books were dispersed, for a few titles found their way into the Dunedin City Library collection, such as a copy of Fergus Hume's The Lonely Church (1904) complete with the Hillside library label and stamp.


Other titles found so far with the Hillside label and now held by the Dunedin City Library are: A Double Blindness (1910) and A Maid of Mettle (1913) by Mrs L. Baker published under the alias 'Alien'; Louis Becke's By Reef and Palm (1896), Breachley, Black Sheep (1902), 'Neath Austral Skies (1909) and Under Tropic Skies (1905); and A Colonial Reformer (1891) by Rolf Boldrewood. There are also five further books by Fergus Hume: The Mystery of Landy Court (1894), The Red Bicycle (the 1916 first edition and the later 'cheap edition'), The Red Window (1904) and The Vanishing of Tera (ca. 1900).

Whether specific books such as these were intentionally deselected, possibly sold in order to raise funds for newer purchases, or were part of a much larger dispersal of the entire collection remains unknown. Enquiries made with Hillside Engineering, Archives New Zealand, and other major archival repositories have shed no light on the Hillside library's fate. I will post an update should my continued research uncover any further information.

In the meantime, the related evidence—the catalogue, book label, and article noted below—does at least raise the wider question of what other factory libraries existed in New Zealand? The 1 May 1912 issue of the Otago Daily Times mentioned the Sarbon Library, which was available to the more than 160 employees of the Dunedin based manufacturing firm of Sargood, Son and Ewen Ltd. Kā Taoka Hākena: Treasures from the Hocken Collections (2007) notes an early Mills & Boon romance from the Employees' Library of the New Zealand Wax Vesta Co. Ltd., Caversham, Dunedin, which had a largely female workforce (102). Such bibliographic clues are certainly worthy of further investigation and research into this hitherto little explored, yet fascinating, area of New Zealand's library history. Should any readers know of other New Zealand factory libraries, please post a comment below.

*A description and history of the Hillside Railway Workshops Library was published by D. H. Hastings in The New Zealand Railways Magazine 3:4 (August 1928). It is available on-line through the NZETC.
↧
Search

Newly Discovered Work by Katherine Mansfield

February 12, 2013, 10:17 pm
$
0
0
Dr Gerri Kimber, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Northampton, has uncovered a previously unknown story by Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923). Called Sumurun: An Impression of Leopold Konstantin, the work was found along with poems and fragments of other stories among the Mansfield papers acquired last year by the Alexander Turnbull Library.

For more on the story, see the announcement made by the National Library of New Zealand and related TVNZ coverage. 
↧
↧

Happy Birthday, Mr Pepys

February 22, 2013, 11:51 pm
$
0
0
Portrait by John Hayls, 1666
National Portrait Gallery, London
Today's date marks the 380th birthday anniversary of famed diarist, naval officer, and bibliophile Samuel Pepys (1633‒1703).

Pepys's carefully arranged and indexed library included incunabula, medieval manuscripts, naval records, contemporary publications, over 1,800 printed ballads and, most importantly, the six manuscript volumes of his personal diary. In addition, Pepys also collected maps and atlases, music, prints, and calligraphy.

After the death of his nephew and heir, John Jackson, in 1723, Pepys's library was transferred to Magdelene College, Cambridge, where it is housed in its twelve original oak bookcases. The collection remains one of the most important surviving seventeenth-century private libraries held by an institution today.

The Heritage Collections, Dunedin City Library, is fortunate to own a book inscribed by Pepys late in life. It is a copy of the sixth edition of Richard Knolles's The Turkish History, from the Original of that Nation to the Growth of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1687; ESTC R179506).



According to the inscription, Pepys presented this copy of Knolles's Turkish History to Thomas Thoroton as a gift in 1690. 'Armig' is an abbreviation of 'Armiger' ‒ one entitled to wear a coat of arms. The remaining words signify Pepys's role as Secretary to the Admiralty during the reigns of Charles II and James II.

Thomas Thoroton (1663‒1721) was a barrister of the Middle Temple, the son of a citizen and salter of London and, at the time he came into possession of the book, about twenty-seven years of age. Thoroton's bookplate is found on the verso of the title-page.

Dr Richard Luckett, who recently retired as Pepys Librarian, informed me by email that the fact of the gift is particularly interesting as other evidence for the friendship between Pepys and Thoroton is lacking (though Thoroton was a close friend of Pepys's intimate friend, the antiquary Thomas Gale, Dean of York).

The reason behind the gift remains unknown. There is a copy of Knolles's Turkish History in the Pepys Library (PL 2739), so Pepys may have found himself in possession of a second copy and thought it a fitting gift for Thoroton. One possibility is that the young lawyer offered legal advice during Pepys's brief period of imprisonment in mid-1690 on suspicions of treason (Pepys was imprisoned in June, released in July, and completely vindicated in October), and presented the book as a mark of his esteem. Though the year of Pepys's imprisonment corresponds with the date of the inscription, without any documentary evidence this hypothesis remains pure speculation on my part.

2013 also marks the 310th anniversary of Pepys's death on 26 May 1703.

--

The Dunedin copy of Knolles's Turkish History was purchased by Sir Alfred Hamish Reed (1875‒1975) from Thomas Thorp, Guildford, in February 1926, and was included in his 1948 Deed of Gift to the Dunedin Public Library.

For details on Pepys's library, see E. Gordon Duff's Bibliotheca Pepysiana, 4 vols. (London, 1914‒), reissued by Cambridge University Press in 2009.
↧

Bought By Association

March 10, 2013, 11:20 pm
$
0
0
My previous post on the Dunedin City Library’s copy of Richard Knolles’s Turkish History (London, 1687) inscribed by Samuel Pepys generated some questions about how the book fit within Sir Alfred Hamish Reed’s collecting interests.

Known primarily as a collector of medieval manuscripts, notable editions of the Bible, autograph letters, and the works of Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens, Reed also collected association copies. ‘To hold in the hand’, wrote Reed, ‘a book that has been inscribed or written in by some famous person, seems … to bring one nearer to him as nothing else, save an autograph letter, can do’ (279).

Association copies were an early collecting interest of Reed’s. Evidence suggests he was acquiring them by at least 1920, if not earlier. His approach was broad, and took in all the points later described in John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors:

ASSOCIATION COPY
‘This term, often scoffed at by laymen, is applied to a copy which once belonged to, or was annotated by, the author; which once belonged to someone connected with the author or someone of interest in his own right; or again, and perhaps most interestingly, belonged to someone peculiarly associated with its contents’ (27).

