Cynically Up To Date: A Second Glance at Penguin Author Biographies

Older Penguin Books provide biographical information about the authors that tends towards erudition and concision with the occasional touch of panache. Some of them read like short entries to a Who's Who reference work. Even modern Penguins have very good biographical information. The inclusion of the author's interests and recreations as can be found in biographical reference works is interesting to read.

Raleigh Trevelyan's first book, The Fortress (Collins, 1956) was republished by Penguin Books in 1958 (No. 1263) and on the back cover beneath the author photograph and decent biographical content, it ends with the author's interests: "writing, Bristol glass, Etruscan pottery, indoor plants and photography, and he enjoys walking, travel, and underwater swimming." Such details provide enough to give the reader a sense of his home life, something to identify with as well such as the common pursuit of underwater swimming. (Well, maybe more the indoor plants.)

Edith Sitwell's Alexander Pope published by Penguin Books in 1948 (No. 636) provides a rather brief biography beneath her somewhat unusual appearance: "Edith Sitwell was born at Scarborough and is the sister of Sir Osbert Sitwell, Bart., and Sacheverell Sitwell. She was educated privately and her principal recreations are reading and thinking about poetry, listening to music and silence." (A true introvert I would think.)

The historian William C. Atkinson, the author of A History of Spain and Portugal, (Pelican, 1960) is provided with a rather odd biographical treatment: "William C. Atkinson is an Irishman--1902 vintage--who graduated through the universities of Belfast, Madrid and Durham to his present chair of Hispanic Studies at Glasgow. Having come, over the years, to know Spain and Portugal better than his homeland, he added Latin America to his parish and has thrice--1946, 1957, and 1960--made the grand tour of that Brave New World visiting every one of its twenty countries and lecturing in almost every university of note there." It ends with requisite list of the author's recreations: "his wife and four children, travel, tramping; on busman's holidays, book reviewing." (His life seemed one of great accomplishment and activity. Tramping, I think it is coming back into fashion.)

The irreverence at the beginning of a rather long biography of Aldous Huxley for his Crome Yellow, Penguin Books, 1961 (No.41) [orig. pub. 1921, Penguin Books 1936] is apt for the content and nature of the author's work: "The name of Aldous Huxley, which became known in the twenties, rapidly developed into a password for his generation. At cocktail parties, which were becoming fashionable in the same period, it was bandied about as if the mere mention of it were enough to show that one was brilliant, witty, and cynically up to date."

Just what people wanted, escape from the memories of the war that took so many lives. It wouldn't be till the late 1920s that people could begin to read about the war to any great extent. Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End which came out in the mid 1920s, was just a bit to early for the reading public. I imagine people were still "cynically up do date" as they looked back at the abyss of the recent past and lifted a glass to the void they felt around them. It makes me wonder where the popular television series Downton Abbey will go with their story lines as they face the 1920s. Will they venture into Huxley or Waugh territory? Will young people be quoting The Wasteland out of University dormitory windows and drinking to excess? Champagne, flappers and jazz? Hmm. Downton Abbey meets Brideshead Revisited?

Huxley missed out on the great war to end all wars due to very poor eyesight. The Penguin biography doesn't mention his early poetry collections which perhaps ironically have much to do with sight:

The Burning Wheel (1916), Jonah (1917), The Defeat of Youth and other Poems (1918) and Leda (1920).

From his first collection: Mole.

Like T. S. Eliot, Huxley was influenced by the French Symbolist poets; if Huxley had kept to poetry instead of prose, I wonder if he would have rivaled the American upstart? Would he have found his 'waste land' through his cynicism, satire, misanthropy and mysticism? Perhaps he did, eventually. Brave New World.

Vesicia Piscis Series

Presumably: A Glance at Penguin Author Biographies

Author biographies that are found on book covers or within books, are, one would think, matters of fact. Especially in this era when information can be so easily accessed, and triple checked, perhaps even with the author involved.

In looking at an early Penguin Books copy of a Graham Greene novel, it reveals that complete knowledge about authors was not as easily acquired in the past. There was room left for uncertainty. Perhaps even mystery.

In looking at my copy of Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear (New York: Penguin Books, 2nd printing January 1946 [1st Penguin US printing January 1944, and 1st edition hardcover Viking, 1943] ), the "about the author" on the back of the paperback drew my attention for a number of reasons. One, for the photograph of the author which looks like it was taken in the late 1920s, which would put the author at his mid to late twenties. At the time of this American paperback printing, Greene was 41 years of age. Secondly, the biographical description reveals a possibly less known fact for it refers to the initial American title The Labyrinthine Ways for his book The Power and the Glory. Thirdly, it refers to him as a gifted poet which adds a nuance of romance and literary beginnings. And finally it drew my attention for the penultimate sentence which reads:

After leaving Oxford he took up newspaper work, and by 1926 he was on the London Times, where he presumably remains today.

Presumably. That seems so fresh and laissez-faire. The hint of uncertainty leaves room for the imagination to stretch possibilities. (One can almost imagine the editor asking the copywriter if he knew if Greene was still with the Times, and saying, well, put in "presumably," that should cover us, we have a deadline after all....) Gone are the days of the "presumably" it seems. (Though that may be presumptuous of me considering authors like Thomas Pynchon and authors in extremis.)

♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠

This "presumably" sentence has had me looking more intently at other "about the author" features and they can be interesting. Some of the descriptions are amusing. I thought I would provide a few as examples. Penguin copywriters seem quite adept. Often with a hint of subtext.

