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In most impressions of this engaging portrait of Maximilian I (1459-1519), the Holy Roman Emperor is looking to the left. Here at Princeton, he looks to the right. All the details in the scene are exactly the same except laterally reversed. That is, until you look at the top right, where a decorative figure with a horned headdress is holding a tablet with the artist’s signature and printing date: L 1520. While the scene is laterally reversed, the signature and date are correctly printed left to right. Our impression is not from the original plate.

The original portrait of Maximilian I was conceived, printed, and published by the Netherlandish artist Lucas van Leyden (ca.1494-1533) after seeing the 1518 woodcut Portrait of Maximilian I by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). In both, Maximilian wears the necklace of the Order of the Golden Fleece and a rimmed hat. However, Lucas’ print is one of the first to combine etching with engraving on a copper plate, using the quicker etched lines to lay down the preparatory drawing and the elegant engraved lines to finish the scene.

According to New Hollstein, this laterally reversed copy of Lucas’ print may have been done by the Dutch artist Jan Harmensz. Muller (1571-1628). Muller apprenticed under the master printer Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) and eventually came to equal his teacher’s virtuosity with the burin. Nowhere is the reason behind this copy explained, although it may have simply been to prove that Muller’s talent was equal to that of Lucas.

Muller’s engraving came to Princeton University with a gift of approximately ninety-five prints and drawings of Alpine views. The Portrait of Maximilian I was included with a note explaining that the emperor was the first climber to be depicted using various articles of mountaineering equipment. Maximilian had three books commissioned to document his life, although he probably wrote some of it himself. The third, Theuerdank (1517) (facsimile: Graphic Arts GA PT1567.M6 A7 1979), includes these mountain climbing images.

The New Hollstein: Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700 (Amsterdam, 1996). Vol. 14 Lucas Van Leyden, p.112. Marquand Library SA ND653.L5 F502 1996

Ellen S. Jacobowitz and Stephanie Loeb Stepanek, The Prints of Lucas Van Leyden & His Contemporaries (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1983. Marquand Library SA ND653.L5 J32

The first U.S. patent (no. 1,767) for “settable-unit stencils” was filed in 1840 by Edwin Allen, who designed stencils of individual letters that could be joined together to form words. This and other U.S. patents can be read at www.uspto.gov.

Samuel Widdows Reese (1843-1913) was a veteran, who served in the 1st Pennsylvania Reserve Cavalry. After the war, he moved to Chicago where he is listed in the city directory as a stencil cutter. Reese filed his first patent for a series of adjustable stencil letters in June 1873 (no. 148,087) and filed a second in 1876 for stencils with an S-fold on one edge to lock together with adjacent letters. The stencils were “machine-cut in spring brass with steel dies”. A broadside advertised Reese’s stencils

for shippers in marking merchandise and produce … manufacturers for labelling contents on boxes … merchants and real estate men in making signs and bulletin boards … cheese factors for dating cheese … in fact nearly all classes find them useful, profitable and desirable.

1876 was also the year his firm S.W. Reese and Company opened in Chicago, where one could buy stencils, badges, and other sign-making equipment. Although the company continued to operate under Reese’s name, he left it in the hands of his partner Christian Hanson (1843-1914) and moved to New York City. A second business called Reese and Company was established on Pearl Street in Manhattan, where it remained until late in the twentieth-century. So successful was the Reese interlocking stencil design that it is still used today.

See Eric Kindle, “Patents Progress: the Adjustable Stencil,” Journal of the Printing Historical Society no. 9 (Spring 2006): 65-93
and
Eric Kindle “Recollecting Stencil Letters,” Typography Papers 5 (Reading, 2003)

It seem fitting in a week when announcements are issued concerning Playboy as mandatory reading for certain Architecture graduate students and masturbation being prohibited in Princeton bathrooms, that we post something from a temperance book devoted to showing the “lamentable conditions” to which the wicked are apt to fall.

This is a collection of stories first published individually in the New York Tribune, then released, according to an 1853 advertisement in the New-York Daily Times, in an edition of 15,000. The book sold in a cloth binding for $1.25 and in a gilt edition for $2.00. It was a best-seller. The sad stories focus on the beggars, the alcoholics and the prostitutes who lived in and around the Five Points area in the lower east side of Manhattan.

