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NEW
dir e c t ions
IN BOOK
history

Reading Books
and Prints as
Cultural Objects

Edited by
EVANGHELIA STEAD
New Directions in Book History

Series editors
Shafquat Towheed
Faculty of Arts
Open University
Milton Keynes, UK

Jonathan Rose
Department of History
Drew University
Madison, USA
As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of
maturity where its early work can be reassessed and built upon. That
is the goal of New Directions in Book History. This series will publish
monographs in English that employ advanced methods and open up new
frontiers in research, written by younger, mid-career, and senior scholars.
Its scope is global, extending to the Western and non-Western worlds
and to all historical periods from antiquity to the 21st century, includ-
ing studies of script, print, and post-print cultures. New Directions
in Book History, then, will be broadly inclusive but always in the van-
guard. It will experiment with inventive methodologies, explore unex-
plored archives, debate overlooked issues, challenge prevailing theories,
study neglected subjects, and demonstrate the relevance of book history
to other academic fields. Every title in this series will address the evolu-
tion of the historiography of the book, and every one will point to new
directions in book scholarship. New Directions in Book History will be
published in three formats: single-author monographs; edited collec-
tions of essays in single or multiple volumes; and shorter works produced
through Palgrave’s e-book (EPUB2) ‘Pivot’ stream. Book proposals
should emphasize the innovative aspects of the work, and should be sent
to either of the two series editors.

Editorial board:
Marcia Abreu, University of Campinas, Brazil
Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University, USA
Matt Cohen, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Archie Dick, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Martyn Lyons, University of New South Wales, Australia

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14749
 Evanghelia Stead
Editor

Reading
Books and Prints
as Cultural Objects
Editor
Evanghelia Stead
Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, Guyancourt, France
& Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France

New Directions in Book History

ISBN 978-3-319-53831-0 ISBN 978-3-319-53832-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53832-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939084

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: Claudio Parmiggiani, Campo dei fiori [Field of Flowers] and Delocazione
[Displacement], San Giorgio in Poggiale, Bologna; from the collections of Fondazione
Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna, Biblioteca d’Arte e di Storia di San Giorgio in Poggiale,
Genus Bononiae - Musei nella Città

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Evanghelia Stead

Part I Manuscripts as Cultural Objects

2 From Devotional Aids to Antiquarian Objects: The

Prayer Books of Medingen 33
Henrike Lähnemann

3 How to Read the “Andachtsbüchlein aus der Sammlung

Bouhier” (Montpellier, BU Médecine, H 396)? On
Cultural Techniques Related to a Fourteenth-Century
Devotional Manuscript 57
Henrike Manuwald

4 “Otium et Negotium”: Reading Processes in Early Italian

and German Humanism 81
Michael Stolz

v
vi Contents

Part II Prints in Europe

5 The Fluidity of Images or the Compression of Media

Diversity in Books: Galeriewerke and Histoires Métalliques 109
Christina Posselt-Kuhli

6 Change of Use, Change of Public, Change of Meaning:

Printed Images Travelling Through Europe 137
Alberto Milano (†)

Part III Printed Books: Media, Objects, Uses

7 The Promotion of the Heroic Woman in Victorian and

Edwardian Gift Books 159
Barbara Korte

8 Pinocchio: An Adventure Illustrated Over More Than a

Century (1883–2005) 179
Giorgio Bacci

9 Illustration and the Book as Cultural Object: Arthur

Schnitzler’s Works in German and English Editions 209
Norbert Bachleitner

10 Two Peas in a Pod: Book Sales Clubs and Book

Ownership in the Twentieth Century 231
Corinna Norrick-Rühl

Part IV Epilogue

11 E-Readers and Polytextual Critique: On Some Emerging

Material Conditions in the Early Age of Digital Reading 253
Stephan Packard

Index 279
 Contributors

Giorgio Bacci Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy

Norbert Bachleitner Vienna University, Vienna, Austria

Barbara Korte University of Freiburg, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Germany

Henrike Lähnemann Oxford University, Oxford, UK

Henrike Manuwald Georg August University, Göttingen, Germany

Alberto Milano (†) Museo Per Via, Pieve Tesino‚ Provincia di Trento, Italy

Corinna Norrick-Rühl Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

Stephan Packard Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany

Christina Posselt-Kuhli Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

Evanghelia Stead Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, Guyancourt,

France & Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France

Michael Stolz University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

vii
 List of Figures and Tables

Fig. 1.1 Claudio Parmiggiani, Campo dei Fiori (Field of Flowers)

and Delocazione (Displacement) 3
Fig. 2.1 Intensity map of the distribution of the Medingen
manuscripts in 1542 (ringed) and in 2017 50
Fig. 3.1 Montpellier, Bibliothèque Universitaire de Médecine,
H 396, fol. 29r: Saint Calendar (1–14 January) 60
Fig. 3.2 Montpellier, Bibliothèque Universitaire de Médecine,
H 396, fol. 45v/46r: Flagellation and Crowning with Thorns 62
Fig. 3.3 Montpellier, Bibliothèque Universitaire de Médecine,
H 396, fol. 19r: Jesus and the Canaanite Woman 63
Fig. 3.4 Montpellier, Bibliothèque Universitaire de Médecine,
H 396, fol. 6r: Ask, Seek, Knock 67
Fig. 4.1 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 504, fol. 59v:
codex owned by the German humanists Hermann
and Hartmann Schedel 88
Fig. 4.2 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 3941, fol. 13r:
codex from Gossembrot’s library, with two-column
register on the “inventors of the arts” 89
Fig. 4.3 a Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, 2° Cod. 217,
fol. 175v: codex from Gossembrot’s library, references
on Sibylline Oracles also pointing to Boccaccio’s book
on Famous Men. b Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August
Bibliothek, 36.19 Aug. 2°, fol. 188v: codex newly
attributed to Gossembrot’s library, detail with numerous
cross-references 91
Fig. 5.1 Theatrum Pictorium, 1660, frontispiece 112

ix
x List of Figures and Tables

Fig. 5.2 Nicolas de Pigage, La Galerie Électorale de Dusseldorff ou

catalogue raisonné et figuré de ses tableaux, 1778, mural
display 115
Fig. 5.3 Nicolas de Pigage, La Galerie Électorale de Dusseldorff ou
catalogue raisonné et figuré de ses tableaux, 1778, title-page
engraving drawn by Nicolas Guibal 116
Fig. 5.4 Thesaurus Brandenburgicus, 1696, frontispiece, vol. I 119
Fig. 5.5 Thesaurus Brandenburgicus, c. 1696, frontispiece, vol. II 120
Fig. 5.6 Thesaurus Brandenburgicus, 1701, frontispiece, vol. III 121
Fig. 5.7 Romeyn de Hooghes, title-page engraving for Nicolas
Chevalier, Histoire Guillaume III par Medailles, Inscriptions,
Arc de Triomphe, & autres monumens Publics,
Amsterdam 1692 124
Fig. 6.1 Ventola engraving, after Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s
La Grasse Cuisine and La Maigre Cuisine, published
by Luca Bertelli, Venice 140
Fig. 6.2 La Grasse Cuisine, second edition, reversed engraving
after Pieter van der Heyden (after Pieter Brueghel the Elder)
by Hieronymus Cock 141
Fig. 6.3 Francesco Villamena, Il Bruttobuono, engraving, Rome, 1601 144
Fig. 6.4 Crédit est mort, engraving, anonymous copy
of Il Bruttobuono by Francesco Villamena, Lyon,
last quarter of the seventeenth century 145
Fig. 6.5 Francesco Villamena, Geminiano caldarrostaro, copy
by Charles David, published by Pierre Firens, Paris,
1620–1630 146
Fig. 6.6 Portrait de M.r Ramponeau [sic] cabartier [sic] de la
basse Courtille en bonet [sic] de nuit, etching
and chisel engraving, published by Charpentier,
Paris, March 1760 147
Fig. 6.7 The Surpreising Bett Decided, etching, published
by Carington Bowles, London, c. 1751 149
Fig. 7.1 Frank Mundell, Heroines of Daily Life. London:
The Sunday School Union, 1886 168
Fig. 7.2 Alfred H. Miles (compiler), A Book of Brave Girls at
Home and Abroad: True Stories of Courage and Heroism
Shown in Modern Life by Women and Girls. London:
Stanley Paul, (1909) 172
Fig. 8.1 Enrico Mazzanti, frontispiece for Carlo Collodi’s
Le Avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un Burattino, 1883 181
Fig. 8.2 Carlo Chiostri, drawing illustration for Carlo Collodi’s
Le Avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un Burattino, 1901 184
 List of Figures and Tables xi

Fig. 8.3 Attilio Mussino, original drawing for Carlo Collodi’s

Le Avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un Burattino, 1911 187
Fig. 8.4 Piero Bernardini, blue cover with Pinocchio silhouette
for Carlo Collodi’s Le Avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di
un Burattino, 1942 192
Fig. 8.5 Lorenzo Mattotti, full-page plate, Pinocchio’s meeting
with the Cat and the Fox. In Carlo Collodi, Le Avventure
di Pinocchio. Storia di un Burattino, 2008 196
Fig. 8.6 Mimmo Paladino, serigraphy for the Cat and the Fox,
In Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio. Le Avventure di Pinocchio, 2004 198

Table 9.1 Diagram of the narrator’s and the illustrator’s perspectives

in Schnitzler’s Lieutenant Gustl 216
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Evanghelia Stead

Cultural Stories and Libraries

In central Bologna, the deconsecrated church of San Giorgio in Poggiale
provides a long and eventful chronicle. Its many features also nourish a
fascinating cultural allegory.
First recorded in writing in 1237, the church was founded in much
older times, and is most probably of Longobard origin. The edifice,
rebuilt in late Mannerist style under the mendicant order of the Servite
friars between 1589 and 1633, is still preserved today. A monastery,
added between 1641 and 1642, met with the fate of many other reli-
gious institutions in the Napoleonic wars, along with the church: it was
suppressed, never to retrieve its sacred vocation either under private
or public ownership. The church was, however, reconsecrated several
times over the course of the nineteenth century. It re-opened inter-
mittently, from 1824 to 1842, under the Franciscan order of the Frati
Minori Conventuali (the Minorites or Greyfriars), and again after 1882
under the Jesuits. The coup de grâce came with the Second World War.

E. Stead (*)
Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, Guyancourt, France
e-mail: evanghelia.stead@uvsq.fr
E. Stead
Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France

© The Author(s) 2018 1

E. Stead (ed.), Reading Books and Prints as
Cultural Objects, New Directions in Book History,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53832-7_1
2 E. Stead

On 25 September 1943 it was heavily bombed and many of the splen-

did artworks it housed were either lost or destroyed. Desecrated, and
even effaced from Bologna’s cultural memory, it faced demolition, but in
recent years it has undergone two restorations, before finally reopening
as a library in 2009.1
Currently installed in the San Giorgio sanctuary, two artworks by the
contemporary unclassifiable Italian artist Claudio Parmiggiani (1943–)
mirror this turbulent storyline. The first is a delocazione (“displace-
ment”), the name Parmiggiani bestows on the traces of dust, soot, and
smoke left by books or objects on the walls of memorable places.2 In
San Giorgio’s semi-circular apse, shadowy outlines of books and shelves
form three insubstantial bookcases looming from between slim Ionian
pilasters. They were torched, imprinted with fire, and only the trace of
their presence remains on the walls, impeccably restored and finished in
2010. Resembling oversized silver-based photographs, or silver-plated
daguerreotypes, they form Parmiggiani’s first permanently visible dis-
placement—former installations having never survived beyond their
temporary exhibition. This ethereal, white-and-grey “fresco” serves
as a backdrop to the second artwork, a portentous installation, now
standing on the site of the vanished altar. A bell weighs down upon a
squat, square bed of charred books. Christened Campo dei fiori (Field
of Flowers), the monumental tribute alludes, among other things, to the
death of Giordano Bruno, who was burnt at the stake.3
The ghostly “bookcases” and the hefty sculpture, materialized in
space as vast metaphors in subtle dialogue with each other and with us,
commemorate the bombing and gutting of the church, the silencing of
the bell, all the while affirming their presence and renewed existence. In
their contrast and tension, they remind us that books are as much solid
bricks as they are symbolic voices and evocative spirits. In this volume,
we look at them as objects, as media, as metaphors, and as symbols. By
transferring ideas and structuring worlds through their rich materiality,
they are seminal agents in the construction and reconstruction of cul-
ture. Just as the inside of San Giorgio was obliterated but today accom-
modates a library, the original shapes and forms of books may survive
and undergo many transformations (Fig. 1.1).
Parmiggiani’s artworks not only reflect upon time, wreckage, and change,
they also invoke the mutability of books, both conceptually and materially.
As a twinned gesture in a desecrated space, they evoke a rich cultural story
of traceable deposits that bind the works of art to the refurbished space
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Fig. 1.1 Claudio Parmiggiani, Campo dei Fiori (Field of Flowers) and
Delocazione (Displacement), courtesy of the artist. Collections Fondazione Cassa
di Risparmio in Bologna, Biblioteca d’Arte e di Storia di San Giorgio in Poggiale,
Genus Bononiae—Musei nella Città
4 E. Stead

