Лапти-лаптищи [Lapti - Laptishchi[. Moscow, Knebel [1909?]. 30x22cm colour illustrated stiff wrapper; 12pp including covers, each opening with a full page colour illustration and a smaller colour illustration with the facing text. Au$225
An attractive, very Russian - colourful, charming and cruel - version of the tale of the wily fox and her victims. The artist is probably D. Shokhin.
Hashimoto Sadahide (aka Gountei Sadahide aka Utagawa Sadahide). 横濱土産 (often written as 横浜土産 these days)[Yokohama Miyage]. n.p. n.d. [186-?]. Two volumes 18x12cm, original decorated wrappers, (worn but solid) with original printed label on the first volume and an old manuscript replacement on the second; 50 folded leaves all with colour woodcuts. Stitching renewed not too long ago by the look of it; certainly thumbed but good luck finding a copy that hasn't been thumbed more than this. Au$2500
Yokohama Miyage (souvenir) - in the forefront of the rush to Yokohama after it was opened as a foreign port in 1859 - was published in five parts in 1860 and perhaps 61 by Gifuya Seishichi. What we have here is a compilation of the five parts without title pages and colophon. I can't find anyone who can explain all the ways the work was issued, in fact I can't anyone with a complete copy in any form.
With all that, this is absolutely as issued, divided exactly in half in the middle of part three. NIJL (National Institute of Japanese Literature) illustrates the Yokohama City Library copy of the first volume identical to ours. Waseda has a copy in the same wrappers with parts four and five together. They also have parts one to three in the original form.
Sadahide was undoubtedly the greatest portraitist of Yokohama. His landscapes interest me less than his people but they are scrupulous. Many of the double page views could be put together into long panoramas. Yokohama is at this time, as seen by a bird and Sadahide, a pretty grim looking huddle of barracks and sheds. Up close it gets a lot more lively.
DAVIS, Robert H. Breathing in Irrespirable Atmospheres, and, in some cases, also Under Water. Including a short history of gas and incendiary warfare from early times to the present day, the physiology of respiration, breathing at high altitudes, resuscitation, the evolution of breathing apparatus, modern gas masks and other respiratory apparatus, with accounts of some mine rescue and recovery operations etc. London, Saint Catherine Press [1947]. Large octavo publisher's cloth; profusely illustrated, four in colour. Au$200
First, seemingly only edition. Davis lived and breathed, so to speak, artificial respiration. He joined Siebe Gorman in 1882, age 11, and retired in 1964 as life president of the company. He stopped breathing in 1965. Along the way he invented the odd submarine escape device and gas mask and wrote the bible on deep sea diving.
Publication of this was delayed by the war and while he notes with horror the appearance of the V2 rocket he hasn't ventured out into space yet. What is described in this book was used for warfare but he is "chiefly concerned with their employment for the humanitarian purposes for which they were originally designed."
Her cataloguer's copy
NORTH, Marianne Recollections of a Happy Life Being the Autobiography ... [with] Some Further Recollections of a Happy Life ... edited by her sister Mrs. John Addington Symonds. London, MacMillan 1892 & 93. Three volumes octavo publisher's gilt decorated cloth. Frontispieces in each, three other plates including the saintly Cameron portrait. Some browning or spotting at each end. Au$900
First editions of still the only substantial record of the globe trotting botanical painter. Not so easy to find all three together; rather good, and a good association: each with the ownership signature, W. Botting Hemsley. Hemsley was a botanist at Kew, worked with North on cataloguing, and was author of the descriptive catalogue of the Marianne North gallery at Kew, commissioned by North. He is also credited with proof reading the diaries. There is a scattering of marginal pencilling but I found only one question mark next to a botanical name.
The Recollections are a posthumous publication - she died in 1890 - they hadn't appeared earlier because she was too ill to take on the "retrenchments" required by MacMillan. I read somewhere that they were much tamed. I happily note that the academics have been stamping out their ground in the North industry accusing each other of deconstruction of her journals and other such improper behavior.
SLEE, Richard & Cornelia Atwood PRATT. Dr. Berkeley's Discovery. NY, Putnams 1899. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in gilt, black and white. Minor signs of use; rather good. Au$385
Only edition, I believe, of this sci-fi murder mystery thriller. The single minded American scientist somehow wins a gorgeous young French wife and still can't stay away from the lab. He is begged to put his earth shattering new discovery to work in solving a brutal murder and discovers that the piece of brain he has grafted into an ape, cultured, sliced up and is recovering images from the memory cells is his wife's.
