Original “A Christmas Carol” manuscript on display

Dickens' orginal manuscript of "A Christmas Carol", 1843Titled “A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas” and prominently autographed by the author on the title page, the original manuscript penned by Charles Dickens will be on display at the the Morgan Library and Museum from November 20th to January 10th.

The manuscript reveals the author’s method of composition: the pace of writing and revision, apparently contiguous, is rapid and boldly confident. Revisions are inserted for vividness and immediacy of effect.

Deleted text is struck out with a cursive and continuous looping movement of the pen, and replaced with more active verbs and fewer words to achieve greater concision. Dickens’s manuscript shows vividly his efforts to create the highest-quality literary work in the shortest possible time.

After Dickens got it back from his publishers in 1843, he had it elegantly bound in red leather and gilt tooled for his childhood friend and sometime lawyer, Thomas Mitton.

Mitton sold it to a bookseller in 1875, 5 years after Dickens’ death, for £50. It passed through various owners after that, ending up in Pierpont Morgan’s hot little hands in the 1890’s. The Morgan doesn’t say how much he paid for it, but the brokers who sold it to him are thought to have purchased it for £1000, which is a remarkable leap in market value over just 15 years. Goes to show how immensely popular the story was right away. Instant classic, as they say.

The manuscript will play a featured role in the Morgan’s Winter Family Day Celebration on December 6th. Educational theater group The Grand Falloons will lead visitors through the exhibit as characters from the story. They’ll also perform an original play where Scrooge confronts not just a myriad ghost, goblins and ghoulies, but also Dickens himself.

Edit: Browse a high resolution scan of the manuscript itself, complete with Dickens’ many crossings-out and revisions. Post the most intriguing revision in the blog comments and get invited to tea at the Morgan. :boogie:

Many thanks to Carolina Valencia for the tip. :hattip:

Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", title page, First edition, 1843

Old book smell: Is there anything it can’t do?

Mmm... Old books...An international research team has devised a smell test that determines exactly how degraded the compounds in an old book are, and how best to counteract the decay without having to damage the book to take samples. The method is felicitously named “material degradomics”.

Lead researcher Dr. Matija Strlic from University College London’s Centre for Sustainable Heritage noticed that conservators often smelled the books to assess conservation needs. That gave her the idea for creating a smell test that would pinpoint the volatile compounds that are released as the paper ages and degrades.

The test employs gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze the paper, binding, etc. and separate out the different compounds.

The team tested 72 historical papers from the 19th and 20th centuries – some of which they bought on eBay – and identified 15 compounds that were “reliable markers” of degradation.

“The aroma is made up of hundreds of compounds, but these 15 contain most of the information that we need,” said Dr Strlic.

Measuring the levels of these individual compounds made it possible to produce a “fingerprint” of each document’s condition.

Once they have that fingerprint, librarians and conservators can more accurately determine which books are in greatest danger of degradation. Knowing which compound is at what level will also help fine-tune the conservation process.

The system isn’t quite ready for primetime. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry devices are still rather unwieldy and they use samples. Dr. Strlic is working on making a portable “material degradomics” machine which could easily be deployed by librarians to find out all kinds of things about a book, not just the compounds degrading on the pages, but also its age and what materials were used to make it.

Happy 50th birthday, Asterix!

Cover of my edition of "Asterix the Gaul"Asterix, that indomitable little Gaul, is 50 today, as are his comrades-in-arms from the one village that resists being divided into three parts by Julius Caesar. Asterix got his big break in the magazine Pilote exactly fifty years ago today.

His creators, illustrator Albert Uderzo and writer Réne Goscinny, published the first book, Asterix the Gaul, two years after that, and basically never stopped. Even after Goscinny’s death in 1977, Uderzo continued to crank out the best-selling books. Asterix books have sold 325 million copies and been translated into 107 languages.

Uderzo, Goscinny, Obelix, Asterix and DogmatixNot to universal acclaim, I’m afraid. I’m not a purist, but there’s no question that the books lost some of their brilliant puncraft and wit when Goscinny passed away. The first 24 books are by far superior to the ones that came after.

Asterix and Cleopatra is my forever favorite, but I cherish all the precious English translations from my youth. They never lost their luster even after I learned enough French to get the originals. Anthea Bell is the translator. There’s a great interview with her here.

Ironically perhaps, Asterix in Britain was a particular challenge to translate because one of the joys of the original was the way in which Goscinny captured the British characters speaking French with a dreadful English accent. It is also a favourite of Uderzo.

“While I like all that we have made, I have a little preference for Asterix et Les Bretons, for the way that René made the British speak with the structure of the English language transformed into French. I found it an extraordinary idea,” he says. “For René, who knew English perfectly, it was like a child’s game”.

Bell, who always ran her scripts past Goscinny when he was alive, was relieved to find that her translation solution – to use very dated, stilted, ‘upper class twit’ language in the style of PG Wodehouse – met with the French writer’s approval. “I told him that we were intending to use phrases like ‘what ho, old bean!’ and ‘hullo, old fruit’ and his eyes lit up,” she said. “‘Vieux fruit! I wish I’d thought of that…’ he murmured.”

