Upcoming Rare Book Auctions - Australia

~ On 27 and 28 May, in three sessions, Australian Book Auctions offers 'Voyages and Travels and other Books and Documents'. The three books bringing the highest estimates are: a large paper copy of Matthew Flinders's A Voyage to Terra Australis (London, 1814), at $80,000 to $100,000 AUD (lot 33); an uncut copy in original boards of James Maria Magra's A Journal of a Voyage Round the World, in His Majesty's Ship Endeavour (London, 1771) with the suppressed Dedication leaf, expected to bring between $120,000 and $160,000 AUD (lot 55); and a first edition of the Second Voyage Round the World (London, 1776), a surreptitious account of Cook's 1772–1775 voyage, bound in red morocco from the Admiralty Office Library, listed at $80,000 to $120,000 AUD (lot 63).

A PDF of the catalogue can be viewed here.

~ The first Sydney Rare Book Auctions sale in their new premises is scheduled for 1 June. More than 400 lots will be on offer, including what is described as a 'clean, bright and crisp' copy of the first complete edition of James De Carle Sowerby and Edward Lear's Tortoises, Terrapins, and Turtles Drawn from Life (London, 1872), with three plain and 57 hand-coloured plates.

Catalogue not yet available on-line.

Alfred and Isabel Reed Medieval Manuscripts Online

Leaf from a French Book of Hours,
fifteenth century (RMMF19)

It gives me great pleasure to announce that images and descriptions of the Dunedin City Library's holdings of medieval manuscripts from the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection are now available on Flickr:

Profile

http://www.flickr.com/people/dplmedmss/

Collections (7)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dplmedmss/collections/

Sets (71)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dplmedmss/sets

 

The images include a selection from each bound manuscript, and the recto/ verso of each individual leaf and fragment. I did not resize the images, so visitors can get access to the original files.

The site was created with the aim of promoting and providing on-line access to one of New Zealand's largest collections of medieval manuscripts. Collection highlights include: a leaf and bifolium from a ninth-century Bible in Carolingian script (RMMF 1a and 1b), which are among the oldest manuscript leaves in the country; a mid-fifteenth-century copy of the Wycliffe Gospels (MS 6) and a leaf from a Wycliffite Lectionary (RMMF 20) dated to the same time period; a portion of a fourteenth-century Bible (MS 4a), identified by Christopher de Hamel as having been written in the Cistercian Abbey of Byszewo (or Koronowo), near Gdansk, the first manuscript of Polish origin to be identified in New Zealand; leaves from the fourteenth-century 'Bohun Bible' (RMMF 13a and 13b); a fifteenth-century Dutch Book of Hours (MS 12) from the library of Alexander Boswell, 8th Laird of Auchinleck, and a second Dutch Book of Hours (MS 10) brought to New Zealand by Walter B. D. Mantell in 1840, one of the earliest medieval manuscripts to be transported to the colony.

 

I would like to acknowledge and thank Christopher de Hamel, Margaret Manion, and the family of the late Vera F. Vines, for granting permission to reproduce the relevant descriptions in Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections (London, 1989). This information has been updated to reflect recent scholarship (most notably by de Hamel, Alexandra Barratt, and Richard Gameson). References are provided. I would also like to thank Paul Hayton, former electronic services co-ordinator for Dunedin Public Libraries, and Will Noel for his guidance.

'Published Daily, Shells Permitting': Soldiers' Newspapers in the Dunedin City Library

Today is Anzac Day, the national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand.* 

As we reflect on the sacrifices made by members of the armed forces, this week's post highlights something that provided a welcome distraction from the duties of active service: soldiers' newspapers.

Better known as troopship and trench journals (and the two are distinct), these periodicals were written, published, and occasionally illustrated, by the soldiers themselves. Some papers were even printed aboard ship at sea. They range from the most basic hand-written news sheets to the pinnacle of professional journalistic and artistic skills, designed to inform, entertain, and improve the morale of the troops who were so far from home. Typically full of wit and black humour, content included official (and unofficial) campaign reports, satirical commentary on military life at sea or at the Front, topical poems and limericks, caricatures (particularly of officers), and other artistic endeavours.

A number of the papers, such as the Mafeking Mail (South Africa, 1899), note their issues were published daily or weekly, 'shells permitting’.