So popular were the stories that three separate theater productions were developed around the character of Little Katy (who sold hot corn in the winter and peanuts in the summer) at Barnum’s American Museum, the Bowery Theatre, and the National Theater. At the latter venue, Little Katy ran in repertory with Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

There are many such books on our collection. See also Ernest Gray or The Sins of Society by Maria Maxwell (1855) Graphic Arts Hamilton 1055

According to Sinclair Hamilton, the artist John McLenan was discovered by the publishers working in a pork-packing plant in Cincinnati and making drawings on the tops of barrels. He became one of the most prolific of our early illustrators. Besides the American temperance books, McLenan illustrated many English novels for Harper’s, such as The Woman in White, Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations, as well as being well-known as a comic draftsman.

Unfortunately McLenan died in 1865 at the age of thirty-eight. The memorial which appeared in the May number of Yankee Notions called him:

…one of the best draughtsman America has ever produced…. Equally at home in caricature and in sketches from the life, with a quick perception of the ridiculous and a fine appreciation of the picturesque, he soon took his place among the illustrators of our current literature, second to none.

See another biography at http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/mclenan/bio.html

Molly Burgess, Still ([Piscataway, N.J.] : Carolingian Press, 1975). Copy 16 of 25. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) in process

This is a book of concrete poetry, based on Eastern philosophy and religion. The words have the appearance of a typewriter face but are in fact printed by letterpress at the Carolingian Press on different handmade rice papers. The book includes anagraphic, concrete poems incorporating the words: breath, earth, heart, death.

The artist writes:

Still is my response to a study of Eastern philosophy and religion. Though the book is based on personal interpretation and experience, there are specific links to both the history and philosophy from which it was conceived. Designed as a complete experience, it leads from the unfolding of the cover through the colors, into the patterns, the paradox, the stillness….

The book is arranged on four different levels: by color, by country, by thought, and by number…. There are thirty-two poems, eight in each of the four sections (the Eightfold way: right views, right intentions, right speech, right action, right profession, right effort, right watchfulness, right concentration). Each section of eight is again divided in two sections of four (the Four Noble Truths) by the ‘lace’ papers. The paterns of the four ‘lace’ papers progress from diamond to star to scallop to circle.

In the September 18, 2009, issue of the Times Literary Supplement on paper, the TLS chose to illustrate Robert Vilain’s review of three books about Rainer Maria Rilke with a double-page spread from Ver Sacrum (correct citation: Heft 21, 1. November 1901). Don’t check the digital article because the online TLS does not include the images from the paper copy, only the words. The Rilke verse is from the dialogue Vorfrühling (Early Spring) from Drei Spiele (Three Plays), spoken by Die Schwarze Herzogin (the Black Duchess) and a servant. There is a credit line for Rilke but no mention of the graphic artist who makes the pages so appealing.

The pages were drawn and printed by Koloman Moser (1868-1918). In the outer margins you can see his small printed signature “Kolo Moser”. As a cofounder of the Vienna Secession, Moser joined Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, and others to establish a revolutionary new art outside of academia. Moser served as editor of their journal, Ver Sacrum, as well as the chief designer for several years. Through the journal’s pages, Moser endeavored to fuse art and literature, graphics and text. With respect to TLS, I’m not sure he would have approved of their description of his work as illustration or the disconnect between paper and digital versions of their publication.

Ver sacrum: Organ der Vereinigung Bildener Künstler Österreichs (Wien: Verlag Gerlach & Schenk, 1898-1903). Marquand Library (SAX) Oversize N6494.W5 V47q

For more information, see also Koloman Moser, 1868-1918 (Vienna: Leopold Museum; Munich; New York: Prestel, c2007). Marquand Library (SA), ND509.M7 A4 2007b

During 1903, Moser and Hoffmann left the Secession group and founded the Wiener Werkstätte. Their Almanach also included texts by Rilke and designs by Moser. See Almanach der Wiener Werkstätte (Wien: Rosenbaum, [1911]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-0687N

In 1807, the British Parliament banned the Atlantic slave trade and the United States followed with their own mandate in 1808. This broadside was published around 1805 to incite Americans against slavery and the “horrors of the middle passage” by describing in gruesome detail the conditions that slaves had to endure. It was published by the New York printer and Quaker, Samuel Wood, who had the wood engravings prepared by the best artisan of the period, Alexander Anderson.

The broadside is undated but Wood is listed at this address in New York City directories from 1805 to 1808. The text and illustrations published here also appear in the following work, first issued by Wood in 1807: The Mirror of Misery, or, Tyranny Exposed.

A complete transcription of the broadside can be found at http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/collection_pdfs/05/11/3/05113.pdf. I have enlarged the images and text printed along the margins to make them readable.

