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✨👻 Fairytale Friday 👻✨

One Foot in Folklore

This week’s tale takes us to Japan, where legends take flight in unexpected forms...

Our first edition copy of The One-Legged Ghost by Betty Jean Lifton was published in New York by Atheneum in 1968. In this story, a Japanese boy witnesses a strange, one-legged creature soaring over the mountain. When the villagers gather to marvel at the sight, none can name it or explain its presence.

Betty Jean Lifton (1926–2010) was an American writer best known for her children’s books, her works on Japanese folklore, and later her groundbreaking books on adoption and identity. Having lived in Japan for several years, she drew deeply on its stories and traditions, bringing them to Western readers with sensitivity and imagination.

The illustrations are by Fuku Akino (1908–2001), a celebrated Japanese nihonga painter. Akino’s artwork beautifully captures the mysterious tone of Lifton’s tale, blending the spectral and the folkloric in luminous style.

Together, they created a tale that invites readers to step into the realm of Japanese legend, where spirits, mysteries, and unanswered questions linger in the twilight.

Do you think the boy encountered a ghost, an animal, or something else entirely? 

Until next time, may your path be clear… even if the spirits walk on one leg. 😉

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--Melissa (wandering where folklore flies), Distinctive Collections Library Assistant

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Feathursday Buntings

Buntings are Old World finch-like birds in the genus Emberiza (the North American Painted Bunting is in the Cardinal family). These wood engravings of the Corn Bunting (Emberiza calandra) and Cirl Bunting (Emberiza cirlus) are by British author and wood engraver Eric Fitch Daglish (1892-1966) from his book Birds of the British Isles, published in London by J. M. Dent & Sons in 1948 in a limited edition of 1500 copies, with 23 black and white and 25 hand-colored wood engravings by Daglish. Our copy is a donation from our friend, Wisconsin wood engraver Tony Drehfal.

View more posts from this volume.

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Wood Engraving Wednesday

Fritz Eichenberg

German-American illustrator and wood engraver Fritz Eichenberg (1901-1990) produced these ten, full-page wood engravings for a 1982 edition of The House of the Dead, Fyodor Dostoevsky's (1921-1881) early-1860s semi-autobiographical novel of convict life in a Siberian prison camp, printed for the Limited Editions Club by Daniel Keleher at his Wild Carrot Letterpress in Hadley, Massachusetts in an edition of 2000 copies signed by the artist and the designer/compositor Michael Bixler.

Beginning in 1850, Dostoevsky spent four years in a penal labor camp at Omsk in western Siberia, and after a further six years in exile he returned to St. Petersburg to write this narrative of the horrifying experiences he witnessed while in prison. As part of this edition's promotion, the Limited Editions Club described it as "De Profundis, Russian Style." Eichenberg's somber engravings adequately capture the torment of life in the harsh conditions of a Siberian katorga. Click or tap the Alt descriptions for the lines each engraving depicts.

View other posts with illustrations by Fritz Eichenberg.

View more posts on works by the Limited Editions Club.

View more posts with wood engravings!

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Typography Tuesday -- EXTRA

. . . And look at these lovely historiated initials and fine typographic layouts from our colleagues at the Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center, University of Minnesota Law School.

Tasty!

Lots of decorated initials! This 1759 copy of The Great Charter and Charter of the Forest, a critical edition by William Blackstone, was printed by Clarendon Press in Oxford. Each copperplate initial depicts notable architecture in Oxford, including Radcliffe Camera, the "Tom Quad" quadrangle, University Church, Danby Gate, and Queen's College.

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Typography Tuesday

On Sunday we showcased the designs and illustrations from Green Arras written, illustrated, and designed by Laurence Housman (1865-1959) and published in London by John Lane The Bodley Head and in Chicago by Way and Williams in 1896. Another visual element in this volume is the use of elaborate, Arts and Crafts-style initials found throughout the book. Today we are showcasing all the initial letters used in the publication.

Their design is uncredited, but we suspect they were probably designed by Housman himself as they bear the same design elements found on the cover and in the borders for the frontispiece and title page that Housman designed.

View more posts on initials.

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Milestone Monday

The Power of Persistence

On August 18, 1920, history was made. The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women the right to vote. This monumental victory came after decades of relentless activism, strategy, and courage from suffragists across the nation. 

