Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries Adopt a Book Candidates 2021

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Summary Shortlist 1. Collection of CMDO (Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations) Documents from May 1968 (Paris, 1968). Loose as issued. $9,500 2. High School Girl's scrapbook/photo album (Washington, D.C., 1918-1921). $395 Adopted!

3. John Ryan & Co., Specimens and Price List of Type and Printing Material cast and sold (Corner of South and German Street, Baltimore, M.D., ca. 1887). $750 Adopted!

4. Lévy, Alphonse; Lazare, Bernard. Scènes familiales juives (Paris: F. Juven, 1902). 1st edition. Later boards. $1,500 5. Capuchinas de Puebla, Copper plate featuring engraved vignette of Brother Leo of Assisi reading the manuscript benediction presented to him by St. Francis of Assisi (Puebla de los Angeles, c.

1750). $1,800 Adopted!

6. Douglass, William, Rector, Sermons Preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church, of St. Thomas, Philadelphia (Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1854). $2,600 7. Livy, Historiarum ab urbe condita decadis quintae libri quinque (Lyon, heirs of Simon Vincent, 1537). $750 8. Margaret Walker, For My People, with lithographs by Elizabeth Catlett (New York: Limited Editions Club, 1992). $1,600 Adopted!

9. Filippo Beroaldo, Heptalogus septem sapientium Gr[a]eci[a]e, sententias pr[a]estantiores explicans (Deventer, Albertus Pafraet, May 1517). $450 10. The Observer, vol. I, nos. 6-12, from February 7 through March 21, 1807. $3,000 11. Petrus Saxonius, Maculae solares ex selectis observationibus Petri Saxonis Holsati Altdorfii in Academia Norica factis. Ad magnificum senatum inclitae Reipublicae Norinbergensis ([Nuremberg?], c. 1616). $3,200 12. Jean De Coras, Arrestum sive Placitum Parlamenti Tholosani, continens historiam (In casu matrimoniali) admodum memorabilem (Frankfurt: A. Wechel, 1576). $3,000 13. Samuel Ampzing and Petrus Scriverius, Beschryvinge ende lof der Stad Haerlem in Holland; [bound with:] Lavre-Crans voor Lavrens Coster Haarlem (Haarlem, 1628). $2,500 Adopted!

14. Gentaku Otsuki, Rokumotsu shinshi [or] Rokubutsu shinshi [New Record of Six Things] (Osaka, 1786). $1,950 15. Hafiz, Divān [Collected Poems] (Persia, before 1883). Illuminated manuscript in hand-painted lacquer binding. $3,500

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16. [Roman Catholic Church.] Psalterium Davidis cum Canticis sacris & selectis aliquot orationibus (Antwerp, 1683). $875 17. Missouri Leviathan. The Reliquiâ of Animal indigenous to North America…Disinterred in the year 1840, after five months labour. ([London], 1842). $1,400 18. Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic (Moï Ver), POLIN (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibutz Ha-Meuhad, 1945-6). $2,250 19. Dante Alighieri, La divina commedia (Venice, 1757-58). $3,700 Adopted!

20. [Board Game]. Pank-a-Squith (Germany: Women’s Social and Political Union, 1909). $1,500 21. Maryland Governor John Seymour, Manuscript letter, signed, from Seymour to one of the lords of trade, discussing issues in the colony, including Penn vs. Baltimore boundary lines and slavery in Maryland (Maryland, March 10, 1709). $2,000 22. Accordion book bound in Asian style (China: n.p., 1920). Near fine. Hardcover. 8vo. Brown silk cloth boards, lettering panel on the upper board. $1,250 1

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Collection of Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations Documents from Paris 1968

1. Collection of CMDO (Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations) Documents from May 1968 (Paris: 1968). Loose as issued. $9,500 May 1968 was a volatile period of civil unrest in France, punctuated by demonstrations and massive general strikes. At the height of its fervor, it nearly brought the economy of France to a dramatic halt.

The Sheridan Libraries have an expanding and very important collection of posters, leaflets, tracts, photographs, and ephemera from these protests. Adding significantly to our existing collection, this group of 19 original items was issued by or relates to the Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations (CMDO) during this time.

