The Private Library

The Short Story and The Private Library (Part II)

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow....  Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Folks who do not collect a particular author in depth often are less tolerant of short stories that are not among an author's best work.  Accordingly, instead of buying a book of short stories that are all by a single author (such as Irving), they may buy instead anthologies that reflect the "best" work done in this form in a particular genre...

   

...or, they may buy anthologies of short stories that have been honored with a particular prize...

   

...or, they may buy anthologies of short stories that encompass literary traditions with which they are largely unfamiliar:

     

Folks who collect illustrated books may prefer collections of short stories published by the likes of The Folio Society...

...The Limited Editions Club, or any number of private presses.  The image below, via L. W. Currey, is from H. P. Lovecraft's stillborn first book of fiction, consisting of the seven gatherings printing the story The Shunned House (despite the title page, not actually printed by The Recluse Press until 1928):

Many authors have been honored for their short stories.  In fact, many authors are far better known (or at least as well known) for their short stories as for their work in other literary forms.  Among numerous masters of the short story who come immediately to mind are Kōbō Abe, Borges, Cheever, Cortázar, de Maupassant, Hemingway, O'Connor, O. Henry, Poe, Prus, Twain, Wodehouse, Woolf -- the list could be extended many times over. 

As good as these authors were, though, perhaps none made the short story his own as much as the Russian physician who also became one of the world's greatest dramatists....

The Short Story and The Private Library (Part I)

Just why it should have happened, or why it should have happened just when it did, he could not, of course, possibly have said; nor perhaps could it even have occurred to him to ask. The thing was above all a secret, something to be preciously concealed from Mother and Father; and to that very fact it owed an enormous part of its deliciousness. It was like a peculiarly beautiful trinket to be carried unmentioned in one’s trouser-pocket-a rare stamp, an old coin, a few tiny gold links found trodden out of shape on the path in the park, a pebble of carnelian, a sea shell distinguishable from all others by an unusual spot or stripe-and, as if it were any one of these, he carried around with him everywhere a warm and persistent and increasingly beautiful sense of possession. Nor was it only a sense of possession-it was also a sense of protection. It was as if, in some delightful way, his secret gave him a fortress, a wall behind which he could retreat into heavenly seclusion. This was almost the first thing he had noticed about it-apart from the oddness of the thing itself-and it was this that now again, for the fiftieth time, occurred to him, as he sat in the little schoolroom....  Conrad Aiken, Silent Snow, Secret Snow (1934)

Given the tremendous demands on one's time in modern industrialized societies, we have always thought it interesting that more book collectors do not have a number of collections of short stories on their bookshelves.  This literary form, born of oral storytelling traditions, is less complex, with fewer characters and plot devices, and appears far better suited to the pace of modern life, than its wordier cousins, novels and novellas.  Short stories are just the right length for consumption during a subway ride, or a break during a hectic day, or the hour before dawn when one's household (hopefully) is still abed:

     

Short story collections have been published for a wide range of authors.  Among the many literary worthies who have produced exceptional work in this form are such well-known authors as Honoré de Balzac, Heinrich Böll, and Haruki Murakami:

     

Of course, not every short story in such collections is (to use baseball parlance) a "home run."  This is not a problem if one is collecting everything written by a particular favorite author.  As we shall see in tomorrow's post, though, some folks are much more selective....

When Genres Go Bad...at The Private Library

Ian McCullough is neck-deep in troubles.... As a half-mortal descendant of Faeries, he's a Guardian, sworn to protect both the mortals of this world and the Portals leading to the Faerie Realm. After six hundred years, he's confident he knows what to expect in just about every situation and exactly how to handle it. But he never counted on a woman like Sarah showing up in his life; a woman who intrigues and charms him. A woman who turns out to be of Faerie descent herself, although she has no idea of her heritage and no belief in any Otherworld beings....

Used to be, a reader could pick up a book with a fairy on the cover and be pretty sure they were getting a fantasy.  If they picked up a book with a ray gun on the cover, they could reliably infer that they were getting a book of science fiction.  If they picked up a book with a man and woman locked in an amorous embrace on the front cover, one could be pretty sure one was holding a romance. 

However, as the promo above (for Melissa Mayhue's Highland Guardian) suggests, romance nowadays is likely to be mixed up with fantasy, or science fiction, or the western, or a mystery...and vice versa:

   

So common has this sort of cross-genre fiction become that organizations now exist for writers that seek to cater specifically to fans of such "crossed genres"--e.g., Time Travel Romance Writers; Paranormal Romance Writers; The Aether Guild of Writers (for steampunk writers ... see titles depicted below); and so on:

   

Is the plain old SciFi book a thing of the past?  Will the purity of "the western" remain sacrosanct?  How mysterious will mysteries be if they get mashed up with romance or fantasy?

Perhaps genres, as presently constituted, are too stultifying to contain the brave new worlds of fiction that readers are likely to encounter in years to come.

Your thoughts...?

The Quion, the Chase, the Furniture and The Private Library

Folks who collect books that were printed prior to the advent of steam powered presses, computers and the like often have no real idea of what printing a page of a book actually entailed in centuries past. They know that such printed pages are often very attractive (such as Aldus Manutius' 1499 edition of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the copy below held by the University of Glasgow)...

...and most such collectors have at least a vague idea of how such pages actually were placed and printed on a press (the image below, of printing via an early screw press, is via Wikipedia):

Many such collectors will even know that such printing required metal type that had been cast by hand (the image below is via Discern Communications)...

...but they are less likely to know how such metal type actually was "put together" so the page of a book could be printed.

Fortunately, this is easily explained if one has a good illustration.  As explained by the good folks at Bedplate Press (from whence the image below also derives),

A rectangular metal frame called a chase was the basis of printing for many years. The type was placed on a flat surface called a stone and clamped into postition.

Th[e] photograph shows the bottom right hand corner of a chase into which type - in this case lines of type (sometimes called slugs) - spaced with various pieces of "furniture" has been clamped.

Furniture was normally wood but sometimes strips of metal were used. Quoins (pronounced "coins") were used to secure the whole assembly. Sometimes two wedges were set against each other to tighten the forme and to keep the furniture parallel to the side of the chase.

In the picture spring loaded quoins are being used. When a quoin spanner is turned in the threaded part of the quoin (the circle with the square recess) the two sections spread to apply pressure to the furniture to keep the whole assembly firm and secure. Turning the quoin spanner in the opposite direction slackens the pressure off and releases the furniture and type.

Once the type was arranged in its final printing position, the level was checked and all quoins were tightened up. The whole chase, complete with its contents, was then transferred to the printing press. In this form the chase and contents were called a "forme".  [Ed. note: in the image of the screw press, above, the paper lies atop the forme.]