Wallace Irwin (1876-1959), Extra!! Fairy Tales Up-To-Now. Wallace Irwin, the Bandit, Again Breaks Loose and Sandbags Old Favorites…. (San Francisco. Paul Elder, 1904). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

Irwin was an American journalist working for William Randolph Hearst’s Examiner, before he found his voice in light verse. This volume includes tabloid style parodies of Babes in the Wood, Cinderella, Jack the Giant-Killer, Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood. Boards are paper pulp embossed by a metal stereotype plate set for a newspaper page.

Irwin also published The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum (1901) EX 2004-0767N; The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Jr. (1902) Annex A 3798.01.379; The Shame of the Colleges (1907) EX 3798.01.385; and Suffering Husbands (1920) Annex A 3798.01.389

Little Red Riding Hood begins

Adulterated Food!
W. Gray Wolf Dies Under Suspicious Circumstances And Little Red Riding Hood Indicted
The two seen together shortly before the tragedy occurred

The parents of Red Riding Hood
Were sharks for scientific food,
And members of a hygiene club
That lived on predigested grub.

When Mrs. Hood was touched with grace
She thought of heaven, as a place
Where all is anticepticized
And even the harps are sterilized.

It chanced one day that Gradma Hood,
Who lived alone within a wood,
Of Bunco Biscuits ate her fill
And fell quite seriously ill.

…Paul Chowder eat your heart out.

When Sir Henry Irving (1838-1905) first played the title role in Shakespeare’s Macbeth in 1875, The Times noted that it was to Irving’s advantage that he was “appearing at a time when there is no important rival to suggest comparisons.” The unnamed reviewer goes on to characterize the performance as “a conception of the actor’s own fancy, which can be supported only by a corruption and misinterpretation of the plain meaning of the dramatist. From first to last Irving’s Macbeth is a poor, frightened, whimpering cur, without even a passing touch of any kind of manliness, except, perhaps, one flash in his last moments.” The production closed in less than three months.

In 1878, Irving purchased the Lyceum Theatre and in 1888, along with his lover Ellen Terry (1847-1928), revived his Macbeth in a freshly designed and directed production, with music by Arthur Sullivan. They played to standing room crowds for over six months. Costumes and props were designed by Charles Cattermole (not to be mistaken for George Cattermole, 1800-1868, who illustrated books by Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott).

Cattermole worked several times for Irving, creating everyone’s costumes except Terry’s, who used her own designer/advisor Alice Comyns-Carr along with the dressmaker Mrs. Nettleship. Unfortunately for Cattermole, when John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) chose to immortalize Terry in her Lady Macbeth costume, the other designs by Cattermole were all but forgotten.

Michael Mazur (1935-2009), Michael Mazur etchings: L’inferno [by] Dante; with selections from the Italian translated in an English version by Robert Pinsky (Georgetown, Mass.: Printed by Robert Townsend at R.E. Townsend Editions, [2001]). “The Italian text is excerpted from the Meridiani edition, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.” Graphic Arts Collection (GAX), Oversize 2008-0023E. Gift of Michael Mazur.

These images from Michael Mazur’s collaboration with poet Robert Pinsky are posted in memory of Mazur, who died earlier this week at the age of seventy-three. Originally composed by Mazur in a series of monoprints—reproduced and published in 1993—the success of the project led to this etched edition, printed by Robert Townsend at R.E. Townsend Editions in 2001. More information on the project can be found at: http://www.dante-inferno.net/Pages/WelcomeDante.html

Mazur received a BA from Amherst College but courses in printmaking with Leonard Baskin at nearby Smith College convinced him to pursue a career in the visuals art. Mazur entered the School in Fine Arts at Yale University, where he received a BFA and an MFA. He taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and Brandeis University, before quitting to become a full-time artist at the age of forty. Recent one person exhibitions have been held at the Mary Ryan Gallery; Barbara Krakow Gallery; Fisher Gallery, USC, Los Angeles; Weil Gallery, Wheaton College; Galleria di Sottoportico, Venice; Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Stanford Museum of Art, Palo Alto.

Canto V The Lustful

…And now I can hear the notes of agony.

