Although 4 February 1820 is officially commemorated as the birthday of Božena Němcová, one of the best-loved Czech writers of the 19th century, the actual date of her birth, and indeed her parentage, are surrounded by mystery. The register of baptisms in the parish church of the Holy Trinity in Vienna’s Alsterstrasse does indeed record the christening on 5 February of a daughter born the previous day to Terezie Novotná, a servant in an inn owned by Barbara Hauptmann, who stood godmother to the child, named after her but known by the Czech form, Barbora. However, the space for the father’s name is blank. On 7 August Terezie married Johann Pankel, coachman to Karl Rudolf Graf von der Schulenburg, on the Count’s estate in Ratibořice in Bohemia, and settled there. Terezie became a laundress to the Countess Wilhelmine, formerly Duchess of Sagan, but as her family increased (she had 12 children, though only six survived), she called on her mother for help, and Magdalena Novotná became part of the household in the Alte Bleiche. 

Portrait of Božena Němcová from František Halas, Triptych o ohrožené zemi (Prague, 1959) X.989/70722.

In her book Tajemství Barunky Panklové (‘The mystery of Barunka Panklová’) Helena Sobková suggests that the child was actually the illegitimate daughter of Wilhelmine’s younger sister, Dorothée de Talleyrand-Périgord; other sources had previously claimed that her mother was Wilhelmine herself, who had given her to the Pankels to raise. Whatever the truth of this, after leaving the village school at ten the little girl was sent to the manor of Chvalkovice to acquire accomplishments such as etiquette, fine sewing and embroidery, piano-playing and flawless German to transform her from ‘Barunka’ into Fräulein Betty. Her mother, it appears, had little time or love for her, and her social pretensions also caused her to feel ashamed of Magdalena with her homely Czech speech and peasant dress. Possibly recalling her own illegitimate pregnancy, she determined to marry her eldest daughter off as quickly as possible, and on 12 September 1837 a wedding took place. The bride was 17, tear-stained and apprehensive; the groom, a customs official named Josef Němec, was 15 years her senior.

The marriage was unhappy from the outset, not helped by several moves during the next few years as Josef was transferred from one post to another. However, despite having her hands full with the care of a daughter and three sons, the young mother gradually found herself being drawn into a wider world. Josef was an ardent Czech patriot (something which would eventually cost him his job) and when the family moved to Prague in 1842 she came into contact with literary circles and met the historian and politician František Palacký and the author Václav Bolemír Nebeský, who encouraged her to write in Czech. On 5 April 1842 her first poem ‘Ženám Českým’ (‘To the Czech Women’) appeared, under the new name which she had adopted – Božena Němcová. Like many figures of the National Revival, she chose a name from Czech history: Božena was a peasant girl chosen as his bride by Prince Oldřich in preference to a German noblewoman.

By the time that Josef Němec’s involvement in the failed revolution of 1848 had caused him to be transferred to Slovakia, Božena’s literary activities had made her so unwilling to leave the Czech literary scene behind that she stayed in Prague with her children, although she made frequent visits to her husband. These journeys provided her with material for a book of travel writings from the Domazlice area (Obrazy z okolí domažlického, 1845), and also opportunities to collect Slovak folk-tales (1857-58) in the original – unusual for a Czech at a time when Slovak was not generally regarded as an autonomous language.

Illustration by František Slabý and Karel Štapfer from Národní báchorky a pověsti (Prague, 1892) YA.1995.b.2351

Her best-loved work, however, was published in 1855. Babička (‘Grandmother’) draws on her recollections of a country childhood in the care of her own much-loved grandmother Magdalena, the ‘granny’ of the title who tells her grandchildren Barunka, Vilém, Jan and Adélka stories from her past, instils in them a simple but sincere faith and morality, and finally dies in the respect and affection of the whole village. In contrast to her is Viktorka, a girl who, seduced by a soldier, loses her wits, and is finally struck by lightning. The grandmother, however, teaches the children to show her compassion, and not to judge others hastily or harshly.

Illustration by Adolf Kašpar from Babička: Obrazy z venkovského života (Prague, 1892) X.902/444

The first translation into German was made in 1858, and since then the novel has been translated into forty languages and reprinted in Czech more than 350 times. However, its success did not prevent Němcová from falling into poverty. Her later life was overshadowed by grief for her son Hynek, who died of tuberculosis in 1853, and as the wife of a civil servant it was impossible for her to take up any form of gainful employment, so that at times she actually went hungry. Her own health was deteriorating, and in 1861 it obliged her to return from Litomyšl, where she had been trying to earn a living with the publishing house which was preparing an edition of her work, to Prague and to her estranged husband. Her romantic relationships, including one with Nebeský, and disputes over the children had driven them further apart. On 21 February 1862 she succumbed to cancer, and was buried in Prague’s Vyšehrad cemetery, the last resting-place of many of the nation’s greatest writers, artists and musicians, close to the city’s ancient fortress.

Božena Němcová lives on today not only as a beloved author in her own right but as an inspiration to those who came after her. Jaroslav Seifert, the first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1984) to write in that language, wrote Píseň o Viktorce, and František Halas composed a cycle of poems about her, Naše paní Božena Němcová. Though never a grandmother in her lifetime, she is a true ancestress of Czech literature.

