AntiquarianBookNews.com

“François Nicolas Martinet engraved illustrations of birds for books by some of the most influential ornithologists in 18th-century France. Born in 1731, Martinet was trained as an engineer and draftsman. Engraving illustrations for books probably began as a secondary profession, but as his popularity and output grew it must have consumed the majority of his time. Martinet’s son Alexandre eventually assisted him and made many engravings, as is known from signatures and dates on the prints. Martinet also had two sisters, Angélique and Marie Thérèse, who were engravers as well, but it is not known if they worked with him. Towards the end of his career, Martinet drew upon his experience in engraving birds for others to publish his own ornithology books, producing plates until his death sometime in the late 1780s or early 1790s (sources disagree on the year).

To understand the significance of François Martinet’s work, it is important first to recognize the difficulties involved in producing illustrations of birds in the 18th century. This provides a foundation for viewing the development of Martinet’s bird illustrations and their contribution to works that became classics in the history of ornithology and makes possible a fuller appreciation of the beautiful hand-colored plates in Ornithologie, the folio reproduced in this digital edition.”

The detailed historical and bibliographic article about Martinet’s legacy (by Leslie K. Overstreet and Kathryn E. Zaharek) provides an overview and introduction to a marvellous (and old) website from the Smithsonian Institution: ‘Ornithologie by François Nicolas Martinet’.

The above images (extensively background cleaned) are a small selection from the more than one hundred and seventy plates available in large size format at the Smithsonian site. I’m fairly sure I’ve posted a couple of them before from their original publications - under a different author - but I can’t seem to locate them. At least my tastes are consistent.

I’ve come across a bit more information on the Renehan thefts which I posted about yesterday. I mentioned then that one of the charges against Renehan was for possessing a forged document: that was “a letter purportedly signed by his predecessor [at the Theodore Roosevelt Association], John Gable, transferring ownership of the letter [that from TR discussing his son's death] to Renehan,” according to an earlier Newsday article by Bill Bleyer.

Also, Renehan’s legal team appears to be trying to muddy the waters by bringing up a 15-year old embezzlement case against another former head of the TRA which was kept quiet by the organization. Along with the bipolar argument, a very interesting strategy … but this seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the current case.

As we gear up for this year’s Olympia Book Fair, I would like to highlight some of the exciting items that will be on show in London during 5 - 7 June. Some interesting items: Signed, first edition, first printing of The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming, £12,000 (Lucius Books) William Shakespeare, The Works [...]

These stunning hand-coloured engravings of exotic fish from Sri Lanka (extracted from a .pdf) are from:
‘A Selection from the most Remarkable and Interesting of the Fishes Found on the Coast of Ceylon from Drawings made in the Southern Part of that Island from the Living Specimens by John Whitchurch Bennett, 2nd Ed. 1834′.
The work contains thirty illustrations in total and the Harvard University edition is available at the Internet Archive. (See related: html version of Tennant’s ‘Natural History of Ceylon’ from 1861 - alas, the images are photocopy quality)

‘An Account of Indian Serpents, collected on the Coast of Coromandel’ by Patrick Russell, 1796. Russell was the botanist to the East India Company in Madras (Chennai). This is apparently the first book devoted to Indian snakes. The image, spliced together from screencaps, comes from somewhere in the Books, Manuscripts & Maps category at Christies (inadvertently following from a comment by Michael some weeks ago).

“This image first appeared in Henry Mayhew’s 1851 or The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and Family, Who Came Up to London to ‘Enjoy Themselves,’ and to See the Great Exhibition (London: David Bogue, [1851]).”
[image and quote from this entry - where there is more info. - at one of my favourite sites: Princeton Graphic Arts Blog.]

View from the Circus looking up Piccadilly - Proof for an illustration to be included in: ‘1851, or, The Adventures of Mr and Mrs Sandboys’ by Henry Mayhew (from the British Museum Prints Database)

‘An Overland Journey to the Great Exhibition. Showing a Few Extra Articles & Visitors’ by (at one time) Punch Magazine illustrator, Richard Doyle. The book contains no text and the satirical parade of humans and animals on their way to Crystal Palace measured nine feet in length when all of the illustrations were joined together. The composite image is from PBA Galleries and the second illustration comes from the Great Exhibition Humorous Asides page at Kansas University’s Spencer Library.

