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SELECTED RECENT ACQUISITIONS
2000
- Book of the Dead (Chapters 18-24). Egypt, 7th or 8th century BCE.
This group of fragments from a papyrus roll of the Book of the Dead includes portions of Chapters 18-24; further portions of the same roll are in the Louvre. Only pharaohs were permitted to use royal cartouches around their names, and the name of the original commissioner of this roll, Pedenemty, has such a cartouche. He is not attested outside of this roll, which apparently dates to the twenty-sixth dynasty. It is possible that he was a local pharaoh in Upper Egypt or one of the Kushite rulers. The text is written in vertical columns of cursive hieroglyphs, in black ink with red rubrics and vignettes.
- Cicero. Paradoxa Stoicorum. Leipzig, 1492.
This edition of Cicero's treatise, printed for university students in Leipzig, includes the first appearance of Johann Gabriel Senensis' commentary on the text. It is extremely rare, with no copies of the edition recorded in North American libraries. A contemporary German student has added in manuscript additional commentary, from interlinear glosses to extended annotations in the margins. The manuscript additions are apparently classroom lecture notes.
- Teseo Ambrogio. Introductio in Chaldaicam linguam, Syriacam, atquen Armenicam, et decem alias linguas. Pavia, 1539.
One of the monuments of early linguistic studies, Teseo's treatise is the first Western attempt to explain the grammar and syntax of Aramaic, Syriac, Armenian, various dialects of Arabic, and Ethiopic. Teseo was a friar who devoted himself to the study of oriental languages in order to assist in the standardization of the performance of Christian ritual in the oriental churches. In order to print this volume he designed and assisted in the cutting of the typefaces; this was the first movable type ever cut for most of these alphabets and it served as a model for many later designers. Teseo's work was instrumental in expanding the ancient linguistic studies of Renaissance and Reformation Europe beyond the conventional focus on the three biblical languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. This first edition of the work is preserved in a contemporary vellum binding and has the "devil's alphabet," which was excised by the Inquisition from many copies of the work.
- Koch unnd Kellermeisterey von allen Speisen unnd Geträncken. Frankfurt, 1547.
The most successful German cookbook of the Renaissance, this volume offers recipes for fish, crab, eel, and beaver; chicken, pig, veal, and venison; sauces, breads, and soups. For the more ambitious, there are sections on gilding food; on preparing green, blue, or yellow milk; and on a variety of sweet and fragrant dishes. The section on wine describes the entire process of vinting, including the preparation of barrels, the maintenance of the cellar, and the reparation of spoiled wines. There are also recipes for spiced, fruit, and medicinal wines. The brewing section is much shorter, dealing mostly with salvaging bad brews. The woodcuts depict the plants and animals used in the recipes, cooks and bakers at work, and cooking implements. This copy is generously splattered with the grease and sauces of the kitchens in which it was used.
- Anne Dudley, Countess of Warwick. Le Tombeau de Marguerite de Valois Royne de Navarre. Paris, 1551.
Six months after the death of Marguerite de Navarre, the three daughters of the Earl of Sommerset, Anne, Marguerite, and Jane, composed and published in Paris a collection of Latin poems in honor of the queen. Ronsard, scandalized by the fact that no French poets had so honored the deceased, had the girls' poems translated into French and assembled a collection of new poems on the same subject by himself and by the members of his circle to publish along with the translations. This first printing of the French collection includes the first appearance of more than eight hundred lines of verse by Ronsard.
- I. Paulini. Roman alphabet. Italy, ca. 1570.
Nothing is known of Paulini, the designer and engraver of this Mannerist alphabet--not even his first name. Each letter is a fantastic composite of human figures, botanical and marine specimens, landscapes or cityscapes, with a frame of arabesques, grotesques, putti, antique statuary, and the like. No two frames are identical. Each letter encapsulates a mythological episode from Ovid, A for Actaeon, B for Bacchus, C for Cadmus, etc. The Ovidian episode is illustrated behind each letter, and printed captions identify the figures.
Jesuit martyrs
- Mathias Tanner. Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitae profusionem militans, in Europa, Africa, Asia, et America, contra gentiles, Mahometanos, Judaeos, haereticos, impios, pro Deo, fide, ecclesia, pietate. Sive vita, et mors eorum, qui ex societate Jesu causa fidei, & virtutis propugnatae, violenta morte toto orbe sublati sunt. Prague, 1675.
The author of this compendium, Mathias Tanner (1630-92), was from Pilsen in Bohemia and joined the Society of Jesus in 1646. The book consists of a series of biographies of Jesuit priests who were martyred throughout the world in the course of their work "against pagans, Mohammedans, Jews, heretics, and the impious." Each biography is illustrated with an engraved vignette in a characteristic Bohemian baroque style. The work is arranged in four parts: Europe, Africa, Asia, America. The longest section is the one devoted to Asia. It is also the one that contains the most lurid images. The "Societas americana" part includes a long biography of Isaac Jogues, evangelizer of the Mohawks.
- Paolo Britti. A collection of his canzoni popolari, ca. 1680.
Known as il Cieco di Venezia (the blind man of Venice), Paolo Britti was one of the most reputed popular poets of his day. The dates of his birth and death are not known, but his "canzoni" (songs) appeared from 1618 onwards and he was evidently still active around 1680. His songs were printed mostly in Venice but also in the neighboring cities of Treviso, Padova, Bassano, and Verona. Known as "ventarole" because they could be used as fans ("ventaglio"), they were sung to music apparently often composed by Britti himself, which has not survived. While they belong to the tradition of popular street poetry, they rise above this usually anonymous genre by proclaiming themselves the work of a single author and by their formal innovations. Britti's themes range from love to the realities of everyday life (including bordellos and venereal disease). His songs are closely related to the contemporary theatrical tradition and especially to the commedia dell' arte.
The collection now in the Beinecke comprises sixty-six songs, eleven of them in two editions, all illustrated with crude woodcuts. Most of those printings are unrecorded by bibliographers. A further indication of their rarity is that there are only eight entries for Britti in The National Union Catalog.
An eighteenth-century periodical
- The Worcester Post-Man. Worcester, 1715-16.
