If you're a regular reader of my blog, you may recall a time long ago when I deaccessioned some items that would be of interest to other collectors by selling them on eBay.
That time has come again!
This is a great chance for you to add a few titles from Tarquin Tar's Bookcase to your own collection and, in the process, help support the continued growth of Tarquin's Bookcase as well.
The first item up for auction (at a very low starting price and with no reserve or handling fee) is a terrific and rare early (1801) Boston imprint of plays and poetry by a leading figure in the 18th-century English abolitionist movement.
Go check it out and be sure to bid strong and bid often!
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Off With His Head! A Broken and Rebound Collection of 18th Century Drama
This week’s book is a fine owner-made collection of seven
plays (six comedies and one historical tragedy) written and staged by the famed
London actor-manager Colley Cibber (1671-1757; right) in the early eighteenth century.
It is evident from the signatures that a previous owner had disbound the plays
from what had been a two-volume collection and then the owner who purchased the
disbound works had them bound together himself into the extant single volume.
The contents in the volume (not including two initial blanks
and two final blanks inserted by the second owner at the time of re-binding)
are as follows:
Love’s Last Shift: or,
The Fool in Fashion. A Comedy. As it is Acted At the Theatre Royal in
Drury-Lane, By His Majesty’s Servants. Written by C. Cibber. Printed in
London, 1721. [Premiered and first published in 1696.] (viii) 74. 4o:
[#]A4-C4(-C4+π1.2) D4(±D4?) E4-L1:
$2. Roman numeral signatures added in the lower margins of the fourth leaf in occasional
gatherings indicate that this play was taken from Volume I of the original
collection. The preliminaries include: title-page; Cibber’s dedication to
Richard Norton, Esq., of Southwick; prologue “By a Friend” and spoken by “Mr.
Verbrughen”; epilogue spoken by “Miss Cross (who sung Cupid)”; full dramatis
personae with character descriptions and the names of the players (Cibber
played Sir Novelty Fashion, “A Coxcomb that loves to be the first in all
Foppery”).
The Lady’s Last Stake,
or, The Wife’s Resentment. A Comedy. As
it is Acted at the Queen’s Theatre in the Hay-Market, By Her Majesty’s Servants.
[Written by Cibber and premiered in 1707.] [viii] 97. 4o: A4-N1: $2.
This play was the first in the second volume and gathering N continues into the
next play in the collection. The preliminaries include: title-page; Cibber’s
dedication to the Marquis of Kent, the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain; prologue;
sparse dramatis personae with the character names and the names of the players
(Cibber played Lord George Brillant [sic]). The play ends with an epilogue,
spoken (and sung) by Cibber.
The Rival Fools: or,
Wit, at Several Weapons. A Comedy. As it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal By Her
Majesty’s Servants. [Written by Cibber and premiered in 1709; an adaptation
of John Fletcher’s Wit at Several Weapons
of c. 1609-20]. [iv] 103-184. 4o: N2-4 O4-Z4:
$2. This play was continuous from the previous in Volume II of the original
collection. The preliminaries include the title-page, prologue (ending with the
ridiculous couplet: “But if [our] humble Jests shou’d fail to win ye, / We beg
some Grace for Signior Cibberini.”), and the sparse dramatis personae giving the
actors’ names with their parts (Cibber played Samuel Simple). The play ends
with an epilogue in the form of a comic dialogue between the actors Pinkethman
and Bullock. According to the catchword on Z4v, the next play after this in the
original Volume II was Ximena, a
comic adaptation of Corneille’s tragicomedy The
Cid, written by Cibber in 1712. In the extant collection, however, Ximena is missing.
The Non-Juror. A
Comedy. As it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal, By His Majesty’s Servants. [Cibber’s
politicized and heavily anti-Catholic 1717 adaptation of Molière’s Tartuffe.] [271]-364. 4o: 2N4-3A2.