Iwahashi Zenbei (or Yoshitaka depending on the transcriber). 平天儀圖解 [Heitengi Zukai]. Osaka, Ikeuchi Yahe &c 1802 (Kyowa 2). 27x19cm (with small variations); [4],38 double folded leaves (the last, the colophon, to be a single leaf pasted down to the back cover); woodcut illustrations throughout, three with moving parts. Light browning; an outstanding copy in unbound sheets, folded but untrimmed and unstitched. Au$1200
A quite remarkable, say I, copy of this guide to Zenbei's Heitengi - a set of astronomical volvelles - issued the year before, and an introduction to astronomy by Japan's leading telescope maker. So, in it's way something of an advertisement - almost a trade catalogue - and it includes a full page illustration of what must be one of his telescopes. Among the celestial and world maps and observations of planets and the moon he made, there is one of Zenbei's three sunspot drawings done in about 1793. Of course we all want a matching set of the volvelles now ... good luck and if you get there before me I curse all your electrical appliances.
This book had no title page, the title is on the binding label, so this set of sheets is absolutely complete.
THORNTON, Henry. Recherches sur la Nature et les Effets du Credit du Papier dans La Grande-Bretagne. Geneva, Bibliotheque Britannique 1803. Octavo modern boards with leather label. Front and bottom edges untrimmed; a pleasing copy with half title. Au$500
First edition in French, from the English original of 1802, indicative of the international attention this received with French and German translations in 1803 and an American edition in 1807. McCulloch revived it mid century in his collection of the most valuable tracts on currency and banking after which it languished until Hayek embraced and celebrated it a century later. Now the economic metaverse swarms with researchers pointing out how important it is and how every other researcher has neglected to understand this properly.
The translation was sometimes attributed to Charles Pictet-de-Rochemont, founder of the Bibliotheque Britannique, but Etienne Dumont - the French (and comprehensible) voice of Bentham, who urged Dumont to translate Thornton - is the translator.
Hikifuda. Bookshop. 書林 [Shorin]. n.p. n.d. [c1880 to 1900?]. Colour woodcut 24x30cm. Rumpled with an old vertical fold. Au$150
From what I can figure out - which is not much with my complete illiteracy when it comes to handwritten text - this advertises a Fukuoka bookshop that stocks Japanese, Chinese and Western books. The westerner is the fat bastard sitting down. That red labelled tube holds Japanese school charts.
Hikifuda are large handbills or small posters, often handed out as gifts for special occasions. Later they were mass produced with the details left blank for the merchant to fill in and the same image could advertise any number of disparate things. Not so in this case.
Risho. 花火秘伝集 [Hanabi Hiden-shu]. Naniwa (Osaka), Kawachiya Genshichiro [c1817 to 1825]. 15.5x10cm publisher's cloth with remnants of the printed label; 39 double leaves and colophon page inside the back cover, double page frontispiece, woodcut illustrations, some full page. A wormed copy, carefully repaired with washi placed within each folded leaf and the stitching renewed. Most of the worming is towards each end, particularly the back, but there is not so much in the way of serious loss and the whole is legible and remarkably clean and fresh for a book like this. Specially when compared to the only other copy I've ever had in my hands. Au$4500
The first Japanese book on fireworks. One issue of this is dated 1817 but CiNii, the NDL and Waseda are not certain enough to assign a date to the others. Philip's Bibliography of Firework Books does list it but only from a translation of the Kokusho Somokuroku (the national bibliography of books before 1867) entry provided to him by the British Library. There it is dated c1825 and Philips states that no more than six copies are extant in Japanese libraries. This can be revised a touch, not a lot:
This copy is identical to the NDL copy online.
Identical but for wrapper colours to Waseda's copy - including no hint that there was ever a title inside the front cover - until we get to the colophon leaf which is very different. They both bear the name of Kawachiya Genshichiro, both in Shinsaibashi but Osaka rather than Naniwa. Their copy was co-published by Suharaya Mohei of Nihonbashi in Edo (Tokyo) who must be part of the Suharaya/Kinkado tangle.
Cinii finds five entries, three at Tenri University.
Tokyo University's copy is dated Bunka 14 (1817) in the colophon. The colophon, still Kawachiya in Shinsaibashi but Osaka rather than Naniwa, is very different. That copy has an illustrated title page inside the front cover, unlike any other I've found.
Kyushu University doesn't mention colophon or publisher.
Tenri University has a colophon in line with Waseda; they may also have another incomplete copy.
Worldcat comes up empty.
The title translates as firework secrets and, like many trades, the secrets were kept in the trade. Until this book and for at least another fifty years the secrets of fireworks were held in manuscripts. The attrition rate for a book like this with an audience of black-thumbed, fire-prone pyrotechnists must have guaranteed not too many secrets leaked out.