The CMDO was a revolutionary group founded on May 17, 1968 that functioned as an uninterrupted general assembly—a successful experiment in direct democracy, guaranteeing equal participation from all members in debates and decision-making. This collection comprises comics, flyers, and reports produced during the protests. Highlights include a tabloid-sized printing of a speech to workers ("Adresse à tous les travailleurs"), a mimeographed comic strip ("Les travailleurs en grève," likely the first leaflet produced by the CMDO), several small posters, and texts of protest songs.

Overall, the CMDO collection is a fine and important assortment of historical documents from the height of this time of civil unrest.

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High School Girl’s scrapbook/photo album, Washington, D.C., 1918-21

2. High School Girl's scrapbook/photo album (Washington, D.C., 1918-21). $395 Adopted by Claire and Allen Jensen This scrapbook belonged to Vesta M. Goodwin, who lived in Washington, D.C. and attended Central High School.

With her annotated photographs and mementoes, Vesta’s album shows key events of the time from a young woman’s point of view, many of which resonant today: the flu pandemic, the inauguration of President Warren G. Harding, and girls enjoying the kind of independence that was just beginning to be available to women a century ago.

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Rare Baltimore Type Specimens

3. John Ryan & Co., Specimens and Price List of Type and Printing Material cast and sold (Corner of South and German Street, Baltimore, M.D., ca. 1887). $750 Adopted by Claire and Allen Jensen A rare type specimen book by John Ryan, who was born in Baltimore County in 1820. As a young man Ryan went to New York to serve a formal apprenticeship, but returned to Baltimore in 1848. By 1882 Ryan’s was the leading type-house and printer’s supply in the Chesapeake area and was considered one of the most progressive in the country.

This specimen book served as part of his offerings to furnish and equip a small printing plant or newspaper office. One could be up and running for $601, and a larger printing operation at only $1,056.08. An interesting primary source exercise for students to locate the fonts and printer’s ornaments, as seen above, across Baltimore maps, City Directories, and on various title pages throughout our collections.

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Scenes of Jewish Family Life

4. Lévy, Alphonse; Lazare, Bernard. Scènes familiales juives (Paris: F. Juven, 1902). 1st edition. Later boards. $1,500 Illustrated album of 22 engravings, on plates, including 3 double-page plates (including frontispiece)

by Alphonse Levy retracing the life and rituals of the Jews of Alsace. Each illustration is captioned in French and in Yiddish with an explanation in a few lines by the author of each plate.

This book offers a fascinating counterpoint to the materials that comprise the Sheridan Libraries’ impressive collection of materials relating to the Dreyfus affair—the anti-Semitic scandal that shook fin de siècle Europe to its core and provided a chilling preview of what was to follow only a few decades later. In Scènes familiales juives we are offered rare vignettes of daily life in Jewish Alsace, the liminal region that gave birth to the similarly liminal figure of Alfred Dreyfus.

In keeping with the many disciplinary areas this book touches, Scènes familiales juives will find many readers across the humanities at Johns Hopkins.

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Unique Copperplate of the Capuchin Nuns of Puebla, Mexico, c. 1750

5. Capuchinas de Puebla, Copper plate featuring engraved vignette of Brother Leo of Assisi reading the manuscript benediction presented to him by St. Francis of Assisi (Puebla de los Angeles, c.

1750). Inscribed as the “Propiedad de la Muy RR. MM. Capuchinas de Puebla,” with a later engraved ownership inscription: “José Firmin Gomez, Junio 4 de 1857.” $1,800 Adopted by Lorna Gladstone in honor of Dean Winston Tabb Mexican copperplates are rarely preserved (most were melted down and reused)—least of all those produced for a convent of nuns of the 18th century. This example is extremely interesting for it is a material echo of its own physical manifestation. That is to say, this copperplate was hand-engraved by an artist with a representation of St. Francis himself in an act of handwriting, inscribing a piece of parchment with his famous benediction to his Franciscan Brother Leo. It was widely believed that the original manuscript depicted here had also survived, and was long preserved in a reliquary at Assisi. Imprints from the plate were ostensibly made available for purchase by pilgrims to the Capuchin convent church in Puebla (founded c. 1703). Much like other objects similarly produced, such as book amulets, the engraved text also promises the possessor of the imprint special talismanic powers, including protection from lightning strikes, earthquakes, shipwrecks, lovesickness, and labor pains. No ephemeral imprints from this copperplate are known to survive.

