Help to identify unknown book
igs
paragraph:
"I drew a volume from my pocket; blind-tooled on the green in a double
circle was a single star above what was perhaps a sea. It was the tenth
edition, of 1917."
The paragraph above was written in the 1930s, and the description is
believed to be factual. It is believed that it refers to a British book
which would have been quite well-known at the time.
I have placed an my own "artist's impressions" of what I think the logo
might look like at the following address:
http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.g.simpson/bitmaps/motif.jpg although
other interpretations might be equally valid.
I believe this to be either a publisher's logo or perhaps a school
crest, but so far my enquiries have drawn a blank. Any suggestions
which might assist with the identification of the book would be most
welcome.
Thanks for any help.
my-wings
news:1126556457....@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Can anyone help me identify the book described in the following
> paragraph:
>
> "I drew a volume from my pocket; blind-tooled on the green in a double
> circle was a single star above what was perhaps a sea. It was the tenth
> edition, of 1917."
>
> The paragraph above was written in the 1930s, and the description is
> believed to be factual. It is believed that it refers to a British book
> which would have been quite well-known at the time.
>
Are there any other contextual clues? For instance, did he say that after
drawing the volume from his pocket he proceeded to lose himself in the rich
iambic pentameter of the verse? or perhaps he confirmed that the 4:10 from
London didn't stop at St. Mary Meade on Tuesdays?
I found three books on AddALL with "1917," "10th," and "green" in their
descriptions. None of them look particularly promising, but you never know:
1. Digest of the Mercantile Laws of Canada and Newfoundland
Anger, William Henry 18.00 W.H. Anger, Toronto GOOD 10th Edition. Nice
green cloth boards show light shelf-wear, front hinge cracked, endpaper
missing, all text excellent. 6.75" by 10", 280 pages. From the title page:
"Digest of the Mercantile Laws of Canada and Newfoundland, the technical
points and main features of both the common and statute laws, together with
the various legal and business documents in general use, forming a work of
ready-reference for magistrates, conveyancers, professional and business
men, landowners, contractors, etc. Lawyers will also find it convenient as a
condensed and well-classified collection of vital legal points for the
various provinces. Tenth edition, seventy-fourth thousand, W.H. Anger, Law
Book Publisher, Toronto, 1917."
2. Dumb-Bell of Brookfield
John Taintor Foote, Illustrated by B&w Frontis of the Dog 20.00 N Y:
Appleton and Company, 1922 Hardcover Hard Cover. Very Good+/No Jacket. 10th
Printing (1917). 12mo - over 6พ" - 7พ" tall. This is Foote"s classic of the
setter that made good.in trials. Green cover, gold lettering, spine a bit
duller than cover lettering. [Northfield, MN, U.S.A.]
3. KITCHENER'S MOB. The Adventures of an American in the British Army.
HALL, (John Norman). 16.50 CA Canadian edition from sheets of the US 10th
printing (US first printing was May, 1916). Green cloth stamped in black.
[x], 201, [1], [6, pub ads] pp + portrait frontis (tissue guard). 1918 gift
inscription on verso of half title, light cover spots, yellowing to page
edges, light soil spots to margins of a couple of pages, a VG tight and
unworn copy otherwise. Fictionalized account. Hardcover. 12mo. Toronto:
Thomas Allen / Boston & NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1917.
Alice
--
Book collecting terms illustrated. Occasional books for sale.
http://www.mywingsbooks.com/
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
> Can anyone help me identify the book described in the following
> paragraph:
> "I drew a volume from my pocket; blind-tooled on the green in a double
> circle was a single star above what was perhaps a sea. It was the tenth
> edition, of 1917."
> The paragraph above was written in the 1930s, and the description is
> believed to be factual. It is believed that it refers to a British book
> which would have been quite well-known at the time.
It's very difficult to come up with anything on such a slim
description, especially since the tooled leather might be a rebinding,
rather than a publisher's binding.
