Current Publications
Sporting with the Classics: The Latin Poetry of William Dillingham

Transactions: Volume 100, Part 1

Estelle Haan
Paper. 136 pp. (12 front matter; 124 text)

$35.00

978-1-60618-001-3
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Sporting with the Classics focuses on the original Latin poetry of William Dillingham, a seventeenth-century editor, anthologist, and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University. It does so in an attempt to dispute claims that Dillingham’s talent lay in criticism rather than in original composition and that his Latin verse shows his complete independence of the old school of classical imitation. The book highlights both the classical and the contemporary intertexts with which this poetry engages. It argues that far from constituting the leisurely product of a gentleman in rustic retirement, this is highly talented verse that “sports” with the classics in several ways: first in its self-consciously playful interaction with the Latin poets of Augustan Rome, chiefly Virgil and Ovid; second in its appropriation of a classical world and its linguistic medium to describe such seventeenth-century sports or pastimes as bowling, horticulture, and bell-ringing. It also foregrounds the pseudo romanticism surprisingly inherent in the work of a late seventeenth-century poet who, it is argued, discovered in his twilight years a neo-Latin inspirational Muse.

 
Estelle Haan is Professor of English and Neo-Latin Studies at the Queen’s University of Belfast. Her research interests lie mainly in links between English and neo-Latin poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in particular the Latin poetry of English poets. She is the author of Classical Romantic: Identity in the Latin Poetry of Vincent Bourne (American Philosophical Society, 2007), Vergilius Redivivus: Studies in Joseph Addison’s Latin Poetry (American Philosophical Society, 2005), Andrew Marvell’s Latin Poetry: Fro Text to Context (Collection Latomus, Brussels, 2003), Thomas Gray’s Latin Poetry: Some Classical Neo-Latin and Vernacular Contexts (Collection Latomus, Brussels, 2000), and From Academia to Amicitia: Milton’s Latin Writings and the Italian Academies (American Philosophical Society, 1998). Currently she is completing an edition of Milton’s Latin and Greek poetry for Oxford University Press.
The House of Barnes: The Man, The Collection, The Controversy

Memoirs: Volume 266

Neil L. Rudenstine
Cloth

$45.00

978-0-87169-266-5
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The House of Barnes: The Man, The Collection, The Controversy is a beautifully written study of the extraordinary art collector and volatile personality Albert C. Barnes.  The book places him in the context of his own era, shedding new light on the movements and ideas (about art collecting, education, and aesthetics) that shaped so much of his thinking.

The Barnes’ major holdings of post-impressionist and early modern art include more than 800 paintings, with a strong focus on Renoir (181 canvases), Cézanne (69), Matisse (59), and Picasso (46 paintings and drawings). In its entirety, it is the greatest single collection of such art that has remained intact.  

The last chapters of the book address the controversial events surrounding the Barnes Foundation’s move to Philadelphia, including vehement opposition—as well as strong support. There is an analysis of the Foundation’s financial plight, a review of the major court cases over the decades, and a characterization of the fervent reactions following the court’s decision to allow the move to take place.

The monograph is recommended for a broad audience, especially those interested in art and art collecting; the role of art in education; and the development of cultural institutions.

2012 J. F. LEWIS AWARD WINNER

With bold clarity, in a manner which can only be described as magisterial, Dr. Rudenstine has written a history of Dr. Albert Barnes, particularly as it relates to the thoughts and actions which shaped his Foundation. The depth of research and wisdom brought to its interpretation surpasses all other publications on the subject.
     The book sets a new standard of highly informed and sophisticated insight into the complexity of Barnes as a man, his legacy, and how this played out with other elements which have governed the fate of his Foundation.
        Joseph J. Rishel
       Senior Curator of European Painting before 1900
       Philadelphia Museum of Art

 
This text provides the first scholarly foray into the historical and aesthetic context in which Barnes sought to intervene, and it goes very far toward explaining why he made certain decisions, including some of his most irrational ones. Barnes is neither eulogized nor demonized.
      The scholarship is superb, the research highly original, and the author’s patience with his subject, astounding. This book is entirely free of jargon; even those who lack legal or financial competence could follow all its intricacies; and it is beautifully written.
       Yve-Alain Bois
       Professor of Art History
       Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Neil Rudenstine is President Emeritus of Harvard University (1991-2001). He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of ARTstor and the New York Public Library.  He is a Member of the American Philosophical Society, Class 5 (1992).
 