The preliminaries include the title-page, a lavish dedication to the new
Hanoverian King George I (in which Cibber alludes to the defeat of the Jacobite
rebels of 1715), a prologue (largely political and anti-Catholic and bearing no
real relevance to Cibber’s play) written by English poet and first editor of
Shakespeare’s plays (in 1709) Nicholas Rowe, and a sparse dramatis personae
with actors’ names (Cibber played Doctor Wolf) and the scene. The play ends
with a rousing rhyming couplet that takes the characters out of the world of
the play to address the royal audience (“Grant us but this, and then of course
you’ll own, / To guard that Freedom, GEORGE must fill the Throne”) and an
epilogue, spoken by Mrs. Oldfield, that continues in the same vein (“How wild,
how frantick is the vain Essay, / That builds on modern Politicks a Play! /
Methinks to write at all is bold enough, / But in a Play, to stand a Faction,
Buff! / Not Rome’s old Stage presum’d (or Fame’s a Fibber) / And Moderns to
attempt it! well said CIBBER!”). The play that follows this in the original
Volume II is again missing (whatever it was, according to the catchword on 3A2v
it began with “The”).
The Tragical History
of King Richard III. As it is now Acted At the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane.
Alter’d from SHAKESPEAR, by Mr. CIBBER. Printed in London in 1721
[premiered in 1699]. [75]-140. 4o: [L2-4] M4-T2: $2. The
preliminaries are remarkably sparse given that this was probably Cibber’s most
famous play: a single leaf with the title-page on the recto and elegant by
spare dramatis personae list on the verso, with – oddly for Cibber, no actors’ names. Based on markings in
the lower margin this was from the original Volume I of the collection and,
based on the pagination, this was the second play in the book, following Love’s Last Shift. Cibber’s adaptation
of Richard III – participating in the
Restoration and eighteenth-century tradition of “improving” Shakespeare by
adapting his works for the radically different English stage of the period – is
the source of the now famous line, “Off with his head!” (see below).
Love makes a Man: or,
The Fop’s Fortune. A Comedy. As it is now Acted at the Theatre Royal In
Drury-Lane. By His Majesty’s Servants. By Cibber and premiered in 1700;
Cibber made this play by merging two plays by John Fletcher (The Elder Brother and The Custom of the Country). [141]-[220].
4o: [T3-4] U4-2F2: $2(-2F2). The preliminaries
include the title-page, prologue, and dramatis personae list with actors’ names
(Cibber played Clodio, “a pert Coxcomb”); the play ends with an epilogue.
Throughout the entirety, additional marks (asterisks,
daggers, and inverted crosses in the plays taken from Volume I and tiny Arabic
numerals in the plays taken from Volume II) in the lower margin of some sheets
may have been used at the time of printing in order to aid in imposition or
binding.
The printer has used very elegant devices, decorated
majuscules, and ornaments throughout the play. At times the ornamentation –
often constructed by carefully arranging tiny pieces of decorative type into
large patterns – competes with the text of the plays themselves for the eye’s
attention. Only rarely do any devices, ornaments, or majuscules repeat, even
within the two different volumes; this speaks to the elaborate nature of the
printing project and suggests it was expansive enough to merit essentially all
of the attention and equipment of the compositor(s) who were working on it. The
printing was very careful and cleanly done; there are few immediately evident
errors and judicious use of page space makes the text extremely clear and
readable. The printer was also attentive to how his work could illuminate the
plays themselves; for example, he used tiny crown ornaments to separate the end
of Act II in Richard the Third from
the start of Act III – a point in the play where Richard ominously welcomes his
nephew, Prince Edward, to London (see below).
