De Revolutionibus

Copernicus first published his explanation of the heliocentric universe in 1543, the year of his death, but he had been circulating the idea for nearly 30 years. As early as 1514, he distributed a pamphlet-sized manuscript laying out his views. In a sense it is the birth of the scientific article--a new idea or argument written up and shared among like-minded colleagues--but before the existence of the scholarly journal. Part of his motivation was to get the ideas out for critique, but he also knew just how inflammatory his theories would be.

In 1543, Copernicus was persuaded to publish De Revolutionibus by fellow scientist Georg Joachim Rheticus. There seemed to be some promise that the ideas might be better received in Protestant Germany. Ironically, it was the Protestants who reacted first and most critically, and only later was the book censored by the Catholic Church.

But that did not stop the circulation of his ideas. This 1617 edition was published in Amsterdam and shows the comments of contemporary readers. Shortly after, in 1632, Galileo published his famous defense of the Copernican system.

To see the Copernicus, ask for Val 523.2 C79a.

So Fine

A lot of fine press books are a bit too precious. A beloved poem or short story by a favorite author hand set and lovingly printed on hand-made paper in a simple, yet elegant binding. They are nice--wonderful to hold and to look at, you can run your finger over the text and feel the bite of the type--but you wonder if anyone read them and how the author might have felt about having his or her text treated with so fine a touch. But sometimes you hit one that is a perfect match.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The House of Life (Boston: Copeland and Day, 1894) is far from our best exemplar of fine printing.  Printed by John Wilson at the Harvard University Press for Copeland and Day, it restores the 1870 edition of the Rossetti's sonnets and does away with some unfortunate editorial changes in the 1881 edition. The poems were precious to Rossetti--when his wife died, he buried a manuscript copy with her.

Rossetti was part of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and friends with great printers like William Morris who printed an edition of his Hand and Soul at the Kelmscott Press. But what makes the Copeland and Day edition work so well is the attention it gives both to the poems and to the reader. It was made to sell and to be read. There is no edition statement declaring it one of x number of copies and the production standards were not so obsessively high that it was priced out of the range of the interested reader. Still, the original borders and initial letters were designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (architect of the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel and the Nebraska State Capital). They accentuate the text in a fitting style. The paper is light and easy to handle, but with enough weight to show off hand-set type. We have two copies, one in its trade binding, the other hand-bound by the Doves Press (pictured here). It is a beautiful book, wonderful to hold in its Doves binding, but equally inviting to read.

To see it ask for Presses C7    9ro.

Longevity Collection

In the face of our ever-growing obsession with youth, it is good to know that the quest we are on is not new. The study of longevity is an old one, and here at Rauner we have a wonderful collection of books devoted to its exploration. Our "Longevity Collection" came to us as a gift from Mrs. Raymond Pearl in memory of her husband who graduated from Dartmouth College in 1899. Raymond Pearl, a renowned biologist and statistician, who is considered to be the father of biogerontology, collected over 330 books and 440 pamphlets on the subject. Titles include The Art of Prolonging Human Life, by Christopher WM. Hufeland, MD, first physician to the King of Prussia (1829), The Dying Speeches and Behavior of the Several State Prisoners That have been Executed the last 300 Years (1720) and a three volume collection by G. Smeeten entitled Remarkable Aged Persons. Smeeten, a publisher, painstakingly hand-recorded most of the entries in these scrapbook-like bound volumes. The information he provides consists of birth and death dates, character sketches and causes of death. Newspaper clippings of obituaries, sketches and articles, as well as drawings related to longevity, supplement the entries.

Several of the texts in the "Longevity Collection" date back to the 1600s while the oldest, De Triplici Vita, by Marsilio Ficino, was probably published in 1490. Many of the early texts are in Latin, but volumes in Italian, German and French are also represented. Philosophical treatise on the subject of longevity, aging and death predominate this collection. However, a variety of clinical texts are also included.

Despite his vast knowledge and research on the subject, Raymond Pearl was not able to prolong his own life. He died at the age of 61 of heart failure.

Search the catalog to see all of the volumes in the Longevity Collection.  The volumes shown here can be requested by asking for Rauner Longevity QP 85 .R453 (Remarkable Aged Persons), Rauner Longevity RA 775 .H9 1829 (The Art of Prolonging Human Life), Rauner Longevity RA 775 .T87 (Monthly Observations) and Rauner Longevity HV 6295 .G7 D8 (The Dying Speeches and Behaviour).

