Kenneth Spencer Research Library

It takes at least a little bit of ego to write and publish a book.  Publication is, after all, a means of saying, “Attention, world; I have something to share!”  But it is not unusual, especially with the passage of time, to see a writer exhibit (or at least feign) a little shame at the product of his or her own mind.  For today’s post, we share three self-deprecating presentation inscriptions by three different writers: William Butler Yeats, Max Douglas, and William Rose Benét.  Recorded on the pages of copies of their works held at the Spencer Research Library, these inscriptions, with their varying degrees of chagrin, offer a change of pace from the more pedestrian, “with compliments of the author.”

1. Ignorant Boy: William Butler Yeats

The poet William Butler Yeats, later in life, famously revised the poems of his youth, so it’s probably safe to take him at his word when, in inscribing this copy of The Works of William Blake (1893),  he expresses a wish to “correct every page.”  Spencer’s copy comes from the library of P. S. O’Hegarty, an Irish nationalist and civil servant, whose daughter, Gráinne, was married to Yeats’s son, Michael.  As O’Hegarty’s penciled-in note indicates, the “Dear P. I. A. L.”  to whom Yeats inscribes the volume  is none other than Maud Gonne, the actress and activist for Irish independence who captivated Yeats for decades. (Click on the image below for a full page view of the inscription, including O’Hegarty’s note). Yeats was in his late twenties when he co-edited with the poet and illustrator Edwin John Ellis this three volume collection of Blake’s works.  His inscription to Gonne, however, seems to have been added much later.   Following some initial remarks about the scarcity of the edition and the circumstances under which it was published, Yeats warns Gonne,

Keep the book out of my sight. Ellis was a wild man & I a most ignorant boy & I long to correct every page. We did however persuade people that Blake knew what he was talking about if we did not. Something we did know however, though, I shall die without discovering why “The number of Outhoon is 2002”.

Blame it on youth: W. B. Yeats’s inscription to Maud Gonne (P. I. A. L.) in the first volume of Edwin John Ellis and William Butler Yeats’s edition of The Works of William Blake; Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical. 3. Vols [Large paper edition]. London: B. Quaritch, 1893. Call #: Yeats Y149. Click images to enlarge.

One wonders if Yeats knew that the errors he wished to correct had spilled over into his inscription:  he tells Gonne that 50 copies of the larger paper edition were produced, but in actuality it was 150.  At least this error works in his favor: the rarer the book, the truer the love?

2. The Standards of Youth:  Max Douglas

During his short life, the promising young, Kansas poet Max Douglas published only one chapbook, Bottom Land: Poems (1968). However, John Martin, editor and publisher of the Black Sparrow Press, had been contemplating publishing a collection by Douglas when the poet died unexpectedly at the age of twenty-one. This presentation copy addressed to Martin, resides alongside the books of Max Douglas’s library, which were donated to the Spencer Research Library by the poet’s father in 1982. In his typed presentation note, Douglas writes,

For John Martin: in response to his interest & kind encouragement, & wth the understanding that this is a book i hv now chosen all but to disown.

Max Douglas’s typed inscription and signature in his chapbook, Bottom Land: Poems. [Saint Joseph, Mo.: St. Joe Press, c1968]. Call #: Douglas C14. Click image to enlarge.

One hopes that Douglas’s dismissal of his Bottom Land was simply the impatience of a poet whose attention was trained on the future.  Though a Black Sparrow Press edition of Douglas’s work never materialized, his later poems did see publication in book form.  Edited by Christopher Wienert and Andrea Wyatt, Douglas’s Collected Poems appeared posthumously in 1978.

3. Dueling Self-Deprecations: William Rose Benét and George Hartmann

There are, of course, many reasons why one might belittle his or her own book.  As the case of the critic and poet William Rose Benét (1886-1950) shows, a self-deprecating note might serve to elevate the work of another.  In inscribing a copy of his collection of essays Wild Goslings (1927) for the designer of the volume’s dust jacket, Benét writes:

To George Hartmann who has contributed the only really interesting and entertaining integer to this book, and I really can’t tell you how profoundly I mean that. To George Hartmann, hell, he’s a real artist! William Rose Benét, January 1927.

Hartmann, clearly not one to take a compliment lying down, responds with a self-effacing quip of his own.  Writing on the back of the dust jacket that is tipped-in to Spencer’s copy, he offers a brief explanatory rejoinder: “Bill [i.e. William Rose Benét]  means this jacket – it’s a lie! GH.”