The paper used for both volumes is a typical sturdy laid
stock measuring 22.5cm x 27.5cm, with horizontal chain-lines that vary between
2.5cm and 3cm intervals. In the plays from Volume II, the chain-lines actually
alternate between the two distances; in all the plays from Volume I except for Love’s Last Shift they are largely
consistent at 3cm. (In the blanks added for the rebinding, the chain-lines are
3.5cm.) This suggests that two stocks of paper were used; the first stock was
split between Volumes I and II and the second stock reserved only for Volume
II. This is confirmed by the distribution of watermarks.  |
| A sample of Cibber's writing style. |
No watermarks appear
in Love’s Last Shift or any of the
plays from Volume II. The remaining plays from Volume I, however, bear a
watermark that indicate the use of a side-by-side paper mould; as is typical of
quarto imposition, the mark crosses the middle of the spine fold – meaning that
when the mark appears, it is either the top half or bottom half and it is
within the inner gutter of the page. With only a few exceptions, the mark tends
to follow the conventional quarto format of division across conjugate leaves
(for example, if the top half appears on S4, the bottom half is on S1, or if
the top half is on Q3, the bottom half is on Q2). The mark is virtually
identical to what paper historians describe as the “Strasbourg bend” (Gaskell’s
fig. 30 on p. 68, but without the countermark), consisting of a fleur de lys sitting
atop a shield design bearing a stripe, or “bend”, diagonally across it.
The book that these plays came from was clearly Plays Written by Mr. Cibber, In Two Volumes
published in London in 1721 by a consortium of stationers made up of Jacob
Tonson, Bernard Lintot, William Mears, and William Chetwood (OCLC #228742382).
Tonson’s name was evidently dropped from the imprint of Volume II, which
suggests he pulled out of the project prior to the printing of that part of the
book. It was a subscription publication and a list of subscribers can be found
in most extant copies of Volume I. The OCLC description confirms that this is
the source of the plays in my collection with the following note: “Each play in
vol. 1 has a separate dated title page, but pagination and register are
continuous in each volume.” No indication is given, however, as to whom the
accomplished printer was that produced the project for the stationers.
My copy has been bound into paper-covered boards; the front
and back paper has a feathered marbling that has been subjected to some wear
and damage over time. The spine is a heavily painted brown paper meant to
imitate leather; there are six compartments separated by raised gilded bands. A
red leather label bears the gilded title “Plays”. The hinges, front and back,
are cracked and rather loose from use, but nothing is detached.
The only marginalia in the entire book is an owner’s
inscription in a confident eighteenth-century hand using copperplate ink, on
the front pastedown:
Thomas Beecroft
No 23
Pater Noster Row.
Scouring genealogical records turns up a Thomas Beecroft
born to John and Elizabeth Beecroft of London on January 16, 1754. Pater Noster
Row in London was the city’s principal book trade neighborhood and so my
initial suspicion is that Beecroft was somehow associated with the industry.
Consulting the Exeter Working Papers in Book History, which lists individuals
who were part of the book trade in eighteenth century England, confirms my
suspicions.
Thomas’s father, John Beecroft – son of gentleman John
Beecroft of Norwich – was a wholesale bookseller working and living on Pater
Noster Row since 1740. In 1767 he moved to 23 Pater Noster Row. In 1773 he
became one of the masters of the Stationers’ Company, the guild for printers
and booksellers. He was particularly known for his publication of music and
because he served as a bookselling agent for Cambridge University. In 1779,
however, he died of an apoplectic fit and his twenty-five year-old son, Thomas
Beecroft, who had likely served his apprenticeship under his father, inherited
the shop at 23 Pater Noster Row. He ran the shop for only about two years, from
1780 to 1781; after being elected to a livery in the Stationers’ Company in
1781, he pulled up roots and moved to Walthamstow, Essex. He died on June 1,
1787 in Saxethorpe, Norfolk.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Elephants and Camels From an Early American Book Empire
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the worthwhile goal of
owning an example
imprint from specific, influential printers, such as the House of Elsevir.
This week’s book picks up that theme again, though in this case the book in
question is from the family of an important early publisher rather than
printer.