Margery Allingham took to writing naturally; in her family no other occupation was considered natural or indeed sane. (Sweet Danger, Penguin Books, 1971.)

Jocelyn Brooke was born in 1908 on the south coast and took to the educational process with reluctance. He contrived to run away from public school twice within a fortnight, but then settled, to his own mild surprize, at Bedales before going to Worcester College, Oxford, where his career as an undergraduate was unspectacular. (The Orchid Trilogy, Penguin Books, 1981.)

Nicolas Freeling was born in London in 1927 and spent his childhood in France. Before taking up writing he worked for many years in hotels and restaurants, and from their back doors got to know a good deal of Europe. (Love in Amsterdam, Penguin Books, 1975.)

John Wyndham was born in 1903. Until 19011 he lived in Edgbaston, Birmingham, and then in many parts of England. After a wide experience of the English preparatory school he was at Bedales from 1918-1921. Careers he tried included farming, law, commercial art, and advertising, and he first started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1923. . . In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the U. S. A. and decided to try a modified form of what is unhappily known as 'science fiction.' (Consider Her Ways and Others, Penguin Books, 1979.)

Nina Epton was born in London of a Scottish father and a Spanish mother. Brought up on self-control and hockey in England. . . . (Love and the Spanish, Penguin Books, 1964.)

Alfred Douglas was born in England in 1942. Inspired by his family's interest in arcane tradition, he began to study occult symbolism when he was still very young. . . Douglas divides his time between an apartment in London and a house in Whitby, where Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, on the rugged coast of the Yorkshire moors. (The Tarot, Penguin Books, 1979.)

The illegitimate son of an itinerant astrologer, Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876. He grew up on the waterfront and was soon a heavy drinker, a fighter, and an outlaw as well as a voracious reader of books from the public library. (The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., Penguin Books, 1978.)

The Man Within My Head by Pico Iyer

The Man Within My Head by Pico Iyer
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012)
242 pp.

When my attention was first drawn to this book a few months before publication by my wife, a librarian, I thought how intriguing. She knew I would find it so. It surprised me to hear that Graham Greene had played a significant role in the life of Pico Iyer. They were not authors I would have associated as having much in common. I had read a few books by Pico Iyer and enjoyed his subject matter and style, and I have, like many, read a great deal of Graham Greene's works over the years and enjoyed them as well. I began to visualize a Venn diagram to try and see what they had in common. My knowledge of Pico Iyer's life was limited but I could see that they were both writers, both had English schooling, both travelled and used their travel experiences in their work. The well known “Greeneland” landscape with its Catholicism, guilt, spies and solitary male protagonists seemed to be absent, more the terrain of John Le Carré and other writers.

It is a difficult book to review without spoiling it for other readers for it conceals a shadowy influence between the two writers as if written in sympathetic ink, with Iyer providing the necessary heat to reveal its nature in this “counterbiography” of his “unsought familiar.”

This is a book that is utterly fascinating to read and provides a rich texture of insights into both Pico Iyer's life and Graham Greene's life and writings. It is a book that bridges the gap between such books as on the one hand, Shirley Hazzard's “Greene on Capri” with her intimate knowledge of the day to day Greene with all his idiosyncratic mannerisms, moods, issues and baggage, and on the other hand, the exhaustive pursuit of the details of the writer's life by Norman Sherry. Pico Iyer explores the shadows of influence, for he never sought out Greene, nor at first thought of him as being the one to have such influence. Logically he thought he had more in common with the life of Somerset Maugham or Aldous Huxley and such is the fascination as we learn how Greene's life and work was a much deeper and more consistent presence as Iyer travelled the world and recognized and experienced facets of "Greeneland" first hand.

The book is divided into three parts, 'Ghosts,' 'Gods,' and 'Fathers.' Each is interlayered with stories of Pico Iyer's travel, autobiographical revelations, interpretations of Greene's works, the often poignant interplay of fathers and sons, and the dance of opposites and dualities such as idealism and skepticism, shadow and light, east and west. The writing is wonderful and each page will find a place in someone's mind.

I think I will leave with a quote of this ultimately very readable and quotable book:

Graham Greene the novelist appeals to some of us, I think—even challenges our sense of who we are—in part because he is so acutely sensitive to all the ways we can fail to understand one another, even those people closest to ourselves; he knew his characters, he wrote in his memoirs, better than he knew anyone in real life. He becomes the caretaker of that part of us that feels that we are larger and much harder to contain than even we can get our heads around, and that there is a mystery, fundamental and unanswerable, in ourselves as in the world around us, which is in fact a part of what gives life its sense of hauntedness. It's the best side of us, in his books—our conscience, our sense of sympathy, our feeling for another's pain—that causes us the deepest grief. And God, if he even exists, is less a source of solace than a hound of Heaven, always on our path. (pg. 39)

Saturday Snapshot

My blogging is not a daily affair, but I do like to check out bloggers like Book Puddle who manage a daily post--something quite beyond my capacity. I discovered this interesting meme via his blog and thought I would jump in.

I have recently finished Pico Iyer's The Man Within My Head, which I greatly enjoyed, and this photo rather depicts my present state of mind. A rather bookish Saturday within.

Although, I did go out with my wife--to a bookshop.

