Prairie Lights

A House Sparrow Feathursday

Once again, we highlight one of our favorite common birds, the cheery House Sparrow (Passer domesticus). Besides being a delightfully homey bird, we learn from Wikipedia that it is also considered a symbol of lust, sexual potency, commonness, and vulgarity. Ooo, la, la!

This image is a wood engraving by British author and wood engraver Eric Fitch Daglish (1892-1966) from his book Birds of the British Isles, published in London by J. M. Dent & Sons in 1948 in a limited edition of 1500 copies, with 23 black and white and 25 hand-colored wood engravings by Daglish. Our copy is a donation from our friend, Wisconsin wood engraver Tony Drehfal.

View more posts from this volume.

Steamy Saturday

Navy Blues by Washington, D.C.'s “Sultan of an X-Rated Empire” J.J. Proferes, was published in D.C. by the gay publishing house Guild Press in 1966. The novel follows the routine life of bisexual Navy Yeoman Barney Reardon. Despite its sleazy appearance, with classic beefcake and Tom of Finland-style illustrations, and several explicit bisexual scenes, Navy Blues is a fairly straightforward, moderately well-written narrative of the life a Navy sailor. We just wouldn't recommend it for little Johnny or Sally to read, or for the priggish reader.

J.J. Proferes was a noted figure in D.C.'s 1960s and 1970s gay community and was instrumental in the city's gay rights struggle. He owned two gay porn cinemas in the early 1970s, the Metropole Cinema and the Mark II, which was charged with obscenity for showing the porn film Deep Throat. The Metropole supported D.C.'s first Gay Pride celebration in May 1972 with special screenings of films during the festival.

Proferes was a friend and colleague of H. Lynn Womack (1923-1985), the owner of the Guild Press, and wrote some 200 hardcore gay pulp novels for the press. The cover design for Navy Blues is by Guild Press art director Vick Lester.

View other gay fiction posts.

View more LGBTQ+ posts.

In BLACK ARMS TO HOLD YOU UP, Ben Passmore brings Black militant history to vivid, unforgettable life. Swipe through to meet some of the revolutionaries he profiles.

Before the uprisings of 2020, there was Assata, Robert Charles, Sayinka Shakur and many others. Grab BLACK ARMS TO HOLD YOU UP at your local bookstore to meet more of the mothers and fathers of the Black Freedom struggle.

Mondays are for Miniatures!

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman has left an unmistakable mark on American poetry as an artform. Originally published in 1855, the book included 12 poems such as “Song of Myself” and “The Sleepers.” By 1892, Leaves of Grass would contain 383 poems.

Entitled ホイットマン詩集 or Hoittoman shishū, which means Whitman’s Poems, this mini was published by Bijou-book Hoshino in Tōkyō. Stylishly housed in a red leather case with a golden chain, this miniature features a blind-stamped (that means stamped with no foil or ink added) publisher’s mark on the back cover, marbled end papers, and a gilt stamped front cover. It measures at 22 x 22 x 10 mm. So this mini is quite small!

It is also tightly bound. You can see that it doesn’t open very far, and that it doesn’t want to remain open to one page. This can happen with books of any size, and the binding will loosen naturally with use. When it comes to tightly bound books, you don’t want to force it open because that can cause the binding to break. Nobody wants that!

-- Hailee M.

Wood Engraving Wednesday

John Roy

These wood engravings are by American artist John Roy (1930-2001) produced for an edition of Mexican-American poet and University of Texas Spanish professor Miguel González-Gerth's (1926-2017) collection of poems, The Infinite Absence, printed in 1964 by Kim Merker (1932-2013) at his Stone Wall Press in Iowa City in an edition of 250 copies.

Our copy, a gift from our late friend Jerry Buff (1931-2025), bears a presentation inscription form the author to Spanish-Canarian literary critic and essayist Juan Marichal (1922–2010).

View other wood engravings by John Roy.

Cover of a Persian manuscript (Collected works of Hafiz, circa 1799).

Decorated with a design in watercolours of a bird amongst flowers painted onto lacquered leather then covered with more coats of lacquer.

National Library NZ on The Commons

Wood Engraving Wednesday

CLARE LEIGHTON

Here are a few engravings from a recent acquisition for our reference collection on the engravings of English/American artist, writer, and illustrator Clare Leighton (1898-1989), Clare Leighton's Rural Life: An Anthology, published in Oxford by the Bodleian Library in 2023. The book was edited with an introduction by Leighton's devoted nephew David Leighton (1931-2022), who sadly did not live to see its publication. Clare Leighton was one of the most prolific and highly regarded wood engravers of her time, leaving behind a body of work that reflected her rural life in Britain and North America.

During the 1930s, as the world around her became increasingly technological, industrial, and urban, Leighton portrayed rural folk and the ancient methods they used to work the land that would soon vanish forever. Her two best-loved publications, Four Hedges (1931) and The Farmer's Year (1933), reflect this passion for the British countryside. Less well known are her books illustrating and describing rural life in the United States, where she emigrated and became a naturalized citizen in 1945. Leighton also spent time in Canada with the logging community, winning the respect of Canadian lumberjacks by adopting their way of life. Her wood engravings depicting lumberjacks in the snow-covered forests of Canada are some of her most evocative prints.

This anthology includes beautifully reproduced extracts and David Leighton's detailed introduction to the artist's life and work, reflecting Clare Leighton's lifelong fascination with the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land.

View more posts with work by Clare Leighton.

View more posts with work by women wood engravers.

View more Women’s History Month posts.