#Mann Library

[mannlibrary]

Lorenzo Langstroth unvarnished

Lorenzo Langstroth, 1890. From Langstroth on the hive & honey bee, rev. by Dadant. 1892.

December 25th, Christmas Day, is a day for sharing and giving. It also happens to be the birthday of a man known as the father of American beekeeping: Lorenzo Langstroth, born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1810. With both happy occasions in mind, Mann Library is pleased to announce a resource that we’re pretty sure students of beekeeping and its history will find a wonderful gift: a fully digitized, searchable copy of Langstroth’s handwritten personal journal. Where a researcher would have once had to make an in-person trip to our special collections reading room to attempt a deciphering of Langstroth’s (infamously difficult to read) handwriting, the journal is now freely available (and actually readable!) as both a digitized version of the original work and in a transcribed form as part of the online Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Page from "Journal on matters relating to bees, etc.," unpublished manuscript, Lorenzo Langstroth 1852-1895. in the special collections of Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University.

For those not yet fully in the know, Lorenzo Langstroth looms large in American beekeeping history thanks to discoveries and inventions he made as a self-taught apiarist, innovations which essentially revolutionized the 19th century practice of beekeeping in North America and facilitated its development into the profitable industry of today. His guide on beekeeping, The Hive and the Honeybee, was first published in 1853 and remains in print even today.  Langstroth’s story is also poignantly notable for a reason that you don’t have to a be a beekeeper to appreciate deeply: his struggles with debilitating depression, which stymied many of his professional endeavors. While working intermittently as a pastor and teacher when his mental health allowed, Langstroth found constant, life-affirming inspiration in the bee world he observed closely through the prism of the hives he kept for most of his adult life.

The history of beekeeping stretches back to prehistoric times, but when Langstroth patented his movable frame beehive in 1852 it created a worldwide revolution in the practice of keeping bees. On this page of his journal, we see the exact moment—the “aha” moment—that Langstroth landed on his brilliant insight: the significance of applying the concept of "beespace" to design hives that allow easier harvesting of honey than possible in earlier hive structures. The rest, as they say, is history.

The journal Langstroth kept is a treasure for several reasons. It provides fascinating insight into pivotal moments of beekeeping’s technological history. It is, as well, an intimate view of resilience in face of sometimes devastating mental health challenges. And last but really not least, in the comments and pet peeves that Langstroth also recorded in his ongoing notes-to-self, his off-the-record writing offers a more mundane but no less instructive tour through the day-to-day concerns—from keeping bee hives productive to the vexing challenges of protecting trade secrets and securing patents for promising new discoveries in a timely way—that would have been top-of-mind for any aspiring agricultural entrepreneur of the 19th century.

Page from "Journal on matters relating to bees, etc.," unpublished manuscript, Lorenzo Langstroth 1852-1895. in the special collections of Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University.

The online availability of Langstroth’s journal in both its handwritten and transcribed form has been a work very long in the making. When early 20th century entomologist Everett Franklin Phillipps joined the Cornell faculty 1924, he made it his mission to establish one of the world’s most important collections of beekeeping materials—now known as the E. F. Phillips Collection at Mann Library. Recognizing the importance of one of this collections’ gems—the Langstroth journal—for the beekeeping field, Phillips began the painstaking process of transcribing 600 pages of its cramped, highly slanted script—rendered even more illegible by the frequent ink bleed-through from other pages—into easily readable typescript. The project remained unfinished at the time of Phillips passing in 1951, and others took up the work intermittently over the following decades. But it wasn’t until the epic pandemic-era national lockdown of 2020 that intrepid collections specialist Betsy Elswit finally found herself with the time needed to finish transcribing of the journal's final 200 pages.  Thanks to this heroic work, a browse through the work on the Biodiversity Diversity Heritage Library today provides a look at Langstroth’s original writing with a side-by-side view of transcribed, machine-readable text.  Thank you Betsy! And thank you, Reverend Langstroth, for persevering through the inspirational highs and deep lows of life to impact the practice of beekeeping so profoundly, and to leave us such a rich record of such remarkable scientific observation and personal achievement.

And with that, we leave you with our best wishes for a good, hope-filled winter holiday season!

[chic-a-gigot]

The Delineator, no. 4, Vol. XLVIII. Autumn Number. October 1896. Published by the Butterick Publishing Co. London & New York. Colored Plate 21. Figure D44. Outdoor Toilette. Internet Archive, uploaded by Albert R. Mann Library

Figure D 44. — LADIES’ OUTDOOR TOILETTE.