When done exceptionally well, this allowed the printer to produce some extraordinary pages, such as this. (Simon de Colines was one of the finest printers of the 16th century, as seen from this title, which is the 2nd edition of a work first printed in 1536.  The image below is from the copy held by the Cary Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology):

The Night Life of Trees and The Private Library

India's fifth most populous city -- The City Formerly Known as Madras, but now known as Chennai -- sits on India's Coromandel Coast next to the Bay of Bengal. India's 2nd largest exporter of software and IT services, and the headquarters of the Tamil film industry, Chennai probably is not where one would first think to look for handmade books.  Yet, within this aggressively modern city there beats the heart of an ancient soul, personified for many collectors of fine press books by the tiny collective of authors, artists and book artisans known as Tara Books.

For 15 years, Tara Books has quietly been producing some of the most interesting, and certainly most affordable, fine press books available in the world marketplace:

   

Drawing on India's rich tradition of tribal and folk art, the publisher manages to produce each year a small number of titles that are hand-silkscreened and handbound by a tiny commune of printers that got its start in a small thatched hut...

that has since moved into more modern quarters:

Tara has managed to publish an astonishing array of handmade books over the past decade and a half -- everything from children's titles to folk art titles to re-interpretations of classic Western literature:

     

Fine press collectors are not the only folks who finally are waking up to what Tara has accomplished.  Oedipus the King, for example, has won multiple awards.  Beasts of India and The Very Hungry Lion also were published to much acclaim, as were several other titles.

Astonishingly, not a single one of these handmade books costs much more than the far more typical poorly printed, poorly bound modern hardback:

Because Chennai is, as noted above, a center for information technology in India, one need not despair if Tara's titles (which now also include non-handmade books, as well as postcards) are not carried by one's local independent bookseller.  Tara has an excellent website from which collectors can order any title in stock; a blog for folks who want to keep track of the publisher's latest doings; and a media gallery where you can see how the publisher actually produces many of its titles....

Piratical Literature and The Private Library: Part VIII

One could spend a lifetime collecting every piece of literature that features pirates. Much of this literature is genre fiction, and much of it (like much genre fiction in general) can at times be depressingly formulaic. The best one can do is survey as wide a swath of authors as possible, in hopes of finding the handful who are consistently able to rise above the constraints of the genre within which they write.

Accordingly, this final post in our series on piratical literature is not one of recommendations, but rather a survey of what's available in the marketplace.  One's own literary tastes must ultimately determine the titles that get added to one's own bookshelves.

Most piratical literature continues to fall into the realm of historical fiction.  Much of this literature takes as its focus the Golden Age of Piracy, but not all of it.  And some of it has been written by folks better known for other careers:

   

Pirates abound in genres where you might least expect to find them ... science fiction, for example:

  

And pirates have long been attractive to devotees of romance fiction.  Some titles, such as the title below right, manage to combine romance fiction with another genre (in this case, science fiction):

   

Children's literature is filled with tales of pirates, from the fairly simple (below left), to the fairly sophisticated (below right):

   

Finally, if it's the Golden Age of Piracy that you're interested in...well, matey, ye had best have lots of bookshelves....

   

Piratical Literature and The Private Library: Part VII

The piratical fiction that we've covered in our last two posts is fine as far as it goes, but there is much more to the world of pirate fiction than these old stand-bys....

The American sea story, as we noted in our ten-part series on sea literature, was invented by an author better known for his land-based tales of derring-do set in the early American frontier.  But James Fenimore Cooper, whose The Pilot inaugurated sea literature in the USA, also penned a fine piece of piratical literature in The Red Rover, a tale that predates (by several decades) the tales spun by Stevenson, Barrie and Sabitini.  Probably the most theatrical of Cooper's many novels, this tale of a noble outcast forced into a life of piracy is also notable as one of the first literary tales of any type to treat African-Americans in a non-stereotypical fashion.  The work has been reprinted numerous times:

  

A one-time puppeteer, pirates Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard, voodoo and the Fountain of Youth are just a few of the elements at play in Tim Powers' still relatively unknown dark piratical fantasy, On Stranger Tides.  Collectors can opt for either the original 1987 edition (below left, still widely available from used bookstores), one of several recent paperback reprints (below right), or an audiobook (published just this year):

  

Powers' book is unlikely to be unknown much longer, as Disney has optioned the book for use in a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  That the rest of the world may finally be waking up to the title is indicated by recent translations of the work into Croatian, Czech, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish.

If you have a well-refined sense of the absurd, you'll likely enjoy George MacDonald Fraser's comic send-up of all things piratical, The Pyrates.  The creator of the immensely popular Flashman adventure novels, Fraser pokes fun at virtually every piratical trope and stereotype you've ever encountered.  As one reviewer put it, it's sort of a The Naked Gun-meets-Buccaneers of America.  First published in 1983, the title has been reprinted several times:

  

Finally, of all the "re-mixes" of Treasure Island that have been penned over the past century or so, perhaps none has "pulled it off" quite so well as Björn Larsson's 1995 homage, Long John Silver: The True and Eventful History of My Life of Liberty and Adventure as a Gentleman of Fortune and Enemy of Mankind (trans. Tom Geddes). Among the book's many successful conceits is an episode in which Silver accompanies author Daniel Defoe to London's Execution Dock to watch a pirate hanging:

   

Although most fictional works about piracy fall broadly under the heading of historical fiction, the bad boy characteristics so beloved of novelists--the flouting of accepted social conventions, disregard for authority, etc.--have proven enormously attractive to storytellers across a wide variety of genres.  As we shall see in tomorrow's post, the last in this series, pirates crop up in everything from romances to science fiction--their shirts attractively ripped, their muscles bulging, their long hair flying, as they sail the dark oceans of the world, or the even darker oceans of eternal night....

Piratical Literature and The Private Library: Part VI

Some twenty years after Stevenson published Treasure Island, another work of long fiction was published that would have an outsized impact on public perceptions of piracy.

In 1902 Scottish author James Matthew Barrie penned a novel for adults, The Little White Bird, which introduced to the public a character named Peter Pan.  In 1904, Barrie added pirates to the mix, and Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, became the hit of the London stage.  In 1906, the Peter Pan portion of The Little White Bird was novelized as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, and in 1911 the 1904 stage play was novelized as Peter and Wendy (the form in which the work is known to most modern readers):

   

A somewhat complex publishing history for a tale that has introduced millions of readers to a ticking crocodile and a pirate captain who has a hook for a hand.  Not just any captain, either--Captain James Hook supposedly was Blackbeard's boatswain and was the only man that Long John Silver ever feared.

Like Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, Captain Hook and Tick Tock have long since passed into the cultural memory of millions.  In part, this is due to the extensive reprint history of the 1911 novelization (which nowadays is frequently titled, simply, Peter Pan):

   

Like Treasure Island, the work's influence has been considerably extended by its association with some truly great book illustrators (most notably Arthur Rackham, below left) and paper engineers like Robert Sabuda (below right):

   

This influence has been promulgated as well as by the numerous TV, film, radio and stage adaptations that have taken place over the past century.  Like Treasure Island, Barrie's creation also has spawned a minor industry of prequels and sequels:

   

Then, there's an entire universe of merchandising tie-ins: peanut butter, bakery goods, a wide array of collectibles (not just the Disney stuff), and so on and so on and so on.