and to its books and prints suggesting novel uses and virtual potential. San
Giorgio in Poggiale today houses: Bologna’s Art and History Library, total-
ling 100,000 volumes from the 1500s to modern times; a periodical and
newspaper collection from the eighteenth century to the present; and a
photographic archive of some 60,000 prints pertaining to Bologna before
it underwent major urban change. Access from the street is through a cir-
cular wooden drum that was conceived by the architect Michele De Lucchi
(1951–) as a tower of books to exclude the city’s noise. The material and
spiritual life cycle of a printed book from production to destruction is
here complete: from paper, traditionally derived from lumber and rags, to
volumes kindled, then conceptualized. The whole building reads as a vast
metaphor, or, as Garrett Stewart would have it, a remarkable “bookwork”
(Stewart 2011). Yet these volumes are no longer orphaned codex forms
violently hijacked from their normal use, as in most of the cases studied by
Stewart. In San Giorgio, materially wrecked objects and their conceptual
reinterpretation have been relocated within a modern library’s collections.
Yet, San Giorgio is more than just an empty, echoing, cultural cell
turned operational library. The lateral walls of the ex-church shelter
a cycle of altar-like paintings by Piero Pizzi Cannella (1955–) baptised
Cathedrals, alluding to other landmarks, either imaginary cities or real
places. The library hosts conferences, talks, and cultural events, and is
today one of Bologna’s important cultural venues. As such, it is part of
the Genus Bononiae virtual network of urban museography, Bologna’s
streets serving as hallways, and its historical edifices working as exhibition
spaces with exhibits, all of which attest to the city’s contribution to the
arts and sciences.4
From a rugged past there emerges a multi-layered identity and his-
tory. Both the San Giorgio library and Parmiggiani’s material and con-
ceptual artworks address factual, physical, and symbolic representations of
cultural objects. They feature as strong emblems the way this collective
volume engages with books and prints as objects, media and metaphors.
Hence the referential analogy, by way of introduction, to the recurrent
phenomena this book investigates.
We set out to retrace here, across books and prints, cultural stories
analysed in context and retold. The extreme, the growing value, even the
perishable quality of cultural objects, all register and reflect the passage
of time, the rise and fall of trends, the changes in purpose, the shifting
functions. As tangible and symbolic embodiments of culture, books and
prints both mean and matter. They point to many uses, whether factual,
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

intellectual, or imaginary. Our particular interest is in addressing their

past value and current heritage, textual, visual and object-specific, from
the fall of the Roman Empire to Amazon’s e-reader hardware.
The parable of San Giorgio in Poggiale, rife with intellectual and
mythical reconstruction, takes us back to the practices of convent scrip-
toria, brings us through the deposits of a remembered past, the many
layers of present physical printed matter, to suggest finally translation
into digital media through the Genus Bononiae network. Similarly, this
book starts with medieval manuscripts, then turns to prints, investigates
meanings and uses of printed matter, and closes with e-readership and
digital books.
As a cornerstone of European culture, Bologna symbolizes the birth
and building of universities in the Western world. Over the last 18 years,
the “Bologna process”, adopted in 1999 by 29 countries with the aim
of creating a European Higher Education Area, has brought students,
academics, and educational systems into durable contact. It has fostered
multi-disciplinary, life-long, and linguistic education through the pro-
motion of circulation and exchange across Europe, thanks to informa-
tion technologies and despite a dismissal as “Humboldt’s nightmare”.5
Likewise, events prior to this book brought together scholars from 6
European countries (Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, the United
Kingdom, and Austria), cutting across specialities and fields of interest:
medievalists encountered sixteenth-century experts, baroque connois-
seurs and modernists; literary historians rubbed elbows with profession-
als of book and media studies; academics mingled with a collector (since
sadly departed); literature scholars engaged with art historians; and all in
answer to the preoccupations of cultural history. Research institutes for
advanced studies provide such platforms as are necessary for interdisci-
plinary encounters, and the venture resulting in this publication origi-
nated as a conference held at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
(FRIAS) at Freiburg-im-Breisgau in July 2015.
Within this book’s wide, interdisciplinary perspective, we adopt no
conventional divisions of language, country-specific practices or print cat-
egories (collectable fine art versus the cheap and popular, for example).
The editor is of course aware that the selection of chapters proposed here
is mainly European-focussed with a few extensions reaching across the
Atlantic to the USA in the West, and stretching in one case to Russia in the
East. This, however, stems from the participants’ subject matter, not from
6 E. Stead

oversight. Many outstanding studies have opened new ways of investigat-

ing cultural history outside Europe and across the globe. Several Panizzi
lectures have considered manuscripts and prints worldwide, from com-
paring Hebrew manuscripts between East and West (Beit-Arié 1993) to
Arabic learning introduced into England (Burnett 1997), one turning to
books in medieval China (Dudbridge 2000). To mention but two scholarly
inquiries, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann’s Toward a Geography of Art (2004)
has straddled the geographical dimension of art history in Europe, Latin
America, and Asia during the early modern period, opening methodo-
logical vistas not only in art history but also in cultural geography. Equally
stemming from geography, Sean Roberts’s Printing in a Mediterranean
World: Florence, Constantinople, and the Renaissance of Geography (2013)
shows how political and intellectual culture renegotiated the heritage of
classical antiquity when manuscripts turned into printed books, copper-
plate engraving emerged, and remarkable tailored copies travelled from
Quattrocento Florence under Lorenzo de’ Medici to Bayezid II’s court
in Constantinople. Although Roberts does not refer primarily to Ottoman
sources, he revisits relations between early modern Italy and the Ottoman
state in their respective views of the world. And I would have been keen to
add to the present volume a chapter on the travels of The Arabian Nights
around the globe across manuscripts as well as printed and illustrated mat-
ter—a fascinating topic that is only just being investigated.6
However, although grounded in Europe, this volume’s interest and
scope lies beyond its specific subject matter in the way it can be relevant
to future research both inside and outside Europe. Many of its particular
chapters could be case studies to be continued, carried over, or renewed
in other parts of the world, as they build not only on new research mate-
rial, but, more importantly, on an interdisciplinary methodological
stance, each author enhancing his or her home discipline with a broader
approach.
Several moments chart threshold periods: the late Middle Ages, early
humanism, early precursors of art publications, illustrated books from
the industrial age, book consumerism in the twentieth century, contem-
porary e-reading. Just as Parmiggiani’s works of art are both material and
conceptual, our aim for this book is to conceptualize how “the mate-
rial culture of ideas” (Sharpe 2000, 39) relates to reading; how physical
books and prints reveal tendencies and developments, past and present,
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

while disclosing their changing significance over time. To what extent do

form and content, message and medium, respond to material, concep-
tual, symbolic and imaginary use? How do they point to specific cultural
narratives or tales?

The Drill of Discipline

Our wide-angle approach encompasses a field rich in accomplish-
ments, rife with debate. From the 1980s, intense disciplinary discus-
sions have sought the best path towards writing “the history of books”
(Darnton 1982)—a translation of the French term histoire du livre, not
always engaging to anglophone ears.7 There are three major compet-
ing disciplines in this arena: History (privileging cultural transactions),
Bibliography (focussing on material artefacts), and Literary Studies
(prioritizing literary texts). Robert Darnton’s “communications circuit
of the book”, epitomizing the transactions between author, publisher,
shippers and agents, booksellers and readers, is a well-known attempt to
formalize the field and prevent the disciplines from “running riot”. The
role of reading however, was wanting in this model, as Darnton himself
acknowledged: “reading remains the most difficult stage to study in the
circuit that books follow” (Darnton 1982, 16). Several innovative con-
tributions have since made reading studies a leading area in contem-
porary research, from Roger Chartier’s work constructed around four
constants—authors, texts, books, and readers8— to Martyn Lyons’s A
History of Reading and Writing in the Western World (2010), Palgrave
Macmillan’s series on The History of Reading (2011), and an identical
title in the “Routledge Literature Readers” series (Towheed et al. 2011).
Eleven years after Darnton’s influential essay, analytical bibliogra-
phy made its own claim to recognition. Thomas R. Adams and Nicolas
Barker promoted an alternative model of circulation, arguing compel-
lingly that the life of a book does not begin with writing any more than
it ends with reading. Significantly, their book cycle begins with publi-
cation and goes on to reception and survival, but does not end there.
It is graphically set at the very heart of “the whole socio-economic
conjuncture”, seen as four spheres exerting radial pressure on the core
life cycle of the book. The spheres correspond to: (a) intellectual influ-
ences; (b) political, legal, and religious influences; (c) commercial pres-
sures; and (d) social behaviour and taste. This counter-model, aiming to
capture the total significance of books, mainly privileges print culture,
8 E. Stead

“something printed or written in multiple copies”, produced “for

­public consumption” (Adams and Barker 1993, 51). In other words, it
excludes manuscripts, be they medieval copyists’ productions or unique
­unpublished scripts, and was conceived in the pre-digital era. Akin to
Darnton’s graph, it schematizes affairs and relationships diagrammati-
cally. And models, though necessary to visualize, formalize, and rep-
resent theories, “have a way of freezing human beings out of history”
(Darnton 1982, 11).
Peter D. McDonald would in turn emphasize human interactions
in 1997 with his British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice,
1880–1914, as Leslie Howsam notes (Howsam 2006, 38f). By applying
Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural theory of the literary field to book history,
McDonald provides the cyclical actions with relationships and structures.
Writers, critics, publishers, printers, distributors, and readers endow
Darnton’s circuit with genuine life; texts are not only meanings and ideas
to be interpreted, but “radically situated, for Bourdieu, as material forms
with a specific status in the [literary] field” (McDonald 1997, 13, quoted
by Howsam 2006, 38). Transitory commercial, cultural, and intellectual
situations take on a new significance.
Mapping the field, discussing its methodological principles, and iden-
tifying key notions, these useful contributions also reveal the difficulty
in providing a full portrayal of books and prints as cultural objects, and
in rendering their roles or agency. While the historian’s and the bibli-
ographer’s grids capture crucial aspects of the book industry and tech-
nology, they are based either on the book as product, commodity, or
artefact (Darnton), or on the book as object of inquiry, in an attempt
to have Bibliography recognized as a sovereign academic discipline
(Adams and Barker). The question of what books may achieve as cul-
tural agents is not tackled. Leslie Howsam has importantly observed that,
firstly, Darnton’s focus is on the book trade; his main interest lies in the
book’s material production and distribution and he means to explore the
history of communication, not develop a history of culture (Howsam
2006, 31–32). Secondly, still according to Howsam, by concentrat-
ing on events, Adams and Barker undertook to establish bibliographic
truth, provide an accurate text, and follow its transmission. The “reading
public or the broader culture is cast in passive terms”, and “the social
context” in which the book emerged “drops to the background” (ibid.,
15). Despite their ambitious approach, Adams and Barker deem that
“understanding of reception is episodic and scattered”. Reception itself is
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