In all, Reed's 1948 Deed of Gift records just over 140 association books, mostly presentation copies such as Knolles’s Turkish History. Through further acquisitions by Reed and subsequent purchases made by the Library, the collection today numbers about 570 volumes divided into two sequences: New Zealand and non-New Zealand publications/ associations.

What follows is a selection of books highlighting some of the association copies in the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection. A secondary reason for this post is I hope readers (or someone you may know) familiar with the signatures/ handwriting of the former owners will contact me should any appear wrongly attributed. Reed purchased these titles in good faith, but objective confirmation is welcome.

Joseph Addison. The Spectator, 8 vols (London, 1749).

The first and sixth volumes are signed by the great eighteenth-century literary figure, Samuel Johnson (1709‒1784).

A photostat of the title-page (along with copies of other Johnsoniana in the collection) was sent to the Johnson scholar J. D. Fleeman in 1968. Fleeman replied with 'delight and enthusiasm' at Reed's ownership of Johnson's copy of Addison's Spectator, confirmed its genuineness, and later listed the book in his A Preliminary Handlist of Copies of Books Associated with Dr. Samuel Johnson (Oxford, 1984).

William Dillingham. Vita Laurentii Chadertoni S. T. P. & Collegii Emmanuelis apud Cantabrigienses magistri primi (Cantabrigiae, [1700]).

A gift from the publishers to the writer and printer Samuel Richardson (1689‒1761), author of Pamela and Clarissa.

It seems unlikely that Richardson received this book the year it was published, being he was just eleven at the time. However, from 1744 until his death, Richardson printed the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The volumes were produced for the Society's printers Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, who were involved in the publication of Dillingham's work on the life of English Divine Laurence Chaderton (ca. 1536‒1640).

A. E. M. Grétry. Mémoires, ou Essais sur la Musique (Paris, [1797]).

With the bookplate of the poet Edward FitzGerald (1809‒1883), known for his translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

In volume one of his Sale Catalogues of Libraries of Eminent Persons (London, 1971‒1975), A. N. L. Munby notes that Trinity College, Cambridge, holds several volumes of 'incongruously bound collections of tracts and excerpts which it was FitzGerald's habit to make up' (Munby, 1:335). FitzGerald's copy of Grétry's Mémoires appears to have received the same treatment, for the volume is made up of various, out of order sequences of leaves from the three volume 1797 reprint of the 1789 first edition.

FitzGerald's bookplate was designed by his friend, the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811‒1863). 

The Holy Bible Containing the Old and the New [Testaments] (Cambridge, 1668).

Affixed to the front pastedown of this 1668 Cambridge Bible is a note dated 13 July 1675 written by Lazarus Seaman (d. 1675), a Presbyterian minister, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge (1644 to 1660), and active member of the Westminster Assembly.

The 1676 auction of Seaman's library was the first sale of books by public auction held in England. Not every book was included in the sale and no English bibles are recorded in the catalogue. According to B. J. McMullin's note 'Lazarus Seaman and his bequest to James Hulbert', published in The Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand 14:4 (June 1990), the number three (top left corner) suggests two other books were similarly assigned to other recipients and that the absence of English bibles form the catalogue implies these were most likely given as personal gifts before Seaman's death. Although Hulbert's identity is unknown, McMullin proposes that he may have been a member of Seaman's Silver Street congregation.

Mark Pattison. Milton (London, 1879).

The gift inscription found on the front pastedown was written by Henry George Liddell to his daughter, Alice Pleasance, who was the prototype for Lewis Carroll's Alice of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland fame.

Alice (1852‒1934) was four when she and her siblings met the then twenty-four-year-old Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832‒1898), during his visit to their father's deanery in April 1856. Dodgson became a family friend and, on 4 July 1862, invented the story of Alice in Wonderland while on a river picnic with the children. The following year, however, Dodgson was banished from the Liddell household due to an unexplained incident (possibly a marriage proposal made by Dodgson to Alice, then twelve), and his correspondence with Alice, once renewed, was polite at best afterwards (ODNB).

Alice would have been twenty-seven when she received this book in December 1879, and less than a year away from her marriage to Reginald Gervis Hargreaves (1851–1926) in September 1880.

J. H. Stirling. Jerrold, Tennyson and Macaulay (Edinburgh, 1868).

Presentation copy sent by the author, James Hutchison Stirling (1820‒1909), to the eminent biographer and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795‒1881).

According to his entry in the ODNB, Stirling was 'an ardent admirer of Carlyle ... [who] corresponded with the sage as early as 1842, mimicked his passionate style, adopted his cultural pretensions, and took his advice to learn French and German as a means to mastery over contemporary European literature and philosophy'.

Beneath the inscription are pencilled notes in Carlyle's hand. Though he found pages 172 to 224 'worth reading', it appears Carlyle found much of the rest of Stirling's text to be 'noisy - trivial'.

Anthony Trollope. British Sports and Pastimes (London, 1868).

A little known work edited by Anthony Trollope (1815–1882), the copy held by the Dunedin City Library appears to have been the novelist's own, and contains numerous editing marks and annotations in Trollope's hand.

The work was reprinted from articles originally published in St. Paul’s Magazine, of which Trollope was the editor from 1867 until it ceased publication in 1870. Eight articles covering horseracing, hunting, shooting, fishing, yachting, rowing, alpine climbing, and cricket are included in the book, to which Trollope contributed the preface and chapter on hunting.

Did Trollope mark up this copy with the intention of producing a second edition? No later edition is known to exist, but the title was reissued six times (see Michael Sadlier's Trollope bibliography, pp. 218-219). It is therefore possible that the edits in the Reed copy are reflected in one of the reissues.

[For more information, see my short contribution in Trollopiana: The Journal of the Trollope Society 83 (Spring 2009): 8–13.]

John Walker. A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (London, 1834).

The front free endpaper and title-page are signed 'Marian Evans', who is perhaps better known by her pen name 'George Eliot'.

Evans (1819‒1880) would have been just fifteen years old when she signed the book, if the ownership inscription coincides with the publication date. In 1834, she was enrolled in Miss Franklin's school in Coventry, where she excelled at the piano, in French, and in English composition, perhaps with the aid of Walker's Dictionary.

Charles Walton. Essays on Natural History, Chiefly Ornithology (London, 1838).

The Reed collection includes four books from the library of Charles Dickens (1812–1870). None, however, are as intimately attached to one of Dickens’s most memorable characters as Waterton’s Essays on Natural History. The character is, of course, Barnaby Rudge’s pet raven 'Grip', the second of Dickens’s popular animal characters (the first being the dog 'Bullseye' from Oliver Twist), who was a composite of two successive ravens of that name which formed part of the Dickens household while he was writing Barnaby Rudge (88 weekly parts, February to November 1841).