Much of the influence that both Peter Pan and Treasure Island exert on public perceptions of piracy must be attributed to the fact that most folks first encounter these titles when children, a time when many of our most enduring perceptions of the world are formed.  The third influential title, however, was written specifically for adults, and because most folks rarely encounter this title until they reach their teens, its influence, while quite substantial, is not nearly as far-reaching as that of the two titles mentioned above.  Unlike the previous two titles, this work also is largely based upon real pirates and real events.

It only took Rafael Sabatini 25 years of writing to become an overnight success. That success came in 1921, with the publication of Scaramouche (with what is arguably the best opening line in all of literature: He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad).  Scaramouche was followed almost immediately (in 1922) by the even more successful Captain Blood, Sabatini's great and enduring work of piratical literature:

Captain Blood is, as mentioned above, fiction for adults, with a main character that is far more nuanced that those in the two titles previously mentioned.  Cindy Vallar, whose website Pirates and Privateers is one of the most comprehensive available, has an excellent article about the historical background of Captain Blood that is a must read for devotees of this title.  Like Treasure Island and Peter Pan, Sabatini's great work has been reprinted many times:

   

Sabatini followed up the success of Captain Blood with two books that contain short stories about the further adventures of Captain Blood.  The first of these (below right) is considered by many critics to be even better written that the original novel:

As will be obvious from the above images, these later short story collections, like the original novel, have been reprinted many times.

Hollywood, too, has helped extend Captain Blood's influence on public perceptions of piracy, as have comic books and radio:

   

Of course, to say that a particular title had had an outsized influence on public perceptions of piracy is not to say that such title is either the best-written work about piracy or the most accurate in its depiction of piracy.  As we shall see in tomorrow's post, there are any number of titles that piracy buffs feel warrant such accolades far more than the titles we have examined thus far....

Piratical Literature and The Private Library: Part V

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand- barrow -- a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest --Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" 

in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum....

Just as a couple of non-fiction titles (Exquemelin and Johnson) had an outsized influence on public perceptions of piracy, so too did three fictional titles have an outsized influence on such perceptions. However, because what we recognize as the modern novel is a fairly late development in literature, what arguably are the most influential fictional works about piracy were penned much later than their non-fiction counterparts.

The first substantial fictional works about piracy appeared early in the 18th century. Among these may be counted such works as Adrian van Broeck's The Life and Adventures of Capt. John Avery (1709, which DNB pointedly notes is [f]iction, with scarcely a substratum of fact) and Daniel Defoe's The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton (1720, notable for its depiction of the homosexual relationship between the eponymous hero and his religious mentor).  First Editions of both titles are rare and expensive, although the Defoe title has since been reprinted several times:

   

Apart from long-form fiction, other early works that featured pirates included poems, such as Lord Byron's The Corsair (1814, so popular that its initial printing of 10,000 copies sold out the first day of publication); short stories, such as Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug (1843, a tale which not only involved Captain Kidd, but which also popularized cryptography and heavily influenced RLS); and Gilbert & Sullivan's 1879 comic opera, The Pirates of Penzance (the image below right is from the Harold Kanthor Collection at the University of Rochester):

   

As popular as these works were, none of them had the influence on public perceptions of piracy that three later fictional works would exert.

Treasure Island, the most influential work of piratical fiction ever written, began life as a serial publication (not unlike Poe's Gold Bug, one of several influences on Stevenson's own tale). Serialized in the British children's magazine Young Folks in 17 weekly installments from 1881-1882 (under the title The Sea Cook; or, Treasure Island: A Story for Boys), the tale made its first appearance in book form in 1883.  (The map, below left, is from the First Edition novel held by the University of South Carolina.  The illustration by Edward A. Wilson, below right, is from the Limited Editions Club version of 1941, held by the same institution):

   

Robert Louis Stevenson's first successful novel, Treasure Island's heady mix of tropical islands, buried treasure and one-legged pirates has spawned so many imitators that it's become well-nigh fruitless to try and keep track of them all. Perhaps more importantly for book collectors, the title has been well served by some of the best book illustrators of all time.  Among some of the better-known artists associated with the title are N. C. Wyeth (below left) and Frank Godwin (below right):

   

The influence of this great work of piratical literature is only partly accounted for by its numerous reprints.  The title also has been much beloved by Hollywood (over 50 different TV and film versions to date), by radio and theater (over two dozen major adaptations to date), and a wide range of authors have tried their hands at penning both prequels and sequels to the work....

   

Piratical Literature and The Private Library: Part IV

In the 1690s, successful attacks against Muslim and East Indian ships in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea led to a second burst of activity during the Golden Age of Piracy. This so-called Pirate Round drew many pirates away from the Caribbean and the Americas (while many others became privateers).  It was this second burst of piratical activity that saw the rise (and fall) of the notorious William Kidd.  

Ironically, Kidd had originally been hired to rid several locales of pirates.  And his own turn to piracy produced depredations that were far less destructive and far less lucrative that that of most of his well-known contemporaries (historians continue to disagree about whether Kidd should be characterized as mostly pirate or mostly privateer). Much of the mythology that has arisen about Kidd is due to the fact that, unlike most of his fellow pirates, Kidd was caught, tried and executed.  His trial and execution were widely reported and keenly followed by an attentive public, as were reports that he had left behind buried treasure (a tale that has grown considerably in the re-telling):

   

The final burst of piratical activity generally associated with the Golden Age of Piracy began towards the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, which left a great many seamen idle at the same time that cross-Atlantic shipping was beginning to recover. During the decade or so from roughly 1716-1726, the Indian Ocean, West African coast, eastern coast of North America and the Caribbean all experienced a major resurgence of piratical activity.

This era saw the rise (and, usually, fall) of some of the best-known pirates of all: Edward Teach (aka Edward Thatch, Blackbeard); Anne Bonney; Calico Jack Rackham; Bartholomew Roberts (aka Black Bart, the most successful of all pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy):

   

The primary source for many of the legends and myths that have grown up surrounding these and other well-known pirates was published in 1724 under the title A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates. Authored by one "Capt. Charles Johnson," this book -- and Exquemelin's Buccaneers of America -- remain, over 300 years after their initial publication, the two most influential works about piracy ever published. (The image of Black Bart, below, is from the First Edition of Johnson's work held by the New York Public Library:)

Originally published in two volumes, A General History is not only the foundational text for the biographies of pirates like Blackbeard, Anne Bonney and Calico Jack Rackham, it also is the originary source of concepts like "buried treasure" and the "Jolly Roger."  Too bad we still have no idea who really wrote it!  