Provincial newspapers in the modern sense began with the eighteenth century, and Francis Burges's Norwich Post, founded around 1701, is generally considered the first. Stephen Bryan's Worcester Post-Man, which started to appear in 1709 and is still running, is not only the oldest surviving provincial newspaper but the oldest commercially published English newspaper still in existence. The present run of 46 issues covers almost a year from August 1715 till July 1716. The events it reports include the fall of the Whig ministry, the death of Queen Anne, and the Hanoverian accession--with the entirety of the 10 January 1716 issue devoted to the King's speech to Parliament. Foreign news is present, with reports from Vienna, Venice, and Paris.
That such a long, early run should have been preserved is in itself exceptional. This set is even more exceptional insofar as its early provenance has survived: many issues bear, on the blank page six, the name of the Reverend Joseph Guest of Winforton, a village on the river Wye, thirty miles from Worcester.
- Johann Friedrich Reichardt. Vertraute Briefe über Frankreich. Berlin, 1792-93.
The composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814) wrote numerous orchestral and instrumental works, operas, and songs, including 128 settings of texts by Goethe. He was also the author of books about music and volumes of political commentary, including this set of "confidential letters about France," dated from Strasbourg, Lyon, and Paris between 6 January and 30 March 1792. It was Reichardt's sympathy with revolutionary ideas that led to his dismissal two years later as music master to the Prussian court.
- Peter Lionel Courtier. 30 autograph letters to R. A. Davenport. Hammersmith, Convent Garden, etc., 1796-1804. With 2 poems.
These letters, full of banter and colorful phrases, give a glimpse into the penurious life of P. L. Courtier, author of six recorded works, including his Poems of 1796. Davenport was also trying to pursue a literary career, and evidently felt pressured to publish before the turn of the century. In the fall of 1799 Courtier admonishes his friend:
"I doubt very much whether R. A. Davenport Esq. means to eke out the Anthology of 1799: for I suspect that, after all, it will be a New Century Boy! Recollect yourself: tis verily November began . . . If, therefore, our Pomes, as Old Peter used to call them, are to be Published this year, look yet mon, there are but a few weeks of November, then followeth that Old Muddy Books, December . . . Do, therefore, as much as you can do, which is more than you have done-that is, if you really intend to show-off during the Year 1799!
- Sophie Mereau. Fiametta. Aus dem Italienischen des Boccaccio. Berlin, 1806.
Sophie Schubert Mereau was the author of two novels and two volumes of poetry. After her divorce from Friedrich Mereau, a law professor, she married the writer Clemens Brentano in 1803 and died in childbirth three years later. This is the first German translation of Boccaccio's Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta and Sophie Mereau's last published work. It is handsomely printed in Unger Fraktur, which made its first appearance around 1793.
- Ebenezer Stevens papers & Albert Gallatin letters
Descended from a family who had emigrated to the New World in the 1630s, Ebenezer Stevens joined a Boston artillery company in 1768 at the age of seventeen. Five years later, the company took part in the Boston Tea Party. An officer in the Revolutionary War, he fought at the battle of Bunker Hill under Major General Horatio Gates, played a key role at Saratoga, and served under Lafayette in Virginia and at Yorktown (he can be seen in John Trumbull's painting in the Rotunda in Washington, D.C.)
After the war he entered the shipping business while pursuing a political career as a member of the New York State assembly. Having attained the grade of major general of the artillery of the state of New York, he participated in the battle of Fort Erie and left military service in 1814. He died in Rockaway, Long Island, in 1823. The youngest of his eleven children, Mary Lucretia, married F.W. Rhinelander and their first daughter was Edith Wharton's mother.
The papers contain Revolutionary War documents, 1812 War documents (the most spectacular being a manuscript map of the Battle of Fort Erie), and correspondence documenting Stevens's military, political, and professional life, including financial records for the firm Ebenezer Stevens & Sons up to 1866. Of particular note are letters from his agent in Antigua, Thomas Norbury Kirby, mostly from the mid-1790s.
Byam Stevens, Ebenezer's son and successor in business, married Frances Gallatin, daughter of Jefferson's secretary of the treasury. Together with the Stevens papers came thirty-seven letters from Gallatin and four from his subordinate Edward Jones, dating from 1793-1812 and all addressed to David Gelston, tax collector for the city and port of New York and superintendent of light houses.
Nineteenth-century French theater
Situated at the heart of the Paris "grands boulevards," the Th‚ƒtre de la Porte Saint-Martin opened its doors in 1802 to close them for the first time in 1807 when Napoleon suppressed all Parisian theaters. It reopened for two and a half years in 1810, and, more permanently, in 1814. It went on to stage nearly all the French Romantic dramas and premiered a number of them, including Alexander Dumas's Antony, Balzac's Vautrin, and Victor Hugo's Marion Delorme, Lucrèce Borgia, and Marie Tudor. Its troupe comprised at that time the legendary Frederick Lemaître, the French Kean (for whom Dumas wrote a play based on the English actor), whose celebrity was revived by the film Children of paradise; Marie Dorval, mistress of Alfred de Vigny; and Juliette Drouet, mistress of Hugo.
The Beinecke has just acquired a collection of 212 plays housed in 31 portfolios. The largest in private hands since the nineteenth century, it represents the theater's repertory from 1802 (Pixéré-court's Pizarre, with which it opened) to 1876 (Cournier's Le médecin de son honneur). Other authors include Anicet-Bourgeois, Dumanoir, D'Ennery, and Auguste Maquet. The plays cover genres as diverse as comedies, melodramas, ballets, and op‚ras-comiques. Individual titles include Le pasteur (Paris, 1846), the inspiration for Verdi's Stiffelio; an adaptation of Sheridan's School for scandal; and plays based on Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, The Bride of Lammermoor, and Goethe's Faust.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 2 letters to Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner. Jena, 1812 March 12;Weimar, 1830 January 20
Döbereiner (1780-1849), Goethe's lifelong friend, was professor of chemistry, technology, and pharmacy at the University of Jena. He invented a lighter that used hydrogen and powdered platinum, the principle of which led the Swedish chemist J. J. Berzelius to develop the concept of catalysis. Döbereiner's observation of similar chemical properties in certain triads of elements anticipated the discovery of the periodic system of elements. He also contributed to industrial projects, such as the production of sugar from starch and of illuminating gas from coal. Goethe's earlier letter, in the hand of his secretary J. A. F. John but signed with a personal greeting at the end, has to do with the acquisition of equipment for the laboratories at the University of Jena. In the second letter (also in secretarial hand) Goethe asks about the nature of a chemical reaction that has caused a silver spoon to take on a gold sheen after being soaked in a brew of red cabbage.
