Leopoldt, Holt, Schuyler, and Dewey

As books and their bibliographies can lead one to other books, so a seemingly insignificant piece of card stock ephemera like this, can lead one to new discoveries. I had never heard of Frederick Leopoldt and in doing light research, I also came across Eugene Schuyler, another person new to me. Although Henry Holt's name lives on as an imprint, the names of Leypoldt and Schuyler seem forgotten except by scholars and specialists in certain fields.

Of the many publisher's devices, the owl used by Leopoldt & Holt, and then Henry Holt & Co., is one of the more recognizable ones along with Alfred A. Knopf's borzoi and Allen Lane's penguin. I don't have many Henry Holt books but one can find the images online here and there. It is interesting to come across the different versions of the owl. The card to the left was issued by the firm, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, this one from the Canadian office in Toronto, and the card was placed in complimentary copies sent out to, one hopes, fortunate recipients.

Baltimore born Henry Holt (1840-1926) joined the company of Frederick Leypoldt in 1866 whereby it became Leypoldt & Holt. One of their publications in 1867 was Edmund About's The Man With the Broken Ear translated from the French by Henry Holt. Two years before they joined together in business, Holt had offered this translation to Leopoldt who had graciously declined. Holt dedicated the translation to Leopoldt in an amusing paragraphe concerning this. You can find the translation and the dedication at Project Gutenberg. More importantly, in 1867, the company published the first English translation of Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons: a Novel, number 3 in their Leisure Hours Series. The translation was made from the original Russian with the approval of the author by Eugene Schuyler(1840-1890)the extraordinarily accomplished diplomat, author and traveller. Schuyler was one of the first recipients of an earned Ph.D. degree from an American University: Yale, 1861. The firm became Holt & Williams in 1872, and then Henry Holt & Co. in 1873 and continued to publish translations of Turgenev's works. Holt's memoirs entitled Garrulities of an Octogenarian Editor came out in 1923. (I can't think of another book with 'garrulities' in the title, although there may be other examples.)

Frederick Leopoldt (1835-1884), originally from Stuttgart, Germany, arrived in America in 1855. He was interested in creating better bibliographic records which would make the bookselling and publishing business more efficient. His Annual American Catalogue came out in 1870, his Publisher's Weekly came out in 1872, and Publishers' Trade List Annual in 1873. He was a busy man. Richard R. Bowker was Leopoldt's associate editor and he later took over the business. R. R. Bowker is a name that has survived into our day, as any one involved in libraries or publishing will know. They are also the official U. S. ISBN agency. Poor Leopoldt, his name continually dipped into obscurity, and yet he was the catalyst for so much. He was, in fact, instrumental in the start of the American Library Association.

In the month of May 1876, Melville Dewey had dropped by Publisher's Weekly in New York to tell Leopoldt about his idea for a library journal. Leopoldt was interested in the idea very much. Leopoldt in turn, told Dewey that in a forthcoming Publisher's Weekly editorial, he had suggested that librarians get together to meet in Philadelphia for the centennial celebrations: a conference to discuss and share information. This eventually happened, and the American Library Association was formed. Leopoldt liked the idea of a library journal and wanted to own and publish one. He asked Dewey to become the editor, and Library Journal came out in 1876.

Frederick Leopoldt, responsible for so much, yet, never achieved that lasting impression of a trade name like a Holt, or a Bowker. I only hope there is a bust of Leopoldt in the foyer of Publisher's Weekly, or an engraving of him at the home of the Library Journal.

For those with time on their hands, there is in an interesting interview with a Publisher's Weekly editor at this link.

Bookmark of the Week: No. 13

This is a small bookmarker (6.5cm x 3.5cm) with an uneven top edge and a cut out flap to mark your place. After spending two hours weeding and cutting the lawns, I could have used a nice cool New Yorker Lager. Not being a beer drinker except after cutting lawns or after a round of golf -which I haven't played for twenty years-I don't usually keep any in stock. Canada Dry Ginger Ale had to do.

This would be a good bookmark for books by Hammett or Chandler or even those west coast hardboiled favourites of mine by Ross Macdonald. Ah, I see some of my summer reading taking shape already.

Gielgud's MacBeth

In honour of Scotland's election day, I looked for something related to the country in my ephemera and came up with this 1942 programme for John Gielgud's production of MacBeth for a two week run at the King's Theatre, Glasglow, during the month of February 1942.

The air raid warning notice above, centre, and the advertisement for Kelvin Court flats listing it has air raid shelters certainly provides a context to these performances.

It was Gielgud's 1942 production that saw three actors die and the suicide of a costume designer. The curse was much on the minds of the theatre company to be sure.

At the bottom is the announcement of the production to follow: More 1066 And All That, presented by Emile Littler.

Harper & Brothers

Ephemera for the month of May seems appropriate.

