armstrong review

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Information, Community, Policy.

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ReviewAuthor(s): Philip J. WeimerskirchReview by: Philip J. WeimerskirchSource: The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp.

273-275Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40039752Accessed: 30-06-2015 15:52 UTC

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2/4

REVIEWS

273

to the sentimentalaspectsof the story,whereas he (lesscommon)male readerwill

consider these

no

more than

foolish

twaddling p.

129).

Class s an

even more

fundamental

oncept underlying

Brantlinger's

iscussionof

criminality

nd

social

disorder.In

both

JaneEyre

nd

Wuthering

eights,

or

example,

the Bronte

sisters

set forth their

image

of the

right reading:

a secular

iteracy

hat has the

power

to

reshape

he 'brutish'

nd

dangerous

working

lassafter he

'respectably

ressed,'

well-spoken

and nonviolent

mage

of the

bourgeoisie

(p.

120).

However,

hroughout

his

sophisticated

nd

thought-provoking nalysis

f British

literature,

ne dimension s

underexploited:

hat of

age.

Anxietiesaboutmass iter-

acy

revolved

especially

around the issue of

youth reading,

as

culturalauthorities

debated he need to attract he

young

to

reading

while

protecting

hem from

harm.

The late nineteenth

century

saw

the

rise

of a

commercially

uccessful

genre

of

fic-

tion

targeted pecifically

t

children,

yet among

his

examples

of

nineteenth-century

fiction

Brantlinger

ailsto include bookswritten or children.And

Americans

might

ask a further

question

about

the dimension of race.

The

quintessential

American

bestsellerof the nineteenth

century

wasHarrietBeecher

Stowe's

Uncle

Tom'sCabin.

How

did Stowe

represent

her readerswithin the text of her

novel,

readerswho

must have included AfricanAmericansand the

white

working

class,

as well as the

abolitionistwhite

middle class

toward

whom

Stowe

ostensibly

directedher

writing?

Brantlinger's

heme is

linked

to the ever

presenttopic

of

censorship

and its

close

cousin,

cultural

elitism.

While

cultural

pessimists

believe that

they

are

defending

both the

only

correctcultural tandards

nd

the masses

who,

whether

iterate,

emi-

literate,

or

illiterate,

orely

need their

guidance,

he

points

out

that all

theyusually

express s outrightcontemptand fear of the masses thatis, of all of us, including

themselves

p.

211).

As the debate

about

providingpopular

materials

whatever

theirformat continues o

exert its influence on

public ibrary

ollectingpractices,

Brantlinger's nalysisprovides

a

much needed

and

readable historical

context

and social comment.

Christine

Pawley,

Center

for

the

Historyof

Print Culture n Modern

America

Madison,

Wisconsin

Scenes n a

Library:

Reading

the

Photograph

n the

Book,

1843-1875.

By

Carol

Arm-

strong. Cambridge,Mass.:MITPress,1998. Pp. xxiv+511. $45.00. ISBN0-262-

01169-7.

Photography

was

invented more or less

simultaneously y

Louis

Jacques

Mande

Daguerre

n

Franceand William

Henry

Fox Talbot

in

England,

but

their

photo-

graphs

were

quite

different.The

daguerreotype

was

a

copperplate

overed

with

fine

droplets

of

mercury;

Talbot'

calotype

was a

piece

of

paper

embedded with silver

salts.Both of these

types

of

photographs

were used for

illustrating

books,

but be-

cause the

daguerreotype late

had to be bitten with acid and then

printed

as an

etching,

t was

much more cumbersome o use

and,

therefore,

much less

frequently

used for this

purpose.

Calotypes,

however,

could

easily

be

pasted

into

books,

and

they

were

used

extensively

or

illustrating

books

in

Britain

beginning

in 1840.

Not a greatdeal has been publishedon earlyphotographicallyllustratedbooks,

although

in

1980

the Grolier Club

published

a seminal exhibition

catalog,

The

Truthful

ens,

compiled

by

Lucien Goldschmidtand

Weston

J.