The eponymous Grandmother. Illustration by Adolf Kašpar from Babička

Susan Halstead Subject Librarian (Social Sciences), Research Services

References:

Helena Sobková, Tajemství Barunky Panklové: Portrét Boženy Němcové (Prague, 2008) YF.2009.a.2612

Jaroslav Seifert, Píseň o Viktorce (Prague, 1950; X.958/30908)

František Halas, Naše paní Božena Němcová (Prague, 1940; X.958/3250

In May 2000 the British Library held a one-day conference on the theme of foreign-language printing in London from 1500 to 1900, specifically printing by and for immigrants in London. The focus was on the languages of continental Europe, with papers on German, Dutch, Scandinavian languages, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, Greek, Russian, Polish, and Hungarian printers and printing, which were collected into a book, published in 2002 as Foreign Language Printing in London. Long out of print, this volume has now been made freely available via the British Library’s research repository. Some of its articles offer a general overview of printing activity while others concentrate on particular periods, printers or publications.

Cover of Foreign Language Printing in London, edited by Barry Taylor (Boston Spa, 2002) 

One thing we discover is that, apart from the special case of Latin, the foreign vernacular language most frequently printed in London was French, also the only one to appear in the 15th century. Italian, Spanish and Dutch material all first appeared in the 16th century while German, Portuguese and modern Greek made their debuts in the 17th century. Most languages show an upward trend over time, although the number of Dutch publications gradually declined from the 16th to the 18th centuries. However, none of the numbers are particularly large: only for French do figures reach into the thousands rather than hundreds or fewer.

Most printing in foreign languages in London began with language-learning aids: dictionaries, grammars, textbooks and phrase-books. The earliest such work was a French-English vocabulary printed in 1480 by William Caxton (who had himself started out as a foreign-language printer in Flanders where he produced his first book in English, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye). These works might be aimed equally at English learners of another language or at native speakers looking to learn English in their new home. Likewise the printing of foreign-language literature in London could appeal to an audience of language learners as well as native speakers, although as a rule literature remained more likely to be imported than printed in London. Nonetheless, there were printers and publishers who also had a role as ‘foreign booksellers’ in promoting foreign-language literature to Anglophone audiences and some, like the 18th-century German bookseller Carl Heydinger, also translated works into English.

A bilingual German and English edition of the farce Die drei Freier / The Three Suitors (London, 1805; 1343.d.10), published by the London German firm of J. B. G. Vogel 

Other foreign-language printing was aimed more specifically at foreign communities. A number of these were initially formed by those fleeing persecution. In earlier centuries this tended to be religious persecution, with Protestants from Catholic Europe in particular finding refuge in England (paralleled, of course, by English Catholics seeking similar refuge abroad). Printing religious texts was an understandable preoccupation for these groups, but was also typical of foreign communities in general since places of worship were usually among the first community meeting-places to be established by immigrant groups. Most of the examples in the book come from Christian denominations, but there was also printing by Jews arriving in England from the continent, notably the Sephardim from Spain and Portugal who established a synagogue in London in the mid-17th century and printed sermons, calendars and polemical works, mostly in Spanish. Later, especially in the 19th century, the refugees were more often fleeing political than religious persecution. Liberal and socialist exiles took advantage of Britain’s relatively tolerant climate and, in particular, its free press.

These persecuted groups often printed books, pamphlets and newspapers to be exported – sometimes smuggled – back home. Their efforts met with varying degrees of success, perhaps the greatest being that of the Russian-language newspaper Kolokol (‘The Bell’), published in London between 1857 and 1867, which circulated widely and was much read in Russia. Less influential when first published was the Communist Manifesto (Manifest der kommunistischen Partei), printed in London in February 1848; it was not until the 1870s that it began to be widely reprinted.

Masthead of the first issue of Kolokol (London, 1857) C.127.k.84

Not all immigrants, of course, were fleeing persecution. Many were scholars, tradesmen or workers of all kinds and classes, and many soon became assimilated into English life and society – one of the reasons why a career in foreign-language book trades in London was often precarious. The short lives of many foreign-language newspapers which were founded in 19th-century London offer one of the clearest pieces of evidence for the difficulty of maintaining an audience for foreign-language material. Nonetheless, foreign-language printing and publishing have continued in London through the 20th century and into the 21st, with the addition now of internet resources by and for the many communities from Europe – and of course beyond – in Britain. A more recent British Library project, the ‘Russia in the UK’ Web Archive Collection, showcases examples of this.

When Foreign Language Printing in London was published, the Internet was still far from the ubiquitous tool it has become today, and all forms of online publishing still in their relative infancy. It is gratifying that, nearly two decades later, the book can be freely accessed online, for it remains a valuable introduction to the topic and of potential interest to specialists and lay readers alike.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the death of the Greek author Stratis Tsirkas, who commemorated the struggles of his country during and after the Second World War.

Woodcut portrait of Stratis Tsirkas, ca 1970. Frontispiece from Stratis Tsirkas, To Eikosiena stē neoellēnikē pezographia: Solōmos kai Makrygiannēs (Athens, 2011) YA.2011.a.4072

Born Yiannis Hatziandreas in Cairo, then a city with a substantial Greek community, on 23 July 1911, he received a commercial education but was an avid reader from an early age and began publishing both translations and original texts in journals while working as a factory manager in Upper Egypt. His time in the region inspired his first published collection of poems, Fellahin, which appeared in 1937. The following year he moved to Alexandria, where he became involved in literary and communist circles, and published more volumes of verse. His first collection of short stories appeared in 1944.

