Four Thousand New Old Books: tales from the Flea Market, Part II

Benet Pols May 6, 2024

“You know, if you really want to move these books, you need to bring along someone who can’t read, “ the gentleman who had sold me three or four thousand books genially told me. He watched me pausing, contemplating, planning, reading a bit here and there while I should have just been packing.

The books have been moved now (for the most part), but the phrase loiters in my mind each time I pick up one of those four thousand volumes to assign it a value and get it sold. For instance, as I wrote the listing for Rothstein—the story of Arnold Rothstein who fixed the 1919 World Series and was the model for The Great Gatsby’s Meyer Wolfsheim and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls—my mind wandered to a photograph I had made in the fall at the high school production of The Great Gatsby.

The actor had nailed the accent, or at least what we expect the accent of such a guy to be.

If Fitzgerald had really modeled Meyer Wolfsheim on Rothstein he took some trouble to tidy him up a bit as Wolfsheim, no doubt a crook, had some redeeming qualities. Of course Rothstein had yet to be murdered in 1925 when Gatsby was published so perhaps Fitzgerald’s characterization was an act of self-preservation.

Setting the price on this one was easy—$19.19—it sold four days after listing and gave me a great little mental tour. May each of the 4000 be so.

Four-thousand new old books: Tales from the flea market, Part I

Benet Pols March 9, 2024

Stephen Spender.

I had never heard of him. He was, I learned, a poet. English. Very active from the 1920s through the 1950s and somewhat active beyond that. Knew Auden, Hemingway, T.S.Eliot and all sorts of others.

Among my four thousand or so recently acquired new old books are a lot of poetry books. This is regrettable in many ways, not the least of which is, for the most part, they are not worth much.

There are a few things that dictate an old book’s value: one of them is its condition. This Stephen Spender book was “near fine,” in spite of its sixty-nine years on shelves. Not so old to be “rare,” or antiquarian, but “vintage” is fair. Because it is in great shape, I wanted it to be uncommon, if it could not be rare.

Nope. Half a dozen or so listed in single digits on AbeBooks, my primary selling platform.

In any event, I had never heard of the guy. Even so, I listed it at $10.

Two days later I read this:

”About twice a week I would venture to London, usually to the Churchill Club, where a very good dinner was furnished for half a crown. I mean a really good dinner, not a canteen or Red Cross Club dinner. It was at the Churchill Club that I encountered T.S.Eliot, heard Myra Hess, heard that fine Octet and other things—Peggy Ashcroft and Stephen Spender reading poetry, a talk by the recently retired Archbishop of Canterbury etc. etc.”

There he was. Stephen Spender, in the same paragraph with Peggy Ashcroft and T.S. Eliot, in a letter from my father to my mother written in 1944 or 1945 describing his wartime experiences in England (Not to worry, he also described Buzz-bombs, V-2 rockets, and plenty of death and destruction).

Not coincidentally, I stumbled on Spender while reorganizing some papers to make a more efficient workspace for my four thousand new old books .Perhaps I should bump that price to $11.

We Belong to the Rock.

Benet Pols December 1, 2023

My thoughts flittering between The Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge and the photos I was trying to make, I rapped on the door on Summer Street.

The copy I had owned had been deposited at the post office on my way down to the river. Rated by me as in “poor” condition, I was happy to send it on its way back to England even if I was only to gain $44. Originally printed in 1548 “in prose and ryme doggerel,” my copy had been reprinted in 1814 from an original in a printing of 120 copies.

Bedecked with a pair of imposing Nikons I stood on the porch hoping my knock would be answered. I had no back up plan. Behind me in the driveway was a middle-aged, lightly blistered, Subaru Forester bearing a “Save the FJWB” bumper sticker. The Frank J.Wood Bridge, a 1932 WPA project linking Brunswick and Topsham and bookended by Brunswick’s Cabot Mill on the South and The Great Bowdoin Mill of the Pejepscot Paper Company on the North dominated the view shed from this Summer Street home. The bridge has also been the source of long ranging community conversation as its inexorable end appraoches.