Victory: How Women Won It: A Centennial Symposium, 1840–1940 by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, is a vital resource for understanding this transformative era. Published in New York by H. W. Wilson in a limited edition of 300 copies in 1940, the book chronicles the struggles, strategies, and triumphs of the women who fought tirelessly for the ballot. Our copy bears a signed presentation inscription from suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) to [Stella] Virginia Roderick (1880-1965), who among other things was an editor for Catt's suffrage periodical The Woman Citizen.

From marches and speeches to petitions and legal battles, this book preserves stories of determination that shaped democracy and reminds us that progress is hard-won but achievable.

1920 secured the vote for women; 2025 demands we defend it for all.

View more posts of Women's Suffrage.

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--Melissa (celebrating the power of persistence), Distinctive Collections Library Assistant 💪

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Decorative Sunday

English writer, illustrator, designer, and suffrage activist Laurence Housman (1865-1959) wrote, illustrated, and designed his own first book of poems, Green Arras, published in London by John Lane The Bodley Head and in Chicago by Way and Williams in 1896. Housman worked for The Bodley Head and designed several of their covers, including this one. He wrote about this cover design in his 1936 autobiography, The Unexpected Years:

I was just then designing book-covers for John Lane; so naturally I did what I thought an extra good one for myself: it was, at all events, very rich and elaborate. . . .

Before publishing, Housman ran all his poems passed his more famous older brother A. E. Housman (1859-1936) who gave him useful advice, but who later gave a dig to the book's cover design, stating that a neighbor of his liked the poetry, but "did not say that the Green Arras had a pretty cover nor has it."

Laurence Housman was much closer to his older sister, the illustrator and wood engraver Clemence Housman (1861-1955), who shared his interests in illustration, design, and the suffrage movement, and collaborated with him very closely. They also lived much of their lives together, sharing homes from about 1920 until Clemence's death at the age of 94. Laurence died a little over three years later at 93. Green Arras is dedicated to Clemence, and in the opening lines of his dedicatory poem he writes:

I hang my green arras before you Of the lights and the shadows I wove: Could the worth of my gift but restore you One half of your watchings and love!

View more posts on the Housman siblings.

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Steamy Saturday

"Life and death, love and lust. . . ."

". . . conflict between a doctor's duty and a lover's passion."

"Luther Clay: . . . trapped in a web of hospital passions. . . ."

"Lenore: married to Clay, yet . . . with a cold hatred of him. . . ."

"Kady: . . . she sought release in Clay's arms."

"Tina: she knew . . . the passionate fires beneath Clay's harsh surface."

"Nurse Hoffman: . . . she knew a truth she dare not face."

". . . a tense story of one man's crossroads. . . ."

Steam is everywhere in this tense soap opera of a talented surgeon who juggles multiple love interests and the jealousies of the men he has betrayed. In Doctors and Lovers by Roy Sparkia (1924-1992), published in New York by Pyramid Books in 1960, Dr. Luther "Luke" Clay is married to the frigid and spiteful Lenore, but is having ongoing flings with Tina since his teenage years, the wife of his ill-tempered and brutish brother Frank, and with Kady, the wife of the man whose name appears on the hospital Dr. Clay works at. And, of course, there's the competent, efficient, and ever-helpful Nurse Grace Hoffman who secretly longs for him across the operating table.

David Burnham, the owner of the hospital, has to endure much-needed surgery from a man he suspects of cuckolding him. Dr. Clay's brother Frank spends the novel battering his wife Tina over suspected infidelities, especially with his brother. Luther Clay can't get any from his own wife, so he turns to the wives of others, an endearing fellow. And Nurse Hoffman is eternally useful while pining away. The story is as tense and convoluted as any soap opera, but the short of it is: the difficult surgery is a success; Lenore divorces Clay; there is a murder/suicide. And who does the philandering doctor end up with? Why, the devoted nurse, of course!

The author, Roy Sparkia, was not only the author of many successful novels, but also a noted visual artist who created the stained-glass windows for the Empire State Building with his wife, the sculptor Renee Nemerov (1928-2012), sister of American Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov (1920-1991). One could only wish the cover art for this book would have been done by its author, but instead it is by prolific pulp cover artist Tom Miller.

View other nurse romance novels.

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✨🦁🦋Fairytale Friday🦋🦁✨

Welcome to the Jungle...

Where fable meets fine art, and the improbable becomes the inevitable.

This week's tale has us trekking deep into the jungle, following the unlikely journey of a golden lion and a blue butterfly.

