The Water Babies in the 100 Greatest Books for (Victorian) Kids

Guest Blog
by Catherine Batac Walder


A recent blog post on this site linked to the 100 Greatest Books for Kids. It made me think of children's books that were extremely popular during their time and wonder what had caused the decline in their status such as Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies.

Around the time this list of 100 Greatest Books for Kids was published, we nipped into an antique shop in Eversley, a village close to ours, and were drawn to St. Mary's Church right beside the antique shop, where Kingsley had been rector from 1844 until his death in 1875.

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St. Mary's Church in Eversley, the view from Charles Kingsley's grave.

The Water Babies is the only work of Kingsley that I've read so far. I personally couldn't grasp the idea of Tom, the young boy in the story, turning into a water baby as I thought this new life in the water was even lonelier at first and more unsafe than the cruelty and danger he had faced as a chimney sweep. The idea is for him to learn from his adventures but then it wasn't his fault that he was born poor and didn't know much as a chimney sweep. To become a water baby was, I thought, an unfair way to be taught lessons in life. At the end of the tale, he was restored to being a human again. That he didn't remain a water baby, to me, seemed to have defeated the whole purpose of his transformation and just proved that it was better to be a land baby after all. The first few chapters were strong but it appeared as though his transformation into a water baby was only to keep the adventures going, somehow to create excitement out of the author's desire to impart a moral fable. Tom's adventures aren't as fantastic as those of the hobbits or that certain boy wizard for today's readers. There didn't seem to be enough "action" whenever he met someone new. Kingsley (as the narrator addressing a young boy, presumably his youngest child, to whom he dedicated the story) wrote like a firm school teacher. I did enjoy the references to pop culture of that time. His thoughts I didn't find out of date but there was just a lot of information and he dwelt too much on a single subject, almost sounding too defensive about his arguments.
 
Many are of the opinion that the decline in popularity of The Water Babies roots from the inclusion of the common prejudices of that time period and insulting references to other races, cultures and religion.* Apparently, most modern editions of the book have an inscription on the copyright page stating that "references that would have little meaning or purpose for the children of today have been omitted." I haven't read a modern edition of the book so I'm not sure which parts had been edited out. But then the tale is satirical and as in any such work, the author uses irony that in the end we're not quite sure if he's dismissing others or his kind. Undeniably, Kingsley had wit and humor. And if I would think of other things that were admirable about him, I would put on top of the list his niece Mary Kingsley (1861-1900) who was considered to be a woman who belonged to the twentieth century in her desire to affirm the value of different cultures. She was an explorer in West Africa and was a champion of the traditions of indigenous peoples. She challenged the prevailing assumptions of her generation through her passionate concern to understand and safeguard the tribal societies she encountered (Fuller and Fuller, The Story of Eversley Church, 2004, p.19).

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Kingsley Centenary Window, the south window of the chancel, designed by Christopher Webb.

Eversley Church was listed in the Domesday Book as a possession of Westminster Abbey. What singles it out among typical English churches is its connection to Charles Kingsley. As you explore the church, you see many memorials, stained glass windows, etc. all relating to Kingsley. The crèche is called "The Water Babies Creche." There is a stained glass window in the chancel that marks the centenary of Kingsley's arrival in Eversley as a curate. Installed in 1942, the window shows the figure of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, the heroine of Kingsley's poem "The Saint's Tragedy" and the figures on each side are reminiscent of the water babies. My favorite part of the church is the Sarsen Stone that was discovered there in 1940. Geologists identified it as one of the Bagshot series from about 50,000 years ago.

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Grave of Charles Kingsley and his wife Fanny at the St. Mary's churchyard. The Latin epitaph at the base reads "Amavimus, amamus, amabimus" (We loved, we love, we shall love).

Although I'm not a huge fan of The Water Babies, I now associate Charles Kingsley with St. Mary's Church, the great changes he had made for the parish and the legacy he had left in Eversley, something that the villagers are undoubtedly proud of even to this day.

*I couldn't find evidence of this theory about its decline in popularity. Even the "studies" I found on some sites point to Wikipedia, which doesn't suffice. Perhaps FB&C readers could shed some light...

Many thanks to Catherine Batac Walder, a writer living in the UK, for this photo essay. She has previously written for us about Sherlock Holmes and ex-library books.


Kate Carlisle is the author of the Bibliophile Mysteries, featuring a bookbinder who has a tendency to stumble across murder while restoring old books.  The fifth entry in the series, ONE BOOK IN THE GRAVE, was released earlier this month.  We recently spoke with Kate about her mystery series, old books, and publishing in digital vs physical format.

