A Census of Ladies in My Library

These ladies in my library are an enchanting lot.
There is not a one I would not like to have known.
Norman H. Strouse, 1966

In 1966, Ellen Shaffer, Rare Book Librarian of the Free Library of Philadelphia, became the first women to hold the office of President of the Manuscript Society.  And she invited her long-time friend, the distinguished book collector, Norman H. Strouse, to deliver the talk at the society's annual meeting.  "Ladies in My Library" was the title of his talk.

"Ladies in My Library" was also the title of the talk that Norman Strouse gave at the meeting of the Philobiblon Club on November 21, 1967:   "An Evening in Honor of Miss Mabel Zahn," the renowned bookseller of Sessler's Bookstore in Philadelphia.

And the following year, from September 3rd to November 17th, the Free Library of Philadelphia held an exhibition by the same title:  Ladies in My Library: Books and Letters From the Collection of Norman H. Strouse.

In my library, I have the typescript of Norman Strouse's talk before the Manuscript Society, which I recently acquired from Oak Knoll Books.  And I have two copies of the catalog of the exhibition at the Free Library of Philadelphia.  The cataloger of the exhibition suggested that other collectors might "enjoy making a census of their feminine representatives and comparing them with those of Mr. Strouse."


A Census of Ladies in My Library

While I enjoyed making a census of ladies in my library, my motley collection of books and letters is no match for the admirable display of fine bindings, not to mention letters literally from First Ladies, in Mr. Strouse's library.  But surprisingly, there are four ladies in my library who were ladies in Norman Strouse's library!

NOTE:  Many of the ladies in my library made names for themselves in more than one field.  But for simplicity's  sake, I will only list them in one category.


Women As Book Collectors

Estelle Doheny

Estelle Doheny (1875-1958) is one of the ladies in my library. And she was one of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library. She gave a portion of her library to St. Mary's Seminary in 1954, which included two copies of  Trees and Other Poems.   These copies  were part of lot number 371 of the Christie's Sale of the Estelle Doheny Collection held on Dec. 14, 2001.

The statement on the listings below: "First appearance of Kilmer's beloved poem," is incorrect. The poem first appeared in the August 1913 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.

Mary Hyde

Mary Hyde (1912-2003) is one of the ladies in my library. And she was one of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library.  Norman Strouse called her "The First Lady of Books" because of her Boswell-Johnson collection at the Four Oaks Library.   And in 1984 Mary Hyde became a lady of nobility, "Lady Eccles," when she married David, Viscount Eccles.

Four Oaks Farm and Four Oaks Library were the first books I acquired for my Mary Hyde collection.  At last count, I have over 135 books either by her, about her, or formerly owned by her.  And here is the listing of "The Beginning of the Collection" from my old webtv website:

Mrs. Piozzi

Mrs. Piozzi (1741-1821), also known as Hester Lynch Thrale, is one of the ladies in my library. I have a copy of the catalogue of her library, her anecdotes in Johnsoniana, and the books that Mary Hyde wrote about her. I have yet to read the marginal comments she wrote in Boswell's Life of Johnson but am looking forward to reading them when I'm old and grey. . . .

Alida Roochvarg

Alida Roochvarg (1922-1993) is one of the ladies in my library.  She collected  books about books for almost forty years (my area of expertise), and then decided that "the time had come to think of sending the collection out into the world."  The author and collector, Herman Abromson, claimed Alida Roochvarg as his mentor when both were members of the Long Island Book Collectors. And in the forward to the catalogue of her library, he wrote, "Through her collection, you glimpse a great book lady."


Maureen E. Mulvihill

Maureen E. Mulvihill, scholar and writer, Princeton Research Forum, is one of the ladies in my library. At a Florida Bibliophile Society meeting in October 2011, I had the pleasure of viewing some of her rare books and listening to her presentation,  "The Evolution and Education of a Collector (1980s-): The Mulvihill Collection of Rare and Special Books and Images."

