Printer's Delight

We generally try to stay away from the obsessive intricacies of the rare book world in this blog--preferring to regale you with charming vignettes or shock you with sordid tales from our collections. But today, while looking at the silliest of books, we fell into a bibliographic curiosity that we will now bore you with. Wait, how can a post about book with the title Recreation for Ingenious Head-peeces, Or, a Pleasant Grove for the Wits to Walk in be boring?! This is a book filled with shape poems, witty epigrams, and "numerous Fantasticks!"

It was those shape poems that aroused our curiosity; not so much their shapes, but how they were printed. Each one is an engraving that has been printed using an intaglio process, a completely different process from the accompanying text, which was printed in relief with raised metal type. This means that the printer could not have printed the images at the same time as the text. That is not a big deal--it happens all of the time in the 17th century. Usually the engraved pages are special plates printed out of sequence with the text block signatures and then bound in separately. We are starting to bore you, aren't we?

Not to worry, here is where it gets exciting! All of the engraved pages appear in the same signature (Q) between signatures P and R. Most of the pages in the signature are type, but four pages are engraved. Not only that, but the entire book is an octavo in 8s except for this signature which is an octavo in 12s. "Wow!" you say, "this is exciting!" You're right. That signature, with its 12 leaves, has four engraved pages. In each case, they are on the same leaf with text on the other side. So, it looks like the printer took a half sheet, printed one side using using an intaglio process and the other side with a relief process. At least that's what we think--it is really hard to tell for sure without disbinding the thing. Also, he seems to have folded it incorrectly so the pages are out of order. It is a mess, bibliographically. This took some planning by a printer who wanted to make his "Fantasticks" fantastic. He was smart enough to place all of the fancy work in this one signature so he could print the rest more easily, but why he didn't go with plates is anyone's guess.

To try to puzzle it out, ask for Rare PR2308 .W58 1654.

Killing Quakers

This week we're on a colonial America kick. On Tuesday, we posted about the wild life of Captain John Smith before his Virginia days. Today, we're obsessing about a broadside that we found in the collections. Printed in London in 1660, the poster caught our eye immediately because it calls Quakers "pernicious." As if that weren't enough to rouse one's interest, the proclamation goes on to state that the government in Boston, Massachusetts, had actually executed some of them. "Why are Puritans in Massachusetts hanging Quakers?!?" we wondered to ourselves. And, with that question, we began our dive into the murky world of New England colonial politics, the insidious intertwining of church and state in the "New World," and the eventual dissolution of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's charter by King Charles II. What follows are the briefest of talking points about this strange time in the history of colonial North America and the Quaker faith.

At the risk of oversimplifying everything to do with English conflicts over belief systems, the English Civil War in the 1600s gave rise to the Puritans but also saw the emergence of numerous other dissenting Christian groups including the Quakers. In brief, the Quakers were seen as a problem theologically and politically. They refused to swear fealty to the Crown because of religious beliefs and they also threatened to undermine the power of the clergy through their insistence that God spoke directly to all people and not just through ministers and appointed ecclesiastical officials. Not surprisingly, persecution towards Quakers spiked in England in the 1650s and many of them fled the country for other lands. Some even came to Boston, Massachusetts, and began proselytizing, which promptly resulted in banishment from the Colony.

However, the number of Quakers in the colonies continued to grow. In 1659, a group that came to be known as the Boston Martyrs returned to Massachusetts in defiance of the law of banishment that promised death as punishment. You can see where this is headed. All three martyrs were quickly arrested, and two of them, Marmaduke Stephenson and William Robinson, were hanged the same year in Boston. Mary Dyer, the third, was spared at the last minute and deported, but eventually returned and was also hanged a year later, in 1660. A fourth Quaker from Barbados, William Leddra, was hanged in 1661. By then, however, Charles II had regained the throne and was eager to establish a policy of religious tolerance. He forbade the Massachusetts Bay Colony to continue killing Quakers. They grudgingly agreed, but still found other ways to make Quakers miserable until 1684, when the king revoked their charter and installed a royally-appointed governor to administrate the territory.

To see this broadside, which provides a fascinating window into Puritan intolerance and Quaker martyrdom in colonial New England, come to Rauner and ask to see Broadside 660940.

Gunning for Glory

Most Americans have heard the quasi-mythical story of Pocahontas, the daughter of a Powahatan chief, and how she saved the life of English colonist and soldier John Smith. John Smith himself was, and still is, a central figure in the story of the English colonization of North America, including the founding of Jamestown in Virginia. Always a controversial figure, Smith nevertheless contributed significantly to European knowledge of the American continent through his explorations and mapping of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, as well as of a coastal region that he named "New England."

Given his importance to early settlers, popular knowledge of John Smith understandably begins with his adventures in North America. However, most people aren't aware of the life that Smith lived before he arrived in Virginia, despite his having written a book about his early years titled The True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captain John Smith, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, from Anno Domini 1593 to 1629. This publication was printed in 1630, six years after his well-known General History of Virginia hit the streets of London. With it, Smith attempted to capitalize on the success of his previous work by recounting his youthful adventures, perhaps in a prescient retelling of his life before his death in London the following year.

What is most fascinating about Smith's pre-Virginian life, at least for me, is how full a life the
twenty-seven-year-old had led by the time that he made landfall in North America. As a teenager, he had abandoned his late father's desire to apprentice him to a merchant and instead joined a group of British soldiers who were helping the Dutch in their war of independence from Spain. After that, he bounced around the Mediterranean, dabbling in piracy before joining the Austrian army in their battles against the Ottoman Empire. He was promoted to captain, sent to Transylvania, and reportedly killed three Turkish knights in single combat. It's worth noting that, in at least one of these bouts, Smith used a pistol on horseback to dispatch his opponent after their lances had both shattered.