Dickens used 'Grip' to great comic effect, and justified its creation by writing: 'Barnaby being an idiot my notion is to have him always in company with a pet raven who is immeasurably more knowing than himself'. Dickens quoted from Waterton in his preface to Barnaby Rudge, and the pencilled markings in the chapter on ravens, bears evidence that it assisted Dickens in describing the fictional 'Grip'.

The other books from Dickens's library held by Dunedin City Library are: R. H. Horne's Ballad Romances (London, 1846) and John Hollingshead's Ways of Life (London, 1861), both inscribed by the authors to Dickens, and a French translation of Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop published in Paris in 1857 (also with the bookplate of the Comte Alain de Suzannet (1882–1950)).

--

John Carter and Nicholas Barker. ABC for Book Collectors (New Castle, DE; London: Oak Knoll Books; the British Library, 2004, eighth edition)

A. H. Reed. An Autobiography (Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1967)
↧

Medieval Bookbindings Blog

March 16, 2013, 10:07 pm
$
0
0
A new blog created by Alexandra Gillespie, Associate Professor in English and Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, with contributions by Emeritus Professor Alexandra Barratt, University of Waikato:

http://medievalbookbindings.com/

Recent posts include a description and very clear images of a sixteenth-century binding and its medieval manuscript endleaves from the Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, and Alexandra Barratt's discovery last year of vellum quire guards taken from an early ninth-century Carolingian Bible and sewn into a fifteenth-century binding (also in the Grey collection).

Sixteenth-century binding brass hook-clasp fastening and fore-edge book
marks; New Testament, probably Netherlands, late twelfth or early thirteenth century; Auckland Libraries, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Med. MS G.140
Alexandra G. and Alexandra B. have done great work identifying and expanding upon what is known about early bindings, and the manuscript waste found in them, held in New Zealand collections. The site will cover a variety of bibliocentric topics (not just New Zealand and not just bindings), so I am definitely excited about future posts!

If interested in receiving email alerts, click the 'Follow' function icon towards the bottom of the page/ screen (may not appear in Chrome).
↧
↧

Catalogue of Incunabula, Dunedin City Library

April 2, 2013, 11:19 pm
$
0
0
Leaf from the Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1455)
A few years ago I began compiling an annotated catalogue of fifteenth-century printing held by the Heritage Collections, Dunedin City Library. That work was set aside when I started my MA thesis. Now, with the thesis completed last August, I have at last been able to finish the work.

The catalogue records seven bound incunabula and more than ninety leaves and fragments, with commentary on the texts, provenance, and printers. I have also included links to fully digitised copies where available.

Highlights from the collection include: one volume of the 1472 Latin Bible printed by Peter Schöffer and Johann Fust, the oldest printed book held by the Library; a 1476 edition of the Legenda aurea sanctorumfrom the noted collections of Sir James Balfour (ca. 1600–1658) and David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes (1726–1792); leaves from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), a leaf from William Caxton's first printed edition of TheCanterbury Tales(1476/7), a leaf from the Catholicon (1460), and one leaf from the Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1454), the first book printed in Europe using movable type.

Rather than leave the catalogue solely for in-house use, I have uploaded the file (1.6MB) to Google Docs, and my academia.edu and LinkedIn accounts. Interested readers are welcome to view/ download the PDF and/ or share it with others.

A number of individuals provided invaluable assistance. Though these people are thanked in the catalogue introduction, I would like to express my appreciation to them here. Sincere thanks go to:

Jordan Goffin (Rhode Island Public Library), Klaus Graf (University of Freiburg), Farley Katz (San Antonio, Texas), Donald Kerr (Special Collections, University of Otago), Francis Lapka (Yale Centre for British Art, Yale University), Paul Needham (Scheide Library, Princeton University), Stephen Tabor (Huntington Library), Bettina Wagner (State Library, Munich) and Eric White (Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University).

Special thanks go to Falk Eiserman, Oliver Dunst and Martina Nickel of the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke for their encouragement and willingness to receive images of unknown leaves and fragments, no matter how small or fragmentary; to Gabriel Swift (Princeton University) for his comments on the initial draft; and to the Berkeley-based bookseller, Ian Jackson, for his kindness in editing the final text.

I make no claims at being an incunabulist, and so welcome any corrections or added information by those more learned than myself.


Latin Bible (1472)
↧

Noah to Edward IV: The Canterbury Roll Digitised

April 12, 2013, 3:31 pm
$
0
0
Courtesy of the University of
Canterbury Library
The University of Canterbury has digitised its fifteenth-century manuscript roll, which traces the genealogy of the kings of England from Noah to Edward IV. The roll, which measures 489 centimetres in length, has been in the university's collections since 1918 and is the only medieval roll known in the Southern Hemisphere.

The website aims to 'provide a high quality digital archive of the manuscript that will allow an international public to view and make use of this unique treasure [which has been] photographed to an archival standard in an effort to aid its preservation and to ensure the best viewing experience'.

The scrolling contents page allows visitors to navigate through the roll and includes a general commentary on/ description of each section. The informative website also provides an introduction to the roll and the overall project, explores the provenance of the manuscript, and offers commentary on the scroll's biblical and mythological elements and use as a tool in political propaganda.

The roll can be viewed in its entirety here and downloaded here.

The digitised manuscript project was developed by Chris Jones, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Canterbury. Much of the work was done by Maree Shirota, one of Chris's Honours (now MA) students, whose master's thesis is centred on the Canterbury Roll.

Congratulations to everyone who was involved in this very worthwhile project!
↧

'Published Daily, Shells Permitting': Soldiers' Newspapers in the Dunedin City Library

April 24, 2013, 1:57 pm
$
0
0
Today is Anzac Day, the national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand.* 

As we reflect on the sacrifices made by members of the armed forces, this week's post highlights something that provided a welcome distraction from the duties of active service: soldiers' newspapers.

Better known as troopship and trench journals (and the two are distinct), these periodicals were written, published, and occasionally illustrated, by the soldiers themselves. Some papers were even printed aboard ship at sea. They range from the most basic hand-written news sheets to the pinnacle of professional journalistic and artistic skills, designed to inform, entertain, and improve the morale of the troops who were so far from home. Typically full of wit and black humour, content included official (and unofficial) campaign reports, satirical commentary on military life at sea or at the Front, topical poems and limericks, caricatures (particularly of officers), and other artistic endeavours.

A number of the papers, such as the Mafeking Mail (South Africa, 1899), note their issues were published daily or weekly, 'shells permitting’.

