A Bookish Interlude with…Wit in a Constable

Actus primus, Scena prima.

Enter Holdfast, Tristram.

Holdfast.

Did you ere we departed from the Colledge
Orelooke my library?

Trist. Yes sir, I spent two dayes in sorting Poets from Historians,
As many nights in placing the divines
On their owne chayres, I meane their shelves, and then
In separating Philosophers from those people
That kill men with a license: your Physitians
Cost me a whole dayes labour, and I find sir,
Although you tell me learning is immortall,
The paper and the parchment, tis contayn’d in,
Savors of much mortality.

Hold. I hope my bookes are all in health.
Trict.  In the same case the Mothes have left them, who have eaten more
Authenticke learning then would richly furnish
A hundred country pedants; yet the wormes
Are not one letter wiser.

Hold I have beene idle
Since I came back from Cambridge, goe to my stationer
And bid him send me Swarez Metaphysickes,
Tolet de anima is new forth,
So are Granadas commentaries on
Primum secundae Thomae Aquinatis,
Get me the Lyricke Poets.  And—
Trist. I admire
How he retaines these Authors names, of which
He understands no sillable, ’twere better
I bought the Authenticke Legend of Sir Bevis,
Some six new Ballads and the famous Poems
Writ by the learned waterman.
Hold. Iohn Taylor, get me his nonsense.
Trist.  You mean all his workes sir.

Hold.  And a hundred of Bookers new Almanacks.
Trist. And the divell to boot,
Your fathers bookes in which he keeps th accounts
Of all his coyne will scarce yield crowns to afford
Your fancy volums : why you have already
Enough to furnish a new Vatican,
A hundred country pedants can read dictats
To their young pupills out of Setons logicke,
Or Golius Ethicks, and make them arrive,
Proficients learn’d enough in one bare twelmonth
To instruct the parish they were borne in : you
Out of an itch to this same foolish learning
Bestow more money yearely upon books:
Then would for convent sisters build an almes-house.
Hold.  You displease my patience Tristram.

Henry Glapthorne, Wit in a constable. A comedy written 1639. The author Henry Glapthorne. And now printed as it was lately acted at the Cock-pit in Drury lane, by their Majesties servants, with good allowance.  London, Printed by Io. Okes, for F.C. and are to be sold at his shops in Kings-street at the signe of the Goat, and in Westminster-Hall, 1640.  Beinecke call number: Z77 91k.

From the Reading Room: The Text Font of the First Folio

Contributed to Early Modern at the Beinecke by Reed Reibstein, an undergraduate student in the Yale University History of Art Department and a student in Professor David Kastan’s Fall 2009 class, Materializing the Word: The Book as Object, Technology, Concept, and Event, 1500-1800.

From the Reading Room: This series of postings highlights the research of students, research fellows, and other scholars working in the Beinecke’s early modern collections.

As the compositors in William Jaggard’s print shop plucked countless sorts out of their cases, composing page after double-columned page from 1621 to 1623, they could not have suspected that they were handling a font that would be the object of more study than perhaps any other before or since. The font certainly would not have appeared remarkable in any way; it was cast on a pica body, the most common size of the era, and fonts made from the same punches had been owned by more than thirty printers since 1570. Moreover, the font was weathered, having been in use probably for well over a decade.

Surprisingly, it was precisely this battered condition that made it so fruitful for detailed analysis: the numerous visible defects in the sorts of the First Folio’s text font have proved the most powerful tool for reconstructing the book’s printing history. Charlton Hinman in The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare devoted 98 pages in his first volume and much of the second to an analysis of the Folio’s type, making the text font the subject of an extraordinary amount of research.

Despite an extensive analysis of its distinctive sorts, few Folio scholars (including Hinman) have examined the origins and characteristics of the font itself, and the limited information available in the literature to date is more a result of generalization than of detailed scrutiny. I measured the dimensions of the text font in the Beinecke’s First Folio (BEIN 1978 +83), finding twenty lines of type to measure 82.7 mm.

Visual and historical evidence have led me to suggest that the font is the second pica roman of Pierre Haultin (as described by H.D.L. Vervliet in The Palaeotypography of the French Renaissance), cast for Jaggard’s use probably around 1603 or 1608 by an unknown typefounder who likely inherited the matrices from Pierre’s nephew Jerome Haultin. The font was old and in poor condition when it was used to print the Folio, which supports the view that Jaggard and his pressmen did not see the Folio as an unusually important book.

