Thomas J. Wise

Thomas J. Wise
Author: William B. Todd
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 141
Release: 2014-07-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1477300406

Thomas James Wise (1859–1937), though destined to receive in his own lifetime practically every honor the world of letters could bestow, is remembered today as perhaps the greatest malefactor in all of literary history. From 1934 to 1957 various enquiries have implicated him first in the manufacture of more than fifty predated "original" editions of eminent Victorian authors, then in seven additional forgeries, later in countless piracies of other nineteenth-century work, and finally in repeated acts of vandalism upon forty-one seventeenth-century plays. It is fitting that Wise himself appears as a contributor to this volume. Included are his original introduction to the Browning Library, his letters to bookseller J. E. Cornish, his extraordinary letter to Sir Edmund Gosse, and a note to H. Buxton Forman. These Centenary Studies review the course of research over twenty-five years, designate topics requiring further investigation, and assess new evidence of Wise's villainies. One more forgery is identified, the provenance of others reexamined, the forger's method of purveying his wares closely appraised, his association with H. Buxton Forman and Sir Edmund Gosse more precisely defined, and the range of his activities summarized in an annotated handlist. The record includes at least 400 printings directly attributed to Wise, as well as 23 suppressed or abortive issues, and 29 others in which he seems to be somewhat involved. Through these perspectives the culprit appears even more contemptible and, possibly for this very reason, ever more intriguing as a cause célèbre in literary scholarship. The illustration on the cover of this book reproduces, through a magnifying glass, the peculiar question mark appearing in certain forgeries printed for Wise by the firm of Richard Clay & Sons. The mark may also implicate Wise in other irregular printings, including The Death of Balder.

Bibliography and Modern Book Production

Bibliography and Modern Book Production
Author: Percy Freer
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2024-08-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1776149122

Bibliography and Modern Book Production is a fascinating historic journey through the fields of print history, librarianship and publishing. It covers key developments from 1494 to 1949 in bibliography and book production from the history of scripts and paper manufacture to the origins of typefaces and printing. Although not a textbook, the book was a guide for library students in the 1950s on the essential literature of librarianship. As the first librarian appointed to Wits University in 1929, Percy Freer’s near encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject of bibliography enabled him to develop a key resource for relevant library examinations in South Africa and abroad. Due to its immense value as a historic record, and to acknowledge Freer’s contributions as scholar, librarian and publisher, it is being reissued as part of the Wits University Press Re/Presents series to make it accessible to scholars in book histories, publishing studies and information science.

The Texas Book

The Texas Book
Author: Richard A. Holland
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2006-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0292714297

Provides personality profiles, historical essays, and first-person reminiscences of the history of the University of Texas. Topics include recurring attacks on the school by politicians and regents, the institution's history of segregation and struggles to become a diverse university, the sixties' protest movements, and the Tower sniper shooting.

Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti

Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti
Author: Roger W. Peattie
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 820
Release: 1990-03-15
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780271026626

William Michael Rossetti (1829&–1919) always presented himself as the third Rossetti: a civil servant and critic unworthy to be compared with his brother, Dante Gabriel, and his sister, Christina. Not everyone has readily accepted Rossetti's evaluation of himself. The painter William Rothenstein remembered him as a man whose &"outlook on life was broad and humane,&" and the only one of the Pre-Raphaelites &"who was sympathetic towards the work of younger writers and painters.&" More recently, Professor W. E. Fredeman has written of him as &"among the P.R.B.s... almost the only man of action,&" and the essential figure in the founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and its magazine, The Germ. The publication of this edition of more than six hundred of his letters (most of them previously unpublished), to such leading literary and artistic figures as Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, Browning, Swinburne, Whistler, and Whitman, demonstrates convincingly the range and quality of his friendships, his active involvement in the cultural life of Victorian England, and the complexity of his character. The letters also offer a detailed account of his powerful advocacy of the work of Blake and Shelley, of Swineburne and Whitman among his contemporaries, and, after their deaths, of Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti. Throughout his life Rossetti was intensely aware of the political and social events of his time, both in Europe and the United States, and the letters contain numerous references to the Crimean, Franco-Prussian, and Boer wars, the Paris Commune, the American Civil War, women's suffrage, and Italian unification. The letters have been extensively annotated, making use of the hundreds of letters by Rossetti not included in the edition, his twenty-volume diary, and the thousands of letters to him preserved in the Angeli-Dennis Papers at the University of British Columbia.