This last half-joking comment reflects another purpose behind the creation of such journals: humour in the face of death and destruction. For soldiers on active duty these journals provided much needed light relief from the horrors of war. To the modern reader, their impact is perhaps best summarised by Professor Graham Seal of Curtin University (Australia): ‘Through this mostly forgotten literature, language and art we can connect with the common concerns of foot soldiers and perhaps understand a little better how they endured the unendurable and why, at its end, many of the survivors experienced oddly mixed feelings of relief and regret’.

The Dunedin Public Library is fortunate to hold one of the largest collection of these soldiers' newspapers, journals, and official military souvenirs in New Zealand. The collection was begun by Dunedin's first librarian, William Barker McEwan (1870-1933). Showing great foresight, McEwan put out the call for returning soldiers to donate their First World War troopship and trench journals as early as 1915. He made further requests  from the New Zealand High Commissioner in London, Sir Thomas McKenzie, the Dominion Museum, and the Chief Librarian in Cape Town South Africa, where many journals were printed during port-of-call stops. Journals from the Second World War were added by Miss Elizabeth Bryant, who served as interim Public Librarian after McEwan's death. Bryant kept alive McEwan's goal of building one of the best troopship journal collections in the country, and the library maintains an active collection development policy in this area.

Today the collection numbers more than 380 journals and papers. The following is a small representative sample, with most of the examples dating to the First World War when Anzac Day was founded. I had less choice than usual, but with very good reason. The library is currently involved in a project with the Auckland War Memorial Museum to digitise troopship and trench journals in time for the First World War centenary next year, and a number of the library's journals are presently with the Museum.

A. C. Morton. The Gymeric Times; printed on board H. M. T. Gymeric in the Indian Ocean during the voyage from New Zealand to South Africa, April 1900.

Published for troops bound for the Second Boer War, The Gymeric Times boasted at having ‘the honour of … [introducing] the first paper issued on board a troopship from New Zealand’.

The Gunner: The Official Journal of H. M. N. Z. T. No. 7; printed at sea, 1914. 

Illustration of Kaiser Wilhelm II surrounded by lions representing each corner of the British Empire, with the Russian bear and French eagle in background.

The Grey Funnel; With Which is Incorporated The Tin Hut Table, Empire's Call, and The Quinn's Post Nightly: The Official Organ of Troopship 95 on Her 8th Trip to the Homeland; published in London, 1917.

A shipboard artist's impression of the sardine-like conditions aboard ship.

The Digger: Being the Unofficial Record of the Early Days of the 41st RFT at Sea; published in Capetown by Cape Times Ltd., 1918.

Cover illustration showing a Kiwi footsoldier skewering the leaders of the Central Powers.

Napoo: Published As a Record of the Homecoming of 700 Demobilised Diggers by the S. S. Rimutaka; published in Wellington by Lankshear's Ltd., 1919.

'Napoo' was a slang term for 'to finish; to put an end to; to kill'.

Convoice; printed on board H. M. T. 24 for the Second Expeditionary Force, 4th Reinforcements, 1941.

A mostly cheerful account of life on board the Niew Amsterdam, this journal includes cartoons by the great New Zealand cartoonist Nevile Lodge (1918-1989), who was on board.

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For more information, see Graham Seal's The Soldiers' Press: Trench Journals in the First World War, published earlier this month by Palgrave Macmillan; David Kent's From Trench and Troopship: The Experience of the Australian Imperial Force, 1914-1919 (1999); and Professor Seal's summary of trench journals on the Simply Australia website. 

*Be sure to check out the National Library of New Zealand's latest blog post on its war diaries project, written by David Colquhoun (Curator, Manuscripts at Alexander Turnbull Library).

Noah to Edward IV: The Canterbury Roll Digitised

Courtesy of the University of
Canterbury Library

The University of Canterbury has digitised its fifteenth-century manuscript roll, which traces the genealogy of the kings of England from Noah to Edward IV. The roll, which measures 489 centimetres in length, has been in the university's collections since 1918 and is the only medieval roll known in the Southern Hemisphere.

The website aims to 'provide a high quality digital archive of the manuscript that will allow an international public to view and make use of this unique treasure [which has been] photographed to an archival standard in an effort to aid its preservation and to ensure the best viewing experience'.

