A Trace of Levi K. Fuller's Vermont Library

Levi K. Fuller (1841-1896) was Vermont's 44th governor, serving a two-year term upon his election in 1892. This I learned after acquiring a few old Vermont Legislature booklets with Fuller's bookplate.

 

Bookplate might even be an inaccurate description of the paper pasted on the booklets. Label seems more fitting somehow given the business-like nature of these aids to finding a book's proper place when returning it to the shelf. And business-like would be an accurate characterization of the man behind the name on the library label. The organization and efficiency indicated by his library served him well in his diverse pursuits of business, political, civic and philanthropic endeavors. 

Fuller trained as a machinist and studied engineering and manufacturing, which helped him land a job with Estey Organ Company in Brattleboro, Vermont. Though he married the owner's daughter, he rose through the ranks to the executive level on his own merits. He patented more than one hundred inventions, including a standard pitch adopted by musical instrument manufacturers worldwide.

Fuller's accomplishments in life could have ended there and he would have enjoyed a respectable business reputation for his accomplishments at Estey Organ Company. But he also became a director of the Brattleboro Savings Bank and a trustee for the Brattleboro Free Library. His library interests would not be confined to that institution. Befitting his engineering and mechanical interests, Fuller amassed one of the state's finest private libraries of scientific and technical literature.

With his attraction to the sciences, Fuller developed into an avid amateur astronomer. So passionate was he about astronomy,  his own observatory is not too hard to contemplate, given his engineering background and inventive work. But given that his life and business seemed locked into the Brattleboro, Vermont area, it is more difficult to imagine how he became involved in founding the South's oldest historically African American college--Shaw University in North Carolina. The oldest building on campus, Estey Hall is named for Jacob Estey, Fuller's father-in-law, whom no doubt was recruited by his son-in-law to become the largest donor to the construction of the first building for the higher education of African American women.

What of Levi K. Fuller's personal library, though? These legislature pamphlets are the only remnants I've been able to find. Surely, it must have been and impressive collection and I would surmise that it was donated in large part to another library. Even more impressive perhaps is that he accomplished all he did in business, science and engineering, book collecting, and philanthropic pursuits in a short (by today's standards) 55 years.

Reviewing Tito

Review slips or letters from publishers often accompany review copies of new books they offer to booksellers. I usually find them tucked inside the front cover (example here), containing language that states the bibliographic details of the book, expected publication date, and a request to send reviews to the publisher. The American Booksellers Association refers to this as Advance Access on their Web site. And when I find them they exist as originally sent, as they are not forms to complete. Rather, they provide contact information for sending reviews.

Not so the one below, which I got a kick out of because it appears the reviewer intended, for some reason,  to recycle the request itself into a review of sorts or at least a notepad for later transcription into a proper and separate review piece.

This 1986 review copy of Tito's Flawed Legacy: Yugoslavia & the West Since 1939, by Nora Beloff included a review slip from the publisher, Westview Press (Frederick A. Praeger, Publisher) requesting copies of any reviews of the book. The reverse side was blank. But not for long.

Working around the margins in a clockwise fashion and then in the center, the review, if that's what this scribble is, uses most of the available real estate on this 4 x 5.5-inch slip of printed paper. Flipping it over, page references continue the notes or review, covering the entire backside.

I can't make out any of this, save a few words, but here is the sequence I would suppose someone at the publishing house would have had to read had this piece actually been sent in.

Impossible to know if these notes made it to the publisher in some form. The only thing I can say for certain about this is that it was put back in the book where I found it a quarter-century later.

The Rothensteiner Collection of the Mundelein College Library

I wake up one day knowing nothing about an old, private Roman Catholic women's college in Chicago called Mundelein College. Never heard of it. Within hours, the defunct college, its library, and once-great collection of books are at the forefront of my thoughts and research.

