tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54731210275489231612024-03-13T15:05:08.190-07:00The MorrisianClara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-51785757079853878952015-07-11T05:33:00.000-07:002015-07-11T10:53:19.700-07:00I'm Back, and I'm in Iceland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BzG40HBX6Kw/VaEKXYRfdQI/AAAAAAAAI3E/LW4v1X_bhsA/s1600/iceland%2Bmap%2Bsmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="504" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BzG40HBX6Kw/VaEKXYRfdQI/AAAAAAAAI3E/LW4v1X_bhsA/s640/iceland%2Bmap%2Bsmall.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">Dear
Morris World,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">I
am back, and I am visiting Iceland. The two facts are not related,
but make up a coincidence more than nice enough for a blog post.
Instead of arriving by cold, heaving seas, and setting foot on the
very shore of Reykjavik, as Morris did in 1871 and again in 1873, I
flew into Keflavik airport, stepping out into a warm, postmodern
interior with faux wood flooring and skeins of yarn in the welcome
gift shop. The tourism board has arranged for (admittedly great) quotes to be painted on the walls here, like 'There are many wonders in a
cow's head' or 'It's a pity we don't whistle to each other, like birds. Words
are misleading'. Fish and crabs are embossed on the coins instead of
old men and women with flinty, xenophobic gazes. It is a good first
airport impression.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">I
spent thousands of krona on a sandwich and a latte (almond milk!
Seemingly by default!) and sit down to think about Morris's start
here. He'd come for the ancient sagas and the harsh wilderness. He'd
come to escape his semi-wrecked life, in which his wife was in love
with his old mentor, the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
He'd bought a new nest—Kelmscott Manor—and left those two
particular birds together while he winged away to the lava wastes.
He'd come to scrub his mind out with volcanic rock; to blot out his
view of London with some inky mountains.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">But
he soon found that Iceland blotted nothing out. Far from allowing
anyone to forget everything, Iceland was the blankest page,
containing nothing but humans and memories:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">“<span style="font-size: 9pt;">a
piece of turf under your feet, and the sky overhead, that's all;
whatever solace your life is to have here must come out of yourself
or these old stories, not over hopeful themselves.” </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">This
is obvious from my very first step outside the airport: no trees,
just long bleak stretches, and free-falling views all the way out to
the distant mountains. The airport, far from a dominating symbol of
the 21<sup>st</sup> century, suddenly feels like tenuous stake of
indoor-ness, threatened on all sides by this vast exposure. If those
mountains were my destination, it would be a daunting start to my
journey. I had no idea it would be this dramatic. The scale of it all
puts the bravery of Morris's adventure into perspective. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">But
he never thought of it that way. He wasn't thinking of himself, he
was observing the people around him, and imagining the people who
used to live there, in the saga times. He felt by turns envious of
the happy simplicity of life on an icelandic farm—haymaking and
brandy and salmon and curds—and sad for how “little” everything
had become from the grand, savage days of the sagas.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">Nor
did he feel especially sad for the poverty of the Icelanders. He'd
seen working men in England, and their brutalized lives, and knew who
had the better lot. This trip contributed to his social thought in
new and unexpected ways, and he came away thinking “the most
grinding poverty is a trifling evil compared to the inequality of classes”. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Also
added to his imagination were the interiors, tiny and innocent of
drapery. These simple wooden places blurred the boundaries between
inside and out with their turf roofs, and sometimes with ivy growing
inside too. They were all small, and humble, and almost all of them
were clean. This furthered his vision for the small, classless house
of the future. Later in the '80s, he would write to Thomas Coglan
Horsfall, “What furniture a workman can buy should be </span><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">exactly</span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
the same ... as a lord buys.”</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">When
he left after his second Icelandic journey in 1873, he felt as if “a
definite space of my life has passed away,” and vowed to himself
that he would be a “really industrious man: for I do not mean to
return to Iceland again if I can help it.” </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">This
trip is only my 1871 however. I hope to see more of what Morris saw
in this place, and I mean to come again if I can help it. To come for
an 1873, and maybe even for that third trip that he never needed or
couldn't manage.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 9pt;">(Sources: <a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/icelandic1871portal1911.html">William Morris Online Edition</a>, John's Purkiss's <i>The Icelandic Jaunt, </i>and<i> The Collected Letters of William Morris, Volume II, Part A.)</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-17611402777939946722013-10-27T19:26:00.000-07:002013-10-28T07:56:17.146-07:00Mark Samuels Lasner: The Collecting Life<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Mark Samuels Lasner, <a href="http://www.materialculture.udel.edu/faculty/lasner.html">Senior Research Fellow</a> </span>at the University of Delaware Library<span style="font-family: inherit;">, is an authority on the literature and art of 1850-1900. He has spent years collecting <a href="http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/msl/index.htm">thousands of items from the period</a>, and h</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">is collection is largely housed at the University of Delaware's Morris Library, under the name of the <a href="http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/msl/">Mark Samuels Lasner Collection</a>. </span><br />
<br />
His books include <i><a href="http://www.rivendalepress.com/mark.html">The Bookplates of Aubrey Beardsley</a>;</i> and bibliographies of <a href="http://www.bossbooks.com/beardsleylist.html">Aubrey Beardsley</a> and <a href="http://www.oakknoll.com/detail.php?d_booknr=54057">William Allingham</a>. His writings have appeared in journals such as <i>Book Collector </i>and <i>Browning Institute Studies</i>. With Margaret D. Stetz, he has co-authored books and curated exhibitions including <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/England-1880s-Old-Guard-Avant-Garde-Stetz/10056289516/bd"><i>England in the 1880s: Old Guard and Avant-Garde</i></a>; <i>The Yellow Book: A Centenary Exhibition</i>; and <i>London Bound: American Writers in Britain, 1870-1916.</i><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u1b4WSQj8M8/UiGXBMfUlaI/AAAAAAAAAi4/dLlMxbSpy0I/s1600/last+living+WITH+QUOTES+mark+crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-left: 0em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u1b4WSQj8M8/UiGXBMfUlaI/AAAAAAAAAi4/dLlMxbSpy0I/s400/last+living+WITH+QUOTES+mark+crop.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
He was the principal organizer of "Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites," a conference and related exhibitions held at the University of Delaware, Delaware Art Museum, and Winterthur in 2010. Works from his collection are frequently included in outside exhibitions as well, including the excellent show this spring, <a href="http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/preraphaelites.shtm">Pre-Raphaelites and the Book,</a> which was shown alongside the Tate Britain's Pre-Raphaelite show when it visited the National Gallery of Art.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I met Samuels Lasner at his home away from home in Manhattan, <a href="http://www.grolierclub.org/">The Grolier Club</a>. Each room in this bibliophile's club, founded in 1884, seems to contain only dark wood, stately chairs, and books. The Grolier Club library contains an impressive 100,000 volumes, mostly surrounding the theme "books about books." </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite the existence of the perfectly apt "Morris Room" on the fifth floor, we met in the smaller Phillipps room instead, and began to talk about collecting, William Morris, Max Beerbohm, and the three tales that a book can tell.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Can you pinpoint a particular experience, or acquisition, which led you to become a collector?</i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, I'll go back and start with my usual story, which
seems even more remarkable now as I get older than it did when it happened. I
grew up in suburban Connecticut, and lived with my grandparents in a wonderful
Queen Anne “summer cottage” designed in 1898 by Bruce Price, the architect of
Tuxedo Park. I loved that house; in fact I might claim to have had a
turn-of-the century childhood in the 1950s. The atmosphere was of the late
Victorian period. Of course my grandparents were born in the 1890s.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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My grandmother had an elderly friend, May Bradshaw Hays,
whom we used to visit. Mrs. Hays was the daughter of Joseph Jacobs, the
Australian-born British writer and folklorist. She was born in 1880 and was
full of tales about growing up in London. And she had known William Morris and
had visited Kelmscott House; she had known Burne-Jones; she had met Robert
Browning; she remembered, as a teenager, being taken rowing by Frederick
Furnivall. Mrs. Hays even claimed, and it was possible, that George Eliot had
seen her as an infant.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">I heard all these reminiscences, which only reinforced my
love for everything about that period. When I graduated from Connecticut
College in 1974, at which point Mrs. Hays was 94 years old, a box arrived. In
the box were two hand-painted fireplace tiles; those were her parent's wedding
present from Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones; and four pieces of blue and
white china, the remnants of the tea set that William and Jane Morris gave
them. That was the moment I started to collect. And I now realize that I knew
the last living person to have known William Morris. It's just astonishing. As
Lorelei Lee says in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes</i>, “fate just keeps on happening”—and it keeps happening to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><b>You
own such treasures as Morris’s handwritten catalogue of his books, Edward
Burne-Jones’s visitors book from North End House, Rottingdean, and a rare
original print by Max Beerhbohm: is there a single item that you would consider
to be the crowning jewel of your collection?</b><o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"></span></i><br />
<a name='more'></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><br /></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">It's always this question, if someone yells, “fire,” what
do you take with you. I think I have to say that the Morris calligraphic
manuscript is one of my great treasures. It's a spectacular thing. I was
actually surprised that I was able to buy it at auction. I assumed that—I won't
even name which institutions, but those would come readily to mind—I assumed
that one or another of the great libraries or museums would outbid me, and they
didn't. The manuscript is like the Holy Grail to me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-615YsNcdWVE/Uh3YLv-QLJI/AAAAAAAAAhA/Mesp2CHKkv8/s1600/quote+mark_this+is+not+here.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-615YsNcdWVE/Uh3YLv-QLJI/AAAAAAAAAhA/Mesp2CHKkv8/s320/quote+mark_this+is+not+here.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">The Burne-Jones visitors' book was a complete surprise. I
didn't know it existed. In January 2004 a bookseller sent me an email, saying
that he had the book for sale for a client, and asking if I knew anything about
it. I remember calling him, and I recall my exact words, which were “I don't
know anything about it except you're putting it in a Fed-ex box and sending it
to me.” That was it. I didn't know how much it was, I didn't even ask. The
dealer’s email stated that it came with a little group of drawings by
Burne-Jones, but there were no further details. The next morning one of the
mailroom staff at the University of Delaware library brought the package to my
research study. I unwrapped the book and kept turning the pages filled with
sketches, awe-struck, which is an understatement. All the time I was thinking,
why isn't this in the Fitzwilliam Museum or the Morgan Library, how is this
here? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VwgdBKeVheo/UimmZzd0vPI/AAAAAAAAAjo/wb7sIKFt6KQ/s1600/sm_MSL_Childhood+Home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="306" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VwgdBKeVheo/UimmZzd0vPI/AAAAAAAAAjo/wb7sIKFt6KQ/s400/sm_MSL_Childhood+Home.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Samuels Lasner's childhood home, built in 1898 to the design of Bruce Price.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Then I opened the little portfolio, bound in patterned paper,
which accompanied the visitors book and find a Burne-Jones self-caricature, a
caricature of Georgiana Burne-Jones, drawings of animals and babies. There was
a folded piece of paper, and inside this another folded sheet of paper at which
I stared for at least two minutes. I thought, no, no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> is not here, there's something really wrong. Because what I
was looking at was the sketch of Burne-Jones in the studio in Red Lion Square,
in 1858, reproduced in every book on the artist or Morris. That ironic piece of
Pre-Raphaelite history must be in an institution; it just can’t be sitting in
front of me, and I went to the stacks and got the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones,</i> where the illustration caption
says “from a photograph in the British Museum.” The British Museum has always
had a photograph; this was the original.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">And I remember, after I recovered, that I picked up the
phone and I called Margaretta Frederick of the Delaware Art Museum. I asked
Margaretta, “What are you doing?” and told her to just stop and get in her car
and come to Newark. I did not tell her why, just that she had to come, right
now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Margaretta came, and I handed her the little piece of
folded paper and she opened it up, and she kept saying “oh my god, oh my god”
and of course, for both of us, this was magic: for in the drawing Burne-Jones
is sitting on one of the medieval chairs, decorated by Morris and Rossetti,
that are in the Delaware Art Museum.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">So the Morris manuscript and Burne-Jones visitors' book are at the top of the list. It's partly the stories, and partly the
acquisition, but also that these objects are without doubt really interesting,
wonderful items. I'm so grateful to have them, and to not only enjoy them
myself, to make them available to people to see them. Both the calligraphic
manuscript and the visitors book receive a lot of “oohs and aahs.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Are there others that you’re particularly fond of for more subjective
reasons?</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">
</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Oh I'm attached to so many of them. (laughs) There are
things that have come to me because they belonged to friends and mentors. Early
on, I was introduced to Simon Nowell-Smith, the great bibliographer and book
collector: he was head of the London Library for a decade. Simon collected
various things, but his lifelong enthusiasm was English poetry from Wordsworth
to Betjeman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">I'd never seen books like Simon’s; when I went to see him
in the 1970s he had all these association copies and rarities. Just
breathtaking—the dedication copy of Swinburne’s first book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Queen-Mother, Rosamund,</i> inscribed to
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was typical, I didn't realize that a private person
could own such works. I thought that they were all in libraries, Harvard,
Princeton and the British Library. That really fired me up to get unique books.
After Simon died his library came on the market, and I was able to buy a number
of items. They're wonderful association books on their own, but because they
belonged to Simon Nowell-Smith, they are very precious to me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"></span>
<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-emy59w6Chto/UhxzoXjayeI/AAAAAAAAAf0/mTGIA451wCU/s1600/MSL_Childhood+Home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></a></div>
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Your collection is wide-ranging, but Morris is one of your
specialties. What makes him so interesting and important? </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">I think Morris is central first of all because of the
personal connection of knowing Mrs. Hays. But Morris is fascinating; he
did so many things so well. I'm a great admirer, sympathetic
to his political and environmental views, I love the incredible invention of
design that he had. The sheer beauty of Morris's productions, whether they are
textiles, Kelmscott Press books, or stained glass windows, is remarkable. I
remember that there's the story that when William Morris died, his doctor said
that he died of being William Morris and doing more things than ten ordinary men.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mhssRD3qfX4/Uh3XCs__jdI/AAAAAAAAAg0/OXedkShzvrk/s1600/quote+mark_3+tales.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="183" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mhssRD3qfX4/Uh3XCs__jdI/AAAAAAAAAg0/OXedkShzvrk/s320/quote+mark_3+tales.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">However, I have to say that while I was president of the
William Morris society, I claimed that I did not collect William Morris. That
was in self-defense, but it was also true. Because I've
never gone out to look for Morris in the way that I've searched for, say, Max
Beerbohm or Aubrey Beardsley, on whom I have done scholarly work. Morris items
simply came to me, and I was happy to add them, but, for instance, I’ve never
deliberately acquired William Morris letters. And thus I only have a couple—and
with Kelmscott Press books, it’s much the same process; I like to have some, but
have never wanted a complete set. I couldn't afford it anyway. The Chaucer, in
any case, is not financially possible. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Oddly enough, I no longer have my first Kelmscott Press
book, which my grandmother bought me on our first trip to London in 1967.
Inexplicably it got out of my possession. It's in the <a href="http://pacscl.exlibrisgroup.com:48991/F/AFMYYG33X1T9E33YJ26PIIGJ9QAGPLIJL91S4BANQNGYTP8YEG-34582?func=item-global&doc_library=PPA01&doc_number=000005509&year=&volume=&sub_library=PPA">Athenaeum of Philadelphia</a>. When the William Morris Society paid a visit to the Athenaeum
there or four years ago, they brought out their Morris and Arts and Crafts
books, and there was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gothic Architecture</i>,
with my bookplate, in the box I had made for it... they do not have an
acquisition record, nor I do not have any recollection of selling it or giving
it away. I'd like it back! (laughs)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><b>Which of his Kelmscott Press books do you admire most?<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">I almost would say you have to admire the Chaucer, but
actually I'm very fond of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">News from
Nowhere</i> because of <a href="http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/SP90.8.4.PenningRowsell.pdf">Gere’s beautiful frontispiece of Kelmscott Manor</a>, one of
the great examples of Morris’s uniting illustration, text, and ornament to
perfection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><b>You said in an earlier interview that when
you collect, you seek out connections to the past rather than mint-condition
items. Can you talk about this concept a little?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Many collectors are interested in the obvious qualities of
rarity, cultural significance, and the fine condition of the objects they
collect. I'm not entirely indifferent to condition, but I consider it to be of
far less consequence than the interest in the item, in terms of “who made it,”
“what is it,” and “what does it tell you about the person and the period and
the place.” I believe that objects are practically human, or animate anyway,
and they have three tales to tell: the story of their creation, the story of
what they mean in their own time, and then the story of what's happened to them
since.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MXaj9UNVyoA/UimmliY-CJI/AAAAAAAAAjw/hydTuQmKrIA/s1600/sm_burne-jones.redlionsquare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="268" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MXaj9UNVyoA/UimmliY-CJI/AAAAAAAAAjw/hydTuQmKrIA/s400/sm_burne-jones.redlionsquare.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A staggering find: Edward Burne-Jones in the studio at Red Lion Square, 1858.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">All these stories are fascinating to me. And occasionally I
find something that combines all three elements. A good example would
be, of course, the Burne-Jones visitors book, but another might be William Allingham's manuscript commonplace
book. Allingham is an interesting writer, and commonplace
books of nineteenth century poets are not something you see everyday: you
get an idea of what interested him, what he felt was worth copying into his
notebook. Allingham began the manuscript probably around 1850, and then
continued to add to the book until 1866. Most of the text consists of poems by
the Brownings and Tennyson. These writers became his friends, but he didn't
know them when he started. It turns out that much of what is in the book is
copied from another commonplace book, one kept by Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
because Allingham has included comments, which he attributes to a “note of
DGR”; from their correspondence we know that Rossetti lent his notebook, location
now unknown, to Allingham. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">The volume opens with a transcription of Robert Browning's
first published book, <i>Pa</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">uline,</i>
published anonymously in 1833. In 1847, Rossetti read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pauline</i> in the British Museum and guessed that Browning, who he
didn't know, was the author. He wrote to Browning, saying I've come across this
book, can you tell me if it is your work? The letter he wrote to Browning is in
the Huntington; it's a rather famous letter. Allingham has copied, along with
the transcription of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pauline,</i> the
letter Browning wrote to Rossetti acknowledging the authorship. This is the
only known text of the letter. So now we have the second story, a multilayered contemporary
context: in one object a picture of, not just Allingham, but also the first
personal connection between Rossetti and Browning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z7t1zrK_Lbk/UiGJC0z989I/AAAAAAAAAhs/gwo0tsHduKY/s1600/good+bibliography+mark+quote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z7t1zrK_Lbk/UiGJC0z989I/AAAAAAAAAhs/gwo0tsHduKY/s320/good+bibliography+mark+quote.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">The third story is about provenance, how did the
commonplace book get from William Allingham, who died in 1889, to Mark Samuels
Lasner in 1979?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Allinghams lived in
Surrey in a house called Sandhills. Helen was a watercolor painter famed for
her depiction of the British countryside. At the end of his life, Allingham
became ill, and they moved to Hampstead. The house survived, and was bought by the
artist-writer W. Graham Robertson. He died in 1948, having never installed
central heat, running water, or electricity. Eventually the house came on the
market, and the new owner supposedly found some boxes of materials left behind
90 years before by the Allinghams.</span><br />
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I have no idea if the last part is true. Possibly the box turned up at Hampstead or was sold in a country auction in Surrey. It
doesn’t matter, the Allingham books and two manuscripts, one of which was the
commonplace book, came on the market. I bought them. It was years before I
realized that the commonplace book contained the first letter from Browning to
Rossetti.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">There are many perfectly ordinary books in the collection, with texts not found online; or containing elements I find appealing, such as illustrations or a publisher's binding; or that merely act to represent a particular artist or writer. What I really love are the items that have
within them narratives of creation, meaning, and history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Some books in the collection can be traced continuously
through a series of owners and I know where they lived from publication day to
my acquisition. There's a copy of Tennyson's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lover’s Tale</i>, one of his later, still extremely common titles, that
he gave to the writer/collector Frederick Locker-Lampson. It was sold after
Locker's death, and next owned by the American collector, William Harris
Arnold; Arnold sold his library at auction, where it was bought by the composer
Jerome Kern; Kern in turn sold his library at another auction in 1929; this
time it was acquired by Arthur Houghton, Jr., the Corning Glass heir and a
major book collector. I purchased the book at the Houghton sale at Christie’s
in 1981. Each owner is represented by his bookplate, including my own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><b>Just
to continue that question, do you have a favorite inscription from one of these
authors to someone else? Also, do you have favorite caricature and maybe even a
favorite letter?<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Oh dear, a favorite inscription. This is a really tough
question, because there are more than a thousand inscribed books in the
collection, and it would be hard to choose one. I suppose it has to be the Kelmscott <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">News from Nowhere,</i> which was presented by Morris to Burne-Jones. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">In terms of Max Beerbohm caricatures, my choice would be <i>Un Revers. </i>This is
the largest self-caricature he ever did, and it's truly wonderful, showing the
dandified Max seated in an armchair writing at a tiny desk, the floor of the
room littered with drafts of whatever he was writing. The caption reads, “They
call me the inimitable and the incomparable and the witty, I wonder if I am.” Without
doubt the epitome of Max. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">There are letters, too, that I am very fond of. In one, Oscar
Wilde writes when he was in Kansas in 1882 during his American lecture
tour; he was in Topeka for one day, and then went on to someplace else. It’s
rather a fun letter. The recipient was a poet called Peacock, and Wilde says
that he was appreciative of the man's visit, and of course, makes a witty
remark about a poet having such as aesthetic name.</span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><b>In the past, you’ve sold some excellent items in order to buy others.