GOWER, Richard Hall. A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Seamanship, together with a system of naval signals ... a useful compendium to the officer, to instruct him when young, and to remind him when old. The third edition, corrected and enlarged.
[bound with]
A Supplement to the Practical Seamanship ... London, for Wilkie & Robinson &c 1808; London for Mawman 1807. Together in octavo contemporary calf (rebacked, original lettering piece retained); xxviii,242,[2]pp; volvelle and ills and diagrams through the text; [4],208pp; seven plates - numbered to six with two fours - and illustrations through the text. Au$1300
Probably the last edition of the Treatise. The volvelle is particularly marvellous: a revolving ship in plan, on it a moveable jib (stayed with cotton), fore yard, main yard, C.J. yard and tiller/rudder; in a printed circle 120mm in diameter. The author's preface to this third edition reminds us why these books are so scarce: "the author having seen impressions of the former editions of this work, in the possession of young men on shipboard, many of which impressions had been deprived of their plates altogether, by rough sea-usage, and too intimate an aquaintance with the lee-scuppers - has, in part, prevented the evil in the present edition, by introducing the explanatory figures with the letter-press."
His preface to the second edition is a list of complaints about Steel's Rigging and Seamanship, not so much for his piracy from Gower as for the misrepresentation and obfuscation introduced in his attempt to disguise that piracy.
The Supplement is Gower's continuing research, experiments, designs and inventions: his quite radical ship 'Transit', his new patent log, an eyeshade ... many of which were not much noticed but bore remarkable resemblances to improvements made later by others. Gower seems to have been an admirable man; clever, learned, always inspired by notions of progress, improvement and humanitarianism, and indefatigable in pursuit of acknowledgment and adoption of his work. I get the impression that the halls of power emptied at news that Gower was in the building.
Burnley said, in his DNB entry for Gower, that a second edition of the Supplement appeared in 1810 but I am yet to find a copy. The Treatise is hard to find, the Supplement is rare.
Building photograph. A large photograph of a large timber framed building and its builders during construction. n.p.n.d. [190-?]. Albumen print 21x27cm on embossed studio card mount 32x40cm, by Sugiura Photographic Studio in Matsumoto. Au$150
I'm told this came from Azumino City in Nagano Prefecture, not far from Matsumoto. The references to Sugiura photos from Azumino I've come across date from about 1890 to around 1914.
This is no quaint cottage or farmhouse, it looks like a modern school to me and I think it must be Unmei Gakko; it was at one stage with some later photos, also taken by Sugiura, of various special occasions - people but not the school building.
There were 35 people gathered on this wet day, not all of them workers by the look of it. There are a few distinguished older gentlemen at the front who might include school officials as well as the bosses. Doubtless they would soon put up their umbrellas and leave and the workers would get back to work.
Theatres. Kenchiku Kenkyusha. 興行場 [Kogyojo]. Tokyo, Kenchiku Kenkyusha 1936 (Showa 11). 19x13cm publisher's printed wrapper; 72pp, photo illustrations, plans etc. Au$125
Kenchiku Keikaku Sosho 4 - Architectural Planning Series 4 - devoted to theatres by the Architectural Research Society. There's quite a lot packed into this small book: Japanese theatres at the beginning, then a look around the world, then entrants for the 1930 Ukrainian State Theatre competition. Nothing was built but Japanese architects were surprised, maybe pleased, maybe not, when Kawakita Renshichiro placed ahead of Gropius, Bel Geddes, Polzig, Breuer, and other luminaries.
Worldcat finds only the NDL entry for number two in the series.
Kon Wajiro 民俗と建築 : 平民工芸論 [Minzoku to Kenchiku : Heimin Kogeiron]. Tokyo, Isobe Koyodo 1927 (Showa 2). 19x13cm publisher's cloth and printed card slipcase (spine dulled); 115 illustrations, six folding. Name on the box. Au$150
First edition of Wajiro's collection of writings before and after the Kanto earthquake, charting his development from chronicler of folk architecture and crafts to modernologist. He warns in his preface that anyone expecting concrete architectural solutions to current needs will be disappointed. Part four (of four parts) dates from the earthquake and is devoted to the makeshift shelters and barracks. Kon and an odd collection of designers, architects and designers formed the Barracks Decoration Company aiming to bring some vestiges of beauty, humanity and surprise to grim emergency sheds and shacks. From there it was a natural progression to modernology, the science of the present.