The scrolling contents page allows visitors to navigate through the roll and includes a general commentary on/ description of each section. The informative website also provides an introduction to the roll and the overall project, explores the provenance of the manuscript, and offers commentary on the scroll's biblical and mythological elements and use as a tool in political propaganda.

The roll can be viewed in its entirety here and downloaded here.

The digitised manuscript project was developed by Chris Jones, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Canterbury. Much of the work was done by Maree Shirota, one of Chris's Honours (now MA) students, whose master's thesis is centred on the Canterbury Roll.

Congratulations to everyone who was involved in this very worthwhile project!

Catalogue of Incunabula, Dunedin City Library

Leaf from the Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1455)

A few years ago I began compiling an annotated catalogue of fifteenth-century printing held by the Heritage Collections, Dunedin City Library. That work was set aside when I started my MA thesis. Now, with the thesis completed last August, I have at last been able to finish the work.

The catalogue records seven bound incunabula and more than ninety leaves and fragments, with commentary on the texts, provenance, and printers. I have also included links to fully digitised copies where available.

Highlights from the collection include: one volume of the 1472 Latin Bible printed by Peter Schöffer and Johann Fust, the oldest printed book held by the Library; a 1476 edition of the Legenda aurea sanctorum from the noted collections of Sir James Balfour (ca. 1600–1658) and David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes (1726–1792); leaves from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), a leaf from William Caxton's first printed edition of The Canterbury Tales (1476/7), a leaf from the Catholicon (1460), and one leaf from the Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1454), the first book printed in Europe using movable type.

Rather than leave the catalogue solely for in-house use, I have uploaded the file (1.6MB) to Google Docs, and my academia.edu and LinkedIn accounts. Interested readers are welcome to view/ download the PDF and/ or share it with others.

A number of individuals provided invaluable assistance. Though these people are thanked in the catalogue introduction, I would like to express my appreciation to them here. Sincere thanks go to:

Jordan Goffin (Providence Public Library), Klaus Graf (University of Freiburg), Farley Katz (San Antonio, Texas), Donald Kerr (Special Collections, University of Otago), Francis Lapka (Yale Centre for British Art, Yale University), Paul Needham (Scheide Library, Princeton University), Stephen Tabor (Huntington Library), Bettina Wagner (State Library, Munich) and Eric White (Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University).

Special thanks go to Falk Eiserman, Oliver Dunst and Martina Nickel of the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke for their encouragement and willingness to receive images of unknown leaves and fragments, no matter how small or fragmentary; to Gabriel Swift (Princeton University) for his comments on the initial draft; and to the Berkeley-based bookseller, Ian Jackson, for his kindness in editing the final text.

I make no claims at being an incunabulist, and so welcome any corrections or added information by those more learned than myself.

Latin Bible (1472)

Medieval Bookbindings Blog

A new blog created by Alexandra Gillespie, Associate Professor in English and Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, with contributions by Emeritus Professor Alexandra Barratt, University of Waikato:

http://medievalbookbindings.com/

Recent posts include a description and very clear images of a sixteenth-century binding and its medieval manuscript endleaves from the Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, and Alexandra Barratt's discovery last year of vellum quire guards taken from an early ninth-century Carolingian Bible and sewn into a fifteenth-century binding (also in the Grey collection).

Sixteenth-century binding brass hook-clasp fastening and fore-edge book
marks; New Testament, probably Netherlands, late twelfth or early thirteenth century; Auckland Libraries, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Med. MS G.140

Alexandra G. and Alexandra B. have done great work identifying and expanding upon what is known about early bindings, and the manuscript waste found in them, held in New Zealand collections. The site will cover a variety of bibliocentric topics (not just New Zealand and not just bindings), so I am definitely excited about future posts!

If interested in receiving email alerts, click the 'Follow' function icon towards the bottom of the page/ screen (may not appear in Chrome).

Bought By Association

My previous post on the Dunedin City Library’s copy of Richard Knolles’s Turkish History (London, 1687) inscribed by Samuel Pepys generated some questions about how the book fit within Sir Alfred Hamish Reed’s collecting interests.