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NP: Could you tell us a little bit about the new Bibliophile Mystery, One Book in the Grave?

KC: I'd love to! For readers who aren't familiar with the Bibliophile Mystery series, the books center on pre-eminent bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright, who brings rare books back from the brink of death in her San Francisco workshop. Unfortunately for Brooklyn, every antique book she restores seems to be linked to a modern day murder. (Her guru is trying to help her understand why the universe has chosen her for this peculiar "honor.") The books have a lot of humor, and I work very hard to give readers a true insight into the art and craft of book restoration.

In ONE BOOK IN THE GRAVE (February 2012), Brooklyn has been called in to restore a badly weathered, illustrated copy of Beauty and the Beast. As soon as she sees the book, she recognizes it as the treasured possession of a friend who died under mysterious circumstances. The book was stolen shortly after her friend's death. Why has it reappeared on the marketplace now, years later? When she goes to the bookstore where the book first reappeared, she discovers the owner lying in a pool of his own blood. Dead. Brooklyn must figure out who is killing people linked to this rare book, before she becomes the next victim.

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NP: Could you also tell us about your new Bibliophile novella series?  I know the first volume, Pages of Sin, is available to download now; are there plans for future novellas as well?

KC: PAGES OF SIN is a Bibliophile Mystery novella that came out in January of this year as an ebook exclusive. It's not a separate series, but more like a bonus Bibliophile Mystery. At the moment, there are no plans for another novella, but I'd love to write another.

NP: As an author with an obvious interest and love of the book as a physical object, how do you feel about the publication of your novella in digital form?  Are there plans to release paper versions?  Does that matter to you?

KC: The irony hasn't escaped me! (Much like the irony that the first Bibliophile Mystery, HOMICIDE IN HARDCOVER, was published in paperback.) The truth is, the books I love as physical objects are those which transcend their "bookishness" and become works of art. I'm talking about the beautiful leather-bound, gilt-edged, illustrated books that one feels honored to hold. The fine books that are celebrated in Fine Books & Collections, to be precise.

I would love, someday, for the Bibliophile Mystery books to be bound so beautifully. In the meantime, I'm happy that my stories, in whatever format, are introducing so many readers to an appreciation of the art form I adore.

There are no plans at this time to publish PAGES OF SIN on paper, but readers who don't have an ereader can get free software to read the book on their computers. You can email me via www.katecarlisle.com for links to where to get the free software. While on my website, sign up for my mailing list for a chance to win a 513-piece jigsaw puzzle featuring the cover of ONE BOOK IN THE GRAVE. It's gorgeous! You can also read a free excerpt of each of my Bibliophile Mystery novels.

NP: Have you always been interested in rare books?

KC: Always. My father had a small collection of old books, and I remember spending hours looking in awe at the copyright pages of the books. Then when I grew up, I loved to haunt the antiquarian book shops in my town. Each book told two stories - the story on its pages, and the story of who had touched it during its long lifetime. Who read this book? Where did it go? Who wrote it, and who bought it? Did another girl just like me stay up late a hundred years ago, straining her eyes to read by candlelight because she couldn't bear to close the book?

NP: Do you moonlight as a book restorer, like Brooklyn?

KC: I've never restored a book professionally, but bookbinding has been an avocation for years. I've taken classes in the book arts for years, and I work hard to get the details right in my books.

NP: What books do you personally collect?

KC: My collection is rather eclectic. I have a beautiful leather bound copy of Walt Whitman poems, which I treasure. I have a 1922 edition of Toto the Bustling Beaver - because no collection would be complete without Toto the Bustling Beaver! I love the illustrations in fairy tales (which is why Beauty and the Beast is the featured rare book in ONE BOOK IN THE GRAVE), and I have a lovely edition of fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson.



Book artist (and our book art columnist) Richard Minsky has just unveiled his latest collection -- The Book Art of Thomas Watson Ball. Following in the footsteps of his three highly successful collections of American publishers' bindings, he assembled this single-artist collection of more than sixty books, dating from 1897 to 1905. Ball was a designer for Harper's and other turn-of-the-century publishers, and his work was often unattributed (and copied). Writes Minsky, "Ball was a master of silhouette and skyline, and excelled at landscape and marine subjects. His abstract landscapes on book covers predate Kandinsky and other modernists' ventures in that direction, beginning in 1897." The exhibition is up now at Minsky's Hudson, New York, studio, and some of it can be seen online.