Naef,

and

Helmut

Gernsheim

produced

an excellent

bibliographical

work,

Incunabula

f

British

hoto-

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3/4

274

THE LIBRARY

QUARTERLY

graphic iteratureLondonandBerkeley: colarPress,1984).Gernsheim's ook con-

tains

a

Bibliography

f books

published

n

GreatBritain

and illustratedwith

origi-

nal

photographs

hat lists and

describes619 books

published

between

1840 and

1875.

Carol

Armstrong,

n art historian

with a

Ph.D. from

Princeton,

has written

what s

by

far the most

voluminousbook ever

published

on British

books

llustrated

with

original

photographs.

t is

not a

generalsurvey,

owever,but, rather,

a detailed

and

well-illustrated

xegesis

of five books with briefercommentson

many

others.

Armstrong nalyzes

hese books

in

the

light

of the

writings

of the

French critic

and

semiologist

Roland

Barthes,

especially

his

Mythologies

nd Camera

ucida,

and

of the

positivistphilosopherAuguste

Comte.

Armstronggrapples

with

notions

of

the

essence of a

photograph,

how

photographs

and texts

are

interrelated

n the

photographically

llustrated

book,

how

the

Victorians

perceived

these

books,

and

how one should

perceive

them

today.Armstrong ives fairly engthy explanations

of

the ideas

of

Barthesand

Comte,

and

her

analysis

s

largely

a

philosophical

one.

Unfortunately,

he

writes

in

the verbose and sometimes rather

opaque style

of

Barthesand other

proponents

of

the New Criticism.

Armstrong

eems

to have done most of her research n Princeton'sFirestone

Library,

he

Spencer

Collection

of the New YorkPublic

Library,

he

library

f

the

Getty

Museum,

and

the British

Library.

pecial

collections

ibrarians nd

preserva-

tion

specialists

will be

interested

n

some remarks

n

the

introduction,

where

Arm-

strong

writes, Now,

sitting

n

musty

ibraries,

ushedrarebook

collections,

or

spot-

less

study

rooms,

ooking

back

through

old books

with

photographspasted

n

them,

we

frequently

ind those

photographs potted,

stained,

and faded with

age, having

lived lives like other natural hingsand on theirway,dust to dust,to the grave, f

not

already

n it

(p.

16).

In a

footnote to this

passage

she

states,

So much

is

this

the case

that

original

copies

of

the first

photographically

llustrated

books,

such as

the New York

Public

Library's

ThePencil

of

Nature,

re so

fragile

and

so

nearly

de-

stroyed

by

the

passage

of

time

that,

quite paradoxically,

o

preserve

hem

they

are

kept

mummifiedand

entombed n

the inner sanctumof the

library,

ot to be han-

dled,

viewed,

or read

by

readers

ever

again.

Nearly

all the

plates

of other

copies,

such as that n

the

Graphic

Arts

collectionof Princeton

University ibrary,

re faded

almost

beyond

visibility p.

441,

n.31).

The

photographically

llustratedbooks

that

Armstrong

analyzes

at

some

length

are Charles

Ottley

Groom-Napier's

TheBook

f

Nature nd theBook

f

Man

(1870);

William

Henry

Fox

Talbot'sThePencil

f

Nature

1844-46)

;

AnnaAtkins'

Photographs

ofBritishAlgae(1843-54) ;FrancisFrith'sEgyptand PalestinePhotographednd Observed

(1858-59);

and

Julia

Margaret

Cameron's Illustrations o

Alfred

Lord

Tennyson's dylls

of

the

King

(1874).

Armstrong

ook her

title from the

eighth plate

in

Talbot's The

Pencil

of

Nature,

.

photograph

of

two shelvesof

books

in

Lacock

Abbey.

The ninth

plate

in

this book is

titled

Fac-Simile f an Old Printed

Page.

It

is

from

a book

in

Talbot's

ibrary,

nd in her

description

of

it

Armstrong ays,

of all Talbot's

plates

it is the

mostassertive

f its status

as

a

printedpage.

At

the same

time

t demonstrates

its

difference from

the

larger

context of

printed pages

into which it is inserted:

hand-lettered n

Norman French

calligraphy

hat

is

evidently

different from the

letterpress

f

The Pencil of

Nature,

and

glued

rather han sewn

in,

it

illustrates ts

own intrusion

nto the

printed

space

of the book

(p.

151).