This is a Harper & Brothers Form No. 802 which was placed in each box of books packed for shipment. Printed on the reverse are lines for the initials of the individuals who packed the box and checked the box after packing. Their quality control of the day.

If you are visiting New York you may want to check out the exhibit at Columbia University: Caterers General to the Literary World: The House of Harper (Chang Octagon, RBML, Butler 6th Floor East, 535 West 114th Street) March 28 through June 30, 2007. It was mounted to coincide with the Bibliographical Society of America’s conference: Birth of the Bestseller: The 19th Century Book in Britain, France, and Beyond which ran from March 29th to the 31st.

Bookmark of the Week: No. 12

I believe this to be the smallest rectangular card stock bookmarker I have. There is a history of the bookshop written by the owner, Margaret Hard: A Memory of Vermont: Our Life in the Johnny Appleseed Bookshop, 1930-1965, originally published by Harcourt but it was reissued in 1995.

During the summer of 1942, Vladimir Nabokov was staying at the summer home of a Harvard Professor near West Wardsboro, Vermont, not far away at all from Manchester Village. I wonder if he ever dropped by looking for books on entomology.

Signed copy

Having recently looked into the in-print status of a certain author long deceased, I came across a publishing site whose basic set-up for each book provides for author contact information. If I would like to contact so-and-so and see about getting a book signed etc. Since the author was quite dead it provided food for thought. Could it be a job for Margaret Atwood's innovative and exciting Longpen technology I wondered? It would make a good New Yorker type of cartoon. Deceased authors lining up on the other side to sign books for the living. Jane Austen stepping back on Herman Melville's shoes as she backs away from Cervantes gesticulating in earnest as he explains a basic narrative premise to Goethe, and Henry James and Joseph Conrad at the end of the line looking the other way, confirmed in their belief that this was a bad idea altogether.

I do think the Longpen is quite marvelous. And Atwood, well, our resident genius.

Browsing? Our Robots can do that for us.

Over at Librarian's Place I came across a link to an article about a Chicago University Library using a robot to retrieve books from a warehouse-like set-up called a library, thereby creating efficient retrieval. One can see certain benefits. Books would not be lost, mishelved, damaged or hidden, at least one would hope. Any university student or librarian knows of the chaos that can occur in a library at paper writing time. Books everywhere. The shelves in disarray. Reshelving carts overflowing. Books with chapters sliced out. Bound periodicals in stacks and piles on the floor beside photocopy machines. At least those were my memories, dated though they may be.

To lose the on-site browsing ability, however, certainly guts the very life out of a library.

Perhaps the librarians can give the robots names, like Helena or Marius from Karel Capek's R.U.R., or Hadaly from Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, the guy who coined the word 'android'.

It would be nice if the robots were androids. One could listen to their complaints over a cup of coffee. They could sport reading glasses. And a cardigan. Those warehouses must be cold after all.

Browse

For every action there is a reaction. The recent article in the Times about the supposed negative effects of internet bookselling on the art of the browse can be seen as one journalist's attempt to get a reaction. At least it makes us think about the issue. Margaret Atwood's and Kazuo Ishiguro's remarks may have been used by the journalist to point the brick wall he was building, but I think the wall is only knee high and we can safely sit on it and see both ways. Margaret Atwood and Ishiguro are of a certain age, and like many of their age, myself included, they spent their formative years in open stack libraries and a selection of bookshops both retail and second-hand. I use the internet and it is a very useful tool like Ishiguro mentions, but I too, like Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro, have been conditioned over the many years by the browsing in bookshops and libraries. The utter reality of it: the sunlight coming through the window; the smell of the books; the excitement and pleasure upon finding what one was looking for and for the chance discovery of something utterly new; the bookseller's friendly banter; the cat sleeping in the sunny window; the sound of the door closing and opening; the feel of that little step down into the shop; the chance meeting with a friend; the old chair next to the heating stove; the sense of comfort and well-being as rain taps against the window and one has no umbrella; the light upon the gilt titles and colourful softcovers; the feel of the binding and the sound of the paper as each page is turned. . . Endless memories come back to me of experiences in bookshops over the past close to 40 years. This is what cannot be replicated on-line. There is something unique about reality.

Although the internet has indeed brought about all sorts changes and adjustments in the bookselling world, I agree with Michael Gove's response in the Times that it is "the spread of bookselling by the major grocers that has caused real problems for the margins of smaller bookshops." His article is quite humourous and he is obviously an ardent bibliophile.

I came across an article only yesterday quite inadvertently on a library database (yes the internet does have its serendipity but of a different kind) written for The Chronicle of Higher Education by Thomas H. Benton titled Stacks Appeal. It is his lovely paean to open stack libraries and the art of the browse. Very well said and humourous. Yes, browsing in reality is different. And may we always have it.