Late For Layton

Browsing my small record collection--hardly a collection anymore, more a remnant from youth having sold many during the late 80s to that wonderful source of so much, L'échange in Montreal--I felt for every LP I flipped through, four or five ghost LPs would be conjured up. Sometimes with regret. I was not like a few of my adolescent friends in the early 1970s who saved up a substantial amount of money and stood in line outside Sam the Record Man in Montreal on Boxing Day in the early hours to shiver with more than anticipation, envisioning every desired pristine record on their wanted list to be resting gently awaiting their nimble half-frozen fingers. No, I was likely down at the local park's outdoor rink with my brother, pretending to be Guy LaFleur or Ken Dryden. (There was something special about outdoor rinks in Montreal in the 1960s and 1970s, rinks where they left the shovels for you to remove the snow yourselves while the caretaker drank his coffee in the building talking to his compatriots, often in French or Italian; the sound of skate blades sliding across the ice, the sound of the the Victoriaville hockey sticks tapping the ice, the smell of hockey tape, the sound of pucks as they hit the aged frozen boards with an invigorating thud.) I knew I could always check out my friend's LPs in the New Year and wait for a later sale and browse without the crowds elbowing me for that prized LP.

(Why did I sell--or was it one of the lost--Sing it Again Rod (1973) one of my favourite LPs from that year and with that fabulous record sleeve? Oh, well. And Clapton's Rainbow Concert? Rick Derringer's All American Boy? Young's After the Gold Rush? Frampton's Camel? Somethin's Happening? Tubular Bells?..... I guess I changed, outgrew some, moved on to Jazz and classical. Perhaps it is all just nostalgia now. They moved me then, and now rekindle memories. But it would have been nice to have kept those and so many more, and have the senses of touch, sight, smell, and sound fully involved. Rather like old love letters.)

Well, life is a progression of sorts. So, to get back to the browsing, I came across an unusual LP.

The year was 1992. The Montreal Library in which I worked was planning its annual fund raising campaign. The chair of the board of directors, having a background in Canadian literature, put forward the name of Irving Layton to be their fundraising spokesperson. He accepted. The chair thought it would be appropriate to have a display of the poet's works and she made the request of the poet whether he had anything of interest that could be used in the display. He said he would look for items. Since I was overseeing the archives and displays at that time, I was generously given the opportunity to go to the poet's house and make a choice of the selected material. I was truly excited. This was not the kind of opportunity that ever came my way. I had a week to think about the approaching day. I had a couple of Irving Layton's many, many books of poetry, and wondered if I should scour the shops for additional titles so I could bring him a handful of books to sign. I did, I confess, pick up a few more.

The day arrived, August 29, 1992. I was given the afternoon off to visit his home in my old neighbourhood of Notre Dame de Grace. I was fairly nervous to meet him. His poetic reputation and his robust personality was on my mind as I entered the taxi. Half-way there I realised I had forgotten his books. In my nervous haste I had left them on my kitchen counter. To turn back and retrieve them was a fleeting thought, but I would be late for Layton. I didn't want to be late for Layton.

Arriving on time, I approached the front door on Monkland Avenue and rang the bell. As I readied myself to say hello to a renowned poet, the door was opened by an attractive younger women, his partner and companion of the time, and she invited me in. I waited in the entrance as she quietly disappeared to the back of the house. As I waited, I heard some movement upstairs and the great poet came into view at the top of the stairs and began a composed descent. For his age, 80, he seemed in robust health, his thick long grey hair was impressive, an ideal poet's mane. A strongly built man who in his prime could probably have taken me out with his pinky. Though not a tall man, he had a strong physical presence. Our pleasantries over, he ushered me into the living room and back to the dining room where he had laid out the chosen materials. I think he recognized a devotee and he was quite lovely. There were a number of foreign language translations of his works and he was proud of his popularity in Italy. I looked over the material and made my choices. Then he brought out an LP of a reading he did back in the 1980s. I said that was terrific for the display. I told him I had forgotten a few of his books to sign, and he brought out another copy of the LP. He bent over the dining room table, rested the LP on the books and papers and delicately inscribed it for me in a somewhat shaky hand.

I left with the materials, feeling invigorated by the meeting. I walked back into my old neighbourhood before setting off for lower Westmount. It had been an interesting visit.

When the annual board meeting took place in September and Irving would give a speech, I was unable to attend as I had a university class that evening, so I missed out on a bonus meeting and chance to have my books signed. I did get one however. A few years later I came across a limited signed fine press edition of one of his books in Italian translation illustrated by an artist. Some things take time.

The LP: Layton Reads Layton The poetry of Irving Layton as read by the poet himself. Recorded live at the Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario Public Library, November 10, 1981. (A Karlay Production, recorded by Satalite Sound, 1981.)

Nabokov Covers

I am in the midst of reading Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, and the latest warm-hearted offering by Alexander McCall Smith, but I now find myself 90 pages into The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov.

I blame housecleaning.

In a moment of vacuous calm after a bout of dusting and vacuuming, I happened to be staring at bookshelves, no doubt through the rise and fall of imperceptible dust motes, when I noticed how very plain the dustwrappers of the Nabokov hardcovers issued by Putnam in the 1960s were in comparison to the surrounding books. My initial reaction to the covers was to wonder why they were so drab. Was there a lack of direction in the art direction department? Was there a lack of funds? Was it a style of the period? Was it due to the sophisticated nature of the text that made them avoid putting a foot wrong, and resort to plain typographic design with a wash of backcloth colour? The contrast with contemporary designs for Murakami's works by Chipp Kidd made these covers seem exceedingly plain.