The

typography

f

the

page

from

the

old

book is

certainly

different rom that of ThePencil

of

Nature,

ut

it is definitelynot a specimenof calligraphy.Armstrong videntlymisunderstood

Talbot's

description

of this

page,

which

begins,

taken rom a

black-letter olume

in

the

Author's

ibrary,

ontaining

the

statutesof Richard he

Second,

written

n

NormanFrench.



4/4

REVIEWS

275

Armstrong'shirdchapter s devotedmainly o two albumsof cyanotypes f sea-

weed

compiledby

AnnaAtkins

between

1843 and

1854,

though

t also discussesher

book on ferns and books

on similar

ubjects

by

several

other

authors.This

chapter

contains

a

particularlyarge

numberof illustrations. here are

thirty-one

ull-page

plates

of

seaweed,

wo

of whichare

in

color

(shades

of

blue,

as

they

are

cyanotypes);

four

full-page plates

of title

pages

and table-of-contents

pages

from

the seaweed

albums;

nd several

plates

from other books.The two illustrations

n

color are also

reproduced

n blackand

white.

The

large

numberof seaweed

plates

seems almost

too much of

a

good

thing.

The book

has no

bibliography,

ut there are

sixty-fourpages

of notes at the end

of the volume.

Armstrong

has read

widely,though

I

did not find

any

mention of

Helmut Gernsheim's

bibliography.In her notes

Armstrong

calls Elmer

Adler,

the man who formed Princeton's

graphic

arts

collection,

a

nineteenth-century

rinter.

Adler

taught

at Princeton

from

1940 until

1952,

and he wasnot a

printer.

She also

says

hat Frederic

Eugene

Ives,

the

inventorof the

halftone

process,

ived

in

Chicago,

but

it would

be more

accurate o

say

that he lived

in

Philadelphia.

More than once

Armstrong pelled

the

plural

of

apparatus

apparatii.

In her remarks n Fox Talbot'sThePencil

of

Nature

London:

Longman,

Brown,

Green &

Longmans,

1844-1846),

Armstrong

wrote,

Finally,

ather than a

point

of

origin

in

the

teleological development

of the

photograph

toward ts manifest

destiny

as a mass

medium,

I

wish

to understand t

[the

photographically

llustrated

book]

again

as an

experiment,

but

by

no meansa

foregone

conclusion,

n

the 'mas-

sification'of the photographand the photographicallyllustratedbook, sewnwith

its author's

gentlemanly

mbivalence

n

that

score,

withthe

marksof his

contrarian

desire

to

preserve

ts

privacy

nd its

preindustrial

ature,

and

with

the

unfamiliarity

of another

era besides

our own whose values

were

other than ours. No matterhow

self-explanatory

he formand obvious he content

of ThePencil

f

Nature

might

seem

to us

now,

it is worth the labor

to make it

strange

(p.

112).

Armstrong

as a knack or

making

imple

things

appear

o be much more

compli-

catedand

strange

han

they

are,

at least

n

my

opinion.

She

evidently

et out to

write

a difficult

book,

and

in

thatshe has succeeded.

Readerswho are not au courantwith

the latest

academic

argon

will

likely

find it

problematic.

think

Armstrong

would

have

servedher readers

better

if

she had

paid

less attention

to

Barthes

and Comte

and

more attention

to Strunkand White.

Philip

J.

Weimerskirch,

pecial

Collections,

ProvidencePublic

Library,

RhodeIsland

Untold Stories:

Civil

Rights,

Librariesand Black

Librarianship.

Edited

by

John

Mark

Tucker.

Champaign:

University

f Illinois

Press,

1999.

Pp.

xvi+265.

$49.95

(cloth).

$19.95

(paper).

ISBN

0-252-06746-0

paper).

Librarianship

oes not

escape

the

ugly

stain of race relations

n

the United States

as the

documentation

n

this slim volume

presents

clearly.Although

t is doubtful

that

the full

story

of race and

librarianship

will

ever be told in all its

complexity,

the fifteenpapers hatcomprise his collectionoffer numerous nsights ntovarious

aspects

of the

relationship

of AfricanAmericansand libraries

n North

America.

Published

by

the

University

f IllinoisPress or the GraduateSchool of

Library

nd

Information

Science,

it is a

significant

contribution o the historical iteratureof


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