One of several designs for political caricatures on the Great Exhibition of 1851 drawn by George Augustus Sala (from the British Museum Prints Database)

‘O Ful, Tru, un Pertikler Okeaawnt o bwoth wat aw seed un wat aw yerd, we gooin too Th’ Greyt Eggshibishun, e Lundun, an a greyt deyle of Hinfurmashun besoide’ by Oliver Ormerod (penned under his Rochdale, Lancashire pseudonym, Felley from Rachde).
“The title of the book (translated from the Rochdalian) is “A full, true and particular account of both what I saw and what I heard when going to the Great Exhibition, in London, and a great deal of information besides.” (image and quote also from Kansas U.)

Punch Magazine on the Prince Consort and the Exhibition of 1851 (from Victorian Web) [See also: Punch Magazine illustrations by John Leech: Memorials of the Great Exhibition]

The prompt that made me look around for some satirical prints on the Great Exhibition of 1851 was receiving a (requested) copy of the catalogue (available online) from Melbourne’s Monash University Library exhibition (until August 31) - Fifty Books for Fifty Years. “This is an exhibition of fifty books chosen by Monash academics and researchers.[..] The fifty participants have chosen items they have consulted in the course of their work. The result is a fascinating variety of books, many of which have never been displayed.” If not for the thousand-or-so kilometres, I would definitely go.

Speaking of Melbourne, Sophie Cunningham is a publisher, journalist, writer and current editor of Meanjin, an Australian literary and culture magazine established more than sixty years ago. Sophie has posted a set of photographs of Meanjin covers to Flickr. Both the stylised Aboriginal figure in ceremonial* attire and emu head cover illustrations above remain under copyright and have been posted here with permission.

These engravings come from the first of Johann Forkel’s ambitious 2-volume work, ‘Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik’ (General History of Music) [1788-1801]. These, together with a couple more similarly interesting illustrations can be found on the last pages of Tome I at the Universities of Strasbourg Digital Library (very little of visual interest in Tome 2). I presume the schematic in the first illustration above is a pedal control unit for a pneumatic organ. It’s too early for steam. Forkel was a biographer of Bach and is often regarded as the founder of modern musicology. He was never able to complete the planned third volume in the series so this first German attempt at documenting the history of music stops at the beginning of the 16th century. (See: i, ii, iii)

Titlepage from ‘Facetiae Pennalium’, 1622, by Julius Zincgref from HAB. I know nothing about this book although I suspect it is philosophical in nature. Somewhere around I have a couple of links to emblemata books by him which might materialise here in the future.

Despite the terrible rendering of online translation of Dutch, I’m fairly confident all four images above relate to the Java region of Indonesia and are all approximately from the second half of the 17th century. They are spliced screencaps from a new cartographic database of several hundred images relating to the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The collection consists mostly of maps (of course) - many fort outlines and lots of interesting and artistic map sketches - but there are the occasional scenic watercolour pictures as well. The material is hosted by the Image Bank at the National Archives of Holland, accessible from the advanced search page. From the ‘Collectie/Archief’ drop down menu, select ‘Kaarten van de VOC’, change the number of thumbnails you want to display per page down the bottom and then hit ‘zoek’. It’s all easy. [via/via]

This chromolithograph world map [spliced together from two sections] was made by Konrad Miller in 1896 and is a reproduction of a mappamundi produced in Hanover (I think) in 1300. Although the largest version doesn’t quite magnify all the details, it nevertheless remains an interesting map. Note that Christ’s head, hands and feet mark the vertical and horizontal axes. The digital version is hosted by MDZ.

Now, as I’m posting this entry, I’ve found a decent write up at the Henry Davis site. They advise that the map - the German equivalent of the ‘Hereford Mappamundi’ - is known as the ‘Ebstorf Mappamundi’ (image) and was produced in 1234 by Gervase of Tilbury.

This lithograph, with it’s unusual scalloped vignettes, was produced by Joseph Vürtheim sometime between 1843 and 1875. The print imagery seems to imply that village fair recreation will lead to death and despair. The image was spliced from screencaps from the Amsterdam Archive Image Bank.

These fabulous squid and mosquito engravings come from Jan Swammerdam’s classic ‘Bibel der Natur’ (1752). The whole book is (finally!) online at Berlin’s Humboldt University E-Doc server. (note the thumbnail link top left; the text may be photocopy quality but the engravings are great: ‘Höhere Auflösung’=high resolution)

The Dutch microscopist, Jan Swammerdam, conducted groundbreaking research into the development of insects and made significant contributions to human anatomy and scientific methodology. (see: i, ii, iii)

I jagged these odd engravings from ‘Mathesis Caesarea’ (1662) just because the idea of adding putti (cupids) to an otherwise rather dry reworking of Albert von Curtz’s ‘Amussis Fernandea’ by Gaspar Schott (the book being about mathematics, geometry and military architecture) seems amusingly incongruous. The book is online at HAB. [Schott was assistant to Athanasius Kircher] See: Polybiblio.