While these questions settled in my mind, I looked at some of the paperbacks of his work for which I have a fondness. The vintage illustrations for the Popular Library editions issued in the late 1950s and early 1960s do not tend to correspond to the text within but at least they are on the conservative side of the lurid illustrations of the day, when sex was used to sell paperbacks. These latter covers generally remind me of the 1955 film, The Seven Year Itch, where the actor Tom Ewell, portrays a character who is overseeing a manuscript by a pyschiatrist, and the cover art designs for this non-fiction work are luridly ridiculous.

My first encounter with Nabokov's work was with Nabokov's Dozen (Popular Library, 1958), a paperback I picked up secondhand. I still return to this slim volume to reread Spring in Fialta and other short stories, sporting my pencil marks, signposts of a youthful passage. These illustrations are by the talented and prolific illustrator Stanley Zuckerberg (1919-1995), a New Yorker who illustrated many paperback covers during the 1950s and 60s, and according to Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History by William B. Jones, Jr., he illustrated two Classics Comics, A Tale of Two Cities (1942) and Robinson Crusoe (1943). He married a fellow artist, Lillian Chestney who also had a long and prolific career as an illustrator, and she also illustrated two Classics Comics, Arabian Nights (1943) and Gulliver's Travels (1943).

I cannot find a reference by Nabokov to this specific cover art for Nabokov's Dozen, nor to The Gift, but I gather from reading his selected letters, that he was adamant about what he did and did not want, and was often provided with cover art that was not to his liking in the extreme. The cover for Nabokov's Dozen does seem more like an advertisement for hair styles, but as a reader, I am rather fond of the volume.

The one-line blurbs on the back of the Popular Library edition of my 1963 copy of The Gift pictured here, are rather amusing: "A bizarre and special romp" (St. Louis Globe-Democrat), "A powerful kick" (Associated Press), "An occasion of delight" (Commonweal). On the back of my 1964 Popular Library copy of The Defense is the following hyperbolic purchase-motivating blurb: "Superior to Lolita and, in its way, as much of a shocker" (W. G. Rogers, Saturday Review Syndicate). Anything to sell a book.

In the late 1960s, Nabokov's son Dimitri provided paperback cover art sketches for a number of his father's works, The Defense being one. When it was to be reissued in the early 1970s, Nabokov was unhappy with the new cover. Writing to Rosa Montague of Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, the author wrote :

I do not wish to appear choosy, but the new cover design won't do. The banal pop-arty combination of a broken chessboard inserted between Siamese twins (identical except for the forlock on one brow) is meaningless and repulsive. I do not insist on cover designs illustrating a novel realistically, but I do object to a pseudo-realism unconnected with anything in the book. It is a great pity Panther does not wish to use the 1967 cover-design, but if so, let us have some purely ornamental pattern without eyes, noses, or hands. -September 9, 1970. (Vladimir Nabokov Selected Letters 1940-1977, HBJ, 1989, p.472.)

Dimitri Nabokov also provided the cover art for The Gift issued by Panther in 1967, one that his father approved of fully, referring to it as a "subtle and intelligent sketch. . . with the keys on the floor of the hall."

It seems if the art departments of publishers could not figure out a proper concept for his covers, large black lettering on a pale background was preferable. I gather that is what helped sway the decision process at Putnam's when they issued his books in hardcover with similar dustwrapper designs with the only variation being the subtle colour shadows to the titles.

Much more could be written about Nabokov covers, especially the wonderful book, Pnin, but I will leave that to another day, or to another altogether. I really should get back to 1Q84, but I so enjoy the rich textured prose of The Gift that I forget I have already been there before, walking beside Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev listening to his thoughts.

Gleanings from the Odd Book Book Shelf: No. 2, Alexander Gardner, Publisher

The New Testament in Braid Scots rendered by William Wye Smith and published by Alexander Gardner in 1901, is not an uncommon or scarce title but it is a bit of an odd fish in my collection. I picked it up at library sale in London a number of years ago for a few dollars. I thought I would research this publisher and book and hopefully find some interesting gleanings for the odd book bookshelf.

The publisher's device to the left belongs to Alexander Gardner, the Scottish publisher based in Paisley, whose history can be traced back to the late 1820s. The device was a fairly recent addition to this publisher as it only begins to show up in books published in the first decade of the last century, and is generally found at the back of the book centered on one of the penultimate pages. It reflects a certain modernity in its design with its use of the silhouette of an oak tree and a man planting what I assume to be an acorn, and the publisher's initials bookending oak leaves surrounding a Scottish thistle image. The latin motto, vive ut vivas, and its placement around the outside, hearkens back to older designs used by printers and publishers.

According to the Scottish Book Trade Index, Alexander Gardner began as a bookseller, stationer and printer and first appeared at 14 Moss Street, Paisley, from 1828-1830 and their Printing office was at 4 Lillia's Wynd in 1831. This narrow street, “wynd” no longer exists today, but according to an old Paisley Street Directory, it ran up from High Street and met Dyer's Wynd, another narrow street which still exits (truly but an alley today). They moved about over the years, but stayed in this vicinity which is just around the corner from the present City Hall and nearby Paisley Abbey.