If the results of this research are to be accepted, they will correct two particularly enduring statements made about the font by Horace Hart in 1902: The font appears to be of French origin, not Dutch, and it was not commissioned specifically for the printing of the Folio but rather had been in use for fifteen or twenty years by 1623.

Images drawn from Beinecke call number: 1978 +83. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, histories, & tragedies. Published according to the true originall copies. London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed. Blount, 1623.

Goodbye to Johnson and All That

Goodbye, goodbye, to 2009! But linger first for one last glimpse back o’er the annus Johnsonianus, with its wild lexicographical wonderments. Below, some favorites from Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, which ended today:

Those of you in Johnsonian withdrawal are invited to visit a web exhibition of the Beinecke’s 2009 Samuel Johnson exhibition, to browse the scanned copy of the annotated Sneyd-Gimbel copy of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (from which most excerpts for the Dr Johnson’s Dictionary blog were drawn), or to ramble through the digital archive of the James Boswell papers, held in the Beinecke Library collections.

For the rest of us, there is always the anniversarial literature of 2010. Why not a bracing dip into the quadringentesimal translation of William Camden’s Britannia—or, for those of you seeking inspiration for your new year’s resolutions, perhaps the tersemicentennial Peter Whitehorne translation of Machiavelli’s Arte of Warre. For the royalists among you, there are always the festival books for the 1610 coronation of Louis XIII—let’s hear it for the roi!

In the interim, do but consider this small dust, here running in the glass by atoms mov’d. Beginning on January 1, the Beinecke’s new Early Modern Paleography blog will begin its wander through the manuscripts and annotations of the Beinecke’s early modern collections. It’s not too late to resolve that 2010 will be the year of reading the early modern word, as scratched, copied, blotted by the early modern hand. Below, death, time, and love from the other Jonson, to mark the beginning of 2010.

Commonplace book, mid-17th century. Beinecke call number: Osborn b205.

From the Reading Room: MS 128

Contributed to Early Modern at the Beinecke by Elena Pellus, a doctoral student in the Yale University Department of Spanish and Portugese. Elena works on colonial Latin American literature, and was a pre-prospectus graduate research fellow at the Beinecke Library in the summer of 2009.

From the Reading Room: This series of postings highlights the research of graduate students, research fellows, and other scholars working in the Beinecke’s early modern collections.

These are the first two pages of the only extant manuscript of the “History of the Invention of the Indies,” dated 1583, catalogued as “MS 128” in the Medieval and Renaissance collection of the Beinecke Library. Written by the Spaniard Hernán Pérez de Oliva (1494?-1531), it is one of the first interpretive accounts of the Columbian encounter with the New World, and it summarizes the moral questions that the Castilian discovery and conquests posed to Spain and Europe. The manuscript was written between 1525 and 1528, and presented by its author to the learned son of Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Columbus. The original of this work was forever lost, and only in 1943 was a later copy found in London and put up for sale at auction. This unique manuscript, which is a treasure in itself, was donated by Frank Altschul to the Beinecke Library in 1944.

The interest of the “History” lies in the fact that it was written during a crucial period, the years between the four voyages of Columbus and the explorations that would lead to the conquest of Peru. (The intervening years saw the colonial establishment of Hispaniola, the conquest of Cuba and, most significantly, the conquest of Mexico). Written in third person, it deals with the exploration and conquest of the Antilles under Christopher Columbus’ command during his first three voyages, from 1492 to 1496. The first narration tells the first voyage of the Admiral, the exploration of the islands and the settlement of the expedition members, and the communication with its native towns. From the fourth narration on, we learn about the indigenous and Spanish rebellions and other difficulties that the Columbus’ brothers face in their government, the dialogue interchange with the tayno caciques, and the description of their cultures siboney and tayno. At the end of narration eight, centered in the events in Hispaniola during the Admiral’s absence, the story ends. The ninth and last narration is a description of the religion and customs of the tayno culture.