Advertising ABC. Kryolith. Kryolith Kids Alphabet. Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Co [Chicago printed]. 1907. 21x18cm colour illustrated publisher's wrapper; 28pp, colour illustrations throughout by Art Williamson. A short tear in the bottom edge of one leaf, minimal signs of use, rather good. Au$300
A charming ABC extolling Kryolith - made into lye, caustic soda, sold as Lewis Lye - and the multitude of ways it makes life easier, healthier, more beautiful. Cryolite seems to have come from one source, a deposit on the Greenland coast which, once that lode was turned into lye or used in the production of aluminium, pretty much vanished from our lives.
WALRAS, Leon. Correspondence of Leon Walras and Related Papers. Edited by William Jaffe. Amsterdam, North-Holland 1965. Three volumes stout octavo, very good in publisher's cloth and mildly torn duswrappers. Au$175
Warmly inscribed and signed by Jaffe to economist and historian Joseph J. Spengler.
HADDON, A.C. The Decorative Art of British New Guinea: a study in Papuan ethnography. Dublin, Royal Irish Academy 1894. Largish quarto modern cloth; [2],279pp and 12 litho plates each with a leaf of explanatory text (two plates printed in two colours), map and 92 illustrations through the text. Stamp of a Royal Society on the half title; first couple of pages a bit rumpled; uncut and mostly unopened. Cunningham Memoirs X. Au$2150
Rare.
The emoji murders
SELBORNE, John. The Thousand Secrets. London, Everett 1911. Octavo publisher's cloth with mounted colour illustration. A touch of spotting around the edges; a pleasing copy. Au$600
First edition of this thriller which surely must be the first emoji mystery. At the scenes of the crimes the villain leaves a cryptic typed smiling face. Did he or she kill only owners of typewriters or carry spares? You might be sure the killer is a he from the cover but I'd say our cover artist never tried to make such a face with a typewriter. So can they be trusted about the typist? Truth in advertising or book covers has never been desirable.
Selborne published two thrillers in 1911 and vanished. Hubin suggests that he might be Harry John Selborne Boome who turns out to have been an unmemorable London stock broker. Not much help.
"As is often the case in such tales, the criminals show far more intelligence than their pursuers," (The Adelaide Register).
Architecture. GOISSAUD, Antony [introductions]. Garages et Salles d'Exposition. Paris, Librairie de la Construction [1928-30?]. Two volumes 25x33cm publisher's cloth backed colour illustrated boards (wear and rubbing); 16pp introductory text in each volume, 102 plates: photo illustrations, plans and elevations; loose as issued. A used copy, I'm sorry to say, with some browning, smudges, and occasional frayed edges; a thoroughly acceptable, complete, I repeat complete, set. With the embossed bookshop labels of Meiji-Shobo, Kanda, Tokyo; an stylish bit of deco design in itself. Au$1000
Royalty among books on garages, parking stations and automobile show rooms - a small kingdom - and hard to find complete.
Writing. 真字行書草書 : いろはにほへとちりぬる: 真行草之事 [Shin Gyosho Sosho : Irohanihoheto Chirinuru : Shingyoso no Koto]? n.p. [c1870?] 17.5x8cm publisher's wrapper (faint signs of a label); folding out to 143cm with lots of small colour illustrations on a yellow background. Some worming, nothing serious. Ink inscription on the back cover. Au$400
This most charming guide to hirigana, katakana and western letters and numbers is a mystery to me. I'm not even sure which small panel has the title and a fair bit of searching has got me nowhere.
Iroha can be translated as ABC - from the maybe C11th poem which is used to order kana.
Fujimoto Katao. 実用お料理献立漫画双六 [Jitsuyo Oryori Kondate Manga Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Fujin Sekai 1926 (Taisho 15). Colour broadside 55x79cm. Mildly used, quite a good copy. Au$400
This delightful manga sugoroku celebrates cooking and was the new year gift from the magazine Woman's World.
Sunakawa Hoshiji. 少女ラヂオ放送双六 [Shojo Radjio Hoso Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shojo Sekai 1926 (Taisho 15). Colour broadside 54x78cm. A couple of small holes in folds, quite a good copy. Au$600
The new year gift from the girl's magazine, Shojo Sekai, this is a celebration of radio: Japan's first radio station, JOAK in Tokyo, illustrated here, began broadcasting in March 1925. By the time readers got this game JOBK in Osaka and JOCK in Nagoya had made test broadcasts.