While Ben Franklin might be the more familiar name as a
major early American printer-publisher, the name of radical patriot and
newspaperman Isaiah
Thomas (1749-1831; shown above in a portrait owned by the American Antiquarian Society) is perhaps just as important though perhaps less well
known. Beside printing revolutionary newspapers – many of which were the first
of their kind in the colonies – Thomas also published books, perhaps most
importantly a series of children’s books by author John Newberry. In his time,
the Thomas empire produced more than 1,000 titles (far more than any of his
rivals, including Franklin) and was bolstered by many shrewd business moves,
including buying a book bindery in Worcester in 1782 and progressively opening
branches and partnerships in Boston, Newburyport, Springfield, Vermont, New Hampshire,
New York, and Baltimore. In addition to magazines, newspapers, almanacs, and
other ephemera, the books from Thomas’s sixteen presses included the first
American editions of major English novelists such as Laurence Sterne and Oliver
Goldsmith, the first American novel (The
Power of Sympathy, or, The Triumph of Nature, 1789, by William Hill Brown),
and the earliest American edition of Mother
Goose (1786). His decision to acquire the copyright to all of Noah
Webster’s spelling and grammar books, in 1789, proved a particularly shrewd
investment. After his development of the first truly successful interstate
publishing and retailing network in the history of America’s book trade,
Thomas, in his retirement after 1802, penned the monumental and still relevant History of Printing in America (in
which he provides the first comprehensive and authoritative description of the
people and firms at the heart of the country’s colonial and late 18th-century
through early 19th century book industry) and in 1812 founded the American Antiquarian Society in
Worcester, whose vast collection of pre-1876 American imprints (most donated by
Thomas) is rivaled only by the Library of Congress.
One of my goals has been to acquire a Thomas imprint – book,
pamphlet, or newspaper – in good condition. This week’s item comes close: like
the Elsevir I wrote of before, however, this item is from a later family member in the trade. Upon
his “retirement” from the trade in 1802, Thomas passed his business on to his
son, Isaiah Thomas, Junior (for simplicity, I will refer to Thomas, Junior as
Thomas from this point; if I refer to the father, I will use Thomas, Senior).
Like his father, Thomas rested a substantial portion of the firm’s income upon
that always reliable staple of the industry: textbooks.
This book is The Understanding
Reader: or, Knowledge Before Oratory, Being a New Selection of Lessons, Suited
to the Understanding and Capacities of Youth, and Designed for Their
Improvement. Its goal is to teach students about "Reading”, “The Definition
of Words”, and “Spelling, Particularly Compound and Derivative Words.”
The title-page promises that the book offers “A Method Wholly Different From
Any Thing of the Kind Ever Before Published.” It also offers an observation
attributed to Ben Franklin: “Our boys often read as parots [sic] speak, knowing
little or nothing of the meaning.” The book is by Daniel Adams
(1773-1864), a Leominster, Massachusetts-based academic and physician who eventually
moved to New Hampshire, where he became a state legislator in 1838. Adams’s
textbooks were popular and this was no exception, going through over two dozen
editions from various publishers between its first printing (by [Daniel] Adams
& Wilder for Adams, in 1804) and its last (by Hori Brown of Leicester, MA
in 1821); according to the lavishly descriptive copyright statement on the
verso of the title-page (typical for its day), the book was entered for
copyright in Massachusetts by the Commonwealth’s district clerk (and Salem
native) Nathaniel Goodale, on “the 27th day of September, in the
twenty eighth year of the independence of the United States of America” (that
is, Sept. 27, 1804; because Adams’s preface is dated “Leominster, Sept. 29,
1803” some descriptions of the book by dealers, Wikipedia, etc. misattribute
the copyright to that date – instead, oddly, it seems that nearly a full year
elapsed between Adams’s completion of the book and its appearance in print). 
The Thomas firm evidently obtained the copyright shortly after – perhaps almost
concurrent with – the appearance of the first Adams & Wilder edition. This
particular title is an excellent demonstration of the reach of the Thomas
empire, for most of his editions were printed in different cities and towns
around the country and for retail by different specific booksellers in those
cities and towns, but nearly all of them were published by Thomas and bear his family’s name. Like his father
before him, Thomas mastered the lucrative art of book wholesaling.