**Looking down river toward the Frank J Wood Bridge, and its replacement, now under construction, from a residence in Topsham.**

As it turns out The Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, despite its majestic title, is fairly prosaic: it ranks as the earliest known continental guidebook in English, but I didn’t know that at the moment. I had not considered it in any way since researching and adding it to my inventory back in October 2019. Patience is a big component of the used book business. When I awoke Tuesday morning to find the order, I completed the customs forms and packaged the book up and posted it. It may have been wanted for Christmas.

I started pondering its high-minded title during the mile and a half walk to the Topsham side of the river. I had stopped several times along the way to get photos from beneath the Frank J. Wood Bridge at Brunswick’s 250th Anniversary Park and from various other spots that might show the crews at work, their implements, and their progress.. A lot of clambering around on the river bank and various rock piles to get the best views gave me time for idle thoughts between exposure changes, consideration of the sun, and waiting for bridge builders, traffic, and pedestrians to do something more interesting.

There’s nothing like transparency. I rated it “poor” and am pleased someone will get some pleasure from it at $44. An 1814 reprint of a book initially published in 1548. The 1814 edition was in 120 copies and bears this notation, “This volume was faithfully reprinted from an almost unique copy of my own (illegible) and is presented to by friend Mr. David Showell, of Park Lodge, Kent Road. London Institution” It also bears inscriptions showing subsequent ownerships up through the middle of the 19th century. Its author, Andrew Borde, was an erstwhile monk, an occasional Suffragan Bishop, a writer of early fad diet books, a physician, a traveler, and an acolyte of Cromwell who wrote about all these topics. He died in prison after being convicted of keeping house with three loose women.

What sort of knowledge were we talking about? Spiritual, astronomical, philosophical, or scientific? How had in been introduced? Empirical, methodical study, force, or was it revealed?

I was about to back off the porch when the owner of the Subaru opened the door. I asked her permission to walk through her back yard to make some photos of the work underway over by the bridge. Work which will decidedly not be saving the FJWB.

I had been on the property before because in the side yard, hard on Summer Street, is a gravel labyrinth with an old millstone at its center. Assorted other relicts of ancient millworks and a flutter of Buddhist prayer flags welcome passersby from the street for a moment of reflection. But I didn’t think I should go around the back side the house armed like Ron Galella without asking permission.

The homeowner asked where the photos would find a home and I pointed across toward Fort Andross, as if to explain it all. I told her some will end up on the radio station’s website and a larger number would end up on my own website. The radios station’s listeners and followers seemed to enjoy seeing the bridge work the last time I had shared them through WCME. It gives people a chance to inspect what they might only catch a glimpse of while crossing the bridge.

“Of course,” she said and thanked me for asking, “not many do” she added. “Do you know what I’d suggest? go through the labyrinth and across the back where you’ll see a big rock.”

I had seen the rock. Standing on the FJWB looking upstream toward the falls a high granite promontory protrudes into the river side. All rock save a lone rugged evergreen doing its best to slowly cleave the rock. The rock was the reason I was at her door. I wanted to be on it with my cameras.

“Of course, we don’t own the rock,” my host added, “We belong to the Rock.”

And there was my introduction to knowledge.

Photos of construction of the new bridge to replace the Frank J. Wood Bridge, also known as the Green Bridge, between Brunswick and Topsham, Maine. These photos were made November 28, 2023. The replacement bridge and all related construction will be completed in 2026.

Photos of The Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, by Andrew Borde 1548, reprinted here in 1814. Photos made in October 2019.

This is the road to Fort Popham pictured in John McKee’s *As Maine Goes*, Photographs by John McKee Introduction by William O. Douglas, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Copyright 1966 by the President and Trustees of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine 04011. The Photo would have been made sometime in 1966 or a little earlier. To the left is the cove, a part of Atkins Bay, that you will see as you exit Spinney’s. Across the way, where the Federal style house sits, is Gilbert Head in Georgetown. The Fort itself is out of the frame to the right.

On the Trail of John McKee, Part II: A Missed Opportunity Revisited.

Benet Pols November 21, 2023

I am gratified by the response to my post last week about John McKee and Bunganuc and am compelled to share what I have learned in its aftermath. A Bungonucker’s listicle.

