Very few people now know the name of Ivan Ivanovich Bashmakov (?-1865) or his pen-name Ivan Vasenko. Even fewer can remember reading anything by him. A prolific Russian writer, he published novels, fairy tales, short stories, books for children, and even patriotic tracts (e.g., Enemies of the Holy Russia about the siege of Sebastopol), primers and textbooks for learners.

In literary encyclopaedias Bashmakov is described as an author of popular literature for common people. Critics agree that he was best known for his fables in verses (first published in 1854), which although not masterpieces, were lively, witty and funny.

The tradition of fables had been established in Russia by Mikhail Lomonosov, Ivan Krylov, Ivan Dmitriev and others, and Bashmakov successfully followed their steps, although supplied his book Semeinye prikliucheniia zhivotnykh (‘Animals’ family stories’; British Library 12304.c.8) with a subtitle: ‘basni inogo roda’ (‘fables of another type’). The book consists of two parts with a small appendix of three fables ‘Mysli i chuvstva rastenii’ (‘Thoughts and Feelings of plants’).

Bashmakov’s imagination took him on a trip of discovery of human features in almost every living creature: Goat’s valour, Bear’s taste, Crawfish’s  heroism, Bumblebee’s wish, Cat’s melancholy, Piglet’s annoyance, Cricket’s  dignity, Jackdaw’s gossip, Sparrow’s anger, Mouse’s impulse, etc. However, only two out of four lithographed images illustrate animals other than perfectly domesticated cats and dogs. Here is one:

Although the fable tells a story of a Hare who, having overheard a conversation between an Elephant and a Lion, realised that all have their own weaknesses (as Lion was afraid of mice, he was afraid of dogs), it looks as if the illustrator decided to ignore the ‘main hero’ altogether. The two animals are of the same size and it is obvious that the artist had been trained to draw lions as they appeared in the European visual tradition, but had almost no idea how to approach drawing an elephant. Maybe, that is why the elephant is well hidden in the bushes?

The picture above  illustrates the fable called ‘Snake’s tenderness’. You can probably guess already that instead of a kiss for fantastic singing a Skylark got poisoned.

In the pictures that accompany the tales, ‘Dog’s instructions’ about an old female Dog recalling a story of her love and ‘Dog’s fate’ that, by comparing cats’ and dogs’ life in one household, concludes that we should to be happy with what we have, not wishing to obtain another fate, people clearly dominate the scene.

 

 Maybe, the artist really liked cats, as he supplied ‘Dog’s fate’ with one more picture, featuring a cat:

Quite unlike other images where animals were portrayed without any impersonation that was prompted by the text of the fables, only one cat in the whole book looks like a lady.

Can you imagine that this lady-Kitty in the fable ‘Cat’s sensibility’ interrupts her aria to her beloved Pussycat to catch a mouse? Oh, no!!! But will you drop your love song when your iPhone notifies you of new pictures on friend’s Instagram?

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections

 

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478-1557) is best known nowadays as the author of the Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535, second edition 1547),  a pioneering account of the history and natural history of the Americas.

He is also of interest as a writer and courtier whose career spanned the Atlantic.  He was also obviously something of a dog-lover.

The focus of today’s blog is the Libro de la cámara del príncipe don Juan.  This is a very full account of the personnel and activities of the court of Prince John (born 1478), son of the Catholic Monarchs.  John died young in 1497 at the age of 18.  The Libro (first manuscript version 1547-48, revised a year later) was prepared by Oviedo for the guidance of Prince Philip (later King Philip II).

One detail which Oviedo added in the second version was this account of Bruto (Brutus), the prince’s greyhound. 

He had black and white patches.  He was not a handsome beast, as his father must have been a mastiff, and so he did not have a pretty head, but he was strongly built and not very tall.   But he was clever, as dogged as could be and marvellously quick at the attack.       

A contemporary greyhound.  No stain of the mastiff here (British Library Royal MS 16 F II)

When on the road or hunting, the prince would deliberately drop a glove or handkerchief and once they had gone on a league or so, would say, “Bruto, bring me my glove.”  And the dog brought it to him in his mouth, as pristine and clean of dribble as if a man had brought it; and this regardlesss of whether the terrain was open or thickly covered in trees.