Astronomy in the Maya Codices

Memoirs: Volume 265

Harvey M. Bricker and Victoria R. Bricker
Cloth

$75.00

978-0-87169-265-8
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The Precolumbian Maya were closely attuned to the movements of the Sun and Moon, the stars and planets. Their rituals and daily tasks were performed according to a timetable established by these celestial bodies, based on a highly comples calendar system. Agriculture provided the foundation for their civilization, and the skies served as a kind of farmer’s almanac for when to plant and when to harvest. In this remarkable volume, noted Maya scholars Harvey Bricker and Victoria Bricker offer invaluable insight into the complex world of the Precolumbian Maya, and in particular the amazing achievements of Maya astronomy, as revealed in the Maya codices, the indigenous hieroglyphic books written before the Spanish Conquest. This far-reaching study confirms that, independent of the Old World traditions that gave rise to modern Western astronomy, the Precolumbian Maya achieved a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy based on observations recorded over centuries.
 
WINNER OF THE 2011 J. F. LEWIS AWARD
 
Astronomy in the Maya Codices is the first thorough treatise on the codices since Thompson's A Commentary on the Dresden Codex four decades ago. The Brickers' work is special in that it gives a complete account of the historical background of scholarly inquiries into each of the instruments they deal with. The Brickers attempt to place each codical instrument in real time, an approach they uniquely develop and fully justify. This work will remain the "last word" on the role of astronomy in the codices and in Maya thought for a long time to come.
     Anthony F. Aveni
     Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of Astronomy and
          Anthropology and Native American Studies
     Colgate University
 
Astronomy in the Maya Codices represents a compilation of almost three decades of scholarly research conducted by the Brickers, reflecting a unique collaboration that combines their respective areas of expertise in linguistics, epigraphy, and astronomy. Their book is the most comprehensive treatment of the Maya codices to date, and is likely to remain a classic for years to come.
     Susan Milbrath
     Curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology
     Florida Museum of Natural History
 
Astronomy in the Maya Codices is simply a tour de force. The breadth and depth of Harvey and Victoria Bricker’s research on the Maya codices and the accessibility of their writing style make this important book a “must read” for a host of constituencies, from scholars of the Maya to astronomers to the interested general public.
     Jeremy A. Sabloff
     President, Santa Fe Institute
    

Peter Collinson and the Eighteenth-Century Natural History Exchange

Memoirs: Volume 264

Jean O’Neill
Elizabeth P. McLean
Cloth

$75.00

978-0-87169-264-1
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Peter Collinson’s life is a microcosm of eighteenth-century natural history. A London Quaker, a draper by trade, and a passionate gardener and naturalist by avocation, Collinson was what we would now call a facilitator in natural science, disseminating botanical and horticultural knowledge during the Enlightenment. He influenced men such as Comte de Buffon and Linnaeus. He found clients for the Philadelphia Quaker farmer and naturalist, John Bartram, at a time when the English landscape was evolving to emphasize trees and shrubs, and the more exotic the better. Thus, American plants populated great estates like those of the Dukes of Richmond, Norfolk, and Bedford, as well as the Chelsea Physic Garden, and nurseries of James Gordon and Robert Furber. Botanic painters such as Mark Catesby and Georg Dionysius Ehret painted American plants in Collinson’s garden. His membership in the Royal Society enabled him to broaden his scope: he encouraged Franklin’s electrical experiments and had the results published, he corresponded about myriad natural phenomena, and he was ahead of his time in understanding the extinction of animals and the migration of birds. Though a man of modest Quaker demeanor, because of his passion for natural science, he had an unprecedented effect on the exchange of scientific information on both sides of the Atlantic. In this monograph, the authors give a convincing biographical portrait of Collinson. He “speaks” to the reader throughout the book in a distinct voice.