Figure D 44. — This consists of a Ladies’ jacket and skirt. The jacket pattern, which is No. 8661 and costs 1s. 3d. or 30 cents, is in thirteen sizes for ladies from twenty-eight to forty-six inches, bust measure, and may be seen differently portrayed on page 438 of this number of The Delineator. The skirt pattern, which is No. 8599 and costs 1s. 3d. or 30 cents, is in nine sizes for ladies from twenty to thirty-six inches, waist measure, and is shown on its accompanying label.

A leading style of jacket or blazer and skirt is shown at this figure. The jacket is here pictured made of a handsome quality of broadcloth, with a velvet collar and velvet cuff-facings, and the skirt of gay plaid wool goods. The loose fronts of the jacket are closed with four handsome cord frogs and are reversed in stylish lapels that form notches with the rolling coat collar. At the sides and back a close adjustment is effected by under-arm and side-back gores and a center seam and stylish outstanding flutes result from extra widths underfolded in box plaits at the middle three seams. One-seam sleeves that are gathered stand out in short leg-o’-mutton puffs at the top and are comfortably close-fitting below; they are completed with deep, round cuff-facings of velvet. Machine-stitching finishes the pocket laps and all the free edges of the jacket.

The skirt, which is known as the new bell skirt, is circular at the front and sides and in two gores at the back. At the front it flares stylishly and it ripples gracefully at the sides and back.

The most admired jackets are made of broadcloth, cheviot, etc., in any of the popular shades, and a velvet collar and cuffs and machine-stitching form the fashionable finish. With a stylish street jacket, a skirt of plain cloth or of bright plaid wool may be worn.

The large hat shows a lavish trimming of ostrich tips.

[briabooknerd]

Sunny sweet can so get lost

Sunny sweet is so not sorry

Sunny sweet is so not scary

Sunny sweet is so dead meat

Jennifer Ann Mann

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Herbert A. Otto and John Mann - Ways of Growth - Pocket - 1971

[themannfamily]

[sherbertilluminated]

I saw your tag

#and 19th c biographical novels that depict historical figures in hilarious and disturbing ways

and wondered if you had any recommendations?

(It's not quite a biographical novel ,but you might like *Charles Auchester* by Elizabeth Sara Sheppard, who is Felix Mendelssohn idfic with the serial numbers filed off: see my review at https://landofnowhere.dreamwidth.org/99862.html.)

Thanks for the recommendation, Farouche! Your review has me excited to read Charles Auchester over the summer, and I'll try my hand at a few recommendations of my own.

I'll admit upfront that I've mostly read novels of this kind in German, and am not aware of translations for most of them right now. The novel I have the most experience with is Berthold Auerbach's Poet and Merchant: a Portrait of Life in the Time of Moses Mendelssohn, which is available in German here and English here. It takes as its subject the obscure and unhappy life of the poet Ephraim Moses Kuh, who after a difficult childhood receives the opportunity to travel to Berlin in the mid-18th century. This framework is mostly an excuse for Auerbach to include his favorite historical figures—Moses Mendelssohn, of course, but Lessing and Gleim show up in the army, and in Mendelssohn's living-room we get to meet Salomon Maimon, Aaron Gumperz and Johann Caspar Lavater. A.L. Karsch even shows up at a wedding, I think!

While the scenes of luminary debate are delightful, the overall arc of the story deals with heavy themes: What's the use of a poetic vocation? More broadly, what is fulfillment? How do you live as a person and citizen of a country that considers you neither? Unlike in Auchester (as far as I can tell; I'm only a few pages in), antisemitism features heavily in the story, both in scenes of individual violence and as a pall hanging over the characters trying to conduct their lives within inhuman limits. Auerbach's clearly turning to the 18th century with a 19th-century lens, in the hope that Mendelssohn's project can provide an answer to contemporary problems, so while his "portrait" is clearly made with love, it's not necessarily accurate. On the other hand, the novel develops certain interpersonal dynamics excellently; the unfolding understanding between Kuh and his uncle Veitel is one, and the enthusiastic, very R/romantic admiration between Kuh's sister Violet and Lessing is another.

I'm also reading Lessing: Roman by Hermann Klencke. As far as I know, it's only ever been published in German. It appears he's written a whole series of biographical novels of 18th-century German writers. My mutual @estomia has read his Gleim novel, but I haven't (yet).