A number of men could be fifteen, twenty or thirty paces away, and the prince would say, “Bruto, bring me that man.”  And he would go and take him by the arm, very gently and without sinking his teeth.  And when the prince said, “Not him,” Bruto left him and fetched another.  And when he said, “Not him, but the one with the green, or grey cape,” as he was commanded so he did, in such as way that it seemed he knew his colours, like a person of good judgment.  He was a marvellous tracker.

When the prince was buried at dawn on 5 October 1497 in the Cathedral of Salamanca, Bruto lay down at the head of the tomb, and whenever they took him away he returned to his place; so that finally they supplied him with a cushion to lie on, day and night, and they fed and watered him there, and when he went out to perform his necessities, he returned to his cushion.  When the King and Queen left for their daughter’s weddding in Portugal, on their return they found him there still.

The prince’s final resting place was at Avila.

 
The tomb of Prince John at Avila (Image from Wikimedia Commons)           

Writing in 1549 of events of 1497, Oviedo obviously found Brutus as admrable as Greyfriars Bobby was to be four and a half centuries later, an exemplar of canine loyalty above the bestial standards of the late medieval court.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies

References

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Libro de la cámara del príncipe don Juan, ed. Santiago Fabregat Barrios (Valencia, 2006), pp. 135-37.

Libro de la Cámara real del Príncipe Don Juan, é officios de su casa é seruiçio ordinario, ed. J. M. Escudero de la Peña (Madrid, 1870) Ac.8886/7.

Angel Alcalá and Jacobo Sanz, Vida y muerte del Príncipe Don Juan : historia y literatura (Valladolid, 1999)  YA.2002.a.11935

 

Champfleury, pseudonym of Jules Husson Fleury (1821-89), is little read nowadays,  though his name is familiar to students of French 19th-century culture because of the variety of his interests and activities, both literary and artistic. A prominent member of bohemian circles in Paris in the 1840s, a novelist and short story writer, he also championed the painter Gustave Courbet and realism in art and literature, and played a key role in the ‘rediscovery’ of the Le Nain brothers, 17th-century painters of ‘reality’ who, like Champfleury himself, were born in Laon in Picardy. He had a lifelong interest in ‘popular’ arts  and wrote on a wide variety of subjects including  pantomime, caricature,  popular imagery, Japanese prints and ceramics. For the last 17 years of his life he was the curator of the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres.

Champfleury’s most  popular work was his book on cats, published in 1869.  Les Chats, histoire, moeurs, observations, anecdotes was advertised by a poster with a lithograph by Manet, Le rendez-vous des chats (‘The cats’ rendezvous’), showing two cats on a rooftop engaged in a mating game. The black cat was no doubt a reminder of the cat that featured prominently in Manet’s Olympia, the painting that had caused a scandal when first displayed in 1865. Manet’s lithograph was also used on the poster for the second edition of Champfleury’s work a few months later and an engraving of it appears in the book itself. 

Poster with a lithograph by Manet, advertising Champfleury’s Les Chats (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

The popularity of the book was such that it was reprinted twice in quick succession and two deluxe editions followed in 1870 with several additional texts and illustrations including, in the fifth edition, an etching by Manet, Le Chat et les fleurs (‘Cat and Flowers’), showing a cat on a balcony near a ceramic jardinière, an image influenced by Japanese prints and also a reference to Champfleury’s interest in ceramics. [Fig.3]

Edouard Manet, Le Chat et les fleurs. Etching  in  Les Chats (5th edition, 1870)

The book’s 23 short chapters (34 in the de luxe editions) and numerous appendices look at cats in ancient civilizations, popular traditions, heraldry, art and literature. There are also chapters on friends, enemies and painters of cats. It is profusely illustrated  with  full-page illustrations, decorated letters and vignettes, and several chapters have delightful tailpieces, several of them copied from a sheet of studies of cats  by Hiroshige (which Champfleury erroneously attributes to Hokusai).

Ando Hiroshige , Sheet of cat studies from Ryusai gafu. ca 1836

The frontispiece of the original 1868 edition is a drawing by the Swiss artist Gottfried Mind (1768-1814), ‘the Raphael of cats’, a nickname given to him (according to Champfleury) by Mme Vigée Lebrun.  Mind painted an infinite variety of cats and he would sit for hours drawing with a cat sitting on his lap and two or three kittens perched on his shoulders; a general massacre of cats in 1809 in his native Berne was the greatest tragedy of his life. Another Mind drawing in the text (below right) has the elegance and grace of a Matisse line drawing.