As I am not an influencer I may have a genuine understanding of when my posts on this blog or on the socials actually please people. Clicks on the website and analytics that track them to their source are great….sometimes. The biggest bang for my buck usually comes from a school connected activity: sports photography, whether posted to my own accounts or via the Facebook Page of RadioMidcoastWCME usually travel well. Cultural events, such as last week’s presentation of The Great Gatsby by the BHSPlayers generate huge spikes and wander far and wide as grandparents and other relations at great distances check in. The man behind the curtain at WCME told me that my photos of the bridge construction adjacent to the Frank Wood Bridge were viewed more than 11,000 times in two days.

But on top of clicks, John McKee has generated a visceral interest.

So in the spirit of click-baiters, SEO mavens, and influencers everywhere, here are the five things I learned (so far) since posting about John McKee last week:

1) John McKee’s property is in a conservation easement owned by the Brunswick Topsham Land Trust so his property and what it means to me and others will continue to hold this meaning. Perhaps one day I will walk this stream.

2) A quick look at look at the Cumberland County registry of deeds leads to the inference that John McKee has been instrumental in conserving other properties in his neighborhood on the Highland Road.

3) Fellow faculty brats and current faculty members (not just those related to me) have fond memories and strong feelings. One told me of John’s early work with the Board of Maine Coast Heritage Trust, one told me of his dog Pi, and another told me of her regular visits with John McKee.

4) His neighbors have the same strong feelings about the area: one, whose family was instrumental in conserving the Town of Brunswick’s Maquoit Bay Conservation Land, is a proud Bungonucker, one told me of walking the stream in snow shoes from Pleasant Hill Road to the stream’s opening as a creek at Maquoit Bay, a third told me story about John’s decision to purchase his land being driven by the quality of its well water for the photographic process.

5) I now own four copies of As Maine Goes. I bought the three listed on ABEbooks to be sure I got a decent copy this time.

I made this photo the same day I made the photo of the can of PBR that reminded me of John McKee. It shows construction on the new bridge crossing the Androscoggin River between Topsham and Brunswick. It will replace the Frank J. Wood Bridge, a 1930s PWA project known as The Green Bridge.

Above the Swinging Bridge, Androscoggin River

Getting In Touch With My Inner John McKee

Benet Pols November 17, 2023

Whenever, I make a photograph like my Pabst Blue Ribbon can here, I always refer to it, silently to myself, as getting my John McKee On.

John McKee is a name from my past, a Professor at Bowdoin, a colleague of my father’s, and for a period of time, a noted photographer whose work made a difference. In the early part of this century as I began exploring photography myself, I reconnected with my childhood memories of John McKee’s photography, particularly a photo of a rusted hulk on Popham Beach.

On childhood trips to Popham our family would pass this wreck, or some other just like it. There were more than a handful down by the shore. Our family would generally approach the beach through the dunes off the Popham Road rather than through the State Park lot. I can’t say whether this was the result of parsimony, a general habit of tardiness, or if it was just the way things were done back in the day. I can say that the memory of the sand swept wreck, glorious in its rust, comes back to me every time I head down the Popham Road.

A personal Madeleine, no doubt triggered more frequently these last twenty years by the constancy of a camera in my hand. I went searching for the photo I remembered of the wrecked car and eventually found it in As Maine Goes, a catalogue of John McKee’s photographs in what proved to be an influential collection. I found the catalogue on line and bought it. Regrettably, it arrived pretty well banged up by its transit but I am glad to have it.

A scan of John McKee’s photo, “Dawn, Popham Beach” from As Maine Goes, Photographs by John McKee, Introduction by William O. Douglas, Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Copyright 1966 by the President & Trustees of Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine 04011. Interestingly my copy, purchased on ABEbooks bears the stamp, “Withdrawn from MOMA Library.”

For several years now I have been intending to write him. I pass his home frequently on the Highland Road on my commute to and from work. I often walk the road from Pleasant Hill Road to Bunganuc Road. I eyeball the Bunganuc Stream’s outlet into Maquoit Bay winding by a legendary house on posts hard on the stream side. On the walk back, if the sun is in the right place its light is refracted through the slats on the cupola of Professor McKee’s barn. Along the road are signs noting that his property, which extends down across the road and down to Bunganuc Stream, is private but may be crossed with permission of the owner. The signs provide the name, John McKee. For several years now, since discovering that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in one of his earliest published works, written under the pseudnym George F. Brown, referred to us natives of Brunswick as Bungonuckers, I have wanted to walk along Bunganuc Stream to see what triggered Longfellow to decide that this little stream encapsulated the essence of our community.