Just a thought, though. The writer thought to specify the edition, and
for most people and most books it wouldn't really matter much what
edition it was. One context in which it *would* matter, though, would
be a traveller consulting a travel guide.
The classic guide book was Baedeker, and the ultimate accolade was to
be awarded a Baedeker's star, but I never heard of there being a star
and sea design on the cover.
Also, they were issued in cloth (generally red cloth), so a red
herring, perhaps, unless it was rebound, but that's all that comes to
mind offhand.
my-wings
"John R. Yamamoto-Wilson" <jo...@rarebooksinjapan.com> wrote in message
news:1126598754.9...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> igs wrote:
>
>> Can anyone help me identify the book described in the following
>> paragraph:
>
>> "I drew a volume from my pocket; blind-tooled on the green in a double
>> circle was a single star above what was perhaps a sea. It was the tenth
>> edition, of 1917."
>
>> The paragraph above was written in the 1930s, and the description is
>> believed to be factual. It is believed that it refers to a British book
>> which would have been quite well-known at the time.
>
> It's very difficult to come up with anything on such a slim
> description, especially since the tooled leather might be a rebinding,
> rather than a publisher's binding.
>
> Just a thought, though. The writer thought to specify the edition, and
> for most people and most books it wouldn't really matter much what
> edition it was. One context in which it *would* matter, though, would
> be a traveller consulting a travel guide.
>
That's a good point, John. To be referred to like that, it almost has to be
a reference work of some sort, and small enough to put in one's pocket.
There aren't may kinds of reference works that would be routinely carried in
the pocket except a travel guide or perhaps a field guide, but I would
expect the decoration on a field guide to be more appropriate to the
content: a bird, a flower, a leaf. Maybe a phrase-book? (¿Dónde está el
baño?) I can't believe there aren't more clues in context. Why, for
instance, is the description believed factual, and why is the book believed
to be British and well-known?
Alice
I like a puzzle.
igs
>That's a good point, John. To be referred to like that, it almost has to be
>a reference work of some sort, and small enough to put in one's pocket.
>There aren't may kinds of reference works that would be routinely carried in
>the pocket except a travel guide or perhaps a field guide, but I would
>expect the decoration on a field guide to be more appropriate to the
>content: a bird, a flower, a leaf. Maybe a phrase-book? (¿Dónde está el
>baño?) I can't believe there aren't more clues in context. Why, for
>instance, is the description believed factual, and why is the book believed
>to be British and well-known?
The description comes from a puzzle mystery by the 1930s British
crossword setter Torquemada (Edward Powys Mathers). In his Torquemada
Puzzle Book, a short novelette was included which had the pages printed
in a random order. A prize was offered to whoever could put the pages
in the correct sequence, but the solution to the puzzle was lost long
ago. I run a mailing list of about 20 people attempting to rediscover
the correct solution.
We have discovered many other carefully laid clues within the text,
which is why I believe the description of the book to be factual and
recognisable to a 1930s British reader. Unfortunately, enquiries to
date (including many hours spent by me in secondhand book shops looking
for this logo) have drawn a complete blank as to the book's identity.
igs
> You may already have trawled abebooks.co.uk ? If not, one possiblity
> found there is
>
<snipped>
Thanks for that, and the previous suggestions, which will be filed away
for future reference. Any other suggestions are welcomed!
The earlier idea of Baedeker is interesting, as the Michelin Guide to
the British Isles has already been thought of, but 1917 seems too early
for the 10th edition and the logo seems wrong.
As to the binding, my own thoughts are that it is an original
publisher's binding. A rebound book (perhaps a school prize binding) is
possible, of course, but I don't think that would leave us with enough
information to identify the contents, as the edition and date on their
own are not sufficient.
stretford_end
quite well-known at the time.>
It would only have been known to a very specific, and really quite
small, section of the British public. Crossword puzzles in the upmarket
press, particularly at that time, virtually mandated a classical
education if there was to be any hope of success. Not neccessarily an
education that culminates in a double first at Oxbridge, but one that
entails solid servings of Greek and Latin over six or seven years; ie.
the English public schools (and the grammers which sought to emulate
them.)