This last half-joking comment reflects another purpose behind the creation of such journals: humour in the face of death and destruction. For soldiers on active duty these journals provided much needed light relief from the horrors of war. To the modern reader, their impact is perhaps best summarised by Professor Graham Seal of Curtin University (Australia): ‘Through this mostly forgotten literature, language and art we can connect with the common concerns of foot soldiers and perhaps understand a little better how they endured the unendurable and why, at its end, many of the survivors experienced oddly mixed feelings of relief and regret’.

The Dunedin Public Library is fortunate to hold one of the largest collection of these soldiers' newspapers, journals, and official military souvenirs in New Zealand. The collection was begun by Dunedin's first librarian, William Barker McEwan (1870-1933). Showing great foresight, McEwan put out the call for returning soldiers to donate their First World War troopship and trench journals as early as 1915. He made further requests  from the New Zealand High Commissioner in London, Sir Thomas McKenzie, the Dominion Museum, and the Chief Librarian in Cape Town South Africa, where many journals were printed during port-of-call stops. Journals from the Second World War were added by Miss Elizabeth Bryant, who served as interim Public Librarian after McEwan's death. Bryant kept alive McEwan's goal of building one of the best troopship journal collections in the country, and the library maintains an active collection development policy in this area.

Today the collection numbers more than 380 journals and papers. The following is a small representative sample, with most of the examples dating to the First World War when Anzac Day was founded. I had less choice than usual, but with very good reason. The library is currently involved in a project with the Auckland War Memorial Museum to digitise troopship and trench journals in time for the First World War centenary next year, and a number of the library's journals are presently with the Museum.



A. C. Morton. The Gymeric Times; printed on board H. M. T. Gymeric in the Indian Ocean during the voyage from New Zealand to South Africa, April 1900.

Published for troops bound for the Second Boer War, The Gymeric Times boasted at having ‘the honour of … [introducing] the first paper issued on board a troopship from New Zealand’.






The Gunner: The Official Journal of H. M. N. Z. T. No. 7; printed at sea, 1914. 

Illustration of Kaiser Wilhelm II surrounded by lions representing each corner of the British Empire, with the Russian bear and French eagle in background.





The Grey Funnel; With Which is Incorporated The Tin Hut Table, Empire's Call, and The Quinn's Post Nightly: The Official Organ of Troopship 95 on Her 8th Trip to the Homeland; published in London, 1917.

A shipboard artist's impression of the sardine-like conditions aboard ship.





The Digger: Being the Unofficial Record of the Early Days of the 41st RFT at Sea; published in Capetown by Cape Times Ltd., 1918.

Cover illustration showing a Kiwi footsoldier skewering the leaders of the Central Powers.









Napoo: Published As a Record of the Homecoming of 700 Demobilised Diggers by the S. S. Rimutaka; published in Wellington by Lankshear's Ltd., 1919.

'Napoo' was a slang term for 'to finish; to put an end to; to kill'.







Convoice; printed on board H. M. T. 24 for the Second Expeditionary Force, 4th Reinforcements, 1941.

A mostly cheerful account of life on board the Niew Amsterdam, this journal includes cartoons by the great New Zealand cartoonist Nevile Lodge (1918-1989), who was on board.































































--

For more information, see Graham Seal's The Soldiers' Press: Trench Journals in the First World War, published earlier this month by Palgrave Macmillan; David Kent's From Trench and Troopship: The Experience of the Australian Imperial Force, 1914-1919 (1999); and Professor Seal's summary of trench journals on the Simply Australia website. 

*Be sure to check out the National Library of New Zealand's latest blog post on its war diaries project, written by David Colquhoun (Curator, Manuscripts at Alexander Turnbull Library).
↧
Search

Alfred and Isabel Reed Medieval Manuscripts Online

May 6, 2013, 6:41 pm
$
0
0
Leaf from a French Book of Hours,
fifteenth century (RMMF19)

It gives me great pleasure to announce that images and descriptions of the Dunedin City Library's holdings of medieval manuscripts from the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection are now available on Flickr:

Profile

Collections (7)

Sets (71)
 
The images include a selection from each bound manuscript, and the recto/ verso of each individual leaf and fragment. I did not resize the images, so visitors can get access to the original files.

The site was created with the aim of promoting and providing on-line access to one of New Zealand's largest collections of medieval manuscripts. Collection highlights include: a leaf and bifolium from a ninth-century Bible in Carolingian script (RMMF 1a and 1b), which are among the oldest manuscript leaves in the country; a mid-fifteenth-century copy of the Wycliffe Gospels (MS 6) and a leaf from a Wycliffite Lectionary (RMMF 20) dated to the same time period; a portion of a fourteenth-century Bible (MS 4a), identified by Christopher de Hamel as having been written in the Cistercian Abbey of Byszewo (or Koronowo), near Gdansk, the first manuscript of Polish origin to be identified in New Zealand; leaves from the fourteenth-century 'Bohun Bible' (RMMF 13a and 13b); a fifteenth-century Dutch Book of Hours (MS 12) from the library of Alexander Boswell, 8th Laird of Auchinleck, and a second Dutch Book of Hours (MS 10) brought to New Zealand by Walter B. D. Mantell in 1840, one of the earliest medieval manuscripts to be transported to the colony.
 
I would like to acknowledge and thank Christopher de Hamel, Margaret Manion, and the family of the late Vera F. Vines, for granting permission to reproduce the relevant descriptions in Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections (London, 1989). This information has been updated to reflect recent scholarship (most notably by de Hamel, Alexandra Barratt, and Richard Gameson). References are provided. I would also like to thank Paul Hayton, former electronic services co-ordinator for Dunedin Public Libraries, and Will Noel for his guidance.
↧
↧

Upcoming Rare Book Auctions - Australia

May 16, 2013, 4:23 pm
$
0
0
~ On 27 and 28 May, in three sessions, Australian Book Auctions offers 'Voyages and Travels and other Books and Documents'. The three books bringing the highest estimates are: a large paper copy of Matthew Flinders's A Voyage to Terra Australis (London, 1814), at $80,000 to $100,000 AUD (lot 33); an uncut copy in original boards of James Maria Magra's A Journal of a Voyage Round the World, in His Majesty's Ship Endeavour (London, 1771) with the suppressed Dedication leaf, expected to bring between $120,000 and $160,000 AUD (lot 55); and a first edition of the Second Voyage Round the World (London, 1776), a surreptitious account of Cook's 1772–1775 voyage, bound in red morocco from the Admiralty Office Library, listed at $80,000 to $120,000 AUD (lot 63).

A PDF of the catalogue can be viewed here.

