The craft of making art from inkblots is called klecksography (from klecks, the German word for “stain” or “blotch”). The modern reader might call to mind the Rorschach Test, but klecksography has a much longer history.
The first person to publish a book using inkblots was Justinius Kerner (1786-1862), a German poet and medical writer. Due to failing eyesight, he would often accidentally drip ink onto his paper. Rather than throw away the resulting inkblots he decided to keep them as artwork, and wrote poems to accompany them. He finished the book Klecksographien in 1857 but it wasn’t published until 1890, twenty-eight years after his death.
Page 7 of Justinius Kerner’s “Klecksographien”
In 1896, Albert Bigelow Paine (1861-1937) and Ruth McEnery Stuart (1849-1917) published “Gobolinks,” (a play on the words “goblin” and “ink”). Paine and Stuart envisioned Gobolinks as a game, where the players have five minutes to create an inkblot and then a poem to accompany it. Judges are chosen amongst the group, and they choose the best submissions; players whose works are chosen then become judges for the next round, and the previous judges become players. After the proscribed number of rounds, the final judging is conducted.
Enter Paul Elder & Company in 1907, with Blottentots, and How To Make Them. The book is certainly derivative, but the inkblots are creative and the verses delightful for youngsters’ ears. The author is John Prosper Carmel with calligraphy by Raymond Carter, but the former is believed to be a pseudonym of the latter. I have been unable to find any information about Mr. Carter.
Cover of Stuart and Paine’s “Gobolinks”
In 1921, fifteen years after the publication of Blottentots, Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) wrote his book Psychodiagnostik, which was to form the basis of the test which bears his name. Some have suggested that Rorschach based his inkblots on Kerner’s, but there appears to be no conclusive evidence of this.
The rules of GobolinksPage 3 of GobolinksFrontispiece and title page of “Blottentots”Pages 2-3 of “Blottentots”Pages 22-23 of “Blottentots”The first of the ten cards in the Rorschach test
The Soul of an Artist was published in Milan in 1895 under the title Anima Sola, meaning “lonely soul.” It’s an apt title for Neera, whose melancholy childhood set the tone for much of her writings.
Neera was the pseudonym of Anna Zuccari Radius (1846-1918). She lived her entire life in Milan, Italy. Anna’s mother died when she was ten, whereupon she was sent to live with her father’s two unmarried sisters, strict and unsmiling. In 1871 Neera married Milanese banker Emilio Radius; they had two children.
Neera’s output was prodigious: twenty-two novels, eight volumes of short stories, ten volumes of moralistic essays and two of poetry. According to Catherine Ramsey-Portolano, of the American University of Rome
Neera’s protagonists are women struggling to fulfill the traditional roles of wife, mother and daughter in fin de siècle Italian society… The polemical and engaged nature of these writings, in which Neera defends maternity as woman’s highest mission in life, is evident from the titles chosen for two of the volumes, Battaglie per un’idea (1898) and Le idee di una donna (1904). Although Neera defined herself an antifeminist in her essays and was not supportive of the feminist cause, feminists of the period, such as Ersilia Majno and Sibilla Aleramo, recognized the importance of her role as woman writer and the feminist nature of her narrative work.
Title page of “The Soul of an Artist”Neera (1846-1918)
Generally speaking, Paul Elder preferred to publish original works (notwithstanding the occasional series of classic literature, such as Impression Classics, Panel Books or Abbey Classics). Thus a book like his 1905 publication of The Soul of an Artist, as a previously published work, is uncommon in the canon.
The authorized translator was Miss Elizabeth Livingstone Murison of San Francisco, whose work was called out by an article in the San Francisco Call of 18 February 1906.
Foreword of “The Soul of an Artist”Translator’s Preface of “The Soul of an Artist”Page 1 of “The Soul of an Artist”Page 117 of “The Soul of an Artist”
References:
1. http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/IWW/BIOS/A0034.html
2. “San Francisco Woman in Translator’s Role“, San Francisco Call, vol 99 no 80, 18 February 1906.
In 1905, Paul Elder published Wilbur Nesbit’s An Alphabet of History, a large-format volume of verse for adults. In contrast to some other humorous verse featured here, Nesbit’s poetry has survived the last century in fine shape to be appreciated by the modern reader.
Wilbur D. Nesbit was born in Xenia, Ohio in 1871. He spent most of his career in journalism, working his way up from small-town newspaper reporter to editor at the Chicago Tribune and then the Chicago Evening Post. Along the way he began composing poetry. Nesbit was also in demand as a toastmaster, and was a long-time member of the “Forty Club,” a Chicago version of San Francisco’s Bohemian Club. Nesbit wrote a history of the Forty Club in 1912.
Title page of “An Alphabet of History”
According to The National Magazine of May 1917, what Wilbur Nesbit was best known for at the time was a patriotic poem “Your Flag and My Flag,” often recited at political conventions and Congressional sessions, and which has “a ring of national sentiment that rivals the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ itself.”
The delightful drawings are by the artist Ellsworth Young (1866-1952), who in addition to book and magazine illustrations, was a noted landscape painter and poster artist. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and later worked for the WPA.
References: The National Magazine, Boston, May 1917, p304-5.
Frontispiece of “An Alphabet of History”“An Alphabet of History,” letter K“An Alphabet of History,” letter S“An Alphabet of History,” letter Z
Paul Elder & Company is not generally known for “fine press,” but the 1907 series TheWestern Classics certainly qualifies. In my opinion, these are the highest-quality books that Paul Elder ever published. The set consists of four novels printed on fine Italian paper, high-quality bindings and handsome slipcases, each in a limited edition of 1000. The format is the consistent, but each book has its own design and is set in a different typeface.
The Sea Fogs
Title page of “The Sea Fogs”
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Sea Fogs is an excerpted chapter from his larger work, The Silverado Squatters, published in 1883 in Edinburgh, Scotland by Chatto and Windus. The “sea fogs” of the title refers to the morning fog bank visible from Stevenson’s cabin in the hills above Calistoga, in California’s Napa Valley:
The sun was still concealed below the opposite hilltops, though it was shining already, not twenty feet above my head, on our own mountain slope. But the scene, beyond a few near features, was entirely changed. Napa valley was gone; gone were all the lower slopes and woody foothills of the range; and in their place, not a thousand feet below me, rolled a great level ocean. It was as though I had gone to bed the night before, safe in a nook of inland mountains, and had awakened in a bay upon the coast. I had seen these inundations from below; at Calistoga I had risen and gone abroad in the early morning, coughing and sneezing, under fathoms on fathoms of gray sea vapour, like a cloudy sky—a dull sight for the artist, and a painful experience for the invalid. But to sit aloft one’s self in the pure air and under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus look down on the submergence of the valley, was strangely different and even delightful to the eyes. Far away were hilltops like little islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot of precipices and poured into all the coves of these rough mountains. The colour of that fog ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant, among the Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen something like it on the sea itself. But the white was not so opaline; nor was there, what surprisingly increased the effect, that breathless, crystal stillness over all. Even in its gentlest moods the salt sea travails, moaning among the weeds or lisping on the sand; but that vast fog ocean lay in a trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morning tremble with a sound.
Tennessee’s Partner
The popularity of Bret Harte (1836-1902) rests on his stories of the Gold Rush in California. Tennesee’s Partner first appeared in the October 1869 issue of the Overland Monthly, a magazine which Harte himself edited and published.
In 1955, RKO released the film Tennessee’s Partner, starring John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, and future California governor and US President Ronald Reagan. The movie took substantial liberties with Bret Harte’s story line.
The Case of Summerfield
William Henry Rhodes (1822–1876) is known today primarily for this one story, published in 1871 in the Sacramento Union newspaper under the pseudonym “Caxton.” The chief antagonist in the story is named “Black Bart,” an alias adopted later by the “gentleman” stagecoach bandit Charles Bolles. At the time it was published, however, The Case of Summerfield was known more for Black Bart’s ability to use potassium to set water on fire. Many consider it one of the first American science fiction stories.
A Son Of the Gods and A Horseman In the Sky
The scene of these two short stories by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913?) is the American Civil War. This was a subject he knew all too well: Bierce joined the 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment when he was just nineteen years old, and fought in the 1861 Western Virginia campaign. Bierce later was a horrified participant at Shiloh in April 1862, an experience that would serve as the basis for many of his later short stories. Both stories first appeared in the San Francisco Examiner newspaper (29 July 1888 and 14 April 1889, respectively).
Page 1 of “The Sea Fogs,” set in Caslon 471. Note the mitred rules characteristic of Nash’s work.Colophon of “The Sea Fogs”Cover of “Tennessee’s Partner”, Western Classics #3Title page of “Tennessee’s Partner”Page 1 of “Tennessee’s Partner,” set in Cheltenham Wide.Cover of “The Case of Summerfield”, Western Classics #3Title page of “The Case of Summerfield”Page 1 of “The Case of Summerfield,” set in Bookman.Cover of “A Son of the Gods”, Western Classics #4Title page of “A Son Of the Gods and A Horseman In the Sky”Page 1 of “A Son of the Gods,” set in Scotch Roman.
Cover of “Mr Pickwick Is Sued For Breach Of Promise”
When I first began work on Paul Elder & Company, I would stumble upon previously-unknown titles every few months. Twenty years later it’s rare to find a new addition to the list, but this week I received two unusual books in a series called The Langham Library of Humour: Charles Dickens’s Mr Pickwick Is Sued For Breach of Promise (number 1) and Robert Burns’s The Jolly Beggars (number 2). They are slender, fragile items, with attractive covers and color frontispieces. They are marked “San Francisco and New York,” which dates them to the 1906-09 period following the 1906 earthquake and fire that destroyed Elder’s bookstore and printing shop.
The books bear no resemblance whatsoever to the typical Tomoye press output: heavy floral dingbats and block-letter typography, unusual page size, lack of a colophon and not a tomoye in sight. Clearly these were printed in another shop for sale by Elder. Several years earlier, Elder had published other series with similar outside provenance: the Panel Books, Impression Classics and the Abbey Classics.
Cover of “The Jolly Beggars”
These two books appear to have been first published in 1907 by Siegle, Hill & Company at 2 Langham Place in London, which would explain the “Langham Library” moniker. The “G. Ross Roy Collection of Robert Burns” lists The Jolly Beggars as issued “in cream-colored boards, stamped in gold and blind.”
In North America, at least one other publisher issued these same titles with the same cover art: the Musson Book Company Ltd., Toronto. It seems likely that the books were printed in London by Siegle Hill & Co., but issued simultaneously by all three publishers.
The Langham Library of Humour apparently started and ended with these two titles: I have been unable to find mention of any others.
Frontispiece and title page of “Mr Pickwick”Frontispiece and title page of “Jolly Beggars”“Mr Pickwick,” page 7“Jolly Beggars,” page 9