Mathers had a very specific audience, a (very) rough demographic of
which might be achieved thus:
1- Select for U (as opposed to non-U); English upper and upper-middle
class; educated, widely travelled and relatively wealthy.
2- Further select for literary interest and satisfaction achieved
through intellectual stimulation (this gets rid of a much of (1), vide
Crick's biography of Orwell.)
This is really quite a small pool (compared to the total population)
and standing neck-deep in the middle is Mathers himself.
Mathers the scholar, the linguist, the orientalist; Mathers the
obscure; Mathers the poet.
<I drew a volume from my pocket; blind-tooled on the green in a double
circle was a single star above what was perhaps a sea. It was the tenth
edition, of 1917.>
Context is everything.
Baedecker only works if the book is withdrawn outside of the UK; at
home it would be a railway or shipping time table - unusual in tooled
green bindings.
My guess is a book of poetry.
Context again; is he in a graveyard? Gray's Elegy then; no, much to
early.
Tennyson dies in 1892. A memorial volume, tenth edition in 1917? much
too hackneyed.
I think that Mathers oriental interests provide a major clue. This all
occurs at a time when the old classicism was seen to be a bit boring,
neccessary certainly, but far too available, too mundane. Your real,
serious, intellectual had to be fluent in Sanskrit and (maybe) Farsi
(see Elliot and The Wasteland.) Mathers was quite famous for his
translation of The Arabian Nights, and this after Burton. And is it
coincidental that Mathers' first poetic work is entitled "Coloured
Stars"?
So, it's not a book of English poetry, at least in the original.
There is a very obvious candidate:
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night . . .
Alas! too obvious, and only five editions.
<The book finishes with a 100-page detective story called 'Cain's
Jawbone'. What makes the story so special is that the pages are printed
in the wrong order. Each page has been written so as to finish at the
end of a sentence and readers were invited to work out the correct page
sequence. Despite the offer of a cash prize, only three correct
solutions were received by the publishers!>
Difficult, but not impossible.
Francis A. Miniter
Curiously, my first reaction to the description was that it was a book
associated with a secret society or lodge of some kind. Think of the well-known
symbolism of freemasonry, for instance.
So I decided to check out the symbols. Googling on "star sea circle" and at
least one of "symbol signify" I first found this:
http://www.egyptianmyths.net/star.htm
"It was believed that the stars did not just inhabit this world, but in the Duat
(land of the afterlife) as well. The Egyptians believed that the ba might ascend
to the sky to live as a star in heaven. Many tombs also featured deep blue
ceilings dotted with bright yellow stars in the exact image of the hieroglyph in
hopes to make the ba feel at home in its new dwelling place. The stars were
called the "Followers of Osiris and represented the souls in the underworld. The
five-pointed star within a circle was the Egyptian symbol of the Duat."
Then another site - http://www.angelfire.com/nt/dragon9/PENTAGRAM.html -
(which dealt with the Pentagram and showed a very interesting star setup within
concentric circles) mentioned The Mermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, and I went
straightway to their web site,
http://www.hermeticgoldendawn.org/index.shtml ,
which yielded (about 2/3 the way down the page) an interesting circle containing
a six-pointed star and within that a sun rising [dawn remember] over the sea.
I hope that this helps. I will try later after I get some more work done.
Francis A. Miniter
ReadingStore
associated with a secret society or lodge of some kind. Think of the
well-known
symbolism of freemasonry, for instance. "
My thoughts exactly. Freemasonry, Rosicrusians, magick. The description
of the book does not seem to be enough to identify a book, only enough
to confirm the books identity to an insider.
Then you come across a book such as:
Abraham ben Simeon, of Worms, 15th cent.
The book of the sacred magic of Abra-Melin the Mage, as delivered
by
Abraham the Jew unto his son Lamech, A.D. 1458 / Abraham the Jew ;
translated by S. L. MacGregor-Mathers,. 2d ed. London : J. M.
