Browse

A rare and ingenious portable analog computer or slide rule for computing and converting weights and measures to and from the metric system. Includes feet, yards, leagues, perches, muids (a wine measure), pints, setiers, ounces and pounds, tuns, stères. Cards 28-30 are for calculating interest and final card is a blank table. An notice placed in the British journal The Engineer advertised it as ‘A translucid cylindric apparatus for bringing the former weights and measures into those of the present decimal system most easily and precisely and vice versa’. Amédée Barthélmy-Doriat Maurand registered his invention with the Paris prefecture on 5 September 1863 giving his address as 57 rue Mouffetard. An explanatory booklet of 31 pages was issued (the Bibliothèque nationale holding the only copy recorded in WorldCat).
He made a further registration for a ‘Balançoire à parallelogram’ in 1865.

A rare set of all twenty-four parts of this delightful miniature children’s collection by an artist born in the USSR (in present-day Moldova). Elisabeth Ivanovsky arrived in Belgium in 1932 to complete her art training at the Higher Institute of Decorative Arts in La Cambre. ‘Along with other Russian expatriate artists, she revolutionised the world of children's books in the 1930s in Belgium and its neighbouring countries. Strongly influenced by her Moldovan teachers, the visual artist Sçneer Cogan and Auguste Baillayre, both prominent figures in the art school of her hometown Kishinev, her illustrations were met with criticism from the conservative actors in the Belgian world of children’s books. The disapproval was directed mainly at Ivanovsky’s peculiar use of colour and the lack of a clear line in her drawing style. Supported by some important artists connected to the Higher Institute of Decorative arts, she nevertheless broke through and became highly successful as an illustrator. The support of her teachers at La Cambre was part of the progressive orientation of that institution at the time, particularly towards Russian constructivism. La Cambre was far ahead of comparable institutions in Brussels and Ghent in opening its door to women’ (University of Ghent, Academic Biography).
Issued over several years, complete sets in fine condition are rare. The individual titles comprise:
1. Saint Nicolas 2. Sais-tu compter? 3. Le Lièvre à des oreilles 4. Qui a volé le Nid? 5. Une Poule sur un mur 6. Pauvre Mouche 7. Noel 8. Je sais mon ABC 9. Le petit Chasseur à ̀bon coeur 10. Et Moi de m’encourir 11. La Princesse des roses 12. Chantons ensemble 13. Devinettes d’A 14. Les Cloches de pâques 15. Jean de la Lune 16. La Charbonnier est roi chez lui 17. Saint George et le dragon 18. L’Alouette et le pinson 19. La courte Paille 20. Le Singe et le chat sauvage 21. Au Pays bleu des étoiles 22. La Légende du Grand Saint Hubert 23. Le Valet de coeur 24. Le Monde à l’envers. WorldCat lists US sets at Princeton and University of Minnesota, both of the first 18 volumes only. The NYPL set is apparently of 17 parts only.

Presentation copy, inscribed by the artist to the pianist Madeleine d’Aleman (Madame Jean D’Aleman, 1890-1962, an acquaintance and interpreter of Ravel). Rimsky-Korsakov’s seminal one-act ballet Schéhérazade (1910) produced by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, featuring choreography by Michel Fokine and designs by Léon Bakst heralded the new era of modernism in music, dance and design. The production featured Ida Rubinstein as Zobeide and Vaslav Nijinsky as the Golden Slave. While Bakst’s designs conveyed the sumptuous exoticism of the production, Dunoyer de Segonzac’s spontaneous drawings perhaps better captured the revolution in movement expressed by Diaghilev’s dancers. His drawings were issued in at least two forms by François Bernourd, one (as here) titled Vingt-quatre dessins sur Schéhérazade and another Vingt-six dessins sur Schéhérazade (Ballet Russe) carrying his ‘La Belle ́Édition’ imprint. Evidently printed in very small numbers, both are scarce.
Dunoyer de Segonzac’s first submission to the Salon d’Automne was in 1908, while in the next year he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, and for the next several years he exhibited regularly at both. In the early 1910s he became a member of Section d’Or and was one of the modernists included in the Armory Show that opened in New York in 1913, with subsequent showings in Chicago and Boston. WorldCat: Library of Congress and Harvard only in US.

