The Cruickshank Almanacks

"He has told a thousand truths in as many strange and fascinating ways; he has given a thousand new and pleasant thoughts to millions of
people; he has never used his wit dishonestly; he has never, in all
the exuberance of his frolicsome humor, caused a single painful or
guilty blush." [William Makepeace Thackeray]

The most prolific satirist, book illustrator and caricaturist, George Cruikshank (1792-1878), son of a humorist painter and father to some 15,000 etchings and engravings, continued in the english artistic tradition of predecessors, Hogarth and Gilray.

Cruikshank began by engraving political cartoons and would eventually contribute illustrations to much of the literature and childrens stories of his day. He collaborated (and collided) with Dickens on a couple of books and was a fervent supporter of the temperance movement.

The images above come from The Comic Almanack, an Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest -
"The Comic Almanack, was started in 1835, organized around the etchings of George Cruikshank with textual contributions by Thackeray and others. In addition to an increased emphasis on visual satire, The Comic Almanack distinguishes itself from its predecessors by its moderation and the mildness of its satire, its embrace of reform instead of reaction or revolution".


Over the last several months when I'd been hunting down particularly interesting material I often came up empty handed and a recurring frustrating result from my searchings was a defunct repository at the University of Brighton in the U.K. So in the last 10 days it has been very pleasing to find that Chris Mullen (after some sort of dispute with Brighton University) has been reposting much of this same material onto his own website.

I've posted images from at least 5 of these books in the last week and I've hardly even scratched the surface - I really don't know the extent of the material available but it's all rare and only a small amount of what I've seen is online anywhere else.

The downside is that, despite there being a large amount of illustrated material at the Fulltable site, the server is exceedingly slow. It was that fact which made me refrain from shouting it out previously. Chris is still actively uploading material and the link to the Almanack etchings has only been fixed in the last few hours. To the best of my knowledge/searching only a few of the 40 or so Almanack illustrations are elsewhere on the web.

• The main Fulltable site: The Visual Telling of Stories: A Database Dedicated to the Study of the Narrative in Visual Form.
• The Comic Almanack of 1843, with a link to other Cruikshank Almanack illustrations near the bottom of the page.
• George Cruikshank at wikipedia.
• George Cruikshank by HM Thackeray at Project Gutenburg.
• Previous related posts.

Thought Forms

"As knowledge increases, the attitude of science toward the things of the invisible world is undergoing considerable modification. Its attention is no longer directed solely to the earth with all its variety of objects, or to the physical worlds around it; but it finds itself compelled to glance further afield, and to construct hypotheses as to the nature of the matter and force which lie in the regions beyond the ken of its instruments.

The fact is that science has pressed its researches so far, has used such rare ingenuity in its questionings of nature, has shown such tireless patience in its investigations, that it is receiving the reward of those who seek, and forces and beings of the next higher plane of nature are beginning to show themselves on the outer edge of the physical field."

First published in installments in Lucifer, the book Thought Forms was brought out by theosophist and activist, Annie Wood Besant in 1905.

I have only limited public liability coverage and as I cannot guarantee that space cadets readers are wearing a properly fitted tinfoil chapeau, I feel duty bound not to elucidate upon the meanings of these illustrations.

• The images here were beamed to me from fulltable who are hosts to an incomplete but large-ish format display of example illustrations from Thought Forms.
• All 58 images as well as a full transcript of the text is available to cautious teleporters at the AnandGholap site.
• Alternatively Project Gutenburg will ensure you become enlightened.

Addit: I've possibly come across as disparaging Annie Wood Besant unfairly with my flippant remarks. She is certainly much more complex and her accomplishments much more tangible than this singular work might otherwise suggest. She was in fact a groundbreaking feminist, trade union organizer and political reformer in both the UK and India; beyond any slanted attitudes her adherence to the Theosophical Society might inspire. More at Victorian Web.

Studies in Design

Studies in Design 1876: Christopher Dresser: artist; A Goater: lithographer - in 6 thumbnail pages at NYPL.

Northern Voyage II

Drakter til bondekoner i områdene rundt Moskva

Bulgarsk familie i Moskva

Gripsholmslottet, motiv tatt fra Mälar

Båtbyggebasseng i Karlskrona

Inni stallen til Circassiens i Warsawa

Inni en norsk-samisk hytte i Kautokeino, Finnmark

Broporten i gamlebyen i Praha

Katedralen i Krakow

Stopp for Nord-kommisjonen i Lupsäkoppi, Finnmark,
8. September 1839, hos en familie med flyttsamer

• The above images come from Volume II of Voyages en Scandinavie, en Laponie, au Spitzberg et aux Feröe, pendant les années 1838, 1839 et 1840, sur la corvette la Recherche from the National Archives in Norway. This book covers Lapland, Sweden, Russia and Poland with occasional Finnish, Czech and Lithuanian settings.
• Volume I from a few weeks ago.

Etching Shakespeare

Where the bee sucks, there suck I
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily:
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
"The Tempest" (5.1.97-103)

The Etching Club was a social and professional association of twelve painter-etchers formed in London to revive etching as an illustrative artform. Members included Charles West Cope, Richard Redgrave, John Callcott Horsley, Frederick Dielman, Samuel Palmer, John Bell and William Holman Hunt.

The club promoted the rendering of original works during a period when reproduction of old masters was in vogue thus they helped invigorate the emerging art scene in England. It issued 10 volumes of original etchings during its life (1838-1885), most often accompanying literary works.