Timber yards. 北海道 : 三井製材實况 [Hokkaido : Mitsui Seizai Shikyo] Mitsui & Co's Timber Industry in Hokkaido. Mitsui & Co [190-?]. 9x16cm publisher's colour printed card, cord tied. Contents leaf and 10 b/w photo postcards. The first four are joined to form a panorama of the Umaya Yard and another three form a panorama of the Sunagawa Mill. All have perforated edges for easy removal and the usual postcard stuff printed on the back. Cover a bit smudged, rather good. Au$100
It has always been a firm rule here to avoid postcards but as Sterne wrote somewhere, "Is a man to follow rules or rules to follow him?" The next question here is, who thought this was a good idea? Naturally we all want to see endless vistas of logs but do we want to send photos of them to our family and friends? But then, postcards were, in Japan, for collecting rather than sending.
Mitsui was and still is a gargantuan trading company though these days, according to their website, they are in the business of preserving forests. They still own 45,000 hectares of forest around Japan; my guess is that a lot more than that is stacked up here.
A long time ago I collected disaster souvenirs and remembering the souvenir views of the Hamburg cholera outbreak of 1892 this little book makes sense. It is, after all, progress and industry on a massive scale and the production is exemplary.
Ogata Korin & Nakamura Hochu. 光琳画譜 [Korin Gafu]. Toto (ie Edo ie Tokyo), Kinkado n.d.. Two volumes 26x19cm publisher's yellow wrapper with title labels, accordion folding; 25 double page color woodcut plates. Wrappers marked and dusty; rather good. Owner's seal at the beginning and end of Yoshizawa Juminato (? - not sure of the reading of this given name); a name that occurs in some good books. Au$4000
Hochu's re-invention of 17th century Ogata Korin is the beginning of a world invasion of form and style that is now familiar to all of us. It took most of the century to be re-invented again in Japan and reach the west but we are now well and truly conquered.
This beautiful book is not the 1802 printing, despite the evidence of Union Catalogue Database of Japanese Texts, confident assertions of many prestigious libraries and optimistic booksellers. Neither is it the 1826 second edition; it is better. When not dated 1802 this Kinkado edition is often referred to as 'after 1868'. Is this because Kinkado's colophon comes from Toto (eastern capital) rather than Edo, the old name before the name change from Edo to Tokyo in September 1868? If so then the cataoguers never saw the probable 1802 printing because the colophon of Omiya Yohei also comes from 東都 - Toto - Eastern Capital. Kinkado's name appears on prints and books from the late 18th right through the 19th centuries, so that's not much help.
Now, Kinkado and Omiya Yohei are the same company. Kinkado was founded by Omiya in the last decade of the 18th century. Suharaya Sasuke bought into Kinkado Omiya Yohei in 1806 and took over in 1823. He adopted the name Kinkado - I can't discover when - and passed it on to his heir.
I have only found three or four books with the Omiya colophon, none of them after 1804. Neither does Kinkado appear as prolific publishers. The main business was wholesale and paper.
Kinkado also published an edition of Oson Gafu (1817), a neo-Korin cousin to our book, apparently using the original blocks in maybe the 1840s. A later edition has Tokyo on the title page and the colours are brasher. Their colour grammar, Usuyo Irome (1826), comes with a Kinkado colophon or a Kinkado and Suharaya Sasuke colophon. Both place Kinkado at Nihonbashi, Edo, where they had been since Omiya Yohei's time. The address was used or not used according to no discernible rule. What seems to be a printing of the Korin Gafu from these same blocks appeared with no colophon. And Suharaya Sasuke could be any one of at least three generations, no-one seems sure who was who. In short, it's a jungle. Kinkado's great bird books, the Taka Tagami and the Shucho Gafu, are Meiji productions and are identified as such.
When I say this is better than the 1826 edition it's an unreliable judgment. I've compared this copy with every image of every edition I can find online and all I've really learnt is that no two copies are the same. Not even of this edition. The 1826 printing uses recut blocks, as does this printing, so the original blocks vanished pretty fast. They should have passed from Omiya Yohei to Suharaya Sasuke if Omiya ever had them. Hillier confused me by talking of a second impression and a second edition without making it clear whether they are or aren't the same thing. Recut blocks can't, or shouldn't, be called another impression. Was that careless proof reading or is there another early printing without the hand colouring?
But it's clear that Kinkado used a copy of the 1802 original, ignoring the edition in between. Most of Hochu's techniques and tricks are here: bokashi, tarashikomi and karazuri. In order: colour graduation; applying ink to still wet ink; embossing. What's not here is the extra hand colouring Hochu added but it's often hard to tell.
I've never held a copy of the 1802 edition. Not being friends with many billionaires I'm not likely to. In the meantime, unless there is some other evidence kept secret by those cataloguers who designate it as Meiji there is no reason to accept that. It doesn't sit with other Kinkado books; it doesn't make sense.