a “theme”, “a passive thing”, not a process (Adams and Barker 1993, 60

and 58). Their recurring comparison of Bibliography with Archaeology
clearly does not favour the book’s impact or influence. Lastly, McDonald
intends “to re-think and re-write literary criticism” and, by recon-
structing the literary field, “stress the complexity of a literary culture”
(Howsam 2006, 39).
This collection also builds on literary and artistic culture with a dif-
ference: by combining literary analysis and looking at how books and
prints are shaped by design, format, uses, and, later, marketing, it inves-
tigates their impact on cultural trends; similarly, it explores how cultural
trends shape the reading and deciphering of books and prints. Books and
prints may well be the outcome or consequence of procedures, transac-
tions, or trades (as well as a witness to the legitimacy and strength of
Bibliography); still, they concern us here as active and complex repre-
sentatives of culture through their manifold uses and many-sided reading
processes.
Since McDonald, an alternative to the “History of Books” has
emerged in the form of “Book Studies”. The breadth implied by the
term has proved appropriate for this book. True, in Jonathan Rose’s
words, Book Studies represents “a new academic field to explore the
past, present, and future of all forms of written and printed communica-
tions” that “would bring together, under one interdisciplinary umbrella,
specialists in book history, the book arts, publishing education, textual
studies, reading instruction, librarianship, journalism, and the Internet,
and teach all these subjects as an integrated whole” (Rose 2003, 12,
my emphasis). Admittedly, when Book Studies is merely understood
as “a dual discipline”, encompassing “Book History and Book Arts”
(Stepanova 2007), significant phenomena, such as the effects of reading
or the complexity of literary culture, are still sidelined. And it has been
asked whether Book Studies is not “merely an interdisciplinary academic
program” rather than a “free-standing discipline” (Stepanova 2007).
The latter question, however, concerns more the structure of academia
than Book Studies as the research stance we propose here. This book
aims to show its research benefits. As I have already argued regarding
periodicals, it may not be necessary to establish yet another free-stand-
ing discipline. “Discipline” implies rules and sanction. Books (and, in
the broadest sense, manuscripts, periodicals, and prints) invite switching
disciplines in order to cross-exchange views and interrelate objects, uses,
and fashions. Should yet another specialist field emerge, it would, in the
10 E. Stead

effort to be peer-recognized, necessarily generate rules, scopes, aims,

issues, and so on, and diligently so. We are sufficiently supplied with dis-
ciplines to be able to explore books, prints, and periodicals, and under-
stand how they work as cultural objects. More pertinently, should we not
consider how books and prints challenge our disciplinary criteria (Stead
2015)?
This challenge is addressed here by asking more modestly “What do
books and prints do as cultural objects?” while moving from construc-
tive dialogue between disciplines to interdisciplinarity. We attempt this
without promoting yet another scheme or study model, or giving our-
selves a further scientific identity. Commercial, cultural, and intellec-
tual exchanges are transitory: our approach needs to be supple enough
to adapt and remain flexible. An approach is not a fixed attitude, and
research is not a position (a location, rank, posture, or set argument),
even if it often leads to academic appointment, status, or employment.
It may, however, gain strength and finesse by adjusting to objects—start-
ing with a close examination of their materiality. Conversely, disciplinary
discussion may simply derive from an anxiety of academia as an institu-
tion, rather than being a search for interpretative improvement. Bonnie
Mak argues that systems of classification may be “transformed into repre-
sentatives of different categories of knowledge, and even come to signify
knowledge itself” (Mak 2011, 56). Since Book Studies covers substan-
tially different historical periods, dissimilar media and varied situations,
it is crucial not to fix and batten down its means of investigation and the
directions it may take. The authors in this collection, challenged by their
very objects of study, have adopted interdisciplinary approaches while
striving to provide a comprehensive survey in each particular historical
context. Books and prints are already demonstrable cultural agents in this
sense.
Book Studies implies a long list of fields well implemented and inves-
tigated by specialists: Book History; Materiality and Printing Studies
(frequently called Analytical or Descriptive Bibliography); Book Arts;
Media History and Internet Studies; Literature and Publishing Histories;
Histories of Education, Librarianship and Journalism; Social, Economic
and Political History affecting the book trade and interacting with
it; Digital Humanities; the Social History of Reading, and Textual
Studies—to name but the most prominent. We have chosen a broad
chronological approach here, with each study calling on two disciplines,
if not three. Is this cross-disciplinary approach “poaching” (Howsam
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

2006, 37)? Admittedly, Michel de Certeau did not disdain braconnage

(“poaching”) in his elaborations on cultural theory and everyday life (De
Certeau 1980, 279–296).
Such an approach informs a book published in 2012 under the title
La Chair du Livre: Matérialité, Imaginaire et Poétique du Livre Fin-de-
siècle (The Flesh of the Book: Materiality, Imagination and Poetics of the
Fin-de-Siècle Book). In this, thanks to the productive metaphor of the
book as flesh, it is argued that print culture is based on much more
than the reader’s intellect: it relies on his or her senses and imagination.
Print and visual culture is explored in relation to the rich materiality
of fin de siècle publications and inserted in “a network of cultural and
metaphorical associations woven into nineteenth-century book culture”
(Arnar 2014, 474). When print culture is probed both literally and
figuratively, and an iconographical or metaphorical analysis combines
with critical discourse, books and prints prove to be much more than
a depository of formats, techniques, materials, or illustration styles:
they are the very hub of cultural metaphors that throw light onto visual
and literary experimentation. Starting from a plurality of methodolo-
gies, materiality, figurative imagination, and poetics have thus proved a
threefold way to look at books and prints as telling objects of cultural
history. Addressing sophisticated and mechanical printing, deluxe and
low-priced realizations, that study even extended to writing instruments
in Suetonius’s The Lives of the Twelve Caesars; Marcel Schwob’s bust,
modelled as book-ends that defined the breadth of his private library;
as well as Schwob’s medieval and early modern books, which creatively
informed his modern writing, anticipating Borges. The question thus
arose: Could books and prints then be studied in similar ways across
periods and in other media than those proper to the fin de siècle? FRIAS
welcomed this idea in the broader context of the ongoing project on
Goethe’s Faust I print culture.9
This volume is one consecutive answer. In the wake of James
O’Donnell’s and Roger Chartier’s previous contributions,10 tradi-
tional boundaries according to media and periodicity have here been
suspended. Manuscripts, prints, printed matter and digital media are
considered as silent but powerful European, and sometimes transatlan-
tic, messengers, as cultural objects “bearing in their pages the bounda-
ries of their possible reception”.11 Intersemiotic relationships arise from
the ways their parts combine: content with container, inside with out-
side, text with image and ornament, binding with ideas and purport,
12 E. Stead

contextuality with intertextuality, genotype with phenotype. Grounded

in materiality, the chapters offered look at reading processes, imaginary
representations, and circulation.

Materiality, Reading, Representation, and Circulation

Each study starts from the material forms in which wording and art are
constituted and transmitted. The material characteristics of prints and
books are consistently central to their meaning—this is a key meth-
odological stance. Accordingly, the detailed examination of the physi-
cal constitution of written and printed matter leads, in a few cases, to
deciphering specific objects; in other, more numerous cases, the material
characteristics of prints and books become the connective tissue between
communities of readers. But the anatomy of an object would fall short of
the mark, if it did not release its imaginative energy. Materiality may be
intimately bound to the ideas it expresses and carries. Careful, conscious
designs may converge to constitute trends, and these change significantly
over time. Investigations conducted in archives, or the anchoring of
material relationships, thus allow for restaging activities in new intellec-
tual, political and social contexts, thanks to the numerous connections
between readers and objects of study.
We look at reading firstly by deciphering books through use, and
by pairing materiality and concept. In this process, reading, whether of
manuscripts, prints, or tablets, is seen as the vibrant part of the intel-
lectual pursuit. Object matter engages with immaterial meaning in a
mutually dynamic relationship. From the book’s implementation (books
as objects) to its energy released through individual or collective read-
ing (books coming to life), books and prints engage “with the aes-
thetics of reception but by displacing and enlarging its aim” (Chartier
1985, 81).12 Secondly, we follow the changing roles of books over
time. They are not only historical documents bearing the traces of the
past, but agents of knowledge, aesthetic import, and imaginative intel-
lect. Thirdly, the wealth of humanist culture from antiquity to modern
times is represented by interrelated reading. Michael Stolz underlines the
density of humanist reading: not just the mind’s encounters with texts
while reading, but also with remembered reading, and reading circum-
stances rooted in previous reading scenes. Similarly, our title, Reading
Books and Prints as Cultural Objects, combines internal and external
reading processes: the researcher’s gaze, the readers’ experience, and
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

the multi-layered scenes that are read involving other readings. Reading
embedded in material culture is prolonged by electronic reading: on the
one hand, digital texts are consumed by contemporary readers; on the
other, e-text providers monitor this very readership in turn to constitute
reading communities or gather representative samples for advertisement
campaigns from the information collected electronically.
Furthermore, this book extends former publications on books stud-
ied alongside images. The 2002 special issue “Reading with Images in
Nineteenth-Century Europe” showed that images in books fully partake
in literary reading: they enable the author to write with images; they
empower the reader through visual spurs; and they endow the book itself
with a spectacular dimension (Stead ed. 2002). Images may relate to the
text structurally, indicate peak moments, or connect with other images
(just as texts do in intertextuality). The 2014 special issue of Word &
Image on “Imago & Translatio” looked into the translation of literary
works in Europe alongside artistic rendition, simultaneously considering
transfer from language to language and from language to images from
the late eighteenth to the twentieth century, while discussing circula-
tion patterns and publishing tendencies. This gave rise to a self-imposed
methodology, at the crossroads of Literature and Art History, Semiotics
and Translation Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Literature Studies
(Stead and Védrine eds. 2014).
Expanding on these investigations, several chapters in this volume
explore reading with images from the Middle Ages to modern times,
while one chapter examines how prestige prints encounter the book.
Reading with images depends on additions (ornament, insert plates,
in-text images) or self-standing prints. It may give rise to various book
genres. Frequently understood as illustration (i.e. explanation, demon-
stration, or illumination), such limitative branding may be misleading
when texts decked with images produce intricate intersemiotic relations,
expand or contradict textual meaning. The relevance of the term “illus-
tration” may also be challenged. There may be many books within a
single book, as there are many meanings and dimensions within a given
print. And when “artworks on paper” (drawings, engravings, litho-
graphs, reproductions) circulate extensively between countries, then
media and art history are further enriched.
Books and prints are, however, not just objects or media. An impor-
tant part of their life relates to the imagination. As Ernst Robert Curtius
famously showed, books and writing, as symbols, play a seminal part in
14 E. Stead

Western culture from antiquity to the end of the Enlightenment (Curtius

1953). This argument has been taken further in the mass-printing age
and recast in Leah Price’s How to Do Things with Books in Victorian
Britain (2012). Large-scale changes and a new cultural status drive
books into other uses than reading: they become fashion accessories,
wastepaper, wrapping for food or props—a medium for social interac-
tion. They involve “rejection theory” (rather than reception theory). In
this collection we attempt to look at several sides of the metaphorical and
symbolic associations involved.
This complex process may lie in the book’s very materiality: to insert
valuable materials in a volume (such as a bone plaque much later added
in a medieval manuscript psalter, as H. Lähnemann shows) is to imag-
ine a modest book’s other self by imitating the ivory of representational
manuscripts’ lavish bindings. Material embellishment could have con-
noted spiritual devotion, the soul’s commitment; but, in the case of this
particular object, at the time it is inserted, it reflects instead antiquar-
ian infatuation. Moreover, books function as metaphors. They partake
of the way humans construct notions of truth, existence, the world, life
itself. As Kevin Sharpe argues, “the texts, discourses and performances
by which a culture structures the chaos of experience are the representa-
tions of the world that become the only reality that human beings can
know” (Sharpe 2000, 11). As bearers of such phenomena, books and
prints epitomize “cultural history” “between practices and representa-
tions”—to echo an eloquent title by Roger Chartier (Chartier 1988).
If the “world as representation” is “fashioned by means of the series
of discourses” (ibid., 11), books are a central means to fathoming and
understanding a culture. Equally essential to representation, prints act as
clusters of images that structure the imagination and bear on the psyche.
They carry innovation, established conventions, or revolutionary belief.
Reading and picturing processes are the channels through which texts,
myths, and imaginary patterns are transmitted, read, re-read, and reme-
diated in different contexts and over time. Their twin energies stimulate
the imagination, just as they transform and shape experience, belief, or
configurations of the world.
Such processes depend largely on circulation and dissemination. In
this book, we investigate inter alia the movement of prayer books from
the Medingen convents across lands and centuries; the reinterpretation
(and displacement) of texts through illustrated and translated editions
of Schnitzler’s works across Austria, Great Britain, and the USA; as well
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

as the transformation of prints between genres and cultures, thanks to

pedlars and hawkers. European cultural exchanges existed very early, well
before our global digitized culture. To show books and prints as agents
between cultures is seminal. Traditional nationally based approaches to
documentation limit reception, restrict investigation, and distort percep-
tion, since they prevent dissimilarities, distinctions, or even disparities
from exerting their refining influence on the elaboration of theory. This
volume shows that prints and books reflect the encounter, divergence,
and overlapping of cultures. Questions of production, reception, trans-
formation, and circulation of aesthetic and cultural models are brought
to the fore. Rather than putting the emphasis on a unified field, this
volume stresses journeys, movement, and changing categories. Reading
itself is both a spiritual and a physical movement. Early modern read-
ers engage with negotiation, that is textual and remembered interchange
that transcends barriers of origin, space, and time. Similarly, quality cate-
gories and hierarchies are tested: we take into account originals, variants,
replicas, and serialization processes. Finally, we turn to books and prints
as complex and self-referential cultural agents that change from cultural
objects into cultural emblems. Cultural emblems nourish the mythical
dimension of the book object itself, and the last two chapters challenge
this mythification of the book.