They began printing mainly religious tracts, pamphlets, and other theological publications which became the foundation of their business. This is not uncommon for a provincial publisher of this period. Some of their earliest publications I can find are: Letters to a Minister of the Gospel on His and Other Interpretations of Our Saviour's Predictions of His Return by James A. Begg, published in 1831; Sermons Preached to the First United Associate Congregation, Paisley, on Sabbath, 27^th December, 1835, by John Mitchell (1768-1844) published in 1836; Symbola Classica, Intended to Assist the Classical Student by William Hunter (Rector of Paisley Grammar School), published in 1833; The Sabbath, a Day of Rejoicing by Rev. Alexander A.M. Rennison, 1849; and Sermons by the Late Alexander Rennison M. A. Minsiter of St. George's Church Paisley, with Memoir, 1868.>

In Fowler's Paisley and Johnstone Commercial Directory for 1845-46, a relation of Alexander Gardner, one Archibald Gardner, is also listed as working at the printing business, and is listed as a “writer” whose domicile was in Nethercommon. He was the author of Morisonianism Refuted: A Review of the Rev. James Morison's Exposition of the Ninth Chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans published by Alexander Gardner in 1852. A list of other titles written by Archibald Gardner is provided and they are: A Defence of Infant Baptism; A Catechism on the Nature, Design, Subjects and Mode of Christian Baptism, 3^rd. Ed.; and A Catechism on the Lord's Supper for the Use of Young Communicants. A one page advertisement of works published by Alexander Gardner is also at the back of this volume and includes: A Brief Commentary on the Epistle of James by Rev. Alexander S. Patterson; The Judgement of the Papacy and Reign of Righteousness by Thomas Houston; and a reprint from an American edition, Hodge on the Romans with an Appendix on the Nature and Extent of the Atonement

By the 1870s they have diversified and expanded their range of publications. Issuing reprints is fairly common pursuit and they came out with a series of literary reprints, poetry, books on local history, travel, as well as their books on religious subjects. A few examples include: Folklore: or, Superstitious Belief in the West of Scotland Within This Century: with an Appendix Shewing the Probable Relations of the Modern Festivals of Christmas, May Day, St. John's Day and Halloween to Ancient Sun and Fire Worship by James Napier, 1879; The Poems of Allan Ramsay 2 vols., 1877 (being a reprint of a well-known 1800 edition of George Chalmers); Cantus, Songs and Fancies to three, four. . . by John Forbes, 1879 (originally published in 1662); The Songs and Poems of Robert Tannahill ed. By David Semple, 1879; The Poems and Literary Prose of Alexander Wilson, the American Ornithologist ed. by Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, 2vols., 1876; and the unusual Colquhoun's Closets: or, The Dry and Ventilating System in Lieu of the Present Water Closet and Sewage System by John Colquhoun, 1870. Their publication of John Jamieson's An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 4 vols., 1879-1882, plus the supplementary volume issued in 1887 is one that can be readily found through online bookselling sites but it seems to be the most expensive multi-volume issues of Alexander Gardner's publications presently available.

Some interesting titles from the 1880s include: Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, by R. H. Cromek, 1880 (a re-issue of an 1810 London publication, the poems and songs really belonging to the pen of the Scottish poet, Allan Cunningham); Saga of Halfred the Sigskald by Felix Dahn, translated by Sophie F. F. Veitch, 1886; Benderloch: or, Notes From the West Highlands by W. Anderson Smith; Loch Creran: Notes From the West Highlands by W. Anderson Smith; Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: with a Bibliography of English Writings on Music by James D. Brown (Mitchell Library, Glasgow),1886; Martyrs of Angus and Mearns: Sketches in the History of the Scottish Reformation by Rev. J. Moffat Scott (Arbroath), 1885; Wit, Wisdom and Pathos from the Prose of Heinrich Heine, with a few pieces from the “Book of Songs” selected and translated by J. Snodgrass, 2^nd. Rev. Ed., 1887; Law Lyrics (anonymous author: Robert Bird) 2^nd Ed., 1887; Pinkerton's Lives of the Scottish Saints revised and enlarged by W. M. Metcalfe, 2vols.,1889; Loch Etive and the Sons of Uisnach by R. Angus Smith, New Ed., 1885; The Tragedy of Gowrie House, an Historical Study by Louis A. Barbe, 1887; Life in Shetland by John Russell, 1887; and Idylls of the Captive King by James Sharp, 1887.

On August 23^rd, 1888, Queen Victoria visited Paisley in honour of the city's fourth centenary, and somehow Alexander Gardner managed to procure the licence to print on his title pages from that time onwards, “Publisher to Her Majesty the Queen.” After her death it was continued with “Publisher by Appointment to the Late Queen Victoria.”

The Scottish Review

From November 1882 to July 1886, Alexander Gardner published and collaborated in editing the Scottish Review. Antoinette Peterson in the 1972 publication The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900 edited by Walter E. Hough writes:

And although Scotland possessed two influential newspapers, the Glasglow Herald and the Scotsman, no monthly or quarterly was engaged in the fight for Scottish Home Rule and other liberal-national measures. To correct this situation, two men living in Paisley, both intensely Scottish, determined in 1882 to found a new quarterly in order to “protest against the idea that London is the center of Scottish life, as also against the idea that Scotland is not strong enough to have a literary organ of its own.” The Reverend W. M. Metcalfe, a minister of the Established Church of Scotland, was the “originator and editor” of the Scottish Review. His collaborator was the Paisley publisher whose name was associated with so many Scottish literary revivals, Alexander Gardner. Gardner described the venture as one in which he was to take the pecuniary risk and Metcalfe was to do the editing, though in point of fact this division of labor was never precisely adhered to. (p. 1144).