 Tipped in dust jacket (left) and Benét and Hartmann’s inscriptions (right) in Spencer’s copy of William Rose Benét’s Wild Goslings: A Selection of Fugitive Pieces. New York: George H. Doran, [1927]. Call Number: B11618. Click images to enlarge.

Fear not, though, some writers manage to remain untouched by even the pretense of modesty, as critic and editor H. L. Mencken demonstrates.  His inscription in one of Spencer’s copies of his In Defense of Women pithily proclaims: “Dear George: Read this and you will learn. HLM.”

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian

When it comes to creating an exhibition of illustrated books with a biological theme, a fabulous sea monster can be almost anything in the eye of the creator, and by power of suggestion, in the eye of the beholder. Some historians of biology have suggested that the basis-in-fact for the Scandinavian sea monster, Bishop Pontoppidan’s kraaken in this case, was a whale, so the image was used in a past show of whaling books in the Spencer Library. But Moby Dick‘s author, Herman Melville, as well as marine biologist Jacques-Yves Cousteau, thought it more likely that the real basis for the legends was the giant squid. For purposes of this post, it’s a sea serpent, but we intend to keep it in mind for our up-and-coming Squid Exhibit.

Image from Erik Pontoppidan (1698-1764). The natural history of Norway. London: 1755.
Call number: Ellis Aves E333, Special Collections.

The Danish original of this natural history was published in Copenhagen (1752-1754), and is of interest chiefly for its accounts of the myths connected with whales and other natural curiosities such as the fabeled kraaken.

Sally Haines
Rare Books Cataloger
Adapted from her Spencer Research Library exhibit and catalog, Slithy Toves: Illustrated Classic Herpetological Books at the University of Kansas in Pictures and Conservations

Over the centuries a number of techniques for creating graphic images have outlived their original technology, successfully migrating to new imaging technologies. I was recently reminded of this while planning Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s exhibition, “Ornithological Illustration in the Age of Darwin: The Making of John Gould’s Bird Books” (open September 11-November 15, 2014 on weekdays 9-5 and Saturdays 9-1, except October 11).

John Gould, an English ornithologist, published illustrated books about birds from 1830 until his death in 1881. The Library has recently digitized its holdings of Gould’s 47 large-format volumes, as well as nearly 2000 preliminary drawings, watercolor paintings, tracings, lithographic stones, and proofs.

When searching the new digital John Gould Ornithological Collection (accessible at the University of Kansas Libraries website at http://lib.ku.edu/gould), I happened to compare the published hand-colored print of the Horned Lark or Otocoris alpestris with the black printing image on lithographic stone. “What a great example of dead coloring!” I exclaimed.

Otocoris alpestris / Horned lark. Lithographic crayon on stone by
John Gould and Henry Constantine Richter.
Reference: ksrl_sc_gould_2387.tif.
Call number: Gould Drawing 2387. Click image to enlarge.

Otocoris alpestris / Horned lark. Lithograph and watercolor by
John Gould and Henry Constantine Richter.
Reference: ksrl_sc_gould_gb_1_3 (n77).
Birds of Great Britain, 1st edition, volume 3, plate 18.
Call number: Ellis Aves H131. Click image to enlarge.

So what is dead coloring? It involves underpainting shapes in a neutral hue, then finishing the oil painting with transparent colored glazes, and was often used by late-18th-century English painters. Early painters in watercolor, a medium gaining popularity in England during the late 18th century, employed a similar approach.

However, dead coloring also had a place in European printmaking. Mezzotint and aquatint, new methods of intaglio printmaking capable of the tonal gradations necessary for dead coloring, were invented in the mid-17th century and increased in use thereafter. John James Audubon’s hand-colored aquatints of American birds published in the early 19th century were outstanding examples.

During the early 19th century yet another new printing technology, lithography, spread from Germany, where it had been invented in 1798, across Europe to England. Working with a waxy crayon on a block of lithographic limestone with a fine-textured surface was similar to drawing on rough-textured paper. The lithographic crayon caught on the tips of the grained stone surface, creating a random pattern of irregular dots. Viewed with the naked eye, the tiny dots merge into shades of gray.