Minsky-Ball.jpgThough not intended to be definitive, Minsky's exhibition will guide scholars and collectors in this area. To that end, Minsky has also produced an exhibition catalogue. Until February 29, a pre-publication discount in in effect for both the limited and deluxe editions. The deluxe edition of twenty-five is signed and numbered with color photos of all books in the exhibition, printed in archival high resolution inkjet, in a hardbound cloth binding by Minsky, based on a T. W. Ball cover design.The limited edition of one hundred is printed in full color on an Indigo 5000 digital offset press and housed in a flexible cloth cover with a gold-stamped panel adapted from a T. W. Ball design, an archival inkjet printed dust wrapper, and polyester protective overwrap

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If you haven't had the chance yet, now's the time to see The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which just won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

 
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Architectural Digest's 10th Annual Signature Greenroom at the 84th Academy Awards®. Credit: Roger Davies for Architectural Digest

Every year Architectural Digest designs an exclusive backstage lounge for Oscar presenters and honorees. This year, that greenroom has a designer library, too.

Thatcher Wine of Juniper Books in Boulder, Colorado, was called on by this year's AD Greenroom designer, Waldo Fernandez, to fill the room's empty bookshelves. Fernandez's overall design evokes the Hollywood of the 1930s and 40s, with references to the glamorous parties of director George Cukor. Wine ran with that idea, imagining shelves of books that look like vintage film reels.

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A portion of the library prior to installation. Courtesy of Thatcher Wine. 

"The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences gave me access to their archives," he said. "I picked out classic film scenes, then printed them on book jackets." All of the photographs he chose are recognizable, fit to a new medium. As anyone who has seen Wine's custom dust jackets (FB&C profiled his work last fall) can attest, the effect is incredible. "There is no one else in the world who does what I do with the book jackets, so this was the perfect project for me to come up with a never-before-seen idea ... I am so honored to be a part of it," he said.

Wine flew out to Los Angeles earlier this week to personally install the library backstage at the Kodak Theatre in anticipation of Sunday's 84th annual Academy Awards.

While it's not the first library in an AD Greenroom, it is certainly one in which the books don't just blend into the background. "The idea being that books are relaxing and help calm the presenters before going on stage. My library calms and also inspires with a dose of film history and nostalgia," Wine said.

What's underneath the jackets? A selection of entertainment biographies and books about film, he said. When Wine works on a project like this, he leaves it up to the client whether they want a curated collection or just props behind the art.

Our series profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers continues today with Brooke Palmieri, a young American working in London for Sokol Books.

brooke.jpgNP: What is your role at Sokol Books?

BP: The ends of the job are to catalogue our stock in pre-1640 English and Continental books, but the means are paved with e-mails, InDesign, VAT returns, auction catalogues, etc. etc. I do whatever is necessary to keep day to day business running. It's great to learn how to run a business, and the added bonus is, I'm serving my time in Admin in order to play with the old books later on in the day.????

NP: How did you get started in rare books?

BP: I was an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania, and I had this idea that dealing with original materials would give me a better sense of why Literature is sometimes written with a capital "L". So before the start of the year I went to the Rare Book Library and asked for a job. John Pollack gave me one, and I've been gratefully losing sleep at night and waking up in the morning for this stuff ever since. From day one, John told me that the cardinal rule was that if you saw a book that interested you, you should stop what you were doing and spend time with it. You don't often find that kind of generosity with 400 year old books at age 19, and it's an experience I value more as time goes on. So now I'm a little closer to unlocking the mystery behind that capital "L" for Literature, and when I go back home to Philly now, visiting the library is as essential as visiting my parents.

NP: ??Favorite or most interesting book (or etc) you've handled?

BP: I try to keep a blog about the things that interest me most: http://eightvo.wordpress.com.  But I'm very impressionable and so it's usually the book I'm cataloguing at the moment. There is a copy of one of Jean Bodin's (many) works on witchcraft: Le Feau des Demons et Sorciers on my desk at the moment. It's the latest of several books on witchcraft and magic we've acquired, including Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, a book that argues with Bodin. The 16th century has always been a draw for me because the disciplinary boundaries are very supple.  Bodin draws together everything from folk songs to medical recipes, psychological studies, astronomy and theology to make his point about the evils of magic, and in this case, with serious legal consequences he a hand in determining. It's just goes to prove that in the 16th Century, you've got to be a Jack-of-all-trades, an ambition of mine which I think resonates with anyone in the book trade. Plus if all else fails I can make some money moonlighting as a palm reader.


NP: What do you personally collect?