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Sermons Preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Philadelphia

6. Douglass, William, Rector, Sermons Preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church, of St. Thomas, Philadelphia (Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1854). $2,600 Hardcover. First edition. Small octavo. 251pp. Brown cloth decorated in blind and titled in gilt. A little very light spotting on the boards, a small patch of erosion on the rear board, and a very faint dampstain on the bottom margin of a few pages, very good or better. A collection of sermons by a Black preacher dedicated by him to his congregation "as a small token of gratitude for the many tokens of esteem and love bestowed upon the author during his parochial labors among them for the period of nineteen years."

William Douglass was born free in Baltimore, the son of a blacksmith and Elizabeth Grice, who was the daughter of Black abolitionist Hezekiah Grice. Douglass was an itinerant minister to Methodists, but eventually found his way into the Protestant Episcopal Church, and was the first Black man ordained to the ministry of the Episcopal Church in the South. He had visited Philadelphia for an abolitionist convention the year before his ordination, and soon thereafter accepted the pastor-ship at St. Thomas African Church. St. Thomas was founded by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, themselves the founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and where Jones had served as the first Rector until his death in 1818. The church had a succession of white preachers until Douglass took over as Rector in 1831. (The preceding summarized from Gazetteer of Maryland by Henry Gannett, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904.) A very uncommon title.

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A Student’s Prayer before Study

7. Livy, Historiarum ab urbe condita decadis quintae libri quinque (Lyon, heirs of Simon Vincent, 1537). $750 A student’s sammelband of classical texts on the history of Rome, including Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita.

The simple temporary binding in limp vellum and the annotations, both in Latin and Italian, suggest a student’s copy.

A contemporary reader has annotated the inside front and rear covers in a neat humanistic hand with moral quotes and proverbs from Cicero (‘Virtus nihil aliud est, nisi in se perfecta, et ad summum producta natura’), Ovid, and others. In particular, the verso of the front flyleaf is entirely occupied by the ‘Creator ineffabilis’ (‘O Creator Ineffable’), a prayer composed by Thomas Aquinas, also known as the ‘Prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas before Study’ or the ‘Student’s prayer’, in which the prospective student asks God to grant ‘a keen understanding, a retentive memory, method and ease in learning, the ability to grasp things correctly and eloquence in speech.’ The prayer ends with Antonio Pasqualigo’s ownership inscription (‘Antonius de Paschalighum’). The Pasqualigo were a very influential Venetian family (originally from Crete, according to tradition) including numerous high ranking officials, politicians and soldiers.

A wonderful example to share with students as they embark on their career at Johns Hopkins and an important example in the classroom of a reader’s marginalia and interaction with both classical and Christian texts.

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For My People

8. Margaret Walker, For My People, with lithographs by Elizabeth Catlett (New York: Limited Editions Club, 1992). $1,600 Adopted by Lisa and Bill Feustle In 1942, the writer Margaret Walker, born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1915, received the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize for her first book, the poetry collection For My People—the first Black woman to win a national writing prize. The poems explore shared African American experiences during the first decades of the twentieth century; they are deliberately presented as “the songs of my people,” as Walker put it. Today, paradoxically, Walker is not as well-known as other writers of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement with whom she was connected.

For the 1992 Limited Editions Club edition of For My People, the graphic artist Elizabeth Catlett produced six gorgeous, multi-colored lithographs that imagine the people invoked in specific stanzas. Catlett and Walker were roommates as graduate students at the University of Iowa, where they were not permitted, because of segregation, to live in the dormitories. This collaboration thus commemorates not just the fiftieth anniversary of Walker’s historic accomplishment, but also the long and sustaining friendship of these two ground-breaking artists.