The experiences of a Montana gold prospector
- James Henry Morley. Diary of his life in Montana, 1862-65. Typed transcript.
James Henry Morley, of Pacific, Missouri, traveled by boat from St. Louis to Fort Benton and then by trail to the gold fields in Montana, departing May 1862 and returning August 1865. This bound carbon transcript of his daily diary records in detail his trip by steamboat to Fort Benton, prospecting and working as a miner both alone and with mining associations, serving as juror for cases of murder and claim jumping, surveying new towns, witnessing clashes between Indians and whites, and participating in meetings that organized the towns of Marysville and Centreville.
- Stefan George. Maximin. Ein Gedenkbuch. Berlin, 1907.
One of the formative experiences in the life of the poet Stefan George (1886-1933) was his meeting, in 1903, with a Munich schoolboy named Maximilian Kronberger. The handsome child wrote poetry, and George soon adopted him into his circle, revering him almost as a divine presence. Maximilian died the next year of meningitis, which drove George nearly to suicide but ultimately raised his poetry to a new level of intensity, as in the cycles Jahr der Seele and Der siebente Ring. This memorial book for "Maximin" contains poems by Stefan George and members of his circle as well as Maximilian Kronberger's own poems. The lavish volume was designed by the painter Melchior Lechter (1865-1937), who produced several of George's early books. The influence of William Morris is evident. Copy 24 of 200, the book is illustrated with a photograph of Max Kronberger.
German book illustration
The early years of the twentieth century were a time of extraordinary book design in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Gathered here are a few examples of illustrated books from the decade 1913-23.
- Kasimir Edschmid. Bilder. Lyrische Projektionen. Darmstadt, 1913. Poems, with woodcuts by Hermann Georgi. Number 22 of 210 copies, bound in parchment and signed by both the author and artist.
- Robert Walser. Geschichten. Leipzig, 1914. Walser's stories are illustrated by his brother Karl. The sketches, quite different from Georgi's Expressionist images, anticipate Fritz Kredel's style of illustration. Robert Walser's deceptively simple fiction moves in the ironic mode, bordering on absurdity. The Swiss author (1878-1956) spent his later years in mental institutions.
- Ernst Barlach. Die Wandlungen Gottes. Berlin, 1922. In high Expressionist style, these seven woodcuts portray the "transformations of God," bounded by the first day of creation and the seventh day of rest. Barlach (1870-1938) was a sculptor, dramatist, and novelist as well as a graphic artist. His work was banned by the Nazis, who persecuted him.
- Jakob Bosshart. Neben der Heerstrasse. Zürich, 1923. These stories by a little-known Swiss author are illustrated by one of the best-known artist of the Expressionist period, E. L. Kirchner. The book is printed in an unusual Jungendstil Fraktur, as yet unidentified. Bosshart, who signed this copy, was a friend of Robert Musil.
- Joachim Ringelnatz. Turngedichte. Munich, 1923. Satirical and humorous "gymnastics poems" illustrated by the caricaturist Karl Arnold. Arnold's seventeen line drawings, reminiscent of Georg Grosz though gentler in spirit, are in the style of the "new objectivity" (neue Sachlichkeit), which followed upon Expressionism.
Gallup's Eliot
Donald Gallup is presenting his T. S. Eliot collection to the Library. The "A" and "B" sections alone comprise 173 works in 1037 volumes. The examples on view suggest the depth of the bibliographer's work to identify variants and to obtain copies.
- Ara Vus [i.e. Vos] Prec. [London]: The Ovid Press, 1920. Of a total edition of 264 copies, number 1 of 4 printed on Japanese vellum & not for sale. Presentation inscription dated 23 Sept. 1920 to John Quinn from the author.
- Ara Vus [i.e. Vos] Prec. [London]: The Ovid Press, 1920. Of a total edition of 264 copies, one of 4 printed on Japanese vellum & not for sale. Autograph of John Rodker.
- Ara Vus [i.e. Vos] Prec. [London]: The Ovid Press, 1920. Of a total edition of 264 copies, number 20 of 30 signed copies numbered 5-34.
- Ara Vus [i.e. Vos] Prec. [London]: The Ovid Press, 1920. Of a total edition of 264 copies, number 40 of 220 copies numbered 35-255. Presentation inscription dated 5 Feb. 1929 to Edgar Jepson from the author.
- Ara Vus [i.e. Vos] Prec. [London]: The Ovid Press, 1920. Of a total edition of 264 copies, number 136 of 220 copies numbered 35-255. Ara Vus [i.e. Vos] Prec. [London]: The Ovid Press, 1920. Of a total edition of 264 copies, 1 of 10 numbered copies for review.
In his notes to A3 in his Eliot bibliography, Donald Gallup writes: "The error 'Vus' for 'Vos' in the title was discovered after all the sheets had been printed and was corrected only on the label. Concerning the title, Mr. Eliot wrote me on 21 February 1936: 'The correct title of the book is Ara Vos Prec. It only happened to be Vus on the title page because I don't know Provençal, and I was quoting from an Italian edition of Dante the editor of which apparently did not know Provençal either. It would seem that there is no such word as Vus in that language.'" Eliot used "Ara vos prec" in his notes to The Waste Land, his next book of poetry, A6. Gallup's fifteen copies span six decades, 1922 to 1982. Described here are the first New York edition in two impressions and the first English edition, published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf.
- The Waste Land. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922. No. 4 of 1000 copies, first binding, first state (determined by the correct spelling of "mountain" on page 41), in original dust-jacket and original glassine inner jacket.
- The Waste Land. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922. No. 427, first binding, later state (determined by the dropping out of the "a" in "mountain" on page 41).
- The Waste Land. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922. No. 6, first binding, later state, in original dust-jacket and original glassine inner jacket. Bookplate of Fania Marinoff [Van Vechten].
- The Waste Land. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922. Second impression, 1923. No. 881 of 1,000 copies, called "Second Edition" in the colophon.
- The Waste Land. Richmond: The Hogarth Press, 1923. Copy in original boards with asterisk label. With author's presentation inscription to Edgar Jepson, Christmas, 1923, and 3 manuscript corrections.
- The Waste Land. Richmond: The Hogarth Press, 1923. Copy in original boards with ruled label.
