Tag: Bookplates
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Lions on the Clock II: Six Owners, Five Marks of Provenance, One Book (and Two Lawsuits)
Lions are primarily pursuit predators, although “ambush behaviour has been observed … mainly during daylight when stalking prey is more difficult” (“Predatory Behaviour”). I presume this accounts for the way three more books from the press of sixteenth-century Swiss printer Nikolas Brylinger—he of the clock-watching lions—leapt out at me from the Kislak Center’s holdings after…
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A Coincidence of Mermaids: Two Bookplates of the Mason Family
The Kislak Center’s American Culture Class Collection holds fifty-four nineteenth-century editions of works by William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870), an author who embodies the contradictions of his era: the son of a bankrupt, he married a plantation heiress; a member of the Young America circle, he rejected Americanism in favor of sectionalism; a Unionist during the…
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The Princess and the Piarists (Or, The Mystery of the Misidentified Monogram)
Marks of provenance tend to accumulate as books pass from one owner to another. New bookplates are pasted next to or over old ones; stamps and ownership inscriptions are added, emended, cut out or struck through; entire textblocks are rebound to display the arms of proud possessors. The dynamics of this process are equal parts…
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From the Gales of War to a Life of Peace: H.A.L.H. Wade, Soldier and Interpreter
On 16 December 1888, Harry Amyas Leigh Herschel Wade (1873-1959) received a book from his housemaster at Harrow as “diligentiae praemium” [the reward of industry]. That industry would support Lieutenant-Colonel H.A.L.H. Wade in a career of both warfighting and peacemaking that spanned two World Wars and the rise and fall of the League of Nations.
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Alias Mr. Atlantis, Knight Grand Star of the Noble Order of Count Dracula, the Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang
This extremely Gothic bookplate appears on the front pastedown of Armine von Tempski’s 1929 novel Fire in the Caroline F. Schimmel Collection of Women in the American Wilderness. It was designed in 1933 by the American medical illustrator, Atlantean scholar, and First Fandom member Henry M. Eichner (1909-1971), whose career is as fascinating as his…
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“Women Ain’t No Fools” – The Paul Eldridge Papers
Written by Alexandra M. Wilder Paul Eldridge (1888-1982) was a poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, and teacher. Eldridge was born in Bucharest, raised in Philadelphia, and spent most of his life in New York City. He married fellow writer, stage actress, and soprano, Sylvette De La Mar (also known as Sylvette De Lamar, née…