In sad crescendo beginning to reach my ear;
Now I am where the noise of lamentation
Comes at me in blasts of sorrow. I am where

All light is mute, with a bellowing like the ocean
Turbulent in a storm of warring winds,
The hurricane of Hell in perpetual motion

Sweeping the ravaged spirits as it rends,
Twist, and torments them.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834), A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig: an Essay (Rochester, N.Y.: Printing House of Leo Hart, 1932). Edition limited to 950 copies on Okawara paper. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX), 2009-1931N

The English author Charles Lamb wrote many essays under the pseudonym Elia and first published his collected Essays of Elia in 1823. One essay describes the discovery of pork roast in China, with a somewhat politically incorrect text. Over the years, Lamb’s essay has been reprinted and illustrated by many celebrated artists, including Frederick Stuart Church and Will Bradley. This 1932 edition is illustrated by Wilfred Jones (born 1888), with pochoir color. Note the red-haired figure at the top left with the monogram G.B.S., representing George Bernard Shaw.

The piece begins:

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks’ holiday.

After the demise of The Comic Almanack in 1853 (see posting September 2008), George Cruikshank (1792-1878) tried to publish a magazine under his own name: Cruikshank’s Magazine. It only lasted two issues, January and February 1854, but opened with the spectacular fold-out “Passing Events, or, The Tail of the Comet of 1853.” This 15 ¼ x 7 inch sheet includes hundred of figures chronicling the events of the previous year.

Princeton is fortunate to hold the steel printing plate for this etching. Although it is hard to photograph, I’ve posted a few images to give you an idea of the complexity of this plate. The iconography includes Albert Smith’s lecture on Mont Blanc, a prize cattle show (along with a beef dinner close by), emigration to Australia, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Although Princeton is sadly missing, the New York’s Crystal Palace can be seen at the top right just above a peace conference. Also depicted is the war between Russia and Turkey, spirit rapping, table turning, ceiling walking, John Gough and the temperance movement (see post December 2008), Charles Keen’s Sardanapalus, Captain McClure and the North-West Passage, and much more.

In his lifetime Cruikshank created nearly 10,000 prints, illustrations, and book plates. Princeton holds the largest set of Cruikshank material in this country, including prints, drawings, watercolors, illustrated books and magazines, proofs, correspondence, and printing plates. The collections are open to the public Monday to Friday.

The German aviator Manfred von Richthofen (1892-1918), also known as the Red Baron, was the commander of a World War I squadron dubbed The Flying Circus. Together, they shot down eighty-nine British airplanes from 1916 to 1917, when Richthofen was finally wounded. This 1917 photograph shows Richthofen receiving a medal from Paul von Hindenburg, while Erich Ludendorff watches. His red Albatros D.III is seen in the background.

The following is a portion of Richthofen’s book Der Rote Kampfflieger, from the English language version translated by J. Ellis Barker and published in 1918 under the name The Red Battle Flyer.

I Am Shot Down. (Middle of March, 1917)
I was flying with the squadron and noticed an opponent who also was flying in a squadron. It happened above the German artillery position in the neighborhood of Lens. I had to fly quite a distance to get there. It tickles one’s nerves to fly towards the enemy, especially when one can see him from a long distance and when several minutes must elapse before one can start fighting… We Germans had five machines. Our opponents were three times as numerous. The English flew about like midges. It is not easy to disperse a swarm of machines which fly together in good order. It is impossible for a single machine to do it. It is extremely difficult for several aeroplanes, particularly if the difference in number is as great as it was in this case. However, one feels such a superiority over the enemy that one does not doubt of success for a moment.
I watched whether one of the fellows would hurriedly take leave of his colleagues. There! One of them is stupid enough to depart alone. I can reach him and I say to myself, “That man is lost.” Shouting aloud, I am after him. I have come up to him or at least am getting very near him. He starts shooting prematurely, which shows that he is nervous. So I say to myself, “Go on shooting. You won’t hit me.” He shot with a kind of ammunition which ignites. So I could see his shots passing me. I felt as if I were sitting in front of a gigantic watering pot. The sensation was not pleasant… But suddenly I heard a tremendous bang, when I had scarcely fired ten cartridges. Presently again something hit my machine. It became clear to me that I had been hit or rather my machine… I went right down.
Instinctively I switched off the engine and indeed it was high time to do this. When a pilot’s benzine tank has been perforated, and when the infernal liquid is squirting around his legs, the danger of fire is very great. In front is an explosion engine of more than 150 h. p. which is red hot. If a single drop of benzine should fall on it the whole machine would be in flames. I left in the air a thin white cloud. I knew its meaning from my enemies. Its appearance is the first sign of a coming explosion. I was at an altitude of nine thousand feet and had to travel a long distance to get down.