Reading Cultural Objects Over Time

Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects extends its reach from the
Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, and is divided into four parts
according to questions of media: manuscripts, prints, mechanically
printed books, and e-readers. Each part contains two to four chapters.
Part IV serves as an ample conclusion, more speculative in nature, and
which may also be read as a foreword to digital reading practices. This
arrangement works more as reversible counterpoint than strict chronol-
ogy. As will be immediately obvious to the reader, chronological order
is not always strictly respected within a section. For instance, Part I, on
manuscript culture, might have begun with a piece on a fourteenth-cen-
tury devotional booklet rather than with the fifteenth-century Medingen
prayer books. By the same token, Part II, on prints, ought to have
opened with the circulation of cheap print culture from the sixteenth
century onwards rather than with baroque reproductions of princely
galleries. In both cases, the chronological inversion is the consequence
16 E. Stead

of the methodological questions raised by this volume. By encompass-

ing three media-driven periods, the scope of Lähnemann’s study on
the Medingen manuscripts announces our investigation from medieval
times to the digital age. To examine prestigious copperplates glorifying
political personalities before derivative, far-travelling imagery, infinitely
adjustable to use and context, works counteractively to the status of
such worthies’ galleries. The inverse contrapuntal order in Part II mir-
rors rival, yet complementary, categories. In Part I, the profusion of cul-
tural practices around the Medingen manuscripts is apt justification. In
both instances, inversions echo our wide-ranging approach to book and
print culture. Put differently, chapters in each part engage with specific
media in complementary ways and address questions relevant to special-
ist dialogue. Nevertheless, they articulate problems that clearly transcend
periodicity, medium-specificity, and specialisms.
Part I focusses on manuscripts while addressing reading practices in
contexts that are monastic and antiquarian (H. Lähnemann), devo-
tional (H. Manuwald), or early humanist (M. Stolz). In Chap. 2,
Henrike Lähnemann follows the prayer books made by fifteenth-cen-
tury Cistercian nuns in the Medingen convents through to the twenty-
first century. The nuns individually plied script, ornament, prayers, and
hymns to express worship, although common devotional features may
also be discerned. In their material and spiritual identities, these book-
lets are cultural handbooks: not only manuals in the current sense, but
strong expressions of personal soul and body devotion by the handmaid-
ens of God, schooled and trained in the convent. To be fully grasped,
their rich materiality transcends descriptive bibliography. It points to
symbolic uses. Materializing the word thus employs parchment, for
animal skin best befits the word made flesh, just as scraping the manu-
script to use it anew embodies conventual reform and renewal. That a
patchwork—a motley of cloth and sewn-on scrolls forming an ante-
pendium (altar cloth)—leads to the discovery of a rich array of prayer
books now dispersed throughout Europe and also over the Atlantic,
shows how deeply cultural history relies on textual heritage—texts and
textiles, according to the etymology (“text” comes from “texere”, “to
weave”). Such practices are not unique or exclusive to Medingen. In
the first half of the twentieth century, Clelia Marchi, a peasant woman
from Poggio Rusco near Mantua, wrote her diary on a 2 m-wide bed
sheet, now a jewel in the collection of the National Diary Archive of
Pieve Santo Stefano near Arezzo, along a Memory Route.13 Her diary
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

is today available in print form.14 Textual culture transcends books, just

as books are a part of broader cultural trends. That thread indeed leads a
long way. The Medingen path of manuscripts winds through faith, doc-
trinal and historical ruptures, and emerging specialisms. Religious trans-
formations and historical turning points encounter nascent academic
disciplines: Antiquarianism, the building of museum collections, German
Studies, Philology, Codicology, Linguistics, and Musicology. The prayer
books encourage manifold perusal: they may be read as expressions of
personal faith; mirrors of religious engagement and reform; collectors’
cherished treasures; items hoarded by museums to signal cultural shifts;
pieces of disciplinary implementation; or as testimony to politics, institu-
tionalization, and internationalization.
Not all manuscripts or books, however, provide such plentiful infor-
mation. In research, abundance of evidence and scarcity may jostle, as at
the opening of Part I, enhancing its contrapuntal structure. In Chap. 3,
Henrike Manuwald discusses an enigmatic case, a minuscule picture
book from central Germany dating from the first half of the fourteenth
century and now in one of the libraries in Montpellier, indecipherable
by manuscript type, of unknown production, and pointing to unknown
cultural practices—such as re-memorizing the Gospels through pictures
and abbreviated texts in vernacular German. In many pages, images take
the lead over text. To modern eyes, the meaning emerging from textual
abbreviations and pictorial signs would make of the booklet a series of
punning riddles or rebuses. Not so to the medievalist. Manuwald turns
to modern theory, namely cultural accomplishments as discussed in
media and cultural techniques (Kulturtechniken). The actor-network
model, in which an object shapes or even creates an action, spurs com-
parison of the Montpellier manuscript with other objects of the period
(folding calendars; almanacs; books of liturgy; collections of Gospel
excerpts, known as pericopes). The three related parts of the booklet
exemplify further dimensions of reading: the decoding of symbols or
mnemonics; material signs alluding to an immaterial text; the function of
textual and pictorial abbreviations; word and image complementing each
other, and intertextually relating to the Gospels. Original and later uses
point again to multilayered reading practices. Combinations of images
and pericopes in the vernacular attest to both lay and clerical readings.
The author stresses the shared cultural competences of the time, indi-
vidual meditative or ruminative reading, and even emotional engagement
18 E. Stead

with the biblical stories (devils defaced). However small, the Montpellier
booklet well reflects the extensive power of books.
Chapter 4 leafs through depictions of reading in Italy and Germany.
Michael Stolz considers reading scenarios in Europe from late antiq-
uity to early humanism. His investigation extends from Saint Augustine
(reading Saint Paul and Antonius’s vita) to early German humanists
(reading in their libraries) via Petrarch returning to Saint Augustine
and reading Boccaccio, who himself leads on to Chaucer and Christine
de Pizan. Thanks to the contrapuntal pattern of otium/negotium, inti-
mate considerations and private, self-reliant, intention supplement
social exchange and the interaction of ideas in cultural representations
of reading: remembered reading, reading embedded in other reading
scenes, hasty reading accompanied by commentary, translation, pub-
lic assessment, as well as multiple cross-referencing. This bustling activ-
ity highlights the antecedence of performances that current automated
feats sometimes advertise as very modern. The swift interchange of ideas
is not just mental but again also physical, as signalled by the use of the
Latin verb currere (to run), pairing physicality and concept. As the com-
mon denominator of circulation and commerce (negotium), movement
reminds us that Hermes, messenger of the gods, is equally the wing-
footed god of trade. Interestingly, in the wake of early humanist transac-
tions, a new awareness of fiction emerges when Sigismund Gossembrot
opts for the ‘other’ truth to be found in poets’ works and invention as
opposed to religious verity. Is not Hermes, though, the god of wily fib-
bers as well? Should he not be seen as the deity of make-believe?
A detail in Stolz’s essay provides the transition from Part I to Part II,
which turns to images and circulation. The humanist Hermann Schedel
comments, when reading, on retexere (“weaving anew”—a further bond
between textual reading and interlacing) by lining up functions com-
monly attributed to images, particularly illustration: retexere is explained
as “clarifying”, “denuding”, or “exposing”, “reporting omitted things”,
“making obvious” or “public”, and, most fittingly, as “opening”.
What, then, would images add to reading processes? As already
pointed out, the objects of study in Part II could not be more antitheti-
cal: on the one hand, pricey and elaborate engravings are seen to con-
fer the highest praise and honour; on the other hand, studying low-cost,
broadly distributed imagery can provide genuine insight into widespread
uses and tendencies. Substantial material differences enhance the social
and technical aspects: the expensive prints embrace the book format in
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

an intricate relationship with the gallery as building, the gallery collec-

tion represented in a book as a new literary genre, and already with art
historical argumentation of the time. Conversely, the trade of inexpensive
sheets across Europe shows that they are readily adapted as individual
fans, box decorations, games, screens, even wallpaper. Though radically
different, both types of prints are nevertheless equally based on reproduc-
tion. All are copies, replicas: the expensive ones of very valuable paint-
ings; the ordinary ones of cherished art plates, now in broad circulation.
They allow us to follow the growth of imagery alongside the expansion
of printed culture without interpretative biases such as the one that has
long considered illustration or popular imagery as minor art categories.
Chapter 5 concentrates on two genres, prestigious painting collec-
tions rendered on copper known as Galeriewerke, and numismatic col-
lections known as histoires métalliques, both turned into books. Christina
Posselt-Kuhli shows how these impressive items oscillate between heroic
visual programmes glorifying rulers as godlike figures (as the allegori-
cal frontispieces make clear), and art historical developments reflected
in their composition and structure. While first organizing the reproduc-
tions in gallery sequence and standardizing formats to boost heroizing,
further arrangements by painting schools and genres reflect considera-
tions foreshadowing art history as a discipline. New expressions such as
“catalogue raisonné et figuré” are coined, to become widely used later.
The very birth of the art book is here, as Francis Haskell has shown
after the Crozat example (Haskell 1987, 1992), a topic further investi-
gated through portfolios of prints by a number of curators, academics,
and researchers (Hattori et al. 2010). Today’s commonplace genres have
their starting point in these dignified tomes, which also represent pre-
industrialized forms of the picture book. These media are addressed to
rulers, artists, and connoisseurs, respectively enhancing prestige, reflect-
ing on artistic worth, informing and complementing collections. Still,
they are cross-breeds: they typically rest on pictorial and textual hybrid-
ity, and their structural logic reflects turning points. Additionally, the
conceptual dimension of the book can supersede the genre and function
independently, devoid of images, as can be seen with galleries organized
as “fictive medal panegyrics”.
Chapter 6 turns to the phenomenon of circulation and reception
through decorative prints. While Christina Posselt-Kuhli documented
the dissemination of a book genre according to historical circumstances
and aristocratic prestige, Alberto Milano follows the traffic of images and
20 E. Stead

the commercial networks across Europe. Geographical, chronological,

and social evidence spans from Italy to Flanders, and from England to
Russia. Of particular interest is the way it bridges the differences between
artistic and commonplace images by adapting compositions by Pieter
Brueghel, Jacques Callot, or Stefano della Bella to widespread uses. Daily
consumption of such images exemplifies historical, moral, decorative, or
satirical propensities. Comical and grotesque interpretations prevail, as
does a vivid interest in monsters and freaks. These well-liked reworkings
are not shy of moral wisdom or satirical commentary either. Word play
frequently boosts the comical aspect. Puns work on visual explicitness
and linguistic innuendo in parallel, which indicates an intelligent public,
attuned to ambiguities of language, as opposed to the “popular” sort,
which might instinctively spring to mind as the supposed audience. This
chapter, based on Milano’s years of research and collecting, touches on
a delicate methodological point that has to do precisely with the above-
mentioned presupposition: decorative ephemera have long been studied
and documented as if they represented national specificities and the “soul
of the [nation’s] people”. The phenomenon of extensive circulation
directly challenges this and calls for a re-evaluation of traditional distinc-
tions such as “high” and “low”.
Part III moves onto pervasive reading practices based on printed
books with a bi-directional motivation: first, reading books with
images; second, books as symbolic objects related to educational pur-
poses. Intersemiotic readings are promoted through the phenomenon
of domestic and foreign “illustrated” books; and collective or individual
rituals, with books both as containers and contents, are probed through
the examination of gift books and book club subscriptions.
In Chap. 7, Barbara Korte draws on Jane Tompkins’s notion of “cul-
tural work” (Tompkins 1985) and on anthropologist Marcel Mauss’s
approach to gifts as rituals, in order to analyse gift books and to show
how the heroic is modelled in Victorian and Edwardian mass print cul-
ture, particularly for a female readership. The more than 60-year period
she inspects (1846–1909) corresponds to an important shift in gender
moulding, reflected in the books’ often hesitant or conflicting femi-
nine models. As widespread representatives of key middle-class virtues,
such books were attractively produced and published with an educa-
tional purpose. They frequently served as rewards at school and Sunday
school. Korte shows that cultural work in this area, generally celebrat-
ing male heroism, particularly appeals to research in relation to altering
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