That morning, I find in a second-hand shop a beat-up, damaged copy of Pope Leo XIII's Memoir, Life of Leo XIII: From an Authentic Memoir  (1896), which introduces me to Mundelein and an interesting and benevolent bibliophile that helped shape their library.

The old book's covers are detached, it's falling apart, and a rubberband holds the pieces together. Still, I must look inside for hidden treasure and I am rewarded for doing so. I find pasted on the marbled endpaper a bookplate from Mundelein College, specially designed to acknowledge the gift of a man identified as Rev. John Rothensteiner.

Back home a bit later, I research Mundelein College, which no longer exists, and its connection to a man named John Ernest Rothensteiner. I learn more about Rothensteiner's extensive and very impressive book collection and how he ended up giving some 20,000 volumes to a small upstart of a college in need of a library. 

All this, and more, I begin to learn thanks to a worn and broken copy from that collection, which somehow traveled a thousand miles south to the University of Houston's library and later deaccessioned into some individual's hands and ultimately into a resale shop, where a blogging bookseller picked it up and found another story besides that of Pope Leo XIII.

More research produces fragments of information that reveal Rev. John Rothensteiner  was not only a man of the cloth, he was also a poet, historian, writer, scholar, and, as mentioned before, a bibliophile. He wrote a history of the St. Louis Diocese as well as German lyrical poetry. His interests were diverse, but I want more information about his book collection.

I turn my attention to online booksellers and in seconds I find and purchase a copy--the only copy available--of The Rothensteiner Collection, a bibliographic booklet published in 1933 by Mundelein College Library. Within a few days I have it in my hands to peruse. It's covers are detached as if in solidarity with those of Rothensteiner's  Life of Leo XIII. And as with Pope Leo XIII, suspending judgment of the cover of the Rothensteiner pamphlet yields a rich history.

To begin with, in addition to an annotated listing of the highlights of the collection, there is history on Rothensteiner, including an image.

And there are images of the college and inside the Mundelein Library.

The foundation of the library's holdings begins with the foundation of John Rothensteiner and his love of books. The author of the booklet states that Rothensteiner was "a born book-hunter," having grown up frequenting the book shops of his native St. Louis and Milwaukee. He developed an early appreciation for fine and rare books. I'm reading this and wondering how a boy, and later a young priest, could afford to purchase fine and rare books. Perhaps there was money from his father or perhaps he was very adept at ferreting out a rare volume here and there from booksellers who didn't know or appreciate what they had.

His scholarly pursuits fed into his book collecting and vice versa. He trained in the classics at Milwaukee Seminary. Afterward he studied philosophy and theology before entering the priesthood in 1884. Accordingly, the Bible and works of the founding fathers of the church became a specialized field of collecting for Rothensteiner. Folios and quartos held a special attraction for him. His books would become his reference library that he used for writing many books and articles for literary and theological publications.

He spent twenty years in Fredericktown, Missouri before being transferred to St. Louis. His growing collection went with him and continued to grow. In his 73rd year, he learned from an acquaintance about plans for Mundelein College and an idea came to mind about how to help a small college get its library started. His books went to their new home a few thousand at a time. By the time of this publication, a year or so after Mundelein opened, Rothensteiner had parted with 7,500 books. Mundelein instantly had a bibliophile collection and working library consisting of theology, philosophy, patrology, classics, history, French, Spanish, German, and English poetry and prose, essays, letters, art, travel, and rare and curious.

After the brief history of Rothensteiner and his books, the donated collection is described in relation to the evolution of the book and printing. From the early history of books there's a fragment of an ancient manuscript, a Catholic antiphonary. There are also two authenticated volumes of Incunabula, early examples of books printed with movable type before the year 1500, and each is described in bibliographical detail and with provenance. 

High spots from the sixteenth century are described, as are books related to the great printers descended from Gutenberg and Fust. These books would include the works of Aldine, Plantin, The Stephani and Gryphii, Elzevir, Foulis, and Bodoni. 