First edition of Shoenberg’s first exposition of his twelve-tone musical system, which would revolutionise western music in the twentieth century and beyond. Together with the broader techniques of Serialism championed by Shoenberg, the twelve-tone system became one of the pillars of cultural Modernism. ‘Schoenberg’s revolutionary musical theories were first fully outlined in A new twelve-note notation published in the avant-garde journal Ansbruch. It would be difficult to improve on the summary of modern opinion of Schoenberg given by Mr. Humphrey Searle in Grove’s Dictionary of Music (5th ed., 1954): Whatever may be the verdict of history in Schoenberg’s works, he writes, there is no doubt that they have revolutionized the whole of twentieth century music. Without them the free use of all the notes of the chromatic scale, which every composer today accepts as a matter of course, would have been impossible, or at any rate considerably delayed. One has only to add to this Schoenberg’s innovations in form and instrumentation to see that his historical importance cannot be rated too highly’ (Printing and the Mind of Man 414). WordCat locates two copies: one at Harvard is of the journal issue (as here) while another, at Bates College, is an offprint. We have located no other example of an offprint issue in an anglophone library.

First edition of this survey of the fundamental changes made to female education in France between 1879 and 1887, France fundamentally reformed female education, moving from Catholic-dominated, basic instruction to a state-run, secular, and more academic system. Legislation such as the 1880 so-called Camille Sée law, established the first public secondary schools for girls (lycées) to produce educated ‘republican mothers,’ focusing on academic study rather than just needlework. The author was deputy director of the French ministry of public education. He dedicates the book to Camille Sée.

First edition of this rare practical programme for female secondary education. The so-called Duruy Reforms of 1865 instituted a new programme of secondary instruction geared towards practical careers in business and administration. While they also reformed primary education for girls, they did little for their secondary education, as noted in the foreword here by Madame Charles Sauvestre, instutrice. She concludes that the private initiatives are the only way of circumventing this, and the Guide pratique pour les écoles professionnelles de jeunes filles is a brief but complete guide to the practicalities and particularities of secondary schools for girls, starting with budget estimates for their foundation and maintenance. Much of detail is provided by the tables, which include three-year curricula with breakdowns of the necessary subjects, encompassing, letters, sciences, arts, and practical studies. ‘Letters’ comprise literacy in French and other living languages (not Latin), as well as history, geography, cosmography, domestic economy and ethics (religion is absent). ‘Sciences’ include mathematics (especially mental and commercial arithmetic), accounting, botany, zoology and mineralogy. ‘Arts’ include writing, drawing, geometry, ornament, industrial drawing, engraving, painting on porcelain and singing (formal music and panel painting notably absent). ‘Practical studies’ include couture (dressmaking), embroidery, tapestry, artificial flowers, lacemaking and paper crafts. Each of these subjects is broken down further into specific lessons with their place in a termly and weekly timetable divided into hours. A final chapters gives recommendations for the organisation of a library and a list of recommended books and authors. WorldCat: Library of Congress only outside Europe.

First edition, presentation copy, arguing for the proper provision of university education for women. The author surveys recent developments around the world, notably in the United States, where the women’s education movement has been most marked (and citing the Philadelphia medical school and the University of Michigan as examples) and in Great Britain (citing University College, London, Girton and Somerville Colleges at Cambridge and Oxford respectively). WorldCat locates a single copy: Università Bocconi, Milan.