Tsirkas was actively involved in the Communist Party’s anti-fascist initiative and edited its journal, Hellēn (‘The Greek’). The 1944 mutiny of the Greek fleet and army and its brutal suppression became a major theme in his writing in the decades that followed. In 1958 his study of Cavafy, Ho Kavafis kai hē epokhē tou (‘Cavafy and his Era’) won the State Award for biography, and was followed by a work on another poet, George Seferis. His friendship with Cavafy was also the inspiration for Ho politikos Kavafis (‘Cavafy the politician’ (Athens, 1971) X.709/15555).

Title page of Ho Kavafis kai hē epokhē tou (Athens, 1958) 11866.f.18.)

In 1961 he published Hē leskhē (‘The Club’) the first volume in his most famous work, the trilogy Akyvernētes politeies (‘Drifting Cities’), as a result of which he was expelled from the Communist Party. The second volume, Ariagnē (‘Ariadne’) followed in 1962, and the third, Hē nikhterida (‘The Bat’) in 1965, by which time Tsirkas had settled in Athens. The three novels take place in Jerusalem, Cairo, and Alexandria respectively, with an epilogue in mainland Greece, after the end of the Civil War. The historical thread linking them is the efforts of the Greek left-wing movement to resist both external and internal reactionary forces and to aid resistance within mainland Greece, culminating in the destruction of the Greek navy in the harbour of Alexandria, when the commanders declared their intention of joining the mainland resistance. At that time a speedy German withdrawal was not in the interests of the British, who were afraid of the increasing power of the left-wing resistance government, and they treated their Greek allies, who had fought alongside them against Rommel, as enemies.

The tragedy is seen through the eyes of the protagonist, Manos Simonidis, a communist intellectual divided between loyalty to the left-wing cause (though he cannot accept blind obedience to its rigid Stalinist precepts) and the lure of ‘decadent’ cosmopolitan values with their aura of existential meaninglessness. In the end, as a committed Greek, Manos can only choose action, although he despises his leaders and the cause itself is hopeless.

Chapter opening with decorated initial from Hē leskhē, 4th ed. (Athens, 1973) X.909/84060

In Hē leskhē, Manos, hiding in a Jerusalem pension run by a German-Jewish refugee, falls in love with Emmy, the wife of an Austrian minister-in-exile, but loses her to another man and is recalled to action by his party's ideological leader, ‘The Little Man’, who unscrupulously uses others for his own ends under the pretext of ideology. In Ariagnē, wounded in a bomber attack, he is sheltered by Ariagne Saridis, head of a working-class family in a poor district of Cairo, and continues to write pamphlets. Ariagne’s family is a microcosm of the turbulence outside; some of its members belong to the right, others to the left, some are black marketeers, and some fight in the regular army or the resistance. She gives Manos the strength he requires to carry on with his mission, and in Hē nikhterida, after surviving a forced march through the desert, he arrives in Alexandria, and encounters Nancy Campbell, a Scottish noblewoman who becomes active in the resistance, before participating in the naval uprising. The story ends with the crushing of the revolt and the realization of the movement’s members that civil war is now inevitable.

In the coda, the survivors gather in Thessaloniki to hold a wake for their comrades who were tortured, executed or killed during the Civil War and the subsequent right-wing reign of terror. All the best men are dead; the women are left to mourn, struggling to survive and raise their children alone.

Tsirkas actively opposed the dictatorship, and during the rule of the colonels he devoted himself to translation. When censorship was lifted he played a leading part in producing the anti-junta 18 Texts and New Texts, and contributed to the anti-dictatorship journal Synechia.

Hē chamenē anoixē (‘The Lost Spring’), published in 1976 and set in Athens, was intended to be the first part of a new trilogy which Tsirkas never completed. Its hero is a left-wing refugee returning to the city after the tumultuous events of 1965, and it is fascinating to consider how Tsirkas would have developed the theme – and indeed, had he lived, how he would have described the collapse of the Greek economy in the next century. No doubt he would have continued to sum up his country’s future in the words, ‘Wherever there’s suffering and sweat and tears, there’s humanity, isn’t there?’

Susan Halstead Subject Librarian (Social Sciences), Research Services

References/Further reading

Stratis Tsirkas, Akyvernētes politeies.
1: Hē leschē. 4th ed. (Athens, 1973) X.909/84060.
2. Ariagnē. 6th ed. (Athens, 1974) YA.1995.a.11045.
3. Hē nychterida. 6th ed. (Athens, 1974) X.950/46877
English translation of the complete trilogy by Kay Cicellis, Drifting Cities (New York, 1974) X.981/11651

Stratis Tsirkas, Hē chamenē anoixē: mythistorēma. (Athens, 1976) X.909/37874

Stratis Tsirkas, Ta poiēmata (Athens, 1981) X.950/34436

Eleni Papargyriou, ‘The Poetics of Transit: Exile, Diaspora and Repatriation in Stratis Tzirkas’s Novels’, in Greek diaspora and migration since 1700: society, politics and culture, edited by Dimitris Tziovas (Farnham, 2007) pp. 193-204. YC.2009.a.14560.

The nonconformist artist and poet Evgenii Mikhailovich Malakhin, better known as B. U. Kashkin or later Starik Bukashkin (‘Old Man Bukashkin’), is a legendary figure in Ekaterinburg, the Russian city where he spent most of his adult life. Sporting a large bushy beard, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘I am a great Russian poet’, and carrying a balalaika, B. U. Kashkin could be found walking the streets and creating art for much of the 1980s and 90s. In recent years, the so-called ‘Bukashkin Trail’, a walk through the area where a small number of his murals remain intact, has even appeared on alternative English-language travel guides to the city. Yet, B. U. Kashkin remains relatively unknown outside of Russia or even Ekaterinburg.