Images of cats by Gottfried Mind, frontispiece and p. 142 of the 1869 edition of Les Chats

Champfleury’s erudite interests are much in evidence in the book in the inclusion, for example, of two devices of the Sessa family of printers, active in Venice in the 16th century, showing a cat.

 

Sessa’s printers device, Les Chats (1869) p. 152

 There are also examples of cats in heraldry, in legends and, above all, in popular prints. They include a 17th-century French woodcut showing a concert of cats in a fairground, their trainer surrounded by cats reading from scores headed ‘miaou’ and a Russian lubok colour print showing ‘The Mice  Burying the Cat’, a typical example of the world turned upside down.

‘La Musique des Chats’ [above] and ‘The mice burying the cat’ [below], from Les Chats (1870)

  
 

An impressive full-page Japanese print (below) showing  a composite head of a cat is another example of the author’s interest in Japanese art.

 

The numerous  portraits of writers and artists who were cat-lovers include Montaigne, Chateaubriand, Hoffmann and Baudelaire, but pride of place is given to Victor Hugo and his cat Chanoine.

A vignette of Chanoine in the first edition became the frontispiece of the de luxe editions (above) with a note in Hugo’s hand quoting Joseph Méry’s dictum “God made the cat to give man the pleasure of stroking a tiger.”

While a drawing of a cat by Delacroix (above) almost looks like a self portrait, cat’s ears are sprouting on Champfleury’s own head in the final illustration in the book, a humorous portrait of the author in his study, poring over a book about cats and observed by a cat perched on a bookcase behind him. 

Chris Michaelides, Curator Romance Studies

References:

Champfleury Les Chats. Histoire-mœurs-observations-anecdotes.  Troisième édition. (Paris, 1869).  7207.aa.23; 

Quatrième édition. (Paris, 1870). 7208.aa.10. 

1869 edition available online from the Bibliothèque nationale de France via Gallica

Luce Abélès, Champfleury: l'art pour le peuple. (Paris, 1990). ZV.9.a.67(39)

A cat-eared Champfleury in his study, portrait by Edmond Morin from Les Chats (1869), p. 287.

On Tuesday of this week Joost Zwagerman, one of three most read Dutch authors of our generation, took his own life. 

Joost Zwagerman in 2010 (picture by Jost Hindersmann from Wikimedia Commons CC BY 3.0) 

Zwagerman was a prolific author, poet, commentator, art critic and polemicist. In 2010 he was awarded De Gouden Ganzenveer  (The Golden Quill) for his whole oeuvre, one of several literary awards during his career. In the same year he wrote the Boekenweekcadeau the annual ‘gift’ for the Dutch National Book Week. Being invited to write this is considered one of the biggest accolades in the literary world.

Zwagerman very much engaged with his readers and the general public in the Netherlands and abroad. He spent two weeks as author-in-residence at the University of Sheffield. Whilst his work is not (yet) translated into English, English speakers can get a real flavour of his wonderful style from the account he wrote of his experiences in Sheffield on Citybooks.eu (click on ‘Engels’ for the translation).

He frequently appeared on television, where he talked about art and culture, a topic he wrote about in many of his works. A better advocate for art and literature will be hard to find. His enthusiasm was inspiring.

He also wrote about suicide (his father attempted suicide and a close friend of his died by assisted suicide). In ‘Door eigen hand: zelfmoord en de nabestaanden’, freely translated as ‘By one’s own hand: suicide and next of kin’ he strongly argued against it, which makes his own suicide all the more poignant.

His work was translated into German, French, Czech, Hungarian and Japanese, but as already stated,  does not appear in English. That is a shame. Joost Zwagerman deserves to be translated into the world language that is English and reach a much wider audience.

Some of Jost Zwagerman's books from the British Library's collections

The British Library holds most of his works, which can be found by using our catalogue Explore.