Jean O’Neill (1915–2008) was awarded the Gold Veitch Memorial Medal by the Royal Horticultural Society in 2001. She concentrated her scholarly research on Collinson’s life and writings and his place in Anglo-European history. Lady O’Neill, wife of the late Northern Ireland prime minister Terence O’Neill, was a passionate lover of nature and frequent author of articles in horticulture. She had a keen interest in the history of plants. She was chairwoman of the National Trust Gardens Committee and a fellow of the Linnean Society of London.

Elizabeth P. McLean, a graduate of the Arboretum School of the Barnes Foundation, is Research Associate in Botany at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and on the boards of the Library Company of Philadelphia (having served as past president) and the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania. Her particular expertise is in the Anglo-American horticultural relationships of the eighteenth century. She has written various garden history articles, and is co-author, with architectural historian Mark Reinberger, of the forthcoming Country Houses and Landscapes of Colonial Philadelphia.

Indexed in H.W. Wilson’s Essay and General Literature Index.
VISUAL MECHANIC KNOWLEDGE: The Workshop Drawings of Isaac Ebenezer Markham (1795-1825), New England Textile Mechanic

Memoirs: Volume 263

David J. Jeremy
Polly C. Darnell
Paper

$70.00

978-0-87169-263-4
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Markham’s sixty or so drawings are the earliest-known set of textile machine maker’s workshop drawings in the U.S.A., prepared primarily for cotton carding, spinning, and weaving machinery but also for wool carding and spinning equipment. Nothing similar has survived from the antebellum decades. Prepared between 1814 and 1825, a collection of such significance requires an examination of its provenance, a biography of the draftsman, and an analysis of the historical contexts shaping both draftsman and drawings. David Jeremy and Polly Darnell fulfill all of these goals in this marvelous book.
            As comparisons with contemporary European machine drawings reveal, Markham’s drawings are evidence of the transition from preindustrial to industrial forms of technical knowledge, and of a much wider knowledge revolution in the United States.
 
David J. Jeremy is Emeritus Professor of Business History at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, where he has taught since 1987. He has researched in the areas of business history and the history of technology, and has written a number of articles and books, including Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technologies Between Britain and America, 1790–1830s (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press and the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum, 1981 and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981) and Artisans, Entrepreneurs, and Machines: Essays on the Early Anglo-American Textile Industries, 1770–1840s (Alershot: Ashgate, 1998).
 
Polly C. Darnell currently is the Archivist and Librarian at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. Between 1980 and 1995, she ran the Research Center of the Sheldon Museum in Middlebury, Vermont. She has taught and written about archives and community history and been active in regional and national archival organizations. She has a B.A. in American History from Goddard College and an M.L.S. from the University at Albany, State University of New York.

 
POLAR HAYES: The Life and Contributions of Isaac Israel Hayes, M.D.

Memoirs: Volume 262

Douglas W. Wamsley
Cloth

$75.00

978-0-87169-262-7
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In the mid-nineteenth century as an ambitious young country expanded its horizons westward, Dr. Isaac Israel Hayes, a young physician from an Orthodox Quaker family in the rural farmland of Pennsylvania, turned his eyes to the North. As a member of the harrowing American arctic expedition under the command of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane in search of the lost British explorer Sir John Franklin, Hayes became obsessed with making his own mark in the far northern polar regions. Overcoming tremendous apathy, he organized his own privately funded voyage to the Arctic in 1860, during which he claimed to have reached a ‘farthest north’ and to have stood on the edge of the fabled “Open Polar Sea,” a mythical ice-free zone in the high northern latitudes.

