Bicentenaries Galore
Before this year comes to a close, we would like to take note of three important bicentenaries in 2012, each of which could be celebrated with items in the Chapin Library.
The first is the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. Born in Portsmouth, England, on 7 February 1812, Dickens became a tremendously successful writer, popular then and now on both sides of the Atlantic. The Chapin Library has an extensive collection of Dickens’ works in first editions, including some of his novels as issued in monthly parts – a device which put the works within reach of less pecunious readers while making money for the author through advertising. A year ago in this feature, we marked the Christmas season by illustrating a page from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843).
The second bicentenary is that of Edward Lear, born in London on 12 May 1812. Lear is probably best known today as a nonsense poet, inventor of limericks and creator of the Owl and the Pussycat who “went to sea / In a beautiful pea-green boat”. But he was also a serious artist, painter of vivid landscapes from his visits to Greece and Egypt, India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). And he contributed illustrations of birds to works by the noted ornithologist John Gould. His picture of a Great Horned Owl, or Eagle Owl, for Gould’s Birds of Europe (1832), seems to have a cheeky expression.
Finally, 2012 is the two hundredth anniversary of the first publication of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales) by the brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Grimm’s Fairy Tales have long been an integral part of Western culture: a new edition of selections from the Grimms’ tales appeared this year, as retold by Philip Pullman. The Chapin Library has a copy of the first selection translated into English, published in 1823–26 and illustrated by George Cruikshank.
The staffs of the Chapin Library and College Archives wish all of our readers happy holidays and a splendid New Year. – WGH
Shown, top to bottom, is the cover of the first part of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1849), the Eagle Owl by Edward Lear for Gould’s Birds of Europe, and the title-page, with illustration by Cruikshank, for the Grimms’ German Popular Stories.