Do you have any tales of particularly successful, or unsuccessful, bargains?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A page from the Burne-Jones visitors' book.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">I want to admit first that there are things that I've sold
and bought back when I realized I made a mistake or later discovered a significant
feature in the book or manuscript. It was Simon Nowell-Smith who introduced me
to deaccessioning as a way to improve a collection. Simon sold his Henry James
books to fund purchases in poetry. He constantly traded up, disposing of minor
items (and authors) in order to buy otherwise unaffordable major association
copies. I think a lot of people who collect never sell anything: they're
careful about what they buy in the first place, or they just can’t part with
anything. In my case, I love new acquisitions—to the point of forgetting about
what I already have. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">At times I’ve sold items that, well–because I can't figure
them out. There was one book to which I devoted an enormous amount of research,
indeed dragged other people in trying to determine the identity of the writer
of an inscription, to the point that I finally got so sick of it that I just
said “It's going, I don't want to see it again. It’s driving me crazy.” And so
the book went into the discard shelf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">On occasion, to buy something like the Morris calligraphic
manuscript, I have had to sell some lovely books, but I thought the
particular item was so crucial to the collection that sacrifices were
necessary. And since the collection came to reside at the University of
Delaware Library, there has been “controlled weeding,” the deliberate reduction
in the number of books by authors in which my collection is weak and the
library strong. Do I need two shelves of first editions of Robert Louis
Stevenson? And the answer may be, that unless there's something about the book
in terms of rarity, illustration, inscriptions, or provenance that really appeals
to me, I don't need it if there is a copy upstairs in Special Collections. The
aim is representation, not completeness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Bargains sometimes come my way because of knowledge
of the period or long experience as a collector. I remember once buying a book
published under the name of Fiona Macleod, the female pseudonym of William
Sharp. Sharp was a perfectly respectable novelist, critic, and poet, but his alter
ego Fiona was a literary star of the Celtic Renaissance. There were some at the
time who wondered who Fiona really was, for few had ever met the mysterious
author. Sharp was very clever about this. He got either a cousin or a beautiful
woman named Edith Rinder, who was his muse, to pose as Fiona, to meet George
Meredith—Meredith was particularly curious about Fiona. Meredith then
vouchsafed the charming Miss Macleod. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">On a visit to a bookseller in New York, I was shown a copy
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dominion of Dreams</i> by Fiona
Macleod. The dealer figured I’d like to have it. And, yes, I did—for Fiona
Macleod had presented it to George Meredith. Inserted was a long letter from “Fiona,”
regarding the meeting her friend Mr. Sharp had arranged. Since the seller had
no idea who the author was he priced the book and letter together at $75. I
wrote a check on the spot and left before I could say another word.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Surely my greatest unexpected find was a couple of years
ago when my friend Phil Cohen told me that a British dealer had in a catalogue
the first two volumes of the large paper edition of Morris’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Earthly Paradise. </i>Although the two
volumes make up only the first part of the poem (the large paper version
extends to a total of eight volumes) they are very rare. I had only seen such large
paper copies once before, but that’s another story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">In his description the dealer stated that there was a
portrait of Morris glued in opposite the title page. I assumed this would be a
printed portrait cut out of a periodical. Now, I won't admit the cost of this
book, except to say that it was a very, very moderate amount of money. There
was indeed a portrait of Morris glued in opposite the title-page, except it was
not a reproduction but an original drawing, inscribed underneath, “the author
of the Earthly Paradise by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.” It is hard to believe that
the bookseller did not notice this. The books had belonged to Ruth Herbert, the
actress who was also an occasional model for Rossetti and the drawing was an
unrecorded caricature of Morris, dated to the late 1850s by Jan Marsh when she
published it in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Journal of William
Morris Studies.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><b>Looking
at some of your bibliographies, it occurred to me that a good bibliography of a
single author’s work is a like an amalgam of a collection and a biography. Do
you think of your bibliographic work in any similar terms? What do you tend to
enjoy about this kind of work?</b><o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"></span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">You've described the ideal purpose of a bibliography, which
is to be a biography as well as a descriptive catalogue. In the late 1890s, the
bibliographer and also forger Thomas J. Wise, and a number of people in his
circle, discussed how to do bibliographies of authors. One of the things that
came out of this discussion has become a rule: a bibliography of an author, a
publisher, a catalogue of an artist, any list is best done in chronological
order. You see the development of that person's activity and reputation through
the growing number of items and how they relate over time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xq0_MDEd_iE/UiGJfhi_BTI/AAAAAAAAAh0/efwBPHZeBtA/s1600/Maximania+Mark+Quote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="72" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xq0_MDEd_iE/UiGJfhi_BTI/AAAAAAAAAh0/efwBPHZeBtA/s320/Maximania+Mark+Quote.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">A good bibliography of a historical figure is in many ways
a biography, a life story with the boring or speculative bits left out. I've
done a couple of bibliographies, and also often in collaboration with Margaret Stetz,
a number of exhibition catalogues. I love these forms of scholarship. They're
never perfect, there is always some awful mistake you find years later, and let's not forget the information that turns up later. While scholars and critics tend to neglect bibliographies (a well known novelist once asked me "what is a bibliography?), antiquarian booksellers consult them avidly. Indeed the citations of bibliographies in dealer's catalogues may represent the sole fame bibliographers receive. It is rather cruel to say this, but I suspect my name will live on longer than those of far more adept writers on literature and art. Decades from now, some bookseller will no doubt ask a large price for a Beardsley item “not in Samuels Lasner.”
<o:p></o:p></span><br />
Bibliographies really belong online now,
where they can be updated and corrected. Yet there is a satisfaction in a printed book that cannot come from digital publication. Although I may be wrong, I cannot think of a major descriptive bibliography
that is available solely online.<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"></span>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><b>As an independent collector, researcher, typographer and bibliographer
who collaborates with all sorts of people, where do you see your position in
relation to the worlds of curating, academia, publishing, and collecting? Do
you feel mostly independent, or mostly integrated into one or more of these
communities?</b></span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bs9sKmpRgfU/Uh3PSEq_SyI/AAAAAAAAAgc/l_UEV5-eElc/s1600/beerbohm.unrevers.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bs9sKmpRgfU/Uh3PSEq_SyI/AAAAAAAAAgc/l_UEV5-eElc/s400/beerbohm.unrevers.jpeg" width="330" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">"Un Revers," Samuels Lasner's favorite Beerbohm caricature from his collection.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">I'm active in all of these roles—with collecting at the center. I'm
sort of an academic; I'm sort of a curator. Now I work for the great university
library that has provided a wonderful home for the collection. Much of what I
do as a “Senior Research Fellow” (a clever made-up title, but perhaps not as
appealing since my sixtieth birthday) is only tangentially connected to my own
interests. Looking for donations, helping researchers, working on exhibitions, helping
to organize events, our annual Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies. Then there
are the various organizations and bibliophile groups in which I’ve been
involved: the William Morris Society, the Grolier Club, the Bibliographical
Society of America, the American Printing History Association... anything that
involves books, I'm there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
It may sound odd, but there are reasons to collect apart
from having a collection. Collecting of course gives you something to do, using time
and money that might be devoted to a more constructive purpose. I often think
of A.N.L. Munby's comment that book collecting is a full-time occupation, and
if you do it right, you won't have time for frivolities like reading. One can
collect at any financial level, and now, with the Internet, you can make
acquisitions twenty-four hours a day. Another reason why I love collecting is
you get mail (something email has yet to replace)—dealers’ catalogues, and of
course packages. If you buy enough, every day is like your birthday.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">You also get to know a lot of wonderful, extraordinary people, who may not share your particular interest or obsession,
but understand it. There can be no more gossipy world than the... I'm going to
say the book-collecting world, certainly the collecting world, and probably the
book-collecting world is the most gossipy of all. We want to know what's
happening. Who has just been hired by that library, what collection is coming
up for sale, how the deal was done to get that rare and famous book from one
place to another, who's writing on what. It’s a fabulously insular little
world. I like that. It's something like academia, but better, with real books
and money, and crime and sex, added. Speaking of scholars let me not forget all
that I have learned from them about my books. Although I cherish my
independence as a private collector, I also like being integrated into the
other worlds that you asked about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><b>You have the world’s largest private collection of works and items
related to Max Beerbohm, the eminently amusing critic, essayist, writer, and
caricaturist. Does a personal affinity with Beerbohm—who looked back on the
past much as you do, in your position as surveyor of late Victorian and
Edwardian literary figures—fuel any of your interest in collecting him?</b></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"> </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Of all the people I collect, Max Beerbohm is the one that I
would most want to visit, and have him just talk. Max is perhaps—even more than
William Morris—the figure most appealing to me. Certainly the greatest British
caricaturist of his time, Max drew several thousand caricatures of the
literary, artistic, political men, mostly, of his time. He was also an
extraordinary writer, perhaps the greatest parodist in the English language, an
important theater critic, and the author of one of the great comic novels, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Zuleika Dobson. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Yes, Max became an obsession for me and I simply
love—and want—everything to do with him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Still, I am not unaware of Max’s blind spots. He didn't
like to caricature women, which he got around by saying that he didn't want to
be cruel to them; he didn't care much for women writers or their writings,
although he admired Virginia Woolf. Like most of us he could be touchy or
difficult at various points. Part of Max’s appeal is that he was fascinated by
the Pre-Raphaelites (see the book of caricatures, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rossetti and his Circle</i>) and knew the writers and artists of the
1890s—in a way he is a way of approaching the rest of my collection through a
single brilliant figure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">I have to say that Max has influenced my style of dress. Indeed
since I wear a hat, sport a monocle, and have a walking stick. I've turned into
a Max Beerbohm caricature myself. Such a caricature exists, by my artist
friend Peter Astwood, signed “Max” of course. Perhaps some future curator will catalogue it as the real thing. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><br /></span>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><b>Why
do you think he looked back to Morris and his circle, and caricatured and wrote
about them as if they were his friends?</b></span></i></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Max had the ability to at once get to the essence of so
many people in a humorous way. Someone, I think it was Oscar Wilde, said the
gods had given Max the gift of perpetual old age. This was when Max was twenty
years old. Yes, he was already looking back even as a very young man. In 1896,
he wrote an essay, “Diminuendo,” published at the end of his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Works of Max Beerbohm,</i> which one
might think is the collected works of an old man, but is in fact the title of
Max’s first book. In it he says, “I belong to the Beardsley period,” already
writing of himself as passé. He seems to have had a very self-aware nostalgia, something
I identify with. At sixty I have a reverence for my childhood; when I'm seventy
no doubt I'll look back longingly at my fifties. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z_cj_CTCPdA/UiGKC5KqVdI/AAAAAAAAAiA/U5Q0Qba4pxA/s1600/collector+friend+mark+quote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="184" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z_cj_CTCPdA/UiGKC5KqVdI/AAAAAAAAAiA/U5Q0Qba4pxA/s320/collector+friend+mark+quote.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Max is simply fun to collect. Like William Morris, he worked
in a variety of media. Max Beerbohm once claimed that “my gifts are small; I've
used them wisely,” leading one to believe that he hadn't done very much over
his long life. In fact, if you include every pamphlet there are at least sixty
separate printed items by Max (his collected works issued 1922-28 extend to ten
thick volumes). And that's just writings, never mind 2,000 original
caricatures, plus radio broadcasts and periodical appearances. As with Morris,
there is no lack of material in the marketplace. I used to say that I could
walk into any bookstore in the world and find something with a Max connection:
a later edition, a magazine, or a book of someone's reminiscences. It is
extraordinary the number of otherwise negligible items which contain a reference
to Max. So there are a great many things to collect: the first editions of his
books, books from his library, letters, manuscripts, drawings, and personalia.
Of the last category I own, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inter alia,</i>
one of his walking sticks, one of his cigarette boxes (empty), and his and his
wife's World War II food ration book. Gathering Max became for me an obsession with
a name: Maximania. The excuse of acquiring such a mass (or mess) was that I was
compiling the definitive bibliography, which survives in a draft approximately 1,300
pages long<i>—typeset.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><b>So
now I come to my book-collector question: what might one version of your ideal
book look like? Take us through its qualities, from the cover through the
illustrations and the type. Then, I’d like to know what time-transcending team
of collaborators you might like to see creating this book.</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JZm0TIGP2Pg/UimnAZL7A_I/AAAAAAAAAkA/zk5-GQES11k/s1600/sm_morris_manuscript.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JZm0TIGP2Pg/UimnAZL7A_I/AAAAAAAAAkA/zk5-GQES11k/s400/sm_morris_manuscript.jpg" width="315" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Morris's calligraphic catalogue of his own books.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">That's a good question, what's my ideal book. Actually,
what I would like to have is a printed catalogue of my collection, necessitating
many volumes, produced in 2013 as if it was printed in 1913. So
we're talking letterpress, handmade paper, generous margins, and lots of
details in the entries, indications of provenance, collotype illustrations.
Something like Harry Elkins Widener's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Catalogue of the Most Important Books, Manuscripts, and Drawings in the Library
of Harry Elkins Widener</i>, privately printed in 1910 in an edition of 100
copies. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">That</i> would be my kind of
ideal book. Think Updike and the Merrymount Press, not a Kelmscott imitation. Grandeur,
but not grandiose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Regarding collaborators. My friends at Lead Graffiti, Ray
Nichols and Jill Cypher, who did <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Multifaceted Mr. Morris</i>, fabulous letterpress printers and artists of the
book. I’d certainly like Jerry Kelly to have a hand in the design (how about some
of his lovely calligraphy on the title-page?). Wouldn’t mind input from some
other designers, such as Bruce Kennett, and of course William S. Peterson would
be there to advise not only on typography but also content—good to have one of the
best bibliographers and book historians on the planet take a major role. Margaret Stetz,
Steve Rothman, Phil Cohen, Florence S. Boos, David Holmes, Carol Rothkopf, and
John Bidwell might all take a role. Perhaps I should get them all to be
proofreaders: with everyone involved surely there will be no errors of any kind.
Nicolas Barker might provide a preface.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Binding. I'm not very interested in bookbinding. Perhaps
bright red cloth, solidly sewn and cased, reminiscent of Thomas J. Wise's
library catalogues. I don't want the books to fall apart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Illustrations. Black and white mostly, a color frontispiece
for show in each volume. I do like the elaborate tipped-in illustrations in
Jerry Kelly’s massive catalogue of Grolier Club exhibitions and publications—but
perhaps this is asking too much.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Typeface. Morris's advice was, when in doubt use Caslon. Caslon
would be fine, or a digital interpretation of a classic typeface, but
printed really dark, which is what letterpress is so wonderful for. Avoid at
all costs the gray color on grayish paper found commonly today in commercial
books. The size ought to be appropriate for the page, say 12-14 point. (Smaller
for descriptive sections and notes, however.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">I think that's what I'd like it to be. Obviously, a signed,
limited edition. Maybe five copies printed on Japan vellum, for special gifts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><b>Would
you want all black ink, or some red too?<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Oh, black and smattering of red, please. Along with images
of items in the collection, and I suppose I would commission a portrait of
myself. I'm not sure who I would have do that. The annual portrait exhibition
at the National Portrait Gallery in London might give me some ideas. Perhaps
there is a living artist whose style harks back to the fin de siècle.
Silverpoint, or an etching or lithograph, not oil painting. If only we could
get William Strang to come back, or Violet Lindsay who did wonderful drawings,
someone in that period. On second thought, I don't want any historical figures
involved, they're going to be too difficult, too opinionated, and their
unfamiliarity with digital processes will surely breed contempt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>William Morris would take over the project,
he'd want it done his way, not mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><b>My
last question is, can you think of a few discoveries that stand out from your
career as being more exciting than others? What items feel most obviously
missing from your collection today?</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">I think I mentioned a few discoveries, inadvertent or not: William
Allingham’s commonplace book with the text of Browning's first letter to Rossetti;
the Burne-Jones visitors book; the Morris portrait by Rossetti in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Earthly Paradise; </i>there are many
others I've acquired and eventually figured out that they merit unusual
interest. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am now in the process of
re-cataloguing the entire collection, assisted by a wonderful graduate
assistant, Ashley Rye. Margaret Stetz's brilliant phrase for this process is
that I'm shopping my own shelves. Indeed I am. I'm looking at things I have no
recollection of, or I'm looking at them in a new light because when I bought the
item years ago I didn't know what I know now. Often we find that one item now relates
to another in the collection. So that's been wonderful. I've made some pretty
good discoveries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5EMaWrxDIuo/UimnUPQp-iI/AAAAAAAAAkI/qY49xju_PnE/s1600/sm_beerbohm.hadsheakespeare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5EMaWrxDIuo/UimnUPQp-iI/AAAAAAAAAkI/qY49xju_PnE/s640/sm_beerbohm.hadsheakespeare.jpg" width="409" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Had Shakespeare asked me...": another Beerbohm caricature in the collection.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">What's missing from the collection? I have a list of ten books I want to get before I die. The list changes as books turn up, often by happenstance, perhaps one title every two or three years. Long on the list was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">People of the Period,</i> a
biographical dictionary, an early Who's Who from the 1890s. I first came across
this in the Boston Athenaeum library and have always wanted one but never saw a
copy for sale, ever. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">People of the Period
</i>is a book that is truly hard to find. It was instantly out of date as a
work of reference; it’s printed on very bad paper and a large volume, cheaply
bound, so copies simply fall apart. Yet one day, it turned up on the Internet,
offered for sale by the London bookseller Jarndyce. When they received my order
Brian Lake and Janet Nassau were surprised—for just two weeks earlier I had
been standing right in front of the book in their shop! I wasn't expecting to
find it there, so didn’t notice; indeed I hadn't expected to ever find a copy.