Watkins,
1900.
This is probably written by a relative of Edward Powys Mathers. And is
often described in terms such as "the most dangerous book ever
written".
More info on S. L. MacGregor-Mathers here:
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/S.L.+Mathers
S. L. MacGregor-Mathers apparently wrote or translated many books on
occult work. Most books of this type are not on the market, but are
locked in collections. Incidentally, these works are filled with
double-circle and star symbolism, and anachrostic word combinations.
Interestingly, S. L. MacGregor-Mathers died in 1918, so his last
literary work would probably be 1917! My guess is that it is one of his
works.
Neal
Francis A. Miniter
By way of follow-up, I found this image associated with the Stella Matinuta, an
organization that continued after the demise of the original Hermetic Order of
the Golden Dawn: http://www.geocities.com/academie23_stella/front.html
Notice the sort of bar under the star that is within the circle of light.
Looking through all this made me feel like Casaubon in "Foucault's Pendulum",
plowing through the computer files of his friend, Belbo, with all the references
I found to the Aleister Crowley, the Templars, the Rosicrucians and the Kabbalah.
Finally, I found this site
http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/symbolism/pentagrams.html
http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/pentagram.html
associated with the Masons, which toward the bottom features an image with two
concentric circles enclosing a five-pointed star with writing about it.
Apparently, even the badge of the Texas Rangers is a double circle - star
configuration and Stephen Austin (who established the Texas Rangers) was
apparently a freemason.
Still more finally (??), mention should be made to the concept of the "star of
the sea", research on which led to the following find:
http://www.discoverthepath.com/gds-june.htm
"As for the Roman Goddess Juno who ruled well before Christianity, Walker also
notes that the star shaped sceptre, which was her symbol, identified her as Star
of the Sea, or Stella Maris, a name that is often heard today."
At this point, (clearly, post-finally) it occurred to me that Aleister Crowley
kept popping up a lot here. He was an Englishman reputed to be "the wickedest
man on Earth", and perhaps by his own attempts to spread that reputation. And
he wrote in the relevant time period. For instance, his book, "The Star and the
Garter" (77 pages) was published in 1904, leaving plenty of time for a 10th
edition by 1917. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find detailed
descriptions of the book. Could the "perhaps a sea" actually be the depiction
of a garter?
Then there was the Ordo Templi Orientis, founded in 1902, in part by Aleister
Crowley, which had a constitution that was regularly published since 1906, and,
in fact, there was a 1917 revised edition of the constitution.
http://www.hermetic.com/heidrick/oto_history.html
1917 was the year in which Lugano, Switzerland became its principal
headquarters, if that helps at all. They also published regular membership lists.
As an aside, L. Ron Hubbard became involved with the Agape Lodge (in Los
Angeles) of the Ordo Templi Orientis, where he became sexually involved with
Jack Parsons, a student of Crowley, and with Parsons' girlfirend. Now I really
feel that I am writing like Belbo.
Another Crowley possibility is "The Book of the Law", first published in 1904
and a critical text of the O.T.O. Crowley claimed it was dictated to him from a
supernatural source while he was in Cairo in April 1904, between the hours of
noon and 1 pm on three successive days. It is a fairly short book.
Franics A. Miniter
fundoc
"Francis A. Miniter" <min...@attglobalZZ.net> wrote in message
news:43278...@news1.prserv.net...
> igs wrote:
> > Can anyone help me identify the book described in the following
> > paragraph:
> >
> > "I drew a volume from my pocket; blind-tooled on the green in a double
> > circle was a single star above what was perhaps a sea. It was the tenth
> > edition, of 1917."
> >
> > The paragraph above was written in the 1930s, and the description is
> > believed to be factual. It is believed that it refers to a British book
> > which would have been quite well-known at the time.