And again I'm wondering how a priest of seemingly limited means, could amass a collection of museum pieces. Prices in his day were a far cry from what they are today, granted, and he did generate income through his writing. Still, I wonder. Perhaps in his time, such a collection could be achieved without a great amount of money. Not so today.

The library booklet segues next into a roll call of its finest by specific subject, and there are many. A note on bindings to be found in the collection concludes the booklet. 

I learn from other online sources that Rothensteiner died in 1936, so the remainder of his collection made its way to Mundelein in short order between 1933 and his death. 

The college itself died from lack of enrollment and funds in 1991 and was incorporated into Loyola University in Chicago. Learning that, I contemplate what happened to the library. The answer appears to be in the Newberry Library in Chicago. The preceding link indicates that the Rothensteiner collection resides there. Minus a Pope Leo XIII memoir and probably a few other titles. There's also mention of a second catalog that came out in 1941, an update of the rare and valuable books in the collection.

I did some genealogy research at the Newberry Library about 20 years ago while on a business trip to Chicago. It's an impressive library and I'd love to visit again--this time to hunt down some of the old Rothensteiner collection and see some of the rare volumes first-hand that I've been reading about. 

Schulte's Book Store Catalogue

A few years ago, I acquired a cache of old letters written to Schulte's Book Store in New York City during the 1940s to 1960s. Most of the letters were from authors, artists, and collectors of varying degrees of note, such as authors Rose Wilder Lane and Stefan Lorant, and woodcut illustrator J.J. Lankes. These are just three I've written about from the two-dozen-plus letters in the collection. 

I've been hoping to add a store catalogue to the collection to gain more insight into Schulte's stock and anything else about the business it might offer. Now I have one--Catalogue 81.

There is no date, but an online search of the phone number (Stuyvesant 2550) turns up a few Schulte references dating from 1918 to 1924. So this catalogue is probably circa 1920s, a few decades before the correspondence mentioned above.

But it does reveal on the cover some information that clearly shows Schulte's was a well-established book store long before the correspondence in my collection took place. The front cover boasts that Schulte's is the largest second-hand book store in New York and one of the largest in all of America with an inventory of more than 100,000 books. Their stock consisted of Americana, Art, Costumes, Curiosa, Facetiae, Fine Sets of Standard Authors, and miscellaneous books for the book-lover, collector, and librarian.

Additionally, the cover ad goes on to state, "we have a large outlet for fine editions, standard subscription sets and rare books." It then reiterates the size of the inventory and expands a bit on the subject matter one is likely to find there: Americana, Art, Belles Lettres, History, Philosophy  Sociology, Travel, Biography, and a separate department for Theology. Something for everyone. Inquiries and correspondence about selling books to Schulte's are encouraged.

With so much to offer, the catalogue jumps right into it with double-column listings that start immediately at the top of the inside cover page and run without a break to the bottom of the rear cover. No images, no ads--a no-frills, workman-like catalogue.

Nine-hundred and five entries comprise the 36-page catalogue, which was apparently well-read, used, and abused. This beat-up, stained, worn copy is exactly how a catalogue should look (particularly of this vintage). Had it been in fine condition, it's purpose for existing would likely have gone unfulfilled.

Revisiting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on his birthday

Today is appropriate for revisiting a 2009 post I wrote about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and a book purchase he made in 1880. Today is Longfellow's birthday.

One of America's most famous poets, Longfellow was born in 1807, 216 years ago. Below is my blog post from November 27, 2009, Longfellow's Receipt.

In 1880, the revered American poet and scholar, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), bought a book printed in Pennsylvania German from H.L. Fisher, a York, Pennsylvania lawyer and poet. Fisher evidently self-published the book and had pre-printed receipts ready for the sales.

I have in my collection the receipt he made out to Henry W. Longfellow for his purchase of a copy of 'S Alt Marik-Haus Mittes In D'r Schtadt, Un Die Alte Zeite, a centennial poem in Pennsylvania Dutch.