Lithographic drawing was much easier to learn than mezzotint and aquatint and was the obvious choice for illustrating John Gould’s ornithological books. Elizabeth Gould (his wife), an amateur artist, rapidly mastered crayon lithography under the tutelage of Edward Lear, a younger but more experienced artist employed by Gould. She illustrated Gould’s books until her death in 1841, after which he employed a succession of professional artists.

Melanopitta sordida. Watercolor and lithographic crayon drawing by
William Hart. Reference: ksrl_sc_gould_1264.tif.
Call number: Gould Drawing 1264. Click image to enlarge.

Melanopitta sordida. Colored lithographic proof by
William Hart. Reference: ksrl_sc_gould_1265.tif.
Call number: Gould Drawing 1265. Click image to enlarge.

Artist William Hart executed his drawing of Melanopitta sordida in lithographic crayon and watercolor, thus rehearsing his final drawing on lithographic stone for printing and hand coloring. Colored by hand using watercolors, Gould’s lithographic prints are successful examples of dead coloring. By the time of Gould’s death in 1881, color printing was taking over the reproduction of graphic images, bringing the hand-colored lithographic revival of dead coloring to a close.

Karen S. Cook
Special Collections Librarian

The late marsupialist John A.W. Kirsch was interviewed by a local (Peruvian) newspaper while on a collecting trip in South America back at the end of the 1960s. He described the kinds of animals he was looking for and was shocked to see the headline a few days later: KANGAROOS ON MACHU PICCHU.

While it’s true that the mammal group we call marsupials includes the kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, koalas, and bandicoots that are usually associated with Australia, and that the New World once did boast a rich and diverse marsupial fauna, most of the New World forms are now extinct and, sad to say, there are no kangaroos on Machu Picchu.

Opossums (and yes, there are several pictured above): Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1595-1658).  Historia naturae. Antverpiae: ex Officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti, 1635. Call Number: Summerfield E1105. Click image to enlarge (and reveal the well-camouflaged opossum young.)

The marsupial heyday began to end circa three million years ago when a land bridge over the Isthmus of Panama provided for northern migration of animals including the ancestors of our familiar opossum, who dates back to around 35 million years ago and looks today pretty much the same as he did then. During the same period, some of the northern placental mammals migrated south over the same land-bridge. Thus, for example, it appears that the placental sabre-toothed tiger from the North began to compete with the marsupial sabre-toothed tiger and soon put him on the road to extinction. But the marsupials are survivors, nevertheless, and the American opossum, the only one of the family in North America, is just one of seventy some opossum species to survive; the ‘possum family is restricted to the New World, and except for Didelphis virginiana, whose range extends from southern Canada into Central America, the rest of the family is restricted to Central and South America.

Earlier travel accounts and herbals had described the plants and animals of the New World, but Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s account was the first comprehensive natural history of the area, dealing primarily with Mexico and the West Indies. This illustration of the Virginia or American opossum is the earliest printed portrait of the earliest discovered (by Europeans, at least) marsupial anywhere.

Sally Haines
Rare Books Cataloger

Adapted from her Kenneth Spencer Research Library exhibit, The Haunted Forest: New World Plants & Animals (1992).

A number of works in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s collection of Polonica are a good source for the study of Polish costume: the chromolithographs by Racinet, engraved colored plates by Jacquemin, colored and uncolored plates in the two volumes of Zaydler, and plates in the costume books by Kretschmer and Vecellio.

“Harvest-home in the environs of Sandomir” from Jozef Zienkowicz’s Les costumes du peuple Polonais.  A Paris: Librairie Polonaise; A Strasbourg: chez l’éditeur; A Leipzig: chez F.A. Brockhaus, 1841.  Call Number: D819. Click image to enlarge.

The colored lithographs of Zienkowicz’s Les costumes du peuple Polonais are particularly interesting: “Harvest-home in the environs of Sandomir” (above) illustrates the rich harvest tradition of a country that until recently was primarily agricultural. Poles today celebrate an annual Harvest Festival in early September.  In olden days the best girl reaper would bestow on the master of the house the gift of a wreath of wheat and rye adorned with flowers, fruits, and ribbons; feasting and merry-making followed the ceremony. Although folk costumes are not now in general use in Poland and are worn mostly for festivals and national celebrations, Poles in rural areas wear folk dress on church holidays and for family celebrations such as weddings.

Sally Haines
Rare Books Cataloger

Adapted from her Kenneth Spencer Research Library exhibit, Poland: A Thousand Springtimes.