gender relations precisely because discourses directed at female audiences

vary. This chapter stresses the importance of educational books in shap-
ing behaviour and character for ordinary life. However, as Korte argues,
these are not predictable cases. The books carry a transgressive potential:
public and domestic models differ, and discursive and narrative strategies
diverge. Recurrent and clashing subject matter is mirrored in the peri-
text and bindings, which in turn redefine gender stereotypes. Infringed
boundaries are interestingly showcased in serial forms, such as Mundell’s
“The Heroines’ Library” and its differing models. In parallel to shifts of
audience (here, young to adult readers), the shape and meaning of books
matter. The colourful covers appeal equally to reader and buyer, whether
addressing modern tendencies (females seeking adventure in exotic
places) or favouring stereotypical attitudes and mirroring common cul-
tural memory. Studying books as cultural objects allows Book Studies to
engage further with important issues in modern academic discourse, such
as gender, race/ethnicity, or national identity. Bibliography has indeed
been criticized as “left relatively unscathed” by “theoretical questions
that have rocked other parts of the academy” (Howsam 2006, 37–38).
A methodological shift from Bibliography to Book Studies shows how
pertinent such approaches may be.
To consider “illustrated” books within book categories and posit them
within trade and social drives is another key methodological shift, differ-
ing from the widespread, twofold, text-and-image approach. The latter
can claim important contributions to intersemiotic methods and a fruit-
ful dialogue between literature and the arts. However, its twin strategy
has a levelling dimension, related to flat book openings and binary anal-
ysis. A variety of reading models nurtured by images allow for further
discussion of this with Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio and Arthur Schnitzler’s
illustrated editions in German or in translation as sample cases.
Collodi’s Pinocchio can be read in many modes. According to Italo
Calvino, the text oscillates between novel and story; the genre, between
children’s story, picaresque novel, and black romantic fiction; the style,
between realistic nineteenth-century prose and the poem in prose. It can
rival major nineteenth-century Italian texts, adds Calvino. Such variable
characteristics are perhaps the very fabric that masterworks thrive on,
since they famously elude their authors. Facing an avalanche of illustrated
items, Giorgio Bacci has wisely selected only a representative range of
book objects. He shows how Pinocchio is gradually transformed from
Collodi’s regional character to a universally known figure that also proves
22 E. Stead

to be archetypal. A fundamental mutability strongly engages with images

and book types. As Bacci stresses, images accompany Pinocchio from his
very first book appearance in Italy (1883) through to Mimmo Paladino’s
reinterpretations (2004). They engage with format, publication type, and
book reception to shape a series of cultural objects from children’s books
to items of self-identification for broad Italian audiences (Pinocchio can
only be Italian!). In the course of this development, the Walt Disney
movie operates a major change in genre and character interpretation, still
lingering in current perceptions of Pinocchio. However, initial broad cir-
culation also narrows down, with Mimmo Paladino, to prints intended
for a select audience. Significantly, when Paladino attempts to liberate
Pinocchio from the book form by collecting his graphic works in a port-
folio (an expression of artistic meditation), his publisher cannot resist
the temptation to turn them into “illustrated” books. Paladino’s intrigu-
ing work, however, abandons anecdote and storyline. It searches for
elementary forms echoing archaic representations. Picturing Pinocchio
coming to life from a ligneous trunk (a collage in wood), the artist
strongly exemplifies the puppet’s mythical (and sexual) aspect and relates
Collodi’s stiff mannikin to primeval wooden cult images. Yet mythical
creation is twofold, powerfully embodied in artistic lucky guesses, and
copiously fleshed out in manifold editions.
Chapter 9 pursues the argument by probing a selection of illustrated
German and English-language works by Arthur Schnitzler published in
the course of the twentieth century. Norbert Bachleitner tackles repre-
sentation in the illustrated book in two engaging ways. Following Jurij
Tynjanov on the one hand, and the argument that reality is nothing
but a linguistic construction (i.e. a representation), he posits that texts
are not translatable into images. By distinguishing, as illustrator Alfred
Kubin did, between receptive and productive illustration, Bachleitner
shows that, in productive illustration, illustrated editions are reinterpre-
tations of a text in another medium, especially in other cultures, that is
through translation. This further confirms that images frequently escort
texts in translation, enhancing their appeal to foreign audiences (Stead
and Védrine ed. 2014, 177). Images then shape reception as much as
translation, commentary, and adaptations. In Schnitzler’s case, as in oth-
ers, they can even play the part of critical commentary or sheer rein-
terpretation. However, they are rarely considered in reception studies,
which are commonly text-based. This chapter’s brief indications concern-
ing other world-famous texts illustrated by the same artists show that we
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

are dealing here with important episodes of modern reception through

images and books alike—a point to be further explored.
On the other hand, Schnitzler’s strong interest in character psy-
chology and his frequent use of oblique modes of narration (interior
monologue and stream-of-consciousness) challenge illustrators. How
are mental images to be represented? Like Milano’s survey of popu-
lar imagery, this chapter does not look into choice bibliophilic editions,
but at the routine book trade. Schnitzler was branded as a pornographic
writer by conservative readers, and his subtle use of Viennese dialects
(giving characters life and personality) proved impossible to render in
translation. Bachleitner shows that images strengthen erotic pictorial
renderings of his works and carry them into twentieth-century common
genres such as pulp fiction, pin-up aesthetics, and comic strips. While
these transformations may depart from the author’s original intention,
they certainly contribute to a work’s capacity to survive specific refer-
ences and adapt over time. The exceptionally broad spectrum of artis-
tic trends illustrating Schnitzler (Romanticism, realism, Art Nouveau,
cubism, and pop art) display the power of images in accustoming works
deeply engrossed in issues of love, desire, loyalty, or sexual attraction.
Corinna Norrick-Rühl likewise looks into representation in Chap. 10
as she considers book objects from the point of view of ownership, pri-
vate exhibition, and individual prestige. She not only addresses book
clubs in Germany and the USA in the twentieth century, she also tack-
les what the book might be as a myth, a symbol, or a social sign via its
materiality. As with other chapters, her transnational study combines spe-
cialities: book publishing, the social history of reading, media and liter-
ary history, as well as social and political history. Book clubs are efficient
and popular distribution networks. They influence readers’ choices. By
cutting costs and promoting sales, they help make masterpieces or forge
classics. They sometimes emerge as religious, political, ideological, and
educational structures. The angle taken combines two substantially dif-
ferent aspects of the book chain: marketing and mass distribution on the
one hand, and reception on the other, bringing together facets that do
not commonly meet. By marketing books for consumption and stimu-
lating leisure reading, book clubs also initiated important shifts in read-
ing habits and the symbolic value of books. Chapter 10 identifies major
phases in the twentieth and the early twenty-first century: the heyday of
book clubs in the 1920s after the First World War, coupled with left-
wing needs for self-education in Germany, and the crave for intellectual
24 E. Stead

possession in the States; the spectacular demand for books after the
Second World War as a sign of economic growth and belonging; the
decline of book clubs due to the boom in paperbacks from the 1960s
onwards; finally, changing expectations and habits, as book collecting is
now hidden in tablets and embedded within social media platforms that
have replaced book club discussions.
Chapter 10 also bears on the book as cultural myth or symbol gradu-
ally voided of its substance. Norrick-Ruhl shows that, in the aftermath of
the two World Wars and in a commodity-driven era, books loomed more
important through their materiality than their content. The demand
for luxurious, significant objects, emblematic of education and personal
accomplishment, increased. Books became a sign of prosperity and repre-
sented intellectuality. Expressions such as “books by the yard” or “bookaf-
lage”—coined on “camouflage”(?)—still indicated, however negatively, the
symbolic status of the book that prevailed in the twentieth century more
through container than content. A book became a dummy shell, a “cultural
emblem” as Megan Benton puts it (Benton 1997, 271). It is then strik-
ing to consider buildings such as the Kansas City Public Library, located
since 2004 at 14 West 10th Street, in a previous nineteenth-century bank.
Its facade is remodelled as a gigantic library shelf, with gargantuan tomes
picturing twenty-two famous titles chosen by local readers. The saying
“A book is a man’s best friend” has been materialized in bricks-and-mor-
tar (actually mylar panels on an aluminium substructure) and in full street
view15 as if to say: We do not just live with books, we read in them.
In Chap. 11, Stephan Packard offers a final discussion on representa-
tion and misrepresentation by turning to the materiality of digital tools,
that is e-readers, particularly Kindle. He compares books in print and on
tablets by furthering the divide implied by Marshall McLuhan’s opposi-
tion of message and content in media. Cultural objects are again deter-
mined by the implementation of their use, by the traces they leave, by
the digital data structures they use, and through the collective imagi-
nary of our concepts concerning them. New technology is expected to
correspond to new forms, but Packard shows this is not necessarily so.
Instead of the expected reinvention of readership, Kindle proves resistant
to media convergence and impervious to readers’ potential involvement
in writing (and thus to new potentialities, such as George Landow’s
“wreading”). As a twist in the tale (and this volume’s tail, as Lewis
Carroll would say), instead of offering the reader revolutionary possi-
bilities, Kindle not only remains fixed to the material printed book, it
reads the reader himself and, by calling his attention to passages marked
 1 INTRODUCTION 25

or underlined by other on-line readers, orients his imagination with typi-

cal, statistical information on internet readership audiences. Packard’s
analysis sounds at times Kafkaesque as it explores cyber culture, a mean-
dering that relies on ever-derivative hypertexts waiting to be explored.
The linearity of conventional text is thus negated in a never-ending quest
for relief. The multiple focus of this concluding chapter is arresting and
challenging as it discusses the key notion of polytextuality in the light
of several critical theories. Packard shows a double limitation of reading
on e-readers: firstly, with respect to opening new possibilities, in rela-
tion to renowned modern theories of reading—from Deleuze’s rhizome
and network theory to Eco’s open text, Bakhtin’s dialogism, Kristeva’s
intertextuality, or Derrida’s deconstruction; secondly, in relation to the
imitation of the printed book, supplemented by the imperium of its pre-
determined programmed functions. Norrick-Rühl showed the book as
a commodity at the content’s expense, Packard affirms the e-reader as
online commodity, and electronic texts, in line with Alan Galey (2012),
not as ephemeral but indelible.
Cyber-sceptics then? Not necessarily. As Packard stresses, it is early
days. It took the printed book 300 years to detach itself in form and
function from the manuscript. The major difference between them, it
has been stressed, is that texts multiplied through printing remain unal-
tered. Yet, the idea of print as a fixed and unchangeable form has been
contested repeatedly. This does not only concern early printed texts and
Shakespeare (De Grazia and Stallybrass 1993; Mak 2006), it is a myth of
the print era as well (see Howsam 2000, 2006, 14 and 65f). Similarly,
Packard contests yet another myth: that books are only texts—immaterial
structures to be dominated by clear minds. Before we may fully recon-
sider e-publishing and e-reading as cultural objects, we need to see how
the last flood of innovation finds its own space, settles down in media
history, and negotiates presumed issues with its fellows.

Conclusion
Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects could certainly have included
many other topics. The scope of the FRIAS conference on which this
book bears was broader, and the TIGRE seminar (Texte et Image Groupe
de Recherche à l’École) at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris has
since developed the theme in a two-year programme (2015–2017). But
the aim of this book was never to be comprehensive. It merely demon-
strates, through a sample selection, what Book Studies can offer through
26 E. Stead

interdisciplinary research, across different media and historical periods. Its

contribution lies not in all-encompassing material, but in the ways ques-
tions are articulated, and methods outlined and put into practice.
Methodologies shared in this volume vaunt the merits of compari-
son. All of the chapters are based on a comparative stance, be it of object
or theme, or else they use comparison as a method between areas, cul-
tures, or periods. Even in a focussed single-object approach, it is largely
thanks to the comparison with other cultural practices and better-known
devotional objects that Henrike Manuwald reads and deciphers the
Montpellier Andachtsbüchlein in its relation to more general practices in
the fourteenth century. To accomplish this, the input of specialist studies
is invaluable. Nevertheless, the complexity of material culture substantially
benefits from a broader inter- or trans-disciplinary view. At the Freiburg
conference, the commonality of questions and methods shared by scholars
ofnnnmedieval manuscripts or printed books was a welcome discovery. It
is hoped that readers of this volume will perceive that and enjoy it.
The editor dedicates this book to the memory of Alberto Milano,
who sadly and unexpectedly departed on the day after submitting his
chapter. His many years of work on print circulation, his patient tracking
of the changeable meanings of images across cultures, and his boundary-
challenging discoveries speak volumes in praise of comparison.