Fireworks. 煙火競技大会 : 大正14年 : 栃木町消防組主宰 [Enka Kyogi Taikai : Taisho 14 : Tochigi-cho Shobo-gumi Shusai]. n.p. (1925, Taisho 14). 17x25 pattern cloth album, cord tied; 22 photos (11x15cm) on 11 heavy card leaves with captions, the last photo larger. Au$600
This album of the 1925 fireworks competition in Tochigi, then a town now a city, was put together by the town's fire chief. Note that there were day and night fireworks. Those large balls - shown with their maker and his apprentice during the festival and with the family in that last delightful photo - are called two shaku balls. A shaku is so close to a foot (12 inches) that it doesn't matter.
A child of his generosity
HORNE, R.H. (Richard Henry, later Hengist). Orion. An epic poem ... fifth edition. London, J. Miller 1843. Octavo contemporary half calf (quite rubbed and scuffed).
Inscribed by Horne to Robert Bell and a note about extra lines added to this edition on the next leaf; with Anthony Trollope's bookplate initialled R.B. in the corner. Au$500
I don't know why Horne waited until the fifth edition to give Bell a copy of his best selling book. It wasn't a long wait, even for a man who did not like like giving away his books - he wrote so to G.H. Lewes when he thought Lewes was angling for a copy of his Gregory VII. Lewes suggested that giving away unsold copies was better than seeing them line pie trays. Which might have had something to do with Horne first publishing this at a farthing a copy. So, a much smaller loss as a gift than the half crown this fifth edition cost. Which might be why Horne waited: it seemed a more generous gift. Perhaps I misjudge him.
Horne and Bell were friends of everyone and both ended up poor. Bell seems the better friend, procuring money for Horne from the Literary Fund Society when he was thoroughly down and out in Melbourne. Trollope enters this story when Bell, too sick to accept the job Trollope offered him, died in 1867 and unable, with others, to get a pension for his widow Trollope bought Bell's library at a higher price than its appraisal.
Orion is among the books mentioned in Anthony Trollope's Libraries (Grossman and Wright; 1976) which indicates Trollope's rapid integration of Bell's books where Bell's Orion duplicated his own in his 1867 catalogue. A lot of books were culled by his 1874 catalogue but Grossman & Wright don't mention Orion again and Trollope had added Horne's Death of Marlowe.
So this is one of what Sadleir called "doubly precious. They are not only books that once were Trollope's; they are the little children of his generosity".
"if there are people enough to make it pay, then Sydney is in a parlous state indeed"
HENSOLDT, Dr. H. and F. Allman [ed]. [Henry, originally Heinrich; & Frederick; respectively]. Orient and Occident : a monthly magazine devoted to original studies of the race problem ... By No.3 it had changed to: A monthly magazine devoted to the investigation of supernormal phenomena, popular delusions, organised superstitions, conventional shams ...
and
Breaking the Fetters ; an appeal to enlightened humanity [subtitled: The Truth About the "Church" on the front cover.
Sydney, March to October 1907; Eight numbers, 24x17cm, together in modern cloth, the first number with front and back wrappers preserved, the rest with one or the other. An occasional bit of marginalia, rather good.
and
Sydney, the author 1907: octavo publisher's printed wrapper; 36pp. Signs of use but pretty decent. Inscribed "with the compliments of the author". Au$1400
The complete run of this product of the Australian chapter in the life of this liar, fraud, bigamist, thief, and quack. The lies begin in the masthead with the 'Dr.' and really take off on page three with his interview with the Dalai Lama during his first visit to Lhasa.
The most complete life of Hensoldt seems to be that of Stevenson and Gill on microscopist.net. He did make use of whatever education he received from the family business of his father, microscopic slide maker Moritz Hensoldt. During his stay in Sydney - he was apparently here by 1905* - he married wife four or maybe more, Hillend heiress Ada Wythes in January 1908, liquidated her property and they set off for a honeymoon trip that would end on a Texas ranch. It ended in Chicago in February where he and her money vanished. The portrait of him in the Chicago Tribune is the same as that in the first number here. Ada must have been carrying one.
The lies don't stop there. In San Francisco, in May 1908, one Edward P. Bailey gave an interview to the Chronicle saying that he had sold up properties and come from Sydney to meet Hensoldt who would give him half shares in a mother lode in Texas. He claimed to have organised Hensoldt's lecture tours in Australia, helped set up Orient and Occident and introduced Hensoldt to the best of society. Now an Edward P. Bailey was, in October 1907, a certified masseur offering various electrical treatments, in the Royal Chambers which was also the address of Hensoldt. And some twenty years later Australian born Adventurer (capital A) Col. Edward P. Bailey was offering tours of 'The Great Australian Bush' out of San Marino, California.
