The Oriental Annual, or Scenes in India; Comprising Twenty-Five Engravings from Original Drawings by William Daniell, R.A. and a Descriptive Account by the Rev. Hobart Caunter, B.D. London: Published by Edward Bull, Holles Street, Cavendish Square. 1834.

This beautifully bound book contains a series of dramatized vignettes about the lives of English colonists in early 19th-century India. The author states his aim as “to blend entertainment with information,—to record such events as he considered best calculated to amuse, at the same time that they should afford an insight into the habits, manners, and national prejudices of a remote and extraordinary people.” Written as a first-person ethnographic view of colonial India, The Oriental Annual seems to blend observation with imagination.

The Oriental Annual was an early 19th-century periodical featuring travel writing from especially the Indian subcontinent. Published in London, its primary readership was arguably the English high society. Whereas today’s readers approach The Oriental Annual with an understanding of its penchant for exaggeration and reliance on stereotyped South Asian vignettes (see the extract from this volume’s final story, “A Tiger Hunt”), Georgian and later Victorian readers may have taken the stories at face value or at least trusted Hobart Caunter’s narrative more than we are inclined to do today.

Shakespeare, William. Venus und Adonis; Tarquin und Lukrezia. Zwei Gedichte von Shakespeare. Trans. Albrecht, H.C. Printed in Halle by Gebauer, J.J., 1783.

This German translation of Shakespeare’s poems “Venus and Adonis” (1593) and “The Rape of Lucrece” (1594) stands out from other German versions of the poems not only because of its age, but because it contains Albrecht’s German on the right and Shakespeare’s original English on the left. Note how Gebauer’s typesetting changes from an ornate Gothic font in German to a relatively more legible English typeface.

The printer, Johann Jacob Gebauer, worked in the German city of Halle in the late eighteenth century. In 1783, Halle was a major educational and intellectual center because of the two major universities nearby: University of Halle and University of Wittenberg (now united in the Martin Luther University). Gebauer’s family-run publishing house was closely affiliated with both universities, thereby explaining how Johann Jacob got access to two of Shakespeare’s less canonical poems.

Book of the Week, 19 May 2016:

Home, Robert. Select views in Mysore, the country of Tippoo Sultan / from drawings taken on the spot by Mr. Home ; with historical descriptions.  London: published by Mr. Bowyer, 1794.

Select views in Mysore, the country of Tippoo Sultan contains illustrations of locations in Mysore and around Southern India. The illustrations are accompanied by foldout maps and plans, along with descriptions about the places shown in English and Persian. 

Book of the Week: 12 May 2016

Twentysix Gasoline Stations by Edward Ruscha, 3rd ed. (lmtd. to 3000 copies), published by Cunningham Press: Alhambra, CA, 1969.

Tonight: Found in the Archives: A Lange Nacht Scavenger Hunt!

Be the first to answer one of the 20 questions and win a one-of-a-kind prize! 

Reading room doors open at 10pm. To answer a question, you’ll need to identify the relevant item from our collections, come to the reading room, and request the item by call number or archival folder number. We’ll bring you the item from the stacks. When you’ve found the answer, notify Nicholas and claim your prize! 

Book of The Week: 14 April 2016

Min Hunāk, by Taha Hussein, published by Dār Rūz al-Yūsuf, Cairo, 1955.

Taha Hussein was an Egyptian writer and intellectual active during the 20th century.  Educated in France, Hussein was a prolific author and theorist as well as translator.  A staunch Egyptian nationalist, he is also remembered as the most prominent advocate of the nationalist ideology of Pharaonism, a belief that Egypt is more closely tied to the Mediterranean than the Arab world because of its ancient roots, and seeks to recover a pre-Islamic Egyptian identity.  In 1950 he was appointed the Minister of Education, and arguably was one of Egypt’s preeminent 20th century public intellectuals and the figurehead of the later period of Al-Nahda, the Egyptian or Arab Renaissance.

Min Hunāk (From There) is a work that illuminates aspects of literary criticism through its form, by trying to reorient the narrator and reader, changing the perspective of both.  Little information exists online about it compared to more famous Hussein works, but the work as a retelling of stories told by French narrators and the attention it draws to drawing the reader into the work are consistent with his intellectual pursuits.  The story is the story of the story, intensely aware and focusing on meta-narrative. 

Book of the Week 25/2/2016

A Way of Seeing: Photographs of New York by Helen Levitt with an essay by James Agee, 1965. 

Known as the “most celebrated and least known photographer of her time”, Levitt’s street photographs of urban New York were taken over a number of years beginning in the early 1940s. The work was not published until about two decades later.

Levitt was mesmerized by the buzz of a richly sociable urban community at the core of poor neighborhoods. Perhaps this is why her photographs resemble a family archive -- relatable and intriguing about one’s past.

Transcending boundaries, from newborn to elderly beyond skin color and class, Levitt’s photography reveals the authentic nature of an inclusive New York. 

Although children animate the majority of Levitt’s photographs, there is minimum infantilism present in the photos.

Energetic and thoughtful, happy and sad, proud and humble -- Levitt’s photographs cover the entire spectrum of human feelings right at the heart of live action and irreversible time.

This emotional roller-coaster is captured in James Agee’s words, “an uninsistent but irrefutable manifesto of a way of seeing, and … a major poetic work.”

Levitt is posthumously represented by Laurence Miller Gallery - for those of you in New York, there is a current exhibition of her photographs at the gallery, open now through February 27th.