First edition of one of the celebrated French clairvoyant’s earliest and rarest works, in which she reported an angelic appearance at Louis XVI’s tomb and revealed the contents of a tablet of prophecies for the era of the Restoration of the French monarchy. Like Le Normand’s later works it is couched in terms of dreams, predictions and angelic interventions. Marie-Anne Le Normand (1772–1843) was a celebrated (but also notorious) clairvoyant. Famed throughout Europe for her exclusive clientele, she popularised cartomancy and spawned an enormous wave of imitators. At the height of her career she claimed to have advised the likes of Robespierre, Talleyrand, Metternich, the Empress Josephine and the Russian Emperor Alexander; others argued that the whole thing was a sham, and she was frequently arrested, spending several weeks in prison. She is perhaps best remembered today for the cartomancy tarot decks named after her (’Lenormand cards’).
Le Normand was not only successful as a clairvoyant, but as a businesswoman, publisher and bookseller, with most of her works carrying her own imprint (as here) and sold at her shop in the rue de Tournon. At this early date she evidently operated her own press, with the half-title giving an address in nearby rue de Seine. Later works were generally printed for her by other presses. Caillet 6515. WorldCat: British Library only. While there are several copies in French libraries it is apparently absent from the Bibliothèque nationale. Arbour, Dictionnaire des femmes libraires en France, p. 343.

First edition of Le Norman’s predictions issued in the wake of the July Revolution of 1830 and the restoration of the monarchy under Louis Philippe, events welcomed by Le Normand, who saw the ghost of Louis XVI as her protector. Like her previous collections, it consists of accounts of her ‘visions intuitives’ and ‘Révélations politiques, symboliques, prophètiques, somnambulismes etc’. Throughout the nineteenth century, writers and pamphleteers repeated that tale of the ‘Little Red Man’ purported to be from an old folk tale dating back to the creation of the Tuileries Palace (1564) in which Le Petit Homme Rouge (a genie, or ghost) had appeared to the kings and queens living in the palace on the eve of great events, from Catherine de Medici to Napoleon. Here Le Normand uses him to recount the counsel given to Napoleon at Malmaison in 1793, that France could never be a democracy. Chapter five is set at the Scottish royal palace of Holyrood where the deposed Charles X had lived between 1796-1803
The title verso has an advert for eleven works hitherto published and still marketed by Le Normand at her shop in rue de Torunon, all priced, together with three fothcoming works ‘sous presse’ and a collected works in 10 volumes. Caillet 6514 (’Ouvrage peu commun’).

First edition of this very rare early satire on fashionable French hairstyles (’carcassières’), with four engraved plates showing forty-four styles, including ‘à la belle Fleur’, ‘à la Papillon’, ‘à la Juive’, ‘à la Pompadour’, ‘à la Sultane’, ‘à l’Esclavage’ and ‘à la Parisienne’. It is an especially early catalogue, predating by two years the celebrated Art de la coiffure des dames françaises by celebrity hairdresser, Legros de Rumigny.
Though the illustrations depict genuine hairstyles, the text reveals itself as a bitter satire on the loss of French prestige after the Treaty of Paris, in which France lost almost all its North American territories. It seems to suggest that despite all this, France can still hold its head high in terms of its pre-eminence in fashion. Marchand ironically proposes a wall built along the length of the St Lawrence river, so that all the young Iroquoises can be crimped only by the French. Appended is a hair-themed comedy, La Fille degoutée which Gay called ‘assez libre’. The book had the distinction of being placed on the Index of prohibited books in the Austro-Hungarian empire (the Catalogus librorum a commissione aulica prohibitorum issued by Court Committee of book censorship in Vienna. Cohen-De Ricci 346 (noting the Duke of Sussex copy in the Ferdinand Rothschild collection). WorldCat lists no copies outside Europe.

An extremely rare romantic novel with Gothic overtones set on the island of Saint-Domingue (Haiti). Botched assassinations, battles with crocodiles, an encounter with an escaped slave, and the exorcism of a lecherous Jacobin disguised as a ghost punctuate this curious tale. The book is illustrated with two wood engraved frontispieces imitating those of the original edition (in which they were copper engravings by Bovinet after Binet) depicting the spectral lover and the heroine narrowly escaping being devoured by a crocodile. This is probably the second edition (the original was published by Le Prieur in 1798). Ménegault (or Ménegaud) de Gentilly (c 1770- c 1830) authored several novels in the same vein. cf. Gay I, 456 for the original edition.