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Learning Latin from the Wise

9. Filippo Beroaldo, Heptalogus septem sapientium Gr[a]eci[a]e, sententias pr[a]estantiores explicans (Deventer, Albertus Pafraet, May 1517). 4º. With a woodcut of a haloed knight on title, with a falcon on his gloved right hand and a raised sword in his left. $450 One of only three known copies of one of the most elegantly written Latin schoolbooks from the turn of the 15th century, first published at Bologna in 1498. It teaches children through comprehensive and entertaining stories based on proverbs and sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, such as Thales, Solon, and Periander.

A celebrated Italian literary author, Filippo Beroaldo (1453–1505) opened a school at Bologna when he was only 19 years old. Eventually teaching at Paris University, where he inspired French students, he edited a large number of classical authors, making him famous throughout Europe, but the present attractively composed schoolbook received no less fame.

A wonderful pedagogic text to incorporate into our popular Freshman Fellows Latin projects, which allows students to use their language skills to translate these lesser-known but important Renaissance texts directly from our rare book holdings.

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A Baltimore-based general interest magazine with the first female editor in America

10. The Observer, vol. I, nos. 6-12, from February 7 through March 21, 1807. Each issue is between 16 and 32 pages, not including the wrappers. Original wrappers and advertisements included. $3,000 Seven issues of The Observer, a magazine printed and published in Baltimore from 1806 to 1807. The magazine was founded and edited by Eliza Anderson, who started the endeavor at the age of 27. It's believed that Eliza Anderson, going by the pen name Beatrice Ironside, is the first woman editor of a general interest magazine in America.

The magazine included regular columns, original essays and verse, literary criticism and letters to the editor (and responses). There are also several articles on the value of quarantines to prevent the spread of disease written by John Crawford; Crawford, an Irish immigrant, attempted to popularize vaccines in America. He also delivered lectures at the city's medical college and assisted in the founding of several charitable endeavors, including the Baltimore General Dispensary. Why did he have a column in the magazine? Because Eliza Anderson was his daughter!

Eliza Anderson is fascinating. She was friends with Betsy Bonaparte and was part of her entourage when Betsy tried to get Napoleon to acknowledge her marriage to his brother Jerome. Anderson herself married a poor choice who abandoned her and their newborn infant, but she later found an ideal partner in the architect Maximilian Godefroy, the fellow who designed Baltimore's First Unitarian Church and the Battle Monument. A life full of scandal and drama fit for a Netflix miniseries.

Extra, Extra, Read All About It!

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Newly Invented Telescope Reveals Spots Moving Across the Face of the Sun

11. Petrus Saxonius, Maculae solares ex selectis observationibus Petri Saxonis Holsati Altdorfii in Academia Norica factis. Ad magnificum senatum inclitae Reipublicae Norinbergensis ([Nuremberg?], c. 1616). $3,200 This handsome, hand-colored folio broadside depicts hyper-precise etched views, depicted through the oculus of a telescope (colored yellow), that carefully track the gradual movement of sunspots over a period of several weeks. The observations were taken by the Holstein mathematician Petrus Saxonius at Aldorf between 24 February and 17 March 1616, and may constitute the earliest popular illustration of this newly discovered celestial phenomenon shortly after the invention of the telescope.

Saxonius was preceded by Christoph Scheiner and Galileo Galilei, who famously published specialist astronomical books in 1612-13 that were similarly illustrated. There the two pioneers dueled with one another for precedence over who was the first to discover this heavenly oddity, which seems to undermine the nearly 2,000 year-old Aristotelian cosmological claim that all heavenly bodies beyond the sublunary spheres were perfect and never changing, comprised of a divine “quintessence.”

The Hopkins copy of this broadside is one of only three recorded, and the only known copy in North America (the other two are in Munich and Nuremberg); happily, the Sheridan Libraries also hold early editions of both the Scheiner and Galileo imprints as well!

