Kenneth Spencer Research Library

[…] I really must, in justice to Jane, apologise for her writing so short a letter—only two pages you see—hardly two—and in general she fills the whole paper and crosses half. My mother often wonders that I can make it out so well. She often says, when the letter is first opened, ‘Well, Hetty, now I think you will be put to it to make out all that chequer-work’ […]

-Miss Bates to Emma in Jane Austen’s Emma (1815)

In an earlier post about the visit of the NEH Seminar “Jane Austen and Her Contemporaries” to the Spencer Research Library, I mentioned a manuscript format that would have been familiar to early 19th-century eyes, but which is likely quite alien to modern readers:  the crossed letter.  It is this type of letter that Jane Austen is alluding to in the above passage from Emma (1815).  A crossed letter is a letter in which the correspondent saved both stationary and postage by writing not only in one direction, but by turning the letter 90 degrees and then writing across the page perpendicularly.  The result is a letter that can be quite a challenge to read.  Just take a look at the letter below from Robert Ker Porter, a painter and diplomat, to his sister, the novelist Anna Maria Porter (click images to enlarge):

Read if you dare:  A crossed letter from Robert Ker Porter to Anna Maria Porter.
4 April 1806. Porter Family Collection. MS 28, Box 1, Folder 27.  Click images to enlarge.

Crossed letters began to decline in use after 1840 when the “Uniform Penny Post” was established in England, allowing letter-writers to send domestic mail at a rate of a penny per 1/2 once (thus the name “penny post”), regardless of distance, payable in advance by the sender.

An English etiquette book from 1901 warned sternly against the habit of crossing one’s letters, but recognized that in the past (as in the example from Jane Austen above), a crossed letter could be a sign of friendship and intimacy:

Crossing a letter is quite unpardonable. Stationery is cheap, postage is cheap; there is no reason for crossing lines.  There was a time when both postage and stationery were very expensive, and in those old days a crossed letter was actually regarded as a mark of friendship.

Some of them were crossed and recrossed! Dear friends filled every corner of the paper, and resented it if the replies were not equally indicative of regard.  But nowadays a crossed letter is by no means a mark of friendship. Very much the reverse!

-from Manners for Girls by Mrs. Humphry. London: T.F. Unwin, 1901, p. 61.

The anonymous author of Hints on Letter-Writing (1841), which came out roughly a year after the launch of the Uniform Penny Post,  advises readers,  “Should you ever be compelled thus to disfigure a letter [by crossing it], in mercy to your correspondent vary the colour of the ink.”

Below is the first page of a letter from Robert Ker Porter to his sister and mother. It is interesting to see that, in this case, he uses the black ink to write to his sister, the novelist Jane Porter, and red ink to write (on the same sheet) to his mother.

First page of a crossed letter from Robert Ker Porter to his sister Jane Porter (in black) and his mother, Jane Blenkinsop Porter, (in red).  June 14, 15, 26th, 1821. Porter Family Collection. MS 28, Box 2, Folder 2.  The second image is rotated 90 degrees to enable reading the portion of the letter written in red ink. Click images to enlarge.

Click on the images above to enlarge them and see whether you think the contrast in the color of the inks makes the letter easier to read.

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian

The bullfrog, Rana catesbeiana, is the largest frog in North America. However, even as flat as he looks on this plate, he’s an unlikely candidate for road pizza on your plate, because although he’s an amphibian, the adult bullfrog tends to stay in his moist habitat and not to venture out onto dry land. Unfortunately for him, in this country, he’s one of the few species large enough to provide a satisfactory meal of frog legs for Homo sapiens.

James Petiver (1663 [or 4]-1718).  Gazophylacii naturæ & artis,: decas prima-[decima]. In quâ animalia,
quadrupeda, aves, pisces, reptilia, […] descriptionibus breviubs & iconibus illustrantur. Londonii: Ex Officinâ
Christ. Bateman ad insignia Bibliæ & Coronæ, vico vulgo dict. Pater-Noster-Row., MDCCII. [1702-1706?]
Call Number: Ellis Aves E116 item 2. Click image to enlarge.

James Petiver, known primarily as a botanist and as one of the founders of British entomology, went to considerable expense to have ships’ captains and surgeons supply him with specimens of natural history from around the world for his museum. In the Gazophylacium, one of Petiver’s rarest and most interesting productions, the figures of reptiles and amphibians, plants, shells, insects, birds, and other animals are displayed together on the same plate. It was the intention of both author and publisher that the text be pasted down on the versos of the plates facing the appropriate plate, with dedication mounted at the foot of each, as in the Spencer Library’s copy; however, in most states of the work, text is simply printed on the back of each plate.

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

The volume below contains a wonderful example of paste paper on its binding.  Paste paper is most associated with 16th- and 17th-century books from the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. It was usually created in the bookbinding workshop for books that did not warrant the expense of marbled paper, a luxurious commodity.