My copy is of the sixth edition of The Understanding Reader. It was published by Thomas – who
prominently points out in his imprint that he is the “Proprietor of the Copy
Right” – and “Sold Wholesale and Retail by him in Worcester, and by all
the principal Booksellers in the
United States.” It was printed by Ebenezer
Merriam (1777-1858) in Brookfield (today’s West Brookfield), Massachusetts;
the relationship between the Merriam firm, which specialized in textbooks, and
the Thomas family was a productive one, even after the Merriams left Brookfield
for Springfield in 1831. Eventually, in 1843, the Merriams would obtain from
the Thomas clan the copyright to one of their most successful titles, Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, giving
rise to the title by which the book is more generally known today: The Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
The final page, T6v, presents one of those intriguing
publisher’s advertisements that reveals a bit about the book market at the time
of publication. The advertisement, headed “Valuable School Books”, notifies
readers that “[t]he following valuable School Books are published by ISAIAH
THOMAS, Jun. and are kept constantly for Sale at his respective Bookstores in
Boston and Worcester, Wholesale and Retail; also by said THOMAS and WHIPPLE,
Newburyport.” The titles listed are Scott’s
Lessons on Elocution, Murray’s
Abridgment of English Grammar, the third Worcester edition of Murray’s English Grammar (copied from
the sixteenth London edition; the blurb gives evidence of the pride Thomas took
in his work: “No pains nor expense have been spared in rendering the Third
Edition worthy of the liberal patronage which the former Editions have
received; and the Proprietor thinks he may justly pronounce this Edition
superior to any impression of the work in America; and he flatters himself,
that by its increasing demand, he shall be remunerated for the expense and
labor he has bestowed”), Parish’s
Compendious System of Universal Geography, and Perry’s Only Sure Guide to the English Tongue (“the proprietor
thinks no other recommendation can be necessary than only to mention that from
THIRD to FORTY THOUSAND of the Improved Edition of Perry’s Spelling Book sell yearly”). The ad ends with a note that, “The
Trade are informed that they can be supplied with any of the above in Sheets or
Bound, in large or small quantities, on as low Terms as any similar works are
sold for in the United States.”
As with most such textbooks, the aim of Adams’s book is to
expand and enrich the student’s command over vocabulary and spelling in
anticipation of his or her later lessons in rhetoric and oratory. The contents
comprise sample passages, organized by themes, in some instances being extracts
drawn from notable sources (from Milton to Franklin and the Bible to
Goldsmith); in the margin beside each passage, Adams has pulled out in italics
the key vocabulary word for the student to master. In an innovative use of
pointing, those words that the student is to learn to spell are marked with a
period and those that the student is to learn to define are marked with “a note
of interrogation” (i.e., a question mark). Glancing through the book, it’s
difficult to resist the temptation simply to read down the margin and imagine
the words there are some kind of surreal staccato dialogue out of a lost play
by Samuel Beckett.
Adams’s preface bears quoting at length in several places
because of the insight it affords into early American pedagogical theories about
how, and why, students learned to read and use language. First, after
explaining the punctuation system and how teachers can use it to drill students
who have practiced with the book, Adams explains the “advantages to be derived
from accustoming youth to give definitions of words”; the value of this, he
insists, goes beyond “simply that of becoming acquainted with the meaning of
them”:
1. Their minds will be excited to inquiry. In this way they will arrive to an understanding of many ideas of the Writer, which otherwise would have been wholly lost to them.
2. It will enlarge their acquaintance with language, not only by a knowledge of those particular words which they would define, but also by bringing many new words to their view.
3. It will help them to a readiness and facility of expressing their ideas. There is nothing in which frequent use and practice do more for a man, than in this one thing. If a man has never been accustomed to express himself on any subject or thing, he will be much put to it and appear exceeding awkward at first, however well he may understand the subject on which he would speak.
