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George Bickham (1684?-1758?). The Universal Penman. London: Robert Sayer, [ca. 1760]. Purchased on the Henry S. Morgan Fund, 2012.

Eight years in the making, The Universal Penman was the most ambitious writing book of the eighteenth century. Twenty-two scribes contributed to this compilation, containing more than two hundred calligraphic specimens adorned with high rococo headpieces and vignettes. For suitable texts, many of them turned to the fashionable authors of the day — Dryden, Pope, Addison and Congreve — culling sententious aphorisms they could use to display their skills in round hand and other scripts graced with a profusion of pen flourishes. The frontispiece is by Gravelot, who was living in London at that time.

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Homer. L’Iliade, traduction nouvelle [par Charles-François Lebrun, duc de Plaisance]. A Paris: Chez Barbou, Moutard, Ruault, 1776. Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2011.

A rising star in the political firmament, Charles-François Lebrun published his translation of the Iliad anonymously, as if his civil service colleagues might have looked askance at his dilettantish literary pursuits. These precautions did not diminish his pride in this publication, some copies of which were printed on luxurious large paper with frontispiece engravings after designs by Charles-Nicolas Cochin. Collectors could buy the special copies at more than twice the regular price, and those in the know might receive one as a gift of the translator. Resplendent gilt-tooled red morocco bindings signaled the value and prestige of this three-volume, large-paper copy.

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Bible. Latin. Vulgate. 1555. Biblia sacra ex postremis doctorum omnium vigiliis ad Hebraicam veritatem & probatissimorum exemplarium fidem. Salamanca: Andrea de Portonariis, 1555. Purchased on the Henry S. Morgan Fund, 2011.
 

The scholar-printer Andrea de Portonariis believed that some passages in the Latin Bible could be corrected on the basis of recent research by a professor of Hebrew in Paris. Attempts to go back to the Hebrew sources were viewed with suspicion by the authorities after a Paris printer had used the professor’s emendations in Bible editions with notes betraying Protestant sympathies. Portonariis appears not to have adopted very many of the disputed readings, but he realized he was in for trouble and took evasive action. He disguised the suspect origins of his edition by announcing that it had been overseen by a Salamanca theologian, who bridled at that subterfuge and complained to the Inquisition. Spanish censors placed the Portonariis edition on the Index of Prohibited Books and seized whatever copies were still available. Piled up with other banned books, they filled five rooms in the cardinal’s palace in Toledo. At first it was decided to burn them, but then they were allowed to rot in storage. Only four copies are known to have survived, this one, formerly in a private collection of Spanish Judaica, and three copies in libraries in Portugal.

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The House that Jack Built: A Diverting Story for Children of All Ages. To Which is Added, Some Account of Jack Jingle. Shewing by Which Means he Acquired his Learning, and in Consequence Thereof Got Rich and Built Himself a House. With a Collection of Riddles Written by Him. The Whole Adorned with a Variety of Cuts by Master Collett. London: Printed and sold by John Marshall, at No. 4, Aldermary Church-Yard in Bow-Lane; and no. 17, Queen-Street, Cheapside, [between 1787 and 1798]. Purchased on the Elisabeth Ball Fund, 2011.

Bibliographers have been able to identify at least eighteen eighteenth-century editions of this classic nursery rhyme, most of them surviving in only one or two known copies. The Morgan has the earliest securely datable illustrated edition (1770) as well as many later editions. As yet unrecorded, this edition contains the backstory of the nursery rhyme, an account of young Jack’s rise to riches, along with a collection of riddles composed by Jack “for the amusement of his playmates.”

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Jean Chenel, sieur de La Chappronnaye (fl. 1614-1617). Les revelations de l’hermite solitaire sur l’estat de la France.  Paris: Toussaincts du Braÿ, 1617. Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2011.

In a series of  visions, illustrated here, a hermit revealed to the author that the French nation was suffering from a blight of dueling. Too many men of honor had lost their lives — and their souls — because of this debilitating vice. As a valorous alternative, Chenel proposed to found a religious order of high-born knights who would renounce single combat, take vows of chastity and obedience, and dedicate their mastery of the martial arts to more worthy purposes, defending the kingdom and delivering the Holy Land. Not a single nobleman enlisted in his order. Taking his own advice, Chenel retired to a peaceable hermitage in the forest of Fontainbleau, but not without first trying to drum up business with this publication, containing eleven full-page engravings and an emblematic title page. The engraving shown here is an allegory of treason. The hermit looks down on the city of Paris, where a runaway horse symbolizes an enemy of the crown, who is finally brought down by the loyal citizenry and is revealed not to be a horse at all but a far less admirable creature.

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Bible. English. New Revised Standard. 2007. The Saint John's Bible. Apostles Edition. Collegeville, Minn.: Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, 2007-2009. 4 vols. (Pentateuch, Wisdom Books, Psalms, Prophets). Gift of Dr. William F. Hueg and Hella Mears Hueg, 2011.

In 1998 Saint John’s University commissioned the calligrapher Donald Jackson to produce fully illuminated luxury manuscript of the Bible, a monumental task completed in May 2011. The University has documented this achievement by publishing several facsimiles of the manuscript, the most elaborate of which is the Apostles Edition, issued in twelve copies. The full set will comprise seven double folio volumes in designer bindings by Lester Capon accompanied by original artwork by Jackson. Set no. 1 is at the Vatican; this is set no. 2.

Image caption: The Garden of Eden, Donald Jackson with contribution by Chris Tomlin, Copyright 2003, The Saint John’s Bible and the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota, USA. Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Catholic Edition, Copyright 1993, 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Bible. O.T. Psalms. The Book of Psalms [London?: s.n., ca. 1890]. Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2011.

The Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones was never not in love. The last of his great passions was for Helen Mary Gaskell, recipient of hundreds of letters and a trove of drawings now in the Ashmolean Museum. He also made for her this Book of Psalms, bound in white vellum with a gouache painting of King David on the front cover framed by extracts of Psalm 148 lettered in gilt. This is one of at least four vellum bindings he decorated for his women friends and is a prime example of the medievalizing bookwork he undertook under the influence of his friend William Morris.

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Vente après décès, de la bibliothèque de nos égorgeurs. [Rouen: s.n., 1795]. Purchased on the Henry S. Morgan Fund, 2011.

The citizens of Rouen avoided the worst excesses of the Terror during the French Revolution — the guillotine the Parisians provided for their use had been allowed to fall in disrepair — but, when the coast was clear, they turned against the extremists by throwing them in jail, driving them out of town, and mocking them in print. This burlesque catalogue of an imaginary library names the most egregious culprits such as the former mayor, author of Robert, Chief of the Bandits: A Tragedy,and a local lawyer, author of a History of the Modern Nero, “sixty volumes in folio.” No other copy of this satirical pamphlet is reported in America.