Charles Perrault's Modern Views, 300 Years Later
If Charles Perrault (1628-1703) hadn't been forced into early retirement, the world might never have had Mother Goose, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty, and other memorable fairytale characters. For most of his life, Perrault worked in government service under the protection of Louis XIV's finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. His reputation as a writer grew throughout his career, and in 1671 he was elected to the Académie Française, France's leading literary institution. He wrote odes and speeches praising King Louis XIV for his artistic patronage and promoted the importance of literature and art in a civilized society. In a 1687 dialogue called Parallèles des anciens et des modernes (Parallels between the Ancients and the Moderns) Perrault lambasts ancient writers like Homer and Aristotle as childish and barbaric, and lauds humanity's progress. This piece was actually part of a much larger debate on scholarship and literary criticism between Perrault and other members of the Académie, polarizing the group and shocking the academic community. Hostilities raged until 1694 when Perrault publicly reconciled with Nicolas Boileau, the leader of the Ancients faction.

Français : Illustration issue de Le Maître cha...

Français : Illustration issue de Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté de Charles Perrault en 1885 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When Colbert died in 1683, Perrault was quickly dismissed from his government position by jealous rivals. Left alone to care for four children (Perrault's wife had died in 1678), he spent his days writing the Contes du temps passé to entertain and educate his youngest son, Pierre. Eight stories in all, they include "Little Red Riding Hood,"  "Cinderella" "Little Thumbling" and were published in 1697 to an enthusiastic public. Like the Grimm fairy tales, many of these originated as oral tales, but Perrault polished them into literary gems that still influence children's sensibilities as well as Disney blockbusters. Interestingly, the Contes advances Perrault's position that modernity trumps antiquity, since he argued that his stories teach morality better than ancient fables. Three hundred years later, and on the eve of Perrault's 387th birthday, Perrault's campaign has stood the test of time. 

Charles Perrault, Cinderella, Puss in Boots, The Walt Disney Company, academic franchise, france, mother goose
Bonds and Share Certificates Auction at Spink on January 30

Nate Pedersen

Nate Pedersen is a writer in Mankato, Minnesota. His most recent book is Pseudoscience: An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them. His website is natepedersen.com.

On January 30, Swiss auction house Spink will offer an auction of bonds and share certificates from around the world. This burgeoning area of ephemera collecting offers a glimpse at world history through a fascinating new lens. 

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Highlights include a 1908 share of the French company Compagnie Générale de Navigation, who incorporated to produce the Model-A airplane from the Wright Brothers after Wilbur demonstrated their invention in Le Mans. The coolest thing about the stock certificate? The fact that it's illustrated with a lithograph of the Wright Model-A. (The business itself was soon a failure, closing its doors after selling a handful of airplanes to the French military in 1910). The rare certificate is estimated at $2,000-$3,000. (If only its original investors could rise from the grave and command that price for their shares).

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On a similar note, a 1909 share is on offer of the German aviation firm Deutsche Luftsschiffahrts-AG (or DELAG) who carted passengers around Europe between 1909 and 1935 on zeppelins! The firm was forced into liquidation, however, by the Nazis in 1935, and their zeppelins were given to the newly formed company Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei. Two years later the Hindenburg disaster destroyed the industry. Estimate $500-$700.

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Also from 1909 is a share of the solar cell producer Sun Electric Generator Company, by the far the earliest share in the field of solar energy. Sun Electric Generator, however, was closed after its owners were arrested for fraud in 1911.  After patenting their unique "Thermo Electric Battery and Apparatus," the firm used fake sales of the product to drive up the price of stock shares, leading to an official investigation.  Police declared the invention a fraud, finding that the apparatus was secretly connected to regular city power in Baltimore. The stock certificate is illustrated with a lithograph of the offending device. Estimate $1,500-$2,000.

[Editor's Note: FB&C ran a feature on scripophily--collecting antique bonds and share certificates--back in 2008. An online version of it is still available at IBSS, the International Bond & Share Society.]

Glenn Horowitz's New Manhattan Gallery, RARE
GalleryShot1.jpgTomorrow evening Glenn Horowitz Bookseller will open RARE, a 1,000-square-foot gallery space to showcase "first editions, manuscripts, letters, archival material, fine art, photography, and decorative arts from the 19th century to the present," according to a press release.

Horowtiz--who assisted in the sale of Tom Wolfe's papers to the New York Public Library and, more recently, in the Ransom Center's acquisition of Gabriel García Márquez's papers--has long had his office in New York City, where he buys and sells manuscripts, archival material, and inscribed first editions. The company also publishes illustrated catalogues and monographs, such as the recent Don DeLillo/Richard Prince collaboration, The Word for Snow.