Left: This 1815 volume from a run of the Spencer Library’s holdings for the periodical Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung has a binding that uses paste paper (Call Number: D3204, Vol. 107).  Right: a detail from the bottom right corner of the volume. Click images to enlarge.

Paste paper was created with starch paste—a staple of any bookbinding operation—and some sort of pigment. Often an implement was dragged through the paper, creating lines that look remarkably three-dimensional.  Once in a while you find a mark of the bookbinder left behind: a finger or thumbprint used to make flowers or other patterns.  There are many instructions for making paste paper, easily discoverable on the internet.

Paste paper details from the bindings of volumes in the Spencer Library’s collections. Top left: Tractatus optimus de arte bene moriendi (expanded version by Dominicus Capranica, d. 1458), Germany, 1456. (Call # MS D38). Top right: Saint Bonaventure’s Soliloquium , Germany, 1433. (Call# MS D37). Bottom left: Anna Seward’s Poem to the Memory of Lady Miller by Anna Seward,  1782 (Call Number: D2763). Bottom right: A modern example: Brian North Lee’s Bookplates and Labels by Leo Wyatt, 1988 (Call # D3245). Click images to enlarge.

For more information on paste paper, see Rosamond Loring’s book, Decorated Book Papers; being an account of their designs and fashions (Call Number: C6396).

Whitney Baker
Head, Conservation Services

A guest post from Vella Munn

Securing a final resting place for my grandfather Homer Eon Flint’s body of published fiction at the University of Kansas began with a backdoor approach. An email I sent to a man involved with Science Fiction Writers of America led to an introduction to James Gunn, SF writer, scholar, and founder of KU’s Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and from there to a series of emails with Special Collections librarian Elspeth Healey.

Homer Eon Flint, photograph courtesy of Vella Munn

As a result, nineteen 90+ year-old pulp magazines such as Argosy All-Story Weekly, Fantastic Novels, and Flynn’s carrying Grandpa’s work are no longer disintegrating in my office. They’re being preserved by those who know how to treat the fragile publications, and I no longer worry that I’m not doing right by what I inherited.

The youngest of four children, Homer Eon Flint was born on Sept. 9, 1888 in Albany, Oregon. He devoured H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Conan Doyle, and Rider Haggard, all known for their romantic fiction, and they made an indelible impact on him. With the encouragement of his wife, a teacher, and a hefty hospital bill to pay off, he started writing. He sold at least eight movie treatments for the fledgling film industry before moving onto short stories, penning everything from horror to humor.

Pictured above: The first installment of Homer Eon Flint’s “The Money-Miler” in Flynn’s, Vol. 1, No. 3,
October 4, 1924 (Call Number: ASF C924);  Cover of the issue of Flynn’s that contained the second
installment of Flint’s “The Money-Miler,” Vol. 1, No. 4, October 11, 1924 (Call Number: ASF C925);
and protective enclosures used to house the fragile pulp magazines.

Flint made his mark with such science fiction as “The Emancipatrix,” “The Devolutionist,” “The Lord of Death,” “The Queen of Life,” and his co-written book The Blind Spot. Some two and a half million readers devoured The Planeteer. “The Money-Miler” ( Flynn’s, October 4-18, 1924) was his last sale. He made it a month before his violent and mysterious death at 36. His 1924 payment for that novella-length story–$400.

In addition, Homer wrote a number of stories that weren’t published. Those as well as his published work are being brought out by Musa Publishing.

Vella Munn
Vella Munn has written a biography of Homer Eon Flint, titled Grandfather Lost.

Summer Conservation Intern Cheyenne Bsaies reports on how to house huge, metal-clad volumes.

I want to talk to you about boxes. It’s a deceptively simple topic, truly. But the boxes I’m talking about are a far cry from the corrugated boxes every college student knows from moving apartments every summer. For one thing, the boxes I’ve been making are destined to house some of the rarer items in the Spencer collections. They’re studier than a corrugated box, they open differently and they’re cloth covered. In short, they’re very fancy boxes for very interesting and unusual tomes.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing and/or handling a very old book, I highly recommend that you visit the Spencer Library and speak to a librarian there in order to avail yourself of their resources. Maybe the only old books you’ve seen have been in the movies when the protagonist uncovers a secret in an ancient library. They’re huge, leather beasts covered with metal studs and straps and clasps, and you just know something important is going to happen when the hero opens one of them.

Left: Steinhardt Gradual. France, after 1253,  (Call No.: MS J4:2); Right: Antiphonary,
Germany, 15–, (Call No.: MS J4:1). Click images to enlarge (trust us, they’re worth enlarging).

Well, those are exactly the books I had the pleasure of working with on this project! And, I have to admit, it’s hard not to feel a bit like Indiana Jones when turning their pages. First I’ll introduce each of them, talk about some of their special features, and then I’ll describe the box making process. Read the rest of this entry »