social sciences

Dean’s Rag Book, number 291. A superbly preserved rag book from Dean and Co, who pioneered the rag book for the youngest children in 1903, producing boldly coloured printed calico books designed to be washable and indestructible. The Dean logo show two dogs pulling at a rag book. The pinked edges were designed to minimise fraying, and in this case the copy is unused.

Lots of Things, in addition to its various vocabulary images, includes the memorable verse:

‘A leaf of lettuce, or a bunch
Of carrots is, to rabbits
Far nicer than a costly lunch:
They have such frugal habits.

Pigs on the other hand are crude
And greedy, while their feeding
Is mannerless and even rude;
It shews their lack of breeding’. WorldCat: Auckland (NZ) and Cotsen (Princeton).

A file copy of Dean’s Rag Book no. 324, full of patriotic imagery - a union jack flying on a sandcastle, a shamrock, rose and thistle, a crown and sceptre, a medal, flags, a drum, a toy aeroplane and a soldier. A superbly preserved rag book from Dean and Co, who pioneered the rag book for the youngest children in 1903, producing boldly coloured printed calico books designed to be washable and indestructible. The Dean logo show two dogs pulling at a rag book. The inserted slip lists further numbered titles in 4 series of different sizes, as well as Dean’s rag dolls. The pinked edges were designed to minimise fraying, and in this case the copy is unused. JISC LibraryHub lists a copy at NLS. The Cotsen copy listed by WorldCat at Princeton has the same title but a different series number (228).

First edition of this very rare collection devoted to the street life of Paris, as observed by an imagined flâneur, some thirty years before Baudelaire defined the characteristics of the archetypal literary and aesthetic wanderer. The plates depict various familiar and unfamiliar aspects of Paris life — the title plate depicts the widow Lagarde, a dog and cat groomer, while other plates show browsers at a book stall in the Rue de Grès, walkers in the Luxembourg gardens, female basket carriers at la Halle, various vendors and hawker and fashionable women in the Boulevard de l’Opera. Complete sets are exceptionally rare (the British Museum catalogue lists only four of the series, for example).

Forest was a prolific caricaturist, working alongside both Grandville and Daumier for satirical journals such as La Silhouette and La Caricature. WorldCat lists only the Morgan copy (Michael Sadleir; from the library of Gordon N. Ray). Inventaire du fonds français après 1800, v. VIII, p. 101

An attractive pocket edition of Ségur’s study of the historical condition of women in ancient and modern society (first published in 1802) with a fourth volume containing Ida Saint-Elme’s continuation (first added to Les Femmes in the edition of 1822 with the title De la Condition des femmes sous l’Empire et sous la Restauration). It contains chapters on the Empress Josephine, Princess Charlotte of Wales, Madames de la Lafayette, de Sévigné, du Chatelet, de Graffigny, Riccoboni, de Genli, and de Duras. This complete edition of 1828 is rare.

First edition of these sermons by a French Huguenot emigré pastor in Dublin. The first two sermons are on the subject of religious toleration: ‘Contre l’Intolerance’ and ‘Les justes bornes de la Tolerance’. The Toleration Act had been enacted in Ireland in 1719, granting Dissenters freedom of worship and allowed them to run schools. Caillard argues that not only was intolerance immoral, but irrational and imprudent. ‘It is imprudent since enforcing a set of beliefs undermines society: it leads groups to take a defensive stance against other groups, destroying public order. It is irrational since, while coercion can lead people to accept a belief outwardly, it cannot alter their inner convictions. It is immoral because coercion’s inability to change inner beliefs means it can only breed lies and hypocrisy, and because individuals have the right to self-determination. However this toleration was not to be extended to Catholics. The sermon was preached on 5th November, commemorating the failure of the Gunpowder Plot. In a later sermon, Caillard established the limits of toleration. While still endorsing the individual right to self-determination, Caillard argues there is a limitation on religious freedom: that such freedom not be harmful to religion in general or society as a whole.’ (Toleration in 18th century Ireland, Irish Philosophy.com)

The book includes a subscriber’s list of men and women, both of Irish and French extraction. Among them is the name of moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson, then resident in Dublin. It is not difficult to trace a connection between Caillard’s arguments for tolerance based on circumstances and Hutcheson’s theories of moral rights, including the right to free conscience — which were later to have a profound influence on both the French and American constitutions. Outside Europe we find copies at Illinois, Charleston and Penn only.