- The Waste Land. Richmond: The Hogarth Press, 1923. Copy in original boards with label without rules.
- William Walton. Sinfonia concertante for orchestra and pianoforte. Autograph manuscript, ca. 1927.
The sinfonia concertante was composed by the twenty-five-year old Walton while he was living in Chelsea with the Sitwells, under whose tutelage he had made his sensational debut with Façade in 1923. It is an ebullient work, for which Walton apparently reused material written for an abortive ballet project for Diaghilev. It was premiered on 5 January 1928 under Ernest Ansermet, with York Bowen playing the "quasi obbligato" piano part. It was published later that year with the three movements dedicated to Osbert, Edith, and "Sachie" Sitwell respectively. Walton later revised it in 1943.
Two manuscripts of the work, both part of the Walton archive in the Frederick R. Koch Collection at Yale, were hitherto known: an intermediate version of the 1928 score, differing in places from the published text, and the wartime revised version. The present manuscript--probably the first Walton score to come up for auction--is the earliest, presenting substantial variants from the Koch manuscript. It is written in ink throughout with some pencil corrections in Walton's hand. More puzzlingly, it includes conductor's markings in blue pencil (possibly in the hand of Henry Wood?) indicating that a private pre-premiere performance might have been arranged. It has been suggested that the manuscript was given to the pianist Angus Morrison, a close friend of the Sitwells at the time and the creator of Constant Lambert's Rio grande.
The Rumanian avant-garde
Two of the original founders of the Dada movement in Zurich in 1916--Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco--were from Rumania. Between the world wars, Rumania was indeed the seat of a remarkable modernist artistic and literary efflorescence, as evidenced by the names of such contrasted artists as Constantin Brancusi and Victor Brauner. The collection recently acquired by the Beinecke documents this notable, if today forgotten avant-garde, which came to an end when the Communists took over in the late 1940s. The collection includes 70 books, among them works by Benjamin Fondane, Virgil Gheorghiu, Gherasim Luca, Naum Gellu, Sasa Pana (notably his Munti noaptea nelinistea, illustrated with a frontispiece by Man Ray), and, especially, Ilarie Voronca (his 1923 Restristi, illustrated by Brauner, his 1927 Colomba, illustrated by Robert and Sonia Delaunay, and his Ulisse, illustrated with a portrait of the author by Marc Chagall). Periodicals include complete runs of Alge (Seaweed, 1930-31, revived briefly in 1933), Contimporanul (The con-temporary, 1922-32), published under Janco's artistic directorship, Integral (1925-28), Muci (Boogies, one issue, 1932), Orizont (1944-47), Punct: revista de arta constructivista internationala (1924-25), and 75HP (one issue, 1924, with a cover by Brauner).
Jean Anouilh papers
Unquestionably one of the major names in the history of twentieth-century theater, the French playwright Jean Anouilh was born in Bordeaux on 23 June 1910. He came to prominence as early as 1932 with the success of L'hermine at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre in Paris, and for the next five decades his name was never absent from the French and international stage. He is the author of more than forty plays, which he published thematically as Pièces roses, Pièces noires, and Nouvelles pièces noires (including Antigone, one of his most performed works), Pièces brillantes, Pièces grinçantes (including La valse des torèadors) and Nouvelles pièces grinçantes, Pièces costumées, Pièces baroques (including Cher Antoine and Ne réveillez pas Madame), and Pièces secrètes. Anouilh also wrote translations of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and Graham Greene, as well as more than a dozen screenplays, several ballets, and television adaptations. He died suddenly in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 3 October 1987.
The collection of manuscripts acquired from Anouilh's son Nicolas includes unpublished juvenilia, complete autograph manuscripts of the plays Mandarine (his second), Roméo et Jeannette, L'invitation au château (Ring round the moon, revived last season on Broadway), Cher Antoine, Ne réveillez pas Madame, and corrected typescripts of Antigone (1944), Cher Antoine, and La culotte. The archive also includes the autograph manuscripts of cinematographic adaptations of La chanson de Roland and Jean Giraudoux's La folle de Chaillot, notebooks, and annotated copies of Antigone and Pauvre Bitos.
Lawrence & Wishart archive
Known at various times as Wishart & Co., Wishart Books, Lawrence & Wishart, and Ernest Wishart, this distinguished London publishing firm, still in existence, was founded by Ernest Wishart in the early 1920s and was amalgamated with Martin Lawrence in 1936. The archive acquired by the Beinecke includes some business records, primarily from 1938 and 1939, but with significant material from 1931 to 1950, such as a 1934-36 book of sales (recording, for example, the distribution of free copies of Nancy Cunard's Negro), and correspondence with printers and binders; dust-jacket artwork; and letters from a variety of correspondents, among them Mulk Raj Anand, George Barker, Oswell Blakeston, the Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose, Basil Bunting, Mary Butts (6 letters concerning her essay on Huxley for Scrutinies), Robert Byron, Claud Cockburn, Cyril Connolly, Cunard (21 letters, all from 1938-39), John Davenport, Douglas Garman (Wishart's brother-in-law), Douglas Goldring, Gerald Kersh (more than 40 letters from the author of Jews without Jehovah), Constant Lambert, F.R. Leavis, George Scott Moncrieff, Myles Mordaunt, Llewellyn Powys and Alyse Gregory, George Reavey, Grant Richards, and Jack Butler Yeats (25 letters, all relating to the publication of Sligo.)
Jeremy Reed Papers
The British poet Jeremy Reed was born in 1951 in Jersey and holds a B.A. from the University of Essex. He is the author of many collections of verse and has published several novels, an autobiography, and translations of Novalis and Montale. Among his sources of inspiration are American popular culture and rock music, in particular the work of Elvis Presley. His archive contains all his extant manuscripts, published or unpublished, a large number of poetry notebooks, and correspondence with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ted Hughes, John Lehman, Rosamond Lehman, James Merrill, and Kathleen Raine. His extensive correspondence with fellow poet David Gascoyne was already part of the Beinecke's collections.
Caryl Phillips Papers
Born in 1958 on the island of St. Kitts in the West Indies, Caryl Phillips grew up in England and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He began his literary career as a playwright in the early 1980s. He has since published six novels (the last of them, The nature of blood, was published in 1997), two volumes of nonfiction, and film and radio scripts as well as contributions to British and American journals, including Bomb and The New Republic. He currently teaches at Barnard College, Columbia University.