For the last few years, Horowitz has relied on his gallery space in East Hampton for exhibits, a trek for many visitors. RARE, located at street level in the Rockefeller Apartments at 17 West 54th Street, across from the Museum of Modern Art's Sculpture Garden, alleviates that by offering a more convenient exhibit space.  

The gallery opening also launches its first exhibit, Matter/Giacometti. Featuring vintage photographs, storyboards, typeface designs, posters, and letters, the show explores Swiss designer and photographer Herbert Matter's working materials for his book about Alberto Giacometti, nearly 25 years in the making. This is the first time the book (published in 1986) and its associated archives have been the focus of an exhibit. Matter/Giacometti will be on display through February 7.

Future exhibits at RARE will include 1920s Constructivist graphics for Soviet cinema and contemporary pop-up books, among others.

Image: Gallery Interior, Courtesy of Glenn Horowitz Bookseller. 
alberto giacometti, exhibit space herbert matter, fine art, first editions, glenn horowitz, manuscripts, photography, rare gallery
Duel with the Devil: An Interview with Paul Collins

Nate Pedersen

Nate Pedersen is a writer in Mankato, Minnesota. His most recent book is Pseudoscience: An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them. His website is natepedersen.com.

We recently caught up with NPR's Literary Detective (and previous Fine Books & Collections contributor) Paul Collins about his book "Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take On America's First Sensational Murder Mystery"


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How did this project begin for you?


It began when I was reading through an old 1914 compilation, American State Trials.  The idea of Hamilton and Burr joining up on a murder case just sounded too good to be true, but there it was.  And not only that, they had a pretty good idea of whodunnit.  Once I discovered a new piece of evidence for the case - I won't give the spoiler! - that pretty much sealed it for me.  I really had to write about then.


Was the finished book what you imagined when you began? Or did your research take you down new and unexpected alleys?


This one wandered far less from conception to completion than some other books, both figuratively and literally, in part because it's not a travelogue.  But the role of politics - the election of 1800, and the maneuvering around water-supply politics in NYC - came to the fore more than I initially planned, because it soon became obvious that they were inextricably interwoven into the case.


 How did you acquire your primary documents? Did you build a personal book collection?  Visit special collections libraries?  Go to town with interlibrary loan?


The competing trial transcripts were crucial -- there were three, and very nearly a fourth, which is about as close to a media frenzy as you can get in 1800.  Without those, and that level of case detail where you have people testifying what someone wore or said on a particular day, it'd have been very hard to create a book around this crime.


The NY Historical Society was also a huge help, because they had a number of diaries that helped on day to day ordinary-life stuff.  The availability on the Early American Newspapers database of thousands of Manhattan newspapers from that period also helped - and I read them all!  (This is slightly less impressive than it sounds; each issue was normally only 4 pages.)


But that's the challenge if you're trying to a write a narrative history that has anything like a novelistic level of detail - it's not just the big stuff, like the details of the case in itself, it's the little stuff like what color was someone's bedstead painted, what did they eat for dinner that night, whose house down the street got robbed the week before, which juror ran a grocery with another juror a decade earlier, that sort of thing.  You can't get that from standard accounts; it's only diaries and searchable scanned newspapers that can dredge up that stuff.


The big question: Hamilton or Burr... and why...


I'll admit that I'm fond of Burr and his progressive views, particularly on women.  That said, he really was a bit of scoundrel.


What's next on the docket for you?


I'm writing Blood and Ivy for W.W. Norton; it's an account of the Parkman-Webster "Harvard murder" case of 1849.  It's been delayed slightly, because I recently began as chair of the English department at Portland State. On the other hand, if you're writing a book about a campus scandal, being a chair gives you a rather practical understanding of that!


Can we expect to see any more Collins Library reissues down the road?


I'm afraid I've let it sit fallow for a few years, because of my teaching duties and my own books.  But the transition of McSweeney's to a nonprofit is really a new era for them -- we're already talking about some new possibilities there.  

Six Pack of Student Exhibitions at Trinity College
Rick Ring, head curator & librarian of the Watkinson Library at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, has long been a proponent of students' use of rare books and special collections. As he told us last year when he was profiled in our Bright Young Librarians series, "I like to create an environment where curiosity, inspiration, and discovery is contagious and electrifying."