Notes
1. See Fini (2007, 81), and Schiavina (2012). The building sits at via
Nazario Sauro 22, until 1919 named via del Poggiale.
2. See Didi-Huberman (2001); Claudio Parmiggiani 2006; and Mauron
(2008) for further reading.
3. By reference to the Campo dei Fiori square in Rome where Giordano
Bruno’s statue stands.
4. See http://www.genusbononiae.it. (Accessed 6 January 2017).
5. See Le Cauchemar de Humboldt. Les Réformes de l’Enseignement Supérieur
Européen, edited by Franz Schultheis, Marta Roca i Escoda, and Paul-
Frantz Cousin. Cours et Travaux. Paris. Raisons d’Agir, 2008.
6. Robert Irwin’s Visions of the Djinn (2010), dealing only with late French and
English illustrated editions, is based on illustrations as commentary to the
text, not on books and manuscripts as cultural objects. Sample studies driven
by a wider cultural stance on The Arabian Nights, either from a Book Studies
or a manuscript perspective, are largely unpublished as yet (Razzaque forth-
coming, 2018; Akel, unpublished thesis, 2016, forthcoming, 2018.).
7. See Howsam (2006), 5, 31, and 85 n. 5.
 1 INTRODUCTION 27

8. Following Dorothea Kraus (1999).

9. See http://www.frias.uni-freiburg.de/de/personen/fellows/aktuelle-fel-
lows/stead and http://www.2017-2018.eurias-fp.eu/fellows/evanghe-
lia-stead-nee-dascalopoulou. (Accessed 6 January 2017).
10. See O’Donnell (1998), Chartier (1995), and the critical overview in
Howsam (2006), esp. 54–61. See also Mak (2011), 5–6, 56–57, and
note 42 for further reading.
11. Chartier (1985), 79: “l’objet imprimé porte en ses pages les bornes de sa pos-
sible réception”.
12. Ibid., 81: “Reconnaître comment un travail typographique inscrit dans
l’imprimé la lecture que le libraire-éditeur suppose à son public est, en fait,
retrouver l’inspiration de l’esthétique de la réception mais en déplaçant et en
élargissant son objet”.
13. Seehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/archiviodiari/sets/72157641708652415,
http://www.archiviodiari.org/index.php/component/content/
article/36-iniziative-e-progetti/737-piccolo-museo-del-diario-little-
museum-of-diary.html. (Accessed 10 August 2016). I warmly thank Mara
Cambiaghi for bringing this to my attention.
14. See Clelia Marchi, Il tuo nome sulla neve. Gnanca na busia. Il romanzo di
una vita scritta su un lenzuolo. Prefazione di Carmen Covito. Prefazione
alla prima edizione di Saverio Tutino. Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2012.
15. See https://collabcubed.com/2012/03/27/kansas-city-public-library-
parking-garage/ and http://www.idesignarch.com/kansas-city-public-
library-missouri/. (Accessed 17 August 2016).

Acknowledgements The editor would like to thank: the Freiburg Institute for
Advanced Studies (FRIAS) in Freiburg-im-Breisgau for funding the international
conference “Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects” that hosted many
of the papers that have been reworked as chapters in this book; colleagues from
Freiburg University and FRIAS who have assisted her in contacting key actors;
Dr Brook Bolander for sharing wisdom on organizational details; Professor
Henrike Lähnemann for her enthusiasm; Junior Professor Corinna Norrick-Rühl
for generously providing useful information; her husband, Christopher Stead,
for his regular help with language and index matters; Dr Paul Edwards and
Dr Guyda Armstrong for their helpful comments on the Introduction; Dr Ilaria
Vitali for diligently supplying information in Bologna; and the contributors to
the volume for their diligence with responses, their enthusiastic commitment to
the objectives of the collection, not to mention their forbearance. The editor’s
special thanks go to artist Claudio Parmiggiani for granting rights to feature his
two artworks reproduced on the cover and in Figure I.1 as well as to the City
of Bologna for generously providing the images. The editor is also grateful to
the external reviewer of the first draft, to the series directors, and to the staff of
Palgrave Macmillan, whose comments have been very useful.
28 E. Stead

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Author Biography
Evanghelia Stead fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France and
Comparative Literature Professor at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin
(UVSQ), runs the TIGRE seminar at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris. She
has published extensively on print culture, iconography, reception, myth, the fin-
de-siècle, and the ‘Thousand and Second Night’ literary tradition.
 PART I

Manuscripts as Cultural Objects

 CHAPTER 2

From Devotional Aids to Antiquarian

Objects: The Prayer Books of Medingen

Henrike Lähnemann
For Elizabeth Andersen,*
My travel companion on the route of discovery
through the Northern German devotional landscape.

Introduction
Prayer books are precious items. In auction catalogues, medieval books
of hours, psalters, and illuminated miscellanies of prayers and meditations
regularly top the price list of antiquarian books on sale. The original reason
for the costliness of the books lies in their content: only the best is good
enough in the service of God, and the importance attached to inward
devotion should be reflected in the outward status of the manuscript.
When the prayer books left their original context, the precious character

*Dutifully and pleasurably my thanks go particularly to Elizabeth Andersen, who

not only patiently read and improved my English in this chapter (and many before),
but was also the inspirational “other” in conversations about “Gott und die Welt”,
Northern Germany, mysticism, devotion, translation, and teaching over nearly nine
years of adventures shared at the School of Modern Languages in Newcastle. The
whole framework of this chapter could not have been built without her and I am
very grateful that our collaboration will continue to thrive.

H. Lähnemann (*)
Oxford University, Oxford, UK
e-mail: henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk

© The Author(s) 2018 33

E. Stead (ed.), Reading Books and Prints as
Cultural Objects, New Directions in Book History,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53832-7_2
34 H. Lähnemann

of the manuscripts secured their survival as objects. Prayer books acquired

a new significance as antiquarian curiosities for private collectors or as the
basis for scholarly studies in libraries.
A rare insight into this process is provided by the large group of
prayer books extant from Medingen, one of the six Lüneburg convents.
In the late fifteenth century, the Cistercian nuns composed, copied, and
illuminated manuscripts for their personal use and the use of their female
relatives. Today, more than fifty of these survive in collections all over the
world. By tracing the wanderings of manuscripts from convents to librar-
ies, the changing attitude of writers and collectors towards these precious
objects also becomes apparent, as shown by the manuscripts’ reworking:
features incorporated by the nuns themselves, signs of appropriation by
antiquarians, and the new significance attached to them by researchers.1
I will discuss the production and dissemination of Medingen prayer
books through two major “reading processes”, both of which engage
with the manuscripts as objects. The first of these uses the books
mainly as devotional aids, while the second values them predominately
as antiquarian objects. However, these reading processes overlap and
intertwine. I would argue that late medieval personalized devotional
manuscripts can be read as cultural objects throughout their life, from
their original production right through to their (post-)modern digitiza-
tion. The nuns who produced and personalized their prayer books as an
act of devotion were passionate about the material side; precious parch-
ment, colourful illustration, and gold provided the means for drawing
out the importance of the contents. Manuscripts did not lose their ability
to inspire prayer and contemplation even when passing through auction
houses. Nevertheless, in the early eighteenth century, a major focal shift
in the appreciation of these manuscripts occurs; regarded as not contrib-
uting to Protestant worship, they become disposable assets from the his-
tory of the convent.
The first part of this chapter will therefore deal with Medingen as
scriptorium, embracing conventual reform in the late fifteenth century,
which stimulated the production of prayer books, through the Lutheran
Reformation, which saw a reworking of the manuscripts, up to the
Thirty Years’ War, when they were boxed up. The second part follows
the wanderings of the manuscripts after they were sold in the early eight-
eenth century as they changed hands through collectors, auction houses,
and libraries.
 2 FROM DEVOTIONAL AIDS TO ANTIQUARIAN OBJECTS: THE PRAYER … 35

Prayer Books as Devotional Aids

As far as we can tell, prayer books were produced in Medingen only from
the last quarter of the fifteenth century onwards. The process was trig-
gered by the late medieval devotio moderna in the Netherlands, which
reached the Northern German convents through the fifteenth-century
monastic reform movement from Windesheim and Bursfelde (Andersen
et al. 2014). In 1469, Johannes Busch, the leading figure of the fif-
teenth-century Observant reform emanating from Windesheim, under-
took himself to reform Wienhausen, another of the Lüneburg convents
(Mecham 2014). He met with bitter resistance, but, once the process
had been achieved, the Cistercian nuns from Wienhausen took part in
the reform of their sister convent Medingen in 1479 – and that met
with enthusiasm. The nuns fully embraced the reform and put it into
practice. The renewal of the monastic injunction to “work and pray”
led to the first of seven stages in the production and dissemination of
Medingen manuscripts.