So <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">People of the Period</i> went off the
list—at last.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">What else do I want? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Girl Among the Anarchists</i> (1903)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">,</i>
by William Michael Rossetti's daughters Olive and Helen under the pseudonym
Isabel Meredith, is a long-sought desideratum. I do have a copy of the book,
but in the plain secondary binding. I want the first edition in the first
binding, bright red cloth showing a large, round, black bomb with a lit fuse on
the front cover. Now, that's on my list. Then<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Without Permission: A Book of Dedications</i> by Arthur Sykes (1896).
I have never seen a copy for sale. It’s a tour de force, three hundred pages of
parodies of famous contemporary writers by one forgotten one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">What else, what other things? A Max Beerbohm broadside, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ballade Tragique, a Double Refrain</i>.
There's a copy at Princeton, and an entirely different one in the British
Library. Those are the only copies known so far, and one or both may be a Thomas
J. Wise forgery, but it's missing from my Beerbohm collection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">So far, I've been thinking of things that might actually
come my way. Moving on to books that exist but which I cannot possibly afford, how about the Kelmscott Chaucer, an incurable or illuminated manuscript
from William Morris’s library, or the series of letters Charles Dickens wrote
to Alice Meynell’s parents recently offered at the New York antiquarian
book fair — these would all fit in nicely, don’t you think? And if we are
talking true fantasyland, I wouldn't mind, if we’re going into Victorian
literature more broadly, having a first edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jane Eyre</i>, inscribed by Currer Bell to Elizabeth Gaskell or the
1865 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland</i>
presented by Carroll to Christina Rossetti. Carroll makes me think of the weak
areas of the collection, authors or artists for who are under-represented in
terms of the number of items in relation to their importance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the poets of the period are found in
depth, most of the canonical—and non-canonical—novelists are mostly absent. The
only book by George Eliot is a book of verse. There’s no Trollope, Brontes,
Gaskell, little Haggard and Mary Ward. I would like to have some novels in
parts, more Carroll, and a first edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little
Black Sambo,</i> if only to be able to show students that the story is not
about African-Americans and is not demeaning to its hero.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";">Of course I'd also love to have a roomful of Beatrix Potter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Just
a roomful?</b></i><span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><b> </b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A roomful! All the first editions, beginning with the privately printed <i>Tale of Peter Rabbit; </i>some illustrated letters; drawings and watercolors (a watercolor from the series, <i>The Rabbits' Christmas Party</i> recently sold for
£400,000. I did recently acquire Potter's first separate publication, <i>A Happy Pair </i>(1890), which is said to be a rare book but is in fact quite common, though not so common in the poor condition of the copy I could actually afford. </span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
And once done with Potter, it would be nice to add some illuminated manuscripts and incunabula, drawings by Blake and Sargent, Tennyson's <i>Idylls of the King</i> illustrated with photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron, and all the titles in the Grolier Club's "undress" lists. I have generally eschewed the accepted high-sots, but would welcome these now, especially the ones which are not yet in the University of Delaware Library. One of my collector friends jokes that eventually what he really would
like is one great book, one a great painting, one a great chair, and a Tiffany
lamp. I'm not ready to be reduced to that but admire the thought.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><b><i>Thank you very much.</i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Liberation Serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">(To read or listen to previous interviews with Mark, go <a href="http://literarytourist.com/2010/07/audio-interview-with-mark-samuels-lasner-on-collecting-the-bodley-head/">here</a> and here.)</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DqRBPjCR2ao/UV61cWlON5I/AAAAAAAAAbg/edxJF7zYPDY/s1600/jack.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DqRBPjCR2ao/UV61cWlON5I/AAAAAAAAAbg/edxJF7zYPDY/s400/jack.jpeg" width="281" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IZntO7SCFxQ/UWf0512YC4I/AAAAAAAAAdM/mPkOUnOi7js/s1600/pullquote3_hardbound+crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-left: 0Fem;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IZntO7SCFxQ/UWf0512YC4I/AAAAAAAAAdM/mPkOUnOi7js/s400/pullquote3_hardbound+crop.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">John
J. Walsdorf, the talented Portland-based collector and author, has
been collecting William Morris and Kelmscott Press related books and
ephemera for almost fifty years, while also working on other
collections. He is currently the Vice President of the William Morris
Society, and serves on the board of the Lake Oswego Preservation
Society.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Among his many publications are<a href="http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=3478370&matches=5&cm_sp=works*listing*title"> a complete bibliography </a>of the work of author Julian Symons</span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">; </i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/400429286972">a book</a> on the American printer Elbert Hubbard; </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and</span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a memoir about his experiences, entitled "<a href="http://www.theprinterybooks.com/Pages/OnCollectingWilliamMorris.aspx">On Collecting William Morris</a>," which was brought out in a fittingly beautiful,
limited edition volume by The Printery. Happily, there are also
records of all his impressive Morris collections, even those which
have been sold on. The first collection can be found in his
1983 book </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.abebooks.com/William-Morris-Private-Press-Limited-Editions/3084349080/bd">William Morris in Private Press and Limited Editions: A Descriptive Bibliography of Books by and About William Morris</a>;</i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
the second lives on in his 1994 volume, </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=8627432320&searchurl=an%3DWALSDORF%252C%2BJOHN">William Morris and the Kelmscott Press</a>;</i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and two years later, the third was
preserved in </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.abebooks.com/Kelmscott-Press-William-Morris-Circle-Walsdorf/457964878/bd">Kelmscott Press: William Morris & His Circle</a>.</i><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I
met up with him this January at the Modern Language Association
conference in Boston, and it was on a cold, sunny day that we
convened to the marble-floored lobby of the Fairmont Hotel. There,
perched on some Queen Anne furniture in a corner dominated by a big,
jungly potted plant, we began our wide-ranging chat, touching on
Morris, the future of the book, and the surprises that can hide in
bookstores (or even in your own collection, if it's large enough).</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Your collecting career can be broken into
distinct stages—might you be able to talk us through that progression a bit?
How did it start?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Well, first of all, I would say that I am a life-long
collector. When I was really young, 6-12, I was serious about stamp collecting,
and I still have those collections. In high school, I didn’t do any formal
collecting, but I did a tremendous amount of reading.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I did my undergraduate work—and I was an English major—I
started collecting books, but reading copies only. Especially American and English
literature: I really liked Maugham, Hardy, Dreiser, Hemingway, and F. Scott
Fitzgerald. But it was in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in
Madison where I really got into collecting, and I started collecting fine press
books and fine printing on a very, very modest budget.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I would haunt the local used bookstores, especially one in
downtown Madison called <a href="http://www.paulsbookstore.com/">Paul’s Book Store</a>, and I would go in there and I would
just spend my time looking for beautifully printed books and interesting books. It was also at graduate school that a professor of mine at the school of
library science, Rachel K. Shenck, introduced me to Kelmscott Press books. She
actually owned two Kelmscott Press books, and she brought them to the class,
and she passed them around. And she let us handle and look at them, and I
simply fell in love with the printing of the Kelmscott Press books.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And really, after that introduction, I knew I wanted to find a way to
go to England. And I was lucky enough to get a job, on a library exchange position
program two years after graduating from U.W. Madison: I got an exchange at the
Oxford City Library.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It must
have been wonderful to work in the library of such a literary city.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Yes: the wonder of Oxford was not just
the buildings, nor the bookshops, nor the city of Oxford itself, but also the
people. Which leads me to my most famous encounter, and for the truth in
the saying: "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">One of the patrons at
the City Library was J.R.R. Tolkien, and one day I remarked to some of my
colleagues at the library that I was going to send him a copy of<i> The Hobbit</i> to inscribe. They
thought that that was simply an unbelievable idea, the thought of sending him
a copy of my book to inscribe was unheard of, at least to them.
Nevertheless I did it, and a number of weeks passed, without the return
of my book. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Then late one
winter's evening, just as it was getting dark, there was a knock at the door of
my flat, and there stood Professor Tolkien, with the book in hand, returning it
not only inscribed, but also with a letter thanking me for my interest, and the
stamps I had enclosed to make mailing the book to me all the easier!</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How long did you live
in Oxford?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I only lived in
Oxford 15 months, far too short a time, as I really felt at home and I fell in
love with the city. Well, a</span>fter the library position, I was hired by Blackwell’s, a
job and various positions that lasted 31 years. I became friends with Sir Basil
Blackwell, and that friendship led us to share stories about Morris and
Kelmscott, and of course he did most of the sharing, telling me stories about May
Morris and his experiences meeting her, and publishing<i> William Morris Artist Writer Socialist </i>by May Morris at the
Shakespeare Head Press in 1936.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Zu7mTFsOzBM/UV8_ZwBHzaI/AAAAAAAAAb4/iTpShfx-GoM/s1600/Blackwells.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="580" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Zu7mTFsOzBM/UV8_ZwBHzaI/AAAAAAAAAb4/iTpShfx-GoM/s640/Blackwells.jpeg" width="450" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Blackwell's bookshop, Oxford, c. 1950s</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sir Basil Blackwell also showed me his personal copy of the
Kelmscott <i>Chaucer </i>that he had on a
stand in his library, and that copy is now owned by his son, Julian Blackwell.
And it really was at that time, when I worked in Oxford, that I became an avid
collector of Kelmscott Press. I still collected other presses, some really nice
fine presses, Doves and Golden Cockerel, but primarily I fell under the
influence of both Sir Basil Blackwell and William Morris. I started collecting
Kelmscott Press books, and Kelmscott ephemera, and that collecting has gone on
for now… almost fifty years, and during that time I’ve built a number of
collections, some of which I had to sell for financial reasons. Now I’m on my
fourth Kelmscott Press collection, and I currently own 26 Kelmscott Press
books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I also collect other fine American presses. I collect Yellow
Barn Press; I have every book from the Yellow Barn Press. I collect Prairie Press
of Iowa; I have about 50 books from that press. The Adagio Press, which was
located in Harper Woods Michigan, run by a man named Leonard Bahr—an absolutely
excellent printer—and I have a large collection of Adagio Press books, but my
largest non-Kelmscott press collection is Roycroft and Elbert Hubbard. I
probably have somewhere in the region of 100 Roycroft Press books, and many of
them the high-end, the ones printed on Japan vellum, the ones hand-illuminated
and signed by the illuminators, and a couple in Kinder bindings, which are also
very high quality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My Kelmscott Press collection of 26 books is augmented by
Kelmscott Press ephemera, but it is almost as scarce—scarcer—than Kelmscott
Press books, and if you were to go on a site like Alibris or Abe, you would
find many hundreds of Kelmscott Press books listed right now, but you’d probably
find five or fewer bits of Kelmscott Press ephemera. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>You mentioned that your largest non-Morris collection is of Elbert Hubbard, could you tell us a little more about him?</b></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yes. Elbert Hubbard
and the Roycrofters. Strange, but about 50% of the people who hear me mention
Elbert Hubbard, think of that other Hubbard of Scientology fame, or they
think of him as the man who wrote one of the largest selling books ever, <i>A Message to Garcia</i>. But I came to
Hubbard and Roycroft first as a collector of American Arts & Crafts,
especially the Roycroft hammered copper pieces. I still have a large collection
of copper, wood furniture, and pottery, but now it is especially books, of
which I have perhaps 250 books and pamphlets relating to or published by
Hubbard and the Roycrofters, which I specialize in. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As you perhaps know,
Hubbard contends that he met William Morris in London at the Kelmscott
Press. He also says that he saw pages of the Kelmscott <i>Chaucer</i> being printed during
his London visit. I contend that this is one of many made up stories by
Hubbard, and wrote about it in my 1999 book <i><a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/400429286972">Elbert Hubbard: William Morris’s Greatest Imitator</a></i>, published by Neil Shaver
of the Yellow Barn Press. I might add that my little book, published in
an edition of 150 copies, of which 34 copies had laid-in leaves from both
Kelmscott and Roycroft books, is now incredibly scarce. There are no
copies of either edition for sale on ABE or Alibris right now, and a copy of
the regular edition (originally priced at $69.00) is now on e-Bay for a
"buy it now" price of $235.00.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>You partially answered this earlier, but why,
more generally, do you collect Morris?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I would say, in answer to this question, that “the book
beautiful” pleases me. The book, almost as an art object, pleases me a great
deal. The black ink, the quality of the paper, the illustrations, and the
content, were all important to William Morris, are all important in the
production of Kelmscott Press books, and I simply feel that it’s a very
pleasant experience to be able to own and handle Kelmscott Press books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You mentioned already that you collect
other categories of books… do you think that there are any unifying themes
common to all of these presses you collect, Morris books and the non-Morris
books alike?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Well, I would answer it in two ways. If I look at what I
have and what I collect beyond the presses I mentioned, I also collect signed
modern first editions, of which I have probably a thousand, I collect signed
and unsigned biblio-mysteries, I have a very large collection—two bays—of variant
editions of <i>A Christmas Carol</i> by Dickens,
I have an overly large collection of books about books … in short I feel I have
too many books, and that’s one of the problems with my type of collecting. I’m
not focused, I don’t stick to a unified theme, and if I did, I would have a far,
far better Morris/Kelmscott Press collection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But I’m the type of book hunter that likes to hunt, and
likes to buy books. And even in the largest bookshops, I can go in and
generally—I mean I’m talking about bookshops the size of Powell’s, which is
three floors and one city block—I can go in Powell’s every month and go the art
section, and go to the “books about books” section, and go to the “William Morris’s
poetry” section, and go to the “William Morris’s literature” section, and I can
only find a few books I want. I need to feed my addiction as a book hunter,
though, so I will find other books, because I already have many of the titles I
see. I think I’m doing a public good: I’m helping Powell’s stay open and I’m
buying their inventory, but I’m also not specializing, and I wish I had the
willpower to only specialize… but I just love buying books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You could maybe say
that the unifying theme is beautiful things, or fantasy/sci-fi… would you say
that has any bearing on it?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AC4uQEiVc64/UV9AKvr_uXI/AAAAAAAAAcA/Bdb11vPNgtc/s1600/Sir+Basil_Kelmscott_Chaucer_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="577" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AC4uQEiVc64/UV9AKvr_uXI/AAAAAAAAAcA/Bdb11vPNgtc/s640/Sir+Basil_Kelmscott_Chaucer_crop.jpg" width="449" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Sir Basil Blackwell, reading his Kelmscott Chaucer.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Well, it’s surprising; some of the people I collect beyond
Morris have a Morris connection. And so you’ll collect a person like Barry
Moser, a very, very good American woodcut artist. And because I collected him
and admired his work, I ended up doing a book with him, called <i><a href="http://www.abebooks.com/Men-Printing-Anglo-american-Profiles-Walsdorf-John/4091949926/bd">Men of Printing</a></i>. So sometimes an outside interest in book
collecting, outside just the pure range of William Morris, can lead you to
other things. In one case, it led me to a really unusual connection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I found myself in the literature section, and in looking for
William Morris I kept finding this guy called “Willie Morris.” Then I thought, “well
this is kind of interesting, let’s read some of this man’s work.” He’s an absolutely
fabulous writer, he died in 1999, but he was the youngest editor of Harper’s
Magazine, and he was a Rhodes scholar. Through reading him and buying his books,
I met him and I helped get one of his books published, called<a href="http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=4542391"> </a><i><a href="http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=4542391">My Two Oxfords</a>. </i>So sometimes Morris can lead you astray, but with interesting
results.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You’ve been asked this before, but perhaps your
answer changes over time—can you highlight three favorite items from your
collection as it stands today?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In my answer to that question earlier, I listed the things
that I felt were my very best, best items. <b><i> (To
see his previous answer, <a href="http://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/academic-resources/collins-memorial-library/news-events/william-morris-interview/">see this interview at the University of Puget Sound</a>) <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But I will add, that since I was asked that question
earlier, I added <i>The</i> <i>Collected Works of William Morris</i> in 24
volumes, which is an expensive book printed by Longmans 1910-1915, and it’s
very costly just to have it shipped to you, at 24 volumes. So it was my big buy
of this past year, and I’m very happy to have it, because it’s a wonderful
collection with introductions by Morris’s daughter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Alongside books, you also collect
catalogues from book dealers. What do you like most about collecting these documents?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I started collecting dealer’s catalogues because I had an
accumulation of probably five to six hundred catalogues that I had received
over the years, and I needed to do some weeding. And in the process of doing
the weeding, I decided, well before I give them away—and I gave the catalogue collection
to the state library of Oregon, which had a large collection of catalogues
already—before I give this all away, I want to check to see if these catalogues
have anything really unusual relating to William Morris. So what I started
doing was looking for dealer’s catalogues that listed inscribed Kelmscott Press
books; or association copies; or William Morris publications, not Kelmscott,
but his works, his literature, inscribed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I started saving those catalogues, and I now have—and its
not a large collection—in numbers of catalogues, its probably less than 200 but
it’s a nice reference tool and I have it in order, the first set of six boxes
is labeled “Kelmscott Press, inscribed,” and the next batch is “non-Kelmscott
books inscribed,” and the next batch is catalogues that list “Morris letters
and manuscripts” and its very accessible, because the Kelmscott Press
catalogues are arranged by the publication number and date, so if I buy, as I
did a couple years ago, an inscribed Kelmscott Press book, I’ve been able to go
to those catalogues, and the book I bought, the inscribed copy of Tennyson’s <i>Maud</i>, I was able to find it being listed
75 years ago for a song. And that’s what’s also fun about looking at these
catalogues, because—fun or depressing—but a book that might be $6000 now was $60
then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a bibliophile who worked first for the Oxford
institution Blackwell’s Bookshop, and then at the famous online purveyor of
books, Alibris, you seem very well positioned to speak about the recent changes
in the book market. So I was wondering how do you feel about these changes, and
the future of books and book collecting?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
book is dead? As I walked up and down the aisles of my flight out from Portland
to Boston, I was able to see an equal number of people reading paperbound or
hardbound books as there were people on ebooks or ereaders. The difference was
that the people over 35 were generally reading “real books,” and the people
under thirty were universally reading nooks and crannies and stuff. But I think
there’s a great future for the hardbound book, but it’s going to change the
numbers that are printed, and it’s going to change the price model of the book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A
good scholarly book might have had, at one point, 1000 copies printed on the
first press run, and that press run can now easily be done for 300 or 400 or
500. They may print more than that, but they won’t bind more than that, they’ll
wait to see how publication goes. The blockbusters, the major authors, the
Larry McMurtrys, the Anne Tylers, will always sell their ten to twenty thousand
or more books, but I feel that what is really changing in the book world is the
availability of the out-of-print, scarce and hard to find book, and the pricing
model for those books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It
used to be that any bookseller was living in a vacuum. He was a bookseller in
Portland, and he had his Portland market, and he bought in a book at x, and he
sold that book at x plus. And he pretty much said to himself, “what do I think
it’s worth?” or “I’ll look it up in book auction records,” and that’s already
two years old, and “I’ll see what, if any copies sold, what it last went for.”
But even a scarce or nicely produced book, he was pretty much free to price the
way that he wanted to price it. Nowadays the Internet and the two big sellers,
Alibris and Abe, with their millions of listings, are changing, absolutely
changing, how books are being priced.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
inexpensive books, the books under $100, the books under $500, the books under $300,
are being driven down, because everybody checks to see, “well, what’s the
lowest price?” And if someone has it at $400 and someone has it at $100, and I
bought it for $10, what am I going to price it at, I’ll price it at $90 or $95
and no postage, and so I’ll get the sale, and the top-tier price and dealer is
often not going to sell his copy for a long time, if ever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And
the Internet also doesn’t give, sometimes, an accurate description of the
condition of the book, so people are buying sight unseen. I think that life
will get harder for a big box used bookstore. I think life will get harder for
them. But I think the book will always be a collectible item. There will always
be people who will form some love, whether it’s <i>The Hobbit </i>by Tolkien, whether it’s JK Rowling’s—whatever it is,
there’ll be that sense of collectability in books. People will want them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is going to be my book collector
question: What might one version of your ideal book look like? Take us through
its qualities, from the cover through the illustrations and the type. Then, I’d
like to know what team of collaborators you might like to see creating this
book, down to the author.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">OK let’s answer this by asking a question of my interviewer.