~ The first Sydney Rare Book Auctions sale in their new premises is scheduled for 1 June. More than 400 lots will be on offer, including what is described as a 'clean, bright and crisp' copy of the first complete edition of James De Carle Sowerby and Edward Lear's Tortoises, Terrapins, and Turtles Drawn from Life (London, 1872), with three plain and 57 hand-coloured plates.

Catalogue not yet available on-line.
↧

Samuel Pepys, William Hewer & Ogilby's Bible

May 25, 2013, 11:14 pm
$
0
0
On 23 February, I wrote about a copy of Richard Knolles's Turkish History (London, 1687) owned and inscribed by Samuel Pepys (1633‒1703) to highlight the 380th anniversary of the great book collector's birth. 2013 also marks the 310th anniversary of Pepys's death on 26 May 1703. To note the occasion, this week's post describes a second book from the Dunedin City Library's Heritage Collections associated with (but not owned by) Pepys.

Pepys's Final Years
The Dunedin copy of Knolles's Turkish History was inscribed by Pepys sometime in the latter half of 1690 after his brief imprisonment on suspicions of Jacobitism. Eleven years later, he retired from public life and left London for a house in Clapham Common, Surrey. Pepys spent the remaining years of his life there, living with his trusted friend and fellow naval administrator, William Hewer (1642–1715) (Pepys's wife Elisabeth died in 1669). Hewer, who was appointed executor of Pepys's will, was once one of his menservants and is mentioned numerous times in Pepys's diary. Pepys's renowned library (now at Magdalene College, Cambridge) was kept in Hewer's home from 1703 to 1724.

1660 Cambridge Bible
The Heritage Collections holds a book from Hewer's personal library, which was widely dispersed after his death. It is a copy of the 1660 Cambridge Bible in folio, printed for John Field and illustrated by John Ogilby ( ESTC R17044). The edition ‘marked the beginning of illustrated Bibles for the high end of the market .… Ogilby first presented a copy to the House of Commons, then extracted a payment of ₤50 for it’ (Van Eerde 46). The engraved title-page of Solomon enthroned is 'blatantly … royalist, for it is difficult not to see the long-haired king as Charles II, and the twelve small lions as twelve apostolic spaniels’ (Norton 148).





The 1660 Cambridge Bible is noted in Pepys’s diary (27 May 1667): 

‘There come also Richardson, the bookbinder, with one of Ogilby’s bibles in quires for me to see and buy, it being Mr. Cade’s, my stationer’s; but it is like to be so big that I shall not use it, it being too great to stir up and down without much trouble, which I shall not like nor do intend it for’ (8:237–8). Indeed, no copy is recorded in the Pepys Library catalogue.

Could the Dunedin copy of the 1660 Cambridge Bible be the very one mentioned in the diary, passed up by Pepys, but bought by Hewer? 


Hewer's bookplate, found on the verso of the title-page of the 1660
Book of Common Prayer (issued with the Bible; ESTC R31275)*

It is impossible to know for certain without documentary evidence, but the idea is at least plausible. The large folio was expensive, possibly as much as £25 when published, even in sheets, which would have normally put the book out of reach for a clerk like Hewer, who was earning £30 per annum. Hewer, however, was not limited by his salary.

According to Robert Latham, Hewer may have inherited money from his father, who died in 1665 (Diary, 10:183). His uncle, Robert Blackborne (d.1701), became secretary to the East India Company in December 1666 (ODNB), and Hewer amassed a large fortune built on trade as a result. His gift in January 1668 of a diamond necklace to Elisabeth Pepys worth £40 is evidence enough that the Bible was far from being beyond his means in 1667 (10:183).

Provenance Continued...
Hewer died in 1715. Much of his property, including the house and contents in Clapham Common, passed to his godson, who died without issue in 1728.

Hewer's books were sold in April 1730, along with the libraries of Thomas Hobart M.D. and the Reverend John Hancocke, prebendary of Canterbury. While the auction catalogue records a copy of the 1660 Cambridge Bible bound in three volumes with the capital letters illuminated (lot 1178), this description does not match the Dunedin copy, which is bound in two volumes with plain capital letters. It is presumed that the three-volume Bible belonged to either Hobart or Hancocke (the catalogue does not specify the former owners of each lot), and that the two-volume Hewer copy was sold or given as a gift before the sale.

Though the immediate owner after Hewer remains unknown, the Bible did not travel far from its Surrey home. Both volumes include the bookplate of William Brightwell Sumner (1728–1796), a member of the East India Company, who purchased Hatchlands Park, Surrey, from the literary hostess and member of the Bluestockings, Frances Boscawen (1719–1809) in 1770. 

Further provenance evidence is sadly lacking until the twentieth century, when the Bible was acquired by Sir Alfred Reed and donated by him to the Dunedin Public Library in 1950. The date and source of acquisition have gone unrecorded.

--

** Hewer's bookplate was only the second bookpile bookplate designed in 1699. The other was for Sir Philip Sydenham, 3rd Baronet (1676–1739), whose own plate was based on a 1698 bookpile bookplate designed by Pepys for Arthur Charlett, Master of University College, Oxford. See Brian North Lee's 'Gentlemen and Their Book-plates' in Property of a Gentleman: The Formation, Organisation and Dispersal of the Private Library 1620–1920 edited by Robin Myers and Michael Harris (Winchester, England: St. Paul Bibliographies; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1996): 42–76.

References
Robert Latham (gen. ed.). Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, 6 vols. (Cambridge, England: D. S. Brewer; Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1978–1987: 1:14–17 (Bibles).  

Robert Latham and William Matthews (eds.). The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols. (London: G. Bell and Sons Ltd, 1970–1983). 

Katherine S. Van Eerde. John Ogilby and the Taste of his Times (Folkenstone: Dawson, 1976). Cited in David Norton, The King James Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 148.

David Norton. The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
↧

Farewell, New Zealand, and Hello, Australia

June 7, 2013, 10:14 pm
$
0
0
A quick note to say Antipodean Footnotes will be on hiatus for a while. I am relocating to Melbourne, Australia, on 10 June, and starting in a new position (Deputy Curator, special collections, University of Melbourne) on 24 June.

I'll be back with new posts once settled into my new role.
↧

Upcoming Rare Book/ Bibliographical Events in Australia

July 1, 2013, 4:10 am
$
0
0
I'm back with a few announcements. Still settling in and finding my way in Melbourne, but I hope to return to a normal blogging schedule in a few weeks' time. Until then...