“Having very little business of their own, they have ample leisure to devote to the affairs of their neighbors; and it is said, that even to this day, if a Bungonucker wishes to find out what is going on in his own family, the surest and most expeditious way, is to ask the person who lives next door.” The Wonderous Tale of the Little man in Gosling Green. The New Yorker, 1834.

Today as I wondered what to do with my can of PBR, I wondered again about John McKee and what approach I might take to ask his permission to cross his land to wander down by Bunganuc Stream.

It seems now I never will:

John McKee, Associate Professor of Art Emeritus, died on March 8, 2023, in Brunswick, Maine.

(The following notice was shared by President Rose on March 13, 2023)

I’m sorry to inform the Bowdoin community that Associate Professor of Art Emeritus John McKee died on Wednesday, March 8, 2023, in Brunswick, after a period of declining health.

John was born on October 20, 1936, in Evanston, Illinois, and grew up in Palatine, Illinois. He graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth as a music major in 1958 and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a master’s degree at Princeton in 1962, where he did additional graduate work and was an assistant instructor in French. His black-and-white documentary film about undergraduate life at Princeton, “Princeton Contexts,” won the Silver Award (highest in the category) at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1962—an early indication of his talents as both a photographer and filmmaker.

John came to Bowdoin in the fall of 1962 as an instructor in Romance languages, a position he held until 1966. His photographs and accompanying catalogue for a 1966 exhibit at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art—“As Maine Goes…”—revealed some ugly truths about the environmental consequences of pollution, seaside dumps, and unchecked development along the coast. It was widely recognized as a catalyst for the environmental movement and for legislation banning billboards on public roadways in Maine. Following the exhibit, John was named the director of the Bowdoin Center for Resource Studies in 1966 to explore land-use issues along the Maine coast. The extraordinary photographs from “As Maine Goes…” also won him the National Conservation Communicator of the Year Award from the National Wildlife Federation.

His second exhibit of photographs at our museum—”Hands to Work and Hearts to God,” about Maine’s Sabbathday Lake Shaker community—was recognized by the Maine Commission on the Arts and Humanities with the 1973 Maine State Award for images that “…summon poetry out of simple things and do not yield to the obvious or the picturesque.” A major retrospective in 1984, “Photographs 73–83 John McKee,” also received critical acclaim for John’s artistry. His influence as a teacher was on display in a 1994 exhibit and catalogue of the work of his former students, “Bowdoin Photographers: A Liberal Arts Lens.”

John was a lecturer in the art department from 1969 to 1987 and an associate professor of art from 1987 until 2001, when he retired and was voted emeritus status. His former students established the John McKee Fund for Photography in 2002 to honor his legacy.

John’s faculty file contained a sealed envelope to be opened upon his death. Inside is a note, written in December 1990, informing the dean of the faculty that he did not want a memorial service: “Anybody who wants to, might some good day go for a quiet walk and enjoy looking about.” This was followed by “If a memorial minute must be read at some faculty meeting, it better not last more than sixty seconds.”

John’s life and career have had a lasting impact on the College, on Maine, and in his field. We join with his former students, friends, and colleagues in expressing our gratitude for the many ways he encouraged us to see the world around us with new eyes.

Sincerely,

Clayton

This is a drawing of John McKee in 1971 by another name from my childhood, Thomas Cornell. Cornell was a faculty member and artist at Bowdoin College. This drawing is seen in a catalogue of an exhibition of Cornell’s Drawings and Paintings at Bowdoin in 1971. *Bowdoin College museum of Art, 1971 By the President and Trustees of Bowdoin College.*

Grant Wood Was a Drone Pilot

Benet Pols April 2, 2023

At work with ninety seconds to kill as the microwave atomizes day old haddock and rice for the benefit of the entire lunchroom you could do a lot worse than scroll the twitter feed of @culturaltutor

The Tutor’s bite sized pieces and visuals have few rivals in the twittosphere for a person looking for a brief break from the monochrome of sports-twitter pontification. Where else could someone learn that Grant Wood was a drone pilot, and a half-dozen other factoids about the man who did this, but is so well known for American Gothic?