Asta Beckett

Asta Beckett is one of the ladies in my library, and I am "honoured" to have her in my library.  Asta not only collects fine leather books, she makes a living by cleaning, reconditioning, and then selling them to other booklovers.  Here are some of her recent reconditioned bindings.   Norman Strouse would have loved them.



Women As Bookplate Collectors

Lydia M. Poirier

Lydia M. Poirier (1873-1936) is one of the ladies in my library. She was the librarian at the Duluth Public Library in the early 1900s and collected bookplates. She traded bookplates and corresponded with other bookplate collectors, including Wilber Macy Stone. I have nine of her letters in my autograph collection.



Women As Librarians
Ellen Shaffer

Ellen Shaffer (1904-1994) is one of the ladies in my library.  And she was one of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library as well.  She knew Norman Strouse for sixty years, from when she worked at Dawson's bookstore, when she was Rare Book Librarian at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and when she was Strouse's librarian at the Silverado Museum, a museum devoted to Robert Louis Stevenson.

The two letters from Ellen Shaffer displayed above were to the book collector, J. C. Dykes, whom she recognized from her days at Dawson's.  And the presentation to her displayed below is from Mike Harrison, written on her copy of Harrison's book, How to Build a Poor Man's Library.  Ironically, one of Norman Strouse's books was titled How to Build a Poor Man's Morgan Library.

Nancy H. Marshall

Here is the listing of this book from my old webtv website:
Great Libraries by Anthony Hobson, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1970. A great book from a great lady! I bought this book on ebay a few years ago from Nancy H. Marshall,  Retired Dean of University Libraries at the College of William and Mary, and a life-long collector of the many editions of Moore's Night Before Christmas. She is the author of Night Before Christmas, A Descriptive Bibliography of Clement C. Moore's Immortal Poem,  Oak Knoll Books, April, 2002. Here is the link to her website: http://www.nightbeforechristmas.biz/author.htm  

Centered on the book above is Nancy Marshall's business card which she included with a batch of prints of the Koran, a fourth century Greek Bible, royal portraits, and manuscripts and first editions. Her note on the reverse side of the card explains the prints: "Jerry--I had these from an exhibit I did many years ago--perhaps they will be of interest to you". ...like I said...."a great lady" ....and in My Library!


Women As Booksellers

Faith Legg

Faith Legg is one of the ladies in my library. She was the proprietor of The Guildhall Bookroom when I first started collecting books in the late 1980s while stationed in England.  I thought of her when I recently read Joel Silver's article in the Winter 2014 issue of Fine Books & Collections: "Collector and Bookseller:  A Vanishing Relationship?"   Faith Legg was my first mentor in the pleasures of book collecting.  And she taught me well.  When I had depleted her stock of books that were to my liking, she gave me copies of the PBFA membership list so I could find books in other bookstores around the English countryside.

Karen Thomson

Karen Thomson is one of the ladies in my library.  I never met her, but I received five of her exquisite catalogs of books on language while stationed in England in the late 1980s. And I acquired another sixty of her catalogs in 2012.   You can view the covers of  over twenty of her catalogs  in one of my blog posts from last year.

Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern

Leona Rostenberg (1908-2005) and Madeleine Stern (1912-2007) are ladies in my library.  And I have enjoyed reading their adventures in finding, buying, and selling rare books.  They too are dually qualified in "Women as Booksellers" and "Women as Authors."

Sheila Markham

Sheila Markham is one of the ladies in my library. She also qualifies in both "Women as Booksellers" and "Women as Authors.  Her interviews of other booksellers first appeared in the Bookdealer  in 1991.  Her Book of Booksellers: Conversations With the Antiquarian Book Trade was first published in hardback in 2003, and in my well-read  softcover copy in 2007.

Sheila Markham has a sequel to her first book that is due out in the Spring in a limited edition of 500 copies:
A Second Book of Booksellers:  Conversations With the Antiquarian Book Trade.