It is possible that Pérez de Oliva had the intention of continuing the story with the fourth voyage of Columbus and the conquest of Mexico; the sudden ending and the title given to the copy suggest this idea: “History of the Invention of the Indies and of the Conquest of the New Spain that Master Pérez de Oliva, born in Cordoba, was writing.” Still partially unknown on the map of colonial Latin American Literature, Pérez de Oliva was a very learned man of the first half of 16th century. He studied in Paris and Rome (then centers of European culture), served two popes, and was close to the King Charles the Fifth. He held a professorship in Theology at the University of Salamanca, became the President of that university, and founded an institute of higher learning (colegio mayor). His works encompassed a broad range of subjects including history, philosophy, drama, mathematics, and poetry, and they are both an exploration in the Castilian language and a reflection of the consequences that the encounter of the New World had for Spain and for Europe in general. I consider the “History of the Invention of the Indies” the culmination of his works because in it Pérez de Oliva incorporates the three main aspects of his literary production: the exploration in the literary genres, the settlement of Castilian, and the account of the New World.

Really As It Was: Writing the Life of Samuel Johnson

“I hope that News was not true,” wrote Hester Thrale Piozzi in 1799, on having heard of the impending death of Anna Seward, “as Floretta found it in Dr. Johnson’s Tale—to outlive Lovers and Haters, and Friends and Foes; and find one’s self surrounded by those with whom one has no Ideas in common—no Care for Applause nor no Strife of Competition.”(1) Piozzi’s melancholy was to continue, over the next two decades, as she out-lived most of the members of a literary circle in mid-eighteenth century England which had included Piozzi herself, Hannah More, Anna Seward, Oliver Goldsmith, David Garrick, Joshua Reynolds, James Boswell, and Samuel Johnson.

This act of remembering, of canonizing a literary circle through memory and anecdote, forms the subject of one of the Beinecke Library’s current exhibitions, “Really As It Was: Writing the Life of Samuel Johnson.” Curated by Diane Ducharme and Kathryn James, the exhibition explores the many biographies of Samuel Johnson’s life which were produced by his friends and acquaintances for an avid public in the days, years, and decades following his death. A web exhibition offers a gallery of the gossip, scandal, bitterness, delight, and fascination with which these works were greeted, read, and answered by the ever-articulate, ever-opinionated members of the Johnson circle. For those whose curiosity is only piqued by the exhibition, scanned manuscripts from the Boswell papers can also be found online. The exhibition is on view at the Beinecke Library through mid-December, 2009.

For further Johnson festivities, follow the word-a-day dictionary blog through its last months and letters. This blog began on January 1, 2009, by offering daily examples from an annotated proof copy of the first edition of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755). When the proof copy finished, as it does abruptly in the letter P, the blog switched in October to examples drawn from a copy of the first edition owned and annotated by Hester Thrale Piozzi. Join us in the last of S, as we follow Johnson through his reading, as he chooses examples from a particular reading of an English literary canon to support a particular idea of the English language and its meanings.

As the end of 2009 draws near and the tercentennial festivities come to a close, Johnson followers can take comfort in one last exhibition, travelling from Harvard’s Hyde collection to open at the Grolier Club in New York City on December 9. The Harvard exhibition, A Monument More Durable than Brass: The Donald & Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, was curated by John Overholt and will be on view at the Grolier through February 6, 2010.

1 Hester Thrale Piozzi to Hester Maria Thrale, Brynbella, 19 March 1799. The Piozzi Letters: Correspondence of Hester Lynch Piozzi, 1784-1821 (formerly Mrs. Thrale), ed. Edward A. Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993), 3, 75.

From the Reading Room: Amaranthes & the Frauenzimmer

Contributed to Early Modern at the Beinecke by Bryn Savage, a doctoral student in the Yale University Department of Germanic Languages & Literature.  Bryn was a pre-prospectus research fellow at the Beinecke Library in the summer of 2008, working on the development of literary criticism in Germany in the late eighteenth century.

From the Reading Room: This series of postings highlights the research of graduate students, research fellows, and other scholars working in the Beinecke’s early modern collections.

Here we see the title page of the Nutzbares, galantes und curioeses Frauenzimmer-Lexicon or Useful, galant and curious Ladies’ Encyclopedia, first published in 1715. Using the pen name “Amaranthes,” Gottlieb Siegmund Corvinus (1677-1747), a lawyer, notary and poet in Leipzig, attempts to describe and explain all aspects of what he perceives to be the feminine world, from famous women and typical women’s professions, to the minutiae of housekeeping and fashion. Any everyday item that could be used by the eighteenth-century woman, such as a box to hold her writing materials [Schreibe-Kaestlein] or coffee beans [Caffee Bohnen], any recipe she might use or any place that she might visit in her daily life appears here in the 1,000 pages of the Ladies’ Encyclopedia. Corvinus creates no categorical chapters, but rather organizes all topics “in an orderly alphabetical fashion,” as he writes on the title page.