These plates (extracted from a .pdf) come from the beautiful book, ‘Illustrations of the Botany and other Branches of the Natural History of the Himalayan Mountains and of the Flora of Cashmere’ by J. Forbes Royle, 1839. The book was digitised by Missouri Botanical Gardens and is available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

‘Allegorie op de Vrede’ (Allegory of Peace) is by A. Zürcher 1814 (not sure if there’s any relationship to the engraver of the rabbits and mice satires up above). The main image is fairly small but I managed to cobble together a fair sized detail of the spectacular ornamental typography from screen caps. This image comes from the Amsterdam Archive Image Bank and is definitely worth seeing in high resolution snippets within the constraints of the flash magnification box at the site.

‘Zoilus’ by Cyprian Norwid (search on his name at the Polish Digital Library - they have a large number of his works. As previously noted, Matt from Rashomon made a beautiful five minute collage-film from a range of Norwid prints)

Many, but not all, of the above images have been spot or background cleaned as the mood took me. As usual, click through the images to flickr and then click ‘All Sizes’ for larger format versions.

The title of this entry - Multiplicity in Time and Space - was a phrase I first heard used years ago by a physician describing the unique profile of symptoms associated with Multiple Sclerosis (the syndrome erratically affects various parts of the body for varying amounts of time).

There is no intended reference here to MS at all, but I’ve always thought it was an elegant turn of phrase and adequately describes the eclectic array of images above: produced by many people at different times in history and obtained from a range of sources. It was also the first thing that came into my head today when I was trying to summons forth a title.

More links? Try the bookmarks.

The BBC reports that William Simon Jacques, 39, suspected of stealing books from the Royal Horticultural Society’s building in Vincent Square, London, has gone missing after being released on bail.

“The items taken include 13 volumes of a rare collection on the camellia flower, valued at about £50,000, plus several other highly-prized 19th century books.”

Jacques was arrested on 2 April after an investigation revealed he had been signing into the library with a false library card giving his name as “Mr. Santoro.”

Photograph here.

- In The Chronicle Review, Thomas Bartlett explores the ongoing controversy over the Gospel of Judas, which was released last year to much fanfare. I guess I’ve missed most of the kerfluffle that’s gone on since the original publication of the National Geographic translation, so this is a good way to catch up.

- Over at BookN3rd, Laura has a must-read post on gender and the rare book world, where she comments on the role of men and women in the biblio-community. Also quite a few excellent links.

- I watched a “Nova” episode (”Lord of the Ants“) yesterday profiling one of my favorite authors ever, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. If you have a chance to see this show, do watch.

- Michael at Book Patrol notes that the Morgan Library will be displaying its three copies of the Gutenberg Bible simultaneously, through 28 September.

- Everyone else who blogs about books has already mentioned Robert Darnton’s NYRB essay in the current issue; I hadn’t yet simply because I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing. I will, and I think I’ll have more to say about it once I have - I’m not sure I entirely agree with him so far.

- Travis posts another comment-rant he received recently, this one from a friend of the Brubakers.

- The folks at Houghton report that they’ve acquired a copy of the anonymous 1821 translation of Faust which some believe was translated by Coleridge.

- J.L. Bell had a useful Google Books moment the other day, discovering some mentions of Bartholomew Broaders, who played a bit-part in the Boston Massacre.

- BibliOdyssey’s got a great miscellany up this week: images include Sri Lankan fish from an 1834 monograph, some drawings by Cruikshank and some early political cartoons, and a couple amazing Swammerdam engravings.

- The AP’s Justin Pope interviews James Cuno, author of the forthcoming (”already controversial”) book Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle for Our Ancient Heritage. One I’ll have to read, sounds like.

Reviews

- This was the week for reviews of Simon Winchester’s new book, The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom (HarperCollins). Here are a few: Washington Post, Boston Globe, Salon, The Inquirer.

- Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night was reviewed by Philip Hensher for The Telegraph. My review is forthcoming, I’m (finally!) reading the book now.

- Rick Ring reviews Richard Wendorf’s beautifully-designed and excellently-written America’s Membership Libraries.

- In the TLS, James Gould reviews Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture.