Library Love

mahendra-singh: What time is it? Time to get to work on the...

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:37:21 -0500

What time is it? Time to get to work on the impending Adventure Time book!

The honeyed tongue of Martin Olson on the telephone was too seductive to ignore for long … before I knew it, I had been hypnotically directed to draw the above bit of occult inkery. Cover design by the talented and equally jaded Sean Tejaratchi … book will appear later this year, stay tuned for further subliminal information dumps.

writersnoonereads: No one reads the Belgian Georges Rodenbach...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:44:13 -0500

writersnoonereads:

No one reads the Belgian Georges Rodenbach (1855-1898), author Bruges-la-Morte, which in addition to being called “the Symbolist novel,” was the first fictional work to incorporate photographs.

Rodenbach, who stated that silence was the thread connecting all of his work—which spanned eight volumes of poetry, four novels, a number of essays and short stories—worked as a lawyer and journalist in Paris (where he befriended Mallarme, Renoir, and Maeterlink, among others), despite his deep affection for his native soil. Of the distance he put between himself and Belgium, he wrote:

One only truly loves what one no longer has. Truly to love one’s little homeland, it is best to go away, to exile oneself for ever, to surrender oneself to the vast absorption of Paris, and for the homeland to grow so distant it seems to die. […] The essence of art that is at all noble is the DREAM, and this dream dwells only upon what is distant, absent, vanished, unattainable.

Bruges-la-Morte, which made him famous when it was published in serial form in 1892 and is undoubtedly his masterpiece, conjures the city of its title. In his forward, in fact, Rodenbach stated his goal in writing the novel was to “evoke a city… in its essence, [as] a person whose shifting moods persuade or dissuade us and determine our actions.”

The plot centers on the obsessive widower Hugues Viane, who moved to Bruges after the death of his wife several years before the novel opens. With no occupation to fill his time, Hugues wanders the melancholy town, meditating on death and longing for the grave. A bizarre and scandalous romance begins when he sees a woman he takes to be the exact double of his dead wife in the streets. The novel’s associations with morbidity and despair, not to mention its shocking conclusion, created a stir among town officials, who later refused to permit a memorial statue of the writer to be erected in Bruges—hence Rodenbach’s suitably eye-catching tomb in Paris, pictured above.

The outline of the plot may lead one to assume that the novel is a melodrama, but it steers away from action in favor of the internal world. Writing in the Guardian, novelist Alan Hollinghurst claims that Rodenbach “creates a rarefied world, internalized and intensified by feeling.” And the always reliable Nick Lezard contends that Bruges-la-Morte “is one of the greatest novels ever written about grief, loneliness, and isolation…”

Some representative passages should suffice to put you under the pall of Bruges’ gray northern skies:

Bruges was his dead wife. And his dead wife was Bruges. The two were united in a like destiny. It was Bruges-la-Morte, the dead town entombed in its stone quais, with the arteries of its canals cold once the great pulse of the sea had ceased beating in them.

And

As he walked, the sad faded leaves were driven pitilessly around him by the wind, and under the mingling influences of autumn and evening, a craving for the quietude of the grave … overtook him with unwanted intensity

For more, see a gallery of photographs included in the book or some of Fernand Knopff’s haunting artwork inspired by the novel.

Dedalus Books publishes English translations of three of Rodenbach’s works, including Bruges-la-Morte.

[Photo of Rodenbach’s tomb in Paris by nikoretro]

Pleasant Dreams (1852). Henry Nelson O’Neil (1817-1880). O’Neil...

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:55:07 -0500

Pleasant Dreams (1852). Henry Nelson O’Neil (1817-1880).

O’Neil (1817-1880) was a leading Victorian painter of historical scenes. He worked in a highly detailed and realistic style.

O’Neil studied art at the Royal Academy schools from 1836. He was a founder member of ‘The Clique’, a group of young artists who were dissatisfied with the restrictions of the Royal Academy and wanted to bring a new realism and emotional intensity to their work.

Mind of a Child (Dec. 1906, Harpers Monthly Magazine) by...

