#Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
More Fairy Tales
This week I bring you The Girl Who Cried Flowers, and Other Tales, by the prolific American writer Jane Yolen (b.1939), illustrated by David Palladini (1946-2019), and published in New York by Thomas Y. Crowell in 1974. The book contains five original fairy tales with accompanying illustrations that range from one to two pages and are in both black and white and color. Tales such as these among her more than 300 titles has led Newsweek to dub Yolen “The Hans Christian Andersen of America.”
Yolen claims that it was this book, published nine years after her first book, that established her reputation in the field of children’s literature. The title story, The Girl Who Cried Flowers, has seen several iterations, including being separately published in Cricket magazine in 1990, published as an audiotape that Yolen narrated for Weston Woods Studios in their Readings to Remember series, and produced as an animated movie by Auryn Studios, with a script by Yolen, and directed by Bollywood director Umesh Shukla.
Yolen, who had originally worked as an editor, considered herself to be a poet and a journalist/nonfiction writer. Fate took her in a different direction, however, and to her surprise she became a children’s book writer who focused mostly on fantasy and science fiction. Her numerous awards andhonors include a Caldecott Medal, a Caldecott Honor, two Nebula awards, the Jewish Book Award, and six honorary doctorates.
Palladini, an Italian-born American illustrator, was best known for his Aquarian Tarot deck, which was published by Morgan Press in 1970 and reworked as the New Palladini Tarot in 1997 by U.S. Game Systems. Palladini’s style is reminiscent of the Art Nouveau illustrations of Alphonse Mucha and Aubrey Beardsley, a beautiful accompaniment to Jane Yolen’s stories.
View more posts from our Historical Curriculum Collection of children’s books.
View more Women’s History Month posts.
-- Elizabeth V., Special Collections Undergraduate Writing Intern
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Some Memorable Reading from 2019
Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women (2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Yūko Tsushima, Territory of Light (1979, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Muriel Spark, Robinson (1958, Macmillan)
Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy’s Wedding (1955, Thomas Y. Crowell Co.)
John Wyndham, Chocky (1968, Michael Joseph)
Tillie Walden, On a Sunbeam (2016, First Second)
Denis Johnson, The Stars at Noon (1986, Alfred A. Knopf)
Sally Rooney, Normal People (2018, Faber & Faber)
Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder (2005, Soft Skull Press)
Ben Lerner, The Topeka School (2019, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
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AN ARRAY OF DISPOSITIONS
The last posting referred to certain points this blog has made through the years. More specifically, those points describe the political/cultural landscape that the political scientist, Daniel Elazar, describes.[1] Here is how this blog (with some editing) reported on Elazar’s contribution, back in 2011:
Daniel Elazar's study of American political dispositions identified these three subcultures. They are the individualistic, the moralistic, and the traditional. The origins of these distinctive cultural dispositions can almost be traced to the earliest colonial period. Highly affected by the economic diversity that sprang up from the colonies in the northern, New England region to the plantation-based economies of the southern colonies, the subcultures of each of the three regions [New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Southern] reflected the social realities emerging from these diverse economic conditions.
Robert Putnam found these diverse political ideas, ideals, and beliefs surviving in the nation’s more current times.[2] Elazar claims that the distinct cultural dispositions stretched westward in mostly three parallel layers of states. The trend is not perfect; for example, while the traditional subculture of the south moved westward, its expansion was limited to the former Confederate States [and ends at the western border of Texas].
Mostly stretching westward from first the mid-Atlantic colonies and then the resulting states, overall, the individualistic subculture is the most dominant today as it mirrors the marketplace perspective. [This blog has made the argument that that dominance was first exerted in the years just after World War II replacing a more moralistic bias that prevailed.] Today, the nation’s political culture is well ensconced in the natural rights construct that is dominant in our nation's school curricula. Why? Because it best reflects the nation’s capitalist biases.[3]
This general description, as presented in this blog, was further supported by the thoughts of the Spanish-American philosopher, George Santayana.[4] He argued that American history saw a religious outlook among Americans that began with a strict Calvinist belief that evolved into a more genteel transcendental perspective. Those competing moral views helped develop or at least co-existed with the above described three distinct political subcultures.
To be clear, none of these perspectives held or hold total allegiance among the American population at any time. That includes the thinking and feelings of Americans today. For example, the Republican Party base today is described as holding a Christian nationalist perspective among its MAGA[5] advocates. Readers can pass judgment as to the validity of that claim. But to the extent it is true, one can classify such thinking as a form of parochial/traditionalist thought.
[1] Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States (New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966).
[2] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
[3] Robert Gutierrez, “Individualistic Political Subculture,” Gravitas: A Voice for Civics, July 18 or 19, 2011). This posting is no longer found in the blog’s archive feature.
[4] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” in The Annals of America, vol. 13 (originally published in 1911) (Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britanica, 1968), The Annals of America, vol. 13, 277-288.
[5] Make America Great Again.
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The Disappearance of Joan Risch
October 26, 2021
Joan Risch (Joan Carolyn Bard) was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1930 to parents Harold and Josephine Bard. Her family moved to New Jersey when Joan was 9, and in 1940 both of her parents died in what was described later as a suspicious fire.
It was reported that Joan had later told a friend that she had been sexually abused as a child, and after the fire she had moved in with relatives who had formally adopted her. Joan took the relatives last name, Nattrass, and had applied for a social security number under that name.
Joan graduated in 1952 from Wilson College in Pennsylvania with a degree in English literature and she later went to work in publishing. She began working as a secretary, later moving to supervise the secretarial pool and after that became the editorial assistant at Harcourt Brace and World and later at Thomas Y. Crowell Co. In 1956 she married Martin Risch, an executive at one of the companies and left work to raise her family.
The couple lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where they had their first child, a daughter named Lillian in 1958 and then a son named David in 1959. In 1961, the couple moved to Lincoln, Massachusetts. Joan became active in the League of Women Voters and Martin worked with the Fitchburg Paper Company. Joan had dreams to pursue teaching when her children became older.
On October 24, 1961, Martin Risch woke up early and left the house to catch an 8 am flight to New York for a business trip he had planned. He was going to be staying the night in Manhattan. Shortly after Martin left, Joan woke the children up and gave them breakfast. She took David across the street to a neighbour’s house, Barbara Barker, and then took Lillian in her blue 1951 Chevrolet for a dentist appointment.
After the appointment, Joan took Lillian shopping at a nearby department store and paid for their items in cash. Milk and the mail had been delivered to the Risches home while they were gone. Neither the milkman or postman reported seeing anything unusual.
Joan picked up David and then they all returned home around 11:15 am. Shortly after, a delivery driver for a dry cleaner came to the house to pick up some of Martin’s suits. He entered the house and did not notice anything strange about Joan. After the delivery man left, Joan changed from her formal clothing to a blue housedress and white sneakers.
Joan made the children lunch and put David into his room for his nap, which always lasted until 2 pm. At 1 pm, Barbara Barker, the neighbour, brought her son, Douglas over to play with Lillian. During this time, Joan was seen coming in and out of the house to prune some plants.
Shortly before 2pm Joan came out and took the children across the street to the Barker’s house. She told them she would be back. Lillian later told police she did not see anyone else in the area at the time and that she and Douglas had played on a swing set, though they could not see the Risch house from where they were playing.
Around 2:15 pm, Barbara briefly saw Joan, wearing what looked like a trench coat over her clothes and moving quickly up her driveway, carrying something red and outstretched in her arms from her car to the garage. This was the last confirmed sighting of Joan Risch.
An hour later, Virgina Keene, the daughter of the Risches’ next door neighbours, got off the school bus and as she got closer to her house she noticed an unfamiliar car, that was dirty and two-toned with one of the colours being blue. Five minutes later, another local said they stopped while driving up Old Bedford to let a car back out of either the Keenes’ or the Risches’ driveway. Both Virginia and her mother said there was no car in their driveway at that time.
Barbara took Lillian back home at 3:40 pm, because she was going to take her children out to shop. She believed Joan was in the house, so she left. When she returned from shopping at 4:15 pm, Lillian came back over and said that her mother was gone and that the kitchen had been covered in red paint. David had been crying in his crib because his diaper needed to be changed. Barbara ran over to the house, and confirmed what Lillian had told her. She called the police at 4:33 pm.
Sgt. Mike McHugh arrived at the Risch residence within 5 minutes. In the kitchen he found the bloody smears on the walls, the table overturned and the handset of the wall-mounted telephone ripped loose and thrown in the wastebasket, which was in the middle of the floor, not under the sink in it’s usual place.
McHugh thought Joan may have taken her own life and searched the house for her body. He did not find it and realized he would need more help, this was not going to be an open and shut case. The police department called local hospitals and said to keep an eye out if a woman matching Joan’s description show up. Martin Risch was notified of what was going on and got on the next flight back to Boston.
In the house, police found 4 letters delivered to the mailbox that had yet not been brought inside. In the kitchen, the telephone directory was found to have been opened to the page where emergency numbers could be written down, though no numbers had been written down. There was an empty liquor bottle found in the wastebasket, but Martin claimed him and his wife had finished it the night before, though he could not explained the empty beer bottles that were also found.
Joan had left the trench coat she had worn earlier in the morning and appeared to have left somewhere wearing a plainer cloth coat. Her pocketbook was also found in the house and police determined she would’ve had less than $10 ($90 in today’s time) left.
Several people reported that they had seen Joan after Barbara Barker had last seen her the afternoon of October 24. At 2:45 pm, a woman wearing clothing similar to what Joan had last been seen in, was seen walking along the north side of Route 2A west of its junction with Old Bedford, heading toward Concord. The woman had a kerchief over her head tied around her chin and appeared to be hunched over as if she were cold. The woman appeared untidy.
Another similar looking woman to Joan was scene with blood running down her legs, walking north on the Route 128 median strip in Waltham between 3:15 and 3:30 pm just north of Winter Street. The woman appeared disoriented and was cradling something at her stomach. Another person reported seeing the woman walking south along Route 128 near Trapelo Road around 4:30 pm.
Police received reports of the car that Virgina Keene had reported in the Risches driveway. The milkman claimed to have seen it there when he made his morning delivery. Another resident told police she had seen a blue two-toned car parked on Sunnyside Lane, at 4:15 pm. She witnessed a man get out of the car, cut some branches from the nearby woods, and put them in the car. Another man said he saw a light blue 1959 Ford sedan parked along Sunnyside at 2:45 pm.
Though there was tons of blood in the Risch kitchen, police could not determine from where the blood might have been from. Large smears were on the walls and the floor, as well as some found on the telephone. Three bloody fingerprints were unidentified, and police were unable to see if they matched Joan’s as she was gone. A roll of paper towels was on the floor, one had been used to wipe up some blood.
A coverall and pair of underpants belonging to David were also on the floor, covered in blood, possibly from an attempt to wipe some of it up. The coverall looked like it had been pressed into the floor, as if a heavy weight had lain on them for a while, possibly a body. Police said that the bloodstains might have been a result of a struggle, but that it mostly likely was from someone staggering around and trying to support themselves following an injury.
Blood was also found outside the house, a 1/8 inch wide drop was found on the first step of the stairway. Two more similar sized drops were found at the top of the stairs, along with 8 drops found in the master bedroom and one near a window in the children’s bedroom.
A trail of blood led out of the kitchen into the driveway and ended at Joan’s car, which was stained in three places: the right rear fender, the left side of the hood, and the very centre of the trunk. It could not be determined where the bleeding actually started. Some believed Joan had been carried out of the house against her own will and placed in another car.
There was no bloody footprints found despite the amount of blood. The blood was found to be Type O, the most common blood type and it was said that this was Joan’s blood type. A police chemist determined the the amount of blood was also half a pint, not enough to have been from a life-threatening injury.
Sareen Gerson, a reporter, went into the local library to research similar cases and came across a book about the disappearance of Brigham Young’s 27th wife, which Joan Risch had checked out the book in September, a month before she disappeared. Another book was about a woman who went missing and left behind blood smears and a towel. Gerson saw that Joan had also checked out this book.
Gerson reported these findings in the newspaper, and volunteers looked through records, discovering that Joan had taken out 25 books over the summer of 1961, many of which had to do with murders and missing people. Due to this, some believe that Joan had staged her own crime scene and disappeared purposely.
Police determined that Martin Risch, the mailman and the milkman had all been elsewhere during Joan’s disappearance. Police looked into a man named Robert Foster, as neighbours believed he was suspicious. Foster had been known to visit homes in the area discussing a project to restore the area back to its historical appearance from the Revolutionary War. Some women told police that Foster had “overstayed his welcome” while visiting homes to discuss this project. Foster had visited Joan Risch on September 25, almost exactly a month before she went missing.