An intriguing homemade book created by an aspiring young writer, copying extracts from a popular juvenile title, Marmaduke Multiply, published in 1817 and designed to teach multiplication with engaging illustrations. In this version, a Francis (or possibly Frances) Taylor has copied extracts from the book using different hands, without much thought to order. Some are captioned ‘with my left hand’, another ‘half with my right hand’ as though he or she were deciding which was the best hand, or simply trying writing and drawing with an unfamiliar hand. Given the general insistence on right hand writing in the period it is an unusual survival, albeit rudimentary, an evidence of active learning activities in the acquisition of early literacy.

First edition of this rare manual for Giacometti’s evolution of the game of chess Il Giuoco della guerra which uses a board game format to teach the principles of military strategy, tactics, and fortification. It belongs to a genre of military games that developed in Europe during the eighteenth century — precursors to the Prussian Kriegsspiel and of modern board-based wargames. The pieces had names such as ‘generals’, ‘cannons’, ‘mortars’ and fortresses’. The engraved plate, dedicated by Pietro Remondini to the Cavaliere Brancaleone shows the field of battle, with double chess boards, separated by a symbolic river, all within an elaborate classical border of panelled friezes. The engraved frontispiece shows two allegorical female figures representing strategic warfare and honour or victory), flanking a large shield bearing a crowned eagle and a plinth bearing the double-headed image of Janus is behind.
It was reprinted several times and translated into French. WorldCat: Cleveland Public Library, Bodley, Dutch National Library only.

First edition with the Lydis illustrations. One of a total edition of 131 copies, this one of the 115 on papier de Rives). The illustrations, many in the style of illuminated miniatures or icons are transformed through brilliant pochoir colouring executed in the workshop of master colourist Jean Saude, reproducing the artist’s signature on each.
These verse litanies, after the traditional catholic Marian litany, are entirely the creation of Armand Godoy and were first published (unillustrated) in 1930. Symbolist poet Godoy was born in Havana in 1880 and spent the first part of his life in Cuba and Peru, working in banking and the tobacco trade, before emigrating to France in 1919 with the express intention of becoming a poet ‘dans la langue de Baudelaire’. Much influenced by the Parnassians and the symbolists he was also a major collector of books, manuscripts and prints, amassing an unrivalled collection of Baudelaireiana. Among his numerous small-scale published works in French is his translation of Poe’s Raven — Le Corbeau d’Edgar Poe (Émile-Paul frères, 1929, with a frontispiece by Lydis).

First edition of the so-called Combination Act, which prohibited trade unions and collective bargaining by British workers. Though separately published with a general title for a complete sitting of Parliament, individual Acts of Parliament were paginated to be bound together in yearly volumes hence the pagination 654-672 here.

First edition of the last Witchcraft Act, repealing the former acts of Elizabeth I and James I (and Mary of Scotland) against witchcraft, and declaring magic, witchcraft and sorcery fraudulent. The last person to be legally executed for witchcraft was the Scottish woman Janet Horne in 1727, but legal sentiment had by then absorbed Enlightenment thinking and rational explanation of all forms of magic. Punishment by death was replaced in the 1735 act by imprisonment of up to one year only, on the basis that witchcraft could no longer be considered a crime, merely a nuisance.

In this volume, formerly belonging to the council of the City of Canterbury (Kent), it is interesting to find an old (perhaps early nineteenth-century) paper scrap marking the Witchcraft Act among the many other acts contained in the volume, together with a marginal pencil marking beside the shoulder note ‘Persons pretending to exercise Witchcraft, tell Fortunes, or by crafty Science to discover stolen Goods’.

Rare first edition of the memoirs of the great circus performer Jules Léotard, pioneer of the flying trapeze who inspired the 1867 song ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’. A second edition of his Mémoires appeared in the same year, with the same pagination, but giving ‘deuxième édition’ on the title — almost all library copies appear to be of this later edition. The superb comic lithograph by Durandeau shows Léotard trapezing over the city of Paris, while adoring female fans cry out to him from the rooftops (some flying heart-shaped kites). With Blondin, Léotard was one of the first great celebrities of the circus, when he visited London in 1861, Charles Dickens wrote: ‘I have been beguiled into seeing Léotard, and it is at once the most fearful and most graceful thing I have ever seen.’ (Letter to Macready, June 11, 1861).