The Review provided an innovation in their section of summaries of foreign reviews which was copied by other prominent publications. According to Peterson, (p. 1145) Gardner lost 1000 pounds by 1886 and could no longer keep it going, so he sold it to J. P. Crichton-Stuart, the third Marquess of Bute. Gardner remained as publisher until the Review ceased publication in October 1900, the same month as the death of Lord Bute. (p.1147) Gardner had published many books by W. M. Metcalfe over the years, including A History of the Shire of Renfrew from the Earliest Times Down to the Close of the Nineteenth Century; History of Paisley; and Ninian and Machor, the Legends of, in the Scottish Dialect of the Fourteenth Century.

I have noticed that quite a few of the publications of Alexander Gardner contained errata pages. Whether that was due to the Paisley compositors being more acquainted with the vernacular broad Scots, or whether it was due to hasty editing I cannot say. I did find a preliminary note to an errata that was rather charming. It is to be found at the back of the second volume of The Poems and Literary Prose of Alexander Wilson, the American Ornithologist, ed. by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, 1876:

"A final reading of both volumes makes us thankful that the 'slips,' whether of Editor or Printer, are very slight, and of a kind, as the old Divines were wont to put it, as "easily corrected as espied."

Alexander Gardner continued to publish interesting books in the 1890s, and into the next century. The name survives today in Paisley on a modern sign hanging above a nondescript building abutting the rather more interesting wine bar called The Abbey on Lawn Street just around the corner from the Paisley Abbey, and not far from their origins on Moss Street. The sign is the same as the publisher's device found in their books as described at the beginning of this essay. I have made a link to the Google street view here. It seems the company has survived as a printing business, a return to roots it seems. The tree still has life.

The New Testament in Braid Scots

William Wye Smith (1827-1917) was born in Jedburgh Scotland. His parents emigrated to America in 1830 and after some time in New York, made their way to Southern Ontario. He worked in various jobs in his life, including shopkeeper, teacher, court clerk and in the 1860s, owner and editor of the Owen Sound Times. He then became an ordained minister in the Congregational Church which became his life's work, beginning in Listowel, Ontario and finishing off his career in St. Catherine's, Ontario. He wrote poetry typical of early Canadian poetry, Alazon and Other Poems (Toronto: Hugh Scobie, 1850), and The Poems of William Wye Smith (Toronto: Dudley & Burns, 1888). His rendering of the New Testament into the vernacular Scottish dialect is interesting to read and was seemingly popular during its day. In a note to the helpful Glossary at the back of the volume, Reverend Smith writes:


As to the dialect used in this version, the dialect of Burns, which has become fixed as the literary form of the Broad Scotch, has been mainly followed; and that, notwithstanding many Border predilections on the part of the translator. Burns, Scott and Hogg are the great dialectic authorities in Scotch, to whose diction all must conform: and the world has accepted as a representative form of the language, a dialect used by these, which is not strictly peculiar to any definite locality.

This is an example of his translation, from Mark, chapter 4.1:

And he begude again to teach by the Loch-side. And an unco thrang gather't till him, sae that he gaed intil a boat, and sat i' the Loch; and a' the folk war by the Loch, on the lan'.

This volume has one small errata slip tipped into the book, with one correction:

"Page 146, heading of page, for "Peter's treat" read "Peter's trial."

In my copy, there is a personal ownership inscription on the front free endpaper, "J. Crawford Smith, Perth, Scotland."

Addendum: I began to wonder why William Wye Smith who had used Toronto publishers for his other work, decided upon Alexander Gardner to be his publisher for this book. Undoubtedly Smith was familiar with the books issued by this publisher because the libraries of the day in Mechanic's Institutes generally purchased books from the United Kingdom, often following a guide book issued by UK based Mechanic's Institute Societies, on what works to choose. Smith was Scottish and the publisher did tend towards religious books so these facts may have all led to the choice of Alexander Gardner. But moving into the area of supposition, Smith's mother's name was Sara Veitch, and Alexander Gardner published a number of works by a writer named Sophie Frances Fane Veitch, and used her work in the Scottish Review to a great extent. Sophie F. F. Veitch was born in 1858 and died in Wanlochead Dumfries in 1912. If this writer was of some relation to Smith's mother, perhaps that also added to the choice of Alexander Gardner. Pure supposition and an open possibility to explore.

Works by Sophie F. F. Veitch published by Alexander Gardner:
Angus Graeme, Gamekeeper, 2vols. 1883.
James Hepburn, Free Church Minister, 2vols. 1887.
The Dean's Daughter: A Novel, 2vols. 1888.
Duncan Moray, Farmer: A Novel, 2vols. 1890.

Sophie F. F. Veitch also used the pseudonym J. A. St. John Blythe.

Gleanings from the Odd Book Bookshelf: No. 1, Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki

Although trained in the laws of librarianship, I find I have never ordered my library according to any rules, even those of the thumb. Binding, colour, and author tend to guide my eye and hand as I arrange books on the shelf; more aesthetics than bibliographics (if I may coin a word use). So my "Odd Book Bookshelf" is rather imaginary for the books are found on various shelves in different locations. Perhaps they harbour desires of shelf-hood and my initiating this series is at their silent beckoning, such is the mysterious nature of the book.