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The Return of Martin Guerre Judge’s first-hand account of Sensational trial of identity theft

12. Jean De Coras, Arrestum sive Placitum Parlamenti Tholosani, continens historiam (In casu matrimoniali) admodum memorabilem (Frankfurt: A. Wechel, 1576). Small octavo (97x158mm), contemporary blind-stamped pigskin over boards with handsome ownership seal stamped on front cover ("Andreas Lissieczki"); owner name and date ("A D 1625") stamped on base of front board and title ("Arestvm Tholosanvm") stamped on top. $3,000 This sensational sixteenth-century case of imposture had everything—an unhappy marriage, a sudden disappearance and a mysterious return, an accusation of impersonation, a possibly complicit wife, a family and a village divided, two dramatic trials, the sudden appearance of a surprise witness at a moment in the second trial when acquittal seemed imminent, a sudden reversal of fortune, the defendant’s conviction, his public apology (declaring the wife to be an innocent victim), and his execution in front of the home of the man he impersonated. Among the luminaries of the court present at the trial, the learned Jean de Coras was assigned the task of reporter for the proceedings, which meant that he would look closely into the issues and finally prepare a report on all the arguments and make a recommendation for the sentence.

This extremely rare volume is the first Latin edition of Coras’s account of the trial, and has great potential for teaching and translation by our curators, faculty, and students.

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Move over Gutenberg An Illustrated History of How the Dutch Actually Invented Printing in 1440

13. Samuel Ampzing and Petrus Scriverius, Beschryvinge ende lof der Stad Haerlem in Holland; [bound with:] Lavre-Crans voor Lavrens Coster Haarlem (Haarlem, 1628). $2,500 Adopted by Daun van Ee This excellent first edition of perhaps the most influential early history of the Dutch city of Haarlem embodies at every level the spirit of Renaissance “civic humanism” during the Dutch Golden Age. Simultaneously, it takes several leaps of faith beyond what the historical record could ever firmly support, by offering “documentary” and even visual “proof” of an earlier, baseless claim by the humanist Hadrianus Junius that Haarlem’s very own Laurens Koster had in fact invented printing by moveable type by 1440. Tragically, according to this ambitious book, Koster’s wily apprentice letter-cutter Johannes Fust (aka “Faust”) stole away the Haarlem types to Mainz in the middle of the night (on Christmas Eve no less!), where he started in his printing operation with Gutenburg and, later with his own son-in-law Peter Schöffer.

To this day there stands a huge bronze sculpture of Koster holding a type punch bearing the letter “A” in the center of the main square in Haarlem’s city center. There are several contributions to this ultimate “precedence debate” within the history of technology that are now held in the libraries’ unparalleled rare book collection on the history of literary forgery, the Bibliotheca Fictiva, though only this one is so bold as to illustrate this “fake news” in several detailed engravings.

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Otsuki’s Odditities The Renaissance Wunderkammer Comes to Japan, 1786

14. Gentaku Otsuki, Rokumotsu shinshi [or] Rokubutsu shinshi [New Record of Six Things] (Osaka, 1786). $1,950 This beautifully printed Osaka imprint, with 12 full-page woodblock prints, was composed by a Japanese native who had dedicated himself to the study of Western medicine. During much of the Edo period, Japanese contact with the West was restricted to a Dutch trading enclave permitted to live on Dejima, a small fan-shaped artificial island in the Bay of Nagasaki. As a result, Gentaku Otsuki’s source texts were also largely Dutch in origin, collectively exploring the exotic-seeming (to the Japanese) medicinal properties of unicorn horn (correctly acknowledged by the author as narwhale horn, which he also illustrates), saffron, nutmeg, “mumia” (balms used in mummification), “agarikon” (a wood-decay fungus supposed to contain anti-malarial quinine), and “mermaids,” whose flesh and bones could also offer all manner of wondrous cures.

To these ends, Otsuki mined various Dutch editions of Jonstonus, Dodoens, Chomel, Valentyn, Hübner, and others, many of which already form a portion of the Sheridan Libraries’ superb collection of early modern illustrated wunderkammer books. Otsuki’s book was successfully published thanks in part to the allied interests of the 18th-century Osaka sake distiller Kenkado, who also built for himself a substantial personal library of natural history.

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Divān Book of Poems

15. Hafiz, Divān [Collected Poems] (Persia, before 1883). Illuminated manuscript in hand-painted lacquer binding. $3,500 This gorgeous volume does not simply contain a collection, in a beautiful Arabic manuscript, of the verse of the celebrated 14th-century Persian poet Khwāja Šamsu d-Dīn Muḥammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, known as Hafiz—it is also an incredible work of art. The poems of Hafiz, many of them ghazals celebrating earthly and divine love, were so well-regarded that many copies of his Divān were created over the centuries after his death.