Cover of B.U. Kashkin (1938-2005): zhiznʹ i tvorchestvo uralʹskogo pank-skomorokha (Ekaterinburg, 2015) featuring a photograph of the artist. YF.2017.a.4031

Born in Irkutsk in 1938, B. U. Kashkin studied engineering before moving to Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) in the early 1960s to take up a post as a senior engineer for an electricity company. Although he was interested in philosophy and the arts, it wasn’t until the 1970s that he began exploring a more creative path. As well as experimental photography, he also wrote and self-published poetry, and painted and worked with wood (including chopping boards). He initially adopted the pseudonym K. Kashkin, which sounds similar to the Russian word kakashka (meaning a little piece of shit). In the late 80s, this morphed into B. U. Kashkin – from the word bukashka (meaning a little bug or, metaphorically, an inconspicuous person).

The first exhibition of his work was held in the mid-1980s and he later founded an art collective, ‘Kartinnik’, which took its name from the Russian word for painting or picture – kartina (and likely also kvartirnik, the word used to describe musical concerts or performance art held in private apartments in the Soviet Union in the 1960s-1980s). The group’s philosophy was based on the idea of art as a form of communication and not a commodity to be sold. In fact, B. U. Kashkin gave most of his art away for free to passers-by in the street. 

Photographs of B. U. Kashkin's murals taken by E. Polens, A. Shaburov, and V. Shakhrin, 1993-2000. From B.U. Kashkin (1938-2005): zhiznʹ i tvorchestvo uralʹskogo pank-skomorokha.

In the early 1990s, B. U. Kashkin expanded his canvas further, painting garages, rubbish bins, and fences around the city. Calling himself ‘the People’s Street Sweeper of Russia’ in a tongue-in-cheek jibe at the official People’s Artist title awarded by the State, his murals called for people to live harmoniously together and to take care of the city and nature. In this way, he was able to communicate his poetry and ideas with a wide, public audience. The performative aspect of B. U. Kashkin’s art has been likened to that of the skomorokhs, medieval East Slavic travelling street performers who sang, played musical instruments and entertained people with comic plays and acrobatic tricks. 

Inside of Bukashkin’s wooden artist book, DRrrrr… ([Sverdlovsk?], [1993?]). RF.2000.a.48

B. U. Kashkin also made wonderfully playful and naïve wooden books, two of which are now held in the British Library. In the smaller of the two books, he juxtaposes the wooden canvas with the act of chopping down a fir tree, an important symbol in Russian culture. He himself is the woodcutter, bearded and dressed in a red tunic and red, white and blue hat – an ensemble he wore in real life and which can be found throughout his art. Measuring just 6.5cm x 5.5cm, the book is entitled DRrrrr… (evoking the sound of the saw) and features the name of the ‘publisher’, skromnaia kniga (‘humble book’), on its cover.

Cover of Kora: av-ai ([Ekaterinburg?], [1993?]). RF.2000.a.47

The second of B. U. Kashkin’s wooden books held by the Library is marginally bigger in size (9cm x 7cm!). Aptly titled Kora (tree bark), the cover features a dog, a cow, a bird and a fish, along with animal sounds. Once again B. U. Kashkin makes an appearance, this time with his infamous balalaika and an assortment of music-playing friends and animals. The books are part of a series B. U. Kashkin made using birch (also a symbol of Russian culture and beauty) and other types of bark in the early 1990s.

Inside of Kora: av-ai

Following his death in 2005, staff and students of Ural State University worked to build the B. U. Kashkin Museum in the university. As well as holding rare artefacts and archival material related to B. U. Kashkin, the museum also serves to promote cultural projects and interdisciplinary research. The Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts similarly collected artworks from different periods of B. U. Kashkin’s life and held an exhibition to mark what would have been his 80th birthday in 2018.

Katie McElvanney, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections

Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27) marks this year the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. On this occasion we present four noteworthy books, published in recent years, which address different aspects of the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland.

Renia Spiegel, Dziennik: 1939-1942. (Rzeszów, 2016). Awaiting shelfmark.

Renia Spiegel was fourteen years old when she started writing a diary in January 1939. Living in wartime Przemyśl, a city in Eastern Poland, she described her school and social life, everyday existence under both Soviet and Nazi occupation, separation from her parents, and transfer to the local ghetto. Knowing that the ghetto was about to be liquidated, she escaped in summer 1942 and was shot a few days later, when her place of hiding was disclosed to the Nazi police. Her diary was saved by Zygmunt Schwarzer, with whom she was in a romantic relationship, and then passed on to her family in 1950 and published in English only last year. Renia Spiegel’s diary is the subject of a forthcoming British Library event.

Andrzej Selerowicz, Ariel znaczy lew (Gdynia, 2018). YF.2019.a.19905

Ariel znaczy lew (‘Ariel means lion’) by Andrzej Selerowicz is a novel about a love story between a fifteen-year old Jewish boy, Ariel, and a German soldier. The couple meet in wartime Cracow and their relationship continues with the outbreak of the war. After Cracow’s Jews are enclosed in a ghetto, the Wehrmacht soldier helps Ariel find a hiding place on the Aryan side, thus saving his life. The novel is loosely based on true events, which, according to the author, were told to him by a Polish man on whom the character of Ariel was based.