So what interest did Longfellow have in some obscure German language book from a Pennsylvania lawyer who liked to write? That was one question I had when trying to determine if this were really the same Longfellow (how many Henry W's could there be?).

I don't know of any specific interest in Fisher. That may be forever lost to history. But in researching Longfellow and Fisher and related people, places, and events, I discovered a bigger picture about Longfellow and his collecting and scholarly pursuits that puts his Pennyslvania German acquisition into a better perspective.

Longfellow's ability in the ancient classics, while studying at Bowdoin College in the 1820s, led the trustees to establish a new chair of Modern Languages and offer the position to Longfellow. But first, he was instructed to study in Europe to prepare himself in the langauge and culture of France, Spain, and Italy.

Before setting sail, he met with George Ticknor in Boston. Ticknor's strong recommendation that the young graduate include Germany in his itinerary sowed the seeds of Longfellow's lifelong interest in Germany and its literature.

Longfellow returned after a few years to Bowdoin College to teach and later was offered a similar position at Harvard on the condition that he travel again to Europe, at his own expense, and attain more expertise in the German language.

His love and scholarly pursuits of German were lifelong and just a few years before his death, the receipt above indicates that he was still reading and studying German. I don't know the extent of his interest in Pennsylvania German or if it were something he aspired to late in life. But he knew enough to select a title from Fisher, "whose admirable contributions to Pennsylvania-German literature easily place him among the most gifted and fertile writers in the dialect." That attribute to Fisher is from a 1902 Pennsylvania-German Society publication article, Metrical Translations from the German and English Classics and from the Irish and Scotch Dialects into Pennsylvania German, by Thomas C. Zimmerman.

I consulted two biographies of Longfellow to learn more about him and attempt to find any connection he had to Pennsylvania German literature: New Light on Longfellow, with Special Reference to His Relations to Germany, by James Taft Hatfield (Houghton Mifflin, 1933) and Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life, by Charles Calhoun (Beacon Press, 2004).

I wound up reading both and recommend them, as well as Harvard's Houghton Library site, Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200 for anyone interested in his life. There's a lot more to the man than Hiawatha and other anthologized relics from an immense, albeit faded (in popularity), American literary legacy.

Philip Greely Brown ex libris

Scouting books in a second-hand shop a few months ago, I pulled from a shelf this copy of Uncle Bernac, by A. Conan Doyle, better known as Arthur Conan Doyle and as the author of the Sherlock Holmes books.

As I customarily do with older books, I checked the endpapers for a bookseller's label, or ticket, and a bookplate. Uncle Bernac had no labels from previous book shops where the book had resided during its life, but I found something more interesting--a book plate that introduced me to a fairly well-known book collector from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century--Philip Greely Brown.

The provenance of the book begins with Brown. Above his bookplate in the upper-left corner are his initials and the date June 97, which is the publication date for this copy of Uncle Bernac. That makes sense--a bibliophile would want to purchase first editions.

Then in 1951, somebody named Dave bought the book and presented it to his father for a Christmas present. Fast forward to 2013, more than a hundred years since Greely installed his ownership marks, I have the book. Looks like Dave's dad and whomever else might have owned it took pretty good care of it.

I wanted to learn more about Greely and his books and barely a month later I found and acquired a catalog for the sale of his library: 

The Library of the Late Philip Greely Brown, Portland, Maine, to be Dispersed at Public Sale by Order of National Bank of Commerce of Portland, Executor, Tuesday and Wednesday October 15 and 16, at 2:15 p.m.

 

Philip Greely Brown was born about 1855. An entry in the In Memoriam section of the The Diamond of Psi Upsilon, Volume 21, Issue 2, 1935 states that he died December 18, 1934 in Portland, Maine in the house he was born in. Further, he was graduated from Bowdoin in 1877, which helps estimate his birth year, assuming he was about 22 years of age when he left Bowdoin. Years later, he would establish and provide the funding for a composition prize at his alma mater in memory of his father--The Philip Henry Brown Prize at Bowdoin College in Portland, which is still awarding two annual prizes to members of the senior class for excellence in extemporaneous English composition.