On the day Joan disappeared, Foster told detectives that he went out for lunch with his supervisor around 1 pm. By 3 pm, he went back to the Lincoln area to meet with a property appraiser. This alibi was completely confirmed.
Martin Risch continued to live in the house and raise the children. He never had Joan legally declared as dead. Eventually, Martin moved to a house in Lexington and died in 2009.
There are many theories about what happened to Joan Risch, with many believing she wanted to run away from her life. Though, a friend of hers said that Joan was very satisfied with her life and wouldn’t of had a reason to run away. Martin proposed that maybe his wife had an amnesia episode or a psychological breakdown and forgotten how to return home. Joan had no history of mental illness.
There was another popular theory, that Joan was pregnant and had died as a result from a botched abortion performed in her house. Some believe the blue two-toned car that many saw, belonged to a person who had come to perform the abortion and that at some point something had gone wrong. The loss of blood may have disoriented Joan, where she had stumbled around the kitchen trying to call 911 but had been stopped possibly. This also matches up with the police thinking she may have been carried from the house to a car in the driveway and driven off. This matches the blood trail that led outside the house and stopped in the driveway. This also would describe Barbara Barker, who claimed she saw Joan wearing a trench coat and carrying something red.
None of this has ever been confirmed, it is unknown if Joan was pregnant, and none of the reported sightings of her walking along the road make sense. Why would she be walking along the road?
It is unlikely that the whereabouts of Joan Risch will ever been known, as the last investigator on the case died in 2009, and most people involved would probably be dead. If Joan was alive today and had left her old life behind, she would be 91 years old.
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The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge
With Memoir, Notes, Etc.
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
ILLUSTRATED
VICTORIAN BINDING
Samuel Taylor Coleridge is the premier poet-critic of modern English tradition, distinguished for the scope and influence of his thinking about literature as much as for his innovative verse. Active in the wake of the French Revolution as a dissenting pamphleteer and lay preacher, he inspired a brilliant generation of writers and attracted the patronage of progressive men of the rising middle class. As William Wordsworth’s collaborator and constant companion in the formative period of their careers as poets, Coleridge participated in the sea change in English verse associated with Lyrical Ballads. His poems; speculative, meditative, and strangely oracular, put off early readers but survived the doubts of Wordsworth and Robert Southey to become recognized classics of the romantic idiom.
Publisher: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York
Copyright: No date printed, c1880s
BUY ON ETSY
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Bibliography
Books
Bonnefoy, Y., 1992. Greek And Egyptian Mythologies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bratton, F., 1970. Myths and Legends of The Ancient Near East. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.
Broyles, J., 2006. Egyptian Mythology. New York: Rosen.
Budge, E., 1904. The Gods of The Egyptians. London: Methuen & Co.
Bunson, M. (1996). A Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, J., 1990. Transformations of Myth Through Time. New York: Perennial Library.
Fletcher, J., 1999. Ancient Egypt. London: Duncan Baird.
Jay, R., 1996. Mythology. Lincolnwood, Illinois.: NTC Pub. Group.
Mackenzie, D., 1907. Egyptian Myth and Legend. London: Gresham.
Miles-Watson, J. and Asimos, V., 2019. The Bloomsbury Reader in The Study of Myth. London: Bloomsbury.
Nardo, D., 2005. Mummies, Myth, And Magic. San Diego: Lucent Books.
Pinch, G., 1994. Magic in Ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press.
Quirke, S., 2015. Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt. Wiley.
Watterson, B., 2003. Gods of Ancient Egypt. Stroud: Sutton.
Wilson, J., 1956. The Culture of Ancient Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Websites
https://www.ancient.eu/Bes/
https://www.gods-and-goddesses.com/egyptian/bes/
Other Sources
Gillian Ramsey, Oriental Museum, Durham.
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Happy birthday to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born on this day (August 28) in 1749. Goethe wrote numerous works of poetry and prose, including Faust, which is a story of a young scholar who sells his soul to the devil.
Images from: Goethe's Faust: A Tragedy. New York : Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.,1883.
Call Number: PT2026 .F2 S9 1882
Catalog Record: https://bit.ly/2PiHFRK
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[Robert Louis] Stevenson's Attitude To Life: With Readings from His Essays and Letters
by John F. Genug. Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1901. First Edition. Printed by D. B. Updike at the Merrymount Press.