Known primarily as a collector of medieval manuscripts, notable editions of the Bible, autograph letters, and the works of Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens, Reed also collected association copies. ‘To hold in the hand’, wrote Reed, ‘a book that has been inscribed or written in by some famous person, seems … to bring one nearer to him as nothing else, save an autograph letter, can do’ (279).

Association copies were an early collecting interest of Reed’s. Evidence suggests he was acquiring them by at least 1920, if not earlier. His approach was broad, and took in all the points later described in John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors:

ASSOCIATION COPY
‘This term, often scoffed at by laymen, is applied to a copy which once belonged to, or was annotated by, the author; which once belonged to someone connected with the author or someone of interest in his own right; or again, and perhaps most interestingly, belonged to someone peculiarly associated with its contents’ (27).

In all, Reed's 1948 Deed of Gift records just over 140 association books, mostly presentation copies such as Knolles’s Turkish History. Through further acquisitions by Reed and subsequent purchases made by the Library, the collection today numbers about 570 volumes divided into two sequences: New Zealand and non-New Zealand publications/ associations.

What follows is a selection of books highlighting some of the association copies in the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection. A secondary reason for this post is I hope readers (or someone you may know) familiar with the signatures/ handwriting of the former owners will contact me should any appear wrongly attributed. Reed purchased these titles in good faith, but objective confirmation is welcome.

Joseph Addison. The Spectator, 8 vols (London, 1749).

The first and sixth volumes are signed by the great eighteenth-century literary figure, Samuel Johnson (1709‒1784).

A photostat of the title-page (along with copies of other Johnsoniana in the collection) was sent to the Johnson scholar J. D. Fleeman in 1968. Fleeman replied with 'delight and enthusiasm' at Reed's ownership of Johnson's copy of Addison's Spectator, confirmed its genuineness, and later listed the book in his A Preliminary Handlist of Copies of Books Associated with Dr. Samuel Johnson (Oxford, 1984).

William Dillingham. Vita Laurentii Chadertoni S. T. P. & Collegii Emmanuelis apud Cantabrigienses magistri primi (Cantabrigiae, [1700]).

A gift from the publishers to the writer and printer Samuel Richardson (1689‒1761), author of Pamela and Clarissa.

It seems unlikely that Richardson received this book the year it was published, being he was just eleven at the time. However, from 1744 until his death, Richardson printed the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The volumes were produced for the Society's printers Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, who were involved in the publication of Dillingham's work on the life of English Divine Laurence Chaderton (ca. 1536‒1640).

A. E. M. Grétry. Mémoires, ou Essais sur la Musique (Paris, [1797]).

With the bookplate of the poet Edward FitzGerald (1809‒1883), known for his translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

In volume one of his Sale Catalogues of Libraries of Eminent Persons (London, 1971‒1975), A. N. L. Munby notes that Trinity College, Cambridge, holds several volumes of 'incongruously bound collections of tracts and excerpts which it was FitzGerald's habit to make up' (Munby, 1:335). FitzGerald's copy of Grétry's Mémoires appears to have received the same treatment, for the volume is made up of various, out of order sequences of leaves from the three volume 1797 reprint of the 1789 first edition.

FitzGerald's bookplate was designed by his friend, the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811‒1863). 

The Holy Bible Containing the Old and the New [Testaments] (Cambridge, 1668).

Affixed to the front pastedown of this 1668 Cambridge Bible is a note dated 13 July 1675 written by Lazarus Seaman (d. 1675), a Presbyterian minister, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge (1644 to 1660), and active member of the Westminster Assembly.

The 1676 auction of Seaman's library was the first sale of books by public auction held in England. Not every book was included in the sale and no English bibles are recorded in the catalogue. According to B. J. McMullin's note 'Lazarus Seaman and his bequest to James Hulbert', published in The Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand 14:4 (June 1990), the number three (top left corner) suggests two other books were similarly assigned to other recipients and that the absence of English bibles form the catalogue implies these were most likely given as personal gifts before Seaman's death. Although Hulbert's identity is unknown, McMullin proposes that he may have been a member of Seaman's Silver Street congregation.

Mark Pattison. Milton (London, 1879).

The gift inscription found on the front pastedown was written by Henry George Liddell to his daughter, Alice Pleasance, who was the prototype for Lewis Carroll's Alice of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland fame.