Coasters.jpgSince 2011, he has accomplished this largely through a Creative Fellowship Program for undergraduates, in which selected students produce a creative project based on or inspired by special collections material. Now Ring's students are diving into the archives yet again. A Six Pack of Student Exhibitions, referring to the six students (three graduate and three undergraduate) that participated in Ring's fall 2014 American Studies course on museum and library exhibition, is on display through June 30 at Watkinson Library. Each student designed a mini-exhibit based on his or her interest and the material in the library's vault. The projects included: Voices for the Vote: What Women were Saying and Reading during the Fight for Suffrage (Gaia N. Cloutier '16); The Impossibility of Translating Culture (Alix A. de Gramont '15); Aotearoa: The Land of the Long White Cloud (Quirin A. Sackmann '15); Vinegar Valentines (Meghan E. Shaw, graduate student); Shall We Dance? The Evolution of Etiquette on the Dance Floor (Karen J. Tuthill-Jones, graduate student); and Functional Pottery in America (Mariah J. West, graduate student).

The students also created a neat set of coasters to accompany the exhibit (seen above), printed by local letterpress shop, Hartford Prints.

Read more about the exhibits and the opening event last month on Ring's blog, The Bibliophile's Lair.
exhibits, richard ring, special collections, trinity college, watkinson library
Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--

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'One more step, Mr. Hands,' said I, 'and I'll blow your brains out!' Image from The Folio Society's Treasure Island, illustrated by Sterling Hundley. Reproduced with permission.

Since 1883, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island  has set the standard for pirate tales, igniting a passion that has endured ever since. The morally ambiguous Long John Silver, the fearsome ship The Jolly Roger, even Davy Jones's locker have entered our collective imaginations.  The 1911 edition of the swashbuckling adventure, with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, showcases bloodthirsty pirates seeking booty and is forever intertwined with Stevenson's story.

As iconic as those images are, The Folio Society felt it was time to give the book an update, and with an eye to exquisite craftsmanship and design, the London-based publishing house has just released a sumptuous collector's edition of Treasure Island. Introduced by British children's book author Michael Morpurgo, this version includes new illustrations by Virginia native Sterling Hundley. From his studio outside Richmond, Hundley spoke with me about the challenges of tackling a project where an illustrator's work is so associated with a particular book.  


Hundley admitted to some initial intimidation, but a healthy dose of self-assurance helped him work through his doubts. "Wyeth's Treasure Island is like the third rail for illustrators - you don't touch it," he said. "After I committed to the project I asked myself what I was thinking, because the cultural implications of this book are so widespread. I reminded myself that Folio hired me to give a classic tale a contemporary look."  


Initially Hundley worked big, like Wyeth; epic oil paintings with grand, sweeping gestures. He soon realized that imitation would not work for this project. "I had a moment of clarity where I wondered why I would try to do anything that gets anywhere close to Wyeth when I knew I couldn't. So I returned to my roots in draftsmanship." (Hundley's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, The LA Times, and other publications.) Working on a smaller scale allowed him to create detail and add refinement. Ultimately, Hundley's oil paintings and drawings were brought together using a sophisticated Photoshop program using tools that mimic real brushes and allow the artist to control opacity, viscosity and flow. The result is refreshingly modern.

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There are images where Hundley acknowledges the old master gracefully: In one pivotal illustration, Jim Hawkins has been chased into the mast by the pirate Israel Hands. In Wyeth's depiction, Jim has already shot Hands, whom we see falling into the water. Hundley also recreated the scene, but altered the perspective. "I had to do that scene, and with the way the signatures were laid out, I couldn't skip it. I put Jim in the mast, but I chose a different moment in time, just before Jim has the upper hand." In another illustration, the pirate gang is crossing a wall, but Hundley shows the attackers from a rear position, rather than the side shot that Wyeth chose.  


Hundley had free reign when it came to designing the cover art, endpapers, even the slipcase, which is a topographical map of Skull Island, with an X marking a hollow eye socket. (The image is also recreated on the spine, as seen above.) Complete with eleven interior plates, the project conveys the energy and violence of the original artwork while navigating readers through this violent and perilous pirate world.


Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, introduced by Michael Morpurgo and illustrated by Sterling Hundley; The Folio Society, $84.95, 256 pages; frontispiece and 11 color illustrations and original Stevenson map.






NC wyeth, folio society, pirates, robert louis stevenson, sterling hundley, Robert Louis Stevenson
Mystery Novel from 1930s is Surprise Christmas Bestseller

Nate Pedersen

Nate Pedersen is a writer in Mankato, Minnesota. His most recent book is Pseudoscience: An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them. His website is natepedersen.com.

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Dorothy Sayers said he was "unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures," but the mystery novels of Joseph Jefferson Farjeon have largely been forgotten since his death 60 years ago. Farjeon, however, wrote a number of bestselling mysteries and plays - over 80 in total - between 1924 and 1955. 
His novel Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story, first published in 1937, was re-released in 2014 as part of the British Library's Crime Classics series.  It shocked the publishing industry, however, when it outsold Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt in British Christmas sales this year. Even Amazon ran out of stock for awhile as it struggled to keep up with demand.