For a long time, historians thought that Capt. Charles Johnson might be a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe, though this idea is no longer given much credence.  In any event, the author's accounts have mostly held up to historical scrutiny, though two or three biographies are believed to be almost certainly fictional. The title has been reprinted numerous times:

   

In 2007, Pickering and Chatto published a four-volume set, British Piracy in the Golden Age: History and Interpretation, 1660–1730.  Folks interested in a truly comprehensive review of the Golden Age of Piracy will almost certainly want to add this set to their bookshelves, despite its great expense (about U.S. $625.00). Volume 1 reprints a number of rare, early accounts of piracy during the period; Volumes 2 & 3 reprint a range of actual trial proceedings for piracy, with accompanying legal history and commentary; Volume 4 records a number of "dying speeches," ballads and fiction to which this age of piracy gave rise.

Of course, as noted in previous posts in this series, other centuries and other parts of the world have not been devoid of piracy, and piracy continues to challenge even our presumably modern world:

   

On Monday we begin an examination of some of piracy's fictional spawn....

Piratical Literature and The Private Library: Part III

In 1897, philosopher and historian John Fiske observed that [a]t no other time in the world's history has the business of piracy thriven so greatly as in the seventeenth century and the first part of the eighteenth. Its golden age may be said to have extended from about 1650 to about 1720 .  It is this brief, 7-decade period to which most folks refer when they talk about pirates and piracy, even though there were in fact three quite distinct outbreaks of piracy during this timeframe.  And it is this period that gave rise to two books that would have a long-lasting influence on public perceptions of piracy.

The first piratical outburst, a roughly three-decade period (ca. 1650-1680), involved Anglo-French seaman on Hispaniola and Tortuga undertaking piracy in response to Spanish attempts to wipe out their native food supply.  (The term most commonly applied to these pirates, buccaneers, is derived from the Arawak term bukan, a type of grill used to smoke meat.) Because this piracy was attractive to the British Crown as a low-budget way to wage war against Spain, many of these pirates wound up becoming privateers.  It was this period of piracy that gave rise to Montbars the Exterminator (Daniel Montbars).

It was towards the end of this period (1678) that a French writer and former buccaneer, Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin, published in Amsterdam one of the most influential books about piracy ever written, De Americaensche Zee-Roovers.  Translated into Spanish in 1681, the title was translated into English in 1684. (The English translation was based on the Spanish, not the Dutch, edition.  Shortly thereafter [also 1684], there appeared a revision of the English edition which sought to clean up the image of the British privateer Henry Morgan, corrected from the errors of the original, by the relations of some English gentlemen, that then resided in those parts.)  A French edition followed in 1686.  

No book of the 17th century in any language (so one observer noted, and as we shall see for ourselves shortly) was ever the parent of so many imitations and the source of so much fiction.  The title pages depicted below (the original Dutch edition, left, and its English translation, right) are courtesy of Stephen Gertz:

   

Although this influential title has been reprinted far too many times to recount (witness the recent reprint above), many collectors prefer one of the earliest editions due to the many excellent engravings contained therein (several of which are foldouts).  Despite the fact that Exquemelin often confuses his dates, he is considered to be, on the whole, a perfectly honest witness, and his accounts of such transactions as fell within his own experience are corroborated by the official narratives....

Piratical Literature and The Private Library: Part II

Over the centuries, piracy has arisen in maritime locales around the world, usually for the same few reasons.  Two of the reasons most commonly advanced (even today) are abject poverty and politics.  (Historically, piracy has not concerned itself primarily with gold or jewels.  Far more often, the prize has been ... foodstuffs ... slaves ... or, most highly prized of all by some pirates, medicine.)

Even the best piratical literature frequently has difficulty separating fact from fiction.  To begin with, pirate did not necessarily mean the same thing in ancient Greece or Rome that it would mean over a thousand years later.  Furthermore, history (as that tired old saying goes) usually is written by "the victors," and the victors' agenda most often has been to paint piracy in as unflattering a light as possible. Fortunately, as we shall see shortly, several accounts of piracy survive which were written by pirates themselves, so it is possible to restore, however tenuously and sporadically, some sort of balance to the historical record.

Although printing came to Western Europe around the middle of the 15th century, it was not until the early 17th century that books about piracy began to appear with any regularity.  (Printed proclamations against piracy are known much earlier.  The British Library, for example, holds a copy of an anti-piracy proclamation of Elizabeth I dated 7 July 1564.  It's an excellent example of "the pot calling the kettle black," since Sir Francis Drake later would act as a government-sanctioned pirate, aka privateer, for this very same queen.)

In 1603, Minucio Minucci published a history of the Uscocs, "Christian refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina who established themselves in the fortress of Clissa near Spalatro (Split) in Dalmatia during the early years of the 16th century, and from there waged war against the Turks. Eventually they were moved by the Austrians to Zengg in Croatia where they turned to piracy, preying not only on the Ottoman fleet, but on all the commerce of the Adriatic." (Antiquariat INLIBRIS Gilhofer Nfg. GmbH, which happens to have a copy of this history currently on offer, notes that Minucci was "Venetian envoy at the archducal Court of Graz and Archbishop of Zara oder Zadar in Dalmatia."  Although six editions of this title were published in three languages between 1603 and 1683, only a half dozen copies, in toto, are known to be held by libraries.)

Many of the earliest books about piracy dealt with the dastardly villains getting their comeuppance.  In 1609, for example, a trial proceeding was published that specified several of these villains by name: The liues, apprehensions, arraignments, and executions, of the 19. late pyrates: namely: Capt. Harris. Iennings. Longcastle. Downes. Haulsey. and their companies. As they were seuerally indited on St. Margrets Hill in Southwarke, on the 22. of December last, and executed the Fryday following. Several decades later, a similar trial proceeding was published that also did not hesitate to name names: An exact narrative of the tryals of the pyrates : And all the proceedings at the late goal-delivery of the Admiralty, held in the Old-Bayly, on Thursday and Saturday, the 7th. and 9th. of Jan. 1674/75. where eight persons were condemned to die: (viz.) Capt. George Cusacke alias, Dixon, alias, Smith. Gerrard Coundon. VVilliam Collingwood. Gerrard Stack. Henry Lovewell. Simon Harker. and Miles Fitz-Gerrard. For taking and robing two ships, viz. the Robert, neer the Fly: & the Ann, on the Dogger-sands. And John King, for taking and robbing a ship called the Palm-Tree; neer Harwich. As likewise the fineing of an Ostend captain 400l. and two of his officers 50l. a piece, for not strikeing sail to the Woolwich, one of his Majesties frigates. And many other circumstances there, very remarkable: the like court having not been held for many years before Printed in the year: 1675.

Charles Malloy, in his De Jure Maritimo et Navali: Or, A Treatise of Affairs Maritime and of Commerce, devoted two substantial chapters to the problems of piracy.  Published in twelve editions from 1676 until 1778, Malloy's work was the standard treatise on maritime law for over a century.  (The image below is of the 1722 edition, currently on offer from The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.  Modern print-on-demand reprints of this title are widely available.)

None of these or similar books, though, shaped public perceptions of piracy as significantly as a title first published in Amsterdam in 1678....