• The 10 page publication, Songs of Shakespeare, Illustrated by the Etching Club (1843) is hosted within the Arts Collection at the University of Wisconsin.
• There is very little online about The Etching Club and the information above was essentially gleaned from here, here and here.

Tycho Mechanica

"I've studied all available charts of the planets and stars and none of them match the others. There are just as many measurements and methods as there are astronomers and all of them disagree. What's needed is a long term project with the aim of mapping the heavens conducted from a single location over a period of several years." [Tycho Brahe, aged 17]

Quadrans Muralis Tichonican
Mural or Tychonian quadrant

Sextans Chalybeus Pro Distantiis Per Unicum Obeservatrem Dimetiendis
Steel sextant for measuring distances by one single observer

Semicirculus Magnus Azimuthalis
Great semicircular azimuth

Quadrans Mediocsis Orichalcicus Azimuthalis
Medium sized Azimuth quadrant of brass

Quadrans Volubilis
Revolving azimuth quadrant

Armilae Aeqatoriæ Maximæ Sesquialtero Constantes Circulo
The great equatorial armillary instrument
with one complete circle, and one semicircle

Danish nobleman astronomer, astrologer and alchemist, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) established with royal patronage his "long term project" at Hven (an island between Denmark and Sweden) where he built his first observatory, Uraniborg.

It was here that he and his assistants constructed massive instruments to help Brahe's assiduous observations (without the aid of a telescope) and calculations in relation to the positions of the heavenly bodies. Alas, none of the instruments has survived.

Privately published in 1598, Astronomiæ Instauratæ Mechanica was actually intended to showcase Brahe's talents in order to secure further funding after a royal death and withdrawl of his allowance. The original woodcuts and engravings were hand coloured and the first trade printing, the year after Brahe's death, only differed by including a portrait of the author.

"The instruments of Tycho Brahe represent a major achievement in astronomical science, because they provided much more accurate readings than previously possible, and on the basis of Tycho Brahe's observations Kepler determined the laws of planetary motions and from these laws Newton discovered the law of gravity. Not until the invention of the telescope some years after Tycho Brahe's death was it possible to get more accurate readings."

• A digitized version of the first printing is online at the Danish Royal Library - The Astronomical Instruments of Tycho Brahe (in english, with transcripts)
• The black and white image above comes from the Smithsonian exhibition - this version has large jpegs of full pages.
• Another version of the 1602 edition at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania (thumbnails).
• Tycho Brahe biography at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
• Tychobrahe.com - A Universal Website.
• Tycho Brahe curriculum vitae (well, a timeline anyway)
• Wikipedia.
• Tycho Brahe's Nose And The Story Of His Pet Moose.
• Strange Cases from the Files of Astronomical Sociology.

Manuscripts from India

Winged Horse and Angel
Al-Qazwini’s Ajaib Al-Makhluqat's manuscript ('Wonders of Creation')
[Bijapur, Karnataka, India] 1570

Two Winged Angels
Al-Qazwini’s Ajaib Al-Makhluqat's manuscript ('Wonders of Creation')
[Bijapur, Karnataka, India] 1570

The Python Swallows Nanda (Recto), Singeing of the Python (Verso),
Folio from a Bhagavata Purana (Ancient Stories of the Lord)
[Mewar, Rajasthan, India] 1600-1650
{Trivia: This folio page was donated by Michael Douglas and his former wife Diandra}

Four Lines of Elegant Nastaliq Calligraphy
Fakir Abdul Hai
[Deccan plateau, India] 18th century

A Jain Manuscript Cover
Gold silver and silk thread on silk backing
[Rajasthan, India] late 19th century

Battle Scene in a City
Folio from a Ramayana
[?Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India] early 17th century

It's commendable to find that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has posted more than half of its holdings online (I imagine the British Library haven't reached 1%). The images here are in the South and South East Asia section among the 'Book Manuscript Album'- about 200 images in total - with a particularly strong Tibetan component.

I haven't checked out the rest of the site but with such a general dearth of Asian material online I'm happy to find anything that has been well digitized, even when the illustrations are only modestly sized.

Which reminds me, although I don't feel any particular responsibility to post material from unusual places, it's something that I like doing because it interests me - the whole reason for being here. So if anybody, anywhere, anytime wants to email me with links to material they think might make a good post - especially eastern Europe, South America, Asia and Africa - please drop me a line and I'll have a look. I'm not starved of repositories by any stretch, but these areas of the world are under-represented online and therefore finding suitable books and manuscripts is a difficult task, believe me.

But the same invitation is extended in relation to any obscure/unusual/esoteric book or print material from anywhere in the world - I'm happy to receive advice/solicitation/free trips to the Bahamas with jacuzzi and drinks that have little pink umbrellas by way of bribery and input. No need to be shy.
This is the 400th post on BibliOdyssey and public entreaties are permitted every hundred posts - it's in the rules.

Sketching Congo

American Museum of Natural History scientists Herbert Lang and James Chapin left New York Harbour bound for the Belgian Congo (now: Democratic Republic of the Congo) on May 8, 1909. They returned home more than 5 years later after amassing one of most comprehensive African natural history collections ever assembled.

Lang took 10,000 photographs and Chapin made 300 field sketches of specimens. Many of these were later published in scientific journals. Chapin was destined to become Ornithological Curator back at the museum.




The American Museum of Natural History have a wonderful and comprehensive exhibtion featuring not only Chapin's sketches but also numerous galleries, historic maps, photographs, diaries, essays and anthropological features to name but a few. This is a first rate site.