A successful businessman and leader in the community, Brown became President of the First National Bank of Portland and of the Board of Directors of the Portland Public Library. He also inherited and managed real estate holdings from his grandfather's estate. All this would indicate a man with the means to collect fine books, though that escapes mention in the fraternity journal. 

The auction catalog for Brown's library offers no biographical information, unless you consider a man's library a portal into his character or personality. Scanning the titles, his collection was heavy in history, Americana, and literature. No estimated values or starting bids are given.

I can find no mention of a wife and children nor any other heirs, which would help explain why his library was auctioned by order of a Portland bank. But I did find an image of Brown from 1877, presumably a graduation photo. Below is the image, shared courtesy of the Bowdoin Library Archives Image Gallery:

Abraham Lincoln's Birthday: A 1944 Remembrance

Today, February 12th, is Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Here's a 1944 press photo from the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, Illinois, which I wrote about on this blog three years ago today. Enough time has gone by now and this seemed a good time to repost it, given all the attention Lincoln has gotten recently in books and film.

The back of the photo has a typed sheet of paper that appears to be dated 2-8-44. Other notation, for the record: A-37690 and Wide World. The title of the release is "Lincoln's Words Live On."


Here's the press release transcribed from the typed sheet (typos and errant punctuation intact):

CHICAGO, ILL.-To the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, started on Abraham Lincoln's Birthday 11 years ago by Ralph Newman come writers, ans (SIC) scholars bent on research, and everyday people of all sorts to who the great statesman is still an inspiration. Carl Sandburg used the shop when he was writing his "Life of Lincoln". Four years ago 25 of its patrons started an informal organization the Civil War Round Table, which meets monthly for discussions of the period. members range from a street-car conductor to a judge. There reading an old book of the Lincoln Period are: Walter S. Holden, Chicago Attorney holding the book, and (left to right)Dr. George Truman Carl, Chicago Pastor; Joseph Eisendrath, Jr., manufacturer; John Hamer, Assistant Manager of an oil company; and Newton C. Farr, a real estate man.

The old book shop is still around at 357 West Chicago Avenue in Chicago. It was established in 1938, so was a mere six years old when this photo was taken. I doubt they allow cigar smoking in the shop now (the man holding the book has a lit stogie!). Click on this link to see the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop today.

And here are a few links for Lincolniana:

Lincolniana at Brown University

The Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana at the Library of Congress

A bookman and his customer at 84 Charing Cross Road

Recognize this bookman?

Trick question, sort of, especially for those unfamiliar with a certain movie version of a certain book.

It's actor Anthony Hopkins and he's no bookman (quite the reader, though ), but he did play one in a favorite movie among antiquarian booklovers--84 Charing Cross Road. 

The 1987 movie was adapted from the 1970 book by Helene Hanff, which chronicled the correspondence between Hanff, a New York writer and lover of English literature and the London bookseller, Frank Doel, who supplied her with the books she discovered she wanted.

This picture of Hopkins playing Doel is on a theater lobby card that also features Anne Bancroft in the role of Helene Hanff. Bancroft signed her photo so now I have the signature of the actor who played Helene Hanff to go along with the signature of Helene Hanff.

Now if I can just get Frank Doel, I mean Anthony Hopkins--make that Sir Anthony Hopkins--to sign the other half of this card...

L'Auto-Carro Libreria: An Early Italian Bookmobile

This photo is cropped from the photo below that features a page from a 1922 issue of the once popular, long-defunct Italian publication L'Illustrazione Italiana.

UNA NUOVA INIZIATIVA PER LA DIFFUSIONE DEL LIBRO proclaims the title at the top of the photo, or, in English (as best I can tell), A New Initiative for Distributing Books.