Piratical Literature and The Private Library: Part I

Ever since penning, some six months ago, our ten-part series about the literature of the sea, we have had numerous requests to expand upon our very brief mention of piratical literature (not to be confused with pirated editions).  Of course, what most folks are interested in is not nonfiction works about modern piracy, but rather the many fictionalized, usually historically inaccurate (i.e., romanticized), titles that abound.

Because the field of piratical literature is far larger than most folks realize, a simple division between nonfiction and fictional titles does not even begin to do this literature justice.  Accordingly, it will be necessary to examine piratical literature over the course of several consecutive posts.

We begin with a definition: piracy usually refers to criminal acts (robbery, violence, etc.) that are directed by private parties on vessels at sea against private parties aboard other vessels at sea (in the modern era this definition has been extended to include similar acts committed aboard aircraft).  The emphasis here is on private parties, since such acts also may be committed at the behest of a sovereign government, a type of sanctioned commercial raiding known as privateering. Our focus in these posts is on piracy, not privateering.  (Although, as we shall discover, many pirates also were privateers and vice-versa.)

Piracy is believed to have existed for as long as humanity has engaged in maritime commerce.  Many citizens of the ancient world engaged in piracy, and some early civilizations were especially well known for the pirates they harbored (e.g., Illyria). In 67 BCE, the Roman Senate passed the Lex Gabinia, one of the earliest known efforts of a sovereign state to legislate against piracy (and, unknowingly at the time, an excellent early illustration of the Law of Unintended Consequences).

The Middle Ages saw the rise of Viking piracy along the coast of Europe (a redundancy, since the old Norse word vīkingr means "pirate"), Muslim piracy in the Mediterranean and Chinese piracy in East Asia. Piracy arose in many other areas as well.  Historical accounts mention prominently the Narentines, the Maniots, the Haida and Tlingit tribes off the western coast of North America, the Wokou in Japan, and many more besides.  Fine historical accounts have been written about many of these.

The books depicted below (along with those depicted above) will give you some basic historical information that you may find useful as you go about constructing a private library around this theme.  There are many more such titles, as we shall see over the next few days....

 

Oak Knoll Fest XVI and The Private Library

As we noted in a previous series of posts, if you collect books about the book arts (printing, typography, bookbinding, etc.), there are three shows that you really do not want to miss if you can help it.  One of those shows comes up less than three weeks from now. 

Begun in 1994 by Oak Knoll Press (the largest American publisher and distributor of books about the book arts), Oak Knoll Fest was held annually through 2008.  It is now held every two years.  This year's Fest is scheduled for Friday-Sunday, 1-3 October 2010.

The Fest is held in the charming little town of New Castle, Delaware.  Founded in 1651 by the Dutch West India Company, New Castle sits alongside the Delaware River, at the head of Delaware Bay.  The town has a fascinating and complex history, and Fest goers will find much of interest here besides the Fest itself.  To top it off, New Castle is but a short drive from a number of major metropolitan areas.

Oak Knoll Fest can be a bit overwhelming for folks who are unfamiliar with the diversity and great beauty of fine press printing. Fortunately, one of the Fest's major features has always been a very strong educational component, and this year's Fest is no different. Among the educational features on tap for this year's Fest are a presentation on private press typography by the distinguished typographer Russell Maret and a symposium that will explore the "tensions" between fine press books and artists' books. Maret's presentation will highlight the annual meeting of the Fine Press Book Association, which we have written about previously.  (Full disclosure: your faithful blogger sits on FPBA's Board of Directors.)

As at Fests' past, Oak Knoll will extend to Fest participants an opportunity to buy any title available from Oak Knoll itself for a 20% discount (reason enough for most folks to make the trip!).  The most significant reason for attending Oak Knoll Fest, though, is the opportunity to purchase some of the world's most beautiful books directly from the folks who made them.  (Many of these descendants of William Morris offer substantial discounts--30% or more-to subscribers.)

What are you waiting for...?!

  

Swashes and The Private Library

Books often are unillustrated.  Illustrations are expensive--the artist(s) or photographer(s) has to be paid; rights to the artwork/photography have to be negotiated; plates might have to be printed separately (for a variety of reasons); and so on.  

Thus, book designers sometimes seek to enliven the pages of books not with illustrations, but through their typographic choices.  One such choice is to adopt swash lettering for a title page, or for the beginning of a chapter or paragraph.

As Crispin Elsted points out in his Brief Glossary of Essential Printing Terms (see the link under Glossaries of Specialized Book Terms on the left-hand side of this blog), swash letters are [s]pecial sorts, almost always in italic, with kerned flourishes or long curving tails.  The image below (by way of Wikipedia) demonstrates the difference between swash (red extensions) and regular (black) lettering:

A rather elaborate example of swash lettering can be seen in this 1540 title by Gerardus Mercator (part of the Gift of Lessing J. Rosenwald to The Library of Congress):

Everett R. Currier (a descendant of the founder of Currier & Ives), in his 1919 article The Origin and Use of Swash Letters (recently archived by Typocurious), cautioned book designers that swash letters should always be used sparingly:

 [t]here are two excellent reasons for the very sparing use of swash letters, and it is hard to say which is the more important. one is appropriateness: when are they in good taste and when not? They are surely out of place in anything of a plain, practical nature, such as financial or industrial work, where the Caslon face itself is eminently appropriate. Nor does their use demand consistency. If there are two R’s in a word, it is not necessary that both should have the long tail. Nor does the use of one swash character call necessarily for the rest of the set.

The other reason for the limiting of their use is the “squash” quality mentioned above, which makes them mechanically a nuisance, and a page certainly does not look well sprinkled with broken-tailed letters. They should be used with restraint, both for artistic and for mechanical reasons.

Swash lettering is often used for titling on modern paperbacks and the dustjackets of modern hardcovers, as seen below:

   

Nor is the use of such lettering unknown on both title pages and elsewhere:

The above, however, proves Currier's dictum: with swash lettering, less is more....

Guest Editorial: The Frankfurt School and The Private Library

Many thanks to Linda Hedrick for today's Guest Editorial, which is an extension of her previous Guest Editorials about Marxism and Critical Theory....

***********

Marxism is based on concepts that are wonderful in their idealism, but completely impractical in practice.  That is why in the decades since these concepts were first espoused philosophers and intellectuals have been tinkering with them (and I imagine will continue to do so) in an effort to make them more practical.

Founded in 1923, The Frankfurt School was derived from the work of G.W.F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx.  It arose due to disenchantment with Western Marxism.  Founded as the Institut fur Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research), or ISR, by Max Horkheimer, Friedrich Pollock, Felix J. Weil, and Carl Grünberg, it was moved to Columbia University in 1933 when the Nazis seized power.  It remained in New York City until 1941, and then was reestablished in Frankfurt in 1950.  Although there was no common doctrine among its members, nor was there intended to be, it was established as a center for neo-Marxist research.  The members' diverse contributions led to the development of critical theory.

