#nineteenth century
(First page of the oldest surviving poem by iconic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley - “Cat In Distress”. He apparently wrote this when he was about 10. Sometime between 1809 and 1811, his sister Elizabeth transcribed it onto this piece of paper and created the little watercolor cat image. When Elizabeth died, the poem was passed to her sister Hellen.)
Pussy’s Return Publisher: Currier & Ives (American, active New York, 1857–1907) Date: 1874–78 Medium: Hand-colored lithograph Dimensions: image: 8 ½ x 12 ½ in. (21.6 x 31.8 cm) Classification: Prints Credit Line: Bequest of Adele S. Colgate, 1962 Accession Number: 63.550.314 Metropolitan Museum of Art
Hammatt Billings, illustration for Tabitha Grimalkin’s Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens, by an Old Tabby (1852)
Marcus Stone, Good Friends, 1887
Retrospective cataloguing work recently turned up a book inscribed to the founder of our library Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull (1868-1918) when he was just sixteen.
The inscription, found in an 1867 edition of Alain-René Lesage’s picaresque novel Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane, reads:
Neuilly 14 Novembre [18]84.
14 rue Borghese
A Manoury.
A mon cher élève [i.e. To my dear student]
A Turnbull.
Thanks to some detective work by Anthony Tedeschi, our Curator Rare Books and Fine Printing, the inscriber has been identified as Arthur Maximilien Manoury (1849–1900), who is listed in the 1891 Paris electoral roll as living in 14 Rue Borghese in the commune of Neuilly (officially Neuilly-sur-Seine from May 1897) in the department of Hauts-de-Seine, just west of Paris.
By November 1884, Turnbull was no longer enrolled as a student at Dulwich College, London, having left at the end of the Lent term in March. Manoury was presumably hired as a private tutor so Turnbull could continue his French education. His comprehension of the language as a student at Dulwich is described in Eric McCormick’s biography as ‘rather better than average’ (p. 59) and, while not exactly a glowing endorsement, young Alexander must have improved and impressed Manoury enough to be given such a kind gift.
This book is one of just two books from Turnbull’s youth found in the collection to date. The other volume is an 1883 edition of works by the English poet and intellectual John Milton (1608-1674).
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Alain-René Lesage, Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane. Paris: Garnier frères, 1867, Alexander Turnbull Library, R407877.
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Happy Birthday to illustrator and cartoonist Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914), born 200 years ago today (28 February), and perhaps best remembered for his illustrations in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its follow-up novel Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871).
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Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. London: Macmillan and Co., 1866, Alexander Turnbull Library, REng DODG Alic 1866.
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass: and What Alice Found There. London: Macmillan and Co., 1872, Alexander Turnbull Library, REng DODG Alic 1872.
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Here stand my books, line upon line
They reach the roof, and row by row,
They speak of faded tastes of mine,
And things I did, but do not, know.
~ Andrew Lang
This morocco binding rainbow comprises 11 of the 12 ‘Coloured’ Fairy Books, e.g. blue, red, yellow, green and so on, published between 1889 and 1910 by Scottish author Andrew Lang (1844-1912) and his wife Leonora (1851-1933).
They were collected by Alexander Turnbull, who had each volume rebound in the rich colour of each title fairy. Only the Violet Fairy Book (1901) is lacking for reasons unknown.
Rather than see them discarded, Turnbull requested his binders affix the original gold-blocked covers to the front pastedown (and the original spine strip to the rear pastedown) in each book as shown here in the Brown Fairy Book (1904) and in this previous Turnbull Rare Books post:
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A Brontë Bicentennial
17 January marks the 200th birthday of Anne Brontë (1820-1849), youngest of the three Brontë sisters and author of Agnes Grey (1847)andThe Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).
Anne’s work first appeared in print alongside Charlotte and Emily in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846). To avoid the prejudice against female authors at the time, they published this collection under male pseudonyms beginning with their first initials: Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily) and Acton (Anne) Bell (Brontë).
Twelve of the poems are credited to Anne, including one of her most acclaimed, ‘Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day’, shown here in the Turnbull Library’s copy of the first edition, second issue.
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Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell [pseud.]. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1846 [i.e. 1848], Alexander Turnbull Library, REng BRON Poems 1848.
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Joseph Harrison’s The Floricultural Cabinet
‘A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars’.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Our first post of 2020 reflects today’s fine summer weather in New Zealand’s capital city Wellington.
Harrison’sCabinetappeared serially between 1833 and 1859. Published in twelve monthly issues, each with a hand-coloured plate, the journal contains articles on all aspects of flower cultivation, including lists of new and rare plants, with submissions from various gardeners.
This set, recently transferred to the Alexander Turnbull Library from the National Library of New Zealand collection, begins with the journal’s first number in March 1833 and runs to October 1845. It includes many of the hand-coloured plates, with occasional in-text wood engravings of propagation techniques and garden layouts.
Joseph Harrison (1798-1856) was a British horticulturalist and editor, who, along with gardener and architect Joseph Paxton (1803-1865), edited the Horticultural Register before founding the Floricultural Cabinet on his own. The new venture (and presumably the lower cost) proved extremely popular. So much so that near the end of its first year, circulation had risen to nearly 60,000 copies.
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Joseph Harrison, editor. The floricultural cabinet and florists magazine. London: Whitaker & Co, 1833-[1845], thirteen volumes, Alexander Turnbull Library, R407843 (vol. 1) to R407855 (vol. 13).
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Whitman at 200
‘I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms’
31 May 2019 marks the birthday bicentennial of one of America’s greatest and most influential poets, Walt Whitman (1819-1892).
Thanks to our founder, Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull (1868-1918), the Turnbull Library is able to honour the occasion by highlighting some key Whitman works in the collection. Shown here are:
~ Whitman’s first published novel Franklin Evans; or the Inebriate (1842)
~ First editions of Whitman’s groundbreaking (and at the time highly controversial) Leaves of Grass (1855) and Drum-Taps(1865), a collection of poetry about his experiences in and the tragedy of the American Civil War
~ The first edition in original wrappers of his political prose publication Democratic Vistas (1871) in which Whitman condemned America’s ‘Gilded Age’
~ And the first edition of November Boughs (1888), a mixture of poetry and prose published in his 70th year
For more on Whitman and his poetry, visit poets.org/walt-whitman-200.
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Walt Whitman, Franklin Evans’ or the Inebriate: a Tale of the Times. New York: J. Winchester, 1842, Alexander Turnbull Library, qREng WALT Fran 1842.
—–Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, New York, 1855, Alexander Turnbull Library, qREng WALT Leav 1855.
—–Drum-Taps. New York, 1865, Alexander Turnbull Library, G 811 WHI 1865.
—–Democratic Vistas. New-York: J.S. Redfield; Washington, D.C.: Sold by the author, 1871, Alexander Turnbull Library, G 811 WHI 1871.
—–November Boughs. Philadelphia: David McKay, 1888, Alexander Turnbull Library, G 811 WHI 1888.
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