And this is what the mockup of the cover looks like:

Women As Autograph Sellers
Mary Benjamin

Mary Benjamin (1905-1998)  is one of the ladies in my library.  And she was one of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library.  Mary Benjamin was known  as "The Autograph Lady."  I have 60 issues of The Collector dating back to 1887 when her father, Walter R. Benjamin, first started his autograph business.  The earliest issue I have with his daughter, Mary Benjamin, as part of the company is 1926.  She took over the running of the company in the 1940s and ran it for another 50 years.  Yes.  Mary Benjamin earned her title as "The Autograph Lady."

Women As Bookbinders
Edith Diehl

Edith Diehl (1876-1953) is one of the ladies in my library.  And she was one of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library.  Nine of the ladies in Norman Strouse's library were bookbinders, including his wife.  And of the 82 items listed in the exhibition catalog, 32 of them were fine bindings.

I have one binding by Edith Diehl from her own library, a relatively plain binding displayed below.  Norman Strouse had a binding from her own library as well.

L. Averill Cole

L. Averill Cole (1880-1971) is one of the ladies in my library.  I'm surprised she wasn't included in the Strouse exhibition because she was one of the premiere binders of her day.   The image above shows parts of a letter to the book collector, William F. Gable, thanking him for a vase he gave her, and discussing a book she was binding.   She signs the letter "L. Averill Howland," but mentions that "L. Averill Cole" is still her professional name.

Women As Authors

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is one of the ladies in my library.  While not purposely collecting her,  ten book by and about her now sit on the shelves in my library.

Anne Fadiman

Anne Fadiman is one of the ladies in my library. And yes, I purposely acquired the books she has written. I even have the last issue she edited of The American Scholar.

Agnes Repplier

Agnes Repplier (1855-1950) is one of the ladies in my library.  I have ten of her books of essays in my library, and have enjoyed reading every one of them.  I also have an autograph letter she wrote to the author, Margaret Sutton Hopkins, who wrote under her maiden name, Margaret Sutton Briscoe.

Catherine Dille

Catherine Dille is one of the ladies in my library.  If you ever have a question about George Birkbeck Hill (and I had a few), then Catherine Dille is your woman!

BonSue Brandvik

BonSue Brandvik is one of the ladies in my library. And she is my youngest son's mother-in-law. My wife enjoyed reading her book, and can't wait for the second one.


Women As Editors
Susan F. Rosen

Susan F. Rosen is one of the ladies in my library.  She was the editor of Other People's Books:  Association Copies and the Stories They Tell, The Caxton Club, 2011.  There were 52 stories in all.  Can you imagine editing essays from 52 authors for one book?  No easy task! I was one of the authors,  and my essay went through several revisions.


Women As Loves of Our Lives

Linda Morris

Linda Morris is the love of my life.  She loves reading.  She loves football.  She loves baseball.  And she loves me.   I am blessed.  And do I know it!

Twelve Blogs for Christmas: Contributions to Biblionotes: Chapbooks

Last Christmas I started a custom in which I will post one of Walter Harris's Twelve Contributions to Biblionotes on My Sentimental Library blog. Last year's topic was "Ex-Libris" and this year's topic is "Chapbooks." Both pieces were written in the 1950s.

By now you must be wondering who Walter Harris is and what Biblionotes is. And I have yet to mention bibliomites. To provide background information for you, I posted "About Bibliomites, Biblionotes, and Walter 'Wally' Harris" on my Biblio Researching blog. I recommend you click on the link and read that blog post first. There will be a link at the end of it to return you to this blog post.

Merry Christmas and Enjoy!

To make it easier to read for you, I have printed "Chapbooks" in its entirety below the image of the typescript page.

Chapbooks

      The Chapman or Itinerant Trader is looked upon generally as a product of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century –– a sort of tallyman of the period. This is far from true however as he is referred to in a work published by Wynken de Worde about 1510. This book, a metrical version of the "History of Jacob and his Twelve Sonnes", has the following

           "Now leave we of them and speak we of the CHAPMAN
          That passed over the sea into Egypt Land."

Shakespeare later on has two references, one in Love's Labour's Lost

           "Beauty is bought by judgment of eye
           not uttered by base sale of CHAPMAN'S tongues."