The Melbourne Rare Book Week kicks off on 18 July and culminates with the three-day Rare Book Fair (26‒28 July). Over twenty events and exhibitions are scheduled across the city, from book culture in nineteenth-century Melbourne and private press printing, to six centuries of Italian books and collectors/ collecting. Among the many highlights is a public lecture by Travis McDade, curator of Law Rare Books at the University of Illinois, called 'The Book Theft Century: A Lament', hosted by the Melbourne Law School (McDade's latest book Thieves of Book Row was published last month. Review in the Los Angeles Times).


The 2012 Melbourne Rare Book Fair, Wilson Hall, University of Melbourne
Photo from the ANZAAB Rare Book Fair Facebook page

And if that was not exciting enough, on Sunday, 21 July, renowned scholar Professor Ian Donaldson will conduct a two-hour masterclass on the creation and history of the Shakespeare Folios, hosted by the University of Melbourne Faculty of Arts and Baillieu Library. On display will be a copy of the Second Folio (1632), courtesy of the University of Melbourne special collections. The registration fee is $80.00 AUD. Spaces are limited and will surely fill up quickly.

Coming up in November...

The annual conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (20‒22 November). Hosted by the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, the theme of this year's conference is 'Bibliography in the Digital Age'. Abstracts of 250 words for 20-minute presentations are now being accepted.

State Library of New South Wales
Photo from Wikipedia

↧
↧

600 Years of Italian Books Exhibition, University of Melbourne

July 24, 2013, 4:33 pm
$
0
0

The latest exhibition in the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne, is ‘Libri: Six Centuries of Italian Books from the Baillieu Library’s Special Collections’. The display, on view in the Leigh Scott Gallery, is in connection with Melbourne Rare Book Week, and highlights the university’s recent acquisition of the first edition of Aldus Manutius’s typographical masterpiece, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice, 1499), which takes centre stage.


Polia and Poliphilo (centre) enter the Garden of Venus (Chap. 24)

Among the fifty-two items on display are: an illuminated fourteenth-century Gradual leaf attributed to a follower of the Perugian artist Matteo di Ser Cambio, early editions of works by Machiavelli, Palladio, Vasari and Leonardo da Vinci, and later texts by such authors as Alessandro Manzoni, Italo Svevo and Primo Levi, and the futurists F. T. Marinetti and Bruno Munari. Case themes cover politics, literature and the arts, travel, humanism and futurism, and Italians living in Australia, such as the Melbourne-based visual artists Bruno Leti and Angela Cavalieri, whose respective works Imago Mundi (2002; with text by Alan Loney) and Inri (2005) are on display.


An Italian-themed exhibition would not be complete without a cookbook, in this case a seventeenth-century edition of the great Renaissance chef Bartolomeo Scappi's Opera dell'arte del cucinare (Venice, 1610)

It would be remiss (negligente is more appropriate) of me to write a post about an exhibition of Italian books and not note that 2013 marks the 500th anniversary of Machiavelli's The Prince and the 700th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Boccaccio, perhaps best known for his allegorical work The Decameron. 

Books relating to both authors are on display, such as Frederick the Great's Examen du Prince de Machiavel (The Hague, 1741), an Italian edition of The Prince (Milan, 1928) with a preface by Benito Mussolini, a sixteenth-century edition of Boccaccio's mythography La geneologia de gli dei de gentili (Venice, 1569), in which he attempts to untangle the genealogy of the Greek and Roman pantheons, and J. M. Rigg's translation of The Decameron, published in Sydney by Angus and Robertson in 1941.

The exhibition runs until 15 September, after which the gallery will be closed for redevelopment. Follow this link to view a selection of the exhibits.
↧

'In Her Hand: Letters of Romantic-Era British Women Writers in New Zealand Collections'

July 31, 2013, 2:03 pm
$
0
0
[This was a project I was fortunate enough to be involved in before leaving New Zealand. Well done to Tom McLean and Shef Rogers (Department of English, University of Otago) for putting together such a great course based on primary material, and many congratulations to the students, who really took ownership of the assignment.]


Cover design by Elicia Milne and Jon Thom 
In Her Hand: Letters of Romantic-Era British Women Writers in New Zealand Collections
By the Otago Students of Letters
Published by the Department of English, University of Otago, 2013 

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many female authors challenged societal expectations. Everyone knows about Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, but Austen and Shelley’s contemporaries included leading women novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists, historians and philanthropists. In Her Hand presents more than fifty previously unpublished letters written by eleven of these women: Anna Barbauld, Hannah More, Joanna Baillie, Jane Porter, Lady Morgan, Lucy Aikin, Amelia Opie, Lady Byron, Felicia Hemans, Anna Jameson and Maria Jane Jewsbury. Little known today, most of these women were household names to British readers two hundred years ago. 

But what also makes In Her Hand distinctive is the fact that these letters have been hidden away in public library collections in New Zealand—in Auckland, Wellington, Invercargill, and especially Dunedin. Had they been in US or UK collections, many of these letters would have been published long ago.

Furthermore, the authors of this book are not professional academics but rather eleven University of Otago English honours students who enrolled in the class ENGL404: Writing For Publication. The course was coordinated by Dr Tom McLean, who has published on many of the writers featured in the collection and thus could check the accuracy of students’ work; and Dr Shef Rogers, who edits the journal Script & Print and the New Zealand Colonial Texts series and oversaw the technical and editorial sides of the book’s production.

Over the course of a single semester, students examined the lives and works of their writers, transcribed the letters (often a challenge in itself), and identified important information relating to the letters. When their own research hit a dead end, McLean put the students in contact with expert scholars in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, who generously shared their knowledge of these women writers. Students also shared in the production work: choosing fonts, creating a cover, checking proofs, organizing permissions for images, assembling introductory material and creating an index. As a result, the “Otago Students of Letters” (as they call themselves) have had an amazing opportunity to work with rare, unpublished manuscripts, and to be involved in all aspects of book production.

In Her Hand is the perfect introduction to a group of remarkable and rediscovered British women writers. Each chapter offers a short biography, transcriptions of the new letters and a discussion of their significance. The letters range in theme from publishing and literary endeavours to spiritual and family concerns. Anyone interested in British literature in the era of Austen, Shelley, William Wordsworth and Lord Byron will find these letters fascinating.