Maria Ciesielska, Lekarze getta warszawskiego (Warsaw, 2017). Awaiting shelfmark.

Lekarze getta warszawskiego (‘Doctors of the Warsaw ghetto’) by Maria Ciesielska is devoted to the history of doctors who performed their work in the Warsaw ghetto. Despite difficult conditions, they managed to create a professional healthcare system and establish hospitals and clinics, as well as organising the underground teaching of medicine and carrying out scientific research. This in-depth study is based on personal narratives and diaries and shows the emotional and ethical struggle that the doctors had to face in their work in the ghetto.

Covers of two volumes of Dalej jest noc : Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Warsaw, 2018). YF.2019.a.19212

The fate of Jews who were transferred to big ghettos, such as the ones in Warsaw or Cracow, has been documented in several books. However, the majority of Polish Jews perished in small provincial villages. The two volumes of Dalej jest noc: Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (‘Night without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland’) contribute to filling in this gap. This is a collection of studies of the fate of Jews who tried to save their lives in rural areas of Poland with the help of their Polish neighbours. Their chances of survival depended to a great extent on the local population’s willingness to help, which was often negatively affected by anti-semitism and social norms. Consequently, two-thirds of Jews seeking help perished. According to the authors of the study, the role of the local population in the annihilation of Polish Jewry was significant and often underestimated by scholars.

Zuzanna Krzemien, SEE Cataloguer

‘Parson’s lass ’ant nowt, an’ she weänt ’a nowt when ’e’s deäd,
Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and addle her breäd.’

Those hard-headed words of Tennyson’s ‘Northern Farmer: New Style’ rang bitterly true in a family where ‘parson’s lass’ was the youngest of four surviving children out of six. The Rev. Patrick Brontë’s daughter Anne, born on 17 January 1820, had no choice but to earn her own living, and a teaching position, whether as a governess or in a school, offered respectability and an income, albeit a modest one. In her first post Anne earned £25 per year. Meagre as the material rewards were, though, her months with the Ingham and Robinson families provided her with others – a fund of experience and a determination to expose the humiliation and exploitation suffered by other women in her situation.

Anne Brontë, drawn by her sister Charlotte

As the youngest of three sisters, plus a scapegrace elder brother, Anne might have been expected to be accustomed to deferring to others and displaying the submissiveness required by her employers. If we are to believe her sister Charlotte’s account of her, she had all these qualities; the picture which Charlotte paints of her in the most delicate pastel tones suggests a muted meekness and piety which nowadays seems dangerously close to mawkishness. Samantha Ellis, in Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life (London, 2017; DRT ELD.DS.181944), describes how the taxi driver taking her to Thorp Green, the site of Anne’s second post, was unaware that there was another sister besides Charlotte and Emily.

This state of affairs is reflected to some degree in the British Library’s holdings of translations of Anne Brontë’s two novels and her poetry. Their scantiness contrasts strongly with the numerous versions of Jane Eyre or Emily’s single novel Wuthering Heights, and the fact that the majority of them are 20th-century publications suggests the slow growth of international awareness of her significance. The earliest in the collections is a French translation of Agnes Grey dating from 1859 in which Anne is not even accorded the dignity of a book to herself but shares it with a translation of her elder sister’s Shirley – both novels being attributed to ‘Currer Bell’, Charlotte’s pen-name, while poor ‘Acton Bell’ is completely obscured.

Title-page of the translations of Shirley and Agnes Grey by Ch. Romey and A Rolet (Paris, 1859) 12602.d.3.

Another French translation, Agnès Grey, was published in 1949. It is easy to see the appeal of this work in a society where the governess was also a familiar figure in middle- and upper-class families, and where, indeed, French was, like music and drawing, one of the obligatory subjects in a curriculum designed to fit eligible young ladies for the marriage market. However, superficial accomplishments did little to enable them to choose wisely, as Agnes’ former pupil Rosalie Murray laments after becoming Lady Ashby, deploring her husband’s ‘carnet de paris, sa table de jeu, ses filles de l’Opéra, sa lady une telle, sa mistress une telle, ses bouteilles de vin et ses verres d’eau-de-vie et de gin!’ In contrast, Agnes, after two miserable experiences as a governess to charges who are spoilt, odious or uncontrollable, returns home to run a successful school with her widowed mother, and makes a happy marriage when independence has rendered her able to make a free choice.

Anne’s other novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, similarly highlights the importance of education in enabling a woman to make a life for herself, escape an abusive marriage and support herself and her children. Helen, its heroine, is at first dazzled by the handsome and wealthy Arthur Huntingdon, and convinces herself that the flaws in his character are due to neglect by his unsatisfactory mother. The marriage rapidly deteriorates through his drinking and mental and physical cruelty, and Helen finally leaves him, taking their child, and adopts a new identity under her late mother’s maiden name. She is able to make a living from painting because she treats it as a serious pursuit, taking lessons to develop her talent (one of the most painful scenes in the novel is that where Arthur burns her work), and becomes a well-regarded (and saleable) artist. Likewise, Agnes Grey’s elder sister Mary develops her artistic gifts and by doing so not only earns a decent living but lifts herself out of the depression which envelops her after the family’s decline into poverty. Nor does this preclude a happy marriage, as we learn when Agnes goes home to help with the preparations for Mary’s wedding to a young clergyman.