And the other in Troilus and Cressida

           "Fair Diomed, you do as CHAPMEN do,
           Dispraise the thing you desire to buy."

      About the beginning of the sixteenth century there were circulating in France, a large amount of Farces, Tales, Almanachs, etc., consisting of just a few pages lightly stitched together, and carried round the country by itinerant booksellers known as colporteurs: later, publications of a similar nature began to appear in England, but were mostly translations from the French. It seems that the Chapmen were the sole purveyors, the little books being at first called Chapmans – books, which later developed into Chapbooks, and such they were named up to about 1840-1850, when this type of reading was displaced by the periodicals and family journals which had then begun to appear.

      The Chapman, whether he be a wanderer, tramp, or tradesman, toiling with his pack from village to village to lonely farm or wayside cottage, was a welcome figure. He usually carried cheap jewellery, ribbons and laces, and other small items besides books, ballads, and broadsides. Lavron in his "Cries and Habits of London" depicted a Chapman with a tray slung from his shoulders, very similar to those carried by street-traders of today.

     It is uncertain when the term Chapbook first came into use, but probably between 1650 and 1700. They were uninviting looking things crudely printed on bad paper, and decorated more often than not with a lurid coloured frontispiece and villainous woodcuts. Those issued in the seventeenth century dealt mainly with History, Legends, Shipwrecks, and Travel, whilst those that come later covered almost every subject imaginable. For boys there were tales of action and adventure, for the most part luridly sensational; for girls, stories of a rather sentimental domestic nature; and for older people, tales, stories, songs and valentines, pattern books, riddles and jest books, and a series of pious stories redolent with brimstone and Hell-fire. They were adapted to every kind of reader by their great variety and their cheapness, prices usually being one penny, sixpence, and one shilling. Some of the jest books were rather on the spicy side, full of coarse witicisms, but there were shades of humour to suit all classes.

     The historical section had a very wide range, and included many favourites such as Joseph & his Brethren, Fair Rosamund, Charles the Martyr, Guy of Warwick, Sir Richard Whittington, Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, The Conquest of France, Elizabeth and Essex, and a host of others. The mythological, supernatural, and superstitious were well represented, as also were the humourous ones, especially those dealing with Courtship, Marriage, etc. A few of the more amusing in the latter category are "A York Dialogue between Ned and Harry," which gives a description of the courtship and marriage of a tradesman and a chambermaid; "The French King's Wedding or the Royal Frolic , being a pleasant account of the Amorous Intrigues, Comical Courtship and Surprising Marriage Ceremonies of Lewis XIV"; "Taffy's Progress to London: With the Welshman's Catechism", (this has a large woodcut depicting Taffy being pushed along in a wheelbarrow by his wife, with the baby strapped on her back); "Long Meg of Westminster" a story of her life and merry pranks, probably founded on fact; "Joaks upon Joaks, or No Joak like a True Joak together with, The diverting Fancies and Frolicks of Charles 2nd and his three Concubines." The period 1750-1850, seems to have been the most prosperous, for these queer little booklets teemed from the printers. They emanated from most of the larger towns including, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin, York, Birmingham, Worcester and Coventry, whilst smaller places like Paisley, Kilmarnock, Penrith, Aylesbury, Falkirk, Cirencester and others sent out regular if somewhat smaller consignments. London seems to have held the lead, with firms like Cluer and Dicey (the largest of them all), J. Dalton, T. Bland, J. Read, A Hind, Evans, Bettesworth; and in later years, Fairburn, and William Hone. In York was Kendrew; in Newcastle, J. White and Angus & Son; Nottingham, J. Burbage; Coventry, Turner and Morgan. Practically all the Chapbooks were issued anonymously, nor is very much known concerning the persons who executed the woodcuts. Many of the cuts were used for one or more books, as for instance, the cut designed for "Jack and the Giants" is also found in "David and Goliath"; another one represents both Miss Davis and Moll Flanders; yet another serves its purpose in Valentine and Orson and Fortunatus.