BP: I don't think I am rigorous or wealthy enough to call it collecting so much as "giving stuff a home".  In addition to the clutter of books on books and poetry, the latest things under my roof are: 1) in-house newsletters by a Bristol stationary company, E. S. A. Robinson, about type and design and marketing paper bags (printing paper bags with logos is apparently "their idea" and it made them a fortune), and 2) After reading a book Television Horror Movie Hosts I have been on the lookout for any ephemera related to the regional American phenomenon that often found news anchors and weatherman pretending to be vampires on TV at night, especially John Zacherle. Finally, I have been trying with minor success to keep up with the Occupy movement. It's the most exciting and important thing to happen to politics, and aside from the vitality of its message and the dialogue it's created, much of the forcefulness comes from striking design. When content and form are unified in such bold ways as that, it's important to start paying attention as well as to start archiving.

NP: ????What do you love / hate about the book trade?

BP: Love: the sprawling community of experts in very diverse & strange fields. Hate: that the community is so sprawling, I only see some of my top 100 favorite people in the world once a year!!????

NP: As an American living in London, what do you notice about the difference between bookselling in Britain and bookselling in America?

BP: The book trade here has a very rich dynastic history. Maggs, Quaritch, Sotheran, Pickering & Chatto all originate in the 18th and 19th centuries, and all have killer reference libraries and the benefit of accumulated wisdom, which gives quite a magnetism to the city when combined with the British Library and the major auction houses. In America the trade really smacks of Manifest Destiny: I have met many booksellers striking their own path from very diverse backgrounds. We all have a story of how we stumbled upon the book trade, and it's usually stumbling that does it, but the influence of London makes for very distinct common ground (& work experience) between booksellers here, as opposed to in the States.
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NP: Any expatriate American bookseller stories to share? 

BP: Rule Number One: Your Visa is Precious. Thanksgiving Day 2010: I'm all grown up & on the Eurostar to Paris to pick up a book we'd acquired. Having done an MA at Oxford the year before, I was traveling on the (now defunct) Tier 1 Post-Study Visa. It was otherwise a great day wandering around Pere Lachaise, the Gustav Moreau museum, Christmas shopping, and picking up the book. What could feel like more of an arrival into the glamorous world of antique bookdealing than this? Imagine my shock-horror later, when I was detained & interviewed for 4 hours at the Gare du Nord. In official terms I was 'refused re-entry into the UK', a serious catch-all term for many kinds of transgressions, some criminal, although in my case it was a bureaucratic mix-up.
 
Did I mention the book was a second edition of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili? So I was stuck in Paris with a hundred thousand dollar book in my bag. Two things kept me from total meltdown that night: collating the book (I will never forget: *4 a-y8 z10 A-E8 F4) and trying to figure out the plot of a French-dubbed episode of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman with special guest star Johnny Cash. It was very dramatic. By the end of the weekend my partner had rescued me (actually maybe that's what kept me from meltdown) and was headed back to London to deliver the book to Sokol. I was headed back to Philly to sort though piles of paper to send to the Border Agency. It took three months and lots of legal advice to fix things. Who would have thought the pursuit of one of the beauties of early Italian printing would have taught me so much about immigration law?

NP: Do you want to open your own shop someday?

BP: Yes, but the gestation period for my ambition in that area has years to go, so there's no knowing when or where it'll happen. I have a lot of ideas, one is pairing artists' books and fine press with older books. Mother books and daughter books. I am frequently struck by contemporary works that make me think: cite your sources! So that's what I'll do: I'll take issues in intellectual history and render them visual.  I'll be very heavy-handed and persnickity in the way I curate, using the order of the books to add new context and value to each of the individual titles across many time periods. Marc Jacobs does it with handbags and fashion books, I'll do it with new books and old books. That'll be Brooke's Books. Or whatever I'll call it. Community is important, so there will also be very many worthwhile parties, as often as possible.
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NP: Thoughts on the future of the book trade?

BP: The quality and quantity of other young booksellers you've interviewed on this blog answers this question much better than I.
 

Published to accompany an exhibit this spring at Yale's Beinecke Library, Remembering Shakespeare (Yale University Press, 2012) is everything a good exhibition catalog should be: short, but thorough; well-designed, and pleasurable to read and to look at. If I can, I certainly hope I'll be able to get to New Haven and view the show in person, but this excellent catalog will serve as a good stand-in should that prove impossible. 

David Scott Kastan and Kathryn James have encapsulated the exhibit well, highlighting not just the major themes, but also the fact that this is an exhibit about Shakespeare at Yale, not just Shakespeare at the Beinecke. Items from the collections of the Elizabethan Club, the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, the Lewis Walpole Center, and the Yale Center for British Art are also on display, and their inclusion makes for a much richer, more satisfying experience. 