Mystery in White tells the story of a group of six people stuck on a train stranded by snow on Christmas Eve. They decide to try to walk to the next station rather than risk remaining all night on the train.

On the way, they stumble upon a mysterious, unlocked house with a table set for dinner, but no one at home.  Slowly, the passengers begin to unravel the secrets of the empty house.  

And that's when the murders start.

Farjeon was born in London in 1885 into an artistic family.  His play Number 17 was a huge success and was turned into a film by Alfred Hitchcock.  Farjeon died in Hove, aged 72, in 1955. 

The new edition of Mystery in White is estimated to have sold about 60,000 copies in 2014.
Paul Revere's Treasures Revealed
Big news for history buffs in Boston today: the newfound time capsule buried 220 years ago by Paul Revere and Samuel Adams was opened last night, revealing colonial coins, a silver plaque likely engraved by Revere himself, and piles of paper ephemera. Conservators from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts carefully unpacked the small box, which was unearthed from a cornerstone of the Massachusetts State House last month and then X-rayed to determine its contents.

Michael Comeau and Pam Hatchfield CROP.jpgSo what's inside? Conservator Pam Hatchfield excavated the treasure with a porcupine quill and a dental tool. The first layer contained five newspapers from the mid-nineteenth century--"in amazingly good condition," according to Hatchfield. In 1855, the original leather pouch interred by Revere and Adams was accidentally discovered and replaced by a sturdier brass box. At the time, contemporary newspapers were added. Underneath sat two dozen coins, including a rare 1652 pine tree shilling. Some of the silver pieces had newsprint stuck to them and some had been corroded by long-term water damage. The capsule also held a paper seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, "calling" cards, and a title page from a seventeenth-century Massachusetts Colony Records.

The objects will receive conservation treatment and go on exhibit for a brief time before reburial.  

Great pictures of the contents are online, as is this short video.

Image: Michael Comeau and Pam Hatchfield of Boston's MFA. Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Paul revere, colonial coins, museum of fine arts, old newspapers, paper ephemera, samuel adams, time capsule
Bright Young Booksellers: Laura Massey (Revisited)

Nate Pedersen

Nate Pedersen is a writer in Mankato, Minnesota. His most recent book is Pseudoscience: An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them. His website is natepedersen.com.

Today we are checking back in with Laura Massey, who was featured in our Bright Young Booksellers series over two years ago when she was employed by Peter Harrington in London. Massey has since gone on to open up her own antiquarian bookshop in London called Alembic Rare Books. 

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Please introduce us to your new shop.  What does Alembic specialize in? Where are you located?


Alembic is based in north London and specialises in books, manuscripts, objects, and visual material in the sciences, with stock in all major scientific fields from the late medieval period to the present. My particular areas of interest are alchemy and the early history of science; nuclear physics & the Manhattan project; natural history; computing; and anatomy. I'm also fascinated by popular science, especially from the Victorian era when scientific pursuits became recreations for the middle classes. Often you find that these books inspired children who grew up to become renowned scientists. They also gave women an entry into scientific fields that were closed to them at the professional level, and a number of women became best-selling popular science authors. These types of books are great gifts or starting points for new collectors, and I keep a good selection in stock.


That leads me to our other area, which is women's history. In addition to books by female scientists, I tend to focus on the lives of ordinary women and stock things like scrapbooks, manuscript recipe books, diaries, and crafts. One of my most interesting pieces is a manuscript receipt for rent payment received by an Englishwoman in 1353, which demonstrates how involved medieval women were in running businesses and estates.


Remind us of your background in rare books:


I did my undergraduate degree in the history of science at Georgia Tech and spent several years as a student worker in the school's archives & special collections department. There's a great bookshop in Atlanta called A Cappella, and the owner Frank Reiss graciously allowed me to volunteer there while I decided whether to pursue a career in rare books. In 2008 I moved to London and completed a master's degree in book history at the Institute of English Studies of the University of London. I then joined the staff at Peter Harrington, where I spent four years as general cataloguer and blogger, and also began specialising in science books, contributing a significant portion of the firm's recent science catalogue.


How has the transition been from employee to shop-owner?


It's been fantastic, and I'm really grateful for the huge amount of support and encouragement I've received from the rest of the rare book community. As for the day-to-day stuff, being a general cataloguer in a large shop is great because you encounter so many different types of books, but now it's nice to be able to focus on the specific areas that interest me. I'm really enjoying making my own decisions about purchasing, and it was a lot of fun to design my website and logo. Though I do really miss the camaraderie of working in a shop, and being able to share my interesting purchases with colleagues.