A spectacular facsimile edition of one of the most celebrated books of hours of the fifteenth century, the illumination by Jean Bourdichon reproduced in superb chromolithography by Léon Curmer. This copy additionally contains twelve sumptuous illuminated calendar borders as copied in gouache, watercolour and gold by Curmer’s anonymous copyist, identifiable through his signatures in this copy as the master facsimilist, Christian Schultz (1817-1883). His twelve superb illuminations show the occupations of the twelve months, including winter fireside dining, pruning, a garden, reaping, harvesting, threshing, grape treading, ploughing and sowing, feeding hogs and killing swine.
This was one of Curmer’s most ambitious publications, requiring painstaking copying from the original manuscript kept in the French Bibliothèque nationale. His methods are not well understood, but each leaf was first copied in gouache by skilled facsimilists who were almost never credited in the final publication. This copy, with the twelve calendar miniatures in gouache allows us to identify Christian Schultz as at least one (if not the only) copyist for this project, with several bearing his minute signature, not included in the final corresponding chromolithograph. He is perhaps better known for his subsequent work for the British Arundel Society, copying Flemish masterpieces such as the Ghent Altarpiece for their important and popular facsimiles. He had been born in Kassel in 1817, was trained in Germany as a draughtsman and studied lithography in Munich (Ledger, A Study of the Arundel Society 1848-1897, Oxford DPhil, 1978) In his work for the Arundel Society he made his copies by painting over photographic images of the work, and it is interesting to speculate how he created the Anne of Brittany facsimiles. Certainly, the whole book had been photographed (and reproduced in the text volume) but his finished miniatures are on fine but not transparent paper, and show no sign of preliminary markings. It would be a worthwhile project in the developing study of nineteenth-century manuscript facsimiles to compare digitised samples with both the monochrome photographs and original gouache miniatures in this copy.
Illustration attributed to Jean Poyet until 1868 when newly discovered documents proved it the work of Jean Bourdichon. Cf. Bourdichon, J. Les Heures d'Anne de Bretagne. Paris, 1946

Presumed first or sole edition of this bilingual English-Japanese picture book showing the costumes of men and women of the various ranks of orders of Japanese society. It includes aristocratic and military subjects, as well as servants, scholars, labourers and craftspeople. The English preface states ‘These books are not only designed to please children, but to show the manners and customs of the ancient and modern people of Nippon. The fine illustrations afford an important aid in this respect. It is through the eye that understanding itself is most quickly reached’.
It was printed by the Poole Women’s College in Osaka. Arthur William Poole, after whom the Osaka Women’s School was renamed in 1890, was the first Anglican Bishop of Japan. The school had been founded as the Church Missionary Society school and its head teacher from 1890 to 1928 was the Durham-born missionary educator, Katherine Tristram, one of the early female graduates of the University of London. When she was appointed ‘there were at the school two other British women apart from Tristram, as well as eight Japanese teachers, including four women, and there were forty-nine pupils, of whom twenty-three were Christians’ (Oxford DNB).