The archive now in the Beinecke Library comprises all of Caryl Phillips's papers to date, including the drafts of all his published works and correspondence with Peter Carey, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, Charles Simic, and Derek Walcott, among others. It is Yale's first archive of a major contemporary Caribbean writer, whose fiction focuses of the roots of racial prejudice in diverse historical settings.
Americana from the Siebert Collection
The following items were purchased at the second part of the Frank T. Siebert sale in October 1999.
The South:
- Robert Ferguson. The present state of Carolina with advice to the settlers. London, 1682 (Wing F52A). First edition of this colonization tract, generally attributed to Ferguson (d. 1714) and recorded in only five other copies.
- Thomas Nairne. Letter from South Carolina; giving an account of the soil, air, product, trade government, laws, religion, people, military strength, &c. of that province; together with the manner and necessary charges of settling a plantation there, and the annual profit it will produce. London, 1710. Howes N5. This promotional tract was authored by the most famous Southern colonist at the time of Queen Anne's War. He was burned at the stake at the hands of the Choctaw Indians in 1715 after being tortured for several days. The Siebert copy of this uncommon item came from the collection of the Marquess of Bute.
- Philip Georg Friedrich von Reck. Extract of the journals of Von Reck, who conducted the first transport of Saltzburgers to Georgia. London, 1734. Howes 104. No other early account of the Salzburgers' migration exists in English. Driven off their land by the Bishop of Salzburg, they were settled by James Oglethorpe in Georgia.
- Benjamin Martyn. Account shewing the progress of the colony of Georgia in America from its first establishment. London, 1741. Howes M353. This first edition of the first historical, year-by-year account of Georgia includes a discussion of the prohibition of Africans from the colony.
- William Stork. Description of East Florida, with a journal, kept by John Bartram of Philadelphia, botanist to His Majesty for the Floridas. London, 1769. Howes S1042. Third and rarest edition, enlarged with three folding maps not present in the second, published three years before.
The Seminole Wars:
- Jesse Denson. The chronicles of Andrew: containing an accurate and brief account of General Jacksons victories in the South, over the Creeks. Also his victories over the British at Orleans. With a biographical sketch of his life. Lexington, Kentucky, 1815. Howes D257. First edition of one of the earliest and rarest accounts (known in two other copies) of the Creek Campaign and the battle of New Orleans in January 1815, which made Jackson an instant national folk hero.
- Samuel Perkins. General Jackson's conduct in the Seminole War, delineated in a history of the period, affording conclusive reasons why he should not be the next president. New York, 1828. Howes P235. First edition of this detailed account written from an anti-Jackson perspective.
- True and authentic account of the Indian war in Florida, giving the particulars respecting the murder of the widow Robbins, and the providential escape of her daughter Aurelia, and her lover Mr. Charles Somers, after suffering almost innumerable hardships. New York, 1836. Howes S278. One of three editions, each with a different title, of this anonymous account of the Seminole War. The author claims to have spent eleven weeks witnessing the events he reports. This title is known in only three other copies.
- William Gates. Proceedings of general court martial, for the trial of Major William Gates, of the Second Regiment of Artillery. New York, 1837. Not in Howes. Gates was court-marshalled by President Jackson following the Seminoles' attack on Fort Banwell. Gates was exonerated and later captured Osceola.
Indian captivity narratives:
- William Biggs. Narrative of William Biggs, while he was a prisoner with the Kickepoo Indians. [Edwardsville, Illinois?] 1826. Howes B443. First edition of a privately printed frontier narrative known in only three other copies. Biggs was captured in 1788 and remained with the Indians until he was able to purchase his freedom.
- Oliver M. Spencer. A true narrative of the capture of the rev. O.M. Spencer, by the Indians. Washington, Pennsylvania, 1835. Howes S835. First edition of a much-reprinted Indian captivity narrative. Spencer was ten when he was captured in 1792. He was ransomed the following year and returned home in 1795.
April
- Eugippiu . Excerpta ex operibus Sancti Augustini. St. Amand, ca.820.
A fifth-century follower and editor of St. Augustine, Eugippius' mostimportant work is his compendium of the writings of the saint, a "Readers'Digest" version designed to popularize Augus-tine's ideas. The presentleaves are from an early ninth-century manuscript of the work producedat the abbey of St. Amand in northern France. Closely connected to thecourt of Charlemagne, St. Amand developed a distinctive style of Carolinescript in the first decades of the ninth century. This specimen also showsthe Uncial script used in the St. Amand scriptorium as well as an enlarged,decorated initial A.
- Rule of St. Benedict. Vangadizza, Italy, 12th century.
The basis for the practice of Western monasticism, Benedict's Rule wasa fundamental text for every monastic community. In many houses, the rulewas combined in a single codex with two other essential texts, the Calendarof Feasts celebrated by the house, and the Necrology recording the anniversariesof deceased members of the community. The relevant portions of these threetexts would have been read in the Chapter meeting every morning to theassembled monks of the community. This copy of the Rule, with Calendarand Necrology, comes from the monastery of Vangadizza in the Veneto (abouthalfway between Ferrara and Venice). It has a charming miniature on thefrontispiece showing St. Benedict reading his Rule to a very chastisedlooking monk.
- A collection of incunabula annotated by contemporary readers. Various places,before 1500.
The acquisition of the Rosenthal Collection of Printed Books with ManuscriptAnnotations by the Beinecke Library, and the publication of the catalogof that collection in 1997, inspired a Swiss bibliophile to offer us hiscollection of annotated incunabula. There are twenty-five fifteenth-centurybooks in the collection, the majority of them printed in Venice. The booksare dated between 1472 and 1494 and cover the range of subject matter ofearly printing, from Classical authors like Suetonius, Valerius Maximus,Ovid, and Juvenal to medieval theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, DunsScotus, and Albertus Magnus. Law, both canon and civil, as well as medicineand liturgical texts are included. Every volume is distinguished by theannotations of early readers, who have left in the margins their thoughtsabout and interpretations of the text, as well as occasional poems, historicalanecdotes, and autobiographical details. Highlights of the collection includean unrecorded edition of Justinian's Institutiones (Venice, 1476),with an illuminated miniature; a 1477 edition of Nicolas of Osimo's SummaPisanellae, with an illuminated initial and the original tooled leatherbinding; and a 1481 Italian edition of Livy, in original tooled leatherbinding with the arms and initials of the original owner.
