I donât know exactly where Camp Good Hope was, but you needed snowshoes to get there in March of 1909. This manuscript birch bark souvenir book is so precious someone stitched a bow though it. đ
Tactile printing in this 1836 edition of Pilgrimâs Progress. Set in Boston Line Type (in Boston), it precedes the first book printed in Braille by a year, and is a landmark publication for the blind. A little sweet pea Valentine tucked between the pages too.
The tintype photographic process was portable and less expensive than its predecessors like daguerrotype, and as such made photography accessible to a wider swathe of society than ever. Particularly popular in America, entrepreneurial travelling photographers developed a range of tricks for achieving the relatively long exposures required to capture a positive image. These included head rests for adult subjects, but for infants a more creative solution was settled upon. The babyâs mother, or nurse or assistant, was seated on a chair and fully draped in cloth, in order to provide support and comfort to the child without also appearing in the final photograph. This resulted in a convention known colloquially as âhidden mother photographyâ.
What did we do to deserve @zarella94 ? Pick up your copy of PBSA @bibsocamer to read Sara DâAmicoâs article on Sarah de Laredo: Historian, Bibliographer, Woman. A Jewish Londoner of American and Gibraltan extraction, De Laredo worked for and with @maggsbros in the interwar period, cataloguing Spanish and Portuguese books and manuscripts, and writing for the great Maggs customer King Manuel II of Portugal. De Laredo was an accomplished palaeographer and cryptographer, deciphering the encoded correspondence between Queen Luisa de GuzmĂĄn and the Portuguese Ambassador in England in the 17th century. She never married, fraternised with suffragettes, made paintings on old vellum, and was involved with the Gaudiya Vaishnavist Hindu mission.
Working for a company with such rich history is a privilege, and for a scholar like Sara dâAmico to take the time and care to uncover the story of this amazing womanâs connection to our bookshop feels like a gift.
Thank you Sara, especially for this piece of de Laredoâs advice:
âThe completely intellectual mind must generate thought; it is not enough merely to pack the memory with a vast number of correct factsâ.
1. Jacky loose with Shacks. Also turned nasty. Dangerous dog. Laughing.
2. Towser receiving homage after a stone carrying performance. Stone balanced on top of rock in foreground.
3. Beedee at home. Note her cute look!
4. Hector looking puzzled about it?
5. The Major (before the bite) wants to fight camera even!
These are just a few of the many dog portraits captured by Aubrey Howard Ninnis, during his time in the Ross Sea Party, on Ernest Shackletonâs 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
A very special visit from @londonfirebrigade hero @activated.char.scroll who was doing their blue light training through Bloomsbury today. Char and I have been friends for over a decade, and Iâm so proud of who they are and what they do. From the rare bookshops of London, thank you for your service! â¤ď¸âđĽđ§đźâđđđ§Żđ¨đŤś
American labour organiser and Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs was jailed in 1919 for delivering a series of impassioned pacifist speeches, and charged with impeding the war effort. This book of poems was compiled by his literary supporters, and signed by him from the Atlanta Penitentiary. âWhile there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal element, I am of it. While there is a soul in jail, I am not free.â
And my favourite, this rare account of the life of Narcisse Pelletier, a French cabin boy who was shipwrecked and marooned off the coast of Australia, rescued by an Uutaalanganu family, and spent the next seventeen years living with them. In 1875 he was encountered by the crew of a pearler called the John Bell, and had his world turned upside down again when they took him back to France. During his time in Indigenous Australian society he received tribal scarifications and piercings, and as such was considered a curiosity back in Europe. He toured briefly as a circus attraction, but ended up a lighthouse keeper.
Beautiful 1934 Bentley 3 1/2 litre Sports Roadster (I think!) parked outside the shop this morning. Reminds me of the pic of our Conduit Street store from around then. Final shot in 1939, just after we moved out to 50 Berkeley Square⌠good timing. @maggsbros