The reader is reminded of the strange yet sublime experience of leafing through Walter Benjamin’s 800-page Arcades Project [Passagen-Werk], which follows a similarly meandering path through the Paris of the late nineteenth century.[1] The juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated topics, which vary wildly in conventionally perceived importance, is as jarring and as fascinating in the Ladies’ Encyclopedia as in Benjamin’s convolutes. An entry on cadence is sandwiched between a recipe for salted cod baked in pastry dough [Cabeliau in einer Pastete] and a biography of the Roman queen Tanaquil [also known as Caecilia Caja].

Leafing further in the Ladies’ Encyclopedia, one discovers the biography of a learned sixteenth-century duchess named Renata between entries on the radish family [Rettig] and a legal term for the forgiveness of adultery [Remittiren].

Part practical how-to, part fantastic entertainment, part serious history, the Ladies’ Encyclopedia offers a unique glimpse into the areas of knowledge considered appropriate to women. The contours of women’s knowledge become most obvious when one considers which topics have been left out. As Katherine Goodman notes, geography was not taught to women at the time and thus cities and landmasses are not included in the Ladies’ Encyclopedia (Goodman 18). At the same time, curious household items in use in foreign lands do find a home in Corvinus’ entries.

Here we have an entry on hammocks [Hang-Matten], which, we are invited to learn, are a sort of woven bed “hung in the air between two trees or posts” and “very common in America and other warm places, where one desires to sleep undisturbed by vermin and other poisonous animals” (739). Certain things, which few women would travel far enough from Germany to see, were considered suitable food for the imagination, while more practical information, such as the location of the Americas, remained out of bounds.

In addition to information about the status of women, the Ladies’ Encyclopedia also offers a unique look into the mechanics of the everyday at the time. In few other sources can one find such detailed descriptions of life in early eighteenth-century Germany, such as common wedding customs and butter-making.

It is likely that the consistent detail of Corvinus’s entries on even the most mundane of topics must have seemed curious, even mad, when it was published. Today, however, this detail makes the Ladies’ Encyclopedia one of the most important sources of information on the subject.

Amaranthes, Nutzbares, galantes und curiöses Frauenzimmer-Lexicon. Worinnen nicht nur Der Frauenzimmer geistlich- und weltliche Orden, Aemter, Würden, Ehren-Stellen, Professionen und Gewerbe, Privilegia und Rechtliche Wohlthaten, Hochzeiten und Trauer-Solennitäten, Gerade und Erb-Stücken, Nahmen und Thaten der Göttinnen, Heroinen, gelehrter Weibes-Bilder, Künstlerinnen, Prophetinnen, Affter-Prophetinnen, Märtyrinnen, Poetinnen, Ketzerinnen, Quackerinnen, Schwärmerinnen … ; Sondern auch Ein vollkommenes und auf die allerneueste Art verfertigtes Koch- Torten- und Gebackens-Buch, Samt denen darzu gehörigen Rissen, Taffel-Auffsätzen und Küchen-Zettuln, Ordentlich nach dem Alphabet … abgefaßt … dem weiblichen Geschlechte insgesamt zu sonderbaren Nutzen, Nachricht und Ergötzlichkeit auff Begehren ausgestellet… Leipzig: Bey Joh. Friedrich Gleditsch und Sohn, 1715.

This recent addition to the Beinecke Collection of German Literature was once part of the well known ducal library of the Oettingen-Wallerstein family [Fürstlich Oettingen-Wallerstein'sche Bibliothek] in the Schwabian castle [Schloss] Seyfriedberg. Beinecke call number: Zg17 C811 715n

Further Reading:

Helga Brandes: Das “Frauenzimmer-Lexicon” von Amaranthes [d. i. Gottlieb Siegmund Corvinus (1677 - 1746)], in: Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 22 (1998), Heft 1, S. 22-30.

Brokmann-Nooren, Christiane Weibliche Bildung im 18. Jahrhundert : »gelehrtes Frauenzimmer« und »gefällige Gattin«. – Oldenburg : Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Univ., 1994 [Diss. U. Oldenburg 1992]. http://docserver.bis.uni-oldenburg.de/__publikationen/bisverlag/browei94/kap3.pdf

Katherine Goodman: Amazons and apprentices: women and the German Parnassus in the early Enlightenment. Boydell & Brewer, 1999.