- The King's Book. Untitled manuscript on paper, not dated, but London,ca. January-March 1543.
A newly discovered preliminary draft of A Necessary Doctrine andErudition for Any Christian Man, commonly known as The King's Book, one of the key texts of the English Reformation. It supplies a criticallink in the known sequence of composition and revision of this celebratedformulary. This is the earliest manuscript version extant of this text.
- Processional. Antwerp, 1544.
The Processional was the cantor's book of instructions and music forthe major and minor processions that formed part of the medieval liturgy.The liturgical practices of the medieval cathedral of Salisbury formedthe basis for English Catholic rituals, and after the Reformation the Catholicbooks, with slight changes, continued in use until the Book of Common Prayerwas published in 1549. During this period, three editions of the Processionalwere published for the Church of England, modified to eliminate the feastof Thomas of Canterbury and all references to the Pope. Of the three editionsof the Church of England Processional (from 1542, 1544, and 1545), onlya handful of copies survive, as they were banned and destroyed as soonas the Prayer Book was introduced. This 1544 edition is printed in redand black with numerous woodcuts illustrating the performance of the liturgy.
- Hildegard of Bingen. Epistolarum liber. Cologne, 1566.
This first edition of the correspondence of the twelfth-century mysticand musician was printed as part of the Counter-Reformation effort to bolsterthe Catholic cause in Germany. Hildegard, abbess of a powerful conventnear Cologne, describes in her letters various administrative and politicalissues as well as her visions and theological positions. The letters andtreatises in this volume are addressed to popes, emperors, archbishops,bishops, and other members of the clergy. The volume also includes a biographyof Hildegard.
- Henri Estienne. Artis typographicae querimonia. Geneva, 1569.
Estienne's diatribe against the sloppy printers of his day is a monumentof typographical bibliography and a model of typographer's art. The beautyof the roman and italic types used for the volume and the elegance of theformat demonstrate how a book ought to be printed. This first edition ofEstienne's treatise is bound with three other rare sixteenth-century worksin a morocco binding made for Jacques-Auguste de Thou, bearing his armsand those of his first wife, Marie Barbançon.
- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Galatea. Paris, 1611.
The pastoral novel Galatea, preceding Don Quichotte bymore than ten years, was Cervantes's first major work. Written while theauthor was in the diplomatic service in Lisbon, it was inspired by an amorousintrigue at court. It was first published in 1584 after Cervantes returnedto Madrid. This Paris-printed edition in the original Spanish was editedand "corrected" by Cesar Oudin, the French royal secretary. The first editionpublished in any language outside of the Iberian peninsula and the thirdedition overall of this important early work, it is revealing of the famequickly achieved by the author of the Quichotte outside his own country.
- Francesco Andreini. Le bravure del capitano Spavento. Venice, 1615. Bound with: Ragionamenti fantastici. Venice, 1612.
A native of Pistoia, Andreini (ca. 1548-1624) was a famous actor andthe head of a troupe called I gelosi (The jealous ones). His signaturerole was that of Captain Spavento da Valle Inferna otherwise known as "Ildiabolico," a typical miles gloriosus or Braggadocio, whose servant Trappolaplays Sancho Panza to his Quixote in a series of comical dialogues or "reasonings."The first edition of these Ragionamenti (comprising 55 dialogues)was published in Venice in 1607. The first six were published the followingyear in Paris in French translation ("Les bravacheries du capitaine Spavente"),a testimony to Andreini's fame outside his own country. A second editioncame out in 1609. The 1615 edition is the third, with ten dialogues added.Andreini's wife, Isabella, was herself a celebrated actress and poet, whiletheir son Giovan Battista became a playwright and a collaborator of Monterverdi.Gian Battista's wife premiered Monteverdi's Ariana of which onlythe Lamento now survives.
German BaroqueLiterature
- Martin Opitz. Die Psalmen Davids. Danzig, 1637
- Joachim Meier. Der durchlauchtigsten Hebreerinnen Jiska Rebekka RahelAssenath und Seera Helden=Geschichte. Leipzig, 1697.
Selected from titles added to the Faber du Faur Collection over thepast months, these two works-poetry from the first half of the seventeenthcentury, a novel from the second half-both have their source in the Bible.Opitz, whose theories of poetic language influenced a whole generationof writers, here paraphrases the Psalms according to French models: hefollowed the late sixteenth-century rendition of the Psalms by ClémentMarot and Théodore de Bèze, and the melodies printed in thetext are also French in origin. Meier's hefty novel, "presented for theexplanation of old times and for virtuous entertainment," relates the historiesof five Old Testament heroines. This dense text is leavened by a few primitivecopper engravings.
- Bernard Smith, ca. 1630-1708, "Father Smith." Important letter, signed,by the greatest builder of baroque organs in England, about the organ atthe Temple Church in London. "The Battle of the Organs" was a famous competitionbetween Smith and Rena-tus Harris, when both men were invited in 1682 tobuild the organ at the Temple Church. Smith prevailed, and eventually,after this appear to Lord Jeffreys, he was paid in 1688
- The Glasgow Mercury. Glasgow, 1778-88.
The Glasgow Mercury, which ran from January 1778 to September1796, appears to have been chiefly aimed at men of business. Each weeklynumber consisted of eight large closely printed quarto pages, two or sodevoted to advertisements. News was mostly reprinted from London papers,supplemented by columns devoted to reports from Edinburgh and Glasgow andsometimes from Ireland as well. In the early years the dominant topic isalmost inevitably the American Revolution, with extensive reports on debatesin Parliament and excerpts from colonial newspapers, especially the loyalistpress in New York; in addition, correspondence came directly to Scotlandfrom various observers in North America. After the end of the war, theUnited States remains a prominent topic; No. 431 (1786), for example, printsthe text of Jefferson's Act for establishing religious freedom in Virginia, and No. 515 (1787) gives an abridged version of the new U. S. Constitution.Much of the advertising relates to America as well. Other advertisementsare for newly published books, Irish lotteries, a wide variety of auctions(called "roups"), local tradesmen, patent medicines, circulating libraries,and much more.
Coverage of local affairs includes church reports, the universities,the courts, the buying and selling of land, etc. Occasional columns coverthe balloon ascensions by Lunardi in Edinburgh and Glasgow (1785), whichcaptured the public imagination. A number of issues for 1787 contain columnsrelating to Robert Burns, whose first volume of poems had just been published,attracting wide attention throughout Scotland. The many publisher's advertisementstend to be for books of a practical nature, such as the second editionof the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1778.
