Surprise Sketches

Tags

917.3 G92.2 [1872685]

Today’s post again turns from the treasures in our special collections stacks to our general collections to provide a glimpse at a unique volume. As with the annotated Mussolini book from a few weeks ago, this item is not unique in the sense that it is the only known copy of a text but rather for what it reveals about a long history of use and reading.

Title page of Francis Grund, Die Aristokratie in Amerika, aus dem Tagebuch eines deutschen Edlemanns (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1839). University of Pennsylvania copy.

The particular book pictured above is Francis Grund’s Die Aristokratie in Amerika published in 1839 in Stuttgart and the same year in English as Aristocracy in America [1]. Grund was a German-American journalist and author who lived in Philadelphia for much of his life [2]. Unlike Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous Democracy in America (1835-40), Grund’s similar work of observations, anecdotes, and reflections on American life  is largely forgotten today. Nonetheless, copies in English and German of Grund’s work abound in libraries across the US and Europe. In fact the ubiquity of the text is what makes the Penn copy all the more interesting.

When Grund’s book came out in London and Stuttgart it contained several engravings of American political figures featured within. Among these was a featured portrait of president Andrew Jackson. In fact, the German edition of the book even proclaimed on its title page Mit dem Bildnisse des Generals Jackson (“With the portrait of General Jackson”). If you look at the title page spread above you can see quite clearly the portrait of Andrew Jackson in Penn’s copy – most readers will notice that there seems to be something a bit odd about it.

Stokowski’s Podium

Tags

UPenn Ms. Coll. 381

This week the Philadelphia Orchestra is commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of Leopold Stokowski’s appointment as music director with a series of concerts in the Academy of Music. In honor of the occasion, there will be an exhibit on display in the lobby of the Academy, featuring several items from the holdings of the Penn Libraries: Stokowski’s tails, his unusual variable-pitch box, and his podium.

Stokowski on his podium ca. 1939

Most conductors’ podiums are nondescript—simple, low-lying wooden boxes—but when designing his podium, Stokowski worked against tradition, as he did in many other areas of his career as a conductor. His podium is round, with round stairs leading up to the platform. A cutout in front cradles the base of the conductor’s music stand to keep it stable and close to the conductor. The sides of the podium appear to be metal, but they’re actually wood that is painted a shiny silver, and the horizontal surfaces are covered with slip-resistant rubber. It has a space-age appearance, and in the 1930s, it must have looked like something taken from a Buck Rogers comic strip.

The Calve’s Head and Early Printing in Jamaica

Tags

HD9111.5 L4 1733 [295231]

Penn has one of the world’s best collections of printed material relating to Jonathan Swift and his work [1]. Within this collection is an unassuming pamphlet bound into a volume with other tracts relating to political controversies of Swift’s day:

The *Calves’s-Head Club; or, a modest apology for Parson Alberoni, governor to King Philip, a minor; and universal curate of the whole Spanish monarchy: the whole being a short, but unanswerable Defence of Priestcraft, and a new confutation of the Bishop of Bangor. Jamaica: printed by R. Baldwin,in Kingston, 1719. [ESTC N67272]

This particular pamphlet stood out to me because of its unusual place of publication – Jamaica in 1719.

While from the title this tract might seem obtuse and unremarkable, it represents the earliest known book printed in Jamaica to survive in the western hemisphere, making it also one of the earliest known examples of Caribbean printing.

A Nineteenth Century Vision of Persia’s Past

Tags

915.5 H793 [2871574]

Tucked away in the compact shelving on the 5^th floor of Van Pelt Library is a real treasure –  a 19^th century Persian book entitled “Asar-i ajam”, or loosely, “Antiquities of the Persians” [ed. note: the book has now been moved to RBML]. The book was written by the well-known author Muhammad Nasir Fursat al-Dawlah Shirazi (فرصت شيرازى، محمد ناصر،-), and was published in Bombay in 1896. This in itself is not remarkable, since Persian was the literary language of large sections of India at the time and Bombay was a center of Persian print culture. The real treasure here are the book’s 50 lithographed drawings of various historical sites of Persia, especially from the province of Fars.

Lithograph #19 of the Asar-i ajam depicting the Gate of all Nations at Persepolis. The Persian caption reads: “Statues at the Gate of the Sphinx.” For a contemporary photographic view see here.