This photograph was gift from Dr. Paul Van Dyke (1859-1933) class of 1881 and professor of Modern European History. He also donated a album of photographs taken by Lt. Edward C. Olds, class of 1909, during World War I. Manuscripts collection MSS CI199 (no.803).

Harry Rouclere Mind Readers, lithographic poster, ca. 1910. Printed by Henderson Achert Krebs. TC094 Theater Posters

Harry Rouclere Terhune (1866-1942), was born in Paterson, New Jersey and joined a national travelling circus act at the age of nine. Interestingly, his wife-to-be Mildred Searing (ca. 1880-1938), also began her stage career at the age of nine as a song and dance performer. Harry took Rouclere as his stage name and developed into a expert juggler, magician, and then gymnast.

When Mildred and Harry married, they devised a mind-reading act they billed as “Mildredism.” Then, in 1891, they startled the scientific world by producing a new version of hypnotic mental telegraphy, which they called “Pyschonotism.” In it they would demonstrate that one intelligent person could convey an idea to another without visable means of communication. This act created a sensation and made them headliners. The Terhunes retired from professional life around 1920 and Harry took over his father’s hotel in Ridgewood, New Jersey, which he called Hotel Rouclere.

Dolley Payne Madison (1768-1849)

James Madison, class of 1771, was forty-three years old when he asked Aaron Burr, whom he had known at Princeton, to introduce him to the attractive young widow, Dolley Payne Todd. They were married that same year; it was Dolley’s second marriage. Seven years later when Madison was appointed secretary of state they moved to Washington where Mrs. Madison frequently acted as hostess for the widowed President Jefferson. After her husband’s death, Congress voted her the franking privilege and a seat on the floor of the House, an honor which had never before been granted to a woman.

This miniature painting by Elizabeth (Milligan) Gulick (1813-1893) was painted on ivory in 1844. The image is 3 5/8 x 2 7/8 inches and was presented to the Library in 1924 by the Class of 1884, which purchased it from Joseph H. Gulick, a member of the class. The Library also owns an autograph collection formerly belonging to Mrs. Gulick, in which where are two letters from Dolley Madison to the artist dated 1844. Although they do not specifically mention this painting, Mrs. Madison praises the artist’s work and recommends her for another commission.

For more information, see Princeton Portraits by Donald Drew Egbert, p. 333-35. Firestone Oversize N6505 .E28q

Late in 1820 and early 1821, Blake put aside his own work to complete a commission for wood engravings to illustrate the third edition of Dr. Robert Thornton’s juvenile Virgil. Thornton claimed that his instructional volumes were meant to “enable youth to acquire ideas as well as words.” He had added a few illustrations to the Virgil second edition and sales were increased. Thornton hoped to build on this success with a fully illustrated edition.

Wood engraving was a new reproductive technique gaining in popularity for illustrating books and Blake, with no training or experience, was willing to try it. He made twenty drawings and from these, cut seventeen blocks illustrating Ambrose Philips’ Imitation of Eclogue, I (v. 1, p. 13-18). When they were delivered to the publisher, the blocks were rejected completely and Thornton was told that they should be completely recut. Happily, Thornton was persuaded by several other artists to keep Blake’s work but he did publish a caveat in his introduction, “The illustrations of this English Pastoral are by the famous Blake … They display less of art than of genius.” Three blocks were added, cut by an unidentified artist, clearly not equal to Blake.

Artist unknown, Trip to Town (London: William Sams, 1822). Box embossed: E.P. Sutton & Company; Sangorski & Sutcliff. GA 2005.01039

Last August, we posted this twelve-plate panorama and asked if someone could confirm the attribution to Thomas Rowlandson, even though there is no artist’s signature on the item. Our London colleague Jonathan Gestetner has now written to us about his copy of the 29.5 foot panorama and confirms that it should not been attributed to Rowlandson. In fact, no artist can yet be credited for this comedy about Mr. and Mrs. O’Squat. I include Mr. Gestetner’s description below. His print is the same as Princeton’s except it was published the following year. Ours is housed in an elaborate viewing case and the London copy is in a hand-held drum.

Trip to Town (London: William Sams, 1822). Handcolored etching.

British satirical, narrative panorama consisting of twelve scenes rather than one continuous image. The coloured etching pasted to the drum consists of the title, and a view of a showman with two realistic puppets of a man and a woman who are made to dance. The showman attracts attention by blowing on a pipe and beating a tambourine. A second man blows on a bugle. A crowd watch the show with rapt attention. Above the image are four lines of verse: The Puppets thus unconscious move/ In shew of happiness and love,/ They raise a smile, a laugh, and roar,/ And then their giddy dance is o’er. Below is the imprint: Published by W. Sams, Bookseller to his R.H. the Duke of York, No. 1 St James’s St., London, 1823.