Marja Kingma, Curator Low Countries collections

A brief selection of titles by Joost Zwagerman, held by the British Library:

De Houdgreep (Amsterdam, 1986). YA.1994.a.3152

Gimmick! (Amsterdam, 1992) YA.1990.a.3895

Vals Licht (Amsterdam, 1992) YA.1993.a.27376

Collegas van God (Amsterdam, 1993) YA.1993.a.25914

De Mooiste Vrouw ter Wereld: gedichten (Amsterdam, 1993) YA.1993.b.8597

Duel (Amsterdam, 2010;  Gift for the National Book week) YF.2010.a.9478

Alles is gekleurd: omzwervingen in de kunst (Amsterdam, 2011) YF.2013.a.7001

De wereld is hier: een keuze uit eigen werk (Amsterdam, 2012) YF.2012.a.34077

Kennis is geluk: nieuwe omzwervingen in de kunst (Utrecht, 2013) YF.2013.a.22414

 The years between 1910 and 1913 were an opportune time for publishing house Adam & Charles Black to produce a series on Russian culture for a British audience.

 Cover of Russia (London, 1913; British Library 10291.cc.33.

George Dobson’s St. Petersburg (1910), Henry M. Grove’s Moscow (1912.) and Hugh Stewart’s Provincial Russia (1913) are all stand-alone works, collected together in 1913 for the larger and more expensive volume simply titled Russia. A further book aimed at younger readers had been produced in 1910 as part of the Peeps at Many Lands series. Colourful illustrations by Frederic de Haenen accompany all five works, showing a picturesque side to Russia far from the Russophobic caricatures the British public would have been used to.

The terrace of the Kremlin, from Moscow (1912)

Conservative concerns about the threat posed by Russia to the British Empire, and Radical opposition to the Autocratic form of government, had long nurtured suspicions about Russia. The growing threat of German militarism to British imperial interests and the democratic gains achieved after the 1905 revolution allayed these fears somewhat, opening up space for a more positive view. Between the Anglo-Russian entente  of 1907  and the beginning of the First World War vigorous attempts were being made to build mutual understanding between the two countries, and a historic visit by members of the Duma to Britain in 1909 raised the interest of the public further.

 Members leaving the Duma. from St. Petersburg (1910)

These popular books, aimed at the general reader, can be seen as an expression of, and a contribution to, what Michael Hughes called the ‘repositioning of Russia in the British imagination’ at this time. And it seems that such repositioning was not only one way, as Grove records in Moscow (1912, p. 118):

There was a Russian I knew well and met often – a schoolmaster. He and I were always quarrelling, for he professed to be and was a pronounced Anglophobe. At last I persuaded him to learn a little English, and go over to England for a few weeks, to see if we really were as bad as he thought. When he came back he was converted into a violent Anglomaniac. I asked him what had converted him, and he said, “Your British Museum.” He said that only the greatest nation on earth could have such a marvellous institution as that; he always felt as if he were in church when he was there, and always held his hat in his hand all the time he was in the building. I am afraid the British Museum does not have the same effect on the average Englishman.

Mike Carey, Collaborative Doctoral Student

References

George Dobson & Frederic de Haenen, St. Petersburg (London, 1910). 10292.dd.6.

Henry M. Grove & Frederic de Haenen, Moscow (London, 1912). 10291.bbb.11.

Hugh Stewart & Frederic de Haenen, Provincial Russia (London, 1913). 10291.cc.33.

Michael Hughes, ‘Searching for the Soul of Russia: British Perceptions of Russia during the First World War’, Twentieth Century British History 20, 2 (2009), 198-226.

Lavinia Edna Walter & Frederic de Haenen, Peeps at Many Lands: Russia (London, 1910). 010026.g.1/26.

 

 

As we commemorate the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, it is interesting to reflect that England was not the only country in mediaeval Europe where the interests of the king clashed with those of his barons. When he succeeded his father Charles IV as king of Bohemia in 1361, Wenceslas IV faced a similar situation. Like his brother-in-law Richard II in England, he was of a temperamental disposition which did not make it easy for him to come to terms with the nobles who were concerned about his attempts to encroach on their ancient rights and organized themselves into a union of lords, the Panská jednota, to combat them. In 1402 Wenceslas was taken captive, leading to prolonged negotiations for his release and fighting between the nobility and the mainly German inhabitants of the royal towns. He was clearly in need of some sound advice about how to rule his turbulent kingdom.