But Dr. Hayes was much more than a mere participant in the history of Arctic discovery during its ‘heroic’ age. Hayes stood at the forefront of American and European Arctic efforts, among other things, initiating the modern race for the North Pole and the crossing of the Greenland ice-cap, as well as contributing meaningfully to the literature of the polar regions. He successfully influenced the course of Arctic discovery. During the U.S. Civil War and as an elected politician in New York State during its Gilded Age, Hayes served the ‘public good’ for a decade, with accomplishments as far reaching as his Arctic service, but little recognized during his lifetime.

Polar Hayes brings to light the complete story of an immensely talented individual who occupied a central position in the cause of Arctic discovery and exploration, and also as a man of public service. Drawing upon Hayes family papers, little-viewed diaries from Hayes’s own expeditions, and unpublished primary sources, the story emerges of a remarkable but forgotten explorer, writer, politician and humanitarian who epitomized the rugged and restless spirit of adventure and individualism of nineteenth-century America.

Douglas Wamsley, an independent scholar and attorney who lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey, has written and lectured extensively on the history of nineteenth-century Arctic exploration and its participants.
Alexander the Great: Coinage, Finances, and Policy

Memoirs: Volume 261

Georges Le Rider
Paper

$50.00

978-0-87169-261-0
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This English translation of Georges Le Rider’s comprehensive study of the coinage and financial policy of Alexander the Great (Alexandre Le Grand: Monnaie, Finances et Politique) brings, for the first time, the magisterial scholarship of one of the world’s greatest living numismatists before an Anglophone public. For more than forty years Le Rider has published fundamental studies on the coinages of the ancient Middle East and eastern Mediterranean world, particularly from the time of Philip II (Alexander’s father), Alexander himself, and the Seleucid empire. The book of 2003 that is now appearing in English represents the culmination of a lifetime of reflection on the coinage of Alexander.

It is not only Le Rider’s gift for seeing the implications of his multitudinous coinage issues that every reader of his works in French will know so well: it is the uncommon lucidity and simplicity of his presentation of the material. No one could hope to capture the crystalline clarity of his French prose, but, by working closely with Le Rider himself and with numismatic specialists, above all Le Rider’s friend and collaborator Hyla Troxell, William E. Higgins has created a book worthy of the original. It manages to retain the excitement of a detective investigation that begins with an anecdote handed down by Plutarch and ends by subverting it. Special thanks go to the Aristotle Onassis Foundation, which generously funded the translation through the intercession of Michel Amandry.

French historian Georges Le Rider is a professor at the Collège de France, a member of l'Institut de France and a specialist in numismatics. He has taught at both the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the Collège de France, and has also served as Director of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul. From 1975-1981 he had the major position of Administrateur général of the Bibliothèque Nationale of France. Since 1989 he has been a Member of the Institut de France in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. In 1996 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The Passion of George Sarton: A Modern Marriage and Its Discipline

Memoirs: Volume 260

Lewis Pyenson
Cloth

$90.00

978-0-87169-260-3
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George Sarton animated the discipline of history of science in America. This monograph, the first full-length study of Sarton’s life and work, traces his youth and education in Ghent, Belgium, and his stormy marriage to the talented English artist Mabel Elwes. It follows George and Mabel Sarton in their path from idealistic refugees fleeing the invasion of Belgium in 1914 to destitute intellectuals at Harvard University. For half a century, history of science as an academic specialty owed much to George Sarton’s visions and anxieties, especially as they were expressed in his marriage. Mabel Sarton sustained his enterprise and contributed to its form, which included parts of socialism, pacifism, aesthetics, and faith. Current themes present in George Sarton’s early work include the common endeavor of artists and scientists, the private nature of scientific innovation, and the history of science as a bridge between the cultures of the humanities and the natural sciences.

Lewis Pyenson is Dean of the Graduate College at Western Michigan University. Formerly he was Research Professor of History at the Center for Louisiana Studies and Adjunct Professor of Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Physics, and Modern Languages at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of the History of Science. In 2005 he lectured in the George Sarton Chair at the University of Ghent in Belgium.  