The stay is made of board; a silk tab attached to it also facilitates the panorama’s extraction. The story on the panorama itself advances from r. to l., each scene being introduced by lines of verse on draped cloth. On the first we learn that Mister O’Squat, quite full of Life/ Sought Widow Shanks to be his wife. Both seek matrimonial treat without any concern for money. In the later scenes O’Squat experiences a humiliating fall. The couple spurn the ‘rusticated state’, and head off on an irresponsible frolic for London.

On the way their gig falls apart, emptying them into a pond. In St James’s Park Mrs O’Squat flirts and her husband learns from his newspaper about sharps and flats whilst having his pocket picked. He gets drunk at a civic feast; with Mrs O’Squat apes delight at a concert, attends a masquerade, is accident prone at billiards, and promenades on Rotten Row. At a military review he has trouble with a bolting horse. Finally the couple are hounded by creditors, and O’Squat is attended by doctors. Mistress Squat in doleful dumps withdrew, we are told, But what became of Squat we never knew.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), A Book of Drawings (Philadelphia: Pennell Club, 1925). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

According to American Book Clubs by Adolf Growoll (Graphic Arts Z1008.A2 G8), the Cadmus Club was organized in the fall of 1895 at Galesburg, Illinois. There were no officers and its membership was restricted to twelve, in honor of the twelve months in the calendar year. The members included John Pearsons Gushing, John Huston Finley, Ben Bowles Hampton, George Appleton Lawrence, Philip Sidney Post, Jr., Lee Saunders Pratt, William Edward Simonds, Francis Hinckley Sisson, Willard S. Small, Willis E. Terry, Charles Burton Thwing, and Philip Greene Wright, all of Galesburg.

Cadmus, His Almanack (Galesburgh, Ill, 1897). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009 -in process

The purpose of the Club was “good fellowship among the members, the encouragement of good reading in the community, and the publication of literary products that possess a local interest.” Cadmus, the Father of Letters, became their patron saint. The Club held regular meetings, hosted lectures, and shared their own knowledge of all aspects of book-making and book history.

Early in 1897 the Club published Cadmus His Almanack, which was “a book by bookish men about books”. It was printed in an edition of 365 copies. Other publications by the Club include Epithalamia (1896); An Analysis of The Social Structure of a Western Town by Arthur W. Dunn (1906), and The Moral Sentiment of the People … An Address by Edgar A. Bancroft (1905) Firestone 1084.07.144.

Other men-only book clubs founded at this time include the Grolier Club in New York (1884), the Club of Odd Volumes in Boston (1886), the Rowfant Club in Cleveland (1892), the Philobiblon Club in Philadelphia (1893), and the Caxton Club of Chicago (1895). The Club of Odd Volumes and the Rowfant Club still restrict their membership to men only.

The Child’s Garden of Verses is one of Stevenson’s most popular and most often illustrated books, although Stevenson himself never approved an illustrated edition during his lifetime.

Joyce Lancaster Wilson designed the 9 full-page and 36 initial woodcuts for this 1978 edition, which was printed by her husband, Adrian Wilson, at The Press in Tuscany Alley in an edition of 500 copies. Stevenson’s text includes nine poems contained in the 1883 trial proof of Child’s Garden but excluded from subsequent published editions. The introduction is by Janet Adam Smith, editor of Stevenson’s Collected Poems.

The Wilsons’ other books include Four Kings of the Forest (1973); The Ark of Noah (1975); and The Swing (1981). Adrian and Joyce did not set out to make books. They founded a theater company in 1946, for which Adrian printed programs and posters. His interest led to a job printing with Jack Stauffacher at Greenwood Press, before opening his own studio The Press in Tuscany Alley, located at One Tuscany Alley in San Francisco, California. He researched the history of book design and in 1983, received a MacArthur Fellowship for this work. When Adrian passed away in 1988, Joyce managed the business until her own death in 1996.

Princeton’s copy is bound by the Colorado book artist Laura Wait, who studied traditional English binding with Richard Tullett at Croydon. From 1981 to 2003, Wait ran a bookbinding and conservation business, and now works on books of her own design. For more information on her work, see http://garageannexschool.com/index.php/gas/instructors/wait/in