This copy, from the 19th century, comes from the library of the renowned British bookbinder Francis Bedford, and was probably rebound and decorated by him. The lacquer covers feature a lush arrangement of hand-painted pink and yellow flowers on the outside and bouquets of irises on the inside.

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From the Cradle to the Grave Uniting Unique Uncut Sheets with a Deluxe Bound Version of a 17th-century Psalter

16. [Roman Catholic Church.] Psalterium Davidis cum Canticis sacris & selectis aliquot orationibus (Antwerp, 1683). $875 Several years ago the Friends of the Johns Hopkins University Libraries adopted one of the most important surviving examples of uncut, unbound sheets laid out for a small octavo imprint from perhaps the most famous European printing house of the 17th century. This miraculous survival of 25 uncut sheets was issued by the Platin-Moretus press of Antwerp, whose original building survives today as the world’s greatest museum and library dedicated to the Renaissance printing arts. It was a shock, needless to say, when the very same imprint appeared in the antiquarian book marked recently in a handsomely bound octavo form, numbering some 600 pages in length (i.e., 25 sheets, each containing 24 pages in the uncut version).

This copy is itself extraordinary, indeed unique, for it was augmented by an early owner with four additional Latin prayers in manuscript. Since each of these scribal additions terminates with the phrase “Requiescant in pace. Amen,” it seems likely that the volume had been customized and specially bound for use by a Catholic priest, specifically for observance of offices for the dead.

Each of these four manuscript leaves is marked for ready reference with simple vellum tabs attached to the fore edge of their respective preceding leaves. Thus, between these two impressions made from the very same setting of type in 1683, we see the history of this book from both ends: from its cradle, quite literally, to the grave!

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The Missouri Leviathan A Paleontological Hoax, & Now the London Natural History Museum’s Prize Mastadon

17. Missouri Leviathan. The Reliquiâ of Animal indigenous to North America…Disinterred in the year 1840, after five months labour. ([London], 1842). $1,400 This is an extremely rare first and only printing (1 of 4 known copies, the others at Yale, London, and Berlin) of this lithograph broadside from the 1842 London exhibition of the controversial “Missouri Leviathan.” The colossal skeleton it depicts was excavated in 1840 on the banks of the Pomme de Terre River in the Ozarks by the German immigrant Albert Koch. It is, in truth, a greatly augmented and oversized mishmash of the bones. Koch was a colorful figure who straddled the line between professional naturalist and a sensationalizing “fossil showman” and salesman of his day. He toured this largely authentic reconstruction (except for the eccentric splayed tusks, and extra segments), measuring some 30x15 feet, across America before packing it onto a ship bound for London for a limited engagement at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly (price of admission: 1 shilling; this print likely sold as a souvenir). The Missouri mastodon was purchased by the British Museum for a princely sum, its authentic parts reassembled. It has since traveled the world on public exhibition and remains on display today at the London Natural History Museum.

Koch’s Leviathan is here posed (somewhat incongruously) in the Missouri wilderness, standing astride an Indian elephant to provide the viewer a comparative sense of the mastodon’s colossal scale. A Native American and a man in contemporary European garb (Koch himself?) look on in discussion of the wonder while in the background a canoe glides along the river; just beyond the hind legs of the skeleton can be glimpsed a living Leviathan lurking in the waters.

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Moï Ver's Poland

18. Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic (Moï Ver), POLIN (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibutz Ha-Meuhad, 1945-6). $2,250 Joining our collection of works by the important avant-garde photographer and painter Moï Ver (born Moses Vorobeichic, changed later to Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic)—including all three editions of his visual study of the Jewish ghetto of Vilnius—is this remarkably rare collection of photographs. POLIN (Poland) features ten pages of stunning photographic plates of Jewish life in Poland during the interwar years, preceded by two pages of text in Hebrew. Found in only three other research libraries, the portfolio will be instrumental to the research of Hebrew and Yiddish Professor Samuel Spinner, who is studying the corpus of Ver/Vorobeichic, and to generations of Johns Hopkins researchers to come.

