Tag: book illustrations

The 19th century Jacques Cousteau? Or the French Darwin?

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A book published in 1886 on underwater exploration by Edmond Perrier has been transferred to the Cambridge University Library from the Balfour Library:

Les Explorations sous-marines / par Edmond Perrier (8001.c.515)

The description of Perrier on the title page of the book states that he was Professeur au Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Paris, membre de la Commission scientifique d’exploration des grands fonds de la Méditerranée et de l’Atlantique. Based on the title and description of the author, it sounded as though Perrier was the 19th century version of Jacques Cousteau. The book describes the author’s participation in a variety of expeditions, including on the Lightning, the Porcupine, the Travailleur and the Talisman.

A variety of images of underwater life
from Les Explorations sous-marines (8001.c.515)

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Fruits, flowers and fantastical figures

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The book Fleurs, fruits et légumes du jour / par Alfred Le Petit ; légendes de H. Briollet (8001.b.156), published in 1871, recently crossed my desk. A book of whimsical political caricatures, it is composed of 32 plates issued in a portfolio; each plate comprises a title, cartoon (in colour) and a brief satirical rhyme or poem. The subjects are generals, intellectuals and politicians (all men, this being 19th century France), with a specific focus on the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune of 1871.

Fleurs, fruits & légumes du jour (8001.b.156) - Title page
Fleurs, fruits & légumes du jour (8001.b.156) – Title page

When adding books to the Cambridge University Library catalogue, we are usually able to copy records from other library catalogues. In the case of the record for this book, a previous cataloguing librarian (possibly in UNC Chapel Hill) added the information that “Many plates appear to be based on the anthropomorphized flowers of J.J. Grandville (Les fleurs animées, originally published 1847)”. This is the kind of information that can be useful for people searching the library catalogue (it means that both books will turn up in a keyword search), and it is also an interesting and hopefully worthwhile piece of information for anyone interested in either of these two works. Not only does copying records from other libraries save us valuable time, it also allows our catalogue to reflect other peoples’ research and knowledge. Continue reading “Fruits, flowers and fantastical figures” →

A Fickle Friend

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Soon Parliament will reconvene. Brexit is bound to dominate the agenda and many Anglo-European friendships will come under severe strain. But there have been tensions before. In this guest post, Jaap Harskamp gives a (biased) explanation.

The so-called album amicorum is a book of ‘autographs’ collected by wandering scholars from the Low Countries or Germany as they moved from one city or university to another. The craze started in the middle of the sixteenth century. A typical album page contains a poem or prose text in Latin or Greek (sometimes in Hebrew) and a formal greeting to the owner of the book. As part of the salutation there may be a heraldic shield or an emblematic picture. Possibly the best known example is the album of the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius, held in the collections of Pembroke College, Cambridge.1 The contributions to his album were gathered over a long period of time and more than 130 of his contemporaries are represented (Ortelius started his collection in 1574 and continued doing so until his death in 1598).  The cosmopolitan list of friends includes William Camden, Gerhard Mercator, Christopher Plantin, Philip Galle, Justus Lipsius, John Dee, Jean Bodin, and many others. The album represents a European community of learned friends.

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Old Glory flying over France

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We’ve previously featured a variety of illustrations from the Liberation Collection; this post will focus on just one book from the collection which is striking, both due to its subject matter and its highly illustrated nature.

Les drapeaux des États-Unis = The american flags (Old Glory) / Alfred Rigny ; dessins de Pierre Noury (Liberation.c.362)

A relatively small book, this contains a ‘Petit histoire du drapeau américain et des drapeaux qui figuèrent dans l’histoire des Etats-Unis d’Amérique (Old Glory)’, which is followed by 40 coloured plates of illustrations of the flags of the United States, and various related offices and organisations (the flags of the president and of various branches of the American military are included, for instance).

Page 34 of Liberation.c.362, showing the (stunningly unoriginal, but also incorrect) New Mexico state flag.
Page 34 of Liberation.c.362, showing the (stunningly unoriginal, but also incorrect) New Mexico state flag.