      About 1830-1840 this type of reading began to fade away, but whatever may be said of these curious little scraps of literature, they played their part and served their purpose of providing congenial reading at a low price. It is now recognized that a great deal of the social life and habits, tastes and ides of past centuries can be gleaned from the Chapbooks they read. They are getting increasingly scarce, consequently there is a desire to possess these humble little books which are worth many times their small initial price. These fore-runners of the modern thriller, usually depending on sensational details for their appeal, are in common with most publications in paper covers, rarely met with in their original state.

     As a whole, the subject of Chapbooks has never been adequately dealt with, the existing reference books confining themselves to special periods. Mons. Nisard in his "L'Histoire des Livres Populaires ou de la Litterature des Colporteurs", deals very fully with the early French publications, and John Ashton in "Eighteenth Century Chapbooks" has done a wonderful job in producing an amusing and instructive book, which gives a very representative list of these booklets with facsimiles of the woodcuts. Other quite useful works are Halliwell-Phillipps "Notices of Fugitive Tracts and Chap-Books", 1849; and the two volumes issued by Andrew Tuer, "Forgotten Children's Books", and "Children's Books of Yesterday".

     There are collection of Chapbooks in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, but probably the largest collection in the world is at Harvard University Library.

And here is a link to last Christmas's blog post on Ex-Libris.

Andrew Lang and The Property of a Gentleman Who Has Given Up Collecting

I didn't start collecting books until 1985. I was 38 years old and serving my last overseas tour in the United States Air Force before retiring. England was a great place to start collecting books. And I had four years to earn my nom de plume of "moibibliomaniac." So yes, I am partial to English bibliophiles, and to their books. And the 1892 Second Edition of Andrew Lang's The Library was one of the first books about books that I ever read. I devoured Lang's advice about book collecting, as did a bookworm who burrowed two tiny holes through the bottom right-hand margin of some of the pages of the book.

Most people remember Andrew Lang (1844-1912) as the author of the colorful Fairy book series, twelve books in all, beginning with The Blue Fairy Book in 1889. But he was also a bookman, a scholar, a folklorist, and a poet. What he was not –– or so I thought –– was a gentleman who had given up collecting.

The Property of a Gentlemen
Who Has Given Up
Collecting

OH blessed be the cart that takes
Away my books––! my curse, my clog;
Blessèd the auctioneer who makes
Their inefficient catalogue.

Blessèd the purchasers who pay
However little––less were fit;
Blessèd the rooms, the rainy day,
The knock-out and the end of it.

For I am weary of the sport,
That seemed a while agone so sweet,
Of Elzevirs an inch too short,
And first editions––incomplete.

Weary of crests and coats of arms
'Attributed to Padeloup',
The sham Deromes have lost their charms,
The things Le Gascon did not do.

I never read the catalogues
Of rubbish that comes thick as rooks,
But most I loathe the dreary dogs
That write in prose, or worse, on books.

Large paper surely cannot hide
Their grammar, nor excuse their rhyme,
The anecdotes that they provide
Are older than the dawn of time.

Ye bores, of every shape and size,
Who makes a tedium of delight,
Good-bye, the last of my good-byes,
Good-night to all your clan, good-night.

' ' ' ' ' ' ' '

Thus in a sullen fit we swore,
But on mature reflection,
Went on collecting more and more––
And kept our old collection!

I read this poem from the first volume of The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang, edited by Mrs. Lang and published by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1921.

I can relate to this poem because I took steps towards the disposition of my own library after a near-fatal illness last December. And I even wrote about it in my Contemplations of Moibibliomaniac blog last February.

But empty shelves were not for me either.

"Once a collector, always a collector."
Andrew Lang may have coined that phrase himself. At any rate, he used it in "A Bookman's Purgatory," one of the essays published in his 1886 book, Books And Bookmen. And I believed that he just wrote the poem about not collecting anymore in jest –– that he never really stopped collecting.

But I was wrong.

