From the Reading Room – English Goethe Society Archives.

Fabienne Schopf of the University of Stuttgart has been in the Reading Room consulting the archives of the English Goethe Society and I asked her why:

I am consulting documents, e.g. letters, annual reports and the Publications of the English Goethe Society (EGS), London. I am especially interested in the period between 1886, when the Society was founded, until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.  A similar society, the Goethe-Gesellschaft was founded in 1885 at Weimar, Germany.  My master’s thesis will compare and analyze the efforts and publications of the societies. 

Founded in 1886 with the aims ‘to promote and extend the study of Goethe’s work and thought, and to encourage original research upon all subjects connected with Goethe’ (English Goethe Society, First Annual Report presented at a Business Meeting 1 December 1886), the English Goethe Society continues to be active today. 

Many of the Society’s records were lost in the bombing of University College London in 1940, where they were stored at the time.  The core of the papers now available to researchers at Senate House Library was in the possession of Ella Oswald, the daughter of Dr Eugen Oswald, a founder of the Society, and were depositied with The Institute of Germanic Studies in 1955.

The collection now consists of c.1500 items, with the majority of them catalogued online.  Among the the collection’s files of correspondence, administrative records and publications are some more unusual artifacts, including fragments of Goethe’s hair (EGS.5.2.PER (iii)), 18th-century silhouettes (EGS.5.2.SIL) and a bust of Goethe. 

 

Senate House Library treasures: featuring the servant problem

In 1847 Henry Mayhew (1812–1887) and his brother Augustus (1826–1875) brought to the

Part 2, “It’s my cousin, Ma’am”

publisher David Bogue an idea for a comic series, to be published in shilling monthly parts. It would purport to be written by the much-harassed mistress of a middle-class household and deal with the problems of recruiting and managing domestic servants, already a favourite subject of the comic weekly magazine Punch (founded in 1841). Bogue accepted their proposal and commissioned George Cruikshank, the outstanding English political and social caricaturist of the first half of the nineteenth century, to supply two etchings for each part, together with a wrapper design and title-page vignette.

Although the resulting work has not survived the nineteenth century, initially it was a great hit, reputedly selling more copies than the monthly parts of  Pickwick Papers had done.  Cruikshank’s brilliantly comic plates helped greatly in this respect. While part publication was a common mode of publishing in the Victorian era and helped readers to spread the costs of their purchase, it was expected that readers would ultimately have the parts bound, and a title page was typically issued with the final issue of parts for the purpose. Thus unbound parts in institutional libraries are relatively rare. We chose to feature the parts for The Greatest Plague in Life rather than those for Dickens’s more enduring Nicholas Nickleby or Little Dorrit, also in the Sterling Library, for their greater rarity: ours is currently the only set of original parts for the Mayhew work recorded on COPAC. For Senate House another endearing feature of the Mayhew is its local flavour: when the story begins, the narrator is in a boarding house in Guildford Street, Russell Square – bereft of her own establishment, she complains, because of a pack of lazy, ungrateful, good-for-nothing servants.

Part 3, back

Conservation of a Seventeenth-Century Book

Morley, Thomas, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (London: Humfrey Lownes, 1608). The book comes from the library of Novello Chairman Alfred Henry Littleton, who collected landmarks of music printing.

First published in 1597, Thomas Morley’s  Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke has been described as a piece of outstanding scholarship,  which has retained its importance as a musical textbook (Oxford DNB). It is written in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil, with many examples of printed music.  The music collection at Senate House Library provides witness to its lasting value, holding an Oxford University Press edition of the entire work from 1937 and Dent editions from 1952 and 1963. These are in addition to several scores selected from it.  The book, in a 17th-century full calf leather binding, was at risk of further damage when it was requested.  

 Many printed books that are referred for conservation in the library’s conservation studio have weak or broken board attachments. This book, sewn on alum tawed supports, had strong board attachments but the front board had bent up at the joint stressing the covering leather. The leather was broken along this part of the joint and areas were missing at the corners and spine.  The book had other damage including loose sewing and torn text.  The book needed remedial conservation to prevent the damage from getting any worse but it did not need to be heavily repaired, which would affect the evidence of the history of the book and its binding.

The first step was to strengthen the board attachment to prevent the leather tearing further along the joint.  

A new strip of leather was inserted across the joint underneath the original leather. It was pasted down one side, on to the board and under the board leather. On the spine side it was only pasted to the underside of the leather to prevent the spine leather becoming too rigid and risk it breaking.  The missing spine panel of leather which exposes the headband threads was not replaced because it was not an area that was vulnerable to further damage with careful use and storage.

