Special Catalogue of Tombstones, Monuments, Tablets and Markers

Special Catalogue of Tombstones, Monuments, Tablets and Markers (1902)

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There was a time when Sears Roebuck sold tombstones and other funerary markers - this is the 1902 catalog.  The opening sales pitch covers the source of the marble, artisans employed, pricing (you could order COD), reliability and freight.  Even knowing how prices have changed these seem quite low ($6.73?).  I can't help but wonder how many Sears sold.

(By the way, Archive.org texts are easier to navigate "full screen" - which isn't full screen to your monitor but to the browser window.)

The Medieval Bestiary

The Medieval Bestiary

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This website compiles images and information about medieval ideas of animals.  The navigation is a bit confusing but go to the Beasts section then try alphabetical.  Once you select an animal the banner at the top has further options such as a gallery with more images or information on the manuscript sources.  From the home page there's a link to digital texts (mostly pdfs).

A Booke of Christmas Carols

Joseph Cundall - A Booke of Christmas Carols, Illuminated from Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum (1846)

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The title pretty much explains it.  Cundall (1818-1895) was a writer and publisher, primarily but not exclusively of children's books.  His other works include stories of British kings and Robin Hood, a history of wood engraving, a study of Holbein, poetry collections and others.

The Star of the Wise Men

Richard Chenevix Trench - The Star of the Wise Men (1850)

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A study of the story of the three wise men with an aim toward untangling who they might actually have been as well as what religious symbolism the author thinks he can find.  It's nothing if not scholarly - I see references to Bede, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Irenaeus, Ambrose and so on.  It's a lot to put on a story that appears in one chapter of only one gospel (with a couple of other stray references) but he's drawing on centuries of stories that did everything from set the number to come up with names.

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1886) was an Irish-born poet and Anglican clergyman.  He was dean of Westminster Abbey for several years (he's buried there) and after Archbishop of Dublin.  Trench was a prolific writer - other than religious works he wrote about Calderon, Plutarch, church history and philology.  In fact this last is one of his main claims to fame - his 1857 paper "On Some Deficiencies in Our English Dictionaries" was the direct inspiration for the Oxford English Dictionary.  (For a recent account see Simon Winchester's The Meaning of Everything.)  The poet Geoffrey Hill was greatly interested in Trench.  (See Matthew Sperling's 2014 Visionary Philology: Geoffrey Hill and the Study of Words.)

The link is to a US edition which has the note "a few passages, appropriate only to readers in the Church of England, have been omitted".

Chalk Talk and Crayon Presentation

Charles L Bartholomew - Chalk Talk and Crayon Presentation (1922)

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Chalk talks are a lecture or presentation where the performer draws as they speak, typically using the images as more than just illustration of the words.  It was popular early in the 20th century, especially in the omnivorous world of vaudeville, and survives today in churches and motivational speaking.  More details and some other downloadable books are available at Golden Chalk Classics.

Chalk Talk and Crayon Presentation is both an overview and how-to guide, complete with info on materials and some sample scripts.  It's well illustrated with practitioners other than the author, the best-remembered today being Winsor McCay, Sidney Smith (The Gumps) and Hap Hadley (poster artist).

Charles L. Bartholomew (1869-1949), known as "Bart", was an Iowa-born cartoonist who spent most of his life in Minneapolis working for a local paper.  He was also involved in education of cartoonists at professional schools.

(Thanks to JGB for the tip on this topic.)

The Antiquity of Proverbs

Dwight Edwards Marvin - The Antiquity of Proverbs (1922)

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A gathering of information about popular proverbs.  Despite the title there's not much antiquity or even formal scholarship but it is interesting browsing.  So "A rolling stone gathers no moss", "Still waters run deep", "Look before you leap", "Kill not the goose that lays the golden egg" and numerous others get a chapter with references and stories about the proverb, ending with a lists of variant, allied and contradictory proverbs.  (Oddly this book was referenced in a 2014 Washington Post piece - most likely the result of Internet searching rather than something the report pulled off a shelf.)

Dwight Edwards Marvin (1851-1940) was born in Greenwich, New York, ordained as a Congregational minister and held positions around the state.  He wrote Curiosities in Proverbs as well as several religious books.

The Aztec Treasure-House

Thomas Allibone Janvier - The Aztec Treasure-House (1890)

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Archive.org direct link (for boys)
Open Library main page (for boys)

This novel seems to be a reasonably acceptable adventure story according to the reviews I found (I've only skimmed bits of it) but is posted because it exists in both a standard edition and one "for boys".  (Presumably girls weren't expected to care about Aztecs or treasure.)

The story is narrated by a professor who wants to find remnants of the Aztecs and who speaks with the name-dropping and historical references that Janvier thought appropriate for such a person.  This professor is accompanied by a priest, a local boy and two American boys, all searching for religion or gold.

The boys' edition seems to not be rewritten so much as just trimmed.  The prologue is gone and from what I compared between the two books the differences are sentences or parts of paragraphs removed entirely with the text that's left apparently the same.  Basically just made shorter and faster rather than simplified.  The illustrations in the boys' edition are more cartoon-like than the few more realistic drawings in the standard edition.  The copyright for the boys edition is five years after the author's death and in the name of his wife - she was a writer herself and most likely made the changes.  On the basis of no evidence whatsoever I'd hazard a guess that she needed money.

There must be studies of children's editions though I'm not aware of much commentary about this (as distinct from teaching editions).  There of course have always been texts of classics modified for younger readers (at least within reason - probably no kids versions of Suetonius or Rabelais).  Children's versions of current books, at least today. are more likely to be ones intended for school or public interest use such as the younger reader editions of I Am Malala and Enrique's Journey.  The world was recently given a young adult version of The Da Vinci Code, thirteen years after the original and to no obvious demand.  But that's a rarity for fiction.

Thomas Allibone Janvier (1849-1913) was a Philadelphia journalist who traveled through the Southwest and Mexico.  When he started writing fiction those experiences provided background.  Other books include Stories of Old New Spain, Legends of the City of Mexico and An Embassy to Provence.  His niece was Emma Janvier, a Broadway actor who seems to have been fairly well known at the time.