Many of Andrew Lang's poems and essays first appeared in magazines before they were published in books. And the poem, "The Property of a Gentleman Who Has Given Up Collecting," was no exception. It first appeared in the December 1889 issue of The Library: A Magazine of Bibliography and Literature.

If you look closely, you will see that the last stanza about "collecting more and more" was not part of the original poem!

"The Property of a Gentleman Who Has Given Up Collecting" was reprinted in the January 1890 issue of The Bookmart –– again with the last stanza omitted –– and again in an 1890 issue of The Bookworm: An Illustrated Treasury of Old-Time Literature

Did Andrew Lang realy give up collecting?

There is a tell-tale sentence in the Preface to the 1892 Second Edition of The Library in which Lang refers to book collecting in the past tense:

I know I read The Library from cover to cover twenty-eight years ago; but that one sentence did not register in my mind. Perhaps I did not want to remember that Andrew Lang, the man whose book inspired me to collect books, had given up collecting himself –– 'Tis gone! 'Tis gone!

A few words here about The Library. It was first published in 1881 by Macmillan & Co. in London. The Second Edition of The Library was published by Macmillan in 1892 in London and in New York. In addition to the Preface to the Second Edition, a Postscript was added to enlarge the last chapter on illustrated books by Austin Dobson. The other chapters about book collecting remained the same as in the 1881 First Edition.

A few years earlier, in 1886, Andrew Lang gave excuses for why he had given up collecting. They appeared in the Prefatory Note to the 1886 First American Trade Edition of Books and Bookmen. The Prefatory Note, presented in full below, includes the poem, "Ballade of the Real and Ideal:

I read this book almost twenty-five years ago. And, recently, I was completely at a loss as to why I couldn't remember reading this prefatory note. Friends and family used to marvel at my excellent memory! Was I losing it? Actually, no. There is a bibliographical maze surrounding the publication of the different editions of Books And Bookmen. It took me hours to comprehend what happened. And it will take more than a few minutes to explain it.

George J. Coombes published both a large paper limited edition of 100 copies and a First American Trade Edition of Books And Bookmen in New York during the early part of 1886. Longmans, Green and Co. published a large paper limited edition of 100 copies of Books And Bookmen in London in 1886 as well. But Longmans, Green and Co. did not publish the First English Trade Edition until 1887. And it published a Second English Trade Edition of Books And Bookmen in 1887 as well.

I have both the 1886 First American Trade Edition and the 1887 First English Trade Edition, acquiring both shortly after retiring to Florida and becoming a "man of letters" (mailman) for the United States Postal Service.

I read the 1887 First English Trade Edition first because it contained five essays that were not published in the 1886 First American Trade Edition. I should also note that the First English Trade Edition of Books And Bookmen did not contain Andrew Lang's swan-song Prefatory Note.

Contents of the 1st Eng Trade Edition

The First American Trade Edition of Books And Bookmen only contained two essays that were not published in the First English Trade Edition. And, when I read it, I went straight to the Table of Contents, and then to the essays themselves, completely bypassing Lang's Prefatory Note.

Contents of the 1886 1st Am Trade Edition

To confuse the matter even further, the Second English Trade Edition of Books And Bookmen, published the same year as the First English Trade Edition, contains two new essays which replaced the essay about Parish Registers. I recently read the two new essays online.

Contents of the 2nd Eng Trade Edition

I ask you! How could a gentlemen with that much knowledge about books and bookmen give up collecting?

"The Property of a Gentleman Who Has Given Up Collecting" was published at least one more time during Andrew Lang's lifetime; this time in New Collected Rhymes by Andrew Lang, published by Longmans, Green and Co. in 1905. And it contained one new stanza!

It appears that Andrew Lang finally came to his senses and started collecting again sometime during or before 1905. He died July 20, 1912, and his library was put up for auction at Sotheby's on December 5th and 6th of 1912.

I have a small collection of books by and about Andrew Lang, some of which were previously owned by some prominent people. I have yet to acquire a book from Andrew Lang's own library.
But, then again, I am not a gentleman who has given up collecting.