The first recognition of the United States by a foreign power was an unexpected event on the Dutch West Indian island of Sint Eustatius --- in the form of a cannon salute fired on 16 November 1776 from the island’s Fort Orange in response to the salute of the American ship Andrew Doria. Taking place just a few months after the United States Declaration of Independence, it is remembered in American history as ‘The First Salute’. A major slave colony and trading hub, Sint Eustatius was used by the Americans during the Revolution as a staging post for importing arms and other goods, in defiance of British embargoes. Guns and gunpowder were exchanged for colonial goods such as sugar and cotton. This illicit trade, and the refusal of Dutch authorities to take action against it, naturally angered Great Britain, as it violated prior Anglo-Dutch treaties. On 16 November 1776, the American Andrew Doria visited the harbour of Sint Eustatius to load weapons and ammunition. It was the first American ship flying the new American flag (the Continental Union Flag) to enter the harbour. Governor Johannes de Graaff ordered that the ship be received with full honours, and after the Andrew Doria fired a salute in greeting, he commanded that it be returned with salutes from Fort Orange. Once docked, he hosted a celebration for the captain and invited all Americans on the island. The Americans accepted the salute as the first recognition of the United States by a foreign power.
The event created a diplomatic storm, with strenuous protest coming from Great Britain, who sent their ambassador General Joseph Yorke with a memorandum of complaint to the Dutch States General. The present document is the official Dutch record of the events at Sint Eustace and their response to Yorke and the British government. This resolution is one of the earliest printed governmental acknowledgments in Europe that an American-flagged vessel had received the salute from a foreign power. The first paragraphs recount the event briefly, before the Estates addressed the British grievances in conciliatory terms, insisting that a full enquiry would take place and that governor De Graaf would be summoned in person to make a full account of his extions. Their response was transmitted to the British and recorded in full in the Annual Register for 1777 (p. 291). In the event, Anglo-Dutch relations were to deteriorate beyond repair, to the extent that in 1780 the British recaptured the island from the Dutch, having declared war (The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War).
Like other Extracts from the Estates General this is a separately-issued report, almost certainly printed at the Hague. It was designed to be folded into octavo size for distributuon, with a printed title panel facing outward for convenient identification and filing. WorldCat lists the KB Netherlands copy only.

A splendid bibliophilic caricature. ‘The bouquiniste in pleasure’ shows a crouching bookseller, his sleeves made of reused book-covers, offering a variety of books to a voracious bibliophile, whose pockets are already stuffed with treasures. The print is signed simply ‘XX’ but is attributed to Auger by the Bibliographie de France of 1817. Adrien-Victor Auger (1787-1854) had been a student of David, he exhibited at the Salons of 1810, 1824 and 1834 and satirised fashionable Paris society through his lively engraved and lithographed prints.

’One of the most elaborate jokes ever perpetuated in the form of a University magazine’ (Marillier). The first two parts (of three) of this exceptionally rare satirical magazine issued in 1870 on the occasion of the passing of the Universities Test Acts. These acts abolished religious ‘Tests’ and for the first time allowed Roman Catholics, non-conformists and non-Christians to take up professorships, fellowships, studentships and other lay offices at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham.
Edited pseudonymously by ‘Hadji Seivad and a talented Heather Staff’, the magazine combined familiar university in-jokes with a satirical reflection of popular opinion. Carrying a publication date twenty years after the fact it pretended to reflect on changes brought about by this landmark cultural legislation.
‘Twenty short years ago the waters of education flowed in that one narrow channel that men called Christianity. The day has come when the professors of an effete and obsolete faith have dwindled to a mere handful, and the time may not be far distant when even these shall pass away from among us - when every man shall be to himself his own measure, his own guide, and his own faith. We need only point, to show that we do not boast unmeasuredly, to the grand Mussulman foundation that has taken the place of the worn-out Christian Asylum of Trinity College - to the settlement of Red Indians who occupy Downing College - to the Aborigines of Queens’ - the Cossacks of Magdalen - the Fire-eaters of Sidney, and similar foundations, in proof of the Cosmopolitan character that we have now assumed. Hand in hand with this advance has gone the Sister scheme of FEMALE EDUCATION...’
A recent reading sees through the satire and comments: ‘Prophesying over the arrival of non-white, non-Christian students “twenty short years” ahead, this three-issue journal (1870–1871) was used to denounce national, racial, religious and gender diversity as a threat to the British character of Cambridge. The first issue portrayed a cosmopolitan Cambridge crew that would win a fictional interuniversity regatta against an Oxford team despite their blatant incompetence (Loïc Folton, ‘Rowing as a Site of Cross-Cultural Encounters: South-Asian Students at Oxbridge, 1870s-1940s’ (Global Histories, Vol. 9, No. 1, November 2023, pp. 23-40.) Marillier, Harry Currie, University Magazines and their Makers, 1899, p. 35. Worldcat: Cambridge (Trinity) and Delaware only (both complete in three issues). LibraryHub adds copies at the UL and St John’s, Cambridge.

