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.

The Clever Engineer

Rauner recently acquired Le Diverse et Artificiose Machine del Capitano Agostino Ramelli (A Parigi: In casa del'autore..., 1588) or the Various and Ingenious Machines of Captain Agostino Ramelli.  Ramelli was a 16th-century engineer and his book is certainly diverse; it includes 195 mechanical designs for everything from water fountains to artificially singing birds to a book wheel to collapsible military bridges for siege work.

The designs are presented with a full-page illustration of the device and often feature insets of critical features. A page or more of explanatory text allows the reader to understand the proposed use and construction of the device. The text is given in both Italian and French, most likely reflecting Ramelli's Italian background and early military service under one of the de Medici's as well as his subsequent service with the Duke of Anjou.

Ask for Rare Book TJ 144 .R3.

Full of Hot Air

This paper lantern balloon from the 1888 Presidential campaign of Benjamin Harrison and his running mate Levi Morton was a common form of campaign advertising ephemera in the 1870s and 80s. Used in evening torchlight parades, the balloon was formed over a wire frame on the end of a long stick with an oil lantern inside. Needless to say, this combination of paper and flame (and their close proximity to one another) virtually ensured the future rarity of these lanterns, if not the short lived terror of the bearer of the stick should a breeze blow unfavorably.

One segment of the balloon has the bastardized slogan "Tippecanoe and Morton too," a play on Benjamin Harrison's father's successful 1840 campaign for the Presidency in which "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" became a famous slogan and song. Benjamin Harrison, who lost the popular vote, but won the electoral college, would have considerably more luck than his father in carrying out the duties of the highest office of the land. William Henry Harrison died a mere 30 days after his famously long inauguration speech in inclement weather. The log cabin motif was also meant to harken back to William Henry Harrison's portrayal of himself as a rugged and frugal frontier everyman despite his genteel southern upbringing and wealth.

With both the Republican and Democratic conventions upon us it bears remembering, while we watch two wealthy urban candidates attempt to manufacture a common man appeal, that there is nothing new under the sun where politics are concerned.

This lantern, as well as a number of other pieces spanning the years 1841 to 1973, is currently on display in the Class of 1965 Galleries in Rauner Library as part of an exhibit on political campaigns and political action.

You can find the lantern and other interesting campaign materials in the the Ralph E. and William W. Becker Collection of American Political Campaign Materials.

Inhabitants Inside the Earth!

In the mid-19th century, when urban dwellers in the United States began to venture into nature for the sake of relaxation rather than conquest, the White Mountains offered an obtainable, yet nicely civilized destination. Once there, tourists were welcomed into luxurious hotels surrounded by breathtaking views and enlivening hikes. They were also met by local color looking for a good audience.

John Merrill was a eccentric tour guide. He set up in Franconia Notch on "The Pool" where he would entertain tourists by showing them the sights and explaining his theories. Boston Rare Maps did some research and found this from the November 1867 Yale Literary Magazine:

Here is an old man in a barge, into which you enter, and he paddles you around the narrow circuit of the Pool. When you have reached the side toward the Falls, where the water is from twenty to thirty feet deep, but clear as crystal, he begins to unfold to you his favorite theory; (for you must know that, in his own estimation at least, the old man is quite a philosopher;) that the earth is a hollow sphere, inhabited on the inside, as well as the outside. He maintains his position by arguments entirely original and irrefutable; has an answer ready for every question, and seeks to proselyte you. He reads a letter he pretends to have received from Queen Victoria,-which here I insert.

Merrill issued the letter as a broadside, Royal Despatch of Her Majesty to Hon. John Merrill, Flume House, N.H. (East Canaan: G. F. Kimball, Printer, [1857]), perhaps to hand out to converts, or perhaps to sell for support of his theories.

We have two variations of the broadside--one containing another letter by Louis Napoleon.  Come judge the validity yourself by asking for Rauner Broadside 001457 or visiting the Pool and looking into its depths.