The title of this second novel provides some interesting challenges for the translator. In a French translation by Maurice Rancès (Paris, 1937; 12643.a.41) Helen becomes La Dame du Château de Wildfell, suggesting the banks of the Loire rather than rugged Yorkshire, while a 1985 Hungarian translation (YF.2006.a.11670) makes her simply Wildfell asszonya (‘The Lady of Wildfell’). A Russian translation which also includes Agnes Grey makes her Neznakomka iz Uaĭldfell-Kholla (‘The Unknown Lady of Wildfell Hall; wisely, translators have avoided attempts to tackle the name of her residence which produced some bizarre results in the case of Wuthering Heights). This translation appeared in 1990, and also contains her poetry.

Cover of a Russian translation of Anne Brontë’s novels and poems (Moscow, 1990); YA. 1995.a.15633.

The strangest ‘translation’, though, is one purporting to be a Spanish version of a joint production by Charlotte and Anne Brontë from a German translation of a text never published in English. Adversidad (Barcelona, [1946]; 012643.tt.74.) is the work of one Ricardo Boadella, who in his preface claims that the novel, set during the Napoleonic wars, bears the unmistakeable stamp of the sisters’ admiration for Nelson, their interest in education and their devotion to duty as illustrated by the hero, ‘Rockhingham’ [sic], who becomes a martyr to it. One would like to think that Anne – a far more courageous and spirited character than she is conventionally perceived – would have relished this preposterous pastiche.

Susan Halstead Subject Librarian (Social Sciences), Research Services

What would you do if you saw an animal in your garden which you’d never seen before? You might say, ‘It had the head like a cat’s and the body of a dog …’

This was the method used by European travellers and writers who had to describe the new fauna of the Indies.

Amongst the most remarkable things at the Indies of Peru, be the vicugnes, and sheepe of the countrie, as they call them, which are tractable beasts and of great profit. … Some thinke that the vicugnes are those which Aristotle, Plinie and others call capreas, which are wilde goats, and in truth they have some resemblance, for the lightnesse they have in the woods and mountaines, but yet they are no goates, for the vicugnes have no horns … These vicugnes are greater than goates and lesser than calves. Their haire is of the colour of dried roses, somewhat clearer (Purchas’s Pilgrims, cited Phipson 120).

The vicuña and other goat- or sheep-like creatures, from Compendio della storia geografica, naturale e civile del regno de Chile (Bologna, 1776) 9773.aaa.28

Nuremberg physician Dr Hieronymus Münzer, writing in Latin and calling himself Monetarius, described his travels in Spain in 1494-95, including a visit to the palace of Prince Henry (cousin of King Ferdinand the Catholic) in Valencia.

The prince, more given to leisure and enjoyment [otio et voluptate] than to war, has built by St Francis’s Church a house so proud and noble that there is nothing superior. All the rooms are hung with tapestries with coloured figures and the cloths are embroidered with gold.

And there he saw

a ‘gazella’, an animal larger than a fox; its head, mouth and ears are like an ermine’s; it is grey with whitish and dark patches; it has the tail and feet of a dog: a bad-tempered and fierce beast [animal colericum et furiosum est].

We understand what made it colericum et furiosum when we read on:

It was in a wooden cage, on a chain. Its keeper ordered it to be dragged by the head to the cage door, and pulling its hind legs lifted its tail and showed us its ‘priapus’ (for it was a male), and taking its testes, which were large, turned them inside out as one would turn a money bag.

A civet, from Icones animalium quadrupedum ... quæ in Historiæ Animalium Conradi Gesneri, lib. I. et II., describuntur ... Editio tertia ... auctior (Heidelberg, 1606)  1505/137.(1.)

(Münzer’s three travelling companions were merchants, so they knew a thing or two about money bags.)

Thus there appeared two cavities, one on each testicle. Into one of them he introduced a small spoon of smooth glass, and three times extracted a quantity of sweet-smelling humour of civet about two drams [duarum dragmarum] in weight and anointed my hand with it, which continued to smell for a number of days.

The prince also showed them a number of birds, including

A starling of the colour of lasuri [lapis lazuli?] and blue, which he said could imitate various sounds, although I never heard it speak the hour we were there.

Münzer doesn’t say where the Prince got his civet from (they’re natives of Africa and Asia), but exotic animals were often used as diplomatic gifts: that was how Alfonso X of Castile-Leon came by a giraffe, a gift from the Sultan of Egypt (Crónica de Alfonso X, p. 28). So perhaps this was such a gift.

An alternative version of the civet from Icones animalium quadrupedum 

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections

References/Further reading:

Emma Phipson, The Animal-Lore of Shakespeare’s Time (London, 1883) 2252.c.1

Hieronymus  Münzer, Itinerarium hispanicum, ed. Pfandl, Revue Hispanique, 48 (1920 ) PP.4331.aea; Spanish translation by Julio Pujol, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 84 (1924) Ac.6630.

Crónica de Alfonso X, ed. M. González Jiménez (Murcia, 1999) YA.2001.a.20194

Theodor Fontane is one of those authors who gives hope to middle-aged would-be novelists who have yet to take up their pens: his first novel, Vor dem Sturm, was not published until he was 59. However, middle-aged would-be novelists should also be warned that, before embarking on the novels for which he is now most famous, Fontane had served a long literary apprenticeship as a poet, critic, journalist and travel writer. In these last capacities, he wrote in some detail about the three visits he made to Britain in the 1840s and 1850s.