The book in question, Japanese Fairy Tales compiled by Yei Theodora Ozaki (New York: A. L. Burt Company) is a reprint copy likely from the 1920s. It is not a valuable book, nor is it hard to find especially with the internet horn of plenty. The binding of black cloth with orange/red titles is likely from the late 1920s or early 1930s, and it is a style which seems to have been in fashion during this period, books by such authors as Rafael Sabatini, Knut Hamsun, and many others were published with similar bindings. It is the binding style that made me arrange such books together on a shelf, the black bindings and orange/red titles forming an aesthetic continuity even though the actual texts vary significantly. A copy of Scaramouche sitting beside a reprint copy of Brave New World may seem odd but for the binding style.

The book was first published under the Andrew Lang inspired title, The Japanese Fairy Book in 1903 by Archibald Constable & Co. in London, and by E. P. Dutton in New York. It included four colour plates and 62 black and white illustrations in the text. Constable issued a second impression in 1904, a third impression in 1906, a fourth impression in 1908, and a New Edition in 1922, dropping the four colour plates and introducing colour illustrated endpapers by Take Sato.

The copy I have, the A. L. Burt reprint, does not have the colour plates and provides only a selection of the illustrations. This publisher began business in the early 1880s in New York and began to print cheap editions of the classics and eventually came out with "Burt's Home Library" which was popular. (The Discourses of Epictetus was a title in this series and it that makes me think of a favourite story by Stephen Leacock, where a bookstore owner, a Mr. Sellyer would direct his scholarly time-wasting browsers to the back of the shop to peruse the cheap reprints of classics, while he pushed the most recent publications of perhaps dubious value on the unsuspecting public.) In the early years of the last century, A. L. Burt competed with the rival Grosset & Dunlop for the rights to reprint works, mainly fiction, and were successful in the areas of popular fiction and children's books; such authors as Henty, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Conan Doyle, and Edgar Wallace were issued by them. In the 1930s, A. L. Burt was bought by Blue Ribbon Books, a company who also specialized in cheap reprints. (Blue Ribbon Books began using the term "pop up" for their movable books, and it is a term which has certainly outlived their background story.)

The story of Yei Theodora Ozaki (1870-19--) is an interesting one. She was an independent, strong young woman who chose her own path and found her way through literature and teaching. The basic outlines of her life would provide the structure for an interesting movie.

Ozaki Saburo (1842-1918), a junior diplomat of the Meiji period, was in London in 1868 to learn the English language and customs and he boarded with William Mason Morrison (1819-1885) a scholar and private tutor. Ozaki Saburo became close to Morrison's daughter, Bathia Catherine and they were married in 1869. She gave birth to three daughters, Yei Theodora in 1870, Masako Maude in 1872, and Kimiko Florence in 1873. Their father returned to Japan in 1873 leaving his wife and daughters in London. Bathia never visited Japan and she was later divorced in 1881. At the age of 16, Yei went to Japan to stay with her father now a high ranking politician. While there, she grew to know Mrs. Hugh Fraser, the wife of the British Envoy to Tokyo.

Seeing that Yei did not want to participate in an arranged marriage, Mrs. Fraser suggested she come and live with them as her companion and secretary to which Yei accepted. When the Frasers travelled to Italy, Yei accompanied them and while there, she was introduced to Mrs. Fraser's (née Mary Crawford) famous brother the writer Francis Marion Crawford who hired her to catalogue his substantial library. She was like an elder sister or young aunt to the writer's daughters, telling them many of the Japanese fairy stories found in her first book. Her dedication to this book is to Eleanor Marion-Crawford, the daughter who would inherit her father's modest palace in Sorrento. Eleanor's sister, Clare, according to one source, went on to be a nun and she served her order in Japan where she is buried.

When she returned to live and teach in Japan, she began receiving the mail of the rather handsome dashing Yukio Ozaki (1858-1954) a prominent individual who happened to be the Mayor of Tokyo. When they finally met, a deep friendship developed and they were married in 1904. In the year 1912, Yukio Ozaki, as Mayor of Tokyo, organized a gift of 3,000 blossoming cherry trees for Washington D.C., cherry trees that continue to be celebrated to this day. The spring of 2012 will be the 100th anniversary of this gift and there will be special celebrations in Washington during the National Cherry Blossom Festival from March 20th to April 27th, 2012.


Books by Yei Theodora Ozaki:

The Japanese Fairy Book, 1903.
Buddha's Crystal and other Fairy Stories, 1908.
Warriors of Old Japan, 1909.
Romances of Old Japan, 1919. (as Madame Yukio Ozaki)

The writings of Yukio Ozaki were collected in 12 volumes, Works, Ozaki Gakudo Zenshu (Tokyo: Koronsha, 1955). A recent English edition of his autobiography was published by Princeton in 2001, The Autobiography of Ozaki Yukio: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in Japan.

Autumn Reflections

There is a favourite image I have always loved and keeps coming up in my thoughts with the approach of autumn: a hedge with a dusting of fallen leaves. I seem to fall back on it as a poetic image as these poems of mine from different periods reflect.


Haiku
Under leaf frothed hedge
Dark-eyed crow in stillness lies,
Staring out the sun.
(September 21, 2011.)


Bounden
Beneath ashen clouds
Huddle-wise brewing unhallowed cares,
Fresh linen forms the breeze beyond hedges frothed with leaf.

