On a snapshot from the Morgan Library…

This Scrap! is derived from a scrap that's just about exactly ten years old: a list of book titles jotted down from a visit to the Morgan Library in July 2015.

As far as I can remember, this was just a list of any book that caught my eye, for whatever reason! I never ended up looking up the books later, so now I'm finally trying it :)

Let's see what I can find, and which still seem interesting…

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The Morgan Library - cool books I noticed…

26 books, now annotated with notes, full titles, and more!

Les six livres de pedacion dioscoride

famous book by a Greek physician; "details medicinal plants and their uses", influential in pharmacology and botany

Histoires extraordinaires - Edgar poe

book of Poe short stories…but the French version…looks like…translated by Baudelaire, cool!

Fables de fontaine

collection of fables, classics of French lit, 239 total

Atlas zu winkelmann werke

[didn't find a single book of this title; likely a collection of images related to the work of Joachim Winckelmann, who studied classical antiquity and art history]

Botanical cabinet

found! with subtitle: "consisting of coloured delineations of plants, from all countries, with a short account of each, directions for management &c. &c."

Catalogue of a collection of miniatures - e cosway

looks like actually by Richard Cosway? not much on this

Anatomy of trunks - crew

actually "The comparative anatomy of trunks" and by "Grew" not Crew haha; subtitle: "Together with an Account of Their Vegetation Grounded Thereupon"

Way to get wealth - markham

self-help, way back! subtitle: "CONTAINING SIX PRINCIPALL VOCATIONS, OR CALLINGS, IN WHICH EVERY GOOD HUSBAND OR HOUSE-WIFE MAY LAWFULLY IMPLOY THEMSELVES"

Philosophie de neuton - Voltaire

I think this should be "Éléments de la philosophie de Newton" and it helped popularize Newton's theories!

Epitres etc - Voltaire

full title: "Épitres, stances, et odes de Voltaire"…so epistles and poems, it sounds like

Useful birds and their protection - Edward h forbush

I love a very direct title haha…sounds like a great book about birds, especially ones that are beneficial to humans; apparently has lots of nice illustrations too

Livre nouveau de fleurs - danckerts

lives of flowers; thin volume with "9 engraved plates of bouquets of flowers"

Histoire des plantes - garidel

full title: "Histoire des plantes qui naissent aux environs d'Aix, et dans plusieurs autres endroits de la Provence", so…local botanical history, nice!

Oeuvres de moliere

collected works of Molière, the French playwright; appears to be a six volume set

Documents litteraires - Emile Zola

a "collection of critical essays and portraits" by Zola, of course best known for his novels, especially the epic Rougon-Macquart series

Disquisitiones arithmeticae - gauss

a math textbook, on number theory, by one of the greats…very influential ("paved the path for modern number theory") and written when he was only 21!

The careless child's alphabet

maybe my favorite title here! sounds like it's intended to help kids learn to write…"The Careless child's alphabet: Designed to fix the learner's attention to the shape of the letters"

Short histories - t carnan 1782

looks to be this one: "Short histories for the improvement of the mind. Extracted chiefly from the works of Joseph Addison, Esq; Sir Richard Steele, and other eminent writers. With suitable reflections by the editor"

Choice scraps - e newbery

another nice long title haha: "Choice Scraps, Historical and Biographical, Consisting of Pleasing Stories and Diverting Anecdotes, Most of Them Short to Prevent Their Being Tiresome. ... for Young Minds. Embellished With Copper-plate Cuts"

sounds like a fun anthology for kids?

Scenes from life and nature

possibly this book, about which I can't find much info: "Lays from the North: Or, Poems on Sacred Subjects and Scenes from Life and Nature"

The pronouncing instructer

little to be found on this one…the main result that turned up was just in a catalog of the Morgan Library itself!

The hermit - longueville

a castaway / adventure novel; subtitle: "or, The unparalleled sufferings, and surprising adventures, of Philip Quarll, an Englishman, who was discovered by Mr. Dorrington, a Bristol-merchant, upon an uninhabited island, in the South-sea, where he lived about fifty years, without any human assistance"

Scenes de la vie...Balzac

collection of short stories; part of Balzac's larger work "La Comédie humaine"…six stories that are "for the most part detailed psychological studies of girls in conflict with parental authority"

Aphrodite - pierre louys

French erotic novel that was apparently very popular and very scandalous!

Journal - Stendhal

just learned 'Stendhal' was a pen name…and that he used more than a hundred pseudonyms! his journal and writings include "many comments on masks and the pleasures of 'feeling alive in many versions.'"

Venus and Adonis - Shakespeare

a narrative poem; "considered likely to be Shakespeare's first publication", cool! originally a quarto pamphlet (I wonder if this one's an original?); a "minor epic"

written in six-line stanzas, 199 stanzas total, can read the full poem here ; "although this verse form was known before Shakespeare's use, it is now commonly known as the Venus and Adonis stanza, after this poem"