Stage 1. 1478. Model Prayer Books

The dates of the first two manuscripts show that they were pro-
duced, in preparation of the official reform, by the sisters Winheid and
Elisabeth von Winsen, who, like almost all of the nuns, came from one
of Lüneburg’s influential patrician families administering salt produc-
tion, which provided the income for the convent. Elisabeth added a
long Latin poem as an epilogue to her psalter, stating that this work had
been commissioned by the reform Provost, Tilemann von Bavenstedt, in
1478. As she remarked at the end, the process of devotional production
is one of total commitment; it “flows from my innermost heart, writ-
ten by hand but involving the whole body” (HI2 = Dombibliothek
Hildesheim, Ms J 27, fol. 146v). Elisabeth also stressed an aspect which
is crucial to the understanding of the Medingen manuscripts as cultural
objects, namely that they were not produced by the modular method
with different scribes and illuminators, but with an integrated approach:
“as is plainly visible to the eye which searches all: the written word is
joined by flowers to make a picture. All this was done and completed by
one single handmaiden in the monastery at Medingen” (“Ut clare pate-
bit oculo quis cuncta rimabit: scripta cum floribus picturam sic sociamus.
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however, the more he washed in the hot tears, the redder grew his
clothes, until he was just the colour of the scarlet bean blossom.
“You told me a story,” said Gillydrop to the giant when he saw how
red he was getting.
“I know I did,” said Dunderhead, drying his eyes, for he had now
wept enough, and was growing hungry; “but if I hadn’t told you a
story, I wouldn’t have got any supper. You’ll never be green again, so
don’t trouble your head. I’m going to get some wood to cook these
nice fat children.”
On hearing this, Teddy and Tilly roared like bulls, and Gillydrop
roared too, for he was afraid he would never be able to go back to
Faeryland in his red clothes; but the giant only laughed at them, and
went out to light a fire under his big kettle.
Gillydrop was naturally very cross with the giant for having deceived
him, and determined to punish him for having done so. Bringing the
two children to Dunderhead for his supper could not be the kindly
deed he had to do, or else he would have turned green again; so
Gillydrop made up his mind to take Teddy and Tilly back to earth,
and thus leave Dunderhead without his supper. While he was thus
making up his mind, seated at one end of the table, the two children,
seated at the other end, were crying bitterly at the plight in which
they now found themselves, for it certainly is not a nice thing to be
boiled for an ogre’s supper.
“Poor mother!” wailed Tilly, weeping; “she’ll miss us so much.”
“I don’t know if she will,” replied Teddy dolefully; “we’ve always been
so naughty, I daresay she’ll be glad we’ve gone.”
“Oh no, she won’t,” said Tilly, nodding her head; “she loves us too
much for that; but if we could get back I’d be so good.”
“And so would I,” cried Teddy; and then they both wept again, while
Gillydrop, seeing their tears, wept also out of sheer sympathy.
“Perhaps the giant will only eat one of us,” said Tilly after a pause;
“so while one of us is boiling, the other must run away and go back
to comfort mother.”
“Who will be boiled?” asked Teddy sadly. “Will you, Tilly?”
“I don’t like being boiled,” answered Tilly, with a shudder. “I’m sure it
isn’t nice.”
“Well, I don’t like being boiled either,” observed Teddy. “Suppose we
draw lots who is to run away.”
“Yes, that would be fair,” said Tilly, drying her eyes; “and the one who
wins must go back to cheer mother.”
Gillydrop was quite sorry now that he had brought them for
Dunderhead’s supper, when he heard how they regretted their
mother; so he made up his mind to save them.
“You shall neither of you be boiled,” he said, walking up to them
across the table, which was like a large plain. “I will take you back to
your mother.”
“But how?” asked Teddy and Tilly, both together. “We cannot go back
across the sea alone.”
“Oh yes, you can,” replied the Red Elf. “I brought you here, and can
send you back; that is, if I only had a leaf.”
“Here is one,” cried Tilly eagerly, pulling a faded leaf out of her
pocket. “I picked it up in the wood to-day, it had such pretty red and
yellow colours.”
“Oh, that will do for a boat,” said Gillydrop joyfully.
“But it’s so small,” objected Teddy.
“I’ll make it large enough,” said the elf. “You’ll see.”
“But how can we go on without sails or oars?” said Tilly timidly.
“You don’t need any,” rejoined Gillydrop, laughing; “you know every
tree has power to draw back its own leaves. The boat we came in
was a leaf, and, as soon as it was launched on the air, it went
straight back to the tree in the Country of the Giants upon which it
had grown; and as this leaf comes from a tree on earth, it will go
straight back to its tree.”
“Then we can get home,” cried Tilly, clapping her hands, “for the tree
isn’t far from mother’s cottage.”
“Mind, you are never to be naughty again,” said Gillydrop solemnly.
“Oh, no, no!” cried both children.
“And be very, very good to your mother.”
“Yes, yes! We’ll be very good.”
“Then go down to the beach by the path,” said Gillydrop, spreading
his wings. “I’ll fly down and get the boat ready; be quick, or the giant
will return.”
Then he flew away through the open window, and Teddy scrambled
down the steep path, followed by Tilly, both of them in a great fright
lest the giant should catch sight of them and pop them into his big
kettle. When they reached the beach, they found Gillydrop had
launched the leaf, which had now been transformed into a beautiful
red and yellow coloured boat.
“Good-bye,” said Gillydrop, as soon as they were comfortably seated
in the boat. “I’m sorry I brought you here, but it will do you no harm,
as it will teach you to be good. Mind you don’t quarrel in the boat—if
you do, the leaf will vanish, and you’ll sink for ever in the black
waves.”
“Oh, we’ll be very, very good,” promised both the children eagerly,
and then Gillydrop gave the boat a push, so that it moved rapidly
away from the land, leaving him seated on the beach, a lonely little
red figure.
Teddy and Tilly were rather afraid at finding themselves alone in the
darkness, but they kissed one another, and fell asleep, while the
leaf-boat sailed rapidly over the Sea of Darkness towards its parent
tree. When the children awoke, they found themselves lying on the
ground under the tree, and there above them was their red and
yellow boat, hanging, a red and yellow leaf, on a high bough.
“Now we’ll go home,” cried Tilly, jumping up; “now we’ll go home to
mother.”
“And be very good,” said Teddy, also rising.
“Yes; very, very good,” replied Tilly. And then, taking one another’s
hands, they ran home to their cottage through the dark forest.
Dame Alice, who thought they had lost themselves in the wood, was
very glad to see them, and, after she had kissed them, gave them a
good supper of bread and milk, which they enjoyed very much, for
you see they were very hungry with the long journey.
They told Dame Alice all their adventures, and she was very glad
they had gone to the Giants’ Country, for she guessed, like the wise
mother she was, that this was the lesson the faeries had foretold.
Ever afterwards, Teddy and Tilly were good children; there never
were two such good children, because they thought, if they were not
good, they would be taken back to the Giants’ Country and boiled for
an ogre’s supper. But after a time they liked to do good actions
because they found it pleasant, and Dame Alice was so pleased with
their behaviour that she made a rhyme about them, which soon
passed into a proverb:
“The magic power of a faery
Cures a child when quite contrary.”
 III.

HOW THE RED ELF RETURNED TO FAERYLAND.

When Gillydrop saw the magic boat disappear into the darkness of
the sea, he thought that, now he had done one kindly deed, his
clothes would change from red to green, and he would be able to
return to his dear Faeryland. But nothing of the sort occurred, and
the poor elf began to cry again, thinking he was lost for ever, but this
time his tears were not red, which was a good sign, although he did
not know it.
Very soon he heard Dunderhead roaring for the loss of his supper,
so, drying his eyes, he flew back again to the hall of the castle, to
see what the giant was doing. He found a great fire was lighted, over
which was suspended a great kettle filled with water, which was now
boiling hot. Dunderhead was searching everywhere for the children,
and when he saw Gillydrop he shook his great fist at him.
“Where’s my supper, you red rag?” he roared fiercely.
“Your supper has gone back to earth,” replied Gillydrop angrily, for no
one likes to be called a red rag. “You told me a story, so I thought I’d
punish you.”
“Oh, did you?” bellowed Dunderhead, in a rage. “Then I’ll punish you
also for spoiling my supper.” And before Gillydrop could fly away, he
caught him in his great hand and popped him into the boiling water.
Oh, it was terribly hot, and Gillydrop thought it was all over with him;
but, being a Faery, he could not be killed, as the foolish giant might
have known. He sank down, down, right to the bottom of the great
kettle, and then arose once more to the top. As soon as he found his
head above water, he sprang out of the kettle and flew away high
above the head of Dunderhead, who could only shake his fist at him.
To his delight and surprise, Gillydrop found his clothes had all
changed from red to green, and instead of being dressed in crimson,
his suit was now of a beautiful emerald colour. He was so delighted
that he flew down on to the floor of the hall, and began to dance and
sing, while the giant joined in as he tried to catch him; so that they
had quite a duet.
Gillydrop. Now I’m gay instead of sad,
For I’m good instead of bad:
Dreadful lessons I have had.
Giant. I will catch and beat you!

Gillydrop. Tho’ a naughty elf I’ve been,

Now my clothes are nice and clean:
I dance once more a faery green.
Giant. I will catch and eat you!

But you see he could not do that, because Gillydrop was too quick
for him, and flew round the hall, laughing at Dunderhead, who roared
with anger. Then the elf flew out on to the terrace which overlooked
the Sea of Darkness, followed by the giant. Gillydrop flew down on to
the beach to escape the ogre, and Dunderhead tried to follow; but,
as he could not fly, he fell right into the Sea of Darkness. Dear me!
what a terrible splash he made! The waves arose as high as the
castle walls, but then they settled down again over Dunderhead, who
was suffocated in the black billows. He was the very last of the
giants, and now his bones lie white and gleaming in the depths of the
Sea of Darkness, where nobody will ever find them—nor do I think
any one would trouble to look for them.
As for Gillydrop, now that Dunderhead was dead, he flew away
across the dreary plain towards Faeryland, and soon arrived at the
borders of the sullen grey sea which still rolled under the pale light of
the moon. Gillydrop was not a bit afraid now, because his clothes
were green once more, and he had performed one kindly deed; so
he sat down on the seashore and sang this song:
“When from Faeryland I fled,
All my nice clothes turned to red;
Now in emerald suit I stand—
Take me back to Faeryland.”
And as he sang the grey ocean faded away, and in its place he saw
the green trees of the faery forest, waving their branches in the silver
moonlight. Only a bright sparkling stream now flowed between
Gillydrop and Faeryland; so, spreading his silver and blue wings, he
flew across the water, singing gaily:
“Thanks, dear Oberon. At last
All my naughtiness is past;
Home I come without a stain,
And will never roam again.”

So at last Gillydrop got back to Faeryland after all his trials, and ever
afterwards was one of the most contented elves ever known. You
may be sure he never wanted to see the Country of the Giants
again, and whatever King Oberon said he did willingly, because he
knew it must be right.
He was quite a hero among the faeries, and had the honour of telling
all his adventures to King Oberon himself, which he did so nicely that
the King gave him a title, and ever afterwards he was called “Sir
Gillydrop the Fearless.”
 SHADOWLAND

IT was Christmas Eve, and the snow, falling heavily over a great city,
was trying to hide with its beautiful white robe all the black, ugly
houses and the narrow, muddy streets. The gas lamps stood up
proudly, each on its tall post, and cast their yellow light on the
crowds of people hurrying along with their arms filled with many
lovely presents for good children.
“They are poor things,” said the gas lamps scornfully. “If we did not
shed our light upon them, they would be lost in the streets.”
“Ah, but the people you despise made you,” cried the church bells,
which were calling the people to prayer. “They made you—they
made you, and gave you your beautiful yellow crowns.”
But the street lamps said nothing, because they could not deny what
the church bells said, and instead of acknowledging that they owed
all their beauty to the people they despised, remained obstinately
silent.
Near one of these lamp-posts, at the end of a street, stood a
ragged boy, who shivered dreadfully in his old clothes, and stamped
about to keep himself warm. The boy’s name was Tom, and he was
a crossing-sweeper, as could be seen by his well-worn broom. He
was very cold and very hungry, for he had not earned a copper all
day, and the gaily-dressed army of people swept selfishly past him,
thinking only of their Christmas dinners and warm homes.
The snowflakes fell from the leaden-coloured sky like great white
angels, to tell the earth that Christ would be born again on that night,
but Tom did not have any such ideas, as he was quite ignorant of
angels, and even of the birth of the child-Christ. He only looked upon
the snow as a cold and cruel thing, which made him shiver with pain,
and was a great trouble to brush away from his crossing.
 And overhead the mellow bells clashed out
their glad tidings in the bitterly chill air, while
below, in the warm, well-lighted churches, the
organ rolled out its hymns of praise, and the
worshippers said to one another, “Christ is
born again.”
But poor Tom!
Ah, how cold and hungry he was, standing in
the bright glare of the lamp, with his rags drawn closely round him for
protection against the falling snow. The throng of people grew
thinner and thinner, the gaily-decorated shops put up their shutters,
the lights died out in the painted windows of the churches, the bells
were silent, and only poor Tom remained in the deserted, lonely
streets, with the falling snowflakes changing him to a white statue.
He was thinking about going to his garret, when a gentleman,
wrapped in furs, passed along quickly, and just as he came near
Tom, dropped his purse, but, not perceiving his loss, walked on
rapidly through the driving snow. Tom’s first idea was to pick the
purse up and restore it to its owner, whom Tom knew very well by
sight, for he was a poet, who daily passed by Tom’s crossing. Then
Tom paused for a moment as he thought of all the beautiful things
the money in that purse would buy; while he hesitated, the poet
disappeared in the darkness of the night, so Tom was left alone with
the purse at his feet.
There it lay, a black object on the pure white
snow, and as Tom picked it up, he felt that it
was filled with money. Oh, how many things of
use to him could that money buy—bread and
meat and a cup of warm coffee—which would
do him good. Tom slipped it into his pocket, and thought he would
buy something to eat; but just at that moment he seemed to hear a
whisper in the air,—
 AS TOM PICKED IT UP HE FELT THAT IT WAS
FILLED WITH MONEY

“Thou shalt not steal.”