> >
> > I have placed an my own "artist's impressions" of what I think the logo
> > might look like at the following address:
> > http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.g.simpson/bitmaps/motif.jpg although
> > other interpretations might be equally valid.
> >
> > I believe this to be either a publisher's logo or perhaps a school
> > crest, but so far my enquiries have drawn a blank. Any suggestions
> > which might assist with the identification of the book would be most
> > welcome.
> >
> > Thanks for any help.
> >
>
> Curiously, my first reaction to the description was that it was a book
> associated with a secret society or lodge of some kind. Think of the
well-known
> symbolism of freemasonry, for instance.
Yes, quite, a "quite well known" volume having to do with a "secret" society.
The Royal Order of the Golden Oxymorons perhaps. I think you're on to something.
Al Smith
The "Book of Abramelin" was translated into English from a French
manuscript Mathers came across in the Bibliotheque Arsenal. The
attribution to Abraham the Jew is spurious, as is the supposed date.
Mathers didn't really write any books. The closest he came to
composing a book of his own was his little pamphlet on the Tarot.
He translated and edited less than half a dozen occult
manuscripts, and did a partial translation from the Latin of Knorr
von Rosenroth's "Kabbalah Denudata," which Mathers published under
the title "The Kabbalah Unveiled." This work was financed by his
friend, the Master Mason Dr. Wynn Westcott, as a way of helping
Mathers out at a time when he couldn't afford to buy food for
himself. It was a charity commission.
Mathers went on to found the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
along with Westcott and Woodman, two fellow Freemasons. Most of
the important writings of Mathers are the working papers of that
secret Rosicrucian society, but it may be incorrect to attribute
them to Mathers since he claimed that he received them psychically
from the "secret chiefs" of the Golden Dawn.
Jerry Morris
A very interesting thread!
Francis A. Miniter brought up the possiblity that the book was a work by
Aleister Crowley:
"......At this point, (clearly, post-finally) it occurred to me that
Aleister Crowley kept popping up a lot here. He was an Englishman
reputed to be "the wickedest man on Earth", and perhaps by his own
attempts to spread that reputation. And he wrote in the relevant time
period. For instance, his book, "The Star and the Garter" (77 pages) was
published in 1904, leaving plenty of time for a 10th edition by 1917.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find detailed descriptions of the
book. Could the "perhaps a sea" actually be the depiction of a garter?"
I queried Clive Harper, the Osman Spare bibliographer. Clive was the
Aleister Crowley collector who bid against me in December 2003:
http://www.tinyurl.com/3yblp
According to Clive Harper, Crowley's Star and the Garter never made it
to a tenth edition. The only Crowley book published in 1917 was Volume
II of his Book of Laws, sometimes referred to as the Holy Books. They
were published in velum-covered boards, however.
Time to put the thinking cap on....The mystery book was mentioned in a
book of puzzles. Perhaps there is more to the description than meets
the eye. For a book to go into its tenth edition, it must have been
published by a popular publisher. If it is a publisher's device in
blind, maybe there is more to the device than is mentioned in the
description.
I went through my library, concentrating on the popular series
publishers, and struck paydirt with the publisher's device of Henry G.
Bohn: http://www.tinyurl.com/7q6uh
This device was used for Henry Bohn's Standard Library, his Classical
LIbrary. Philosophical Library, and Popular Library to name a few.
There is a star within the double circled border which identifies the
Bohn's Library series.
There's only one problem. Henry G. Bohn was long dead by 1917. George
Bell & Sons, however, continued to publish reprints of the Bohn
libraries up to at least the 1930s. A check at abebooks reveals that
some of these books published by George Bell & Sons contained the Bohn
Library device in blind on their covers.
I'm betting the book was published by George Bell & Sons, and that it is
from one of the Bohn Libraries.
Jerry Morris
Welcome to Moi's Books About Books: http://www.tinyurl.com/hib7
My Sentimental Library http://www.picturetrail.com/mylibrary
moislibrary.com http://www.tinyurl.com/hisn and
http://www.floridabibliophilesociety.org