Horkheimer was its director from 1931-1958.  The major members were Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm and, later, Jürgen Habermas.  These thinkers’ intent was to present a version of Marxism without the materialism and positivism. In Europe at this time, the members not only had to address the issues of Nazism and fascism, but also watched as Soviet Marxism turned into Stalinism.  The fact that Communism was not embraced by the West’s working classes was also a factor.   The school was a major influence on radical movements of the 60s, including the New Left.

As with Marxism, this is a multivalent, complex subject, and neither I, nor anyone else, can possibly do it justice in just a few paragraphs. So let’s look at some books that would be valuable if one wished to collect books on this important school of Western intellectual thought.  There are undoubtedly great works on the subject in other languages, especially German, but, alas, I am the typical American monolinguist.

The Dialectical Imagination:  A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923-1950 by Martin Jay is a good overview and gives an authoritative overview of the Frankfurt School and especially of the circumstances within which it arose.  Although first published almost thirty years ago, this title remains a classic.

The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, edited by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, is a series of essays that are a good introduction to the works of the members of the Frankfurt School.  As with most critical theory books, a dictionary (particularly Ian Buchanan’s Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory) would be most helpful.  The introductions to each essay can be more challenging than the essays themselves.

The Frankfurt School:  Its History, Theories, and Political Significance by Rolf Wiggershaus (translated by Michael Robertson) is a chronological account of the Frankfurt School that focuses on the changing politics and intellectual development of the School. This book is concerned more with the development of theories, including those of some of the lesser-known members, and it is peppered with brief biographies and accounts of various events during the School's development.

One of the concepts associated with the Frankfurt School is the denkbild (plural denkbilder), or notion (literally “think picture”.) This is a short narrative prose piece, a brief snapshot of insights. In Thought-Images:  Frankfurt School Writers’ Reflections from Damaged Life, Gerhard Richter explores the political, literary, cultural and philosophical ramifications of this literary genre. This book offers an excellent way to “peel away” the layers of these writers' discourse, and even newbies will find it to be a good introduction to the School's intellectual tradition.

Life in pre-Nazi Germany was intellectually stimulating in a variety of ways--not only was the ISR established, but the Bauhaus as well. While the above books offer an introduction to, and overview of, the Frankfurt School, a better understanding of the School's importance will come from reading the works of the members themselves. Viel Glück!

Hand-Colored Plates and The Private Library

Just as authors' holographic manuscripts are the closest physical connection that most book collectors are ever likely to have with deceased authors, so are hand-colored plates the closest physical connection that most book collectors are ever likely to have with deceased book illustrators.  

What many book collectors do not realize, however, is that most hand-colored plates were in fact not colored by the illustrators who drew or engraved the printed images, but rather were usually the work of an anonymous watercolorist who, more often than not, was a woman or child working in what was an early assembly-line process.  Moreover, hand-colored plates did not cease to be produced just because processes arose that could mechanically add color to printed plates.

As William Reese observes in an article about color-plate books produced for a 1999 exhibition of such books at The Grolier Club, up until the end of the 19th century

color in books represented luxury.  Although advances in technology made color plates steadily more accessible to a wider (and increasingly affluent) audience, there was never a time when color was cheap.  The big color plate books were extremely costly and only available to the rich.  The modest uses of color in gift books and the like were a small taste of the lavish life for the less affluent.  Book buyers wanted color and publishers strove to supply it. New methods steadily made color more affordable, primarily by substituting mechanical work for hand finishing, often at the cost of quality. The balance between the cost of production and the potential market largely determined what was published.

Hand-colored plates appear in books as early as the 15th century, as this plate from Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1499) makes clear:

Hand-coloring was applied to plates that featured woodcuts and wood engraving (such as those found in Yale's 1492 copy of Gaerde der suntheit, a Low German translation of the 1485 Gart der Gesundheit, the first printed illustrated herbal)...

 ...to plates that featured copperplate engraving (such as those found in Carl Jablonsky and Johann Herbst's Natursystem aller bekannten in- und ausländischen Insecten, published as 11 volumes of text and 10 volumes of plates, 1783-1804)...

 ...to plates that featured lithography (such as those found in E. M. Cotton's 1921 title, Illustrations of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Falkland Islands, London: L. Reeve & Co.)...

...to plates that featured aquatint (such as those found in Henry Ellis' Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China, Comprising a Correct Narrative of the Public Transactions of the Embassy, of the Voyage to and From China, and of the Journey From the Mouth of the Pei-Ho to the Return to Canton..., London: 1817)...

 ...to plates that featured steel engraving (such as those found in William Henry Bartlett's American Scenery, London: George Virtue, 1838-1840)...

Hand-colored plates feature in any number of books that have long been beloved by book collectors. As the above images suggest, many of the more notable of these are found among titles about travel, architecture, natural history and fashion.  Such books are very rare and very expensive when found complete and in anything approaching Fine condition.  

As we have noted in several previous posts about book illustration techniques, the reasons for this are twofold: (1) such books were very expensive to produce and thus were produced in limited quantities; (2) those limited quantities have been further reduced over the centuries by book breakers, who removed the plates from these books for resale as individual prints.

But all is not lost.  Inexpensive books with hand-colored plates are still available in the marketplace if one knows where to look.  Those publishers who sought to bring fine books to the masses--e.g., The Limited Editions Club--often published titles which featured plates that were hand-colored by the very illustrators who created the plates' images:

Many of these titles remain available in the marketplace for not much more than the cost of a few modern hardbacks....

Guest Editorial: Doin' that LibraryThing at The Private Library

We are deeply grateful to long-time contributor James Keeline for the following Guest Editorial....

*********** 

I've had an account on LibraryThing since 2007 but haven't used it much until this past week.  My wife and I organized a closet with many crates of books and wanted to keep track of these as well as more recent books to prevent us from buying duplicates.  Of course the next thought is cataloging all of the books in this system.  

In about a week I've added just under 2500 books.  I already had a USB "modified" CueCat scanner so entering the modern books with 978 bookland ISBN barcodes is fairly easy. Some paperbacks place the bookland barcode on the inside of the front cover.  A few hardcovers have them hidden on one of the jacket flaps:

When a book does not have a bookland barcode, the next best option is to manually enter the ISBN number.  In most cases this will bring up a matching book record if the appropriate data source is being used.  The three main ones are Amazon, OpenCat, and Library of Congress.  Amazon works best with a barcode scanner since many can be found with the ISBN-13 bookland barcodes.  LOC does not have this data even though many books can be found with ISBN-10 numbers manually entered.  LibraryThing does not yet automatically convert ISBN-13 to ISBN-10 when a data source only uses ISBN-10.  I hope this feature will be added in the future.

ISBNs (International Standard Book Number) began to be used around 1970. Immediately before that there was the SBN (Standard Book Number).  A 10-digit ISBN looks like this: 0-123-45678-9.