 

This is a spectacular and completely original book. Lewis Pyenson has recreated both biographies and the narratives of George and Mabel Sarton’s relationship by marshaling a stunning range of sources, most importantly the incredibly detailed epistolary relationship of the two principals. At the same time, the book explores George’s intellectual world both in Belgium and the United States and thereby draws out the interesting web of ideas and personalities that formed the core of the nascent discipline of the History of Science, whose foundational institutional organization was largely George’s work.
Thomas Glick, Professor of History
Boston University

Lewis Pyenson is a historian of science of extraordinary breadth no less than remarkable depth and a writer of real distinction. He succeeds in bringing George and Mabel Sarton to life and giving the readers an intimate look into the inwardness of their marriage.
Charles Gillispie, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History of Science Emeritus
Princeton University

This is an important book for the scholarly communities of letters, criticism, and history and philosophy of science. The conceptual, language, and work skills and habits possessed by Lewis Pyenson are rarely found today in the history of science tribe.
C. Stewart Gillmor, Professor of History & Science, Emeritus
Wesleyan University
Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes

Memoirs: Volume 259

Vincent Ilardi
Cloth

$85.00

0-87169-259-7
978-0-87169-259-7
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WINNER OF THE 2006 J. F. LEWIS AWARD

Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes deals with the history of eyeglasses from their invention in Italy ca. 1286 to the appearance of the telescope three centuries later. "By the end of the sixteenth century eyeglasses were as common in western and central Europe as desktop computers are in western developed countries today." Eyeglasses served an important technological function at both the intellectual and practical level, not only easing the textual studies of scholars but also easing the work of craftsmen/small businessmen.

An important subthesis of this book is that Florence, rather than Venice, seems to have dominated the commercial market for eyeglasses during the fifteenth century, when two crucial developments occurred: the ability to grind convex lenses for various levels of presbyopia and the ability to grind concave lenses for the correction of myopia. As a result, eyeglasses could be made almost to prescription by the early seventeenth century.

Vincent Ilardi is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and through the years has been a prolific speaker and author on the fifteenth century. Papers presented include "Diplomatic History as 'Total' History? A Fifteenth-Century Perspective" (International Congress on the Fifteenth Century, University of Perpignan, France, 1990); books include Studies in Italian Renaissance Diplomatic History (London, Variorum Reprints, 1986).
The Temple of Night at Schönau: Architecture, Music, and Theater in a Late Eighteenth Century Viennese Garden

Memoirs: Volume 258

John A. Rice
Cloth

$70.00

0-87169-258-9
978-0-87169-258-0
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Between 1796 and 1800 Baron Peter von Braun, a rich businessman and manager of Vienna's court theaters, transformed his estate at Schönau into an English-style landscape park. Among several buildings with which he embellished his garden, the most remarkable and celebrated was the Temple of Night, a domed rotunda accessible only through a meandering rockwork grotto that led visitors to believe that their destination lay somewhere deep underground. A life-size statue of the goddess Night on a chariot pulled by two horses presided over the Temple, while from the dome, which depicted the night sky, came the sounds of a mechanical musical instrument that visitors likened to music of the spheres.

Only the ruins of the Temple of Night survive, and it has received little scholarly attention. This book brings it back to life by assembling the many descriptions of it by early nineteenth-century eyewitnesses. Placing the Temple within the context of the eighteenth-century English landscape park and of Viennese culture in the fascinating period of transition between Enlightenment and Biedermeier, Rice's book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of garden design, architecture, theater, and music.

John A. Rice, an independent scholar who lives in Rochester, Minnesota, studied music history at the University of California, Berkeley [Ph.D., 1987]. He has written many articles on eighteenth-century music and three books: W. A. Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito [1991], Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera [1997], and Empress Marie Therese and Music at the Viennese Court, 1792-1807.