Going a little out of bounds: Goethe's 1788 play Egmont (English) (German) features Machiavelli as a character in a surprisingly-chill portrayal (he's Margaret of Parma's little guy!), Thomas Mann's short story "Schwere Stunde" is good, but 20th-century, and a must-read for Schoethe shippers, and César Aira's novella An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter develops a fascinating thesis on the interplay of colonialism, art and dehumanization.

I'm really interested in historical fiction, esp. 18th-century historical fiction, as a window into how people conceived of contemporary problems, and as a tool of metanarrative-building (e.g. as a national origin story). That's taken me to some works of art that aren't necessarily "good" or fun to read, but certainly deserve more scholarly interest.

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

If he were to be offered a chance to say a final word about the human spirit, he would like to do so comically, he thought; he would dramatize the idea that humans could not ever be trusted, that they could reverse their own story as the wind changed, that their lives were a continuous, enervating and amusing effort to appear plausible. And in that lay, he felt, the pure genius of humanity, and all the pathos.

Colm Tóibín, The Magician

[zorya-reads]

Mario and the Magician: Thoughts & Book Review

'Mario und der Zauberer' (German Classic) by Thomas Mann

★★★★☆ 

Should one pack up and leave when things get uncomfortably strange? Mann answers with a shrug: no — stay, endure, and observe. There’s something to be learned, even in discomfort. Especially in discomfort.

I believed that probably mirrors our teacher walking in on a Tuesday morning, handing us a copy of the book, and expecting us to read it in that hour. Well, so I thought—until I actually read it.

Synopsis: The story follows a family’s unpleasant summer vacation in hot southern Italy. But the real heat comes from the political climate: cloying flattery from hotel staff toward royalty and the uptight manners of snobbish suburban and small-town guests. When the children want to attend what’s expected to be a harmless magic show, the magician instead hypnotizes the crowd into humiliating spectacles, wielding control like a drunk puppet master. By the end, the curtain falls not to applause—but to bloodshed and bedlam.

(750 words)

The most interesting character to me was the magician, Cipolla. A man as layered as his name (Italian for “onion”), Cipolla has many contradictory layers hiding underneath. An artist, a tyrant, a Lucifer on stage; His character works as a metaphor for a looming political reality: the magician as a kind of precursor to a dictator, with hypnosis representing the early stages of ideological control. Cipolla shows both the fragile power artists hold over their audiences and the willingness of the crowd to be easily fooled. Mundus vult decipi. — But then the world does want to be fooled.

I loved the prose; Mann’s formal, almost Byzantine style. But honestly, modern readers might struggle with it — at least me and my classmates, feeling trapped inside a single sentence that just refused to end: The word choice is super eloquent. It's like he was fueled by a quirky obsession with inventing new words and neologisms—yes, Shakespeare on a linguistic spree—he made the syntax as convoluted as possible. Still, it’s something you can finish in just an hour or two.

Interestingly, the narrator admits to his own unreliability, confessing that the events are jumbled memories: “I’ve skipped around... My head is still full of memories of the Cavaliere’s feats,” he writes, “though I can’t put them in order anymore.” This self-awareness reminds us that memory— like magic — is always a bit of a trick. Self-censorship and attempts to justify himself are seen as warning signs that he might be trying to shape the story in a way that makes it easier for him to cope with what happened.

And that might be exactly the case: Historically, the novella is rooted in Mann’s own 1926 trip to an increasingly fascist Italy under Mussolini, just as fascism was gaining ground in Germany and Hitler’s rise to power loomed. When he wrote the story in 1929, the hopeful “Golden Twenties” in Germany had ended, replaced by growing radicalism and nationalism. The political climate was even more violent than what Mann had seen in Italy a few years earlier. Therefore, it’s likely Mann drew on his experiences in Italy and Germany for the story.

Because the story ends tragically, many think Mann was warning readers to actively resist dictators, even if it takes drastic action. But in a 1930 letter to Otto Hoerth (a german journalist, publicist, and writer), Mann said the story wasn’t meant as a political statement. While the events of the story are entirely real and parallel to his experience in italy, he explained that only the violent ending was his invention. However, by 1932, Mann didn’t rule out political meanings in his work.

The allegory is clear in hindsight: Cipolla as a precursor to the Führer, the audience as the pliant populace, the stage as the world. It’s about seduction and submission, about charisma weaponized, and about the thin line between spectacle and subjugation.

