masque of anarchy

[baronsamdi]

This book was brought out of the vault today for a special fundraising event. Shelley published The Masque of Anarchy in 1832. This binding, the Rare Books Librarian estimates, is early twentieth century. I wish I could show you the rest! The back is similar to the front, but with symbols of hope in place of the front's King Anarchy. The spine has

Comments

[pastor_saturn]

Whoa. Wow. Whoa. That's awesome.

[kmhoofnagle]

God, that's gorgeous! What sort of fundraiser gets to see this thing? Do people get to touch it?

[baronsamdi]

We're piloting a project similar to the White Glove Dinners held at the University of Georgia. While UGA holds one of these dinners before every home football game (!!), we're thinking more along the lines of a couple times a year. I'm not sure yet if our model will be "charge a lot of $$ per plate" or "make it cheap and cultivate the attendees as future donors/benefactors

[schmooo]

Wow, the detail on that is absolutely amazing. I can't believe how old it is, too!

I think it needs a few cobwebs and dust and mildew. Just to complete that "Open the cover and demons will fly out" effect.

[baronsamdi]

The printed poem inside the binding is 1832, but the leather binding isn't nearly that old. It's undated but the librarian thinks it's early 20th century. And don't forget, pure gold doesn't tarnish! so that helps.

The detail is def. really impressive: it's only about the size of a paperback. The skull is a bit bigger than one of those old half dollars?

I'm going to try to sneak some more pics on Wednesday when we are having the dinner event. You have *got* to see the snakeskin on the inside!

[mexlor]

Could a member of the public who had a good reason to look at this come in and photograph all the pages?

[baronsamdi]

We make those decisions on a case-by case basis. If you're planning on publishing the images, you'll have to use our photographer and license the image. If we're talking about snapshot memory-joggers for your research, yes, without flash would likely be fine. The poem is in the public domain, so we don't have any copyright to safeguard. Careful, flash-free photography would also be less damaging than photocopying it--which would not be allowed.

But--considering that you wouldn't be allowed to smash the book flat to get good photos of the pages, you might be better served by the perfectly good identical facsimile in GoogleBooks: http://books.google.com/books?id=vlYJAAAAQAAJ

As a book, this item's under the purview of the Rare Books unit; they get to decide if you can photograph it. My answer above is what I'm pretty sure they'd say. Most Special Collections departments at other universities prohibit any researcher photography.

[lalartu]

That is incredible