First edition of a rare pamphlet issued in the wake of the decree issued by the police prefect Claude Mangin on April 14, 1830, prohibiting prostitutes ‘from appearing, at any time and under any pretext, in the passages, in public gardens and on the boulevards’ and ordering them to engage in prostitution only in licensed brothels. This measure lasted only three months, but was enough for its opponents to publish dozens of pamphlets. All these occasional pieces are extremely rare, including this one.

Purporting to be the work of a Matrone, jurisconsulte de ces dames this enquiry and petition is satirical in tone, and yet still gives voice to the women it represents, by outlining in detail how Mangin’s heavy-handed decree would effect them at various levels, pointing out the impossibility of enclosing the thousands of Parisian filles de joie in licenses houses. The frontispiece, which has been attributed to Henri Monnier, shows a discussion among the women debating the pour et contre of the measures, presided over by the matron. It is captioned ‘Comité central et de Sabbat des Donzelles de Paris’, likening it to a ‘sabbath’ of witches. WorldCat lists copies at the Bn, Cleveland Public Library and Bryn Mawr College only.

First edition. A near pristine file copy of this French language example of an early rag book from Dean and Co, who pioneered the rag book for the youngest children in 1903, producing boldly coloured printed calico books designed to be washable and indestructible — the Dean logo shows two dogs pulling at a rag book, and the inserted advert leaf states that children can carry the book in their mouths without danger ( ‘Les couleurs employées dans ces livres sont fortement fixés. Les enfants peuvent les porter à la bouche sans aucun danger. Ces livres peuvent être lavé’). Qu’est cela? is a simple vocabulary book, naming fifty familiar objects including toys (dolls, a cup-and-ball, a paintbox, a toy train, a jack-in-the box, a kite and a rocking horse) as well as a rifle, a sword, a drum and an automobile. No library copies found in WorldCat or JISC LibraryHub.

A file copy from Dean and Co, who pioneered the rag book for the youngest children in 1903, producing boldly coloured printed calico books designed to be washable and indestructible — the Dean logo shows two dogs pulling at a rag book. It illustrates twenty-four animals, including the dog on the cover, as well as butterflies, a giraffe, a camel, a parrot, a kangaroo, three monkeys and a turkey, all captioned in French. The pinked edges were designed to minimise fraying, and in this case the copy is unused. No library copies found in WorldCat or JISC LibraryHub.

First edition of a detailed treatise on household management for young women, presented in epistolary form. It was to become very popular, running to several editions by the middle of the century, but the first edition is rare. Starting by establishing the principles of order and economy it proceeds to give advice on a suitable house, its furnishing (with chapters on the dining room, salon, bedrooms for both madame and monsieur, and kitchen). There is information on the linen provision and washing, and choice of fabrics, as well as on personal dress. Two of the longer chapters consider the appointment and operation of the wine cellar (over which the mistress of the house had control) and the kitchen, the latter with a selection of useful recipes and dishes.

Though separately-published, it is one of the volumes of the series Encyclopédie des Dames issued by Audot from 1821, which provided titles useful and interesting to women, all in portable format like this. This copy was apparently a subscriber’s copy, with the half-title bearing the printed statement ‘Exemplaire imprimé pour la Bibliothèque de Mademoiselle Emma de Kolly’, and it is therefore likely that the arms on the upper cover are also hers (though we have been unable to discover anything more about her). WorldCat finds only one copy of the first edition outside continental Europe (University of Michigan).

An extensive antiquarian and heraldic register, providing the abbreviated arms of hundreds of English monarchs, nobles and landowners from the medieval era (and in some cases before) to the reign of Charles I. To judge from the paper and handwriting it was probably compiled in the first thirty years of the eighteenth century by someone with access to a variety of earlier heraldic manuscripts for transcription. It is particularly interesting for including many retrospectively attributed arms to individuals living before the formal establishment of heraldry, such as the early conquerors of Britain and the kings and kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England. Its two largest sections are the catalogue of arms from the reign of Edward the Confessor to that of Charles I on 69 folios (copied via a version by the seventeenth-century herald, Robert Glover from a book belonging to one Joseph Holland), and the transcript of the so-called ‘Parliamentary Roll’ made c. 1312-14 giving a complete catalogue of arms borne in the reign of Edward I. The so-called ‘Rouen Roll’ transcribed on f. 77 of circa 1410, was traditionally thought to be a catalogue of all those bearing arms present at the Siege of Rouen during the Hundred Years War. The complete contents of the register are:

1-1v. The fyve Conquests of this Land with the Names & Arms of the Conquerors (Brutus, Julius Caesar, Constantine of Armorica or Vortigern, Hengist, William Duke of Normandy, with their arms).
1v-3. The Saxons divided this Island into 7 Kingedomes (with the names of their kings and their arms).
3-72v. [Arms of the Peerage in order of their creation] A Catalogue of the Armes belonging to England with the causes of the alterac[i]on thereof from the Reigne of St. Edward the Confessor to this p[re]sent [1628, the reign of Charles I).
73-75v. blank
76-76v. Differences born by the Royal Family.
77-77v. [The Rouen Roll, c. 1410]. Les nosmes des nobles q[ui] fueront oue [?avec] le Roy Henrye le quint au Siege de Roan...
78-98. [The Parliamentary Roll, c. 1312-14] Le copie dun ancien liver daunes q[ue] Messier Somerset Heralt avoit du Joseph Holland in couleurs. Conteniant les nosmes & armes des nobles & chivaliers d’Angliterre au temps d’Edward le prim[er] & second Roies d’Angliterre.
98v-100v. blank
101-110r. [Roll of andowners of Suffolk, in the time of Edward I, listed by Hundred].

The volume was later (after 1939) in the collection of the heraldic scholar, Edward Mars Elmhirst (1915-1957), of Worsboroughdale (Yorks). He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Major in the Territorial Army and was well-known for his researches in heraldry (he was offered a position as herald-extraordinary at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953). He also wrote a book on Merchants’ marks, published posthumously by the Harleian Society in 1959.

An ephemeral visitors’ guide — a rare survival. Though unlikely to be the first edition (the cover notes: ‘like all precdeding editions, this is of 50,000’) it is the earliest edition we have found in French, British or American library catalogues. The cover also notes its publication in French, German and Italian. It provides essential information on travel, principal sights, libraries, churches, fountains, gardens, shops, hotels, banks and museum. Copies were sold by the firm of Henri Guérard (stereoscope manufacturers) under the Colonnade of the Louvre.

First edition: a rare work by the young Barrès (1862–1923), the same year Huit jours chez M. Renan, ‘imaginary conversations on an impertinently ironic note, won him both praise and blame, and before long he was in the first rank of authors’ (Oxford Companion to French Literature). Barrès’ look at the Left Bank, and the men and women found there, is peppered with little drawings, all anonymous.

A fascinating guide to the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter of the mid-eighteenth century. Shinpan Sancha daihyoban is a rare early survival of a book of the hyōban-ki genre —’reputation books’, which reviewed and ranked kabuki actors and courtesans, but which in this case is specifically devoted to brothels and the women who worked within them.

The title uses the term sancha as designation for a high-class of prostitute of courtesan (‘joro’) known as sancha-jōro, who followed in rank the taiyū-jōro and koshi-jōro, but was superior to the umecha-jōro class. All these ranks borrow their terminology from tea-making practices, Sancha referring to a powdered tea (similar to matcha) that could be prepared simply by mixing it with hot water—unlike earlier methods that required steeping tea leaves in a cloth and shaking the bag. The ease of preparing sancha came to symbolize the accessibility of sancha-jōro—a courtesan class that, while still prestigious, was less selective with clientele. This accessibility probably explains why the book focuses on the sancha-jōro offering readers a sense of possibility and approachability.

The book catalogues the names of sancha-jōro and the chaya (tea houses, or brothels) they were affiliated with. Importantly, it also highlights their individual skills. While these women are often associated primarily with sex work, they were trained entertainers. At the higher ranks, they were expected to demonstrate talents in music, singing, the tea ceremony, poetry, and other refined arts. This guide served not only to inform potential visitors but also to allow them to request specific courtesans based on their accomplishments.

Additionally, the book provides valuable insight into the publishing and distribution practices related to Yoshiwara’s pleasure quarters, which became historically significant as a cradle of modern publishing practices in Japan. Importantly, our book predates by several years the work of Tsutaya Jūzaburō, the famed publisher known for producing numerous popular guides to Yoshiwara. Although published by Maruya Shōbei in the Nihonbashi district, it was distributed by Honya Yashichi, a bookstore operating within Yoshiwara itself.

Though not quite the same as the lewd eighteenth century guides to Western prostitutes such as Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies in London (published 1760-794) the existence of Shinpan Sancha daihyoban provides an interesting point of reference in compariing sexual culture and publishing practise in No copies located in institutions outside Japan.

First edition of one of the most interesting Paris Exposition guides.