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The tail band threads were loose.

A piece of toned, thin, flexible Japanese paper was pasted to the spine to give a smooth base to paste the tie down threads onto.   

The book is sewn onto alum tawed skin sewing supports which are then attached to the board. The bent edge of the front board may be due to shrinkage of the sewing supports combined with the stiff parchment endleaf guard and the heavy photographic paper of the facsimile title page catching the board as it closes. This title page was removed to try to soften the joint and will be kept with the book.

The board was softened with water  mixed with a little paste before drying it under pressure. The paste was to help the board stay flat. This was not totally successful because the board creased up again slightly as soon as the book was closed.

No further attempts were made to avoid further stress to the alum tawed supports. There is less strain on the joint now because the leather has been repaired so with careful handling it should not get any worse.

PAPER REPAIRS

The text paper is thin with some worn, torn edges and with several knife cuts to the text leaves. The edge tears were repaired if they were likely to catch and extend during use. The clean,sharp cuts are probably a result of the removal of the missing endleaves and the first few pages.   Paper was expensive and it is not unusual for endleaves to be removed for re-use.

These clean, sharp edged cuts running through the text meant that a series of small ‘splint’ paper repairs on both sides of the sheets were needed to prevent the repair paper obstructing the text.                 

The paper either side of the cut on the introductory page has distorted and the type, as you can see, does not match up precisely.

The repairs had to be stiff enough to stop the repaired page ‘peaking’ at the sharp join but discreet enough not to interfere with the text.     

SEWING

The sewing was loose near the tail of the book. Initially this was to be repaired with new stitches but on closer examination it was found that the book was sewn two-on.  In this technique one length of thread picks up two sections in one stitch across the spine. This was common from the beginning of the seventeenth century in England to speed up the sewing. It meant every other section would need to have a new hole pierce the paper but this would disturb the historical evidence of the binding structure. 

Therefore, the loose sections were eased back into position in the book and, where possible, strengthened by pasting them into position on the spine.

These minimal repairs do not intrude on the original binding and with considerate handling and a benign storage environment the book will be functional for future generations.

Beautiful Things – The Chinese Drawings.

‘The Chinese Drawings’ (SLIV 63 Sterling Library) are atypical of the kind of material that Sir Louis Sterling collected but on seeing these exquisite drawings it is easy to understand why he wanted them.  The printed catalogue of Sterling’s collection, published in 1954, describes them simply as ‘A set of twelve coloured drawings on paper, mounted and bound in dark red morocco, gilt, dark red watered silk linings’.  We know something of the provenance of the drawings from a note tucked into their album, which reads thus:

Second only in importance to what are called the Mandarin Series (which are larger designs), sets such as this are scarce on account of the subjects being Chinese national types; i.e., pictures of the common people as compared with celebrity mandarins.  This set was captured at the Taku Forts in 1842, and their captor stated that they were at least twenty years old, and possibly much more, at that time.

The circumstances were these  

Captain Henry Eden, R.N. was senior Lieutenant of the Dido during the closing operations of the Chinese War, 1841-1842.  The day after the taking of Woosung, June 17, 1842, Lieutenant Eden landed in command of the boats’ crews belonging to the squadron, which included the marines of the Dido and destroyed the enemy’s forts, magazines, etc.  In one of those forts this set of Chinese drawings was found by Lieutenant Eden and he carried them off as a prize, retaining them in his family until his death, when they came into the possession of his sons, from one of whom they were purchased in 1919.

Beautiful Things – text and photographs by Charles Harrowell.

We would love to hear from anyone who can add to our knowledge of these beautiful drawings.

Senate House Library treasures volume: featuring witchcraft

Shown here is one of Senate House Library’s two copies of the 1494 edition of the Malleus Maleficarum. Harry Price, the psychical researcher and writer who owned this volume, hated its contents, describing the book as ‘one of the most terrible books known to students of the occult’. Its author, Heinrich Institoris (1430-1505) was an inquisitor and a dubious figure, in and out of trouble, who wanted to prove that witches and witchcraft were a real, not an imaginary, danger and to facilitate their persecution. He wrote his book quite quickly in 1486 and divided it into thee parts. Part I was addressed to fellow theologians and comprised an essay in demonology. Part II, aimed at preachers, reinforced Part I’s message of witchcraft being a reality and all witches (even white ones) being Satanic devotees and supplied anecdotes for sermons. In Part III, Institoris armed ecclesiastic and secular judges with technical points on arresting, examining and sentencing witches.