The dashes are helpful to break up the data into segments.  The first digit is a language group with 0 or 1 for English.  The next grouping is the publisher ID, assigned by a central agency like R.R. Bowker in the US.  This is followed by the book ID, assigned by the publisher.  The final number is a checksum digit where all of the other digits are added in a certain way to enable a system to validate the rest of the number entered.  The values for the checksum can be 0-9 or X:  Large publishers need lots of book numbers so they have short publisher ID numbers.  For example, very large publishers like Macmillan have two-digit publisher ID numbers.  This leaves them 6 digits for the book ID.  On the other hand, a local historical society might have a 7-digit publisher ID leaving only 1 digit for book IDs.  The size of a publisher can be a factor in how well they sell a book.  On average, larger publishers sell more copies of a book than smaller ones.  Of course, in computer records, the dashes are stripped away and this info is lost.

Some book ID numbers leave off the leading digit, usually a zero.  Hence, when manually entering some numbers it is sometimes necessary to add the 0 at the beginning.  This is related to the original SBN numbers which didn't have the language group digit.

If a book was printed in the US between 1940 and 1980 and does not have an ISBN, it may have a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) that looks something like 68-3027 (see the bottom right of the card below):

The digits before the dash are typically a year in the 20th century related to the copyright date for that edition.  On some books the year portion is a couple years after the copyright date.  The rest of the number after the dash can be 1 to 6 digits and they are generally assigned sequentially as the Library of Congress makes cards for the books based on the copyright deposit copies received.  Hence, with these numbers, it is generally possible to tell which of two books from the same copyright year were issued first and whether they were copyrighted together or with many weeks between.

When using the Library of Congress as a data source on LibraryThing, it is possible to look up books by LCCN.  This is the second-best option after ISBN because it matches books around a number instead of words in the author and title fields.

Older books need a search by things like author surname, a keyword (or two) from the title, and a keyword from the publisher imprint.  This helps to narrow down the selections.  You will be presented with a list of matches and you can select the one that is closest to your own copy.  Once selected you can "edit" the book to normalize the entry to your style, include tags and details you want, and select an existing or upload a new cover image.

Whenever possible I have tried to select the system image that most closely matches the book I have. Many books don't have images so I might have to find one online (eBay, Google image search, etc.) or make my own scan at 72 or 75 dpi:

    

We have a couple dozen major categories of books we collect so we have established "collections" in LibraryThing.  Some of these we have not yet populated.  There are also tags which can be added to any entry for phrases that are meaningful to the user.

When you enter a book, the system will tell you how many other copies are in the system. This is for the base title, not your particular edition.  Still, with it you can find other users with similar cataloged collections.  You can join groups of people who are interested in certain kinds of books.  You can even add a widget to your web site to show covers of books in your collections.

Since I use an iPhone, I was interested to see how the site performed in its browser.  The regular site works OK in Safari but it is not optimized for mobile browsing.  It does not even detect the mobile browser.  There is a separate LibraryThing URL for mobile browsing.

This is a stripped-down interface that allows quick searches by author, title, etc. so you can see if you have a book while in a store. I've already used this feature and it allowed me to buy with confidence that I would not be picking up a duplicate.  Once I got home, I immediately entered the books before they were placed in our to-be-read area.

LibraryThing does not have an iPhone app for looking at books.  They do have a recently-developed app for finding local bookstores, book events, etc.  This is called Local Books (see image right).

LibraryThing is an interesting system.  The first 200 books are free and if you want an unlimited number, you can pay an annual fee ($10) or a donation for lifetime membership ($25 suggested). This can be paid via PayPal.  There are about a couple dozen things I'd change to improve the system but the bones are solid and it will continue to improve as time goes on.  I've already sent my first batch of suggestions and am composing the next in hopes that the system will get better and better with the right ideas and people involved.

[Ed. note: for one person's take on the differences between LibraryThing and similar social cataloging sites such as Shelfari and GoodReads, click here.]

The Limited Editions Club and The Private Library

Of all the publishers who sought to publish fine books for the masses, perhaps none is so famous (at least here in the USA) as The Limited Editions Club:

(The image above is an LEC title currently on offer from Charles Agvent, a bookseller who specializes in the Limited Editions Club.)

Founded in 1929 by George Macy, LEC's mission (as noted by Bill Majure in a nice, if brief, history of LEC) was

to publish finely made and finely illustrated limited editions of the classics of literature - and of a few carefully selected contemporary titles....  Most of the books were beautifully illustrated with original artwork by leading book illustrators. In most cases, the illustrators handsigned each copy of the books that they illustrated for the LEC...[although some] books were published without that signature due to the unexpected death of the artist before publication....

LEC generally published no more than 1500 copies of any particular title--enough to keep the costs below that of a typical fine press title.  From 1929 to 1985, some 550 titles were issued.  Interestingly enough, LEC mailed its first title, The Travels of Lemuel Gulliver, on Wednesday, 23 October 1929, less than a week before the world began to plunge into the Great Depression.

Some titles were more expensive than others, because LEC titles were occasionally illustrated by major artists such as Picasso and Matisse.  The image below, of the Picasso-illustrated version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, is currently on offer from Joshua Heller Rare Books:

Others titles carried especially important signatures in addition to those of the author and/or illustrator. Among the most notable such titles were the copies of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass signed by Alice herself (the image below is from a copy currently on offer from Aleph-Bet Books):

After Macy's death in 1956, his wife, Helen, directed LEC's operations until 1968.  Then, until 1970, operations were under control of the Macy's son, Jonathan, and other family members.  In the early 1970s the firm began to go into a rapid decline, as Majure recounts:

[i]n 1970, the LEC (together with The Heritage Press and The Heritage Club), was sold to Boise Cascade Corporation. Boise Cascade sold it to Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Ziff-Davis sold it to Cardavon Press. Cardavon operated the LEC with limited success for most of the 1970's, finally putting it on the block for sale.

Cardavon had raised the limitation to 2000 copies, and had sold The Heritage Press & The Heritage Club to The Danbury Mint (a sister company to The Easton Press) to generate needed cash.... 

Sidney Shiff (1924-2010) acquired the LEC from Cardavon in 1978. Over the next decade, Mr. Shiff gradually changed the focus of the club, and eventually began producing only Livres d'Artiste illustrated with original artwork by major "fine art" artists, rather than professional graphic artists & illustrators....

While LEC titles from the Macy era can often be picked up for a few hundred dollars or less in Fine condition (if there's a problem, it's usually with the slipcase), the livres d'artistes of the Shiff era are well beyond the means of the average book collector.  The Fall of the House of Usher, for example, features an etching and two lithographs by Alice Neel, who died shortly before the book was published (the image below is from a copy currently on offer from Charles Agvent):

Peter Lacey describes the shift in publishing focus in a 1992 article:

Shiff brought the club to its present status by reducing its membership to 200 and the frequency of publication to four books a year. Most important, he raised the quality (and price) of LEC books by commissioning only leading fine artists and photographers. While George Macy usually chose a text he asked an illustrator to adorn, Shiff asks artists such as de Kooning, Motherwell, Kelly and Clemente to select texts themselves.