Born in the town of Neuruppin in Brandenburg on 30 December 1819, Fontane initially followed his father’s career as a pharmacist, serving an apprenticeship in Berlin where he also began to develop his literary interests. It was during his year of compulsory military service that he was invited to join a friend on a two-week trip to England in the summer of 1844. Thanks to a sympathetic commanding officer, he was able to accept.

Theodor Fontane during his first stay in London in 1844. Sketch by J.W. Burford, reproduced in Josef Ettlinger, Theodor Fontane: ein Essai (Berlin, [1904]) 011852.ff.16/18.

On this first visit to England, Fontane was very much a tourist, making planned visits to the sights of London – a city which impressed him with its size compared with the still relatively provincial Berlin – and going on an excursion to Windsor. However, he also made some more independent trips, including a visit to fellow German pharmacist Hermann Schweitzer in Brighton. Schweitzer apparently promised to look for a possible job in England for Fontane, suggesting that Fontane was interested in settling here, although nothing came of this.

A side-effect of this first visit to England was Fontane’s increased interest in historical ballads, and ballads on English and Scottish themes were among the poems he published in 1851, by which time he had given up his pharmaceutical career to live by his pen. The following year, he returned to London as a correspondent for a Prussian newspaper, with a brief to write about conditions in England. This time he stayed for five months, writing articles on a range of subjects from the streets and sights of London to an election in Brentford, which were later collected into the book Ein Sommer in London. During this stay he again considered making a more permanent home in England, possibly by acquiring his own pharmacy business. However, the only work readily available appeared to be as a German tutor and, after some weeks of dithering about whether or not to seek employment in London, he returned to Berlin.

Cover of Theodor Fontane, Aus England (Stuttgart, 1860) 10348.d.3

Three years later he returned again on a longer-term basis with a mission from the Prussian Government to promote a more pro-Prussian line in the British press. He remained until 1859, and once again wrote about England for the German press. A selection of this journalism was also later published in book form as Aus England. Unlike the varied and shorter sketches of Ein Sommer in London, this collection focuses in three longer sections on the London theatre, British art and the British press. The second section was inspired by a visit to the 1857 Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester, and Fontane adds some impressions of Manchester, which he found ‘not quite so dreary a place as it had been described to me in London’, and Liverpool, where he was very impressed by the docks on the River Mersey’s ‘vast expanse of water’.

These excursions are rare exceptions to the usual focus on London and its surroundings in Fontane’s published accounts of Britain. However, in the summer of 1858 he and his friend Bernhard von Lepel set off on a 14-day tour of Scotland which Fontane described in his book Jenseits des Tweed, again compiled from articles originally written for newspapers. Although his anglophilia had become somewhat jaded by the realities of London life, Fontane described himself setting off for Scotland with much of the same excitement that he had felt on first leaving for England 14 years earlier. The travellers fitted a lot into a short time, starting in Edinburgh before travelling on to Inverness, their northernmost stop, via Stirling and Perth. They then travelled down the Caledonian Canal to the West Coast, taking in the Islands of Iona and Staffa before returning to Edinburgh.

Map of Fontane’s Scottish tour, from Theodor Fontane, Beyond the Tweed, translated by Brian Battershaw (London, 1998) YC.2001.a.8037

Like many Germans, Fontane’s idea of Scotland had been shaped by the works of Sir Walter Scott, by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, by romantic tales and legends, and by picturesque historical anecdotes, several of which he repeats in his descriptions of the places he and Lepel visited. However, a ‘pilgrimage’ to Scott’s old home at Abbotsford, the final visit on their tour, and perhaps saved until last as a particular treat, left Fontane somewhat underwhelmed. He found the house, preserved as a museum, something of a ‘waxwork show’ without the living writer’s spirit to animate it.

Despite this rather anticlimactic end to the trip, Fontane retained fond memories of Scotland, and his Scottish tour inspired him, on his return to Germany, to start writing similar travel pieces about his native Brandenburg. His Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg ran to five volumes and played a role in the development of his writing style towards that of a novelist.

Fontane in later life, reproduced in Josef Ettlinger, Theodor Fontane

After leaving London in early 1859 Fontane never returned to Britain, but he wrote at least one more piece about Scotland, a poem in response to the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879. Harking back to his love of Shakespeare and Scott, he wrote it in the style of a ballad, framed by three Macbeth-style witches who plot and rejoice in the bridge’s destruction. Sadly, this is less well known in Britain than William McGonagall’s hilariously inept verses on the same theme, but in the year that marks the 140th anniversary of the disaster as well as the bicentenary of Fontane’s birth, it seems an appropriate note on which to end our look at Fontane in Britain.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

References/further reading:

Theodor Fontane, Ein Sommer in London (Berlin, 1854) 10350.c.1.

Theodor Fontane, Jenseits des Tweed: Bilder und Briefe aus Schottland (Berlin, 1860) 10370.c.26

Theodor Fontane, A Prussian in Victorian London, translated by John Lynch (London, 2014) YC.2016.a.11501

Petra E. Krüger, Fontane in London (Berlin, 2012) YF.2017.a.16769

Gordon A. Craig, Theodor Fontane: literature and history in the Bismarck Reich (New York, 1999) YC.1999.b.9426

According to Otto Wang, author of niche publications in defence of the reputation of Danish ex-libris, and writing in 1927, no one had received more praise for their bookplate artistry than Ebba Holm. A painter, engraver and illustrator, Holm became most famous for 108 linocut illustrations to a 1929 edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy, in Christian Knud Frederik Molbech’s translation. Otto Wang sees Holm as belonging ‘to the not too many Danish artists who have really been interested in this special little art [of ex libris] and realized that it is necessary to cultivate it and subject it to a special study’.