In Her Hand is available from the Department of English (order form). Follow this link for a sample of the text.
↧
Search

Library Discovery Sheds Light on Indigenous Australian Languages

August 29, 2013, 2:26 pm
$
0
0
[By Nate Pedersen, posted on Fine Books Blog]

'Map of New South Wales as Occupied by Native Tribes'

Serendipity has always played an important role in the lives of book collectors and scholars. One day Dr. Michael Walsh, a linguistics professor at the University of Sydney, was browsing through the stacks at Mitchell Library, Sydney, (part of the State Library of New South Wales) when he randomly pulled down an object that looked like a codex, but was actually a box containing two notebooks. After flipping through several pages of "doodles," Walsh stopped at page seven, intriguingly entitled "A short vocabulary of the natives of Raffles Bay." Walsh soon realized he had stumbled across a guide to a lost language from the aboriginal people settled near the coast in Australia's Northern Territory.

The notebook, written by the Victorian colonist Charles Tyres, was entirely unknown to modern scholars.

Using that find as a launching pad, Walsh instigated a two year research project trolling through 14km worth of colonial manuscripts in search of mention of the lost or endangered indigenous languages of Australia.

The Australian government estimates that 145 aboriginal languages are still spoken around the country today, with a further 110 hovering at the edge of extinction. Walsh's research project has contributed to the knowledge of 100 of these native languages. One of his favorite finds was a 130 page, tri-language dictionary in German, Diyari, and Wangkangurru, the later two being aboriginal languages from the north-east part of the South Australia state. 

The next step of Walsh's research project is to disseminate the findings to the aboriginal people around Australia who still speak these languages, or are culturally descended from the native speakers. The Mitchell Library also hopes to digitize the findings, if granted the appropriate cultural approvals, making them accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.
↧

Petition Against Proposed Sale by Senate House Library of Its Four Shakespeare Folios

September 3, 2013, 2:17 pm
$
0
0
[Reposted from The Fine Books Blog]

Word circulated on several electronic discussion lists yesterday that London's Senate House Library--the central library of the University of London--plans to sell four Shakespeare Folios at a Bonhams auction this November. The immediate effect of the sale would be to create an endowment in order to attract more readers and push for restoration of government funding lost in 2006.

Professor H.R. Woudhuysen at Lincoln College, Oxford, sent a long letter last week to Christopher Pressler, director of Senate House Libraries, responding to Pressler's request for 'support' in his decision to sell the folios. Woudhuysen, also vice-president of the Bibliographical Society and co-general editor of The Oxford Companion to the Book wrote, "I have come to the conclusion that I am not able to offer the support that you seek and that I am entirely against any such move." He goes on to say, "On the basis of the documents that I have seen, it seems to me that the sale and its implications have not been thought through properly and that the Trustees have already taken a decision to sell the books through Bonhams, making any public consultation merely decorative. The decision will, I hope, attract a great deal of opposition from supporters of Senate House and if executed, it will, I fear, make many who are supporters of the library and possible donors to it turn their charitable interests elsewhere."

Book historians and special collections librarians on the ExLibris and SHARP-L lists (and Twitter) noted that this type of "asset stripping" in collections is hardly new and should be carefully scrutinized. Library-donor relations are a major theme of this conversation, as many wonder how to trust a library that renegotiates the status of a gift fifty and one hundred years on. The folios in question were donated to the university by Sir Louis Sterling in 1956; as a group, the four have been together since the 1830s. The SHL's website calls the Sterling collection, "an unusually integrated resource for research on the transmission of English literary texts from the 14th century to the present day."

While Professor Woudhuysen did receive a "bland reply" from Pressler in response to his letter, the SHL has not issued an official statement on the auction. A request for comment sent to Mr. Pressler yesterday has not yet received a reply. 

Today, The Bibliographical Society joined the debate by starting a petition that urges the SHL to "reconsider the proposed sale of its first four Shakespeare Folios." After signing his support on that page, antiquarian bookseller Laurence Worms commented, "I teach at the London Rare Books School at Senate House. This proposal damages the very basis of all we try to do."
↧
↧

Update: Shakespeare Folios and Senate House Library

September 5, 2013, 8:52 pm
$
0
0
[Posted on SHARP-L by Simon Eliot, Professor of the History of the Book at the School of Advanced Study, University of London]

Decision on Shakespeare Folios
The University of London this evening announced that it will not be continuing with its consultation over the potential sale of four Shakespeare Folios. However, the development of its Senate House Library Special Collections remains a priority.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Adrian Smith, said: “The University has decided to focus its attention on examining alternative ways of investing in the collection. The money raised from any sale would have been used to invest in the future of the Library by acquiring major works and archives of English literature.”

Sir Adrian explained that the decision not to continue with the consultation on the proposed sale had been reached in view of the feedback already received from the academic community.

Ends


James Pestell
Director of Marketing and External Relations
University of London
Senate House
↧

'Wants E8', or Does It?: The Melbourne Copy of the Gesta Romanorum

September 19, 2013, 2:42 am
$
0
0
While working through the University of Melbourne incunabula, I happened upon a rather interesting printing error in one of the library's two fifteenth-century copies (in different editions) of the Gesta Romanorum, a collection of entertaining short stories meant for moral edification.

This particular copy is from an edition by one of the many early printers whom we know not by name, but by a particular work from their press: the Printer of the 1483 'Vitas Patrum' from Strasbourg.[1]

The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC) attributes twenty-eight works to his press, and records him as an alternate printer for a further six titles. ISTC attributes an approximate date of 'about 1484' for the Gesta, though the Gesamtkatalog der Weigendrucke (GW) takes a slightly more cautious approach, offering a date range of between 1483 and 1486.[2]

E8 or No?
A number of penciled notes are present on the front free endpaper. One comment records that the copy 'wants E8' and that this leaf was replaced with a leaf from another book. Upon a cursory examination, this appears to be the case. Turning to where leaf e8 should be, one finds the following:


This leaf, signed k2, is indeed not from the Gesta, but from an edition of Guido de Columna's Historia destructionis Troiae.

After comparing the text with digitised fifteenth-century editions, I found that the Columna leaf matches that of the Historia printed by none other than the Printer of the 1483 'Vitas Patrum', the date given as 'about 1483 ... Also recorded as [about 1485]' in ISTC (the later date provided in GW).[3]

How did leaf k2 of the Historia wind up in the Gesta?

The answer, which changes, not solves, the question, was found on the verso of the leaf:


This text does not correspond to k2v in Columna's Historia, but rather to the text of e8v in the Gesta. Leaf e8, therefore, is not missing at all. Instead, an incorrect text was printed on the other side of the sheet of paper. To confirm my suspicions, I checked the conjugate leaf (e1):

Recto

Verso

The text on e1r corresponds to the Gesta, while the text on the verso matches k7v in the Historia.

With the conjugate leaves confirmed, the question became not how did a single leaf of the Historia find its way into the Gesta, but how did a sheet of paper come to have text from two different books printed on two different sides, and be published as part of a complete copy?