The vanished Hensoldt supposedly died in 1914 but Stevenson & Gill have convincing evidence that Paul Börnsen, Hensoldt wife two, Augusta, and daughter Johanna arrived in America in October 1908 and settled in Maryland, later moving to Washington DC. Börnsen there went into the radium as a cure-all industry. In 1917 the FBI began investigating him as a possible German spy and Börnsen vanished. Augusta Hensoldt Börnsen reported herself as a widow in the 1920 census but no death record of a Hensoldt or Börnsen could be found.
Frederick Allman is an ephemeral figure; he vanished from the masthead with number four, presumably without anyone's money. I had been wondering, until I noticed that, whether he was the reason this magazine is so well printed on good paper. But the quality doesn't drop and the glimpses of Frederick Allman over the next few years: letters to the newspapers, a Theosophical article, letters to Josiah Cocking; sketch a well meaning, socialist, pacifist, mystical health crank. The sort of person who usually inhabits a boarding house rather than a harbourside mansion. The Sydney Mail review of the first issue tells us he is from Yass and is a long time civil servant. The Burrangong Argus tells us he had been a road engineer at Young. Definitely boarding house material.
In any case Hensoldt had been writing most of the magazine anyway and I doubt it was much of an effort to churn out the rest under the pen names that take over in the last numbers.
Trove finds four locations and Worldcat adds most of a complete run at Stanford. I'm not sure, from their catalogue, whether the SLNSW has a complete run; the other three locations are complete. For Breaking the Fetters Trove finds only the NL and Mitchell.
"Taking it all round, Sydney has reason to be proud of this well-printed, wonderful magazine, and if there are people enough to make it pay, then Sydney is in a parlous state indeed. I wonder what is behind the magazine?" Review of the first number in the Sydney Stock and Station Journal.
* This is based on the statement of Edward P. Bailey who said he had known him for three years; ie most unreliable. Advertisements for Hensoldt's Asutralian lectures begin appearing in August 1906.
Breaking the Fetters completes, I believe, the works of Hensoldt in Australia. The adverts for Orient and Occident on the back cover date it to about the middle of the year. The Sydney Stock and Station Journal reviewer doesn't disappoint: " It is the most awful pamphlet I've seen issued in Australia, and if the author does not get hanged, or burned, or sent to Darlinghurst, it only shows that this world is a safer place than it used to be ... What a man Henry is ! He pays us a great compliment in thinking that we are liberal enough and free enough, and intelligent enough not to resent his remarks."
Ishimoto Kikuji. 建築譜 [Kenchikufu]. Bunriha Kenchikukai 1924 (Taisho 13) 27x20cm publisher's cloth backed boards blocked in black and gilt (cover browned); 14pp and 50 plates being a colour frontispiece and the rest b/w photos. A little browning or spotting at the very ends, quite a good copy.
I am convinced that the inscription on the front fly begins with 日五 - day 5, the day this was published - and ends with 著者 - author. What comes in between ...? Au$1000
First edition; the architectural souvenirs of a trip to Europe and America by a founder of the Secessionist Architecture Group - Bunriha Kenchikukai. Germany is front and centre, if you haven't already spotted that from the cover. At the end of the preface he wonders whether to die for his principles like Gropius, indulge his hobbies like Poelzig, or dream like Taut. What he did in the end was found a firm that now builds massive projects that look like a thousand other buildings.
The radical architectural groups at this time were the Secessionists - formed in 1920 by six graduates of Tokyo Imperial University, growing to nine members - and the Barrack Decoration Company - formed by Kon Wajiro, Yoshida Kenkichi and a disparate group of designers and artists after the earthquake - who rushed around decorating the temporary buildings thrown up in the ruins. Parallel but further off was Mavo which also ran around improving barracks and makeshifts for a while. Naturally the purist Bunriha despised the Barrackists. Architecture could be art but artists could never be architects. Secessionist Takizawa was not so polite about it.
Architecture. Kenchiku Kenkyukai. 和洋建築設計実例編 [Wayo Kenchiku Sekkei Jitsurei-hen]. Osaka, Kenchiku Kenkyukai 1936. 27x20cm publisher's printed boards; 51 folding plans, elevations, measured drawings; a few photo illustrations. A little browning. Au$225
A reprint, first published in 1934, this is a thoroughly useful book from the Architectural Research Association. Enlarge the plans and you could build straight out of the book. Japanese and western are still differentiated and you can choose from ten houses, small school houses, or small apartments.
Worldcat finds no copies outside Japan and it's not so common in Japan.