Manfred Lemmer: Nachwort zur Neuausgabe des Frauenzimmer-Lexicons. Insel, Leipzig 1980, S. 8-9

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[1] Walter Benjamin, 1892-1940. Benjamin had still been at work on the Arcades Project at the time of his suicide while fleeing the Nazis on the Franco-Spanish border. The convolutes, or chapters, of the Arcades Project were not published until 1982.

Welcomes, Introductions, Explorations of Purpose

Welcome to the new academic year for Early Modern at the Beinecke, a blog for the British and European print and manuscript collections, 1500-1800, at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Each month, Early Modern at the Beinecke will explore an area of the early modern collections, introducing not only the materials themselves but their stories as objects or collections. As items in a rare book library, books and manuscripts are met and understood in many spaces and contexts. These essays will delve into the translations which occur as works move between the database and the reading room, the stacks and the footnote, the conservation lab and the classroom.

Early Modern at the Beinecke also peeks inside the reading room. The voices of researchers in the Beinecke collections can be heard in “From the Reading Room,” a column featuring postings by visiting researchers, Yale graduate fellows, and other researchers in the collections.

Early Modern at the Beinecke invites its readers to participate in the social life of the Beinecke’s early modern collections. Exhibitions, lectures, new resources, and events relating to the early modern collections will be announced; these are always free and open to the public. Further information on events can be found on the Beinecke’s calendar of events. Questions on the Beinecke’s location and hours can usually be answered on its web-site.

For further information on Early Modern at the Beinecke or on the Beinecke’s early modern collections, please feel free to contact Kathryn James, the Beinecke’s Assistant Curator for Early Modern Books and Manuscripts & the Osborn Collection at kathryn.james@yale.edu.

Two Recent Acquisitions: The Midshipman’s Library and the Wreck of the Unity

Two recent acquisitions build on Yale’s holdings of early modern British naval and mercantile papers. Above, the inventory of Henry Wright, an early nineteenth century midshipman in the British navy. Wright’s family lived at Brewer’s Hall, Cheshire, their house neighboring the estate of the 12th earl of Derby, who became Wright’s patron. Having joined the navy in 1825, Wright was rated midshipman in 1826, serving in the Mediterranean and West Indies trade until becoming Captain of the schooner Skipjack in 1839. The archive spans the period 1824-1836, consisting primarily of Wright’s correspondence from 1824-1827 and including letters to his father and to his patrons, Lord and Lady Derby.

Above and below, the list of books which Wright brought with him, including Paul and Virginia, the Vicar of Wakefield, the History of Rome, a Life of Nelson, grammars for Latin, Greek and English, an arithmetic, and Molyneux’s Use of globes.

Below, photographs from another recent acquisition, the papers of the British cargo ship Unity on its ill-fated voyage to the West Indies in 1782. Below the account books for fitting the Unity, including the cost of insurance, alongside account lines such as the travel charges for apprentices from London to Portsmouth.

Captained by Samuel Hurry, the Unity sailed from Portsmouth for Barbados in April, 1782. Below, some of the ship’s papers, including papers on the ship’s convoy and documents relating to the ship’s salvage and trials after the Unity was stranded and plundered off the coast of Cornwall.

These collections are currently being catalogued, but are open for research. Researchers are welcome to make use of the Beinecke collections, and can find further information on registering as a reader under “Planning your Research Visit” on the Beinecke web-site.

Frauenzimmer Bibliotheckgen, or, Ladies’ Little Library

Frauen-Zimmer Bibliotheckgen oder Thuelicher Vorschlag / Wie und Auff was Ahrt / für ein Deutsches Frauen=Zimmer / mässigen Vermögens / unterschiedene / außerlesene / und recht nützliche Bücher / zu ihrem Vergnügen / zeitlichen und ewigen Wohlseyn / gar leicht und auff wenig Kosten / angeschaffet werden können. Mit einer kleinen Beylage: Als einem beweglichen Schreiben einer Mutter an ihren zum abgöttischen Pabstthum übergangenen Sohn; und etlichen sonderbahren Denck=Sprüchen / dadurch das Herz in dem Wandel für Gott zu befestigen. Güstrau: Zu finden im Rüdigerschen Buchhandlung, 1705.