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:54:08 -0500

Mind of a Child (Dec. 1906, Harpers Monthly Magazine) by Elizabeth Shippen Green (por de sata1)

Jessie Willcox Smith

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:53:09 -0500

Jessie Willcox Smith

Ida Bohatta-Morpurgo (via arthurvankruining)

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:52:06 -0500

Ida Bohatta-Morpurgo (via arthurvankruining)

Book Week Poster for Children’s Book Week by Jessie...

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:49:51 -0500

Book Week Poster for Children’s Book Week by Jessie Willcox Smith - Source

Fantasy Library - via lsdex.ru

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:44:10 -0500

Fantasy Library - via lsdex.ru

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale ~ Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:05:01 -0400

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale ~ Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson ~ 1913 ~ via

Illustration for Guinevere

The Queen who sat betwixt her best Enid, and lissome Vivien, of her court the wiliest and the worst.

book-aesthete: Little Brother & Little Sister Jakob and...

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:08:14 -0400

book-aesthete:

Little Brother & Little Sister
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1917.

Bound by Bayntun-Riviere c. 1965. One of 525 Copies Signed by the Artist. Limited to 525 copies signed by the artist, this being copy no. 259. Quarto. Thirteen tipped-in color plates, forty-three black and white text illustrations. Bound by Bayntun-Riviere c. 1965 in full midnight green morocco with inlaid pictorial central panel reproducing the color-plate “She Begged Quite Prettily to be Allowed to Spend the Night There” (opposite p. 206) in gilt-tooled frame within triple gilt-ruled borders and large, gilt foliate corner-pieces. Gilt rolled edges. Broad, gilt dentelles. Gilt decorated compartments. All edges gilt. - via

Winslow Homer, The New Novel, 1877.

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 23:23:03 -0400

Winslow Homer, The New Novel, 1877.

book-aesthete: I collect and document books with hand-written...

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 11:35:02 -0400

book-aesthete:

I collect and document books with hand-written inscriptions, and this is one of my favorites. Inscription reads: “To my dear friend Dennis, In loving appreciation of all your efforts to insure [sic] that Jim had the proper and efficacious funeral he so richly deserved. John”

The Victor Book of the Opera
Victor Opera Records
1915

(Many more at my blog!)

Beautiful! Thank you, togetherasalways.

artemisdreaming: ...

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 00:37:38 -0400

artemisdreaming:

Japanese Ivory Netsuke
Geisha Poet
Holding Scroll by Deak
Netsuke Signature: Masasugu, circa: late 19th Century

H 1.5 in.(4cm.), W 1.5 in.(4cm.), D 1.25 in.(3cm.)

A delicate small netsuke size okimono in well marked cream ivory, depicting a youthful geisha at her writing table with a scroll, leaning on her left hand, her legs folded under her. Her hair is carefully coiffed, her eyes outlined in black ink, with a touch of red color still clinging to her lips. The ink-grinding stone and brush holder are more commonly the attributes of a scholar, suggesting that this geisha is practicing her literary skills. buddhamuseum

Morning Sun, Harold Knight. English (1874 - 1961)

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 00:34:21 -0400

Morning Sun, Harold Knight. English (1874 - 1961)

Teen Reading - Fan Art, Kiki’s Delivery Service by...

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 00:32:00 -0400

Teen Reading - Fan Art, Kiki’s Delivery Service by Miyazaki

Carl Vilhelm Holsoe (Danish, 1863-1935)

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 19:22:00 -0400

Carl Vilhelm Holsoe (Danish, 1863-1935)

Claire Fletcher ~ via

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:26:00 -0400

Claire Fletcher ~ via

Reblog if you are a writer.

Mon, 07 May 2012 23:28:09 -0400

moriartys-sonic-screwdriver:

proving a point to my mom.

also, im curious as to how much of the tumblr population writes

crystilogic: Kelliegram cover & binding from The ...

Mon, 07 May 2012 23:25:49 -0400

crystilogic:

Kelliegram cover & binding from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley (1886). From Sotheby’s catalog: ‘Elaborate blue morocco binding by Kelliegram featuring morocco inlays of a fish, a child swimming, and seagulls, spine lettered gilt, edges gilt.’

Happy Children’s Book Week! (via Book Week Online)

Mon, 07 May 2012 12:30:41 -0400

Happy Children’s Book Week! (via Book Week Online)