In the end, when our narrator is asked, “Was that the end?” the answer is yes. Yes, it was the end — a terrifying, liberating, blood-soaked end. The kind of end that leaves you wondering whether it came too soon, or far too late.

To whom would I recommend this book?

Anyone interested in German classics who has read Faust already (because who reads German classics without reading Faust???). It is a quick read—because it is short—and offers some insight into our history while at the same time, does not demand any deep prior knowledge. Its themes are straightforward, making it an excellent introductory work for beginners.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Bambi (1942, David Hand, James Algar, Bill Roberts, Norman Wright, Sam Armstrong, Paul Satterfield and Graham Heid)

03/04/2025

[pietro-balivo]

"Restare sempre calmi e non arrabbiarsi mai è un vero atto di trionfo!"

[meisterdrucke]

The Bookworm by Carl Spitzweg (1850, Öl auf Leinwand)

[chic-a-gigot]

The Delineator, no. 4, Vol. XLVIII. Autumn Number. October 1896. Published by the Butterick Publishing Co. London & New York. Colored Plate 20. Figure D43. Evening Toilette. Internet Archive, uploaded by Albert R. Mann Library

Figure D 43. — LADIES’ EVENING TOILETTE.

Figure D 43. — This consists of a Ladies’ basque-waist and skirt. The basque-waist pattern, which is No. 8637 and costs 1s. 3d. or 30 cents, is in thirteen sizes for ladies from twenty-eight to forty-six inches, bust measure, and may be seen again on page 442 of this magazine. The skirt pattern, which is No. 8672 and costs 1s. 3d. or 30 cents, is in nine sizes for ladies from twenty to thirty-six inches, waist measure, and is differently portrayed on page 447 of this publication.

The ideas expressed in this toilette are calculated to suit the most fastidious taste. Rich faille silk with high lustre and having small black figures on its sulphur ground is handsomely offset by the decoration of chiffon, embroidery and ribbon. A well-fitted lining closed at the center of the front insures a becoming adjustment to the waist, which has a low, round neck and a full front closed along the left shoulder and under-arm seam. The fulness in the back is drawn well to the center in the same manner as in the front by gathers at the neck and shoulder edges and by shirrings at the bottom. The short puff sleeves are made with full linings, gathered, like the puffs, at the top and bottom. A coquettish effect is given by a dainty bow of ribbon on each shoulder, and a softly wrinkled ribbon surrounds the waist. The low neck is decorated with a double ruche of white chiffon.

The five-gored skirt is smooth fitting at the front and sides and may be gathered or plaited at the back. At the sides it ripples but slightly and at the front it flares broadly. The foot trimming consists of a soft, double ruche of white chiffon. Hand-wrought embroidery in black runs upward from the bottom in vine pattern, each spray starting from under a ribbon bow at the ruche.

The toilette is noteworthy not alone for its admirable grace and style but for the practical features embodied in the basque-waist and its susceptibility to variations. A high or low neck and full-length or elbow sleeves may be arranged, and elaborate or simple effects may be attained, according to the use for which the toilette is intended. Faille façonné, moire antique façonné, velvet and the light silks and delicate chiffons and laces which are always more or less fancied, will be chosen for dressy wear, and for more practical occasions mixtures of color, canvas textiles and mixtures of wool and mohair and other novelties will be selected. Lace, colored embroidery, jet passementerie and bands of jet-embroidered mousseline de sole are available for handsome decorations.

[ultramiicccc]

«Io sto tra due mondi, in nessuno sono di casa»

Tonio Kröger, Thomas Mann, 1903

[boardgametoday]

Games Workshop Pre-Order Preview: Lion El'Johnson, Boss Snikrot, Commander Farsight, and more are coming!

Games Workshop Pre-Order Preview: Lion El'Johnson, Boss Snikrot, Commander Farsight, and more are coming! #warhammer40k #warhammer40000 #warhammercommunity #lotr

[sherbertilluminated]

So among friends I've only heard Death in Venice discussed as an abstract exploration of attraction, beauty & decay but it's also definitely about the partitions of poland right?

Aschenbach is a biographer of Frederick II, he's queer & severe & stalking an innocent kid whose parents named him Tadeusz on the eve of the big behold-the-consequences-of-aristocratic-nationalistic-imperialism war? The idolization of perennially-dying chivalry & the doomed intellectual conquest of other places? The longing for a subject you never expected to lack until everything goes wrong like um

like

like health?