Possibilities
I discussed the printing error with Shef Rogers, a bibliographer and friend from the University of Otago, who noted that 'unlike ... 'perfected' copies, this sort of confusion is not one that would result from someone making up a copy later from parts of defective copies'. It seems certain, therefore, that the error happened in the printing house, and is likely to have been present ever since the book left the warehouse over 500 years ago.

One possible explanation is that the two titles were in print simultaneously and there was a mix-up in the half-printed paper stacks. Perhaps a printer removed the sheet in order to check it and then mistakenly returned it to the wrong stack of paper, or maybe a few sheets were mixed up before the printer realised there was a problem. As the error does not appear in the three digitised copies I used for comparison, the problem was obviously caught and corrected, but not before the Melbourne copy somehow slipped past the corrector.

Instead of a mix-up in the paper stacks, could the sheet in question be in an earlier state?

According to Shef:

'You would ... need to check the text of the e sides [in multiple copies] of the later-printed title (if you think the dating of that title as later is correct; if not, you cannot presume an order) to see whether a printer might have simply grabbed a spare sheet of paper (blank on one side, but used on the other and therefore no good for book work, but fine for a proof) and printed the e2/e7 side to proof. Ideally, you'd locate textual variants that might indicate a sense of directionality that would let you determine whether your sheet is the earlier or later state. As a proof sheet, one would expect it to be the earlier state. Of course, there may be no variants, and then the whole hypothesis becomes untestable'.

To resolve the issue would take a census of the surviving copies of the Gesta and Historia in the Printer of the 1483 'Vitas Patrum' editions, to see if the oddly imposed sheet is present elsewhere. It is, however, unlikely that I will be able to take up such a task, so I leave such work (as tempting and appealing as it is) to someone with easier access to other copies and with more knowledge of fifteenth-century printing practices.

Stay Tuned
I reported my findings to the GW. One of its experts, Oliver Duntze, has recently done work on the printing trade in fifteenth-century Strasbourg and was most interested in the error. Oliver will no doubt elaborate on the basic information and speculation provided here, and I will post his findings once received.

--

[1] A. W. Pollard, in his introduction to the first volume of the BMC, noted the possibility that the texts attributed to the Printer of the 1483 'Vitas Patrum' could have come from the press of another Strasbourg printer, Johann Grüninger. He admitted, however, that 'the evidence for positively assigning them to him is insufficient' (1:xix).

[2]Gesta Romanorum [Strasbourg: Printer of the 1483 'Vitas Patrum', about 1484]; ISTC ig00287000, GW 10892.

[3] Guido de Columna. Historia destructionis Troiae [Strasbourg: Printer of the 1483 'Vitas Patrum', about 1483]; ISTC ic00772000, GW 7229.
↧

2014 AU/ NZ Rare Books Summer School Schedule Announced

September 27, 2013, 9:11 pm
$
0
0
[The following was posted on the ANZ Rare Books and Special Collections Librarians listserv by Des Cowley, Rare Printed Collections Manager, State Library of Victoria]

The State Library of Victoria is pleased to announce that the 9TH AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND RARE BOOKS SUMMER SCHOOL is to be held at the STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA, 10-14 FEBRUARY 2014


The Domed Reading Room, State Library
of Victoria (Image: Random Photons blog)

From Book to Building: Architecture and Design from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century
(Instructor: Harriet Edquist)

Palladio’s treatise I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture, 1570) was one of the most influential pattern books in European architectural history, setting out rules for architectural design that were transported across the globe and had currency for three centuries. In the nineteenth century Owen Jones’s treatise The Grammar of Ornament (1856) similarly set the fashion for books on design reform.

Drawing on the State Library’s rich collection of architecture and design publications from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century, this course will introduce participants not only to the histories of these books and their authors but also how they influenced some of Melbourne’s most iconic buildings and their interiors.

Harriet Edquist is professor of Architectural History and Director of the RMIT Design Archives at RMIT University. She was curator of the exhibition 'Free, Secular and Democratic: Building the Public Library 1853-1913', at the Murdoch Gallery, State Library of Victoria, 2013-2014.

The Paper Museum: Opening Up Natural History Illustration
(Instructor: John Kean)

The desire to better understand the world through the examination of animals at close range has driven scientific discovery since the Renaissance. The images created over the centuries and preserved in precious volumes comprise a vast ‘paper museum’. From Robert Hooke’s humble flea, as seen through a compound microscope in 1665, to the ‘double elephant’ folios of John James Audubon, rare books provide intimate access to the great minds of science and art.

The State Library's collection encompasses scientific treatises, taxonomic monographs and lavish folios. The volumes reveal the story of exploration, colonisation and scientific advance, as well as shining light on the world's biological diversity. This course will take participants through the history of scientific illustration, while focusing on particular classes of animal, geographic regions and printing techniques. Participants will also have the opportunity to learn directly from contemporary illustrators who maintain time-honoured techniques, with a contemporary twist.

John Kean is currently undertaking a PhD in art history at the University of Melbourne. He is the curator of the touring exhibition 'The Art of Science: remarkable natural history illustrations from Museum Victoria'.

The Poetics of Printing on the Iron Hand-Press
(Instructor: Caren Florence)

Participants in this course will combine the mind, hand and eye with a classic printing process to explore the physical qualities of text. They will experience hand-rolling both wood and metal type and printing on fine papers with an iron hand-press. They will learn to use the type creatively, operate the press safely and control the ink when rolling both small typefaces and large surfaces. The emphasis will be on text as image, with poetry as the main focus.

Caren Florance is a Canberra-based printer. She teaches book arts and letterpress at the Australian National University School of Art and operates the private press Ampersand Duck. Her printing output spans both traditional and less structured textual works.

This course will be held at the Ancora Press studio at Monash University’s Caulfield campus.

Applications
Applications will close on Friday 6 December 2013. Due to the rare and valuable nature of the materials that students will have access to, numbers are strictly limited, and early application is encouraged. Courses will proceed if sufficient applications have been received by Friday 22 November 2013 (to give interstate and overseas participants time to make travel arrangements).

All applications will be acknowledged upon receipt (preferably by email), and all applicants will be notified of their selection or otherwise in December.

Fees
The fee for each course is A$750. Successful applicants will receive a tax invoice and must pay the full fee by Monday 16 December 2013, by credit card (Visa or MasterCard) or cheque. Confirmation of your place will be made upon receipt of payment.

Further information, along with application form, will shortly appear on the State Library of Victoria website.

For more information, email rbss[@]slv.vic.gov.au.


↧
Viewing all 73 articles
Browse latest View live
Search