In Wang’s survey of Holm’s ex libris art, he suggests the artist has given us two of the greatest Danish bookplates, one being for Harald and Karen Abrahamsen (answers on a postcard) and the other being Ebba Holm’s own. Recently, the library acquired L’Opinion et l’amour, a 1830 French book belonging to Holm herself, so we are lucky enough to be in the possession of this famed ex libris. Sadly we don’t know much about Holm’s personal library, and whether she had chosen the book because it was a historical novel written by a woman, Madame de de Saint–Surin, who had also written about the Middle Ages, or for its pretty binding by Janet, a Parisian bookbinder known for his decorative tastes. In any case, it is exciting to see her choice for this most personal design:

Ebba Holm’s ex libris from Madame de Saint Surin, L’Opinion et l’amour (Paris, 1830), awaiting shelfmark

Holm’s love of medieval imagery, or of all things medieval, is expressed in her own bookplate, which features a knight (or could it be Joan of Arc?) holding a spear from which floats a banner displaying her name.

The library has since also acquired a copy of Johannes Jørgensen’s Dantestemninger (‘Dante moods’), a limited edition from 1928, which features a quartet of poems first published in Jørgensen’s collection Bag alle de blaa Bjærge (1913) here in large format alongside four striking woodcuts by Ebba Holm. Our copy has a small book label designed by the illustrator and stuck on the inside back cover. It bears her initials and is adorned with what looks like a heraldic eagle.

Ebba Holm’s initials underneath an eagle

Jørgensen and Holm were both Italophiles. Jørgensen (1866-1956) lived in Siena from 1914 and wrote the lives of St Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena and St Bridget of Sweden after his conversion to Catholicism around 1895.

The Dantestemninger were written at the time he was composing his work on Catherine of Siena and his research into the period allowed Jørgensen to explore an interest in Dante. As Jørgen Breitenstein has written, the poems often explicitly recall Molbech’s translation of Dante, as we see at the end of Jørgensen’s first poem’s reference to Inferno III, 1: ‘og fører ind til Staden, fuld af Jammer’ (‘Per me si va ne la città dolente’ / ‘Through me the way into the suffering city’). That said, Jørgensen portrays a wet, foggy, autumnal forest that has no real parallel to Dante’s Inferno, and Holm depicts a lost forest-bound protagonist in the first woodcut.

Jørgenson’s Inferno in a Northern European sylvan mood

Holm might be said to deviate from Jørgensen’s second poem as she depicts the protagonist’s encounter with Beatrice. Holm’s scene might be based on Dante’s Florence but the city is also simple and industrial, the encounter itself without any of the symbolism of Jørgensen’s (and Dante’s) association of Beatrice with fire and flames.

Dante meets Beatrice

The third poem deals with Dante’s exile from Florence and the fourth with Dante and Beatrice’s ascension in Paradiso.

Dante in exile

Dante in paradise

Holm’s illustrations here are accomplished without being remarkable but they can also be seen as preparatory for the more lavish, impressive and ultimately prize-winning linocuts for the later Divine Comedy edition. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a copy of this but we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for a fine edition!

Sophie Defrance, Curator Romance Collections, and Pardaad Chamsaz, Curator Germanic Collections

References

Johannes Jørgensen, Dantestemninger (Copenhagen, 1928) LF.31.b.13902

Otto Wang, Ebba Holms Exlibris (Kolding, 1927), 2708.g.23

Everybody needs a patron, nobody more than the medieval or early modern author.

Erasmus dedicated one work to four successive patrons (Carlson 85; also 45). The assumption was that the patron would respond with a payment, sometimes delivered on the spot (Carlson 85). Hence the delicious title of Richard Firth Green’s Poets and Princepleasers: literature and the English court in the late Middle Ages.

Title-page of Juan de Mena, Las ccc (Seville, 1499) G.11274

Here we see the poet Juan de Mena doffing his cap to King John II. (Of course, the woodcut obviously comes from some other work, but such reuse was commonplace.)

Another popular scene shows the patron, the author and the book. It’s probably the norm for an author to be shown presenting his work to his patron.

Harley MS 4431 (c. 1410-c.1414), f. 3r, for example, shows Christine de Pizan presenting her manuscript to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria:

But in other cases the patron is pretty unambiguously doing the presenting.

Here Henry VIII is handing out his Great Bible (London, 1540; C.18.d.10) to the clergy and directly to the people.

Henry‘s iconography is probably the older, as it has been traced back to images of Justinian handing down the law.

Here we have Fray Antonio de Montesino kneeling before Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Monarchs. The book is his Spanish translation of pseudo-Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi (Alcalá de Henares, 1502-03; C.63.i.1.). 

Lyell (385, n. 150) thinks the presenter is the patron Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros, the recipients the patron’s patrons the King and Queen, and that the humble translator, Montesino, is literally sidelined.

The tug-of-love between King and Cardinal makes it hard to see who is giving and who is receiving.

So just remember that this festive season.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections

References

David R. Carlson, English Humanist Books (Toronto, 1993) YA.1995.b.12352

Richard Firth Green, Poets and Princepleasers: literature and the English court in the late Middle Ages (Toronto, 1980). 80/17195

James P. R. Lyell, La ilustración del libro antiguo en España (Madrid, 1997). YF.2009.a.21979. (First published in English as Early book illustration in Spain (London, 1926) 11907.g.58.)