It came from a somewhat surprising source – a man with a personal grudge against the Crown. Little is known about the early life of Smil Flaška of Pardubice except that he studied at the University of Prague in the 1350s, and in 1394 was appointed chief notary of the land court of the Panská jednota. It was also around 1394 that he composed the allegorical poem Nová rada (The New Council), the first example of its kind in mediaeval Czech literature.

Cover of a modern edition of Nová rada (Prague, 1950). British Library Ac.800.ba(9).

Beast allegories were already widespread throughout Europe, both in Latin and the vernacular languages, from the tales of Reynard the Fox to Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls (c.1380), written to mark the marriage of Wenceslas’s sister Anne of Bohemia to Richard II. They were the successors to the classical fables of Aesop and Phaedrus,  in which amusing anecdotes about the follies of the animal protagonists could be used to point a moral which might have been unacceptable if expressed in another guise. This tradition was picked up in France by Gervais du Bus in a satire attacking the corrupt reign of Philippe IV, Le Roman de Fauvel (c.1310), where the run-down nag Fauvel represents the shabby condition of church and state.

The king of the beasts, from an edition of Nová rada iIlustrated by Antonín Strnadl (Prague, 1940). Cup.502.aa.12.

Smil’s poem begins with the young king of beasts (recalling the double-tailed lion of Bohemia) summoning a council of forty-four birds and beasts to advise him. In a series of speeches each presents his views, based on the natural characteristics of their species. The beaver, for instance, advises the lion to build his castles of wood in watery places, a reference to Wenceslas’s well-known fondness for taking baths. The swallow, however, counters:

No, do not build in marsh or mire,
But where the air is healthy, higher;
With stone and mortar, dry and fast,
So what you build is sure to last.

Every aspect of kingly activity is covered, from the lynx’s tips on military strategy to the camel’s advice on charity towards those in misfortune and the elephant’s on the moral upbringing of the royal children. Not everyone is so high-minded, though; the peacock, understandably, urges the king to dress in a style more suited to his station (Wenceslas was notorious for slipping out in humble garb to enjoy the low-life pleasures of the town), and the horse enthusiastically agrees, advocating the splendours of the tournament surrounded by richly bedecked lords and ladies (though we may detect a satirical note in his decidedly unheroic account of the unhorsed knights rolling in the dust, shedding teeth and imploring aid with cries of ‘Rette, rette!’ – revealing their alien origins and tastes).

            The elephant and the camel, from Cup.502.aa.12.            

Courtierly self-interest is also evident in the recommendations of the fox (if the king needs advisers at all, surely smaller ones with their wits about them are the best?) and the cat:

And, in addition, you’ll need spies
To watch at night with shrewd sharp eyes;
Murderers and thieves are apt, I think,
Softly in darkness to creep and slink;
But spies will seize them right on the stair
And drag them to court, for punishment there.
           (Translations by Susan Reynolds/Halstead)

The wolf, too, with his shoulders mantled in grey hair suggesting a cowl, symbolizes the rapacity of certain monastic orders, with an interpolated reference to the falsification of documents which caused Smil’s ancestral estates to be forfeited to the king, one of several cases where Wenceslas deprived noble families of their lands by the feudal right of reversion. He is also associated with the much-resented ‘new men’ whom Wenceslas had taken onto his council and allowed to buy positions in the land court, to the fury of the barons.

The leopard, bear and wolf from Cup.502.aa.12.

Perhaps the author could have used the lynx’s wise advice about how best to avoid an ambush; having taken an active part in the fighting on the side of the nobility, he was fatally wounded on 13 August 1403 during the siege of the royalist town Kutná Hora.

Smil was too astute to speak out unambiguously and counsel the king directly, even in an allegory, but the results make for a colourful and entertaining poem which was one of the first to be published in a new edition with a parallel text in modern Czech by Jan Gebauer, a pioneer of mediaeval Czech studies, in 1876 (Ac.800/7). In 1940 a new translation by František Vrba was published by Orbis in Prague, illustrated with woodcuts by . They prove that though Smil Flaška’s poetry originated from a specific time of personal and national crisis, its appeal is timeless and universal.

Susan Halstead,  Content Specialist, Research Engagement.