Along with a quick tour of perspective, lighting, the non-existence of electric lighting in 18th century New England, how horses run, and some quick side-tours into Copyright, public domain, and the life of Longfellow, the reader might stop to wonder whether Grant Wood had ever flown or otherwise spent time aloft. Wood died in 1942 so it is not a given.

Wood was, in 1931, memorializing Longfellow’s work first seen in the Atlantic Monthly of January, 1861, which in turn memorialized Revere’s ride of nearly a century earlier. So all of it is mythologized, or imaginary, or fanciful even. But here is a real version of the Longfellow original.

If you can’t find the cultural tutor on twitter, or your abhorrence for it outweighs your curiosity you can find the Tutor here. The Tutor also produces a nice weekly news letter that more or less collects the twitter bits in prose. I get it, but generally only sample bits as it doesn't fill the interstitial space quite like the Tutor’s twitter.

If you do still tolerate twitter, and like this sort of thing, another great feed for a little on the go thoughtful cultural eduction is @Victoria_s_reed Senior Curator for Provenance at @mfaboston. “Mainer. Art, due diligence, restitution, provenance, museums, and ladies with severed heads,”as her bio reads.

This link takes you to a listing for The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere in the Atlantic Monthly from January 1861.

Laura E. Richards's House, Lost to a Christmas Fire

Benet Pols December 26, 2022

Laura E. Richards’s house in Gardiner Maine burned down this Christmas. Known as the Yellow House, it was a causality of the winter storm just before Christmas that dumped vast rains accompanied by hurricane winds across much of Maine and left other cataclysmic weather damage across the country. The storm itself didn’t cause the fire; a generator used during the resulting long power outage ignited the blaze. One more bit of historical architecture, an artifact of the past, a building with a story to tell, is now gone.

A nice old house in and of itself, it had stood in Gardiner since about 1810 so it represents another blow to the character of an old Maine village; it had many stories to tell. One story is its connection to literary and historical figures,

Laura E. Richards, was the daughter of Julia Ward Howe who wrote the lyrics for The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Richards herself was a prolific writer; among ninety other works, she wrote one that took the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1917. Written with two of her sisters, it chronicled her mother’s life. Her father, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, a well known abolitionist, founded the Perkins Institution, the Massachusetts School for the Blind. In 1876 Richards moved to this house in Gardiner, Maine, where her husband managed a paper mill. An elementary school in Gardiner still bears her name.

The story of the fire as reported in the Portland Press Herald, a local news paper.

SAMPLES OF THE WORKS OF LAURA RICHARDS AND JULIA WARD HOWE

While Richards’s biography of Julia Ward Howe sold, the following works are still available:

Toto’s Merry Winter, by Laura Richards, $57

The Battle Hymn of the Republic, as first printed in the Atlantic Monthy, $321

Who Owned This Book? And, Have You Seen "Topper" Lately?

Benet Pols February 27, 2022

Roland Keith Young, nominated for an Oscar for his 1937 performance as Topper, was, like his Topper co-star Cary Grant, an English born American actor with a lengthy film career. It stretched from a 1922 turn as Sherlock Holmes’s Watson until near his 1953 death.

Thomas Mann, renowned for Doctor Faustus and The Magic Mountain, one source of his recognition as the 1929 Nobel laureate for literature, also penned the novella Mario and the Magician, first published in Mann’s native German in 1930 and here translated by Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter for a 1931 first American publication by Knopf.

Young’s bookplate, which can be found in the Cornelia Neltnor Anthony and Frank D. Anthony Book Plate Collection of the West Chicago Public library and seen on line in the Illinois Digitial Archives, is in this 1931 first edition.

This is a rare case when the answer to who owned this book? can be given with a high degree of confidence. Perhaps a case where prior ownership has a greater impact on its current value than its condition. After all, there are ten copies listed for sale on ViaLibri; they range from ten to eighty-eight USD. Only two include seller created images, in my opinion the best driver of price (a story for another day).