Can this be a book by an author dead, or does it have to be by a living author?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yes, all the collaborators
can be dead.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ok actually we’ll leave the binding for last, only because
in my structure of what has to happen, you have to start with really good
handmade paper, a really good quality paper, the type of quality paper that Morris
always looked for. You want a type font that is not too thin, something of the
caliber of the Golden type of Morris, or one of Goudy’s better typefaces, but
it doesn’t have to be a Morris Golden type, but it has to be a type that has a
real structure and integrity, that when you pick up the book, you can actually <i>see</i> it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You want a jet black, the very blackest ink you can find.
You would like a couple really good illustrators, maybe more than one, maybe
one like Barry Moser for full-page illustrations, and John DePol for little
vignette type illustrations. If I had my choice of author, living or dead, it
would have to be William Morris, just because that’s my true love. And I’ve
even picked the title: I would like to see this kind of special, modern edition
done of <i>News from Nowhere</i>, one of my
absolute favorite William Morris books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The binding: I’d like to see a serviceable, high-end binder,
it doesn’t have to be vellum, and vellum is really very impractical in lots of
cases, but there are really good trade binders. There is one in Minneapolis
called <a href="http://campbell-logan.com/about/index.html">Campell-Logan</a>: Campbell-Logan by the way do a majority of American
private press binding today. Presses all over the United States produce the
books, and they ship them to Minneapolis, to Campell-Logan, and they get them
bound in different styles, with lots of choices of beautiful, beautiful cloths,
and they can do a quarter leather binding, they can do slipcases, they can
really make a book look gorgeous. They can add spine labels, they can add title
labels on the front cover, they do a really great job.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">These are the elements, and they’re all available—and
actually it’s growing, I mean it’s growing in the sense that the papermakers
are growing, it’s growing in the sense that there are a lot of classes being
taught on bookmaking in art colleges, and in some community colleges, on the
university level. So the chances of your finding, at a book fair for example—an
antiquarian book fair—your chances of finding really beautifully modern-made in
the last 25 years, press books that are really well executed, are very good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have two follow up
questions for that, would you want a Morris fabric for the binding, and second,
it sounds like you’re saying that there’s a future for books as art-objects… would
you say that’s the case?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First of all, Morris cloth, I don’t think it has ever made,
even in Morris’s day, a good binding material. For whatever reason, the weave,
the cotton, whatever it was, it didn’t hold up well. Morris’s, some of his own
books pre-Kelmscott, were bound in Morris cloth, and there was always some
fraying, and it didn’t hold up. Marbled paper is another matter, and you can
execute really very nice looking binding using marbled papers. The second part
of your question was?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Whether the book is
an art-object.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To me, a book is an object to use. And art is an object to
really look at and hang on a wall. And you could turn that around and say,
isn’t a Kelmscott <i>Chaucer </i>too
precious to use? …I don’t know! That is a conundrum. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s a really hard thing to handle, because there was such a
range of Kelmscott press books. In its day, and today. In its day, there were
modest Kelmscott Press books being sold for shillings, less than one pound. And
today, there are still modest Kelmscott press books that you can buy for under
500 dollars, granted that’s a lot of money, but you can buy them for under 500
dollars. The artist’s book seems to be… it simply to me seems to be…<i> too</i> precious, and maybe too expensive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And not enough about
the book?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Well I recently saw an artist’s book with no printed words
except the title page, and it was in a portfolio, and it wasn’t even bound!
Now, is this a book?<i> </i>Or is it art, to
frame and hang on the wall?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Looking at the detailed catalogues of your
collections, it’s clear that you must learn many little-known and wonderful
things through the process of collecting these books and compiling your
catalogues. Can you think of a particularly surprising moment when you learned
something new about one of your own items?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Let me ask you this, does it have to be a William Morris
item? Well I just have a very interesting story, because it just happened in
the last month.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I also collect <i>A Christmas
Carol </i>by Charles Dickens, and because it was Christmas time and I always
<i>A Christmas Carol</i>. I wanted
to find a special edition to re-read, and so I went to my Arthur Rackham illustrated
vellum-bound<i> Christmas Carol</i> signed
by Rackham, but I was just looking for a reading copy, with interesting, good
type, and suddenly what before me should appear but a very tall, very, very
thin book of about 50 pages or so with a beautiful label on the front cover,
and it was entitled <i>Hans Christian
Anderson’s Visit to Charles Dickens,</i> and I thought, “well, I can’t remember
this.” I looked at my price in the back, and found I had bought it over 20 years
ago and clearly I had forgotten about it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I started going through it slowly, and I flipped over to
what would be the verso of the title page, and laid in—glued in—was a clearly
type written introduction to a dinner speech given by a Danish publisher named
Ejnar Munksgaard, and this was a dinner speech in honor of a visitor from
Britain to Copenhagen—where as you may remember Hans Christian Anderson lived
for a number of years. This two page type written manuscript was signed at the end
by Mr. Munksgaard, and he was praising one of Dickens’s English publishers—now
this was in the nineteen thirties—but clearly this English publisher was in the
audience, and his name was Stanley Unwin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I thought “wow! I didn’t remember this was in here,” and
then I went to the true verso of the title page, and it said <i>edition limited to 200</i>, and it was
signed by Ejnar Munksgaard. and I thought “wow this is really unusual.” And then
I went to the first blank page, the front flyleaf, and there it was inscribed
again, this time to A. Mary Unwin, the wife of this English publisher.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Anyway, sometimes if you have more than 6,000 books, like I
do, and you might have a slightly failing memory (or not), sometimes you have
so much, and you’ll find things in your own library that absolutely delight
you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And I will add, I have one wonderful Morris story—years ago,
from a book seller in New Hampshire called The Colophon Bookshop, I had bought
a group of Sydney Cockerell letters, and Cockerell always used a small, almost book
page-sized stationary. I bought a series
of seven letters and I thought, “oh, these are so interesting, I’ll stick them
in the back of a book relating to Sydney Cockerell.” And I always cover my dust
jackets with some form of Demco jacket or maylar jacket, and so under the back
dust jacket I had inserted these seven letters, they’re very thin, and I had
proceeded to pretty much, for years, forget about them. Then recently, I pulled
the book off, and found a very nice surprise—long forgotten!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I pulled another book off recently, and I found a letter
from Jane Morris—in the back of a Morris book. So sometimes you have letters,
and you think “well, they really do fit with this book,” the Cockerell letters
fit with the Cockerell book, the Jane Morris letter fit with this biography of
Morris. I have a nice Walter Crane letter or a nice Burne-Jones letter, and I
put these in different places, and you hope when you pass away, someone will
bother to really look at these things, or someone else is going to make a nice
find. Think of how surprised they’ll be to open up a book and have a Morris
letter or a Cockerell letter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, if Mrs. Havisham decided to give you a
lavish present this year of a rare book, what book would you want it
to be?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I would want it to be William Morris’s classic work of
fiction<i>, News from Nowhere,</i> printed
at the Kelmscott Press, on vellum, inscribed by Morris to any one of his
friends. It wouldn’t have to be Burne-Jones, I would take any of those, and be
happy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What’s one of the most frustrating
collecting experiences you’ve ever had? What’s one of the most exhilarating?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First, the most frustrating. The most frustrating, and it happened
time and again, is: you receive a dealer’s catalogue but you unfortunately live
on the west coast, so that catalogue that was mailed, in the old days by mail,
snail mail, that catalogue was received by the entire east coast and the entire
Midwest and the entire rocky mountain area days before they came to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One Saturday morning, I was lounging on my couch in Portland
Oregon—actually waiting for the mail—and I was reading. And I heard the mail
truck pull up and I heard the mail truck pull away, and I went out and I found
a dealer’s catalogue. I went to the English literature section, and there was
this wonderful signed trade edition, three volumes, of <i>The Earthly Paradise,</i> priced for under $100.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I leaped, remember its Saturday—I leaped to my feet, and
I called the number thinking well its…11:30, 12:30, 1:30<i>… </i>it’s<i> 2:30</i> in New York,
I wonder if they even work on Saturday afternoon at 2:30, but they answered the
phone. And I said “this is Jack Walsdorf from Portland Oregon, I just got the
catalogue and I want to check on an item.” And within less than 30 seconds, the
same voice came back and said “sorry sir, that one’s sold.” Now, that is the
height of disappointment, and it is doubly the height of disappointment because
within 10 years I was able to buy that very same book—that inscribed copy—I was
able to buy that same three-volume set for something like $700. So that was my
disappointing one. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Oh, I’ll tell you a wonderful good find story. This happened
two years ago. My partner and I were in Southern Oregon on vacation. And we
were in the McKenzie River Valley, beautiful area, and we were in a riverside cabin,
it was lovely, but there <i>ain’t going to
be any bookstores around here.</i> So I asked, “where’s the nearest bookstore,”
and they said “well, you go back to where you came from, Eugene, or you go the
other direction towards eastern Oregon to a place called Sisters, Oregon and
there’s a bookshop there.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--F-vxXq5-hw/UV9B6EAkSPI/AAAAAAAAAcU/giIRULWyLE8/s1600/Jack+and+Kay+Kramer_Printery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="318" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--F-vxXq5-hw/UV9B6EAkSPI/AAAAAAAAAcU/giIRULWyLE8/s400/Jack+and+Kay+Kramer_Printery.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Walsdorf and Kay Kramer at the Printery in 2001 making</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">one ideal book, <i><a href="http://www.theprinterybooks.com/Pages/OnCollectingWilliamMorris.aspx">On Collecting William Morris</a></i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I talked my partner into giving up our cabin for the day,
and giving up the porch that is on the river’s edge and the rippling water,
because we really needed to go to a used bookstore. So we went to Sisters,
Oregon, and fortunately for her, standing side-by-side, was an antique mall, so
Marylou went into the antique mall; I went into the bookstore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have a routine. I go in and I say, “Where do you have
biblio-mysteries? Where do you have mysteries? Where do you have press books? Where
do you have <i>Christmas Carol</i>?” and I
list all the things I collect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And I’m all done, and I walk up to the front desk, and I say
to the man, “do you know William Morris, the English Arts & Crafts guy?” and
he says “yeah,” and I said “do you have any Kelmscott Press books?” And he
said, “oh as a matter of fact I just bought one in this past week, I have it
right here, I hadn’t priced it yet. I looked it up on the Internet and it was $2300,
but if you want to buy it right now, I’ll sell it to you for $1800 dollars.” And
I said well, can I see it, and he said sure, and he hands me Morris’s <i>Guenevere</i>, and I said “You know, the
only problem is I don’t have a checkbook with me and I don’t have 1800 dollars
with me” and he says “oh, I’ll take a credit card!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, the funny thing is, that was a great feeling, OK, and
totally unexpected out there in the high desert as they call it. But the funny
thing is, in all that time in Portland, some 38 years, with that great Powell’s
bookstore, I’ve never bought a Kelmscott Press book from Powell’s and I go to
central Oregon and I find one. I guess the moral of the story is, you just
never know where you might find a Kelmscott lurking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And it’s also to
abandon your riverside roost, the comforts—<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Right, right. It’s worth it!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I’d like to end by asking you what are the
overarching reasons, if any, for your own collecting work? Do you feel that
collecting is an important service to society?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Oh, really good question. The reasons for collecting, you
know, are so many. For me it’s just simply a passion for books. Ever since I
was young I have truly read everything put before me. I was one of those people
who read all four sides, and top and bottom, of the cereal box, and I devoured
the sports page when I was young. And I simply have such a passion for what you
can take from books of all kinds. The joy you can get from reading a book at a
certain time, on vacation, how a book will take you to that place after you’ve
been there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the neatest experiences I’ve had is when I went to Spain:
went to Granada and the Alhambra and returned home and read the Washington Irving
story about the Alhambra. And its nice to think: I’ve been there, I’ve seen it
with my own eyes, and now I can read how a great writer—more than 100 years
earlier—has described those arches, and the mosaic, and the beauty of it. And I
just think that the passion for books is a passion for all that books can give
you. All the knowledge, all the entertainment, and all the pleasure of the
stories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You had a second part to that question…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">About collecting
being a service to society.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That’s really a good question. Larry McMurtry in one of his
books, <i>Cadillac Jack</i>, talks about the
collectors and how collections are like clouds. And how if you look at the
clouds on a day when you’ve got bright light and you’ve got blue sky but you’ve
got the clouds going across, the clouds are there bunched up, and then the wind
comes along and it dissipates them and then you look to your right, and they’ve
reformed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And he compares the collections to those clouds in the sense
that, we put the collections together <i>now</i>,
we enjoy them, we read them, we organize them, we categorize them, we take care
of them. And after we’ve used them, we need to do something more with them, and
that more is to give them to libraries, or to<b> </b>sell them so that other people can build collections. But whatever
we do with them, whether we give them away, whether we sell them, after they
leave us, invariably, we’re going to start over, in some shape or form, to
collect again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, I like to think about when I’ve had books with me, what
I’ve done with them. I’ve generally used them to write books. An example, a
non-Morris example: for years and years I was an avid reader of a major English
mystery writer, Julian Symons. At one point I owned over 1200 individual items
related to this one writer, in all his forms of writing: mysteries,
biographies, short stories, etc. I co-wrote a <a href="http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=3478370&matches=5&cm_sp=works*listing*title">bibliography on Julian Symons</a>
that was published by Oak Knoll. After I was done with the collecting and done
with the writing, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to sell these
books through a dealer to Indiana University in Bloomington, the Lilly Library.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, I like to think I spent many, many thousands of dollars
putting this collection together, and many years of hunting, which is all fine,
and many hours of reading and writing. And now my book is published and those
books could just sit in my home and I wouldn’t do much more with them, or by
having them go to a university like Indiana University Bloomington, having them
at the Lilly Library, there are going to be people much more scholarly than me,
there are going to be people who find the Julian Symons’s collection, and
somebody is going to say, “we have that collection, and its accessible to
anybody.” It’s a really good feeling to be able to pass it on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>And it wouldn’t exist
if you hadn’t consolidated it in that way.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That’s exactly true. It wouldn’t exist in that body of work,
in that mass. I found things that the best library didn’t find—magazines and
limited edition booklets, and things that were very ephemeral and very personal,
I mean hundreds of letters from Julian to me. Now they are accessible, and
that’s the beauty. They’re in one place, open to the public, and that’s the
beauty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So as a collector,
you fight entropy: you stop everything from scattering.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Right (laughing), I bring it together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thank you.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-2680027249158669762013-01-31T15:48:00.000-08:002013-01-31T15:48:02.079-08:00Gems from Jane's Collected Letters, No. 1<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R7OWKXG9fiI/UQr_hvKEm8I/AAAAAAAAAbE/yJSx3enGuz4/s1600/Jane+Reading.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R7OWKXG9fiI/UQr_hvKEm8I/AAAAAAAAAbE/yJSx3enGuz4/s1600/Jane+Reading.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cheer up, love.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>My Father
and Mother never could come to a clear understanding about what had
disagreed with my Father the day he lost his situation at
Fothergill's.</i> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My Father
thought it was the sausage and mashed potatoes he had for lunch at
the Rose and Crown, at fourpence, and as much mustard and pepper as
you liked. My Mother thought it was the beer.</span></i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There was
something to be said for my Mother's view, on the score of quantity.</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is how William De Morgan's 1906 novel <i>Joseph Vance </i>opens, and it continues in much the same cheery vein. Jane Morris, reading it in Burford Old Hospital mere months after its release, was delighted by it, and immediately wrote a letter to De Morgan. "<span style="color: black;">Dear
Bill,</span> I
don't think I have ever written you a letter before, but this is such
a very grand occasion that I feel I must put pen to paper and say how
happy your book has made me."</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I have not laughed so much for many a
long year" she wrote, "I can't write half what is in my mind to say in praise of the book, letter-writing being a lost art with me now."</span></div>
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-45300891435543132482012-12-10T12:37:00.000-08:002013-01-31T18:04:46.839-08:00Ada Lovelace: Weaving Algebraic Patterns<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rXhbkzAaFRU/UMZEWeWD5yI/AAAAAAAAAac/lNCd4ezvfV0/s1600/Ada_Lovelace_1838.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rXhbkzAaFRU/UMZEWeWD5yI/AAAAAAAAAac/lNCd4ezvfV0/s1600/Ada_Lovelace_1838.jpeg" /></a></div>
<br />
On this day in 1815, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=AtngooiwXikC&lpg=PA84&dq=ada%20lovelace%201815&pg=PA84#v=onepage&q&f=false">Augusta Ada Byron,</a> the future Ada Lovelace, was born to Lord Byron
and Lady Noel Byron. The marriage broke down in the first few months of Ada's life, so she never met her famous father. As she grew, her intellect became obvious, and her private education taught her more math and science than was available to most of her female contemporaries.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In 1834, the year that Morris was born, Ada heard Charles Babbage lecture on the “Difference Engine,” which he'd invented, but hadn't yet built. (Although he never managed
to build it, this “difference engine” was the first computer.) Ada was fascinated, and began a correspondence with
Babbage. During her short but bright mathematical career, she worked
and corresponded with Babbage, and wrote what's considered to be the
world's first computer program, making her the world's first computer
programmer.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One computing innovation that preceded
the Difference Engine—or Babbage's other computer, the “<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=emmitTbOoFgC&lpg=PA250&dq=%22difference%20engine%22%20%22analytical%20engine%22&pg=PA229#v=onepage&q&f=false">Analytical Engine</a>”—was the humble Jacquard Loom. Although it was not a computer, it
could receive and execute complex commands in the form of punch
cards. Morris, heralded as the father of the Arts & Crafts
Movement, felt conflicted about the Jacquard loom and machinery in
general, but did use the programmable loom in his silk-weaving
operations.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When Ada tragically died of cancer in
1852, she was 36. Morris was just a teenager at the time, preparing
to go to Oxford. The tiny overlap in their lives and work was <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=1LPEMLG98mgC&lpg=PA342&dq=%22Ada%20lovelace%22%20%22william%20morris%22&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false">summed up</a> unwittingly by Ada: “We may say most aptly that the Analytical
Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves
flowers and leaves.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-26398360799411801562012-12-05T09:50:00.000-08:002012-12-05T11:49:01.308-08:00The Morrisian Interview Series, #1: Professor Florence S. Boos<div center="center" text-align:="text-align:">
</div>
<div center="center" text-align:="text-align:">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f4C4K03O3bA/UL66sLmBc8I/AAAAAAAAAYk/MFuET0Jn71Q/s1600/Boos_Forence+ENG.jpg" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f4C4K03O3bA/UL66sLmBc8I/AAAAAAAAAYk/MFuET0Jn71Q/s320/Boos_Forence+ENG.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Today I have the pleasure of </span><span class="il" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">inaugurating</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> my exclusive Morrisian Interview Series, </span><span class="il" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">in</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> which I'll be interviewing all manner of influential and fascinating Morrisians.</span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></i>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first interview is with Florence S. Boos, Professor of Victorian Literature at The University of Iowa. <a href="http://www.uiowa.edu/~boosf/questions/articlesmorris.html">She's often written on the works of Morris</a> (and Rossetti), and she has brought out annotated critical editions of <i><a href="http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=7233430">The Socialist Diary</a>, <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780815321040/">The Earthly Paradise</a>, </i>and <i><a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/jason.html">The Life and Death of Jason</a>.</i> She's the current President of the <a href="http://www.midwestvictorian.org/">Midwest Victorian Studies Association</a>, and Vice President of <a href="http://www.morrissociety.org/">The William Morris Society</a> in the US. She's also the editor of the forward-looking <a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/about.html">Morris Online Edition</a>, whose contribution to global Morris related studies cannot be overstated.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gDKqENfGMFM/UL9bohyb4jI/AAAAAAAAAZE/QtJjRiq8yOk/s1600/pullquote_boos_more_cropped_small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="146" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gDKqENfGMFM/UL9bohyb4jI/AAAAAAAAAZE/QtJjRiq8yOk/s320/pullquote_boos_more_cropped_small.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our interview took place in Iowa City one day after Obama's campaign stop there, and the same day as an important football game, so the streets were festive and crowded. We met at lunchtime, but struggled to find a quiet place: at last we settled in the back of a roomy Italian restaurant and began.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></div>
<div>
<b style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q-
I have to ask, is there a specific text or set of texts that first attracted
you to nineteenth century literature?</span></b></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I did always like everything
that I read of nineteenth century literature, but I think very important for me
was a course that covered Victorian poetry, and we read Tennyson's <i>In Memorium, </i>and some of the other
absolutely beautiful poems of the time, on time passing and death. What was
appealing about them was their visual quality, of course that is the
Pre-Raphaelite quality; and then they are so musical, so metaphysical and so
reflective. So, I liked that aspect of the literature, and I still like it—the
combination of the musical and the intellectual. Of course one finds this
quality from time to time in Victorian fiction, but I do think in the poems of
Morris and those of others of his time one finds it very exquisitely.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Later, I read <a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/defenceguenevere.html"><i>The Defence of Guenevere</i></a>.