The Frauen-Zimmer Bibliotheckgen or Ladies’ Little Library is an instruction manual for ladies on book collecting and was published in 1705. The anonymous male author begins his advice on planning a personal library with a dressmaking analogy. He argues that personal libraries, like dresses, must suit their owners; before sewing, the seamstress examines, age, status, wealth, and temperament of the woman for whom it will be made – and the wise lady will do the same when creating a personal collection of books.

The anonymous author gives some universal advice – in his opinion, it is important to take care of both intellectual and spiritual needs (“Gemuth und die Seele” – 7). At the least, one ought to own a Bible and several devotional texts. Beyond this, a lady might acquire books on history, and housekeeping. He discourages the purchase of “böse Bücher” or “bad books,” such as romances, books on etiquette or the occult. In addition, the author explains the care of books and suggests women share their books with friends and family. Perhaps most interesting is the author’s suggestion that women create, save and pass down their own manuscript materials.

On the frontispiece of the Frauen-Zimmer Bibliotheckgen, we see a young lady in her study, which opens out onto a spacious French garden. In addition to her collection of books, her study also contains an elegant, cloth-draped desk with a notebook, quill and ink set and what appears to be a bookstand at the ready. Her books are arranged by size in a grand, curtained bookcase – there are large folios on the bottom shelf and smaller books above. The young lady herself appears contented and proud; clutching a sheaf of papers in one hand, she gestures confidently toward her books with the other.

Although this engraving shows quite an imposing library for an 18^th-century woman, the author took an egalitarian view to book collecting, writing that almost anyone could own at least the essentials and that every woman ought to buy as many good books as she can afford.

Before the advent of publisher’s bindings, it was common for customers to have several books bound together in a single binding. This small volume contains three slim books.

Contributed to Early Modern at the Beinecke by Bryn Savage, a doctoral student in the Yale University Department of Germanic Languages & Literature.  Bryn was a pre-prospectus research fellow at the Beinecke Library in the summer of 2008, working on the development of literary criticism in Germany in the late eighteenth century.

From the Reading Room: This series of postings highlights the research of graduate students, research fellows, and other scholars working in the Beinecke’s early modern collections.

Exhibition Opening: Starry Messenger, April 8 – June 30

Starry Messenger: Observing the Heavens in the Age of Galileo
An exhibition at the Beinecke Library, April 18 – June 30, 2009

In the autumn of 1609, the Italian mathematician and astronomer Galileo Galilei turned his telescope to the heavens, deciphering the cratered face of the moon, the four satellites of Jupiter, and other previously opaque features of the heavens. When, in 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius, or Starry Messenger, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler responded with enthusiasm, praising the significance of Galileo’s observations with his own Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, or, Conversations with the Starry Messenger (1610).

To whom else did the stars speak in the early modern period? This selection of engravings, charts, diagrams, and texts reveals the furred and cratered faces, the portents and instruments in European observations of the heavens from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Drawing in part on a recently acquired collection of early modern comet literature, these items explore the fascination and anxiety with the world, its state, and its possibilities of imperfection that infused the early modern European discussions of the stars.

Galileo’s illustration of the constellation of the Pleiades, in the first edition of Sidereus Nuncius.  At top: Galileo’s illustrations of the surface of the moon, also from the first edition of Sidereus Nuncius.

Above: images of the moon from the first pirated edition of Sidereus Nuncius, issued in Frankfurt in 1610.

Above: portrait of a cheerful Galileo, included as the frontispiece to the posthumous Opere (1666).

Hevelius’s image of the astronomer at work (above) and of the phases of the moon (below) in his exquisite lunar atlas, the Selenographia (Danzig: Hünefeld, 1647).

Novelists, as well as astronomers, began to colonize the landscapes of the heavens, as can be seen in this wonderfully witty satire by de Bergerac.  Selēnarhia, or, The government of the world in the moon : a comical history [Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune]. London: J. Cottrel, 1659.

A collection guide, containing further images and works scanned from this exhibition, can be found in the Beinecke Library’s digital library.     This exhibition is one event in Yale University’s celebration of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy, and a calendar of lectures, viewings, concerts, and other events has been posted by the Yale Office of Public Affairs.

An exhibition opening will be held at Beinecke Library on Tuesday, April 28, following a lecture by Dava Sobel, author of Galileo’s Daughter and Longitude.  The lecture, sponsored by the Yale University Department of Astronomy, will be held at 4 pm in the Yale Law School Levinson Auditorium.  Both lecture and exhibition opening are free and open to the public.