In addition to the story within its pages, this copy of Mario and the Magician has a story to tell: the story of who owned it. This makes it worth more than $88, but how much?

Having once owned a first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I can spend an inordinate amount of my time cataloguing books wondering whose hands the books have passed through. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was first serialized in an anti-slavery newspaper, The National Era, before being published in two volumes by John P. Jewett in 1852. Jewett printed them in editions of 5000 until 295,000 had been sold that first year. My edition was a mixed state. That is Volume I came from the first run of 5000, while Volume II was a “Ten-thousandth,” or in the third printing of 5000.

Who would have been among the first five-thousand Americans to buy Uncle Tom’s Cabin? How would its ownership have influenced their conversation, thoughts, and social lives. But there were no indicia of ownership; the two volumes were just really old. Based on their condition they had been through many hands. Maybe important ones, but maybe just the hands of a guy like me, someone who reads. Their story—outside of their covers—was a general one, not a specific one tied to any particular person.

The Rabbit Hole is an interesting place, around every corner is a possible source of thought provoking information. Why else would I have spent a Saturday night watching Topper on YouTube, wondering about Billie Burke’s career and whatever became of Cary Grant’s wife Dyan Cannon?

One fruitless turn? My effort to learn whether the characters of Mr. Drysdale and Miss Jane from The Beverly Hillbillies were based on bank president Cosmo Topper and his dour secretary Miss Johnson as portrayed by Virginia Sale. Four peas in two pods they were, right down to the matching brush mustaches and forbidding hairstyles.

But the Rabbit Hole encourages procrastination. It’s a place where the perfect is often the enemy of the good. A first edition of Longfellow’s 1842 Ballads and Other Poems ought to sell itself. The Wreck of the Hesperus, and The Village Blacksmith appeared in book form first between these boards. It appears unique, none like it is available on-line.

And this one won’t be listed either. At least not until the mystery of Horatio Woodman, whose name appears in pencil on the first free leaf, takes better shape. A Horatio Woodman kick-started Boston’s Saturday Club which begat the Atlantic Monthly. Longfellow was a member too. Woodman and Longfellow were both Mainers. Me too, so I am in no rush.

Hey Catherine Maria Sedgwick, What's Your Pub Date?

Benet Pols December 22, 2021

1822. A scant 200 years ago. Why do you ask?

One thing I have discovered about Catherine Maria Sedgwick is that she is perpetually being discovered.

A second thing I have discovered is that, in my circles anyway, this author now acknowledged to have portrayed women in a more sophisticated and nuanced way than was typical of her era, remains an unknown. I have asked people who I consider to be smart, literate, well read, and well educated if they can tell me anything about her (Hint: she’s not a Facebook friend of a friend). The results have been underwhelming.

A third thing I have discovered is that most people, including me, meet their discovery of Catherine Maria Sedgwick with a touch of self-rebuke. We certainly should have known.

A fourth thing I have discovered is the Catherine Maria Sedgwick Society, a group of scholars and academics who get together annually to keep the fires burning, “promoting the study and awareness of Sedgwick’s life and works.”

But before I discovered any of these things I discovered that I own a first edition her first published novel, A New England Tale (1822), listed here.

Most sources book-end her career and notoriety within the nineteenth century with a rise to prominence and a fade to near obscurity by the end of the century.

“Catharine Maria Sedgwick was one of the leading figures in early-nineteenth-century American literary culture. Although she is less well known today, she set a pattern for the development of both domestic novels and historical novels in this country. Male writers such as James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant respected Sedgwick as a peer, while female authors such as Lydia Maria Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe regarded her as a literary role model.” (Annenberg) Other sources note Sedgwick’s primacy in establishing a distinctly American canon, “Sedgwick was immediately recognized as one of the writers creating an indigenous American literature.” (women history blog)

Indigenous American literature was an important concept for the young country , as was an indigenous arts industry. S.G. Goodrich, editor of The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, an annual collection of literary works and “embellishments” noted in the preface to the 1836 edition that while for its nine years in existence, The Token had “been sustained by American writers” 1836 was the first year that the same could be said for its artworks. Owing to advances in the arts and production, the editors were proud to announce that the 1836 edition was the “first annual, and the only highly embellished book, issued from the American press, which could claim entire independence from foreign aid.”