On this autumn head, this top-dressed sod,
With alluvial shoulder shouldering but another age,
I squat, printing finger's touch on stone,
Feeling the silences that hold.

(October 1985)


Fireflies on BirchWood-stove sweet hints of maple
Fluent with the breeze
Swaying over cedars feathered in leaf fall
Grafting
With October's gilded text.

Motionless above me,
Fireflies on birch.
Codelessly camouflaged on a dark window of grace,
A natural scar
Form for their gathering
Beyond the cold light of their old desires,
And beyond the strange embers
Beneath my cigarette ash.

(Lake Malaga, Autumn 1983)


LeafageActions as at autumn bent brow
Chestnut cordial countenance.
Oak on over phrases pile
Encausted flicker of leaves on hedges
Frothed with glass imaginings.
Tapered thought, til up was wrought
Rows, rows, sitting so.
Life margining movements, power dives,
Pliant stiffs waxing within wreaths.
Down, down, down each edge flows frozen full.

(Autumn 1982)

poems copyright ralph patrick mackay.
Note: The Haiku was inspired by the sad sight of a dead crow under a hedge and a well- known haiku by Basho; Bounden reflects my searching out my grandfather's grave; Fireflies on Birch was inspired by direct observation of nature; and Leafage reveals a youthful interest in Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is interesting to look back and see subtle influences by some favourite poets such as Edwin Muir, Hopkins, Ted Hughes. I have to admit that the title for the third poem was made with Irving Layton's famous poem, Butterfly on Rock, in mind, (it is not a comment on the great Canadian poets poem) but what I call my light verse lacks his robust life force. I come across as more lapsed Presbyterian than poet.

If, Dear Reader, you are still reading, you deserve a treat for venturing this far into my poetic hinterland, so I shall post this wonderful music, Autumn Leaves with the masters of poetic musical expression:

Sock du jour

Nothing quite like a large pile of freshly laundered socks,
to keep one's feet on the ground.
So to speak.

They promise autumnal promenades over leaves and rocks,
and toe holds on a future sound,
when snows will squeak.

The game's afoot with emotions, as the seasons and the clocks
in their filial round,
chime antique

Til the day our labeled toes point like compass stars, in dry docks
for our lost and found
souls oblique.

ralph patrick mackay
september 9, 2011.

And See the Land Where Corals Lie

I can see him walking amid the shadows. He breathes in the heady odours of buckram, Morocco, vellum and calf. There are manuscript pages and a book in his left hand as he walks along humming quietly to himself, thinking of an odd passage from an ancient obscure work, the sheltered light glinting off his spectacles as the dust motes rise and fall invisibly between the bookshelves as he passes.

That is my imaginary vision of Richard Garnett in his lair, the British Museum, a phantom amidst the stacks, shifting books and papers in an endless round.

Ford Madox Ford in one of his many books of biographical and autobiographical impressions described him as "a queer, very tall, lean, untidily bearded Yorkshire figure in its official frock-coat and high hat." I wrote about Richard Garnett not too long ago in a post about Robert Louis Stevenson, and having recently re-read the above mentioned book of memories and impressions by Ford Madox Ford, the author provides a further dimension to his passing physical description of Dr. Garnett, one which I failed to remember. It would have been apt for my post on Stevenson as it included a reference to umbrellas:

Having a passion for cats, Egyptology, palmistry and astrology, the great scholar could assume some of the aspect of deaf obstinacy that distinguishes cats that do not intend to listen to you. He cast the horoscopes of all his friends and reigning sovereigns; he knew the contents of a hundred thousand books and must have stroked as many thousand "pussies" pronouncing the "pus" to rhyme with "bus." He was inseparable from his umbrella with which he once beat off two thieves, when at five in the morning he had gone to Convent Garden to buy the household fruit. He was the author of the most delightful volume of whimsico-classical stories that was ever written and the organiser of the compilers of the catalogue of the British Museum Library--an achievement that should render him immortal if his Twilight of the Gods fails to do so.

In the older post on Stevenson, I quoted a poem he wrote on the other side of the world in his tropical paradise, thinking of his old friend Sidney Colvin and his visits to Colvin's home attached to the British Museum. I feel I should round off this brief revisit with a poem by Richard Garnett, who in his dusty comfortable haunt, thought of Robert Louis Stevenson in his exotic lotus land and wrote a sonnet about him after the young author died in 1894. It was published in his The Queen and other Poems, 1901:

Robert Louis Stevenson

Wondrous as though a star with twofold light
Should fill a lamp for either hemisphere,
Piercing cold skies with scintillation clear,
And glowing on the sultry Southern night;
Was miracle of him who could unite
Pine and the purple harbour of the deer
With palm-plumed islets that sequestered hear
The far-off wave their zoning coral smite.
Still roars the surf, still bounds the herd, but where
Is one to see and hear and tell again?
As dancers pause on an arrested air
Fail the fast-thronging figures of the brain;
And shapes unshapely in dim lair,
Awaiting ripe vitality in vain.

It is interesting to read the line "the far-off wave their zoning coral smite," for it recalls Richard Garnett's poem Where Corals Lie, written in his youth and published with many other poems in his Io in Egypt and Other Poems, 1859. Edward Elgar used Where Corals Lie in a song cycle, Sea Pictures, Opus 37. Perhaps I should leave this post with a recording of Janet Baker singing the song: