Autumn Cottage Diarist

You Can't Judge a book by the Cover

 

I gave myself a little gift today. As I spend so much time in graveyards, I couldn't say no to spending 60 pence (a dollar?) on this little 1903 volume of Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” and “Ode on a Distant prospect of Eton College”. 

 

I would hardly have taken any notice of the book if I had not known the poem inside...its frankly battered and dreary cover would not attract much attention. But look inside with me....you can see why I am glad that I did pick it up – filled as it is with some very  charming wood or lino cut (?) vignette illustrations by J.T.Friedenson.

"The distant spires..."

 

I’m including them all here, though I don't know why Typepad is cutting off the right hand side of all the images today - click on them to get "the full picture", and right-click on the bigger image if you want to download it. If anyone wants even higher resolution images, mail me). I think they would make lovely bookmarks and/or bookplates, don’t you? Have fun with them.

 

The other images follow....and here is a link to the whole “Graveyard” poem – and some interesting information about Stoke Poges, where the author lies buried.

The Churchyard

"Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke"

"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife..."

"Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay..."

Epitaph

Gray's Monument

Eton College

Windsor

"The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea..."

Books and Essays

Inspired by visiting Kelly Rae's blog today (in turn passed on by my dear friend Fran), I thought I would share with you the stack of books that is engaging me at the moment. I am working on my second module essay for my MA at Winchester University - the topic this time is the relationship between Photography, death and pre/post bereavement therapy.

Once again, it is a fascinating subject, which is intriguing me as I poke around in the theoretical background to both photography and bereavement studies. So much I am learning!

Do any of you recognise any of the books above? (click on the image to enlarge it and get a better view of the titles). I'd be interested to know if any of you have read any of them - and what your opinions are?
Right - back to the steaming keyboard and more writing, methinks!

(p.s. why not go over to Fran's blog after your visit here - it is always an inspiration)

Altered Book?

Found accidentally in an old bookshop recently, do you think this is one
of the earlier "altered books" around? These are sketches - very amateur
but nevertheless enthusiastic and observant, made in 1935 at an
exhibition in Paris. They are vignettes, with notes, of Tarot Cards,
designed by Pisanello for the Viscount of Milan in 1428, and stuck into
a standard art book on Pisanello (with a very nice marbled cover, though
- which is why I picked up the book in the first place).

Once again, a serendipitous surprise inside the covers of a book.

Time flies by for me - three weeks into the course on Fairytale and Gothic Horror at Winchester. A LOT of reading to do - for the course in general and my seminar paper, which I also have to present, in particular. All fascinating stuff, though. At the moment, "The British Pantomime" seems to be the favourite for the seminar - with "Fairytale
Book Illustration" running a close second. It will be "make your mind up time" soon, so I had better start thinking hard about it!

Fun For Jolly Good Fellows

Another purchase from the book sale on Saturday - "Cassells Book of Sports and Pastimes" from 1893, a two inch thick tome on how Chaps could entertain themselves. This is the way to become "Manly" should any of you wish to do so!

How about starting with a little light football practise?

 

Moving on to more "Manly" wrestling?

Or perhaps Lacrosse is a fellow's best choice?

With a bit of gentle putting to finish?

And when beddybyes comes - however old the participants (the book is written for lads of under 14, by the tone of the text) - there is this universal pleasure to carry out when tucked up in bed, by candlelight...(no, not that!!).......the universal delight of making Animal Shadows.

How many of you have done this in your childhood - and how many of you can still remember all the "shapes"? For those that have faded from memory, here is a refresher - click on the image to enlarge it, then right click to print - and have fun when you are yourself tucked up tonight.

Leading Myself Astray Again

I'm supposed to be saving the pennies to enable a return to Venice some time next year. But I have to do the recycling, and the Antiques Arcade is only two minutes walk from the recycling depot.

So. Ahem. Books, I'm afraid. Seven of them, bought for a pittance, (from the same dealer who sold me the 1906 Ladies Diary and started that ball rolling). Bibliophilia - It's an addiction that I am completely hooked by - and as far as I know, there is no known treatment. Here are the proceeds of my addiction that came home with me today......

A 1911 edition of "The Connoisseur" Arts Magazine - bound volume
"A Viceroy's India" - Leaves from Lord Curzon's Notebooks" - to feed my
fascination with India
"Collecting Kitchenware" - Christina Bishop
"An Album of Curious Houses" - Photographed and Described by an even
more curious - and deeply entertaining woman, Lucinda Lambton
"Angels of Albion - the women of the Indian Mutiny - Jane Robinson
(Who "after graduating in English from Somerville college, Oxford,
joined a firm of antiquarian book dealers specialising in travel" - oh,
bliss!)
Sotheby's catalogue for a "Sale of Venetian Glass, 1910-1960" - from an
"Important collection"
Oakfield Plays" by Margaret Steen, with wonderful stage costume
illustrations by the author
And an illustrated copy of "Venice Observed" by Mary McCarthy

I also purchased a number of delightful costume dolls, picked out from a huge trunk full - the sale of a big collection - most of which were mediocre. But my selection includes a hand carved wooden German doll, and, methinks, possibly a Shallowpool fisherman. A characterful little group, that will add to the array of interesting figures that I already have.

That's enough fun for one day - better get around to housework. Not. :-)

Exquisite..Enchanting..Amazing

 

Living in the 21st century, with our seemingly endless and insane desire
to have everything instantly available to satisfy our whims and
impatience, consider how long it must have taken to create this
exquisite page. It is an illustration from a book I bought from "my" book
dealer today - the one from whom I acquired the Venice Journal. (Surely
this is what we ALL do when we - ahem - go to dump the recycling, isn't it?!)