A short story “New Year’s Day,” attributed to “Miss Sedgwick,” is the second piece in the 1836 Token.

But something else I have discovered about Sedgwick is that attribution of her authorship is often difficult to discern, and sometimes, apparently, willfully obscured. In fact, her second major novel, Redwood (1824), upon its translation for publication in France was attributed not to Sedgwick, but to James Fenimore Cooper. Why? Because of her known affinity with Cooper? Because, like Cooper’s work, Redwood featured sympathetic portrayals of Native American characters? Or perhaps because Cooper was an American author already well known to the French?

The photos of A New England Tale show Sedgwick’s name appeared nowhere in the title pages or elsewhere. Several sources suggest that her dedication of the work to Maria Edgeworth, the renowned Anglo-Irish writer, was a sly reference to the fact that this work too was written by a woman.

Just the pencil markings of a previous owner tell us the author’s name.

Anonymity, even for male authors, was common in the era—Cooper and Hawthorne—both published anonymously or pseudonymously. Recently Stephen King made use of the gambit with the Richard Bachmann series. Sedgwick, at certain times anyway, made it a bit of an obsession. So much so that she even wrote a short story on the dilemma, Cacoethes Scribendi, that appeared in Titles and Sketches. Iironically Titles and Sketches was the only one of Sedgwick’s books published in her lifetime that did carry her name on the title page. Sedgwick’s use of anonymity is nicely explored in Behind the Veil. Catherine Sedgwick and Anonymous Publication by Melissa J. Homestead. Homestead’s piece, though it focuses on Sedgwick, covers a lot of ground; it is sure to up a reader’s Jeopardy skills.

Whatever conclusion you draw, it may help explain why Sedgwick now requires “discovery.” As her Wikipedia entry sums up “By the end of the 19th century, she had been relegated to near obscurity. There was a rise of male critics who deprecated women's writing as they worked to create an American literature. Interest in Sedgwick's works and an appreciation of her contribution to American literature has been stimulated by the late 20th century's feminist movement. Beginning in the 1960s, feminist scholars began to re-evaluate women's contributions to literature and other arts and created new frames of reference for considering their work.”

It may also explain why all my smart friends know who Hawthorne and Cooper are, but not Sedgwick.

(This post is a refreshed version of a post first published a couple years ago when I found this book and did the research on its origins.The republication is triggered by my observation in the Facebook book page of the Catherine Maria Sedgwick Society that the bicentennial of Sedgwick’s first novel, A New England Tale, approaches.)

Old Books With Maps, Always a Welcome Trip Down the Rabbit Hole.

Benet Pols August 24, 2020

1812. A War.

For an American anyway, I may know a lot about the War of 1812. As a Mainer, I have seen the masts of Old Ironsides, the USS Constitution, flickering in my periphery between the trusses of the Mystic River Bridge and the rooftops of Charlestown while headed to Boston. There she sits, everything there is to know about the War of 1812. I may even have visited her as a child on a school trip. After some thought, I can also tell you James Madison was president during this war; this, I know, because his wife Dolley, of snack cake fame, is reported to have rescued a painting of George Washington from the White House before the British arrived to burn it.

I do remain a little unclear on how the United States ended up “winning” a war in which the opposing side first managed to invade the capital, drive out the President, and burn down his house. It may have been connected to the fact that the British were also busy fighting the French and Napoleon in a separate war back on their side of the ocean. That’s a war I know less about.

But while assessing some books for listing I ran into several with large fold out maps. Among them Relation Circonstanciée de la Campagne de Russie 1812, a French history of Napoleon’s ill-fated 1812 invasion of Russia, Edward Falkener’s 1862 work on the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, and Samuel Parker’s 1838 Exploring Tour Beyond the Rockies, recounting his travels to the Oregon Territory.

Old books with maps and charts are interesting. One on hand they send you further down the rabbit hole looking for meaning, history, accuracy, and context. On the other hand the they add another layer to the question of the book’s value; their folds, creases, different methods of insertion and placements almost always lead to questions about the book’s condition. They are often missing altogether.