In 1709 London found itself playing host to thousands of Germans who were fleeing famine, war and religious persecution in their native lands. Many of the first arrivals came from the Palatinate region, and the refugees became collectively known as the ‘poor Palatines’.

An account and depiction of the refugees’ sufferings in Germany, from The State of the Palatines for fifty years past to this present time… (London, 1710) 9325.ccc.40.

Most of these ‘Palatines’ wanted to travel on to America rather than stay in Britain. Many hoped to emulate the success of Joshua Kocherthal, who had emigrated to America in 1708 with a group of fellow Germans, helped by grants of money and land from the British government. Kocherthal’s published description of Carolina, with an appended account of the financial aid his party had received, encouraged others to head for Britain, convinced that they would receive similar assistance towards a new life across the Atlantic. Instead, the majority ended up housed in temporary camps on Blackheath and in Camberwell.

Title-page of Kocherthal’s pamphlet, Aussführlich- und umständlicher Bericht von der berühmten Landschafft Carolina, in dem Engelländischen America gelegen ... (Frankfurt am Main, 1709) C.32.b.38.

The Palatines’ motives for seeking refuge, their worthiness of help and their eventual fate, were the subject of much debate. Queen Anne and her government had indeed initially offered help and support to those perceived as Protestant refugees fleeing oppression by Catholic rulers, but by no means all those arriving in Britain fell into this category, and soon critics were pointing out that some had come from Protestant-ruled states and others were themselves Catholics (although most of the latter were offered a choice between conversion or repatriation). Whatever the reasons for their flight, the refugees were in any case soon arriving in too large numbers for the state to be able to provide for them, let alone pay for all of them to travel and settle in America.

(Protestant) Palatine refugees worshipping in the Savoy Chapel, from The State of the Palatines

Concerns were also expressed about the threat the refugees might pose if allowed to remain in Britain. Many were poor and unskilled labourers and it was argued that they would add nothing to the nation’s prosperity but instead reduce work and wages for their British counterparts. One vocal supporter of the Palatines’ right to remain was Daniel Defoe, whose political periodical A Review of the State of the Nation argued that British tradesmen and labourers had nothing to fear and that the newcomers would enhance rather than damage the ‘publick Wealth’. He also recommended settling the Palatines in sparsely-inhabited regions to develop the land for agriculture. But other voices were less welcoming.

A contemporary pamphlet, The Palatines Catechism, sets out some typical elements of the debate in a fictional dialogue between an ‘English tradesman’ and a ‘High-Dutchman’ (probably himself a German in modern parlance). Visiting the refugees’ camp, the ‘High-Dutchman’ admires their ‘Diligence and Industry’ and argues that Christian charity demands they should be supported and helped to settle in Britain. The Englishman sees only disorder and outlandish habits in the camp and is suspicious of the Palatines’ motives for coming; he declares that, ‘charity ought to begin at home,’ and that Britain should help her own numerous poor before taking in those of other countries. He also fears that, if the Palatines are given assistance, they will repay it by exploiting their benefactors once they are settled. Ironically, this fictional debate, like many of the real ones, ignored the fact that most of the refugees had no desire to remain in Britain.

The refugee camp as depicted in stylised form on the title-page of The Palatines Catechism

Eventually some 3,000 Palatines were granted the longed-for passage to America, although their new life there as indentured workers was not exactly the future they had imagined. Other groups were settled elsewhere in the British Isles, including over 2,000 sent to Ireland. In the autumn of 1709 a new government banned further shiploads of German immigrants from coming to Britain, and in the following months those that remained in the camps gradually dispersed. Some found their way independently to new homes in Britain or America, but others gave up their hope of a better life in a new country and returned at last to Germany.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies

References/further reading:

Daniel Defoe, A Review of the State of the British Nation. (London, 1704- 1712) C.40.h.1.

Daniel Defoe, A Brief History of the Poor Palatine Refugees (1709), introduction by John Robert Moore. Augustan Reprint Society Publication no. 106 (Los Angeles, 1964). WP.2367a/106

The Palatines’ Catechism, or a true description of their camps at Blackheath and Camberwell. In a pleasant dialogue between an English tradesman and a High-Dutchman (London, 1709). 1076.l.22.