The short chapters are well-written and crisp; there's not a superfluous word, and as it should the text continues to return to the main theme, on the very different ways Shakespeare has been "remembered" over the centuries. The illustrations are reproduced very well, and the overall design is attractive. A great success; if the exhibit comes anywhere near the high quality of the catalog, I'm sure it's just as much worth viewing as the book is worth reading.
While we are always told not to collect books based on assumptions of future value, all of us make the occasional purchase with an eye to future profit.  Collecting based on your personal interests remains the best policy.  But when you're around old books long enough, you can hardly deny yourself the occasional speculative purchase. And thus buying rare books is similar to buying stocks.

As someone who has dabbled in both speculative book and stock purchases, I enjoyed Jeff O'Neal's piece on "picking literary stocks" over at BookRiot.  O'Neal rated a handful of contemporary authors with Buy, Sell, or Hold ratings.  His judgements:

Buy: Philip Roth, Alan Moore, Suzanne Collins

Sell: Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan Safran Foer, Joan Didion

Hold: Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, George R. R. Martin

O'Neal is, of course, discussing the literary futures of each author and not necessarily commenting on their present or future collectability.  (Although the two are often bound up together).  But it's similar to the judgement call that rare book dealers, or even special collections libraries, try to make all the time.  (See the recent article in the Atlantic about this kind of speculation at the Harry Ransom Center). 

LawrenceBettmannCorbis4.jpgA visionary librarian, or collector, would have done well to build a D. H. Lawrence collection, for example, around the time of his death.  Lawrence's reputation was mostly in ruins and his obituaries were borderline hostile, with the notable and lasting exception of E. M. Forster's notice in the Nation.  Forster described Lawrence as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation;" comments which would spurn a critical re-evaluation of Lawrence's work and pave the way to his current status as one of the great writers of the 20th century.

In short, you just never know.  But it's fun to play the game.

So, what authors, dead or alive, would you rate as Buy, Sell, or Hold?

Later this week Swann Galleries will auction the libraries of two American private press collectors. Expect to see books from Ashendene, Bird & Bull, Doves, Golden Cockerel, Gregynog, Kelmscott, Nonesuch, as well as more contemporary printers like The Limited Editions Club, Janus, Arion, and many more. It is a great opportunity for those who are actively collecting private press books--there is both a variety of printers and price points (estimates range from the low hundreds to the tens of thousands).

Among the highlights in the 281-lot auction is this Kelmscott Chaucer, regarded as the most famous modern private press book. It is one of 425 copies printed by William Morris in Hammersmith in 1896. Estimated at $30,000-50,000, this one is in original holland-backed boards.
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Catalogue Review: Aleph-Bet Books, #100

Screen shot 2012-02-16 at 10.49.27 PM.pngEarlier this week Scholastic's Parent & Child Magazine ranked the "100 Greatest Books for Kids." How and why? You can read about their methodology here, but in essence, they winnowed down a selection of five hundred considering "literary and/or illustration excellence, popularity, and longevity or innovative freshness."

As I happened to be perusing the newest catalogue from Aleph-Bet Books of Pound Ridge, NY, a long-time specialist in fine children's and illustrated books, it was interesting to note the overlap.

For example, No. 1 on Scholastic's list is Charlotte's Web by E. B. White. It should come as no surprise to see this book in the top spot, and it was one of the most collectible children's books. Aleph-Bet has an inscribed first edition ($28,500). No. 17 on the Scholastic list is Dorothy's Kunhardt's Pat the Bunny, still a favorite seventy-two years after publication. Aleph-Bet has a fine copy in the publisher's box from 1940 ($5,000). No. 20 on the Scholastic list is Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. Aleph-Bet has a signed first edition with an original poem by Silverstein on the endpapers ($2,500). You see what I'm getting at here!

But the other great thing about this catalogue is the extensive variety. So while the high spots are here, there are also some wonderful surprises. I, for one, was glad to see Elizabeth Coatsworth's Night and the Cat, this copy with laid-in handwritten note from the author to a fan ($950). I enjoyed being introduced to a Bauhaus children's book, Mein Vogel Paradies by Carl Ernst Hinkefuss, published in Berlin in 1929. A limited and signed copy with incredible modernist illustrations ($12,000).  And the limited edition copy of Gertrude Stein's The World is Round signed by both the author and Clement Hurd, the illustrator, is also a treat ($1,800).

With 600 items to see in this 100th catalogue, all in full-color, you are bound to miss something great. So go back and look again: http://www.alephbet.com/catalogs.php.