Published in New York by Reynal in association with William Morrow and Company in 1974, Lion and Blue is an allegorical fable about an unlikely pairing that reflects themes of transformation, longing, and crossing natural boundaries. American photographer and author Robert Vavra, known for his photographic studies of horses, shifts here to fiction, bringing his keen eye for animal behavior, symbolism, and storytelling to a narrative that is both imaginative and thought-provoking.

The book’s illustrations are by Fleur Cowles (1908-2009), the American artist, editor, and writer known for founding Flair magazine in the 1950's. Her unique, often surreal images enhance Vavra's storytelling, using rich golds and blues to emphasize the tale's symbolic and dreamlike elements. The work also features a preface by the Prince of the Netherlands. Our copy is a gift of Megan Holbrook and Eric Vogel.

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--Melissa (following the improbable), Distinctive Collections Library Assistant

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A Corvid Feathursday

Europeans have a wider variety of crow-like corvids than we do here in the U.S. Shown here are just two of them, the Rook (Corvus frugilegus) and the Hooded Crow (Corvus cornix) from Bird Portraiture (“How To Do It” Series No. 35) by noted British naturalist artist and illustrator Charles Tunnicliffe (1901-1979), published in London and New York by The Studio in 1945. Rooks nest collectively in the tops of tall trees, often close to farms or villages, as depicted here. A group of Rook nests is known as a rookery.

The Hooded Crow is an omnivorous scavenger with a particular penchant for stealing the eggs of coastal birds, as shown here. About his encounter with this behavior, Tunnicliffe writes,

. . . a pair of Hooded Crows hurriedly flew up, and on reaching the spot where they had been we saw scores of egg-shells, mostly of Guillemots and Razorbills, with a few Herring Gull and Kittiwake shells too. All were in the gully by the stream side. We examined them . . . , the two Hoodies watching us all the time from a rocky hillock near by. We were amused to find among the egg-shells a ping-pong ball, which had been neatly punctured and must have been a source of great disappointment and disgust to the Hoodies.

Our copy of Bird Portraiture is from the collection of the Library of the Akron Art Institute with its bookplate, and is a gift to UWM Special Collections from our friend Tony Drehfal.

View more posts with works by Charles Tunnicliffe.

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Wood Engraving Wednesday

Michael McCurdy

Michael McCurdy (1942-2016) was an illustrator, author, publisher, master wood engraver, and founder of Penmaen Press in 1968. Deeply inspired in his youth by the engravings of Lynn Ward, McCurdy made his first wood engraving in 1963 while attending the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He went on to earn both his BFA and MFA at Tufts University and became a celebrated engraver and fine press printer.

Shown here are two of McCurdy's wood engravings printed by the legendary Harry Duncan (1916-1997) in the 1982 edition of American poet and Zen practitioner Susan Efird's narrative poem The Eye of Heaven printed at Abattoir Editions, the fine press of the University of Nebraska, Omaha, in an edition of 150 copies. Our copy is yet another donation from our late friend Jerry Buff (1931-2025).

View more posts on work by Michael McCurdy.

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Typography Tuesday

The eminent American book and type designer Bruce Rogers (1870-1957) designed a set of printer's ornaments in the early 20th century. Combinations of these ornaments are presented in this small booklet, Bruce Rogers Ornaments, printed in 1996 by Kentucky surgeon and hobbyist printer Blaine Lewis (1919-2001) at his Innominate Press in Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Lewis writes that Rogers became interested in printer's ornaments around 1917 when he found that available ornaments he wished to use "seemed too elaborate and refined."

. . . he photographed a 16th-century arabesque, made line block proofs, cut them into their simplest component units and then shifted them about to form different patterns. . . .he began scanning old specimen books and lifting from obscurity an odd assortment of lines, braces, and geometrical scraps in an attempt to isolate the simplest form to develop a set of flowers. Therefore, . . . forms were developed by Rogers of copies from previously designed pieces of adaptations from parts of the originals found in old specimen books.

Our copy of this type display booklet is another donation from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick (1946-1922).

View more posts of type ornaments.

View other type specimen books.

View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.

View more Typography Tuesday posts.

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Milestone Monday

Mic Drop Moment

On August 11, 1973, a house party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx made history. Hosted by DJ Kool Herc, the event is now widely recognized as the birthplace of hip hop. That night, Herc unveiled his beat juggling technique, while Coke La Rock introduced a revolutionary style of lyrical delivery: rapping. Together, they sparked a global cultural movement.