The set now in the Beinecke comprises 292 numbers, beginning with thefirst two, and runs until No. 559, with a consecutive run from No. 402onwards for the years 1785-88.
- James Boswell. Thirty-five letters to Andrew Gibb, 1781-94.
Andrew Gibb was the manager of the Boswell estate at Auchinleck, whichJames Boswell came into possession of following the death of his fatherin August 1782. The letters range in date from early November 1790 until1 May 1790, with an isolated letter of January 1781. The topics coveredrange from instructions about rent collection from various tenants to poultrysales, plantings of trees, and repairs. A letter of December 1790 refersto the imprisonment of Andrew Dalrymple for a debt to Boswell. A typicalletter, dated 13 November 1793, discusses farm rentals, the appointmentof a new minister for the parish, requests butter for his brother, andhoney for himself.
- Charles Burney. An Account of the musical performances in WestminsterAbbey and the Pantheon . . . in commemoration of Handel, 1785.
With an engraved frontispiece by Bartolozzi and six engraved plates,extra-illustrated with a proof of each plate as well as engraved views,admission tickets to musical events, and an autograph letter from Burneyto Edmond Malone, 1797, describing his formal presentation to the Queen.
- The Rules & Order of Cocking, 1796.
Manuscript sheet with drawings at the head showing two fighting cocksengaged in "First Blood" and "Death" followed by the above title and sixteenitemized rules, concluding "These rules to be used in all Pits, sanctionedthis Fourth day of May in the year 1796."
- Charles Babbage. Scriptores optici; or, a collection of tracts relatingto optics. London, 1823.
This early work by Babbage, completed before he took up the positionof Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge in 1827, gathers seventracts by Descartes, Huygens, and Halley, among others. This copy comesfrom the library of the astronomer Sir John Herschel, Babbage's friendand contemporary at Cambridge, where, together with a fellow mathematician,they founded the Analytical Society in 1813.
- Christian Siegmund Zindel, Eislauf. Nuremberg, 1825.
This extraordinary little "pocket book for young and old" is an anthologyof poetry, anecdotes, riddles, information, and advice about the fine artof ice skating. The first part of the book amounts to a "how-to" manual,from how to select skates and secure them to your feet, to instructionsfor dancing on the ice. The second part taps literary sources and includesmany poems by the greatest of all German literary interpreters of skating,Friedrich Gottlob Klopstock. There are two poems by Goethe, and the bookis illustrated inside and out with crisp and charming engravings. Especiallydue to Klopstock's influence, the speed and exhilaration of ice skatinghad became a popular poetic motif at this time.
- Daniel Wadsworth Coit. Drawings of Peru and Mexico, chiefly ca. 1820-25and 1848-50.
A successful banker and gold trader from Norwich, Connecticut, DanielWadsworth Coit (1787-1876) was also a talented artist and a friend of ThomasSidney Cooper, Copley Fielding, and Thomas Cole. He travelled to Peru twicein the 1820s. In January 1848, he was commissioned by the firm of Howland& Aspinwall to con-duct their operations in Mexico City, then occupiedby the United States. These 61 pencil, wash, and watercolor drawings datefrom those two periods of his life. The first 29 are Peruvian landscapesand city views as well as groups of people; nine are devoted to Lima andtwo show Arequipa and its volcano. The Mexican views are chiefly of MexicoCity and its inhabitants.
- Alphonse Daudet. Autograph notebook with drafts of theater reviews [ca. 1874.]
If he is remembered above all as a short-story writer and a novelist,Daudet was equally famous and successful in his day as a playwright. Healso had a career as a theater critic for several newspapers from 1874(the year of his first major literary success, Fromont jeune et Risslerâiné ), to 1880. This 208-page notebook contains impressions,comments, and details on casts and new productions, scratched out oncethe writer has used them for his weekly chronicles. Among the plays mentionedare La princesse Georges by Alexandre Dumas Fils, La haine by Victorien Sardou, and Les héritiers Rabourdin by ÉmileZola. Contemporary actors discussed by Daudet include Sarah Bernhardt,Julia Bartet (who played a small part in Daudet's L'Arlésienne in 1872), and Constant Coquelin (the first Cyrano de Bergerac). In hiscomments, Daudet deplores the lack of spontaneity engendered by the excessivenumber of rehearsals and notes that the taste for operettas is now beingfelt as far away as China. This precious document on Daudet's working methodsjoins the manuscript of his masterpiece for the stage, preserved at theBeinecke in the Frederick R. Koch Collection.
- Arthur Schnitzler. Anatol. Berlin, 1892.
A physician by profession, Schnitzler soon turned to writing as a livelihood. Anatol is his first published book, a cycle of seven one-act plays that presentamorous incidents in the life of the young man Anatol. The verse prefaceis by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Like that other great Viennese doctor, SigmundFreud, Schnitzler's themes are illicit love, sexuality, and death. Hisworks, which include plays, novellas, and novels, enjoy continuing popularity,a recent example being the Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, which is based on Schnitzler's Traumnovelle.
A Send-Up of Goethe Studies
- Egon Friedell & Alfred Polgar. Goethe: eine Szene. Vienna, 1908.
In this short dramatic scene by the Viennese critics Friedell and Polgar,Züst ("a bad student") is having trouble memorizing all the factsof Goethe's biography. In his rage, Züst inadvertently conjures theghost of the poet, who (in thick Frankfurt dialect) agrees to go to Züst'sexam in his stead. Alas, the great man proves a little forgetful abouthis own chronology, remembers his tête-à-têtes withFrau von Stein all too vividly, and comes to grief by insisting that the Theory of Colors is his most important work. In short, Goethe failsthe Goethe exam, while his examiner, "the professor of German literaryhistory," apparently triumphs, unshaken in his literary-critical opinionsand compendious knowledge of the Goethe's life.
Modern German Literature
- Richard Dehmel. Zwei Menschen. Berlin, 1903.
- Max Mell. Das bekränzte Jahr. Berlin, 1911.
- Emmy Hennings. Das ewige Lied. Berlin, 1919.
- Heinrich Hauser. Das zwanzigste Jahr. Potsdam, 1925.
