Grimm in English

We just acquired the first English translations of the brothers Grimm's German Popular Stories. The first volume was published in 1823 and the second in 1826. The presentation of Grimm's fairy tales in English is much different than the first German editions from 1812 and 1815. The brothers Grimm were engaged in a philological exploration of German language and culture. The German title,  Kinder und Hausmärchen, suggests that the stories were for children, but the scholarly apparatus and some of the more disturbing tales made the books a little less kid friendly.

When the volumes were translated in to English, though, the publisher commissioned the popular George Cruikshank to illustrate the volumes. Some of the more gory details of the stories were softened to appeal to multiple audiences and Cruikshank's illustrations give an indication of those audiences. For the first volume, the title page shows a man in a tavern reading aloud from a book to a group of entertained revelers of all ages. It is interesting that the tales come from a book in Cruikshank's vision, since they were collected by the Grimms from an oral tradition.

The second volume's illustration is an homage to the first printings of Charles Perrault's Mother Goose tales. The two images of an older woman sitting by a fire regaling a listeners with her tales are remarkably similar, even down to the cat warming itself by the fire. The big difference is that in Cruikshank's image, the listeners are obviously children, while there is plenty of ambiguity in the age of Mother Goose's audience.

To see the Grimm, ask for Rare PT921.K5613 1823.  The 1697 Perrault is Rare PQ1877.C513 1697.

My Dinner with Alessandro

In 1836, while touring Europe, the well connected, wealthy Bostonians, George (Dartmouth class of 1807) and Anna Ticknor, paid a visit to Alessandro Manzoni at his villa in Milan. Manzoni, famous for his classic novel I Promessi Sposi, was a major force in the nineteenth-century Italian unification movement. Both George and Anna Ticknor recorded the visit in their journals. Their impressions of the day's events differed.

Anna noted that Manzoni "is not striking in his appearance or manner, and in conversation is neither fluent nor very interesting." George was granted a longer time with Manzoni and found him more talkative: "Thus, for instance, he was positively eloquent, when he urged his fears, that the attempts to introduce liberal institutions into Europe would end in furthering its claims of a heavier despotism on the people; and that the irreligious tendencies of the age would but arm the priesthood with new and more dangerous power."

Ian Blanco, Claire Daly, Paul Maravelias, and Zonia Moore, the four members of Nancy Canepa's Italian 24 class, "Questions of Identity in the 19th Century," have just mounted an exhibit in the Rauner Reading Room showing the Ticknor diaries alongside early editions of Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi. The exhibit will be up until the end of term, so come in to see their amazing work.

After the exhibit comes down, you can see the diaries by asking for MS-1249, Box 1 and MS-983, Box 3.