            The work was printed eight times between 1486 and 1496 and on another sixteen occasions between 1511 and 1621. Price’s distaste did not prevent him from acquiring five editions printed between 1494 and 1615 in addition to the first English translation, made by Montague Summers in 1928. The edition selected as a library treasure is Price’s earliest, printed by Anton Koberger, owner of Southern Germany’s largest printing and publishing house, in Nuremberg on 17 March 1494. While smaller than the other examples of Koberger’s output in Senate House Library (his Latin Bible of 1477, Golden Legend of 1478 and the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493), it is a fitting title to feature in the year marking the 500th anniversary of Koberger’s death. We selected it for our treasures volume for its contemporary German binding.

Malleus Maleficarum, 1494

Beautiful Things – The Insects of Surinam.

This is the first of a series of occasional postings regarding beautiful things I have come across whilst doing the part of my job that involves fetching books for readers.  Beautiful Things is a record of accidental discovery.

The Insects of Surinam is a volume of sixty plates by Maria Merian.  Published in 1705 the illustrations and descriptions concern the metamorphosis in the life cycle of insects. The Latin title translates ‘The metamorphosis of the insects of Surinam, in which the caterpillars and worms of Surinam, with all their transformations, are drawn and described from life, each of them placed on the plants, flowers and fruits on which they were found’.

The Guava

In 2004, Special Collections displayed the volume as part of an exhibition on natural history; the accompanying guide states:

Merian travelled to Surinam (Dutch Guiana) at the age of 52 in 1699, financing her trip by selling her paintings and collection of insects, in order to study insects in their natural habitats.  She remained there for 21 months, breeding, collecting and sketching insects.  Merian financed the publication of her subsequent book on insects of Surinam herself, losing money on the venture.  Two versions were published, one with the text in Latin (shown here), one in Dutch.  Merian engraved three of the 60 plates, a team of three engravers the rest.  They depict about 90 studies of caterpillars evolving into insects, mostly life-size, and include the names and local uses of plants. 

The engravings are the first extensive visual record of South American plants and insects and the first record at all of many of the subjects.  Later editions add 12 more plates based on the drawings of Merian’s elder daughter, Johanna.

The Cassava root with a piece of bread.

The work was also exhibited in 2008 at the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where the guide noted:

‘Each image was organized around a single plant and was accompanied by a text in which Merian described the colors, forms, and timing of each stage of transformation. By including the caterpillars’ food sources in her natural history illustrations, Merian brought a more ecological approach to the study of metamorphosis.

Merian’s work helped to disprove the common belief that insects reproduced by spontaneous generation from decaying matter such as old meat or rotten fruit, and her aesthetic sensitivity raised the standards of scientific illustration.’

The J. Paul Getty Museum – Los Angeles

The Cassava or Manihot.

Beautiful Things – Text and photographs by Charles Harrowell.

Senate House Library treasures volume: featuring the collegiate University

When selecting items for a treasures volume, the University Archive was an obvious source to comb, with its records of University proceedings from the foundation of the University in 1836 onwards. This was where we could expect to find unique documents which provided a sense of University identity. As Senate House Library had put on an exhibition of items from the Archive in 2011 to celebrate the University’s 175th anniversary, selecting items for the treasures volume was quite easy. We had already looked at numerous items, far more than we could exhibit, in the earlier context, and in that context had regretfully discarded this picture of the Colleges in favour of some showing the location of the central University, namely the Imperial Institute in South Kensington and Senate House.

The picture shown here is from the time when the University was located in the Imperial Institute. It is the work of Stanley Gordon Wilson, a historian and vicar who drew it while recovering from a motor-cycling accident. The drawing measures 55.7 by 21.7 centimetres before mounting; 69.9 by 37.6 centimetres when mounted. On the assumption that members of the University might like to have it on their walls, copies could be purchased from a shop in Southampton Row. A reduced version, measuring 13.8 by 41.7 centimetres, appears as the frontispiece of Wilson’s The University of London and its Colleges (1923), which claimed to be the first illustrated account of the University of London ever published. The picture represents every institution that formed part of the University at the time, by a sketch, coat of arms, or both. It thereby aims to portray the University as a cohesive whole composed of and even greater than the sum of its distinguished parts.

The University and its Colleges