Richard Dehmel, a poet who began publishing in the 1890s, wasmuch influenced by Nietzsche. His work, including the cyclical epic poem Zwei Menschen (Two People), attempts to resolve the conflict betweenunbridled instinct and self-discipline.The first poem of the cycle wasthe inspiration for Arnold Schönberg's string sextet VerklärteNacht.
Das bekräntzte Jahr (The Wreathed Year) is one of the fewpre-war works of the Austrian writer Max Mell, who after the collapse ofthe Austro-Hungarian Empire devoted his literary energies to Christian,classical, and mythological themes. Poems to the four seasons structurethis collection of verse, handsomely printed for the Axel Juncker Verlagin Berlin-Charlottenburg.
The writer, singer, and performer Emmy Hennings was among the foundersof the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, a center of the Dada movement.Later she married one of the principal Dadists, Hugo Ball. Das ewigeLied is a highly lyrical first-person narration that depicts the consciousnessof a person in the grips of a serious illness.
Das zwanzigste Jahr, the story of a love affair going bad, isHeinrich Hauser's first book. Hauser achieved fame some five years laterwhen he was invited to sail the four-masted bark Pamir from Hamburgto Talcahuano in Chili and subsequently issued a film and a book aboutthe 110-day voyage, both with the title Die letzten Segelschiffe. Hauser is the German translator of Liam O'Flaherty.
Gallup's Elliot
Donald C. Gallup, '34. Papers, including letters from T. S. Eliot toDonald Gallup, Arnold Bennett, R. Cobden-Seanderson, Harold Monro and others,and the setting typescript and proofs of The Use of Poetry and the Useof Criticism.
Annotated Ezra Pound
- Draft of cantos XXXI-XLI. London, 1935. Manuscript annotations byPound throughout volume.
- Cantos of Ezra Pound, New Collected Edition. London, 1964. Presentationinscription to Olga Rudge from the author; manuscript notes by Rudge throughoutthe text.
- Cantos of Ezra Pound. New York, 1970. Marginal notes by Pound andOlga Rudge including Pound's marking taped texts.
- Cantos of Ezra Pound. New York, 1972. Profuse manuscript annotationsby Olga Rudge with her emendations and sources in margins along with Pound's,as well as her notes on final leaves including one regarding Pound's finalcanto selection.
- Section: rock drill; 85-95 de los cantares. Milan, 1955. Manuscriptnotes by Pound throughout text followed by Rudge's list of pages with Pound'snotes, on endleaf.
- Thrones: 96-109 de los cantares. Milan, 1959. Manuscript annotationsby Pound throughout text noted by him on rear endpaper.
- Charles Norman. Ezra Pound. New York, 1960. Manuscript notes byPound and Rudge in text and profusely on endpapers.
Yehuda Amichai papers
Yehuda Amichai, the Israeli poet who died on 22 September 2000,was born in Würzburg, Germany, in 1924 and immigrated in 1936 to Palestinewith his Orthodox Jewish family. After high school, he served in the Britisharmy during the Second World War, but later fought against the Britishas a member of the underground Jewish military organization in Palestine.He was also involved in the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1948, 1956 and 1973.While teaching high school as a livelihood, he attended Hebrew University,where he studied literature and the Bible.
Amichai traced his vocation as a writer to his time stationed in Egyptwith the British army. There he chanced to find an anthology of modernBritish poetry, and the works of Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Audenincluded in that book inspired his first serious thoughts about becominga writer. Encouraged by one of his professors at Hebrew University, hepublished his first book of poetry, Now and in Other Days, in 1955.
Amichai's other works, which include plays, stories, novels, essays,and three children's books as well as numerous volumes of poetry, havebeen translated into more than thirty languages. Many are available inEnglish, including two books translated by Ted Hughes ( Amen, 1977;and The early books, 1998) and two volumes translated by his friendsBarbara and Benjamin Harshav of Yale University ( Even a fist was oncean open palm with fingers, 1991; and Yehuda Amichai, a life of poetry,1948-1994, 1994).
The poetry of Yehuda Amichai has been praised for its depth and complexityas well as its accessibility, even in translation. His books were best-sellersin Israel, where in later years he enjoyed the status of a celebrity. Admiredfor its linguistic dexterity, Amichai's highly metaphorical verse is characterizedby wordplay, allusion, and shifting levels of diction, from the literaryto the colloquial. While his poetry reflects his lifelong political commitmentto the state of Israel, it is also deeply personal, drawing on his ownparticular experience of war, love, loss, mortality, and everyday life.The role of the poet, he said, was "to name each thing, each feeling, eachexperience, plainly and accurately, without pretense."
The archive comprises the entirety of the poet's extant papers. It includesdrafts, manuscripts, and corrected proofs for his collections of poems,including Time, Jerusalem poems, Great tranquillity, and Hourof grace, and for his writings for children. Among the personal papersare unpublished material (poems, stories, and plays), private diaries,notebooks (going back to the early 1950s), newspaper clippings, and photographs.There are many letters from organizations, among them P.E.N. and AmnestyInternational. Correspondents include Leonard Baskin, Paul Celan, JohnHollander, Irving Howe, Ted Hughes, Erica Jong, Teddy Kollek, GiancarloMenotti, Yitshak Navon, Amos Oz, Cynthia Ozick, Shimon Perez, Eduardo Sanguinetti,Anne Sexton, Alan Sillitoe, Charles Simic, and Charles Tomlinson.
- Pierre Lecuire. Bestiaire. Paris, 1985.
Bestiaire, published in 72 copies, is the 31st and one of the last great creations of theself-published author and artist of the book Pierre Lecuire, born in 1922. It belongs to the oldtradition of the illustrated bestiary, represented in our century by Guillaume Apollinairewith Raoul Dufy and by Richard Wilbur with Alexander Calder, among manyothers. Here the short, elliptical poems by Lecuire, printed by FrançoisDa Ros, are accompanied by 35 drypoint etchings by the Breton artist Tal-Coat(1905-85). The cover shows a shell, and the book includes falcon, ravens,seagulls, cormorants, grouse, cats (eight plates), dog, wolf, porcupine,pike, owls, goats, rabbit, hens (some with butterflies), swan, ducks, geese,snails, and oysters (six plates). The painter died a few months beforethe publication of the book which, as a result, bears his stamp insteadof his signature.
AMERICANA from the Paul Mellon Collection Bequest of Paul Mellon, '29
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