Alice (1852‒1934) was four when she and her siblings met the then twenty-four-year-old Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832‒1898), during his visit to their father's deanery in April 1856. Dodgson became a family friend and, on 4 July 1862, invented the story of Alice in Wonderland while on a river picnic with the children. The following year, however, Dodgson was banished from the Liddell household due to an unexplained incident (possibly a marriage proposal made by Dodgson to Alice, then twelve), and his correspondence with Alice, once renewed, was polite at best afterwards (ODNB).

Alice would have been twenty-seven when she received this book in December 1879, and less than a year away from her marriage to Reginald Gervis Hargreaves (1851–1926) in September 1880.

J. H. Stirling. Jerrold, Tennyson and Macaulay (Edinburgh, 1868).

Presentation copy sent by the author, James Hutchison Stirling (1820‒1909), to the eminent biographer and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795‒1881).

According to his entry in the ODNB, Stirling was 'an ardent admirer of Carlyle ... [who] corresponded with the sage as early as 1842, mimicked his passionate style, adopted his cultural pretensions, and took his advice to learn French and German as a means to mastery over contemporary European literature and philosophy'.

Beneath the inscription are pencilled notes in Carlyle's hand. Though he found pages 172 to 224 'worth reading', it appears Carlyle found much of the rest of Stirling's text to be 'noisy - trivial'.

Anthony Trollope. British Sports and Pastimes (London, 1868).

A little known work edited by Anthony Trollope (1815–1882), the copy held by the Dunedin City Library appears to have been the novelist's own, and contains numerous editing marks and annotations in Trollope's hand.

The work was reprinted from articles originally published in St. Paul’s Magazine, of which Trollope was the editor from 1867 until it ceased publication in 1870. Eight articles covering horseracing, hunting, shooting, fishing, yachting, rowing, alpine climbing, and cricket are included in the book, to which Trollope contributed the preface and chapter on hunting.

Did Trollope mark up this copy with the intention of producing a second edition? No later edition is known to exist, but the title was reissued six times (see Michael Sadlier's Trollope bibliography, pp. 218-219). It is therefore possible that the edits in the Reed copy are reflected in one of the reissues.

[For more information, see my short contribution in Trollopiana: The Journal of the Trollope Society 83 (Spring 2009): 8–13.]

John Walker. A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (London, 1834).

The front free endpaper and title-page are signed 'Marian Evans', who is perhaps better known by her pen name 'George Eliot'.

Evans (1819‒1880) would have been just fifteen years old when she signed the book, if the ownership inscription coincides with the publication date. In 1834, she was enrolled in Miss Franklin's school in Coventry, where she excelled at the piano, in French, and in English composition, perhaps with the aid of Walker's Dictionary.

Charles Walton. Essays on Natural History, Chiefly Ornithology (London, 1838).

The Reed collection includes four books from the library of Charles Dickens (1812–1870). None, however, are as intimately attached to one of Dickens’s most memorable characters as Waterton’s Essays on Natural History. The character is, of course, Barnaby Rudge’s pet raven 'Grip', the second of Dickens’s popular animal characters (the first being the dog 'Bullseye' from Oliver Twist), who was a composite of two successive ravens of that name which formed part of the Dickens household while he was writing Barnaby Rudge (88 weekly parts, February to November 1841).

Dickens used 'Grip' to great comic effect, and justified its creation by writing: 'Barnaby being an idiot my notion is to have him always in company with a pet raven who is immeasurably more knowing than himself'. Dickens quoted from Waterton in his preface to Barnaby Rudge, and the pencilled markings in the chapter on ravens, bears evidence that it assisted Dickens in describing the fictional 'Grip'.

The other books from Dickens's library held by Dunedin City Library are: R. H. Horne's Ballad Romances (London, 1846) and John Hollingshead's Ways of Life (London, 1861), both inscribed by the authors to Dickens, and a French translation of Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop published in Paris in 1857 (also with the bookplate of the Comte Alain de Suzannet (1882–1950)).

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John Carter and Nicholas Barker. ABC for Book Collectors (New Castle, DE; London: Oak Knoll Books; the British Library, 2004, eighth edition)

A. H. Reed. An Autobiography (Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1967)