WILLIAMSON, W.C. [William Cotter]. Lectures on the Care and Treatment of the Insane for the instruction of attendants and nurses. Sydney, Govt Printer 1885. Octavo publisher's semi limp roan titled in gilt on the front (wear to edges and tips). Inner front hinge rudely repaired with brown paper; a used but most acceptable copy. Ownership stamp of the Hospital for the Insane, Newcastle at the beginning of the text. Au$450
"The tiny and very insufficient "handbook" for attendants, published by Dr. L.S. Forbes Winslow, was, until a few weeks ago, the only volume containing practical instructions," says F. Norton Manning in his preface. An English handbook from the Medico-Psychological Association arrived while this going to press and still, "neither ... cover the whole ground, but ... are steps in the right direction".
We might grit our teeth reading this book but Williamson was a proper reformer and his reign at the Parramatta lunatic bin - as assistant from 1883, then superindent from 1900 - was marked by rebuilding and the introduction of gardens; he was keen on gardens. And, of course, the education of attendants and nurses.
This was issued to every attendant and nurse but is now an uncommon book; Trove only finds three entries and Worldcat adds copies at John Hopkins and Cambridge.
MOORE-BENTLEY, M. [Mary Ann]. Sketched from Life. Published by M. Moore-Bentley, Sydney 1903. Octavo modern cloth; b/w illustrations scattered throughout, most but not all signed C.H.H. Signs of use but most acceptable. Au$325
A political romance and novel of wish fulfillment with a heroine pursued by all the powers of the press, the police, the establishment, variously called "The Lyndhurst Mystery," the "Australian Joan of Arc", the "working man's daughter", physically a "tall, commanding, Minerva-like figure," (Moore-Bentley was described as tall and slender) and finally an "Australian Dreyfus."
Our Australian Joan of Arc terrifies her enemies, the old men, by using something that is in effect the talkies. The explanation confused me but it has the same effect as film with sound.
At the end is an advertisement inviting subscriptions for A Woman of Mars, or Australia's Enfranchised Woman (1901) with a page of subscribers' names. If that is the complete list then I count 25 copies sold. A lot less that the 18,000 odd votes she got when she ran for the New South Wales senate this same year. A Woman of Mars starred a feminist visitor from Mars in Sydney.
Trove finds two copies of this: at the Mitchell and the National Library; Worldcat adds no more. I noticed that the ADB still lists her under her married name, Mary Ling, a name she had discarded by 1901.
Koishi Kiyoshi. 撮影・作画の新技法 [Satsuei, Sakuga no Shingiho]. Tokyo, Genkosha 1936 (Showa 11). 20x16cm publisher's decorated cloth and printed card case; b/w photo illustrations and diagrams throughout. Box browned, light spots on the cream front cover; rather good. Au$1600
First edition of Koishi's new techniques of photography - double exposures, under exposures, over exposures, montage, photograms, asymmetry ... all the tricks of a determined avantist.
Onchi Koshiro designed this book. He designed several of Genkosha's photography books including, I presume, his own, and usually made them open right to left.
Thoroughly censored perversions
Soma Jiro. 変態処方箋 [Hentai Shohosen] Selection of Abnormal Documents. Tokyo, Kaichosha 1930 (Showa 5). 19x14cm publisher's illustrated fawn cloth printed in red, yellow and black (some browning and smudging), printed card slipcase. Quite poxed inside but I'm sure no-one wants to read this filth so it won't be noticed. I have seen this singular spotting in another copy, I suspect some unwanted particles in a batch of paper. Au$125
A censored copy. While the colophon seems to claim this is the first printing it isn't. It is dated July and August for printing and publication dates while what might be the first printing is dated the 24th and 29th of June. That has coarser cloth and thicker paper.
According to Hakkin Hon (banned books): Bessatsu Taiyo, the book was banned four days before publication and 295 of the 1000 copies produced were seized.
And I found another note on this book that tells us that 38 printings appeared within four months - with 25% of the text blanked out and at least one all blank page. Indeed page 508 is, not blank but columns of dots. Many other pages have columns of dots.
But this is all a muddle because the copy dated 29th June is also censored and page 508 is also columns of dots while the other pages I compared are untouched. I haven't done a page by page comparison.
I have traced a claimed 38th edition but nothing between one and 38. It makes sense now; they are all, however many there are, first editions.
This substantial classic of the ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense). Hentai Shohosen might translate as 'A Prescription for Perverts'. Drugs, sex toys, punishment, cannibalism and a list of everyday items used by foreign women for masturbation appear among the chapters. So I'm told. Thank goodness I can't read it.
What I really want to know is who did the cheerful cover - one that could double for a book on Japanese motherhood - and box/title page. Designer's names are often tucked away in dim corners but I can't find it.