Entitled  "The Painted Page", it is a catalogue produced to accompany a
travelling exhibition of Italian Renaissance Book Illumination in 1995.
Each manuscript shown makes the mouth drop open in wonderment - a
magnifying glass is an essential piece of equipment, and I could happily
spend days at a time browsing through the extraordinary menageries,
hagiographies and calligraphy contained within.

I am including a fairly high resolution image of this page, (click on the image above), so that you may also browse the detail of the border, and give thanks for the patience and dedication of Ser Benedetto, the calligrapher, and Illuminators Francesco d'Antonio Del Chierico and another unknown limner, who created this item for our appreciation and maybe even our reverence, over 550 years ago, in 1458.

How many animals and birds can you see - and what are all those putti and half man/half beasts up to? Why not download it (right mouse click and "save picture as...") and enlarge it - and then spend the rest of the day poring over it?

And for those of us who long to create something even one hundredth as
beautiful as this page, here is another fragment - something more
attainable....any of the calligraphers here tempted to give it a go - or
maybe a fragment of the border above??

Little Windows into the Picturesque

  Sometimes I find things that I want to share just for the sheer delight
in discovering something lovely and wanting others to see it and enjoy it.
This is the case with these four utterly charming 19th century Swiss
lithographs - found in yet one more book that I have uncovered in the
"major sort out" that I am having at the moment.

Don't worry - these will not be discarded - either into a dustbin or to
the "boxes for the dealer" that are increasing in number by the day.
Delightful items like this will always stay in my possession - and if
anyone wants a higher resolution image of any of these shown here, just
say the word - but for now, just enjoy them.

All the News That's Fit to Print

Part of the Spring clean here at Autumn Cottage this year entails
sorting through the remnants of the antiquarian book and print business
with which I was involved for several years.

I've been sorting through old copies of "The Illustrated London News"
from 1875 & 1897 - and the job is taking far, far longer than it should
because I am, of course, sitting down and becoming completely engrossed
by some of the articles.

A weekly publication, it reported extensively on the events of the
British Empire at home and abroad. Before photogravure and photography
finally appeared in the 1890's & 1900's, the ILN was also illustrated
with extremely high quality engravings, taken from sketches done by some of the most prominent artists of the day.

Advertisements also became more prolific and very picturesque as the
century progressed - small, text only advertising in the 1860's and 70's
giving way to exuberant and entertaining images of the 1890's. The
movement of history and prosperity can, indeed, be followed just by reading the ads, without ever resorting to reading the text!

And more poignantly, the great events of the day were reported as they
happened - from our vantage point over 100 years later, we know all too
well what became of just one happy couple, whose marriage is headlined
below.

Throughout the reading of these journals, the thought came time
and time again to me  that if we do not learn from history, then we are
condemned to repeat it - and from the "current affairs" described on
these pages, (they were even then, beating each other up in the Balkans ) it seems that that is exactly what Nations and individuals do....over and over again.

Calling Booklovers Everywhere

  "84, Charing Cross Road"....The very name stirs something in the breast of all bibliophiles, doesn't
it? This book was mentioned today on the Armchair Travelling list to which I belong, in the context of clearing out and discarding books (gasp). The very thought makes me feel faint, for as hard as I try, I find it
extraordinarily difficult to do a "book sort".

I often try to do this, and oh, my intentions are noble enough when I
sit down to carry out the task. But two hours later, and with a
pathetically small pile of books beside me that I can actually manage to
"let go", I usually admit defeat, and I am afraid that all the other
books go back onto the already bulging shelves. No wonder we have both
moved house and bought the house next door mostly to accommodate our
growing collections of books!

And it doesn't stop me buying more. Oh, no - they are usually the main
things I return home with wherever I travel. There is no nicer time
spent than that looking around, and sometimes positively excavating, a
cosy, untidy, coal fire heated, musky scented bookshop on a winter's
afternoon. (How DOES one describe, exactly, the glorious smell of old,
leather bound books?).

There are not many of those types of old bookshops left now - so it is
with pleasure that I share with you these photographs and text, taken
from a book in my possession - "The London Bookshop", printed in 1977, but now difficult to find.
Here is Mr. Marks himself...and the enticing interior of "Marks & Co. - 84, Charing Cross Road -
Established in 1904".

Finally, the sad epitaph for this most beloved of all emporia to a whole
generation of book lovers......

The Charm of Domestic Detail

I made a most delightful find today, while wandering through the
Antiques Arcade in Hungerford and browsing through the bookshelves of my
favourite second hand book dealer and friend, Martin Smith. For the
princely sum of four UK pounds, I discovered a book about a most
accomplished English female artist of the early 19th century, Mary Ellen Best,
who lived from 1809 to 1891.

She is interesting not only because of the skill of her artistry, but also because she so accurately observed the day to day domestic happenings of female lives - cooking, washing,
visiting market. As a result, she has captured images of scenes that would mostly go  unnoticed - the minutae of domestic life, rather than the grand occasions.

She also travelled extensively, before marrying and settling in Germany, where she continued to paint, including her own children as her charming subjects.

Since I have been teaching a journal writing class today and we have already begun to discuss illustrated journals, I think this will be a fine addition to my reference library, as well as an engrossing personal read.

("The World of Mary Ellen Best"
by Caroline Davidson, published by Chatto & Windus at the Hogarth Press,
1985)