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Dante’s Inferno, Illustrated…on Tissue Paper The Ultra-Rare 1757 “Lacca Povera” Edition

19. Dante Alighieri, La divina commedia (Venice, 1757-58). $3,700 Adopted by Lorna Gladstone in honor of Dean Winston Tabb This beautifully printed, oblong edition of the three parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) is as fragile and it is incredibly rare. While it does not contain the entire text of any of those three sections, this copy is, paradoxically, far more desirable and rare. Perché? Because it presents exclusively the engraved iconographic apparatus of the great Venetian printer Antonio Zatta’s celebrated 4-volume complete illustrated edition of Dante masterpiece…for a very specific purpose. Here these engravings are not printed on heavy paper, but rather on thin, almost gossamer, purpose-made tissue paper sheets designed to be cut out of the volume and fixed to furniture after the Venetian interior decorating fashion of lacca povera.

The lacca povera technique relied on the publication of print-quality engravings that could be colored, cut out, and literally pasted onto armoires, cabinets, chests, etc., and finally brushed over with a clear natural resin sandracca varnish to produce a high-gloss finish not unlike lacquerware. Because so many copies of this publication were presumably mined for this intended purpose, completely preserved copies such as this are of the utmost rarity.

The Sheridan Libraries copy contains all 57 plates, including four that were not even recorded in Zatta’s own original 18th century catalogue. Each plate contains two engravings and summary argomenti of the verse cantos they illustrated, amounting to a staggering 228 illustrations in all. This was a book, in short, that was never meant to survive!

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Pank-a-Squith

20. [Board Game]. Pank-a-Squith (Germany: Women’s Social and Political Union, 1909). $1,500 Pank-a-Squith is a pro-women’s suffrage board game in which the goal is to avoid all the pitfalls of suffragette life, such as run-ins with the police or nasty remarks from politicians, in order to storm the House of Commons and get “Votes for Women!”

The game’s title refers to the names of two prominent individuals in the British suffrage conversation, the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. The game dates to 1909 and was meant to be a novel form of advocacy for the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Even the colors of the WSPU—purple, green, and white—are incorporated into the design of the board.

And what a board it is! The board is illustrated with scenes that evoke the life of a suffragette.

You see her breaking the windows of the Home Office, proudly marching in parades, starting a hunger strike, and zipping about town in an automobile decked out with suffrage flags!

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Important early Maryland Manuscript

21. Maryland Governor John Seymour, Manuscript letter, signed, from Seymour to one of the lords of trade, discussing issues in the colony, including Penn vs. Baltimore boundary lines and slavery in Maryland (Maryland, March 10, 1709). 6 pp. on folded folio sheets. $2,000 A wonderful complement to our ever-growing Sheridan Libraries rare Marylandia and Hackerman map collection, this noteworthy and lengthy manuscript letter from John Seymour, Governor of the Maryland Colony from 1704 to 1709, to one of the English Lords of Trade, details the early tumult in the colony. It touches on the conflicting attitudes of Catholics and Protestants, and discusses the developing border dispute between William Penn and Lord Baltimore: “My Lord I should be glad to have his Majesty’s Command about running the Northern Lyne of this Province … the Borders in both Provinces being hardly restrained from committing violence on each other… in the mean tyme take the best Care I can to prevent it.”

Seymour closes the letter with a notably early and rare mention of slaves: “Having in my last to the Lords of Trade sent them a general account of all Negro Slaves imported into this Province Since the year 1698… the Royall African Company have not imported any.” Ready for deciphering and research by a graduate student or advanced undergrad.

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Picture Story of Mu Lan (Chinese Silk Painting)

22. Accordion book bound in Asian style (China: n.p., 1920). Near fine. Hardcover. 8vo. Brown silk cloth boards, lettering panel on the upper board. $1,250 Title page in Chinese and English followed by 10 sets of two pages, the right hand page with the story of Mu Lan in Chinese and English, and the left hand with a painting on silk illustrating the story. The silk paintings are bright and not faded, showing vibrant pigmentation, and artistically executed with lovely shading effects.

This is the story of the young woman who enlisted in the army in place of her father, keeping her sex concealed until the end, when she was rewarded for her courageous acts. Basis for the movie Mulan by Disney.

The corners and edges of the boards are worn in places, but the text block is in fine condition.