Philip Otterness, ‘The 1709 Palatine Migration and the Formation of German Immigrant Identity in London and New York’  Explorations in Early American Culture, 3 (1999), 8-23.  ZA.9.a.11137 https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/download/25606/25375

Who are the two most famous rabbits in British literature? Do I hear “Peter Rabbit”? Sure, Beatrix Potter’s mischievous rabbit in his blue coat is so famous, he features in our ‘Animal Tales’  exhibition that opened on the 6th of August. “The White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll!” Absolutely, and what’s more,  it celebrates its 150 anniversary this year. (Watch this space for the Library’s commemorations) But there is a third famous little white rabbit who celebrates a big birthday in 2015. Born Dutch in 1955, as main character of a story told by the author/artist Dick Bruna to his son, ‘Nijntje’ appeared in the English language as ‘Miffy’. 

Dick Bruna (Photo by Dolph Kohnstamm (2007) from Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence).

Miffy is known the world over, especially in Japan. She inspired ‘Hello Kitty’ and Japanese artist Atsuhiko Misawa  praises her as having the perfect form. He is one the 60 artists who made Miffy sculptures as part of the Miffy Art Parade. This major event takes place all over the world and is in support of UNICEF.

In the Netherlands celebrations concentrate in Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, birthplace of Bruna. A row of six-foot tall Miffy statues graces the Museumplein in Amsterdam.

Above and below, sculptures from the Miffy 60 parade in Amsterdam  (Photos:  Marja Kingma)

The Rijksmuseum has just opened an exhibition on Dick Bruna, who celebrated his 88th birthday on 23 August. It shows half a century of graphic art in international context.

The British Library holds most Miffy titles published in the UK since 1964, via legal deposit. There is a Welsh translation of one,  Miffi yn yr ysbyty (‘Miffy in Hospital’; X.990/23246), but no Dutch language ones! We normally do not purchase children’s literature from abroad, certainly not if an English edition is already available. Maybe an exception should be made on this occasion?

Marja Kingma, Curator Dutch Language Collections

35 years ago, on 31 August 1980, the Gdańsk Agreement was signed between the strikers of the Lenin Shipyard and the government of the Polish People’s Republic. The Solidarity movement was born.

Poland was a signatory state of the Helsinki Final Act,  signed at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975. This had a tremendous effect on future developments in Poland and subsequently in other countries of the Eastern bloc. Inspired by the Helsinki agreement regarding human rights and civil liberties the dissident movement led to the rise of the unofficial publishing network in 1976. Independent publications produced underground began to infiltrate intellectual circles in Polish society.

The formation of the Solidarity movement in August 1980 resulted in the expansion of opposition publications on an unparalleled scale. Though it may seem strange, the declaration of Martial Law in December 1981 and the repressions that followed did not weaken the underground publishing output. It is estimated that between 1976 and 1990 some 3,000-4,000 independent periodical titles and over 6,000 books and pamphlets were published. The underground publishers and publications are known in Poland as drugi obieg (‘second circulation’).

The collection that found its way to the British Library is named after the Solidarity movement. The name, however, does not reflect the pre-1980 holdings in the collection. Throughout the 1970s and 80s the main means of acquiring dissident material was via anonymous donations. Young Poles travelling to the West smuggled clandestine publications so as to distribute them to Western academic institutions. The British Library was one of the repositories. The curators of the Polish collections at the time also contributed to the growth of this collection.  Their visits to Poland created the opportunity to obtain illegal publications which they then took out of the country secretly.

The situation changed in 1990. The Library bought its first large collection of independent material, consisting of some 900 items, from a private collector in Lublin, Marek Szyszko. There are 808 books in this collection and all the records are tagged with the name of the collector. In 1999 the Library was offered part of the collection of Marek Garztecki, a Polish journalist exiled in London and director of the Solidarity Information Office in London. The collection consisted mainly of some 4,000 underground periodical parts, filling many gaps in the existing holdings. In 2007 a small collection of ephemeral Solidarity publications was purchased from John Taylor, a former London-based Polish Solidarity Campaign activist. Thanks to a generous donation in 2010 of some 1,700 journal parts and about 500 books from the Polish Library in London the collection expanded greatly.