4. It will inspire them with a confidence in themselves, and in their own understandings, which will go further and be of more use to them on any public or private occasion than whole months or even years declamation on the stage.
The ideas Adams presents hint at dual nature of early
American teaching: it was both rooted in the classical and often mechanical
systems of the European Renaissance (memorization, oration, etc.) and also
pushing towards the more open-ended and progressive systems of the American
Enlightenment and soon-to-develop education reform movement (provocations to
inquiry and exploration, the inspiring of confidence, training in the tools in
addition to the content of learning, etc.).
At the same time, however, Adams – like most compilers of
textbooks for children in the period – understood that the kinds of material he
set before students, the ideas
presented in the extracts, would also be of paramount importance in shaping
their young minds and instilling in them “proper” thoughts and conduct.
Finally, at the end of each chapter, Adams provides a set of questions about
the content of the section and encourages teachers to pose such questions to students
in order to ensure that on top of mastering the language they are also grasping
the ideas presented to them (which span natural history, geography, literature,
biblical narrative, and morality).
The paper is a typical early-19th century cheap
wove stock often seen in textbooks of the period; they measure 11cm x 17cm. The
binding is an unremarkable, thick tanned pigskin – a hide that, given its
extreme durability, was a frequent choice for binders of early textbooks – cut
very unevenly and glued inexpertly onto the boards (probably done by an amateur
or owner rather than Thomas’s bindery; as indicated by the ad quoted above,
Thomas, like other publishers, often sold his textbooks unbound and the buyer
would be responsible for binding or paying for binding). There’s no printing on
the binding, but it does look like a faint handwriting is on the back board; it
is now, however, illegible. The book is 228 pages and may be described
collationally as 2o in 6s: [#] A6-T6 [π]: $1 and 3 [as miniscule
with “2”]. There are no catchwords and no errors in either pagination or
running titles, which are identical throughout the book (except for the
preliminaries, which were printed on sheet A) and suggest the use of a skeleton
forme. There are a few obvious compositional errors – such as setting “thier”
instead of “their” – and, judging from frequent blotting, the inking was
evidently done quickly and with little regard for precision. In general, the
book is in fair condition with some chipping on the binding and some tears to
pages and water stains throughout the block with no loss of text and no loose
pages.
Aside from a pen squiggle on p. 185 (Q3r) there are no
marginal markings. A previous owner has inserted three slips of paper, but
these seem to be meant simply to mark the book’s only three (unattributed)
illustrative plates (a reindeer on p.39; a camel on p. 124; and an elephant on
p. 177). There is, however, some owner’s provenance on the front flyleaf. On
the recto of the leaf a cursive, early ninteenth-century hand has written
“Caroline P. Goodnow’s” and, beneath that in a lighter ink, “Caroline P.
Goodnows | Book Febry 24th 1816”. The only precise match
that I can find for this name in any historical records is a Caroline P. Goodnow
who married Captain Lucius Brigham in Princeton, Massachusetts, in October
1832. One genealogy website guesses that her death date was around 1848, but in
the New England Historic-Genealogical Society’s 1860 Genealogies of the Families and Descendants of the Early Settlers of
Watertown, Massachusetts she is described as still alive in October 1852
when her grandmother died at her house in Lexington at the impressive age of
104. Given the marriage date, it seems probable that this is the same person that
owned my book; as a young girl in the early 1810s, Goodnow purchased Adams’s Understanding Reader, possibly for
school purposes. It’s always exciting to
obtain a book bearing woman’s ownership provenance from an age when literacy
education for women was still struggling to gain a foothold. The fact
that Caroline Goodnow owned Adams’s book stands as a reminder that Adams’s own
casual assumption that his reader would be “a man” (see his goal #3, quoted above)
was, by the early 1800s, an already outdated social convention. 
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