In a later skirmish during the same campaign, Smith was captured and sold into slavery to a Turkish woman of Greek descent. He soon escaped and returned to Transylvania, where he was knighted by the prince of that country for his derring-do. All of this, we are told by scholars and critics, is to be taken with a grain of salt, given what is known about John Smith the man. However other scholars have argued that, while Smith may have embellished the details of his life, the larger scope of his life journey was very likely true.

To see John Smith bring a gun to a lance fight, and to read more strange and wonderful tales from his only-partially-but-maybe-mostly-true autobiography, come to Special Collections and ask for Hickmott 480.

Botanic Garden

It finally warmed up last Saturday and melted off the rest of the snow in Hanover. Today it might hit 70, the grass is starting to green up, and the forsythia in front of South Fayerweather is blooming. We still have some heavy frosts in store, but the smell of moist earth after the long winter has us dreaming of the garden. To tide us over for another few weeks of brown landscape, here are some hand-colored plates from Sydenham Edwards's New Botanic Garden (London: John Stockdale, 1812).

To see the plates in person, ask for Rare QK98.E32.

Rauner Exhibit: "Let's Get Lunch"

This term we are proud to promote an exhibit by our current Edward Connery Lathem '51 Special Collections Fellow, Jaime Eeg '18, titled "Let's Get Lunch: An Exhibit for the Discerning Palate." The exhibit will be on display in the Class of 1965 Galleries from April 5th through June 7th, 2019.

We all need food. Without it, we cannot survive. Yet the human relationship with food is intricate, complex, and varies widely across individuals and cultures. Our relationship with food can be at once deeply personal and private while also serving as a bridge to connect with others, sometimes meaningfully and sometimes just superficially. We've all heard the old platitude, "let's get lunch sometime," a statement upon which potential connections can either flourish or wither. Given the opportunity, food has the power to draw us in and connect us with each other, just as cookbooks can connect us to the people and cultures who created them.

Food can also help us build communities. Shared experience helps create strong foundations between individuals and larger groups of people, and shared meals are a common avenue for those experiences. Just as food helps us build meaningful connections across groups, an understanding of the food from another culture or time helps foster deeper, meaningful understanding of those cultures and times. Cookbooks can offer a valuable way to access that potential for understanding.

And food can simply be fun! Cooking and cookbooks can be artistic or experimental, and cooking or eating together complements and strengthens existing relationships. Meals are an excellent excuse to spend quality time with people we care about. After all, we all need food.

If you're hungry for more about food and Dartmouth, come  take a look at the cookbooks at Special Collections. Also, stay connected on social media for updates about opportunities to sample some actual treats made from the recipes in the exhibit. If you can't make it to the exhibit in person, you can read more about it online here.

Pulling Out the Rugg (Curriculum)

Given that we're a library, we are naturally biased towards librarians. We've mentioned former Dartmouth librarian Harold G. Rugg, member of the class of 1906, several times before. However, today we're going to take a different tack and talk about at Harold O. Rugg, a member of the class of 1908. Rugg graduated from Dartmouth with a B.S., which he followed a year later with a degree in civil engineering from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. He then worked for the Missouri Public Railroad before going to the University of Illinois to teach in their engineering department.

This story sounds like that of many other alumni: get a degree from Dartmouth, then possibly complete a grad degree, and then land a respectable upper-middle-class industry job. However, during his time at Illinois, Rugg departed from this well-trodden path. It was there that he began working on a PhD in sociology and education, primarily because of his fascination with the quantification of the learning process and how it works. From there, Rugg went on to serve with his Illinois faculty advisor in World War I on a committee that was the first group to make widespread use of intelligence and aptitude tests on adults.

After the war, Rugg became a faculty member at the Teachers College of Columbia University, where he began work on a social studies textbook series published in pamphlets and titled "Man and His Changing Society." The 14-book series was published between 1929 and 1940. Although initially very successful, selling over 5.5 million copies, in the early 1940s Rugg's work was labeled as subversive by various American conservative groups because it intentionally delineated the weaknesses of American society as well as the strengths. As a result, sales dropped, reactionary pamphlets outlining his philosophy were published and distributed, and there was at least one instance of an actual book-burning of Ruggs's educational series. Although Rugg's direct influence in the school system may have waned since the 1930s, he is still credited with unifying the social sciences into a cohesive curriculum.

To learn more about Harold O. Rugg '08, come to Rauner and ask to see his alumni file.

On Translating the Divina Commedia

We made another nice find this week in the collections. For a class on Dante in translation, we were digging around our various English language editions of Dante. The catalog record for the first printing of Longfellow's translation tipped us off that it would be something special.

Our copy was one of the first ten printed and belonged to Longfellow's publisher, James Fields. It has a little inscription "from the Translator" in one volume. That is pretty impressive, but it has a bonus feature: a holograph copy of Longfellow's sonnet, "On Translating the Divina Commedia," laid in and dated March 29, 1864. Longfellow didn't publish the poem until December of 1864, so this manuscript is an early one that he wrote out for Fields.

It shows Longfellow's stance toward Dante. He compares himself to a laborer, and Dante's work a cathedral. As he works, he stops to pray:

Oft have I seen at some cathedral-door
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his pater-noster o'er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster-gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.

If you want to have your own little holy moment with Dante and Longfellow, ask for Fields 16.