I assumed at first this early bookmobile in Firenza (Florence) must be affiliated with a local library. Translating the caption below the photo and researching clues within it, I learned otherwise.

The caption reads: L'AUTOCARRO LIBRERIA DEGLI EDITORI TREVES E DELL'ANONIMA LIBRARIA ITALIANA, FOTOGRAFAT IN FIRENZE DURANTE IL SUO VIAGGIO INAUGURALE

or, in my best attempt at English through an Internet translation site,

"The truck bookstore of the publisher Treves and of the anonymous Italian books , photographed in Florence during its inaugural journey."

So the bookmobile was a publisher's method of selling books to the public, not a library's program to get books to more citizens. I know this wasn't a unique idea, but it does precede one other example of a business bookmobile I've encountered since starting this blog five years ago: America's First Book Shop Caravan

Treves, in the photo's caption, refers to Emilio Treves (1834-1916), the founder, editor, and publisher of L'Illustrazione Italiana. A Web site for library archives housing a portion of Treves' papers in Milan reveals that Treves started his publishing house in Milan in 1861.  In 1873, he launched L'Illustrazione Italiana under the name Nuova Illustrazione Universale, renaming it L'Illustrazione Italiana in 1876. Under that name, and a change of ownership later, the publication enjoyed a good run until the 1960s.

As Treves' periodicals developed a reputation of world culture, he decided to extend his business to book publishing on a variety of cultural subjects. The bookmobile pictured above in its first venture on the streets of Florence, was an innovative use of early automobile transportation to distribute those books to various markets outside of Milan.

Deviating a bit from the subject of this post, I encountered during my research an artist, Janelle Randall Kroner, who had created a master copy of a painting of Treves, by Vittorio Corcos (1907). With her kind permission, I thought I'd include a copy here to accompany my page from Treves' most popular publication. And you can always click one of the links above to Ms. Kroner's site and view her portfolio of selected works, which contrast noticeably in subject and color to her black and white painting of Treves. The old Italian publisher, a fine subject, does stand out in that crowd!

Emilio Treves, who died in 1916, was not around to witness the advent of his firm's bookmobile, or truck bookstore, but a photographer was on hand to record this historical marketing event for the publisher. Naturally, and fittingly, the photo appeared in an edition of Treves' L'Illustrazione Italiana.

A Napoli bookseller's postcard

This panoramic postcard from Napoli bookseller, Emil Prass, folds out to a length of 11 inches. The reverse side, when folded on the image, has one blank side for a written message and the other side formatted for an address and postage. I date it to the early 1900s, as I have found examples of Emil Prass imprints for various books published between the late 1890s and early 1900s, which establish Prass at the address on the postcard and in that time period. Those books dealt with local and regional history about places such as Naples, Pompeii, and Capri.

As the print ad in the lower corner indicates, Prass was an international bookseller, but most of the books he published, that I found, are in the English language. His book shop's address is given as Piazza dei Martiri, 59-60 and Via Chiatamone, 5.  The Wikipedia page for Piazza dei Martiri  has a photo of how it looks today (above) and Google Maps Street View (below) offers another perspective.

Researching Prass, I found indications that he succeeded another bookseller at the same location--Friedrich Furccheim, who also published local and regional histories and guides. It's curious that both Furccheim and his successor, Emil Prass, appear to have been German and selling books in various languages out of a Naples (Napoli), Italy book shop. Perhaps Prass was a family member or friend from Germany and apprenticed for Furchheim before taking over the business.

Having just visited Naples last fall, I was interested to see if any of my photos captured the same landscape coming into port. A few did and the comparisons below reveal the expected changes in the skyline more than a century later, but the topography is easily recognizable. 

 

Alas, riding around Old Napoli, none of my photos captured Piazza dei Martiri, 59-60. Perhaps another postcard depicting the old book shop awaits discovery.