The map accompanying the last is reputed to be the first reliable map of the interior of Oregon territory. Parker was on a religious mission pursuing locations, and presumably people to bring into his particular fold. According to the Washington State University digital library site which contains an online version of the map, “In 1834, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions appointed Rev. Samuel Parker to go to the Oregon Territory and scout locations for missions there. Parker traveled overland to Oregon in 1835, and traveled as far north as Colville while locating sites for missions near Spokane, Lewiston, and Walla Walla. Eventually, he traveled to Fort Vancouver, and from their obtained free passage by ship to Hawaii, and after some delay there he returned to Boston via Cape Horn. In 1838, he published this map, and the book from which it was taken, as an aid and inducement to future settlers.” The Wikipedia entry on the ABCFM is fascinating.

This map is reputed to be the earliest reliable map of the interior of the Oregon Territory. Folds in the map and its insertion within the text are points where—over its nearly two centuries on the planet—weakness and small tears have developed.

The description of this map as the “earliest reliable source, made from personal observation” is attributed to The Plains and the Rockies: A Critical Bibliography of Exploration, Adventure and Travel in the American West, 1800-1865, begun by Henry R. Wagner and continued by Charles L. Camp and Robert H. Becker. Book and map sellers most often refer to this source as “Wagner-Camp.”

In addition to its map the book contains a glossary of native terminology with English equivalents, and various climatological data.

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Falkener, was a drawer, artist, and draftsman so his work, The Temple of Diana at Ephesus, is notable not just for its large fold-out map, and many smaller interior maps, but for its colored plates. They are the equivalent of a current architect’s renderings with scenes of the archeological sites as imagined in their day, beautiful and detailed.

The Temple of Diana as a name for the structure itself is no longer in favor. Wikipedia’s page on the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, notes that it is less precisely known as the Temple of Diana; Diana was the Roman equivalent of the name Artemis

Both the colored plates and the maps and other schematics from Falkener’s work are frequently reproduced and available for sale through various reprint services. At least one of the plates even shows up on a tee-shirt. All of this makes my efforts at photographing the plates carefully—I didn’t want to use the scanner for fear of further damaging the brittle binding—seem vaguely pointless.

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Campagne de Russie 1812, in addition to its maps, is filled with data. The work was obviously popular in its time as even my rudimentary French told me this February 1815 edition was the fourth edition of the work. It also suggested further research in english. As I plowed through the Wikipedia entries on Napoleon’s reckless caper to Moscow, I was first astonished by the apparent irrationality of the campaign: Wikipedia suggests the reason for the campaign against Russia was to stop the Russians from trading with the English which in turn would make his simultaneous war with England a little easier.

My second realization was that most of what I know of the Napoleonic Wars, and the American War of 1812, I learned from historical fiction, notably the sea-faring novels of Patrick O”Brian. As a result, with the exception of the Battle of Waterloo, burned forever into my nine year old consciousness by the brutal battle scenes depicted in Sergei Bondarchuk’s Waterloo during an ill-advised childhood trip to Portland Maine’s State Theatre, I know mainly about the naval engagements of the wars rather than the political intrigues and land based battles.

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I know about Nelson and the Nile. I know about blockades at Toulon and Brest. I know about Gibraltar, still shimmering in my mind from the one time I actually laid eyes upon it—late at night in 1960s while passing it in the Italian liner Raffaello. And I know about the USS Constitution and its taking of the British frigate Java. In The Fortunes of War O’Brian’s primary character, Capatin Jack Aubrey, was conveniently placed as a guest onboard Java at the time of the battle. And of course I catch a quick view of it off my left shoulder when headed to Boston.

And now, thanks to my travels down the rare book rabbit hole, I know that Wellington’s English and Bluecher’ s Prussians were not the only ones to defeat Napoleon.

Relation Circonstanciée de la Campagne de Russie 1812, a French history of Napoleon’s ill-fated 1812 invasion of Russia. $88 AbeBooks.

Edward Falkener’s 1862 work on the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. $88 Abebooks.

Samuel Parker’s 1838 Exploring Tour Beyond the Rockies, recounting his travels to the Oregon Territory. $88 Abebooks. (SOLD)