To honor this seismic moment in music history, we’re dropping the needle on Hip Hop Family Tree by American alternative comics cartoonist Ed Piskor (1982-2024). This visual mixtape of hip hop’s early days is told through comics as bold and gritty as the streets they sprang from. Piskor, an award-winning cartoonist known for fusing pop culture with sharp storytelling, traces the genre’s roots through its pioneers, battles, and beats. Published in 2013 by Fantagraphics Books, known for championing innovative graphic art, this treasury edition captures the movement’s style, swagger, and soul.

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--Melissa (keeping it fresh), Distinctive Collections Library Assistant

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Decorative Sunday

In 2007, Spanish artist, graphic designer, and book illustrator Pep Carrió (b. 1963) began a daily graphic diary with images created on the go, using any technique available at the time, and without any stylistic determinant. On September 8, 2012 (a date specifically chosen for the birthday of French Symbolist writer Alfred Jarry, b. 1873), selected page spreads from some of Carrió's visual diaries spanning 2007-2011 were published in Madrid as Los días al revés (The days turned over) by Alberto Anaut's La Fábrica. We present a few of those pages here.

Pep Carrió runs a graphic design studio, Estudio Pep Carrió, and on its website it states that Carrió

. . . draws endless diaries; he illustrates his own and other people's books; he publishes books that weren't there before; he constructs memories enclosed in dreamed-up objects. . . . In this interweaving of truths, a way of doing things, of understanding the world, of communicating with one's peers, is defined.

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Steamy Saturday

"He searched the gay world for the perfect mate!"

". . . he'd sample every man in the world. . . ."

"He had to be built . . . and have an insatiable lust for the gay antics. . . ."

". . . he went about seducing every lovable stud in sight."

"If only he could find a man that attracted him mentally and emotionally. . . ."

"But where on the face of the earth was a man like this to be found?"

And there you have it. That's pretty much the entire story of Buffy and the Holy Quest by gay pulp writer Chris Davidson (a pseudonym for Christian Davies), published in San Diego in 1968 by Adult Books, another imprint of William Hamling’s Greenleaf Publishing Company.

The narrative follows the sexual awakening of young teenage Bradley, who calls himself Buffy, and his "holy quest" for the perfect male lover. Buffy whisks through a series of men, all with individual qualities, but none with the whole package. Despite Buffy's ostensible desire for emotional fulfillment, he has no trouble dropping his lovers without a second thought. Not a terribly endearing character. By the end of the novel, the quest continues with no resolution. The narrative is short on substance, but long on gay steam.

Chris Davidson was the author of several gay pulp novels, several of which we hold, but we could not find anything about him. We do know that the cover art is by Ed Smith, a prolific pulp and sci-fi cover artist, and one of the go-to artists at Greenleaf Publishing.

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✨Fairytale Friday✨

This week’s tale takes us to sun-drenched plazas, Moorish castles, and enchanted olive groves…

Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Spain gathers beloved Spanish folk tales retold by Virginia Haviland (1911-1988), an American librarian and writer, who was an international authority in children’s literature. A part of Haviland’s celebrated international Favorite Fairy Tales series, this volume brings Spain’s oral storytelling heritage to life. The work features illustrations by Barbara Cooney (1917-2000), an American illustrator and writer of 110 children’s books.  In 1994, Cooney was nominated as the U.S. candidate for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award, in recognition of her work as a children's book illustrator. Our first edition copy was published in 1963 by Little, Brown and Company.

From clever shepherds to magical birds, these stories blend wonder and wit with the warmth of a long-told tradition.

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--Melissa (sipping sangria and flamenco dancing the night away), Distinctive Collections Library Assistant

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Another Gale Mueller Feathursday

Here are more relief prints of birds by Spokane, Washington printer and printmaker W. Gale Mueller (1927-2018) from his Forty Years of Birds ‘n Blocks, printed from the original blocks at his Millstone Press in 2009 in an edition of 53 copies. From 1969 to 2009, Mueller and his wife Bonnie sent holiday cards with Gale’s original bird prints using several relief print processes. Today we show some linocuts and an early wood engraving from 1982-1993. For those who want to know more about these birds, here you go:

Varied Thrush (Ixoreus naevius)

Saw-whet Owl (Aegolius acadicus)

Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)

Spotted Towhee (Pipilo maculatus)

House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus)

Our copy of this book is a gift from our friend Tony Drehfal.

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