These titles generally sell for several thousand dollars when first issued, and for much, much more thereafter....

Guest Editorial: Marxism and The Private Library

We are indebted to Linda Hedrick for the following Guest Editorial....

***********

Several years ago, on a visit to London, I fell in love with the old British Museum Reading Room.  The British Library (which had been part of the British Museum up until 1972) had been recently built but I couldn’t resist the vibes of the original.  I shifted from seat to seat, hoping that I would pick up, by the little-known process of “derriere osmosis,” some glint of inspiration from Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, or any of the other great authors who had once labored there.  For some reason I became fixated on Marx, so either we shared seats or the time had come for me to acquaint myself with his work.

Far from the evil pinko commie whom McCarthyists and their descendants fear, Marx was a historian and theorist who examined social organizations. Both he and Sigmund Freud asserted that philosophy’s goal was to understand and overcome social structures which dominated and oppressed people.  While Freud believed that sexual energy motivated human behavior, Marx saw human history as a series of struggles between classes.  To him, historical materialism (a theory dealing with the distribution of resources, production and gain) was the driving force.

According to Marx, as society develops more complex modes of production it becomes stratified. Therefore the social class into which a person is born dictates one’s views, or ideology.

Marxism today has been influenced by many thinkers. There are basically two versions of Marxism – traditional Marxists, sometimes pejoratively referred to as vulgar Marxists, and post- or neo-Marxists. The former tend to think it is possible to get past ideology, the latter think ideology is so much a part of us that its effects cannot be overcome.  I am grossly oversimplifying the entire field...so on to a list of books that explain Marxism much better than I can.

The German Ideology, including Theses on Feuerbach (Great Books in Philosophy series) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was written prior to Marx’s Communist Manifesto.  The edition cited includes Marx’s criticism of Feuerbach, which was found after Marx’s death and published by Engels in 1888, and another work of Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, also published posthumously.  This edition is an excellent title with which to begin understanding Marxism.

The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels is available in a 150th anniversary edition, or with additional, smaller works by Marx.  The Verso anniversary edition (published in 1998) offers an excellent introduction by historian Eric Hobsbawm. Although it may seem dated, this is an important classic, regardless of one’s philosophical or political leanings.

George Novack’s An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism is a great intro to understanding Marxism, especially as it explains the development of both formal and dialectical logic beginning with the classical Greeks.   Novack was, in his own words from 1976, “a radical intellectual of 1930s vintage who remains active as an unrepentant Marxist and full-time professional in the revolutionary movement.”  He was also a colleague and defender of Leon Trotsky.

Paul D’Amato is the managing editor of the International Socialist Review.  His book The Meaning of Marxism is a clear and concise explanation of Marxist thought.  If you want a straightforward explanation of Marxism, this one does so intelligently and dismisses the distorted ideas that have arisen about Marxism, including the notion that Marxism is passé.

There are so many other important Marxists whose work should be included in a library on the subject - way too many to list!  However, if you are eager to explore Marxist thought in more depth, the next two books should help you do so.

Louis Althusser is regarded as the founder of structuralist Marxism, and his book For Marx examines the work of early and late Marx, and other writers influential to and influenced by Marx.  This group of essays is often considered a seminal work on Marxism.  Influenced by Lacan, Althusser in turn influenced many other writers, such as Derrida.  His other works have been influential as well.

Fredric Jameson is a contemporary Marxist, who affirms the relevance of Marx’s theories.  His book Marxism and Form addresses the works of major European Marxist theorists, from Adorno to Sartre. Jameson is the prodigious author of some 24 books, covering everything from classical Greek thought to sci-fi, and he has had an enormous influence on postmodern studies in China.

So much has been written, and continues to be written, that you could easily spend all your money collecting books about Marxist thought. The above-mentioned books represent a good start....

Caricatures and The Private Library

Expose not thy self by four-footed manners unto monstrous draughts, and caricatura representations....

Thomas Browne, Christian Morals

If you've ever frequented tourist spots, you've likely encountered a caricaturist. That's the person with the charcoal stick or colored pencil or other drawing implement who is able, for a usually modest amount of coin, to whip up a slightly distorted but generally recognizable portrait of you or yours in a manner of minutes.  As the graffiti below (Pompei, Villa of Mysteries, ca. 79 CE) suggests, the art is an ancient one:

The above caricature is believed to be of the Roman emperor Vespasian, and politicians--as we shall see shortly--have long been a favorite target of caricaturists.

Caricature, which technically refers only to drawings of human beings, can be either mildly amusing and entertaining, or savagely satirical, depending on the intent of the caricaturist.  Selective exaggeration of a person's features is the key to good caricature, since the essence of the art is to create an image that is immediately recognizable as being the image of a particular person.  Fredrick Waddy's caricature of Charles Darwin (ca. 1871) is typical of the sort of identifiable exaggeration (beard, eyebrows, forehead) necessary to the art:

This is a mild form of caricature, similar to the modern-day caricatures penned by David Levine (New York Review of Books), Al Hirschfeld, or Mad magazine's Mort Drucker:

 

Books featuring caricatures are known as early as the 15th century (Sebastian Brant's allegorical Ship of Fools arguably falls into this category), but it wasn't until the 18th century that the art form really took off.  This was the era of the great British caricaturists Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray and, early in the following century, George Cruikshank.  Unlike the modern caricaturists depicted above, Rowlandson, Gillray and Cruikshank used caricature to savagely satirize the foibles of 18th-19th century British society, especially the politicians of the era. 

The Gillray print below is from an 1818 volume originally issued in nine parts (10 parts were projected, but the last part was never published, although a few of the plates were issued as individual prints). It depicts Napoleon and William Pitt the Younger dividing up the world between Great Britain and France.  It has been hailed as the most famous of all British political cartoons:

Other famous caricaturists include the great French lithographer Honoré Daumier, Thomas Nast ("the father of American caricature"), and "the incomparable Max" Beerbohm.

Most of the above artists are known largely from the prints they created, not from books.  (Many of these prints appeared in newspapers and journals of the day, and such copies are understandably much less expensive than the originals.)  That notwithstanding, diligent bibliophiles can add tomes by these artists to their bookshelves given sufficient time and money (for contemporary titles) or simply a little patience (for modern reprints of their works):

  

In addition to books created by the artists themselves, biographies of such artists make a nice addition to one's bookshelves.  Several of these artists' letters to famous figures of their day also have been posthumously reprinted for public consumption:

   

In one of those delicious ironies so beloved by bibliophiles, one of the pre-eminent modern historians of the caricature is himself a politician.  Kenneth Baker (Baron Baker of Dorking), entered Britain's House of Commons in 1968, and subsequently served as Environment Secretary, Education Secretary, Chairman of the Conservative Party and Home Secretary. He now sits in the House of Lords. Among his several well-received titles about caricature are two that focus on political subjects that were especially favorite targets of Gillray, Rowlandson and Cruikshank: