Modern Books and Manuscripts

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection.

The works of Aleister Crowley, the British occultist and author at turns renowned and infamous, are ably suited for inclusion in the Santo Domingo Collection: Crowley’s mysticism, drug use, bisexuality, and overall libertinism, emblemized in his famous slogan “do what thou wilt”, demonstrate his lifelong interest in altered states of mind. Among his most beloved subjects, of course, was himself, and nowhere is this in greater evidence than in his autobiography, The spirit of solitude: an autohagiography: subsequently re-antichristened the confessions of Aleister Crowley, published in this edition by the Mandrake Press in 1929.

The cover (top left) is illustrated with a grotesque self-portrait. The text, divided into “stanzas” rather than chapters and illustrated with portraits, drawings, and facsimiles of Crowley’s manuscript writings, consists of Crowley’s reminiscences interspersed with social criticism and personal philosophy.

As an example of the narrative’s self-aggrandizing tone, here Crowley describes changing his name from his given Edward Alexander, nicknamed “Alick”:

Aleister Crowley. The spirit of solitude. London: Mandrake Press, 1929. EC9.C8863.929s.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection.

Known for the openly sexual themes in his work as well as for his battle with opium addiction, the creative polymath Jean Cocteau is a fitting author for inclusion in the Santo Domingo Collection. Maison de santé, one of the works Cocteau produced during his detoxification cures, consists of Cocteau’s line illustrations, many of them twisted self-portraits, and text reproduced from his original manuscript. This copy, one of an edition of 500 published by Editions Briant-Robert, features on its half-title page an original Cocteau pencil illustration, depicting the author at his opium pipe, and an inscription “à mon Jacques”, dated 1938. The Jacques referred to here is likely the philosopher Jacques Maritain. A devout Catholic, Maritain supported Cocteau’s recovery from opium addiction as well as his return to the church, both of which proved temporary.

Jean Cocteau. Maison de santé. Paris: Editions Briant-Robert, 1926. FC9.C6478.926m

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection.

The volumes in the Santo Domingo Collection are variously remarkable for their content, their condition, their presentation, and their provenance. Perhaps the most arresting example yet of the latter is this unassuming item: Kokain, a German translation of Cocaina, the novel written by Dino Segre under his pseudonym Pitigrilli. The book follows the misadventures of Tito Arnaudi, a cocaine-addled nihilist, as he pursues romance and falls into dissipation. The cover, rebound with the original front cover pasted on, is not among the most beautiful in the collection. The front endsheet, though, bears two bookplates, besides that of the Houghton Library: the bookplate of the Fitz Hugh Memorial Library, whose former holdings make up a significant portion of the Santo Domingo Collection, and the bookplate of Adolf Hitler.

A typescript letter, addressed from a soldier named Rollin Wilson to a “Mother Clark” and dated 7 May 1945, accompanies the volume. In it, Wilson describes his visit to Hitler’s bombed-out mountain residence in Berchtesgaden, and encloses Kokain as “a small souvenir” for Clark’s library.

Provenance often adds to a book’s research value by way of the annotations and markings former owners leave behind. In Kokain, a single passage on page 145 is underlined; in it, the protagonist Tito excoriates farmers, describing them as egotistical, cruel, ignorant, and of “an inferior race of men”.

Pitigrilli (pseud.). Kokain. Berlin: Eden-Verlag, [c1927].  IC9.P6825.En927g.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

Today we focus our attention on books from the publishing house of book dealer, collector, and Henry Miller expert Roger Jackson. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Jackson is Managing Editor of Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal, and co-author of authoritative Miller bibliographies.  Since 1994 Jackson has published limited edition books by and about Henry Miller, as well works by Miller’s friends and associates. Roger Jackson editions are small, seldom longer than twenty-four pages, and diverse in content, encompassing memoir, poetry, letters, and interviews. It is their physical qualities, however, that make them so remarkable. Fine hand-made paper, deluxe storage containers, and whimsical decorative elements abound in Jackson’s publications.

Illustrative of Jackson’s approach to publishing is Henry Miller: 18 Individual Portraits and an Introductory Essay, by Peter Gowland, shown below. The book features photographic reproductions on gloss stock, and is signed by the author. The leaves are unbound but enclosed in a handsome envelope made from fibrous Nepalese lokta paper. Within this envelope are two further wrappers, first a black and gold paper from Thailand, and a second in natural white fiber paper embedded with a profusion of brightly colored silk strings. The cumulative effect of such lavish design affords the reader a pleasure that is both intellectual and tactile.

Lokta paper outer wrapper with decorative title label.

One of 18 portraits of Henry Miller by Peter Gowland showcased in this publication.

Decorative outer and inner wrappers, characteristic of Roger Jackson’s publications.

Gowland, Peter. Henry Miller: 18 Individual Portraits and an Introductory Essay. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Roger Jackson, 2000.  AC9.M6145.P2000ga

Thanks to Bibliographic Assistant Noah Sheola for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection.

A curiosity from the Santo Domingo Collection this week, reflective of Julio Santo Domingo’s far-ranging interest in French history and culture: this broadside, printed in France by Librairie Hayard in 1944:

The front is printed with a satirical invitation to Hitler’s “mise en bière,” or formal funeral ceremony, with an accompanying last will and testament on the reverse. Beyond the obvious insult of declaring Hitler dead, the broadside’s tone is one of absurdist ridicule. The funeral invitation declares that “this fragrant hour has been chosen in order to complement with dignity the foul odors that will emanate from the carcass of this august stiff, and give pleasure to the excellent cretins who will follow the procession.” Guests are encouraged to bring “neither flowers nor wreaths, only old stillborn toads.” Toward the bottom of the sheet is the invocation “prière de rigoler,” or “please laugh,” an inversion of the expected admonishment. On the verso, the following are among the will’s bequeathals: to Mussolini, “my pair of suspenders, to hold up the boxer shorts that encumber him;” and to the Museum of Berlin, “an onion which I had between the big and second toes of my left foot.”

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection.

Previous posts in this space have focused on the erotica in the Santo Domingo Collection, but prurience is not the only aspect of sexuality to be found there: the medical, psychological, and social history of sex are amply represented as well. Today we have a work of strident moralism: Man and his sexual relations by John Thompson, published in 1890. Thompson, also the author of several works on phrenology, writes with urgency on the subject of sex, laying blame for many of our physical and mental ills at the doorstep of overindulgence. He claims, for instance, that “the majority of even those who are suffering from sterility would have children if they were temperate sexually” (v.1, p. 177), and ascribes insanity, criminal tendencies, and suicide to childhood self-abuse. The urgency with which Thompson expounds on these positions frequently leads to such melodramatic and violent language as this, in the course of his excoriation of seductresses:

Later in the text, Thompson provides perhaps the ideal summation of his argument: “I know of nothing so perverted as man’s sexual nature. Society is rotten—rotten to its very core!” (v.2, p. 129)

John Thompson. Man and his sexual relations. South Cliff, Scarborough, [Eng.]: J.B. Keswick, Broughton House, 1890. HQ36.T5 1890x.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection.

The Santo Domingo Collection examines mind-altering substances in every detail: from cultivation and manufacture to distribution, consumption, and finally repercussion. While drug culture and its attendant celebration of drug use constitute much of the collection, many of its volumes also scrutinize the consequences of substance abuse. Earle Albert Rowell’s Dope Adventures of David Dare, published in 1937, is one such work: a semi-fictionalized autobiographical novel concerning an anti-narcotics crusader who lectures high schools and thwarts smugglers. Though Rowell claims that the book is based in the fact of his own experiences, its message suffers somewhat in the face of Dare, his faultless, widely adored, and sanctimonious alter ego. The book also features images of addicts in misery and distress, police arrests, and seized narcotic paraphernalia, all intended to frighten the young reader onto the path of sobriety.

Earle Albert Rowell. Dope Adventures of David Dare. Nashville, Tenn.: Southern Publishing Association, [c1937]. HV5801.R652

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

This week’s find from the Santo Domingo Collection is an extraordinary copy of Baudelaire’s Les fleurs de mal. Number 1 of a limited edition of 1000 copies published by F. Ferroud in 1917, this copy is extra-illustrated with additional prints of its numerous illustrations: wood engravings by Georges Rochegrosse and etchings by Eugène Decisy, from the frontispiece portrait of Baudelaire to the ornaments that frame the text throughout. It’s bound in full dark brown morocco and set in a decorated paper slipcase. What sets this copy apart completely, however, is that it’s cased with a companion volume of Rochegrosse’s original illustrations, with annotations in pencil to indicate their placement in the finished book. The title page and frontispiece of the novel and the original illustration have both been included below for comparison. Bringing this remarkable set into Houghton’s catalog required both a a bibliographic record for the volume of poems and a manuscript record for the volume of original illustrations.

Charles Baudelaire. Les fleurs du mal. Paris: Librairie des amateurs A. Ferroud, F. Ferroud, successeur, 1917. FC8.B3247.917f.

Georges Rochegrosse illustrations for Les fleurs du mal: drawings, 1917. FC8.B3247.917f.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

The two volumes featured today demonstrate the enduring appeal of the scatological. La crépitonomie, ou l’art des pets (1815) and L’art de péter: essai théori-physique et méthodique (1776) are two humorous works on flatulence: the former a book-length poem and the latter an essay. Though their authors are anonymized in the books themselves, we know them to have been written by Ducastel de Saint-Paul and Pierre-Thomas-Nicolas Hurtaut. Both volumes feature frontispieces that satirize the symbolic grandeur that might attend such illustrations in more serious works.

Ducastel de Saint-Paul. La crépitonomie.  A Paris: Chez L. G. Michaud, imprimeur du roi, MDCCCVX [1815]. FC8.D8558.815c.

Pierre-Thomas-Nicolas Hurtaut. L’art de péter. En Westphalie, [i.e. Paris]: Chez Florent-Q, rue Pet-en-Gueule, au Soufflet., MDCCLXXVI [1776]. FC7.H9477.776ab.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Drugs and sexuality constitute the primary subject matter in Santo Domingo, but the collection’s larger function is to investigate the many altered states of the human mind. The collection therefore contains a substantial number of volumes on the occult, such as this work: The anatomy of the body of God, by occultist Charles Stansfield Jones (1886-1950), a member of Aleister Crowley’s order. Jones here writes under the name of Frater Achad, one of many titles and pseudonyms he adopted during his career. Several diagrams accompany this cabalistic text, including this colored frontispiece.

This edition”This first edition of The anatomy of the body of God consists of 22 copies, lettered Aleph to Tau, and 228 copies numbered 1 to 228″–Colophon. This copy is number 6.

Frater Achad. The anatomy of the body of God. Chicago: Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum [i.e. Will Ransom], 1925. BF1999 .J55.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Today we feature two twentieth-century French erotic novels: Pauline Réage’s Histoire d’O and Jean Lorrain’s Le maison Philibert, both extravagantly bound by the French binder Alain Devauchelle. On the front cover of Histoire d’O, tessellations of brightly dyed calf and morocco panels form a kaleidoscopic letter O. The binding of Le maison Philibert, with its glossy pink snakeskin-textured calf, its panels of black lace and foil-stamped leather, and the rose suede lining its endpapers and slipcase, can only be described as striking.

Jean Lorrain. Le maison Philibert. Paris: Librairie Universelle, 1904. FC8.L8938.904m.

Pauline Reage. Histoire d’O. A Sceaux: Chez Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1954. PQ2635.E15H5 1954x

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Books in the Santo Domingo collection are predominantly in English and French, per the collecting habits of Julio Mario Santo Domingo himself. Today we have an exception to this rule: Sexuální nocturno, by the avant-garde Czech author Vítězslav Nezval (1900-1958). Printed in a limited run of 137 copies, this edition is illustrated with a series of psychosexual black and white collages by surrealist artist Jindřich Štyrský (1899-1942), who also typeset and published the book.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Today’s volume, an 1860 edition of Baudelaire’s Les paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch, is handsomely appointed in navy morocco and marbled paper boards, with a matching suede-lined slipcase. It bears the bookplates of the French writer Maxime Du Camp and the Belgian diplomat Louis de Sadeleer, and is inscribed from Baudelaire to Du Camp on the half-title page. Perhaps most interesting of all, though, is a manuscript letter from Baudelaire to the writer and editor Alphonse de Colonne, dated September 8, 1858, and tipped onto a blank preliminary leaf. In it, Baudelaire refers to the imminent completion of an unnamed text to be sent to Colonne for editing, and promises that ‘tomorrow I can resume your opium, and it will be swallowed’

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The volume arrived with two additional Baudelaire letters laid in: one to August Poulet-Malassis, the publisher of this edition of Les paradis artificels; and the other to an unnamed correspondent. As they are not attached to the volume, these letters have been removed and cataloged as part of the Santo Domingo manuscript collection.

Charles Baudelaire. Les paradis artificels, opium et haschisch. Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1860. FC8.B3247.860p (B).

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Les fleurs animées is a beautiful lithographic collection in two volumes that was illustrated in the mid 19th-century by J.J. Grandville, whose real name was Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard.  The book imagines a world where the flowers are able to reclaim the meanings bestowed upon them by a covetous Victorian audience and thus they go out into the world to pursue a dream other than simple adornment.  They long to experience life so they ask the Flower Fairy to allow them to assume human form.   A translation of their plea reads,

“For thousands of years we have supplied mankind with their themes of comparison; we alone have given them all their metaphors; indeed, without us poetry could not exist. Men lend to us their virtues and their vices; their good and their bad qualities; it is time that we should have some experience of what these are.“

So off they go to become nuns, teachers, fortune-tellers, village maidens, and nurses.

Grandville initially gained notice with his lithographic collection Les Métamorphoses du jour, a series of scenes in which individuals with the bodies of men and faces of animals are made to play a human comedy.  He is often credited with being a precursor to the Surrealist movement.  Grandville’s skill in representing human characteristics in animal features brought him success and led to his contribution to a number of French periodicals.  Through this work he became known for his satirical political caricatures and an extremely popular illustrator.  However the return of censorship in 1835 forced him to return to mainly book illustration where he worked on many of the greats like Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe.  During this time Grandville continued to publish beautiful lithographic collections like Les fleurs animées. (Paris: Gabriel de Gonet, [ca. 1847]).  NC248.G7 F63 1847.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager, for contributing this post.

This post is part of  an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

This week, we have a book whose ownership can be traced back three generations: first to the Santo Domingo family; then to Gérard Nordmann, from whose estate the Santo Domingos purchased it; and finally to René Bonnel, publisher of the work, for this was his personal copy. Paul Verlaine’s Hombres, published in an edition of 100 copies (plus this special copy printed for Bonnel), reprints Verlaine’s erotic poetry collection, also including a facsimile of a manuscript letter written by Verlaine (the “lettre de Paliseul” referred to beneath the title) and a transcription of the same. In Bonnel’s private copy, however, the original letter is bound into the volume alongside the facsimile; the letter offers a glimpse both of Verlaine’s original hand and of his scatological sense of humor:

Hombres. Ségovie [i.e. Paris] : A l’enseigne de la Grenade [i.e. René Bonnel], 1926. FC8.V5895.904hb (B)

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Tights, unitards, and spandex are probably the top three words that come to mind when one pictures a superhero’s wardrobe, but let us not forget the capes!  Sure Superman and Batman are the typical cape wearing suspects, but there are plenty of other comic book heroes that wore capes, like Spy Smasher and The Doll Man!

Originally created by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck the Spy Smasher was introduced in Whiz Comic’s No. 2 in February 1940 as a shadowy figure of menace to villians.  Spy Smasher, also known as Alan Armstrong, was a master detective who possessed a number of gadgets, in particular a specialized vehicle called the “Gyrosub” which was a combination airplane, automobile, and submarine.  Spy Smasher was such a popular character at the time that a film was made in 1942 starring Kane Richmond, where the Spy Smasher battles a Nazi villain called The Mask.  The Harvard Film Archive actually has a print of this film version of Spy Smasher.  Another comic book caped-hero was The Doll Man, a research chemist named Darrell Dane, who invents a formula that shrinks him down to 6 inches, but allows him to retain the strength of his normal-sized self in order to fight criminals.  In his first adventure he rescues his fiance Martha Roberts, and decides after his success to fight crime in a red and blue costume that Martha sews for him.  Often referred to as “The World’s Mightiest Mite,”  he battled villains such as the Black Gondolier, the Vulture, and the Phantom Duelist. 

The Doll Man was created by comics legend Will Eisner and originally published by Quality Comics.  Both of these comics are special reprints by Flashback, a company that specialized in providing inexpensive reprints of often rare and expensive Golden Age Comic Books.  The Golden Age of Comic Books began in America in the late 1930s and lasted until the late 1940s.  During this time modern comic books featuring superheroes were first published and became hugely popular resulting in a significant comic book industry.  Comics also began to emerge as a mainstream art form during this Golden Age, however after World War II popularity of the superhero comic waned so many publishers branched out into horror, science fiction,  romance, and Western comics. 

Both of these comics can be found in our online catalog- Spy Smasher, no. 1. East Moline, Ill. : Special Edition Reprints, 1974. PN6726.F55 no.24 and The Doll Man quarterly, no. 1. East Moline, Ill. : Special Edition Reprints, 1974. PN6726.F55 no.9.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager, for contributing this post.

This post is part of  an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

The Marquis de Sade, author and provocateur, spent the end of his life imprisoned for having produced, among other works, Justine, ou, Les malheurs de la vertu. This copy from the Santo Domingo Collection, formerly owned by Gérard Nordmann, is one of the earliest printings of that title in 1791. As suits Nordmann’s collecting habits, this copy is unusual for two reasons: first, that it includes both the preliminaries “Explication de l’estampe” and “Avis de l’éditeur”, missing from most copies; second, that it features a puncture wound that pierces both covers and the entire text block. According to a French bookseller’s description pasted into the front cover, the volume acquired this distinctive feature when it was nailed to a pillory. In this image, the nail’s mark is visible just above the U in the title:

Marquis de Sade. Justine, ou, Les malheurs de la vertu. En Hollande [i.e. Paris]: Chez les Libraires Associés [i.e. J.V. Girouard], 1791. FC7.Sa152.791ja

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of  an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Continuing with the Gérard Nordmann holdings within the Santo Domingo collection, we have this copy of L’École des biches, ou, Mœurs des petites dames de ce temps. Attributed to a small handful of authors, published anonymously for a small group of subscribers and not publicly sold, this edition of 300 copies is cryptically dated “1863-1910.” Nordmann’s copy is handsomely bound in quarter leather over decorated paper boards, but its most outstanding feature lies within: numerous hand-painted aquarelle illustrations throughout the text, of which two of the least salacious are here reproduced.

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Funding from the Ruth Miller Memorial Philanthropic Fund enabled Houghton to catalog a collection of American broadsides this summer.  In a spectacularly productive two-month period, graduate student Agnes Coakley cataloged 770 broadsides, making them readily available to readers for the first time.

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This post is part of  an ongoing series featuring items from the newly-acquired Santo Domingo collection.

We have another item from Gérard Nordmann’s collection this week. Guy de Maupassant’s 1875 quasi-pornographic drama A la feuille de rose, maison turque was published in this edition of 225 copies in 1945; Nordmann’s copy was subsequently bound in this arresting magenta leather inset with panels of pink and rose snakeskin. The custom binding retains the book’s original paper wrappers.

Likely the most interesting feature of this volume, however, is its frontispiece: one leaf features an erotic illustration, while a second is decorated with stage doors and cut to allow the reader to open them onto the scene.

A la feuille de rose, maison turque: comédie de moeurs (mauvaises) en un acte en prose représentée pour la première fois à Paris en 1875.  Paris: : [s.n.], 1945. FC8.M4452.945a (B).

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.