Selling It - American Style

The Wrong Box by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne is a black comedy first published in 1889.  The novel relates the tale of the last two members of a tontine and the efforts of one of these survivors to kill off the other and thus claim the prize pool. Various mishaps ensue.  A corpse believed to be one of the tontine members killed in a railway accident is mistakenly shipped off to another character who is expecting a statue of Hercules. Most everything works out in the end. However, it wasn't the off-kilter humor that tickled our fancy.

Rauner holds both the first British edition and the first American edition.  Both were published in 1889, but the presentation of the novel is markedly different for the two intended audiences.  The British edition features a rather bland red cover with just the title and the authors' names.  Charles Scribner, the American publisher, obviously thought that something more was needed to attract a potential buyer.  The American cover (above) features an eye-catching newspaper fragment impressed into the cover.  The tantalizingly torn advertisement is for one William Bent Pitman - the character who is shipped the wrong, corpse-filled box.

Ask for Val 826 St5 Y9 (1st American) and Val 826 St5 Y91 (1st British) to compare the two editions.

Thoroughly Modern Alice

Keeping children's stories up to date is a constant challenge for publishers. In order to sell a book, especially a children's book, it needs to appeal to contemporary tastes. A new set of illustrations is a common way to freshen a story. We have dozens of editions of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but this copy, which we call the Flapper Alice, is a favorite. Alice, who ought to be sporting a ponytail and wearing a pinafore over her dress, is transformed into a fashionable 1920s flapper.  Her hair is even in a bob!

The marketing of this book by The Reader's Library Publishing Company in London did not stop with Hume Henderson's new illustrations. It was part of their Juvenile Series consisting "only of books that have made good." As a result, readers were "sure of a first-rate story." Not enough? Perhaps the story would be even better with some sweets: there is a full-page advertisement for Nestle's chocolate bars on the back cover as an added enticement.

Enjoy this thoroughly modern Alice, by asking for Sine H464ali.

End Notes

Hartman Schedel's Liber Cronicarum (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493) is one of the most beautiful and best known books from the incunabula period. Using the medieval concepts of ages of the world, it was designed to chronicle the history of the world from start to finish. As a genre, it was not new--chronicles of this sort had been around for a long time in manuscript form. But the printed book posed a problem. In 1493, the world was still in its Sixth Age that would not come to a close until the second coming of Christ, but the Nuremberg Chronicle (as it is commonly known) wanted to be complete and portray the final ages of the world as well.

The printer came up with a simple solution, blank pages between the end of the Sixth Age and the start of the Seventh Age which would usher in the Apocalypse. But how many pages?  If you were trying to predict how much history might transpire between now and the end of the world, how many blank pages, or volumes, would you leave? Tellingly, the printers left just six blank pages to take the book's buyers to the end--surely that would have been enough to carry history to 1500, a date widely touted as the beginning of the end.

You can see one of our copies of the Nuremberg Chronicle on display in the Berry Main Street exhibition, On the Eve of Destruction (Again), now through November.  Or, ask for Incunabula 112 to see it in the Reading Room.

Perfected

In 1834, John Humphrey Noyes (Dartmouth class of 1830) went through a second conversion.  He became convinced that he had discovered a "third state of the heart" as he termed it. In his Confession of a Religious Experience (Oneida Reserve, Leonard & Co., 1849), Noyes defined this as a state in which "all of the affections of the heart are given to God." He concluded that in this state there is no sin and that since he had attained that state, he himself was without sin and thus perfected.  He further declared that Jesus Christ had already returned and that allowed others to attain the same perfected state.

This declaration was greeted with skepticism and derision and Noyes was expelled from Yale and had his ministerial license revoked. He returned to his native Vermont and began to establish what would become known as the Putney Community. During this period, Noyes refined and added to his doctrine of Perfectionism promoting male continence, complex marriage, and free love among other radical ideas.

He was arrested for adultery in 1846 and subsequently fled to another Perfectionist community in New York. The other members of the Putney Community followed and together they established the Oneida Community. The Oneida Community continued to evolve the ideals of Perfectionism including the practice of stirpiculture, a form of eugenics designed to breed a more enlightened individual. Special attachments between members of the opposite sex were forbidden and children were raised by the community as a whole - an interesting prequel to the "it takes a village" theme of today.

In 1879 Noyes fled to Canada after an arrest warrant for statutory rape was issued and remained there until his death in 1886. The Oneida Community dissolved the same year, though the name lived on in the world of commerce.  The flatware company now known as Oneida Limited was initially founded based on the sale of the products produced by the Oneida Community.

Ask for Noyes' Alumni Folder and search the library catalog for books and pamphlets related to John Humphrey Noyes and the Perfectionist movement.