With a start of terror Tom looked around, thinking a policeman had
spoken, and would take him off to prison for stealing the purse, but
no policeman was in sight. He saw nothing but the whirling flakes
and his ragged shadow cast blackly on the white snow by the light of
the lamp. It could not have been the shadow speaking, as Tom
thought, for he knew that shadows never speak; but, ah! he did not
know the many wonderful things there are in this wonderful world of
ours.
Whoever had made the remark touched Tom’s heart, for he
remembered how his poor mother had blessed him when she died,
and told him to be an honest boy. It certainly would not be honest to
steal money out of the purse, but Tom was so cold and hungry that
he half thought he would do so. He took out the purse again and
looked at its contents—four shining sovereigns and some silver.
Then he put it back in his pocket, and trudged home with his broom
under his arm.
Home!—ah, what a dreary, cheerless home it was!—nothing but a
garret on the top of an old house—a bare garret, with no table or
chairs, but only the sacks upon which Tom slept at night.
He closed the door, and then lighted a little bit of candle he had
picked up in the streets with one of the matches from a box given
him by a ragged match-seller.
Tom placed the candle on the floor, and, kneeling down, opened the
purse to look at the money once more. Oh, how tempted he was to
take one of those shillings and buy some food and wood—it would
be a merry Christmas for him then! Other people were enjoying their
Christmas, and why should he not do the same? The great poet who
had dropped the purse had plenty of money, and would never miss
this small sum; so Tom, desperate with hunger, took a shilling, and,
hiding the purse under his bed, was about to blow out the candle
before creeping down-stairs to buy some food, when he heard a soft
voice whisper,—
“Don’t go, Tom.”
He turned round, and there was the shadow
cast by the reflection of the candle-light on the
wall. It was a very black shadow, much
blacker than Tom had ever seen before, and
as he looked it grew blacker and blacker on
the wall, then seemed to grow out of it until it
left the wall altogether, and stood by itself in
the centre of the floor, a waving, black shadow
of a ragged boy. Curiously enough, however,
Tom could not see its face, but only the outline
of its whole figure, yet it stood there shaking with every flicker of the
candle, and Tom could feel that its eyes were looking right into him.
“Don’t go, Tom,” said the shadow, in a voice so like his own that he
started. “If you go, you will be lost for ever.”
“Lost?” said Tom, with a laugh; “why, I couldn’t lose myself. I know
every street in the city.”
“I don’t mean really lost,” replied the shadow; “but it will be your first
step on the downward path.”
“Who are you?” asked Tom, rather afraid of the shadow, but keeping
a bold front.
“I am your shadow,” it replied, sighing. “I follow you wherever you go,
but only appear when there is light about you. If you had not lighted
that candle I would not have appeared, nor could I have spoken.”
“Was it you who spoke at the lamp-post?” said Tom doubtfully.
“Yes, it was I,” answered the shadow. “I wanted to save you then, as
I do now, from committing a crime. Sit down, Tom, and let us talk.”
Tom sat down, and the shadow sat down also. Then for the first time
he caught a passing glimpse of its face, just like his own, only the
eyes were sad—oh, so sad and mournful!
“Thou shalt not steal,” said the shadow solemnly.
“I don’t want to steal,” replied Tom sulkily; “but I’m cold and hungry.
This shilling would buy me fire and food. I don’t call that stealing.”
“Yes, but it is stealing,” answered the shadow, wringing its hands;
“and you know it is. If you steal you will be put in prison, and then I
shall have to go also. Think of that, Tom, think of that.”
Tom did not say a word, but sat on the floor looking at the bright
shilling in his hand which could procure him so many comforts. The
shadow saw how eager he was to take the shilling, and, with a sigh,
began to talk again.
“Think of your mother, Tom,” it said softly. “She was the wife of a
gentleman—your father; but he lost all his money, and when he died
she could get no one to help her. Do you remember how she died
herself in this very place, and how she implored you with her last
breath to be an honest boy?”
“Yes, I remember,” said Tom huskily; “but she did not know how cold
and hungry I would be.”
“Yes she did—she did,” urged the shadow. “She also had felt cold
and hunger, but she never complained. She never stole, and now
she has her reward, because she is a bright angel.”
“I don’t know what an angel is,” said Tom crossly; “but if she’s all
right, why doesn’t she help me?”
“She does help you, Tom,” said the shadow; “and it was because she
saw you were tempted to steal to-night that she asked me to help
you. She cannot speak as I do, because she is not a shadow.”
“Well, help me if you’re able,” said Tom defiantly; “but I don’t believe
you can.”
The candle on the floor had burnt very low, and as Tom said the last
words his shadow bent nearer and nearer, until he again saw those
mournful eyes, which sent a shiver through his whole body. It
stretched out its arms, and Tom felt them close round him like soft,
clinging mist; the candle flared up for a moment, and then went out,
leaving Tom in darkness altogether. But he did not feel a bit afraid,
for the soft arms of the shadow were round him, and he felt that it
was carrying him through the air.
They journeyed for miles and miles, but Tom knew not which
direction they were taking until a soft light seemed to spread all
around, and Tom felt that he was in the midst of a large crowd,
although he saw no one near him. Then he felt his bare feet touch
some soft, cloudy ground, that felt like a sponge; the shadowy arms
unclasped themselves, and he heard a voice, soft as the whispering
of winds in summer, sigh,—
“This is the Kingdom of Shadows.”
Then Tom’s eyes became accustomed to the subdued twilight, and
he saw on every side a number of shadows hurrying hither and
thither. He seemed to be in the centre of a wide plain, over which
hung a pale white mist, through which glimmered the soft light. The
shadows were all gliding about this plain; some thin, some fat, some
tall, others short; they all appeared to have business to do, and each
appeared to be intent only on his own concerns. Tom’s own shadow
kept close to him, and whispered constantly in his ear of strange
doings.
“These are the shadows of the past and of the future,” it sighed; “all
the shadows of human beings and their doings are here; see, there
is a funeral.”
And a funeral it was which came gliding over the smooth, white plain;
the great black hearse, the dark horses with nodding plumes, and
then a long train of mourners; all this came out of the mist at one
end, glided slowly over the plain, and vanished in the veil of mist at
the other. Then a bridal procession appeared; afterwards a great
army, clashing cymbals and blowing trumpets from whence no sound
of music proceeded; then the coronation triumph of a king, and later
on a confused multitude of men, women, and children, all hurrying
onward with eager rapidity. But they all came out of the mist and
went into the mist, only appearing on the white plain for a few
minutes, like the shadows of a magic lantern.
“The stage of the world,” whispered Tom’s shadow. “Birth, death, and
marriage, triumphs and festivities, joys and sorrows, all pass from
mist to mist, and none know whence they come or whither they go.”
“But what has this got to do with me?” asked Tom, who was feeling
rather bewildered.
“You are a man,” said his shadow reproachfully, “and must take an
interest in all that men do; but come, and I will show you what will
happen if you steal the purse.”
They glided over the plain towards the distant curtain of mist, but
how they travelled over the immense distance so rapidly Tom did not
know, for in a moment it seemed to him that he had come many
miles, and found himself suddenly before a grey, misty veil, with his
own shadow beside him, and many other shadows around.
As he stood there, a whisper like the murmur of the sea on a pebbly
beach sounded in his ears, and he seemed to guess, rather than
hear, what the shadows said.
“Now he will see—now he will see—he must choose the good or the
bad. Which will he choose?—which will he choose?”
Then the grey veil stirred, as if shaken by a gentle wind, and,
blowing aside, disclosed what seemed to Tom to be a great sheet of
ice of dazzling whiteness set up on end. As he looked, however,
shadows began to appear on the milky surface which acted a kind of
play and then vanished, and in the play he was always the central
figure.
First he saw himself pick up the purse in the snowy street; then hide
it in his bed. He saw his ragged shadow glide down-stairs from the
garret to buy food; the shopman looking at him, then at the shilling;
then a policeman arresting him and finding the purse hidden in the
bed. Afterwards he saw himself in prison; then released, and
prowling about the streets. Years seemed to pass as he looked, and
his shadow became taller and stouter, but always wearing a ragged
dress. After many years he seemed to see his shadow breaking into
a house—meet the owner of the house, and kill him. Afterwards the
shadow of himself stood in the dock; then crouched in prison; and,
last of all, he appeared standing under a black gallows with a rope
round his neck. At length all the shadows vanished, and the surface
of the ice mirror again became stainless, whilst a voice whispered in
his ear, “All this will happen if you steal the purse.”
Then the shadows again came on to the mirror and acted another
play; but this time it was much more pleasant.
Tom saw his shadow representative take the purse back to the poet
who had lost it. Then he saw himself in a school, learning all kinds of
wonderful things; and the years rolled by, as they had done in the
other play, unfolding the shadows of a beautiful life. He saw himself
become a great and famous poet, who wrote beautiful books to
make people wise and good. Then he saw himself in church, with a
woman’s shadow by his
side, and he knew, in some mysterious way, that it was the daughter
of the poet who had lost the purse. And as the happy years rolled on
he saw himself rich and honourable, and the end of all was a
magnificent funeral, taking his body to be buried in the great church
wherein many famous men were laid. Then the shadows vanished,
and the mirror became pure again, while over it the grey mists fell
like a soft veil, and once more the voice of his shadow said,—
“All this will happen if you remain honest.”
Then the crowd of shadows around Tom looked at him with their
mournful eyes, and a whispering question ran through the fantastic
throng,—
“Which will he choose?—which will he choose?”
“I will choose the honest life,” cried Tom loudly. “Yes, I will give back
the purse to the poet.”
At this the shadows around seemed to rejoice, and he could see
beautiful faces smiling at him from amid the crowd. The shadow
multitude broke in a wild dance of joy, keeping time to some aerial
music which Tom could not hear; and his own shadow, with
happiness shining out of its mournful eyes, threw its arms round him
once more. A dark veil seemed to fall over him, and the great white
plain, the glimmering mists, and the restless shadows, vanished
together.
When Tom opened his eyes again, he found himself lying on the
floor of his garret, cold and hungry still, but with his heart filled with a
great joy, for the shilling was still clutched in his hand, and he knew
he had not stolen the money. He took the purse from under the
sacks, replaced the shilling, and then went out, in the bright sunshine
of the Christmas morning, to give back the lost purse to its owner.
Overhead the bells rang out merrily, as if they were rejoicing at Tom’s
victory over himself, and a beautiful lady, who was on her way to
church, gave Tom some money to get food. He went and bought a
loaf and a cup of coffee, then, thankful for his good fortune, he
trudged off to the poet’s house.
The great poet received him very kindly, and,
after thanking Tom for returning his purse,
asked him why he had done so instead of
keeping it? Whereupon Tom told the poet all
about the shadow, which interested the poet
very much. He also had been to Shadowland
and seen strange things, which he told to the world in wonderful
verse.
“This boy is a genius,” he said to his wife, “and I must help him.”
Then it all happened as the magic mirror had foretold, for Tom was
put to school by the kind poet, and became a very clever man. He
also wrote poems, which the world received with joy; and when he
became a famous man, the kind poet gave him his own daughter in
marriage, and the bells which had rang the birth of the child-Christ
when Tom was a poor ragged boy, now rang out joyously in honour
of his marriage.
“He has conquered,” they clashed out in the warm, balmy air; “he is
the victor, and now he will be happy.”
And he was happy, very very happy, and felt deeply thankful to the
shadow who had shown him the way to be happy. His own shadow
never left him, but it never spoke to him again, though when Tom felt
tempted to do wrong, he heard a whisper advising him to do right.
Some people said that this was the voice of conscience, but Tom
knew it was the voice of his dear shadow, who still watched over
him.
And one day he took his wife to the garret where he had lived when
a poor boy, and told her how he had been to Shadowland, and
learned that to be honest and noble was the only true way to
happiness. His wife laughed, and said Tom had been dreaming; but
Tom shook his head, and said that it was no dream, but a great truth.
Now, who do you think was right—Tom or his wife?
THE WATER-WITCH
 I.

FIRE AND WATER.

ONCE upon a time, long long years ago, there was a shepherd
called Duldy, who dwelt in the forests which clothed the base of the
great mountain of Kel. This mountain was in the centre of an
immense plain, watered by many rivers, and dotted over with many
cities, for the kingdom of Metella was a very rich place indeed, so
rich that the inhabitants looked upon gold in the same way as we
look upon tin or iron, as quite a common thing. The plain was very
fertile by reason of the great rivers which flowed through it like silver
threads, and all these rivers took their rise in the mountain of Kel, a
mighty snow-clad peak which shot up, white and shining, to the blue
sky from amidst the bright green of its encircling forests.
There were old stories handed down from father to son, which said
that the mountain was once a volcano, which, breathing nothing but
fire, sent great streams of red-hot lava down to the fertile plain, to
wither and blight all the beautiful gardens and rich corn-fields. But
the fires in the breast of the mountain had long since died out, and
for many centuries the black, rugged summit had been covered with
snow, while countless streams, caused by the melting of the glaciers,
fell down its rocky sides, and, flowing through the cool, green pine
forests, spread themselves over the thirsty plain, so that it bloomed
like a beautiful garden.
Duldy lived in these scented pine forests, and
was supposed to be the son of an old couple
called Dull and Day, from whence by joining
both names he got his own Duldy; but he was
really a lost child whom old Father Dull had
found, seventeen years before, on the banks
of the Foam, one of the bright sparkling
streams which flowed from the snowy heights
above. Dull took the child home to his wife
Day, who was overcome with joy, for she