Return Of the Book Collection Department

These days book collecting has largely been supplanted by vintage camera collecting ... though that appears to have run its course. Still, books published in bygone days drift into Mysterioso Manor gently and quietly. Here's the latest:

The Voclano's Deadly Work, From the Fall of Pompeii To the Destruction of St. Pierre, edited by Charles Morris, Ll.D, publisher unknown, 1902.
Today we can learn of disasters the minute they occur and watch them unfold, horrorstruck. In the beginning of the XXth Century, news of disasters crept along slowly, taking or weeks while disparate narratives of the calamity were pieced together. Once the magnatude of the disaster was fully realized someone would hurriedly publish a book on it and spread the news further into the nation's heartland and obscure corners.
In this case we have the erruption of the volcano Pele on the island of Martinique and the destruction of the port city of St. Pierre on May 8, 1902. From the moment the volcano errupted it was a matter of minutes before a huge wall of boiling mud, boulders and lava engulfed St. Pierre and its harbour. Worse, perhaps, was the wall of white hot cinders and super heated air which fell upon the ships in the harbour, setting ships and people on fire instantly. Not surprisingly, there were very few survivors and those that did survive were horribly burned.
The Volcano's Deadly Work gives a geological account of the chain of islands which includes Martinique, a look at daily life on the island and in St. Pierre and then recounts the destruction of the city and the aftermath by survivors of the disaster. The book then gives accounts of other volcanic disasters from the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum by Vesuvius in 79 C.E. and the rumblings of Mount Etna near Naples, among others.

Little Journeys: To Homes of Great Lovers ~ D.G. Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal, by Elbert Hubbard, 1906.

Little Journeys: To Homes of Great Lovers ~ Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, by Elbert Hubbard, 1906.

Little Journeys: To the Homes of Great Teachers ~ Plato, by Elbert Hubbard, 1907.
Elbert Hubbard was fascinated by people their lives and work. I should emphasize work for Hubbard was a great believer in work and idleness was anathema to him. The Little Journeys series was about how a person's work, whatever it may have been, effected their life and lives of others, naturally for the betterment of all. Poet, artist, business tycoon, social reformer or teacher, there was something we could all learn from, filtered through Hubbard's own precise world view.


Stealth, 1921, being the yearbook of Henry Coffin, who graduated from Broadway High School, June, 1921.
I have a small collection of yearbooks from the the 1920s. I'm not terribly interested in yearbooks from the 1960s through 1980s, but yearbooks from the 1920s and 30s always fascinate me. For one thing, the teenagers in these yearbooks look so incredibly adult. I suppose its the suits and dresses they're wearing and the hairstyles. But they simply seem, just through their photographs, to be so much more adult than contemporary teenagers who seem like, for the most part, overgrown eight year olds. Well, it was a vastly different era and different things were expected of teenagers 80 years ago.
At any rate, here we have Henry Coffin's senior yearbook. The frontispiece has a marvellous Stieglitz-like photogravure of the Smith Building and the docks, enshrouded in mist. Underneath the caption read "Seattle, the seaport of success." I'm not certain if I thinkof Seattle as being the "seaport of success" but its a charming notion. Next we have a photogravure of Miss Florence Adams, an English teacher, with her pince-nez glasses and piled-up hairstyle from the 1890s. This yearbook is dedicated to her and one can easily understand why. Miss Adams seems like a very nice person and probably thought of these kids as her own children and probably took an actual interest in their lives.
Thereafter we have the Class of '21 and the crazy highjinks they got up to in the early 20s. The class colours were Crimson and White and the class yell was Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, 1-9-2-1. No kidding! I can't remember what my high school class colours were, except I do remember someone wanting camouflage and I did think that was pretty cool. As to our class motto, I don't know what it was, but it was probably something treacly and nowhere near as cool as Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, 1-9-2-1. Anyway, the fashions of the day ran to tight suits and slicked back hair for the guys and long skirts and mid-length, waved hair for the girls. The rest is a typical yeaarbook, the various classes, clubs, sports teams and gradutaing class whimsy.