I was a very young woman, and it was the 1960s. It seemed to me explosively sexual, and at the
time, that would have been the case because people were re-discovering erotic qualities
in literature in a way that would now not be required, because they would seem
more commonplace. I still think there's a dramatic intensity in <i>The Defence of Guenevere</i>, and a
sincerity, that is unique.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Q-
You edited a collection of Morris’s juvenilia in 1982. What prompted your
recent return to the subject, with your forthcoming book, </b><a href="http://www.uiowa.edu/~boosf/FSBMarch2012.pdf"><i>Art and Love Enough: The
Early Writings of William Morris</i></a><b><i> </i></b><b>?<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I was young, I wanted to write an account
of Morris's development that was thorough. I felt that all the one-volume works
had not addressed the complexities of his literary works. But what I actually
got into print at the time was the segment on The <i>Earthly Paradise</i>, so that incompletion nags at me, and I'm returning
to those prior topics. I've written tons of articles on the subject, so it was
time to come back and see if there was a greater pattern to it all, and to deal
again with the question of to what extent you can find the full development of
his thought in his earlier reflections.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And I also want to do that with the later
materials, too, so this is section one. If I live long enough, I'll work on the
third section. I'd also like to gather together something on the Socialist
writings. I was so fortunate as to find almost ten unpublished essays, and that
has attracted me again to the subject of how remarkably forceful and
well-stated and well-thought-out those essays are. I don't have life enough and
time to try for a collected edition of Morris's prose, but that's something
that has been granted Carlyle and Arnold and many of the other Victorians, and I
think Morris too should should be among them. But what I’m working on are
little parts towards a whole.</span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Q-
In <i>Art and Love Enough, </i>you
explore the state of mind of William Morris as a young man. He's often
characterized as a somewhat confused youth, Romantic and changeful, who only
hardened into Socialist vigor in his later years. Is this consistent with what
you found in his early texts?</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He didn't have a really well-developed
complicated political critique of Victorian England, but he did have a fairly
well-developed angry critique of certain types of establishment positions.
First, he came of a Whig background, and all of his reading in Romantic and medieval
literature, as well as history, inclined him towards a certain skepticism about
authorities. One of the things I tried to do very briefly in my book, and I
would have loved to do more of, was to comment on the politics of all the books
he read. He read an enormous amount of history by J.H. Neale, Henry Milman and
others who dealt with the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Middle Ages and so
forth. These were angry books. You would think books on church history would be
about as dull as can be, or very pious, but the opposite is the case: these were
living issues to the people who were looking back on the middle ages and seeing
the huge number of deaths and slaughters and wars that were not necessary, and
the effects on the people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I think that Morris had good cause in
his reading and in his understanding of history to want two things: to separate
himself entirely from the powers that be, and to oppose them. You can see in an
early poem that he wrote for the Newdigate prize, the very unusual <a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/earlypoemslistandtexts.html#10">“The Mosque Rising in the Place of the Temple of Solomon”</a>, what I would call a
proto-politics. First, the young Morris absolutely refuses to write a Christian
poem, which, considering that the prize is about the mosque rising in the place
of the temple of Jerusalem, as <a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/WhitlaRaisingMosque.pdf">William
Whitla</a> has shown in detail, would certainly have been
expected in the context of all sorts of fights in the Middle East—fights that
are still going on—over who had control of Jerusalem and the holy places.
Morris refuses to hate Muslims, he refuses to glorify the Crusades, which he
would have read a lot about, and which he had some occasion to romanticize because
he liked Amiens, and Peter the Hermit came from Amiens<b><i>. </i></b>He
specifically worries about the issue of whether the dead have consciousness,
which is not a Christian position; he is horrified, à la Milman,
his source, that Christians engaged in mass slaughter, even brutality, killing
infants and committing other atrocities. And he is very preoccupied with the
building [the temple], the sense of the building as the repository of the good
and evil of the world, and the progress of time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, I wouldn't say that's a directly
political work, but it encodes a lot of anti-establishment views, and a
determination that there are aspects of human life which oppose the
destructiveness of the powers that be, on which we should be reflecting. And if
you look at his later political writings, you can see he's a much more
sophisticated man after he's seen conditions in London, and tried to run his
own business, but you can find the same impulses. Although he started out as a
left-wing liberal, supporting Gladstone and some of the candidates in the early
campaigns, he clearly had a distaste for the whole political process, and all
of the various kinds of imperial and other compromises that were made. So, he's
a bit intransigent, and indeed many of his followers would not be as clean-cut
in their opposition to all levels of capitalism. Thus, it's not that you can
look at the early Morris and say, well, this was the bud and we now know what
the flower will be, but it's possible to look at his early works and see that this
was one way—a very unusual way—that this human being could develop.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Q- In your <a href="http://www.uiowa.edu/~boosf/BoosMorrisspecialissueintro.pdf">introduction to the </a></b><a href="http://www.uiowa.edu/~boosf/BoosMorrisspecialissueintro.pdf"><b><i><u>Victorian Poetry</u> </i>special edition,</b></a><b> “William Morris: 1896-1996,” you
mentioned that a number of Morris's mature poetic qualities were already
apparent in his first published book of poetry, <i>The Defence of Guenevere. </i>Among these characteristics, you
wrote, was his “need to interpret love and fidelity as political as well as
erotic ideals”. Can you talk a little bit about this concept, and how it might
have applied to his life as a young man, and to the rest of his life?<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One can say that <i>The Defence of Guenevere </i>contained two bodies of medieval
material, the Malorian and the Frossartian, a point which has been often made.
It's a little harder to deal with the Arthurian material, but Guenevere would
have been, in Morris’s interpretation, someone who had been marginalized, or
persecuted, in the context of civil society, and he therefore shrinks Arthur
and aggrandizes Guenevere and Lancelot, which would have been the
Pre-Raphaelite view of romance in general. So he's not only defending love, but
he's defending someone who has been marginalized for political reasons.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But the case of the Froissartian poems is much
more interesting because it's material that he chose. I try to read Froissart
with some tolerance, but the Chronicles are a series of propaganda pieces lauding
the British monarch's intrusions into what most of us now consider to be
France. And if he was anything like as bloody as is represented, or as
capricious, Edward III was <i>not</i> a
great leader. However, I think Morris had a complicated view of Froissart and
its great dramatic potential because his is a really interesting account at
many points. I think Morris took from it the imaginative conception of what it
would have been like to be British in France. That's a reasonable stance, because
it doesn't matter if you think the British were right or wrong, the point is
that people who were ethnically and linguistically English were stuck there. So
heroes like Sir Peter are defending a losing cause that nonetheless they
consider to be right.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, in later life, Morris modified in
retrospect his view of the politics of his youth. He revisited the issue of the
Crimea, and he actually said, at the time people felt that what they were doing
was helping the Crimean situation, but now in hindsight we no longer think
that. I assume that was what he thought about France, too, and that he no
longer thought that Britain should rule northern France. But when Morris first read
Froissart, he identified with those who were trying at a very crucial
historical moment to survive, because England did push successfully into France,
and then at a certain point, they lost battles and had to retreat. So his
heroes are set in that time when one couldn’t know how matters will go, but
it's going badly for your side- and that was exactly his situation in later life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, all these men such as Sir Peter who are also
trying to strive to rejoin their lady Alices, or the speaker of “Concerning
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=-8UTAAAAQAAJ&ots=wlKsnEFi5D&dq=guenevere%20and%20other%20poems&pg=PA137#v=onepage&q&f=false">Geffray
Teste Noire</a>,” or the speakers of the other
more historically-based poems such as “<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=-8UTAAAAQAAJ&ots=wlKsnEFi5D&dq=guenevere%20and%20other%20poems&pg=PA215#v=onepage&q&f=false">The
Haystack in the Floods</a>,” are people who are being
brutalized by their opponents, and who are struggling to keep their dignity.
For instance, in <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=-8UTAAAAQAAJ&ots=wlKsnEFi5D&dq=guenevere%20and%20other%20poems&pg=PA174#v=onepage&q&f=false">The
Little Tower</a>, the speaker says that “it's a joy
to ride to my love again”; the point is that his “little tower” is the tower of
a very small fief which is going to be destroyed because the main army is
advancing. So the speaker is going to die in this little tower. I think when
you realize these dramatic situations, you can see a proto-political tone to
the resistance of these heroes. … in a moment of existential horror , they have
to do something as gallantly or bravely as possible in a situation in which
they could well die.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I would argue that he early adopted a
proto-political position. That's not a unique view, because Isobel Armstrong
has very powerfully put it forth in her chapter on Morris in <i>Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics, and
Politics, </i>in which she advances the view that this is a “gothic”
approach to Victorian society seen through a medieval lens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q- On your
website, you describe one of your areas of study as the “broader social,
artistic, feminist, and cultural contexts for British literature since 1750”.
Given your twin expertise of literature and its historical context, then, where
do you stand on literature's place in the study of history, and vice versa?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GIafpeXRovM/UL98cYLGLPI/AAAAAAAAAZ8/KmlUqW9arHI/s1600/pullquote+boos+morris+cheerful_Cropped_this+one.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-left: 0em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GIafpeXRovM/UL98cYLGLPI/AAAAAAAAAZ8/KmlUqW9arHI/s320/pullquote+boos+morris+cheerful_Cropped_this+one.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That's a nice question: obviously I'm
committed to the belief that they are parts of each other. I hold the view held
by Morris and many others, and that he expounded in <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1882/life1.htm">his essay on “The Lesser Arts,”</a>
that historical documents give access to history from the outside without a
sense of what it meant to people at the time, and that the latter alone is
living history. And as you know, Morris's view was that the lesser arts give us
a sense of what people actually thought and valued and felt, and I would argue
that literature especially does that, because verbal expressions are keys to
such an important part of human consciousness. I don't mean it's not important
to look at coins or buildings and so forth, but it's also important to see what
people said and sung, for otherwise we wouldn't have any sense of who they
were, in a profound sense. The latter is what one wants from history; one wants
to have a connection with human beings as they were. It's “existential
historicism,” in Frederic Jameson's terms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But the reverse is also true... I'm teaching
every week, I see how if one doesn't have a sense of what the values at the
time were, one can't evaluate the characters’ actions or see the meaning of
reference—why a particular novel deals with poverty and scarcity, why a specific
poem alludes to sexual controversies. Of course human nature may not change,
but it does express itself very differently in different social contexts. I see
the evidence of a lack of knowledge of history constantly in my classes—I'm
like the little boy and the dyke, or St. Columba in the waves, I'm always
working against it. I see that people fail to appreciate the motives of the
past, and in so doing, they oversimplify their own lives. Students (and others)
tend to be judgmental of the past. They really think that we behave better in
our gender relationships or politically than our forebears. They tend to
simplify how hard it was for people in earlier situations, because they don't
even understand those situations or how society has changed. But they also tend
to judge both the authors of prose works and poems, and the characters within
fiction, because they're simply not able to evaluate what the pressures or
circumstances are of those lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And so I believe we have to understand other
periods of time or we are trapped in our period and our misunderstanding of
ourselves. I see all the time how difficult it is even to teach about people
who are only a century and a half back, who spoke the same language. There is a
kind of collapse of similarity, where one thinks that because one can read Jane
Austen's words, that one can understand her world. Grasping something of the
class system, the actual social conditions and the health conditions, the
extent to which emigration and wars affected the lives of the average person,
the ways in which they thought about money, all that, I think enables one to have
more sympathy and empathy, but also to recognize the importance of adjusting
social conditions so that human beings can have a freer life, or a better life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q- Staying
in the vein of literary sources and their value as historical documents,
<a href="http://archive.org/stream/lifewilliammorr03mackgoog#page/n7/mode/2up">Morris's first biographer</a> famously gave readers free reign to read part
of <i><a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/eptexts.html">The Earthly Paradise</a> </i>as
a historical document when he said: “In the verses that frame the stories
of <i>The Earthly Paradise </i>there
is an autobiography so delicate and so outspoken that it must needs be left to
speak for itself …” What do you make of this hidden autobiography, and do you
think that Morris was consistent in pouring his personal life into his writing?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's clear that he did. Biographies agree that
this occurred when he wrote the tales of the August, September and October
months, "<a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/eptextAUTOctobertext.html">Acontius
and Cydippe</a><i>," "</i><a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/eptextAUTSeptembertext.html#top">The Death of Paris</a><i>," </i>and "<a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/eptextAUTOctobertext.html">The Man Who Never Laughed Again</a>", as well
as <a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/eptextAUTNovembertext.html">"The Lovers of Gudrun"</a>, with
that horrible quarrel between Kiartan and Bodli brought on by Gudrun's
maliciousness, and the fact that Bodli dies to please a wife who doesn't love
him, and then "<a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/eptextWINTERFebruarytext.html">The Hill of Venus</a>," in which <em><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Tannhäuser</span></em> enters
the cave, Venus deserts him, he's left forever with the memory of the cave, and
is alienated both from society and from himself. That sense of the
compulsiveness—the moral importance, but also the obsessive neediness of love—is
clearly Morris's working out of his own emotions about his marriage. He doesn't
blame the woman figure but tries to be neutral, and that to him is a moral act.
I think that there's more there than just biography in the sense of regretting his
situation; there's also his attempt to decide how a person should respond under
this type of disappointment, and what may be the meaning of the life-force, to
the extent that it is expressed in sexuality or attraction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And then he solved this problem, as people do as
they age, so that by <i><a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/loveisenough.html">Love is Enough</a></i>,
we have an allegorical version of the same situation. Here although the hero is
always seeking, he is always guided by this inner ideal, which to him is
associated with fertility, and with life, and with sexuality without guilt or
malice or possessiveness, or any of the things that are associated with
Puritanism. But I also think, in addition to dealing with inner psychic forces related
to love and sexuality, it's an allegory of his own experience of the restless
need to accomplish something. Obviously Morris was a driven man in a cheerful
sort of way, as many people are who accomplish things of significance. And all his
heroes with their quests, their contests, their travels, their slaying of
dragons, their crossing of seas and so forth, are always seeking something
which they can never quite obtain. That's why it's <i>The Earthly Paradise</i>—it's impossible to obtain an Earthly Paradise—but
if the protagonists didn't work at it extremely hard, they wouldn't be what
people should be. So, the poem is an allegorical representation of Morris's
work ethic, which can seem a very boring thing if you talk of it directly as a
work ethic, but if you project it into a whole series of mythological stories
and tales, then this gives a meaning to them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q- When you
were editing Morris's <i><a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1887/diary/">Socialist Diaries</a></i>, (among many other times), you travelled to Britain and consulted a
range of primary sources, including some in private collections. Do you have a
favorite moment from that year of research, or a discovery that particularly
surprised you?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was exhilarating to have access to these
sources in the late sixties, when I was writing my dissertation. People just
didn't travel as much, because it was so expensive, and in particular, I
couldn't afford to travel. But also now we do have through digital and other
means much better ways of photo-duplication and so it's possible to have greater
access to copies and manuscripts. Before my first trip I had looked at
everything there was in print on Rossetti, and I had heard of the Morris
collection, so when I got my first permanent job here [at Iowa], I applied for
and received a tiny fellowship to visit England to see what was there. Nowadays
you can look online and see what's in the British Library Manuscript Catalogue.
When I walked in the British Library in 1974, I hadn't a clue. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was just astounding to see how much there
was. It was like a whole new world. And at that time my mind was filled with
the scholarship of the time, which was very interested in revisions and
developmental studies of an author. I had as my great model, Christopher Ricks’s
edition of Tennyson, and I would have liked to do something similar for Morris.
A really good edition which also presents the textual variants, and provides (as
in the case of Tennyson), some things that weren't published along with the things
that were, really gives you a sense of the author’s full work. As you can see,
not only have I never done that, but the <i>Morris Online Edition</i> which is working away toward that goal will
never entirely get there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But when you first see something, with the
happiness of youth you understand what can be learned from it, without
understanding perhaps what the obstacles might be. One of the obstacles to using
Morris's manuscripts at the time was the enormous cost of reproduction, which
is now much less. One had to take them home and look at them in microfilm, and
I bought microfilms of almost the whole set. But more important, so many of the
manuscripts were in pencil. One really would have to sit there and transcribe them,
hour by hour, and even then I find it hard to make sense of some of them. Even a
person with reasonably good eyesight still couldn't quite accurately transcribe
it all. I've tried; for the Morris edition, I've spent hours and hours
transcribing the poems, and when I go back and check them, I find mistakes, or
I'll find a transcription by someone else and there will be little differences,
so it's not self-evident that someone could readily do a full textual study of
Morris's revisions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I think such a study would be an important work
on Morris. David Latham has written a
couple articles on this topic, and I finally got my act together and wrote an
article for <i>Victorian Poetry </i>on
“The Hill of Venus”. It's not that I hadn't written on "The Hill of Venus"; I had drafted an
introduction for the edition of <i>The
Earthly Paradise </i>by Taylor and Francis, and had written more generally
about it in my book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/William-Earthly-Paradise-Studies-Literature/dp/0889469334">The Design of William Morris’ The Earthly Paradise</a>,</i> but
when I actually had to figure out specifically all of the versions, I found ten
of them. I <i>think</i> I have
dated them accurately, and I <i>think</i> I've
put them in the right order—and that was just one poem, though a fairly messy
one! Well, I'm saying that the difficulties of coming to a generalization on this
mass of manuscript material is somewhat daunting. So even though it's wonderful
that it's there—it's a wealth of interesting evidence—very few have the
patience, the money, the time, the background, or the will to find all that
there is and come to potential conclusions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And of course its a wonderful thing that there's
a great deal to learn, and many many things remain in manuscript. For
instance, take <i>Love is Enough. </i>The
Huntington Library contains several good and interesting drafts of this, but no
one has ever written an article on these. I have a transcription of all these
manuscripts, and somewhere it's waiting to be done. I'm hoping with <i>The Morris Online Edition</i> to make
more available, in more forms, to more people, the possibility of reaching back
into the archive and the manuscripts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q- We've
talked a little about the <i>Morris
Online Edition </i>already, and I wanted to talk more about that. You've
done great work on the The <i>Morris
Online Edition, </i>making Morris's work available for free online, along
with valuable contextualizing documents. Can you talk about that, and about
your vision for the future of such electronic resources?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I think Morris’s works have to be gathered in
this form. I believe it would be a real loss to Morris's reputation if his
writings couldn't be put online, digitalized, and made available free to the
world. When you think of all the people that won't have access to research
libraries, millions and millions of them, there's an urgency to reaching them. I'd
like to see more translations of Morris’s work into non-English and even non-European
languages; on the U. S. Morris Society
site, <a href="http://www.morrissociety.org/worldwide/index.html">we've tried to provide a very few of them</a>.
I can't tell you how accurate a translation the Arabic one is, or the
translation into Thai, and whether the meaning really changes as you move to a
different language and culture, but I just can't see that we can ignore the
world as it is. ….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NSUGiHZaMZU/UL986SRnXAI/AAAAAAAAAaE/8U3ZgmKVeBo/s1600/Pullquote+3+cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-left: 0em;"><img border="0" height="130" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NSUGiHZaMZU/UL986SRnXAI/AAAAAAAAAaE/8U3ZgmKVeBo/s320/Pullquote+3+cropped.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And obviously we are just at the beginning of a
technological revolution, and whether this will be good or bad for humanity in
the long run, I wouldn't be the one to say, but to complain would be to be as
though someone in the last century regretted that information could be sent by telephone
and telegraph as well as letter. It is absolutely necessary to provide something
better than Google books, something that presents Morris within a reasonably
dignified context, and that provides all of his works, uncommercialized and not
chopped up in meaningless ways. Also as I mentioned, I think one of the
advantages of a digital edition is that you can put up manuscripts, and these
are the items that are so expensive and time consuming to go and see. If what
you really want is not just the tourist experience, but actually to read the
manuscript, it's extremely useful to have it online. It’s complicated for us to
provide images of manuscripts, because it's hard to obtain scans of sufficiently
high resolution. We do our best, but I would hope that as time progressed it
might be possible for better images to be provided, or to devise better forms of
presentation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However, I think the other part of your question
was about the future. The problem with digitalization is that these virtual
forms of transmission could all go away, just as the video disks that were
being made in the 1980s are obsolete, or—just as the pictures of the 1986 <a href="http://www.williammorrissociety.org/iceland.shtml">Morris Icelandic trip </a>taken by my friend Gary Aho in 8mm film are now difficult to
retrieve—there is the terrifying thought, of which people who think about these
things are aware, that methods of preservation might so change that much of
what is now digitalized might disappear. … Even people like Jerome McGann, a
pioneer and mentor and promoter of these projects, has said that we don't know
whether the World Wide Web in its present form will survive, and how long. It's
not any more eternal than other forms of transmission. So that's something that
one has to keep in mind. The edition materials have to be preserved in different
forms, and in such a manner that, when there are new ways of presentation, someone
can manage to bridge between formats without waiting too long.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There's nothing like the book; well-made books can
last for hundreds of years. Of course, you can throw away a book, a book can be
lost in the ocean, or the only copy of the book can be lost, but nonetheless
the book was a great means of transmission of data. Someone will have to keep
thinking about these things, so that what little we have been able to preserve of
our culture will not be lost. The good of the <i>Morris Online Edition,</i> other than the fact that it can provide
the relevant material for anyone interested, such as students, is that contributors
from different countries can participate. This aspect of the edition has been
pleasant for me. We don't have any Australians yet, but Canadian and British scholars
as well as Americans have been contributing, which is gratifying.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q- Well,
it's a fantastic project, and I've consulted it myself many times...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yes, (laughing) I appreciate that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q- I thought
I'd end on a more personal note for myself, and I'm sure a lot of my readers
are curious about this too: it's so tough to get into academia at the moment,
especially in the humanities, so I wanted to know what advice you might have
for people inclined to academia, but who are just starting their careers now?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yes, it's a lot easier to come up with an
answer on these other things than on something so deeply embedded in our
society as the disregard for education. I'm horrified to read that something
like 80% of new positions in academics are for adjuncts. It's been a
sea-change. It's not that it was ever easy to obtain a job as a university teacher,
but the situation has worsened in a dramatic way, because universities are now corporatized
in a way that makes them see potential employees as expensive units, and they
do not want to hire people to teach. This is tragic for students, because the
transmission of culture should be the basic job of a society. Otherwise people
will make horrendous mistakes from not knowing about the past, and not caring
about it. Look at what we [the U. S.] just did in Baghdad; we blew up some huge
historical museum, and we destroyed a whole collection of ancient Buddhist
statues. I'm sure officials said, they're not important, yet they happened to
be really historic ones, some of the oldest and most important in the world.
Anyway, I'd just make the point that these subjects matter for all sorts of
reasons, and society has turned away from everything but instrumentalism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">OK so what advice do I have? I don't have any that differs from what others
who have thought about it would give. Obviously one has to be as
well-credentialed in conventional ways as possible, and that's very expensive
for people now, because of the failure to support public education through low
tuition. But I think the people who have managed to gain jobs in some portion
of the humanities world have often trained in more than one field. So, for
instance, Iowa has an MFA in the book arts; after earning such a degree one won’t
necessarily get a job dealing with the book arts, but I think having a degree
both in a field such as English or history and in something else— museum
studies, the digital humanities (now huge), computer applications to learning— may
help, and all these fields do employ people. I notice at Iowa, though faculty
positions are few, staff positions continue to increase. So a person who tries
to learn more than one skill, and have more than one kind of credentialization,
is better placed to survive. This may be somewhat regrettable, because the
truth is, if you're credentialed in many ways, maybe you're not able to be as
thorough in each one. But I see that people do survive in the humanities still;
it just takes longer. I deeply hope that this situation won't continue indefinitely.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q- Thank you
very much, and was there anything that you wanted to add?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Because we're Americans, Morris’s writings can
seem somewhat remote. That’s unfortunate, because what he observed of political
and social matters could be right from the front page of the newspaper. His ideas
on ecology and the environment, and war and the political process are so
urgently relevant. I would like to see Morrisians make a bigger educational
push to prepare materials for schools—and prepare packages of information that
people could read in a simpler form. I teach <a href="http://www.uiowa.edu/~wmorris/NewsFromNowhere/"><i>News from Nowhere </i>using<i> </i> an online site</a> that a woman named Karla
Tonella helped me develop, which contains images of all the places in London mentioned
in <i>News</i> to try to make it more
accessible. Such things are fine, but
they need to be brought to more people. It's inevitable that even those who are
more educated or who belong to the Morris Society are not necessarily placed to
present Morris’s work to the public. I know, however, that efforts at explaining
his ideas as they have been powerfully expressed will continue to be needed. I
find even very clear Victorian English is somewhat remote to my students—Morris’s
jokes, little expressions, and allusions all make its content difficult for
them. One sees not only in Morris, but in many art movements around the world, that
the desire for a better, more equal life, its expression in art, and opposition
to extremely capitalist and anti-human practices seem to appear together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Well, thank you for interviewing me, this has
been very pleasant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q- Thank you.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-26642350807116799702012-10-31T20:17:00.001-07:002013-02-01T16:57:22.841-08:00The Richest Girl in the World<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aiI5pgek4lM/UJHfgoR8syI/AAAAAAAAAWY/yrEnzqOwpoU/s1600/Iranian+Chair_Doris_Duke_Shangri_La_MAD_Crop_sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aiI5pgek4lM/UJHfgoR8syI/AAAAAAAAAWY/yrEnzqOwpoU/s1600/Iranian+Chair_Doris_Duke_Shangri_La_MAD_Crop_sm.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of Doris Duke's Islamic art objects on show at the M.A.D. in New York City</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Doris Duke was born in New York in
1912, to an incredibly wealthy family. She grew up on Fifth Avenue,
and her beauty and wealth attracted much attention. Dubbed "the
richest girl in the world," she became a celebrity as well as an heiress.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Duke soon married and became Doris Duke
Cromwell, but their dream globe-trotting honeymoon became tiring as the media hounded the couple from place to
place. Luckily, the harried pace of the tour didn't distract her: from the blur of daily sightseeing, one canon of art and
architecture stood out clear as a flame. She was enraptured with
Islamic Art.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
With images of the Taj Mahal dancing in
her head, she set out to extend her parent's Palm Beach home in the
style of the grand mausoleum. Locals mocked her, joking about the
impending “Garage Mahal”, until one day, the project was
cancelled. Duke and her husband had decided to flee the media
spotlight, and build their home in Honolulu
instead.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Thus was born the famous house,
Shangri-La, and it could be said that Duke spent the rest of her life furnishing it. She travelled the world to collect beautiful art objects like sculpted chairs, wooden chests flecked with mother-of-pearl, and delicately pierced iron lanterns, all which added to the mystique of her carefully-curated home.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
While I stood in the exhibit, <a href="http://madmuseum.org/exhibition/doris-dukes-shangri-la">“Doris Duke's Shangri-La”</a> at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York
City the other week, gazing at an 18<sup>th</sup> century Iranian
chair, a woman beside me commented to her companion, “This reminds
me of William Morris”. Yes,
there was a floral pattern on the upholstery, but it was more than
that. The chair had a slightly gothic shape, and the tasteful
decoration was so painstakingly hand-crafted, its very existence
reminded the viewer of the original artisan. There was indeed
something very Morrisian about the chair.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Perhaps this should come as no
surprise, since Morris admired the design of “Persian” textiles,
and vastly preferred hand-crafted wooden furniture to poofy, fully
upholstered pieces. It could be argued that Duke's chair is a rough
intersection of the two. Perhaps if Morris had travelled farther from
home than Europe or Iceland, he would have gone beyond Persian carpets, and
collected more widely from the Islamic decorative arts. Because ultimately, William Morris was a collector. He may have had many other strings to his bow, but the truth is, he collected those strings before he added them.</div>
Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-27627597802390500442012-09-30T20:25:00.000-07:002012-09-30T20:25:53.835-07:00The Guilt of Young Morris
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-daSrVfhM7MA/UGkFxlRLJaI/AAAAAAAAAU8/xD5ROjTejcc/s1600/The+light+of+the+world+william+holman+hunt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-daSrVfhM7MA/UGkFxlRLJaI/AAAAAAAAAU8/xD5ROjTejcc/s640/The+light+of+the+world+william+holman+hunt.jpg" width="312" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Holman Hunt's <i>The Light of the World</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When William Morris went to Oxford in 1853, he met Edward Jones (later Edward Burne-Jones), and they became close friends. One morning in 1855, "just after breakfast," Burne-Jones remembered, "he [Morris] brought me the first poem he ever made." This was <i><a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/earlypoemslistandtexts.html#15">The Willow and the Red Cliff</a>. </i>Morris read it to Jones, and to their other friends, and it was a hit. That night, or soon after, he wrote another poem, one wracked with guilt:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
Dear friends, I lay awake in the night
<br />When I sung of the willow-tree<br />
And I thought, as I lay awake in the light,
<br />Of what you had said to me.
<br />For you remember how you had said
<br />That I should be a poet
<br />Ah me: it almost made me sad,
<br />As I lay in the light, to know it.
<br />For I knew, as every poet does,
<br />What a poet ought to be:
<br />Straightway before me there uprose,<br />
My hideous sins to me.
<br />Sweet friends[,] I pray you pray for me<br />
To Him Whose hands are pierced
<br />That, as, on the breast of His Mother, He,
<br />So I on His breast may be nursed.
<br />William.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I consider this poem to be the first great mystery in the record of Morris's life--the mention of "hideous sins", and of failing to be "What a poet ought to be", is intriguing. Does he refer to a literal sin from his past, a transgression that he'd kept hidden, or was it something more subtle?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's tempting to think that he felt guilty for misleading Edward and his other friends about the number of poems he'd written. He'd allowed them to think that <i>The Willow and the Red Cliff</i> was the first he'd ever written.<a href="http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/earlypoemslistandtexts.html#10"> It wasn't.</a></span><br />
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Sadly, we will never know what drove him to write the poem. But whatever the "hideous sins" were, they made him feel that he wasn't living up to the ideal of a poet; the poet who, in <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37452/37452-h/37452-h.htm#Page_223">Mrs. Browning's poem</a>, says “I seek no wages-- seek no fame:/Sew me, for shroud round face and name,/ God's banner of the oriflamme.” He may have feared instead that he was one of Browning's false poets, who boasted “we are not pilgrims, by your leave/ No, nor yet martyrs! If we grieve,/It is to rhyme to... summer eve."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
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Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-8893604411120917492012-09-01T14:05:00.000-07:002012-09-01T14:10:19.980-07:00Arts & Crafts Versus Arts & Crafts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The TV channel TLC</span><a href="http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/craft-wars"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> recently declared</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> that it was “about to turn crafting on its head” with its show <i>Craft Wars</i>, by assembling “craft virtuosos” for “a knock-down, drag-out fight for supremacy.” As reviews roll in, it seems that the show has indeed managed to turn craft on its head, but not in quite the peppy way that TLC intended.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">On the first of last month, Alexandra Lange at the New Yorker </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/08/dont-put-a-bird-on-it-saving-craft-from-cuteness.html"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">posted a scathing review</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> of the show. In her piece, she argued that the show is an offense to all that true craft stands for, by encouraging wasteful consumption, and by separating the creation of objects from their decoration. As an example, Lange picked an episode in which people competed to make the most attractive playhouse:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The contestants … weren’t even constructing the house part: nameless team members wielded saws and hammers, while the (female) contestants added decoration to the plywood frame. It was a setup that forced them to be decorators, and it also narrowed the skill set required for a win to sewing, glueing, and painting … </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It's true that this is opposed to Morris's idea of an artist-craftsman who masters every aspect of his or her trade. But does this mean that<em> Craft Wars</em> deserves to be dismissed as a group of people wasting their time by making things “cute”? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">A blogger over at</span><a href="http://craftymanolo.com/tori-spelling-vs-william-morris"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> “Crafty Manalo”</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> begs to differ. In her rebuttal to Lange's piece, she writes that it is misleading to compare small home projects and the Arts & Crafts movement writ large, then goes on to quote another commentator who summed up the potential value of the show quite well:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I too recoil a bit when glueing pencils onto a window box is lumped into the ‘craft’ category. However, I have also witnessed acquaintances of mine start out stringing beads into nice earrings and necklaces, and become motivated to learn the full spectrum of jewellery-making techniques, or set about learning to make the glass beads by hand.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">If even one person is inspired to explore craft more deeply as a result of <em>Craft Wars</em>, the piece concludes, then “it will have served a useful purpose.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">(Photo via </span><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herramientas_para_Scrapbooking.jpg"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Wikimedia Commons</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">)</span></span>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-56651860696988238282012-08-16T10:59:00.000-07:002012-08-16T11:01:11.531-07:00Passion Without Vocation<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Morris's leading passion: a "hatred of modern civilization"<br />
<i>Coalbrookdale by Night</i>, Phillippe de Loutherbourg</td></tr>
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Was William Morris possessed of that
magical trait we hear so much about: passion? To understand the most popular definition of "passion" today, one needs only to read a cover
letter. When a candidate writes, for example, “Good administrative
practices are my passion”, or even “the study of history is my
passion”, she wants to tell her potential employers that a specific
thing is her vocation: <i>don't worry, I will never get bored of the
job and run off to start my own business or become a lobster
fisherman in the Bahamas</i>. If that's what passion is in the modern
sense—a specific, directed, and reliable sort of vocation—then
Morris was about as passionate as a piece of moldy bread.</div>
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But if by passion we mean a theme to
one's life, a broad goal towards which all the many vocations are
merely different paths, then Morris was passionate indeed. Later in
his life Morris once said, “Apart from the desire to produce
beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is
hatred of modern civilization.” Hypothetically, if he'd written
this in a cover letter in late 1855 when he was applying to work at the
office of G.E. Street, an architecture firm in Oxford, then he would
never have gotten the job.
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Indeed, perhaps they shouldn't have
given it to him, as he'd only settled on architecture months before
the beginning of the apprenticeship. For years previous to that, he'd
been planning and training to enter the church. But he was so
convincing about his new choice that he had many people in his life
believing that architecture was his one true vocation. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=i3PLbDGeNR0C&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=%22If+I+were+not+to+follow+this+occupation+I+in+truth+know+not+what+I+should+follow+with+any+chance+of+success,+or+hope+of+happiness+in+my+work%22&source=bl&ots=fJHI9oFig0&sig=R-_d8q-CdiDI2Uo9Eq6ZrNaU7xA&sa=X&ei=4DMtUKS_FvK70QHtgYGACg&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">He wrote to his mother</a> along those lines:
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“If I were not to follow this
occupation I in truth know not what I should follow with any chance
of success, or hope of happiness in my work ... Perhaps you think
that people will laugh at me, and call me purposeless and changeable;
I have no doubt they will, but I in my turn will try to shame them,
God being my helper, by steadiness and hard work. … but … I will
by no means give up things I have thought of for the bettering of the
world in so far as lies in me.”</blockquote>
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Alas, architecture turned out to
involve too much drudgery and exact drawing, so he switched to
painting within a year, leaving G.E. Street in the dust. Was this a
sign that Morris was changeable and purposeless, or was he simply
seeking different types of work that suited his life's general theme,
his life's passion? The latter seems most likely. After all, as he
wrote to his mother, he had simple aims: “I do not hope to be great
at all in anything, but perhaps I may reasonably hope to be happy in
my work...”</div>
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After he failed to become a painter as
well, this line from his mother's letter took on new meaning. He no
longer wanted to work for decades at one thing, in order to become a
decent architect or passable painter. He wanted to enjoy his work,
and this he did, becoming eminently successful at many different
things. He wrote poetry about the deep past, he wrote fantasy novels
and Socialist lectures about the far future, and he designed fabrics
and papers to beautify the present as much as possible. These
projects seem scattered, but were in fact very focused. Every single
one of them served one purpose: helping his fellow man to escape, or
to improve, the ugliness and unfairness of Victorian civilization. </div>
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Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-66982511203313835412012-08-04T07:38:00.000-07:002012-08-04T07:38:15.767-07:00"the sorrow that changed and changes my life"<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KzTQ825C1Q4/UB0s8i4fIWI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/6YN677fMJ2Q/s1600/Charles_Eliot_Norton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KzTQ825C1Q4/UB0s8i4fIWI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/6YN677fMJ2Q/s400/Charles_Eliot_Norton.jpg" width="290" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Eliot_Norton_76_years_old.jpg">Charles Eliot Norton in 1903</a></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When
Morris returned from Iceland in the fall of 1871, he wrote a long
letter to his accomplished American friend, Charles Eliot Norton.