In your original BYT interview, you mentioned that you were reluctant to open your own shop as you weren't keen on admin and bookkeeping.  How's that been going for you?


Much better than expected! The first thing I did when I decided to go out on my own was buy the Financial Times Small Business Start-Up Guide, which was extremely helpful, mostly in reassuring me that all the unfamiliar things I needed to do and know as a business person were relatively straightforward. And I'm apparently such a nerd that I'm even finding accounting software and tax law interesting.


At Peter Harrington, you were a resident blogger.  Are you still writing anywhere online?


I'm writing a blog for Alembic, and my first post is on a rare jacketed copy of The Salamander, the first novel about a flapper and the book that inspired Zelda Fitzgerald's lifestyle.


Favorite book that's crossed your door at Alembic?


This wonderful prize-binding that contains two works on the physics of spinning tops and soap bubbles. Prize-bound books were given to students as rewards for scholarly excellence. Most of them date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and they're often works on general topics, such as overviews of natural history. This example is special because the subjects are quite specific and unusual. But what makes it really interesting is that both the books were written by leading scientists who were fascinated by these seemingly minor phenomena because they encompassed some of the great concepts and questions in science. In fact, the work on soap bubbles was considered the definitive account of the subject. It's a gorgeous book and represents the best of what science writing can be.


Started any personal collections beyond antique jelly moulds yet?


Not yet! My personal collecting is still pretty haphazard. But I am pleased to be branching out into scientific objects and other types of antiques as part of my business. I have a particularly nice diptych sundial & compass at the moment.


Any upcoming fairs / catalogues?


Nothing firm yet, though I'm working toward catalogue number 1 and my newsletters can be subscribed to at the bottom of this page. I also regularly post images of new acquisitions to twitter, facebook, and Google+.
TBR 2015
One of my favorite annual holiday gifts is a bag/box of about ten books that I placed on a running wish list sometime in the previous year. They are, essentially, the books I never got to when they were new, or that I only just learned about. They are all "reading" books, not collectible books, although most pertain to the book/art/collecting world in some way. The stack becomes my 'to be read' pile. In between all of the other work-related reading (and the few impulse buys), I pull one of these from the pile to savor each month. I think most of these will appeal to FB&C readers...

9780199951048.jpgThe Newton Papers: The Strange & True Odyssey of Isaac Newton's Manuscripts by Sarah Dry. Published in May 2014, this account details why and how Newton's papers were kept from the public eye. The writeup in Wired caught my attention.

Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England by William H. Sherman. First published in 2007, this is not a new book but one that has long been on my radar as one to read about marginalia, provenance, and early books.

Three Things You Need to Know about Rockets: A Real-Life Scottish Fairytale by Jessica A. Fox. I came across this 2013 memoir about moving to remote Scotland to work in a secondhand book shop while researching the book I'm writing. So reading it is like research, only more entertaining.

Warner copy.jpgTough Day for the Army by John Warner. This is a book of short stories by a McSweeney's editor, aka Biblioracle, who has been known to successfully recommend a book to a complete stranger after he/she has revealed five previous reads. He also recently wrote about buying first editions in the Chicago Trib.

The Art of the English Murder by Lucy Worsley. The subject is intriguing, and we interviewed the author, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, for an article on Queen Victoria's collections a couple of years back. Why not?

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton. This novel, set in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, has landed on many 'best of' lists, and I look forward to finding out why.

Edgar Allan Poe The Fever Called Living by Paul Collins. It might be enough to say that I'll read anything by Collins, author of Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books, The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World, etc. And Poe is endlessly fascinating.

The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City by William B. Helmreich. This is the least "bookish" book on my list. This guy spent four years schlepping down every block in all five boroughs of NYC, studying the city's present and not-so-distant past.

9781472116666.jpg+There are two more, which, to be honest, would have been amongst this year-end pile if I had had more patience.

The Bookshop Book by Jen Campbell, an overview of the world's bookstores, was given to me early, and I've been enjoying nibbles of it ever since.

The Public Domain Review: Selected Essays, 2011-2013, is a collection of neat and unique articles from one of the web's best magazines. (I couldn't wait for Santa; I hastily ordered mine.)
Edgar Allan Poe, biblioracle, books about collecting, bookshop book, jen campbell, jessica a. fox, jessie burton, john warner, lucy worsley, newton papers, paul collins, public domain review, sarah dry, scottish bookshop, to be read, tough day for the army, used books, william b. helmreich, william h. sherman