Memoirs Extraordinary

In London, on April 23, 1841, the poet, author, journalist and editor, Charles Mackay (1814-1889), penned the preface to a book which, unbeknownst to him, would become the one publication of his fairly prolific output which would keep his name alive into the present age. Had he not written this book, he would have been but another forgotten author (though perhaps remembered as the father of Marie Corelli) who would be known only to book collectors and scholars, his titles listed in antiquarian booksellers' catalogues, and his volumes gathering dust in closed stacks of older library collections.

The book in question was first issued by Richard Bentley in 1841, with the title Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions (3 volumes). A new edition was issued in 1852 in 2 volumes by the National Illustrated Library with the ammended title Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (though the spine titles could read Mackay's Popular Delusions which seems rather humourous today.) The American edition was issued in 1856 by G. Routledge in 2 volumes, and later issued in one volume in 1869 in their Routledge's Standard Library series and reprinted subsequently.

The book gained new life when in 1932, during the lowest period of the economic crash, L. C. Page issued a new edition through the influence of Bernard M. Baruch. It was just what people needed. To read of follies and delusions in past ages, and to see that recovery was possible. It is to Bernard M. Baruch that we owe its continuing success. In the foreword to the 1932 edition, Baruch concludes: "It is bound to produce a confirmed and vital conviction of the value and the invariability of the simpler axioms of human conduct and that, I take it, is, just now, a consummation devoutly to be wished." It was reprinted many times throughout the twentieth century and most recently by Harriman House.

It seems we are in constant need of being reminded of our human folly.

Mackay chose as the epigraph to the first edition the following words:
Il est bon de connaitre le delires de l'esprit humain. Chaque peuple a ses folies plus ou moins grossieres.
-Millot

For the 1852 edition, Charles Mackay chose for the epigraph four lines from Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux (a favourite of Dryden) . The last two lines read:
Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgre tous leurs soins
Ne different entre eux que du plus ou du moins.

Portrait of William Shakespeare

In honour of the accepted date of William Shakespeare's birth date, I have chosen the Grafton Portrait which has generally been discredited as a possible painting of Shakespeare, and yet it appeals to me in that it captures the tension of youthful uncertainty combined with the all perceiving eye. J. Dover Wilson used this for the frontispiece to his book The Essential Shakespeare: a Biographical Adventure (Cambridge 1932), but it is now seen to be more likely a picture of the young Marlowe if anyone.

The scholar Peter Beal (author of Index of Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700, and In Praise of Scribes: Manuscripts and Their Makers in Seventeenth-Century England) has recently reviewed a new book concerned with the authenticity of certain portraits of the bard: The True Face of William Shakespeare by Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel (Chaucer Press), and he ends his review with the following words: "By all means, let readers engage with this book and make up their own minds. Absolute truth, however, remains as elusive as ever."

Bookmark of the Week: No. 11

In honour of Shakespeare's birthday, I thought this bookmarker would fit the Bill! I've never been to their shops, though I believe they still exist. On the back of the bookmarker in very small print they explain the reasons for having chosen the name. In honour of Sylvia Beach's example in Paris, Shakespeare and Company, they chose to use another reference to Shakespeare and attach "and Company". Robert Greene's reference to Shakespeare as an "Upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers" fit their bill.

The artwork seems to be by Leonard Baskin. Ted Hughes was prompted by the artist to write a text for his artwork and their collaboration produced Crow among other works. There may be a connection between Baskin and the bookstore but I don't know the story there.

I cannot find my copy of Hughes' Crow. I usually keep all my Faber paperbacks together but It seems to have migrated. Or walked.

Lightly Versified 1

Perusing The New Oxford Book of Light Verse edited by Kingsley Amis has, as usual with these things, influenced me. For some reason the following Limerick came to me as I tried to fall asleep last night.







There was a young man of Chambly,
Who incapably sang in a tree.
When asked why it was,
He said, "It's because,
I'm a descendent of Madame Albani."


A friend I used to know grew up in Chambly and told me of the young man there who was known to be a descendent of the renowned and extremely talented international opera diva Madame Albani, and how he lived off the name. My friend was a great opera fan, and he could see why this young man should be proud, but I think he grew tired of being reminded of this young man's relation to fame.

In the 1850s when Madame Albani was still the young Emma Lajeunesse from Chambly, she performed a number of times at the Montreal Mechanics' Institute Hall where she played the piano and later sang. The Montreal Mechanics' Hall on the corner of Great St. James and St. Peter streets (now St. Jacques and St. Pierre) was opened in the spring of 1855 and was later demolished in the 1920s for the Head Office of the Royal Bank of Canada. That building still exists in its massivity. An astonishing pile indeed. When it was built in 1928 it was the tallest building in Canada. Here is a view of the interior of the main banking level. You would feel confident with your money in this bank. Hmm, I think I have digressed rather far from Kingsley Amis and light verse, but, if you look very closely, you'll see that the man in the photograph bears a striking resemblance to the English author.