Norton, a well-known editor*, had been in Italy
with his wife Susan, but was now traveling North. Morris wrote:
“Please give my kindest remembrances to Mrs. Norton and the rest of
your party … I hope, but don't expect that you will enjoy Berlin—” **</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Indeed
Norton did not enjoy Berlin at all. In fact he never reached it,
because in Dresden his wife died in childbirth. From that moment
onwards, he was a changed man: his happiest times would now belong to
the past.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">Returning
to the United States without his wife, he saw his country in a new
light. He took no pleasure in coming home: the steamer journey across
the ocean had just increased the <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=TuZMzXqtCIcC&lpg=PP1&ots=oB8IKyCZQ4&dq=charles%20eliot%20norton&pg=PA127#v=onepage&q&f=false">“material distance between me and the best part of my life”</a>, he wrote. The memories of his time in
Italy had become <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=TuZMzXqtCIcC&lpg=PP1&ots=oB8IKyCZQ4&dq=charles%20eliot%20norton&pg=PA125#v=onepage&q&f=false">“the secret treasure”</a> of his life; his lonely
existence in the US, by contrast, was bare. Perhaps this emotional
dichotomy was what allowed him to make a cool, critical analysis of
his home country, at a time when so many others were blindly
patriotic. </span></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">A
year after Susan's death, Norton <a href="http://www.dearhenryjames.org/letters/18731208_CEN.pdf">wrote to Henry James</a> in a reflective
mode. His letter touched on the subject of the United States, and its
relative greatness when compared with the rest of the world:</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">No
doubt there is great & restless vivacity of mind, much brightness
of surface; & certainly there are many virtues to be found, even
in the newest & roughest sets (at least Bret Harte, our latest
immortal, so assures us,)—and Cambridge is no doubt as near the
centre of the earth as any place so far north can possibly be. But it
is a barren & solitary earth,—and it would be a wretched and
unworthy patriotism, or a mere love of paradox, or an unmanly
timidity and self distrust, that would hinder one who has known the
best, from saying distinctly, “this is not the best & will not
in our time be the best.”</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Before
the tragedy, Norton had been a dear friend to Morris and his circle,
but he was sometimes a bit neglected.<a href="http://archive.org/stream/memorialsedward00burngoog/memorialsedward00burngoog_djvu.txt"> Edward Burne-Jones wrote to Norton</a> just before the disaster, apologizing for forgetting to write,
and pointing out that Morris was just as negligent in writing: “He
behaves as badly to you as I do—fifty-two times a year we say to
each other 'Have you written to Norton?' ” ***</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">Although
Norton changed after the disaster, his friendship with the circle
became closer than ever, and he was clearly less neglected.
Georgiana, Burne-Jones's wife, explained the shift: </span></span>“from
that time [Susan's death] our sympathy with her husband changed
affection into devotion.'There was no need for you to be dearer to
your friends,' Edward wrote to him, 'but you will be.' <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">* His distinguished career as a Harvard Professor had not yet begun.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">** From letter #154 in The Collected Letters of William Morris, Vol. I, edited by Norman Kelvin.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">*** See page 23 of linked text. Georgiana's quote can be found on page 27.</span></span></div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-26930155709731803042012-07-23T07:31:00.000-07:002012-07-23T07:31:48.968-07:00William Morris's Great Weakness<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FseqBJs3vuM/UAl97NJ85sI/AAAAAAAAAQo/39ko3c1013I/s1600/Cropped_Oxford+Union+Mural_Morris+%25281+of+1%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FseqBJs3vuM/UAl97NJ85sI/AAAAAAAAAQo/39ko3c1013I/s400/Cropped_Oxford+Union+Mural_Morris+%25281+of+1%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Morris's Oxford Union mural, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><i>How Sir Palomydes Loved La Belle <span style="color: black;">Iseult</span> with Exceeding</i></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><i> Great Love out of Measure</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><i>, and how She Loved Him Not Again but Rather Sir <span style="color: black;">Tristram</span></i></span></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n-L2ZO8fpd4/UAl74bLxRVI/AAAAAAAAAQg/TmoYZII-W7Q/s1600/cropped_tristram+and+iseult_oxford+union.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="294" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n-L2ZO8fpd4/UAl74bLxRVI/AAAAAAAAAQg/TmoYZII-W7Q/s400/cropped_tristram+and+iseult_oxford+union.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Morris struggled with the figures in his mural.</td></tr>
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In 1856, at the age of twenty-two,
William Morris decided to become a painter. It's not a coincidence
that this decision came after just a few months of friendship with
one of his heroes, the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. At the time,
Rossetti had very forceful views, which placed painters above
everyone else. <a href="http://archive.org/stream/memorialsofedwar01gbjguoft#page/n181/mode/2up">According to a friend of his</a>, he claimed that if “any man had poetry in him, he
should paint it.” Morris found Rossetti's arguments irresistible, and by July he was
writing: “Rossetti says I ought to paint... now as he is a very
great man, and speaks with authority and not as the scribes, I must
try...”<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span>He would never succeed, and his attempts would often drive him wild
with frustration.<br />
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Very little evidence survives of
Morris's long struggle with figure sketching and painting. <span style="font-style: normal;">Morris
would be pleased with this situation: indeed, he probably destroyed
many of his early works himself.</span> The only canvas painting spared,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1595154335"> </a><i><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/morris-la-belle-iseult-n04999">La Belle Iseult</a>, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">is
good enough to suggest that he was a fine painter, but it was worked on by a number of Morris's
friends, including Rossetti, after it left his hands. To Morris's dismay
however, an unflattering example of his figure painting did survive,
and can be seen to this day.</span><br />
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When
Rossetti gathered a group of artists to paint murals in the new
Oxford Union building in 1857, Morris agreed to do one of the panels.
After being mocked for his figure of Iseult, who apparently looked
like an “ogress”, Morris altered the painting, and covered over much of
the panel with a twisting thicket of plants and sunflowers. The result was a
huge swathe of green, with the rather crude faces of the lovers Tristram and
Iseult peeping out in the upper right corner, and the jealous Sir Palomydes watching them from the left.<br />
<br /><span style="font-style: normal;">Morris was embarrassed by the result, writing
twelve years later “I believe it </span><i>has </i><span style="font-style: normal;">some
merits as to colour, but I must confess I should feel much more
comfortable if it had disappeared from the wall, as I'm conscious of
it being extremely ludicrous in many ways.” </span>When he wrote those words, his wish was coming true. The murals were fading rapidly, and were very difficult to see. It was only later that a restoration revealed the original in all of its awkward glory.</div>
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This experience pushed Morris ever closer to the decorative arts, for although he disliked his wall mural, he was very pleased with his ceiling design, a flowing pattern that was very capably done. Sadly, this pattern can't be seen any more, as Morris<a href="http://www.oxford-union.org/library/murals"> re-painted the ceiling</a> to a new design in 1875.</div>
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If you haven't been to see the Oxford
Union Murals, then watch<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S4DbKkeqP-A"> this video</a> prepared by Oxford Brookes University. It was filmed at night, so the murals—normally hard to see for all the sunlight—come out beautifully.
They focus on a few of the murals, including Rossetti's and Morris's,
while Dr. Christiana Payne and Nancy Langham discuss them.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Unattributed Morris quotes in today's post come from Norman Kelvin's The Collected Letters of William Morris, Vol I. </span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The Ogress comment was made by Val Prinsep, and can be seen in Fiona MacCarthy's biography, William Morris: A Life for Our Time.</span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">To read more about Morris's canvas painting, see Jan Marsh's article "La Belle Iseult" in the Summer 2011 edition of the Journal of William Morris Studies. (Vol XIX, Number 2)</span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>There's also a master's thesis on the topic of the murals, <a href="http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1055&context=oa_theses&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Drossetti%2B%2522oxford%2Bunion%2Bmural%2522%2Brestore%2Bvisibility%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D1%26ved%3D0CEkQFjAA%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdigitalcommons.wayne.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1055%2526context%253Doa_theses%26ei%3DVjsNUK_dDuar0AWPv-y0Cg%26usg%3DAFQjCNGERppLDndF-tjAB2ifd1cAt2X-0A%26sig2%3DVlFeNqJCenJozeAM3ktlgg#search=%22rossetti%20oxford%20union%20mural%20restore%20visibility%22">here.</a></i></span></div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-35281186237154656332012-07-06T03:52:00.000-07:002013-02-03T12:21:55.874-08:00Morris and the Machine<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_YYesITbWdo/T_a5lUVLW6I/AAAAAAAAAPw/FtVhNfQIgXQ/s1600/Machinery+Hall_1893.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="316" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_YYesITbWdo/T_a5lUVLW6I/AAAAAAAAAPw/FtVhNfQIgXQ/s400/Machinery+Hall_1893.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">The 1893 Chicago World's Fair Machinery Hall<br />via http://industrialartifactsreview.com/</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Standing in the Machinery Hall of the
Chicago World's Fair in 1893, Henry Adams, Great-Grandson of the
second President of the United States, suddenly realized that science
and machinery had <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pzjPWGmnUt4C&lpg=PA85&ots=0WOVCy63-o&dq=%22electrocuted%20santa%20claus%22%20%22henry%20adams%22&pg=PA85#v=onepage&q&f=false">“electrocuted Santa Claus.”</a> William Morris died
in 1896, just three years after Adams's realization, and already
there were signs that “the machine” was coming to dominate human
minds and lives. Automobile development was blooming, H.G. Wells's
Time Machine came out in 1895, and in 1896, a wireless telegraphic
message (precursor to the radio), <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w3Mh7qQRM-IC&lpg=PA251&dq=marconi%201897&pg=PA247#v=onepage&q&f=false">was successfully sent </a>nearly nine
miles across the Bristol channel. <br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's easy to think that Morris wasn't
ready for the 20th century; that it was somehow fitting for him to
pass away before the next wave of technology engulfed the wealthy
part of the world. After all, he'd spent most of his life battling
the ugly effects of industrialization. He'd even <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1894/hibs/hibs.htm">said himself </a>that
the leading passion of his life, apart from a desire to make
beautiful things, was a “hatred of modern civilisation.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But he's often misunderstood in this
sense. Although he had been among the first Victorians to decry the
loss of old ways of life, he was more pragmatic about it than many of
us realize. In his 1888 essay, <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1888/handcrft.htm">“The Revival of Handicraft,”</a> he
gently mocked those who would have everything done by hand, without
regard for the craftsmen doing the work: “it is not uncommon to
hear regrets for the hand-labour in the fields, now fast disappearing
from even backward districts of civilized countries. The scythe, the
sickle, and even the flail are lamented over … although I must
avow myself a sharer in the above-mentioned reactionary regrets, I
must at the outset disclaim the mere aesthetic point of view which
looks upon … the reaper, his work, his wife, and his dinner, as so
many elements which compose a pretty tapestry <span style="background: transparent;">hanging.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
He did think that machine labor was
degrading, but he laid the blame for this at man's door, and pointed
out (<a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1884/hwl/hwl.htm">in another lecture</a>) that machines could relieve degradation as well as create it: “I
have spoken of machinery being used freely for releasing people from
the more mechanical and repulsive part of necessary labour; and I
know that to some ... machinery is particularly distasteful, and they
will be apt to say you will never get your surroundings pleasant so
long as you are surrounded by machinery. I don't quite admit that; it
is the allowing machines to be our masters and not our servants that
so injures the beauty of life nowadays...”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
These concessions were limited: his
long-term hope was for the reign of Socialism, the simplification of
life, and the limitation of machinery once again. But in the the
short-term, he quite <span style="background: transparent;">admitted
</span>that “as an instrument for forcing on us better conditions
of<span style="background: transparent;"> life, it [machinery] has
be</span>en, and for some time yet will be, indispensable.” </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-8713947918826358402012-06-24T06:32:00.001-07:002012-06-24T06:32:49.414-07:00A Drunken Promise to Tennyson<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-U8Uyl-csmgY/T-cVT6mDE5I/AAAAAAAAAPk/grVgHAPfp-E/s1600/Tennyson_By_Millais.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-U8Uyl-csmgY/T-cVT6mDE5I/AAAAAAAAAPk/grVgHAPfp-E/s400/Tennyson_By_Millais.jpg" width="322" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Portrait of Tennyson, by Millais. <br />A figure who inspired upstanding behavior...</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
William Morris's friend, William Allingham, was an Irish man of letters with a penchant for collecting famous friends. He was also a devoted keeper of diaries. As a result, his unfinished autobiography, <a href="http://archive.org/stream/williamallingham00alli#page/n9/mode/2up">"William Allingham, a Diary" </a>is an amazing resource, sprinkled with tales of Morris, Rossetti, Carlyle, and Tennyson.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is one of my favorite stories from the diary, a re-telling of a story that Tennyson had told Allingham:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I was at an hotel in Covent Garden, and
went out one morning for a walk in the Piazza. A man met me,
tolerably well-dressed but battered-looking. I never saw him before
that I know of. He pulled off his hat and said, “Beg pardon, Mr.
Tennyson, might I say a word to you?” I stopped. “I've been drunk
for three days and I want to make a solemn promise to you, Mr
Tennyson, that I won't do so any more.” I said that was a good
resolve, and I hoped he would keep it. He said, “I promise you I
will, Mr. Tennyson,” and added, “Might I shake your hand?” I
shook hands with him, and he thanked me and went on his way.” </blockquote>
</div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-67549606391641624192012-06-13T08:56:00.000-07:002012-06-13T08:56:22.526-07:00One Good Thing to Come out of America<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vJ6i1dY-aHU/T9izvA9CP0I/AAAAAAAAAPY/3XW1HJPcNck/s1600/Bright_Pyle_Attack_On_Galleon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vJ6i1dY-aHU/T9izvA9CP0I/AAAAAAAAAPY/3XW1HJPcNck/s400/Bright_Pyle_Attack_On_Galleon.jpg" width="322" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>An Attack on a Galleon</i> by Howard Pyle. Image from Wikimedia Commons.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This year, <a href="http://www.delart.org/about/history.html">The Delaware Art Museum turns 100</a>. Their excellent collection of Pre-Raphaelite art didn't
join the museum until 1935, so the only works to fully celebrate the
centennial this year are about a hundred pieces by a single artist:
<a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xTzraRXV7OMC&lpg=PP1&dq=howard%20pyle&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Howard Pyle</a>. <a href="http://howardpyle.blogspot.co.uk/">Pyle</a> was an American illustrator, artist and author. His art
formed the heart of the new “Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts”
collection in 1912, after his grieving friends and students banded
together to create an institution in his memory.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
His illustrations for magazines and
books were very well known in his lifetime, drawing praise from
American and European artists alike. <a href="http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let262/letter.html">Vincent Van Gogh was especially taken </a>with his drawings of an old-time Quaker village in Harper's
Magazine in 1881, which he thought “astounding”.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Pyle is perhaps best known for his
collection of tales, “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood”, which
was published in 1883. Although the story of Robin Hood<a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dCU5_tMk4VMC&lpg=PA230&dq=robin%20hood%20medieval%20manuscripts&pg=PA28#v=onepage&q&f=true"> dates from the medieval period</a>, and had been partially treated by the famous author Sir Walter Scott, Pyle's book was entirely devoted to
the outlaw, one of the earliest books to do so in a popular fashion.
It was a hit<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">.</span>*</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The book even reached England, and
found its way into the discerning hands of William Morris. It was
right up Morris's street, and not just because of its sympathetic
treatment of the tales. Pyle had carefully designed the whole book,
which included flourishes of medieval manuscript motifs and sixty-one
of this own illustrations. <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature_association_quarterly/summary/v008/8.2.cech.html">According to art critic Joseph Pennell</a>,
Morris had “thought up to that time [that] … nothing good
artistically could come out of America." Pyle's beautiful,
Romantic book changed Morris's opinion: he was <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature_association_quarterly/summary/v008/8.2.cech.html">“impressed greatly”</a>.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So when I say Happy 100<sup>th</sup>
birthday to the Delaware Art Museum, I mean to say happy birthday as
well to the seed of its collection: Pyle's swashbuckling,
adventuresome illustrations and paintings.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">*No such luck for many others, including <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DhACAAAAQAAJ&dq=robin%20hood&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false">John B. Marsh's version from 1865.</a></span></div>
<br />Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-42175776154685950962012-06-07T08:00:00.000-07:002012-06-07T08:00:11.713-07:00Life is Fun! Grow Tall!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--R12jPQfbpA/T9DASO7YKgI/AAAAAAAAAPM/rF7t4mXhj0M/s1600/Ray_Bradbury_open.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--R12jPQfbpA/T9DASO7YKgI/AAAAAAAAAPM/rF7t4mXhj0M/s400/Ray_Bradbury_open.jpg" width="325" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Bradbury in 1975 (Photo by Alan Light)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">In
honor of Ray Bradbury, who passed away on Tuesday night at the age of
91, I thought I'd share a clip from <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6012/the-art-of-fiction-no-203-ray-bradbury">his Paris Review interview</a> from
2010:</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That’s
what we have to do for everyone, give the gift of life with our
books. Say to a girl or boy at age ten, Hey, life is fun! Grow tall!
I’ve talked to more biochemists and more astronomers and
technologists in various fields, who, when they were ten years old,
fell in love with John Carter and Tarzan and decided to become
something romantic. Burroughs put us on the moon. All the
technologists read Burroughs. I was once at Caltech with a whole
bunch of scientists and they all admitted it. Two leading
astronomers—one from Cornell, the other from Caltech—came out and
said, Yeah, that’s why we became astronomers. We wanted to see Mars
more closely. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I
find this in most fields. The need for romance is constant, and
again, it’s pooh-poohed by intellectuals. As a result they’re
going to stunt their kids. You can’t kill a dream. Social
obligation has to come from living with some sense of style, high
adventure, and romance.”</span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Morris
would have agreed heartily. As a boy, he learned the romance of life
from Sir Walter Scott's novels like </span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Ivanhoe
</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;">and
</span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Waverley.
</i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;">That
excitement and love of the world drove him to become a Socialist and
an activist, and to beautify his surroundings with his design firm.