Interesting both as a brief testament to why it was published, and the exceedingly ornate fashion in which the book is illustrated, the 4-page introductory history of the flag (printed in both French and English) justifies the publication: Continue reading “Old Glory flying over France” →

Ceux du maquis and a new thesis from 1978

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Thanks to the Liberation Collection, the level of modern material that we collect about French history from 1944-1946 has significantly expanded. A recent acquisition drew my attention:

Histoire de l’Occupation et de la Résistance dans la Nièvre 1940-1944 / Jean-Claude Martinet ; édition présentée par Jean Vigreux.(C210.c.7324)

This book is a re-edited version of a history thesis presented at the University of Bourgogne in 1978. Cambridge University Library did not buy the original 1978 edition, though there are several copies in the UK (at the British Library, Oxford, and the Universities of Sussex and Leeds). The UL and Oxford are thus far the only UK libraries on COPAC to have the 2015 edition published by Editions universitaires de Dijon. Continue reading “Ceux du maquis and a new thesis from 1978” →

Celebrations and Trepidations

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In May 2016 the Queen’s 90th birthday party will take place in the private grounds of Windsor Castle. Traditionally, royal celebrations have been a grand affair. These were occasions of pomp and pleasantry, times in which courtiers and citizens expressed loyalty and affection to the monarch (real or otherwise). Immigrants played a notable role in such festivities.

IMG_1438
Festival in Antwerp LE.34.43

The early history of urban celebrations has a colourful history. Religious festivals took place on significant dates in the Church calendars. Fetes were organized when royals made a formal entry into a city, either at home or abroad. Festival books were the printed accounts of these occasions. Impressive entries like those of the Habsburg princes in Antwerp and Brussels produced albums that are the most splendid specimens of the Renaissance book.*

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Monkeys in black and white and colour

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Situations regularly arise where a detailed catalogue record turns out to be of paramount importance. A few weeks ago I had the privilege of an early inspection of some of the books in the wonderful Crewe Collection, bequeathed by Mary Innes-Ker, Duchess of Roxburghe to Trinity College. These included an early 19th century French book on monkeys, Histoire naturelle des singes et des makis, with splendid black and white full page illustrations, so I came back to check the University Library’s own holdings. We appeared to have a copy (OA.2.12) which duplicated that at Trinity, and I might well not have investigated further had our catalogue record not been rudimentary and in need of upgrading. There were two different forms of entry for the author in the catalogue, there was no information about publisher or about the book’s illustrations. Continue reading “Monkeys in black and white and colour” →

The Brothers Grimm: much more than just fairy tales

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New academic research into fairy tales made it into the news recently, suggesting that many are thousands of years old and date back to before the languages of the common Indo-European language family split. This corroborates the beliefs of the Brothers Grimm who are famous for collecting and publishing fairy tales in the 19th century.

Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm first published their Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812. The earliest editions held by the UL are the 1826 Kleine Ausgabe (S463.e.82.1) and the 1837 Grosse Ausgabe (XXVII.3.46).

Grimm’s fairy tales have been consistently popular since first publication and much translated and illustrated. Our catalogue lists over 300 editions (some containing just one story though) dating from every decade since the 1820s and including illustrations by, among others, George Cruikshank, (the caricaturist who illustrated the very first English translation), Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane, Ludwig Richter, Mervyn Peake and David Hockney. The illustration of the Grimm tales is in itself an important enough topic that a 2013 book by François Fièvre discusses it: Le conte et l’image: l’illustration des contes de Grimm en Angleterre au XIXe siècle (C204.d.1872).

Cover of Folio Society facsimile reprint (9001.b.2006)
Title page of 1937 edition with illustrations by Ludwig Richter (465:2.c.90.13)
Bremen town musicians illustrated by Rackham (9001.b.2006)
Tom Thumb illustrated by Rackham (9001.b.2006)
Cover of C210.c.6701 featuring illustration by Crane

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An influential polymath: Alexander von Humboldt

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Mirador_Humboldt_01
Bronze sculpture of Humboldt by Ana Lilia Martin at Mirador Humboldt, northeast slope of Orotava valley, Tenerife where he stopped on his way to Latin America. Photo by Koppchen via Wikimedia Commons

Tuesday 26th January sees the announcement of the 2015 Costa Book of the Year winner. One of the books in the running for this prize is The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s new world by Andrea Wulf (382:2.c.201.21) which has already won the Costa Biography award for 2015 and would be a good starting point for finding out more about the life of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859).

Humboldt Penguin (Spheniscus humboldti)
Humboldt penguin. Photo by Gregory Moine via Wikimedia Commons

A renowned figure in Germany and across Latin America, he is less well-known in this country – we may have heard of the Humboldt penguin, named after him (along with countless other species, world geographical features and place names) but most people know very little about the life of this extraordinary naturalist, explorer and geographer. Continue reading “An influential polymath: Alexander von Humboldt” →