He may belong to the world now, thanks to great translators like Ms. Bell, but Asterix is an undeniable French icon, celebrated as an incarnation of the rebellious, stubborn, self-confident French national character. Paris has gone Asterix-mad this anniversary.

They’ve had all kinds of Asterix-themed events, including a sky drawing of the little Gaul done by an elite Air Force unit (video of the aerial stunt), a 50th anniversary book release which is a collection of Goscinny short stories rather than one full-length book. There’s even a musical called “Le Tour de Gaule d’Asterix” by Parisian composer Frédéric Chalin staged at Champs Elysees Theatre.

Parisians are to be besieged by tributes to France’s most popular comic strip. Today, among the third-century Gallo-Roman baths upon which the Musée de Cluny is partially built, an exhibition of original plates and manuscripts opened to allow fans a glimpse of the creators’ inspirations. […]

Menhir with Asterix in front of the Palais BrongniartTo add to the Astérix fervour gripping the capital, various symbols of the books such as giant menhirs … and speech bubbles of famous exchanges will be erected at eight locations including the Place de la Concorde and in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Update: Oh yay, a slideshow! The menhir with faux hieroglyphics is just adorable.

The Musée de Cluny doesn’t have much of a website, so those of us not in Paris today will have to be content imagining the thirty original plates by Uderzo and the handwritten and typed scripts by Goscinny set in what was once a Roman frigidarium.

There are also new parodies by Uderzo of famous French artworks done Asterix style on display in the Cluny gardens. Here’s “Impedimenta Leading the Gauls” after Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People”:

Impedimenta Leading the Gauls, Albert Uderzo, 2009 "Liberty Leading the People", Eugène Delacroix, 1830

Anne Frank captured on film

The real Anne Frank, I mean, not an actor in a movie. This footage was shot from the street when a neighbor was getting married on July 22, 1941.

For a few seconds, the camera points upward and captures an excited, raven-haired young girl leaning out the window to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/4hvtXuO5GzU&w=430]

Less than a year after she leaned out of that window, Anne would receive an autograph book for her 13th birthday, a book she decided to use as a diary. A month after that, the family would go into hiding in the “Secret Annex”, the hidden top floors of her father’s office building.

Two years later, they would be betrayed and sent to their ultimate deaths in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Only Otto, Anne’s father, would survive the death camps.

This is the only known footage of Anne Frank, courtesy of the bride and groom who have allowed the Anne Frank House to display it. It was uploaded to the brand new Official Anne Frank Channel 10 days ago.

Anne Frank writing, 1941The channel already offers a variety of eye-witness interviews, period footage and comments from contemporary luminaries on the enduring significance of Anne Frank and her diary.

They also have a sneak preview of the Anne Frank House virtual museum which will launch in April of next year. Once it’s up and running, you’ll be able to walk the halls of the Secret Annex as they were during the war.

Until then, you can learn more about Anne Frank and her world from the Anne Frank House website.

The rise of the decline industry

Check out this neat article about the flurry of recent books about the decline and fall of Rome.

It’s by Bryan Ward-Perkins, author of a great decline book of his own, that was the source of the greatest list of all time. His experience gives him an interesting insider’s perspective on what publishers are up to (ie, trying to sell books, of course).

For example, on the left is the cover art he wanted, on the right is the cover art he got:

"The Artist in Despair over the Magnitude of Antique Fragments" by Henry Fuseli, 1778-80 “The Course of Empire: Destruction”, by Thomas Cole, 1833-36

In the great battle of meditative vs. lurid, lurid wins hands down. (Not that I’m hating, mind you. I dig them both.)

Anyway, the books Perkins profiles offer a variety of theories for the fall, but he thinks they all cluster around a central anxiety.

But it is hard not to conclude that a widespread anxiety over a modern “decline of the West” underlies the presence of all these books on the disintegration of the Roman empire, and of a reading public prepared to buy them. It is certainly very striking that so many books have recently appeared on the dissolution of Rome’s power, and so very few chart its rise and apogee. Europeans, and their descendents the North Americans, have had it very good for four or five centuries, thanks to their dominance (military, political, economic, cultural, even religious) over the globe. Romans had it very good for about the same number of centuries. Then things got a lot more “complicated” for the Romans. Are we in the modern West headed in the same direction?

Most of the six books make explicit and/or implicit analogies between the Roman then and our modern now. James O’Donnell’s The Ruin of the Roman Empire takes a particularly intriguing stance.

His takes is that Eastern Emperor Justinian ruined things for everyone when he invaded Italy and defeated the Ostrogoths who had established a fairly serviceable kingdom after killing the last emperor and sacking the place. From O’Donnell’s perspective, the barbarian Ostrogoths were trying preserve Roman civilization, and Justinian was an impulsive militarist who didn’t think through the long-term consequences of his bellicosity.

Sound like anyone we know? 👿