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Publishers’ Binding Thursday
I found this book while browsing our stacks on a hunt for a nice publishers’ binding, and the spine immediately caught my eye. The book is Prue and I by American author, public speaker, and abolitionist George William Curtis (1824-1892). Published in 1899 by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. in New York and Boston, the book features color illustrations signed by Harry C. Edwards (1868-1922) and an added title page designed by Theodore Brown Hapgood (1871-1938). It’s possible that the cover is also designed by T.B. Hapgood, though it does not bear his initials.
The cover is described thusly in our catalog: “Grayish olive green diagonal fine rib cloth, ornate gilt iris and leaf design with matte gold fleur-de-lis surrounding gilt lettering, all within gilt double rule border, motif repeated on spine.” I would argue that the cloth is not “grayish” at all, but I think that a pretty neat description of this binding.
I was tickled by some of the passages I read upon opening the book (ex: “Prue often says [xyz]. She is right, as usual.”) and by the dedication: “To Mrs. Henry W. Longfellow in memory of the happy hours at our castles in Spain.” How many castles do you have?
View more Publishers’ Binding Thursday posts.
-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager
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Some Memorable Reading from 2020
William Trevor, Angels at the Ritz (1979, Penguin)
Carmen Maria Machado, In The Dream House (2019, Graywolf Press)
Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood, Youth, Dependency (1967-1971, Steen Hasselbalchs Forlag)
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911, Scribner’s)
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908, L.C. Page & Co.)
Magda Szabó, Abigail (1970, Móra Ferenc Könyvkiadó)
Maud Hart Lovelace, Emily of Deep Valley (1950, Thomas Y. Crowell Company)
Patricia Highsmith, Deep Water (1957, Harper)
Dominique Morisseau, Skeleton Crew (2016, Samuel French)
Annie Ernaux, The Years (2008, Gallimard)
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Twenty Centuries of Paris, Mabell S. C. Smith, Thomas Y. Crowell Co. NY 1913
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Summer Legends. Rudolph Baumbach. Translated by Helen B. Dole. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1888]. First edition in English.
"They are not altogether fairy-tales, though all border on the marvelous, and sprites, elves, and other mysterious folk from Wonderland play a conspicuous part."
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Image taken from page 253 of 'The Evolution of France under the Third Republic ... Translated from the French by Isabel F. Hapgood. Authorized edition with special preface and additions, and introdtion by Dr. Albert Shaw. [With plates.]'
Image taken from:
Title: "The Evolution of France under the Third Republic ... Translated from the French by Isabel F. Hapgood. Authorized edition with special preface and additions, and introdtion by Dr. Albert Shaw. [With plates.]"
Author: COUBERTIN, Pierre de - Baron
Contributor: HAPGOOD, Isabel Florence.
Contributor: SHAW, Albert.
Shelfmark: "British Library HMNTS 09225.g.3."
Page: 253
Place of Publishing: New York
Date of Publishing: 1897
Publisher: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
Issuance: monographic
Identifier: 000797816
Explore:
Find this item in the British Library catalogue, 'Explore'.
Download the PDF for this book (volume: 0) Image found on book scan 253 (NB not necessarily a page number)
Download the OCR-derived text for this volume: (plain text) or (json)
Click here to see all the illustrations in this book and click here to browse other illustrations published in books in the same year.
Order a higher quality version from here.
from BLPromptBot https://ift.tt/2JLPOZ6
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Details of Volume 2 from previous post. ⚔️ 1898 HC The Count of Monte Cristo 2 Volumes Alexander Dumas illustrated by Frank T Merrill Published by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., NY Maroon quarter-leather with marbled boards, titles in gilt, gilt top edge. Chipping to boards and tape to spine of Vol. 2 as shown. Clean tight interiors. 🗡️ $45 for both volumes shipped in the US. 📦 Link in bio, claim in comments or DM to purchase. 📚⚔️🇫🇷🗡️🛡️ #alexandredumas #countofmontecristo #franktmerrill #thomasycrowell #thecountofmontecristo #threemusketeers #bourbonrestoration #napoleon #1890s #antiquebook #antiques #vintagebooks #vintage #booksofinstagram #bookstagram #booksofig #bookworm #literaryclassics #classicliterature #romance #historicalfiction #bibliophile #bookaneer #bookaneer4sale (at Dodge Center, Minnesota) https://www.instagram.com/p/B21mexKAgRI/?igshid=1iu2u944tpa7t
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