As of in August 2015 the collection consists of 1,759 books, 831 periodical titles and 469 ephemeral publications. All the items are physically stored together at the range of shelfmarks with the prefix Sol. followed by the consecutive numbers 1-911. Books are stored at Sol. 200, 200 a,b,c,…270 w and journals at Sol. 1-199 and Sol. 271-911.  Most records include a note “Polish samizdat publication” and a keyword search enables identification of the relevant items in the catalogue. All the ephemeral publications are located at the shelfmark Sol. 764, and the collective title Polish ephemera applies to the group as a whole.

The collection includes uncensored works by Polish writers whose books were banned from the official market such as Kazimierz Orłoś, Tadeusz Konwicki or Marek Nowakowski. Then follow reprints of émigré publications and translations from foreign languages, including works of such outstanding writers as George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut and Josip Brodski. Newspapers, journals, bulletins, pamphlets, collections of documentary material and photographs, as well as the ‘flying university’ lectures, one-leaf factory news-sheets, posters, postcards, calendars and Solidarity postage stamps complete the holdings. Most of the material was published on very poor quality paper and in small formats due to paper shortage, although it is worth noting that some books were lavishly printed, e.g. George Orwell’s Animal Farm published in Krakow in 1985.  However, many books and pamphlets have incomplete imprints or no imprints at all.

 

Magda Szkuta,Curator of East European Collections

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was born on 28 August 1749, is best known as Germany’s ‘national poet’, but he was a man of many parts. Among his various talents and interests, he was a keen amateur artist. Some 2,600 of his drawings survive, many from his Italian journey in the late 1780s. Goethe himself claimed that that he realised during these travels in Italy that he had ‘no talent for visual art’, but he continued to draw throughout his life, especially landscapes.

The British Library’s Stefan Zweig collection includes three such drawings. The first, Zweig MS 154 (below), depicts the Kammerberg near Eger (modern-day Cheb in the Czech Republic): there is a rocky hillside with a winding path leading up to a small building, perhaps an observatory, which stands on its summit.  Towards the bottom right hand corner two sketchily drawn figures can be seen, apparently working at the edge of a quarry sketched in such a way as to indicate the geological features of the terrain.

The drawing was made during Goethe’s first visit to the Eger region in 1808, an area that he visited 19 times in all.  Having a lifelong interest in geology and geological formations, he was particularly moved to investigate the historical origins of the Kammerberg (now known to be an extinct prehistoric volcano), tending at first to subscribe to the Vulcanist theory that the source of rocks was igneous, but later lending his support to the Neptunist theory of aqueous origins.  He spent his time there collecting samples, making close observations, writing descriptions and making drawings. 

The other two drawings, Zweig MS 217, are mounted back to back in a frame. One depicts castle ruins in a hilly setting with the sharp bend of a river in the foreground;  the other, slightly smaller, shows a river with partially wooded banks winding through an undulating landscape. These views have never been formally identified, but it seems very likely that they are taken from the countryside near Jena, a town for which Goethe had a special affection, regarding it almost as his second home. After his first visit in 1775 he became a frequent visitor, and over the course of his life the sum total of time that he spent there amounted to something like five years. 

The river landscape in the smaller drawing (above) seems to bear quite a strong resemblance to the valley of the Saale, while the ruined castle in the larger drawing (below) may perhaps be the Lobdeburg, a 12th-century fortress above Jena whose medieval owners were credited with founding the town, and which fell into decay around the end of the 16th century. For many years Goethe was accustomed to stay with his friends, the Ziegesar family, in Drackendorf, an area of Jena just below the Lobdeburg, and the ruins were a favourite destination for walks with the young daughter of the house, Sylvie von Ziegesar, one walk in particular delighting him so much that he celebrated by composing the poem ‘Bergschloss’  in 1802.

The dimensions of the two landscapes suggest that one or both of the drawings could have been intended for an album, perhaps Goethe’s  ‘Rotes Reisebüchlein’, an album made in 1808 for 18-year old Wilhelmine Herzlieb, one of the many young women who attracted him and on whom he is said to have modelled the character of Ottilie in his novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften.  

These represent three of the seven Goethe drawings owned by Zweig at various stages of his collecting career, and are the only three of the seven known to be in a public collection. Thanks to the recent digitisation of the literary manuscripts from the Zweig collection, they will soon be available to view via the British Library’s Digitised Manuscripts catalogue.

Pamela Porter, Former Curator of Manuscripts