Despite his former military success in service in the American and French Revolutionary wars Custine was found guilty of treason by a majority vote of the Revolutionary Tribunal on 27 August, and guillotined the following day. ‘Custine (an ex-noble) was guillotined on 28 Aug. (in spite of his previous victories), accused of having treacherously caused the fall of Frankfort, Condé, Valenciennes, and Mayence. According to the English newspapers, he “kissed the crucifix, embraced his confessor... and at last was brought to the guillotine by force”’ (BM Satires).
‘Custine stands on the scaffold beside the guillotine (left). Four ragged ruffians are about to bind him to the plank on which he is to lie; one says, “By Gar so we will serve all de Generals who do not conquer de whole World, and give them de Libertè [sic]”. Custine says, “Pardon me Heaven for having been leagued with such a set of Blood hounds”. A stout soldier pushes a weeping priest, who says “Let us Pray”, down the steps (right) which lead up to the scaffold, saying, “Go to de diable & Your Prayers both”. Below (right) stand republican soldiers with fixed bayonets much caricatured. On the extreme left a man kneels at the guillotine holding his hat in place of the usual basket; he says, “Begar I will have a Drink of de blood.” BM Satires, 8340; De Vinck 6176; Krumbhaar 785.

‘Down, down, to Hell & say A Female Arm has made one bold Attempt to free her Country’ reads the speech emerging from Charlotte Corday’s mouth as she holds a bloodied dagger, just withdrawn from the body of Marat, who has fallen to the ground. The subtitle reads: ‘Who [Corday], while he [Marat] was villifying some of the more moderate men in the Convention and asserting that they should lose their heads stabed [sic] him saying, Villain thy death shall precede theirs.’ Charlotte Corday was condemned to the guillotine for the murder of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat. Aged just 25 at her death, she was later nicknamed l’ange de l’assassinat (the Angel of Assassination) for her actions and was posthumously revered by Royalists for her stand against the injustices of the era of the Terror.
News of Marat’s assassination (on 13 July), without details, reached London on 22 July making this the earliest dated British print to depict her. Several later prints, including another by Gillray, depicted her trial and execution. BM Satires 8336; De Vinck 5298; Krumbhaar 1077.

First fully illustrated edition of the most popular German fairy tale books of the nineteenth century. This edition follows the first edition of the previous year which was illustrated with just a wood engraved frontispiece. Deutsches Märchenbuch contains eighty-eight tales, plus Bechstein’s introduction and an allegory, Des Märechens Geburt (The Birth of the Fairy Tale) in which two bored children are brought a gift in the form of an egg (the fairy tale) by a bird called Fantasy. The allegory was dropped in most of the many later editions. Many of the tales are derived from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen, though Bechstein’s collection came to far exceed theirs in popularity.
Several of the steel engraved plates are signed ‘Schurig fec.’ (perhaps Karl Wilhelm Schurig?) and ‘G. Alboth sc.’, others are signed ‘Brennäuser fecit.’ (i.e. Andreas Wolfgang Brennhäuser). They are delightful miniatures in high romantic style with decorative captions and ornaments with gothic details. They depict: Des kleinen Hirten Glückstraum (The little Shepherd’s Dream of Happiness); Das tapfere Schneiderlein (The brave little Tailor); Hensel und Grethel (Hansel and Gretel); Staar und Badewän[n]elein (The Starling and the little Bathtub); Hans im Glücke (Hans in Luck); Tischlein deck dich, Essel streck Dich, Knüppel aus dem Sack (he Wishing-Table, The Golden-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack); Schneeweisschen (Snow White); Dornen-Röschen (Sleeping Beauty); Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) and Helene. From the edition of 1853 (the twelfth) the current illustrations were replaced by those by Ludwig Richter.

A scarce American edition of this abridgment of Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres (London and Edinburgh, 1783). One of the most widely published schoolbooks in early nineteenth-century America, individual imprints can be surprisingly scarce, as with this Northampton issue. The contemporary American binding bears impressions of five different binders’ roll tools, presumably made as trials on a portion of sheepskin before it was reused for a binding. Shaw & Shoemaker 43383.