It also drove him to write his own fantastical stories, inspiring
younger writers like J.R.R. Tolkien. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
gift continues to be passed down in an unbroken chain. Bradbury is a
part of this, which means that he achieved one of his most ambitious
goals: when he was twelve, he decided that he would never die. In a
very important sense, he hasn't.</span></span></span></div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-6793349824726361342012-06-04T03:59:00.000-07:002012-06-05T00:17:24.499-07:00Our Fat Vic<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-n91y7vWyqdY/T8ySkPc4-HI/AAAAAAAAAPA/7cDnPP8HooI/s1600/VICTORIA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-n91y7vWyqdY/T8ySkPc4-HI/AAAAAAAAAPA/7cDnPP8HooI/s400/VICTORIA.jpg" width="281" /></a></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #0b0b0a;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b0b0a;">“<span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif;">I
am sorry poor old Tennyson thought himself bound to write an ode on
our fat Vic’s Jubilee: have you seen it? It is like Martin Tupper
for all the world.” *</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #0b0b0a;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif;">By
the time of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887, William
Morris was an ardent Socialist, and he clearly wasn't that keen on
what the Queen represented. To mock her and the whole establishment of the
monarchy, he had a collection of colorful nicknames for her. He
called her “fat Vic” for obvious reasons; “Widow Guelph”, <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aOqY4_IN7GkC&lpg=PA24&dq=%22the%20widow%20guelph%22&pg=PA25#v=onepage&q&f=false">which drew on an old name</a> from her family, transforming her into an
ordinary widow rather than a royal; and “Empress Brown”, which
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Empress-Brown-Victorian-Scandal/dp/B0006BNSO8">saucily played on her close friendship</a> with her servant, John Brown,
after she'd become Empress of India.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #0b0b0a;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif;">Morris died the year before Fat Vic's diamond jubilee, but had he lived to
see it, he <a href="http://williammorrisunbound.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/that-darned-jubilee.html">wouldn't have liked it </a><a href="http://www.dinahroe.com/blog/pre_raphaelite_thoughts_on_the_diamond_jubilee">one bit.</a></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #0b0b0a;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #0b0b0a;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">* For the quotation, see p39 of <a href="http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/18.2/18.2_tennyson.pdf">this article.</a></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-12926106632157421492012-05-09T13:43:00.001-07:002012-05-09T13:44:35.870-07:00Don't forget to get your thigh-boots...<div><br />
</div><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GTxcBCePGuc/T6rU74-BgUI/AAAAAAAAAO0/jLPgcpN5rJA/s1600/Morris_climbing_Iceland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GTxcBCePGuc/T6rU74-BgUI/AAAAAAAAAO0/jLPgcpN5rJA/s400/Morris_climbing_Iceland.jpg" width="257" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">"William Morris Climbing a Mountain in Iceland" </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">From </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.leicestergalleries.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">www.leicestergalleries.com</a>.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">The stresses of packing for my upcoming summer-long adventure, and for a move in the fall, made me sympathize with Charley Faulkner, a longtime friend of Morris's. Faulkner, despite his poor health, signed up to go to Iceland with Morris in 1871, and was probably overwhelmed when he kept getting letters like this:</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">“I have bought a cork bed for your use, but couldn't buy your water-proof coat without your trying it: if you get one yourself it should be that stout india-rubber stuff not the light-coloured M[agnússon] and I both have hoods to ours. Don't forget to get your thigh-boots — and order your breeches if you are going in them, as I shall. Magnússon advises us to take saddles with us after all: I have borrowed one from my mother What will you do? I have seen a second-hand one... A gun I have borrowed I think I told you. I need not warn you perhaps to take an over plus of money out....”</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">The Icelandic adventure ended up being great fun, but as the packing list hints, it was also quite difficult and exhausting. Faulkner was a devoted friend.</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">The letter excerpt is from the 1st edition of <i>The Collected Letters of William Morris, Volume I</i> edited by Norman Kelvin. It's p137, letter 138.</span></div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-74738372085379975702012-04-29T07:41:00.004-07:002012-04-29T08:26:32.438-07:00Morris's Least Favorite Scott<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2IncQGuEGjY/T51NBE2bM5I/AAAAAAAAAOo/wm3iKi6CQJM/s1600/St.+Pancras.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2IncQGuEGjY/T51NBE2bM5I/AAAAAAAAAOo/wm3iKi6CQJM/s400/St.+Pancras.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Gilbert Scott's St. Pancras Station and (former) Midland Grand Hotel in London.</td></tr>
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<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sir George Gilbert Scott was the architect of </span><a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/sir-george-gilbert-scott/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">some of the most beloved neo-Gothic structures </span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">in Victorian England; he was also a famous “restorer” of countless cathedrals and abbeys. But after Scott died in 1878, Morris called him “that (happily) dead dog”. </span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Scott's knack for extreme ecclesiastical makeovers made him some enemies, and Morris was clearly one of them. Things had started out badly between the two men - just months after Morris left Oxford's Exeter College in 1856, Scott knocked down the college's lovely Jacobean Chapel to make room for a new chapel in a gothic style – and relations never improved.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Morris hated Scott's work so much that he made it part of his own life's work to keep Scott and others away from historical buildings. In 1877, Morris proposed the formation of his “<a href="http://www.spab.org.uk/">Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings</a>” (SPAB) with an urgent </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1291744900"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">letter to the </span></a></span><i><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=2Jz0af5mXA8C&lpg=PA341&dq=william%20morris%20%22steadily%20and%20courageously%22&pg=PA340#v=onepage&q&f=true"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Athenaeum</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">,</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> in which he denounced Scott by name. Shortly after, a man named Sir Edmund Lechmere sent Morris's letter along to Scott, provoking </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=U8kjAAAAMAAJ&dq=george%20gilbert%20scott%20%22nay%2C%20you%20know%20whether%22&pg=PA367#v=onepage&q&f=true"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a long, thoughtful response</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to the criticism.</span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Morris's letter to the</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Athenaeum </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and Scott's letter to Sir Edmund, when read together, constitute a sort of discussion between the two men. I've arranged excerpts from their letters into a conversation, to give a sense of the conflict between Morris and Scott as it stood in 1877, one short year before Scott's death. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">MORRIS: </span></b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My eye just now caught the word 'restoration' in the morning paper, and, on looking closer, I saw that this time it is nothing less than the Minster of Tewkesbury that is to be destroyed by Sir Gilbert Scott.</span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">SCOTT: </span></b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You, my dear Sir Edmund, know whether I am “destroying” the church, or contemplating such treatment of it as is intended by that term. You know whether I am “hopeless, because interest, habit, and ignorance bind” me. Nay, you know whether I have obliterated a single chisel-mark of the old masons, and whether I have not, lovingly and carefully, traced out the almost obliterated evidence and relics of much of their work … </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">MORRIS: </span></b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">...Your paper has so steadily and courageously opposed itself to these acts of barbarism which the modern architect, parson, and squire call 'restoration,' that it would be waste of words to enlarge here on the ruin that has been wrought by their hands; but, for the saving of what is left, I think I may write a word of encouragement...</span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">SCOTT: ...</span></b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> painful and galling as it is, I rejoice in such letters and protests: for true—most dreadfully true—it is that what “modern architect, parson, and squire call restoration,” </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">has</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> wrought wholesale ruin among our ancient buildings. I have lifted up my voice on this subject for more than thirty years, and, though not faultless, have striven with all my might to avoid such errors, and to prevent their commission by others. I feel more deeply on this subject than on any other …. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I am, therefore, willing to be sacrificed by being made the victim in a cause which I have so intensely at heart.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">MORRIS: </span></b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What I wish for, therefore, is that an association should be set on foot to keep a watch on old monuments, to protest against all 'restoration' that means more than keeping out wind and weather, and, by all means, literary and other, to awaken a feeling that our ancient monuments are not mere ecclesiastical toys, but sacred monuments of the nation's growth and hope.” </span></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Photo via </span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bethmoon527/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Beth M527</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> on flickr, </span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">some rights reserved</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">.</span></span></span></div></div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-59750414062997522492012-04-20T14:13:00.003-07:002012-04-20T23:07:55.230-07:00Algernon Swinburne, Sent to the Guillotine<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BoLPhefrP6Q/T5HM-6k-iYI/AAAAAAAAANg/hrFkzgDXvVo/s1600/Swinburne_Full_View+(1+of+1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BoLPhefrP6Q/T5HM-6k-iYI/AAAAAAAAANg/hrFkzgDXvVo/s640/Swinburne_Full_View+(1+of+1).jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"A.C.S. addressing the people"<br />
Copyright: Syracuse University Library Special Collections</td></tr>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Many of William Morris's friends were famous in their own right. <a href="http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/swinburne/">Algernon Charles Swinburne</a> was one of these men, becoming well-known for his poetry in the late 1860s and the '70s. Swinburne is also well-known for his eccentricities. A tiny man with an enormous head crowned by fluffy red hair, he was a sight to see. He was also restless and enthusiastic. In short, he was easy to caricature. His friend Lady Trevelyan did just that in 1861, painting a silly watercolor of him on a Republican tirade.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;">This sketch, “A.C.S. addressing the people”, is now in the Special Collections of Syracuse University Library, where I stumbled upon it during a mission to read some of Morris's letters. The Library has kindly agreed to let me share the watercolor, which is directly referenced in Chapter IV of William Bell Scott's<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1041044277"> </a></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/autobiographical02scot/autobiographical02scot_djvu.txt">Autobiographical Notes</a>. </i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The quote explains why the figure of Swinburne is standing in front of a guillotine:</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><blockquote class="tr_bq">“Louis Napoleon, or, as Swinburne called him, "the Beauharnais," was now in his glory; Victor Hugo, and others dear to all of us, were refugees. Swinburne, always possessed by some pet subject of hatred or admiration, was carried away by un-governable fury at the success of the wretched adventurer ... now settled in the Tuileries, and practised his ingenuity in inventing tirades against him, sometimes full of humour and splendour, at other times grossly absurd. Lady Trevelyan, always ready to enter into his mood, used to assist him; but learning he was going to accompany his family to France, she predicted that he would be caught by the police, and sketched the fate that awaited him. The figure of A.C.S. addressing the people was wonderfully good.”</blockquote></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;">You can contact me at <a href="mailto:clarafinley1@gmail.com">clarafinley1@gmail.com</a> if you want to see a higher resolution image. Click to see more views and thumbnails! </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N4Yfcwn-Djg/T5HN2sv7o8I/AAAAAAAAANw/0I5pF3sw6KA/s1600/Swinburne_Thumnail_Signature_2+(1+of+1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="140" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N4Yfcwn-Djg/T5HN2sv7o8I/AAAAAAAAANw/0I5pF3sw6KA/s640/Swinburne_Thumnail_Signature_2+(1+of+1).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Lady Trevelyan's inscription at the bottom of the page.</span></span></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FuPzy20jfk0/T5HPQwKerfI/AAAAAAAAAOY/BDkJsRWhtbk/s1600/Swinburne_Thumnail_Signature+(1+of+1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FuPzy20jfk0/T5HPQwKerfI/AAAAAAAAAOY/BDkJsRWhtbk/s320/Swinburne_Thumnail_Signature+(1+of+1).jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lady Trevelyan's Signature from the bottom-right corner.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LaAjIqSJu1c/T5HOBL7HZVI/AAAAAAAAAOA/uEz4Pvmdm8I/s1600/Swinburne_Thumbnail_Vibrance_2+(1+of+1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LaAjIqSJu1c/T5HOBL7HZVI/AAAAAAAAAOA/uEz4Pvmdm8I/s400/Swinburne_Thumbnail_Vibrance_2+(1+of+1).jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Closer view of Swinburne (with vibrance and saturation increased.)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SGsxOXi1CHg/T5HOcWdN4TI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/mqWRCFqghhc/s1600/Swinburne_Thumbnail+(2+of+1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SGsxOXi1CHg/T5HOcWdN4TI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/mqWRCFqghhc/s320/Swinburne_Thumbnail+(2+of+1).jpg" width="263" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The inscription on what seems to be a statue of Louis Napoleon, on the left:<br />
"JE SUIS LE NEVEU DE MON ONCLE" (I am the nephew of my uncle)<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Clarity increased on this image</i></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jRCoxRZWoHs/T5HPhDAugwI/AAAAAAAAAOg/ItQjWuAsvlI/s1600/Swineburne_In_Frame+(1+of+1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jRCoxRZWoHs/T5HPhDAugwI/AAAAAAAAAOg/ItQjWuAsvlI/s400/Swineburne_In_Frame+(1+of+1).jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The sketch in its cardboard frame, as it looks today.</td></tr>
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div></div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-54904189086433562812012-04-13T10:54:00.000-07:002012-04-13T10:54:31.231-07:00The Two Beatrices: A Companion to the New-Found Rossetti<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xrgwCj3Uuhw/T4hdlzd1x3I/AAAAAAAAANM/PUk6j8mY2-Q/s1600/Two_Janes_flat_Cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="245" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xrgwCj3Uuhw/T4hdlzd1x3I/AAAAAAAAANM/PUk6j8mY2-Q/s400/Two_Janes_flat_Cropped.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"The Salutation of Beatrice" and "Jane Morris as Beatrice"<br />
Left, the newly discovered oil ( </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">© Christie’s Images Limited 2012.) <br />
Right, the watercolor via Rossettiarchive.org. [copyright </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">DGR 1828-1882: An Exhibition (Tokyo 1990)]</span></span></span></td></tr>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">After lying hidden in a private collection in Scotland for the past century, a forgotten oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Salutation of Beatrice,” will go on sale at <a href="http://www.christies.com/about/press-center/releases/pressrelease.aspx?pressreleaseid=5473">Christie's</a> at the end of May. It features Jane Morris in all of her glory as Dante's love, and it's been hailed as “the finest oil portrait by the artist to come to auction in over 25 years.”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Its appearance resolves some mysteries about Rossetti's work. The first mystery comes from one of Rossetti's letters to Jane, written late July of 1869: “I want much to get the little Beatrice I was doing from you finished,” he wrote, “but the hands are in the way as I think I <i>must </i><span style="font-style: normal;">alter them and all the models have such vile hands.” When this letter was published in </span><i>Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Jane Morris: Their Correspondence </i>in the late seventies,<i> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">the reference to the painting was a bit confusing, because the only likely candidate for a </span><i>Beatrice</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> from 1869 didn't have hands anywhere in the picture.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> A footnote tried to get around the problem : “It is difficult to identify this picture. It may be the </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s256.rap.html">Beatrice</a> … which is a replica of the head of the 1870 </span><i>Mariana </i><span style="font-style: normal;">... Having such difficulty with the hands he may have cut down the canvas and kept the head and shoulders” But the dating of the newly emerged painting - 1869 - means that we have a much simpler, and more likely, explanation for this reference.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Another mystery was the purpose of a Rossetti watercolor, "Jane Morris as Beatrice"(Alternately titled “The Salutation of Beatrice”). <a href="http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s260d.rap.html">Some scholars thought</a> that it was a study for an <a href="http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s260.rap.html">oil painting of a completely different design</a>. We see now that it is obviously the same design as the discovered painting. If the dating of both works is correct, the watercolor was probably a copy of the oil painting.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-40657471633215230212012-04-11T10:05:00.000-07:002012-04-11T10:05:19.264-07:00May Morris's 150th Year<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a8HiGZ_N7lQ/T4W4VJW10wI/AAAAAAAAAL8/zFpfP-Fb8ME/s1600/May_Morris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a8HiGZ_N7lQ/T4W4VJW10wI/AAAAAAAAAL8/zFpfP-Fb8ME/s320/May_Morris.jpg" width="274" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">May Morris in a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1872</td></tr>
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2012 is May Morris's 150th anniversary year, an occasion that the Royal Mail (UK) marked with bringing out a <a href="http://www.williammorrissociety.org/news.shtml">stamp</a> featuring one of her lush embroideries.<br />
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May, Morris's second daughter, was an impressive textile designer and artist in her own right; she was also a close partner to her father during his years of Socialist activity. After her parents passed away, she lived out her days at Kelmscott Manor, with her devoted companion (and possible lover) Miss Lobb.<br />
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Marjorie Breakspear, the niece of one of May's friends, wrote a <a href="http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/SU83.5.3.Breakspear.pdf">beautiful account</a> of her days living in a cottage on Kelmscott Manor's grounds, and of her memories of May. May, though quieter than the brash Miss Lobb, was evidently up for a laugh:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">“...May Morris came and dug up our potatoes, and it was a good joke for her when we offered to pay her at the current rate! She accepted the money, with much laughter, and spat on it in her hands, as she had seen the farm labourers do. She also kept goats, and loved the kids, gambolling over her head and shoulders. She liked knitting, but not crochet, and her favourite colour was a soft blue.”</blockquote><br />
Happy 150th birth-year, May Morris!Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-58329686780403763082012-04-02T21:30:00.000-07:002012-04-02T21:30:27.980-07:00A Cheeky Letter from Robert Louis Stevenson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lGyj6QMKbYE/T3p5ZehtsoI/AAAAAAAAALs/VnSH0L58v1Y/s1600/Whereas+Trouble+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="49" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lGyj6QMKbYE/T3p5ZehtsoI/AAAAAAAAALs/VnSH0L58v1Y/s320/Whereas+Trouble+2.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G0sruoO7niw/T3p5DLh--9I/AAAAAAAAALk/rlRfeom_DYM/s1600/Robert+Disapproves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G0sruoO7niw/T3p5DLh--9I/AAAAAAAAALk/rlRfeom_DYM/s320/Robert+Disapproves.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Louis Stevenson, penning some grammar corrections.<br />
(Top, a sentence to set Stevenson's teeth grinding.)<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Robert Louis Stevenson, author of <i>Treasure Island </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and </span><i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr.</i> <i>Hyde</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,</span><i> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and a fan of Morris's poems,</span><i> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">drafted</span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=21KzyXeBwp8C&lpg=PA24&vq=master%20morris%20whereas&dq=%22the%20letters%20of%20robert%20louis%20stevenson%22%20IV%20colvin&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q&f=false"> this letter to Morris </a>from his estate on a Samoan island in February of 1892. The “touches of affectation and constraint” weren't normal for Stevenson, so it seems he felt uncomfortable or even nervous about writing it. In the end he couldn't bring himself to send it. This was probably for the best. Morris wasn't overly sensitive to criticism, but he didn't exactly relish it.</div><blockquote>“Master,—A plea from a place so distant should have some weight, and from a heart so grateful should have some address. I have been long in your debt, Master, and I did not think it could be so much increased as you have now increased it. I was long in your debt and deep in your debt for many poems that I shall never forget, and for Sigurd before all, and now you have plunged me beyond payment by the Saga Library. And so now, true to human nature, being plunged beyond payment, I come and bark at your heels.</blockquote><blockquote>“For surely, Master, that tongue that we write, and that you have illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. She has her rights and laws, and is our mother, our queen, and our instrument. Now in that living tongue where has one sense, whereas another. In the Heathslayings Story,<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=hb0tAAAAMAAJ&dq=heathslayings%20morris&pg=PA241#v=onepage&q=heathslayings%20morris&f=false"> p. 241, line 13, </a>it bears one of its ordinary senses. Elsewhere and usually through the two volumes, which is all that has yet reached me of this entrancing publication, whereas is made to figure for where.</blockquote><blockquote>“For the love of God, my dear and honoured Morris, use where, and let us know whereas we are, wherefore our gratitude shall grow, whereby you shall be the more honoured wherever men love clear language, whereas now, although we honour, we are troubled.</blockquote><blockquote>“Whereunder, please find inscribed to this very impudent but very anxious document, the name of one of the most distant but not the youngest or the coldest of those who honour you, </blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Robert Louis Stevenson.”</span></blockquote><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo via Project Gutenberg: </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_199880360">The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys </a></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_199880360">and Girls</a></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15547/15547-h/15547-h.htm"> </a></span></span></div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-48772329963542523642012-03-24T20:37:00.000-07:002012-03-24T20:37:03.813-07:00Happy 178th Birthday, William Morris!<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ibfuwEhSgno/T26QCrHJttI/AAAAAAAAALc/t8ey-VTd_cY/s1600/Happy+178+Birthday+Morris+(1+of+1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="211" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ibfuwEhSgno/T26QCrHJttI/AAAAAAAAALc/t8ey-VTd_cY/s320/Happy+178+Birthday+Morris+(1+of+1).jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our lemon drizzle birthday cake for Morris.</td></tr>
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Today I thought I'd write about what Morris did on his 44th birthday, 134 years ago. That year, h<span style="font-weight: normal;">e spent his birthday at <a href="http://www.google.com/maps/ms?msid=200878574672492083021.0004bc03951fcc8898307&msa=0&ll=50.513427,3.647461&spn=7.519655,18.061523">“The Grange”</a>, home to his friends Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones.</span> Although it was March, it still felt like winter and snow came “with a sudden & mighty squall” at about 3<span style="font-weight: normal;">PM</span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> His wife and teenage daughters were away in Italy, so they sent him notes and gifts through the mail. His daughter May, barely sixteen, sent him a stylish tobacco pouch. He wrote thanking her: “the shape ... is very pretty & the colour: only I ask you to put silk strings to it as cotton on cotton sets my teeth on edge: of course 'tis indigo.” It could be tough having a designer for a father.</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> The next night, he had a belated birthday dinner at his mother's house with his mother and his unmarried sister, Henrietta. He stayed overnight, and in the morning a servant gave him a haircut in front of his mother, sister, and a resident parrot. Apparently, the parrot “was delighted” by these proceedings, drowning out their conversation as he “mewed & barked & swore & sang at the top of his vulgar voice.”</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">It was a very good birthday indeed.</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">All quotes from Norman Kelvin's <i>The Collected Letters of William Morris, Volume I</i>.</span></div>Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5473121027548923161.post-21639968180450898332012-03-15T08:40:00.000-07:002012-03-15T08:40:37.321-07:00A Victorian Morris Joke<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kKhAuqHiQ30/T2IM5qYsXxI/AAAAAAAAALQ/8E4Sun9b8gI/s1600/Morris_Joke_in_Punch+copy.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kKhAuqHiQ30/T2IM5qYsXxI/AAAAAAAAALQ/8E4Sun9b8gI/s1600/Morris_Joke_in_Punch+copy.png" /></a>From the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_750419543">November edition of </a><i><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=3uZbAAAAQAAJ&dq=%22william%20morris%22%20intitle%3APunch&pg=PA251#v=onepage&q&f=false">Punch</a> </i>in 1883:Clara Finleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17446914113663663484noreply@blogger.com0