DOI Heft:
Nr. 239 (January, 1917)
DOI Artikel:Merian Allen, H.: America's first lithograph
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43463#0257
Americas First Lithograph
similar to the foreign product could be found in
this country, set out to get it, and soon discov-
ered very available specimens from Kentucky
and from Lancaster and Montgomery counties in
Pennsylvania. In these endeavours they were
encouraged and helped by the considerable com-
pany of artists and engravers drawn to the City
of Brotherly Love by the active publishing trades
there. So it was that Messieurs Brown and Otis
“borrowed” the Munich stone from the Society,
to whom it had been given by Thomas Dodson,
about thirty or forty pages, for magazines were
in their infancy then. It was well printed and
decorously “neat, not gaudy,” with no scantily
draped maiden on its cover, no flaring type. It
had been in existence over six years when this
particular number came out, having made its
bow to the world on the New Year’s day of
1813. Moses Thomas was then publisher; from
Vol. I, No. 1, on into 1816, no other than Wash-
ington Irving, yet in his twenties, was the editor.
He laid by the work only because of his voyage
A REPRODUCTION OF THE FIRST LITHOGRAPH PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES, JULY, 1819, IN
THE OLD ‘ ANALECTIC MAGAZINE”
the Philadelphia publisher and bookseller, in
order to see how far these samples had the vir-
tues of the original, and, what with acids and
other tests, it is fair to assume that it was worn
away, though worn away gloriously in efforts
which were to be finally crowned by the perfec-
tion of an art which, through the years, has
exerted an important influence in the populari-
zation of books and magazines.
Quite as interesting in its way is the herald of
this first essay in lithography, the Anatectic. It
was a modest, ordinary book-size periodical of
to England. In this very July, 1819, issue is a
review of the Sketch Book then just published,
containing, of course, the immortal Rip Van
Winkle, of which the reviewer says: “The writer
seems to have aspired to unite the Dutch paint-
ing of Crabbe and Smollet with the wild frolic
and fancy of an Arabian tale,” which sounds both
inadequate and inaccurate enough to-day—but
Jo Jefferson had not yet been born!
The whole of the little magazine, to tell the
truth, appears naive and ingenuous now. For
instance, there is for this July an “Original Letter
XCIII
similar to the foreign product could be found in
this country, set out to get it, and soon discov-
ered very available specimens from Kentucky
and from Lancaster and Montgomery counties in
Pennsylvania. In these endeavours they were
encouraged and helped by the considerable com-
pany of artists and engravers drawn to the City
of Brotherly Love by the active publishing trades
there. So it was that Messieurs Brown and Otis
“borrowed” the Munich stone from the Society,
to whom it had been given by Thomas Dodson,
about thirty or forty pages, for magazines were
in their infancy then. It was well printed and
decorously “neat, not gaudy,” with no scantily
draped maiden on its cover, no flaring type. It
had been in existence over six years when this
particular number came out, having made its
bow to the world on the New Year’s day of
1813. Moses Thomas was then publisher; from
Vol. I, No. 1, on into 1816, no other than Wash-
ington Irving, yet in his twenties, was the editor.
He laid by the work only because of his voyage
A REPRODUCTION OF THE FIRST LITHOGRAPH PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES, JULY, 1819, IN
THE OLD ‘ ANALECTIC MAGAZINE”
the Philadelphia publisher and bookseller, in
order to see how far these samples had the vir-
tues of the original, and, what with acids and
other tests, it is fair to assume that it was worn
away, though worn away gloriously in efforts
which were to be finally crowned by the perfec-
tion of an art which, through the years, has
exerted an important influence in the populari-
zation of books and magazines.
Quite as interesting in its way is the herald of
this first essay in lithography, the Anatectic. It
was a modest, ordinary book-size periodical of
to England. In this very July, 1819, issue is a
review of the Sketch Book then just published,
containing, of course, the immortal Rip Van
Winkle, of which the reviewer says: “The writer
seems to have aspired to unite the Dutch paint-
ing of Crabbe and Smollet with the wild frolic
and fancy of an Arabian tale,” which sounds both
inadequate and inaccurate enough to-day—but
Jo Jefferson had not yet been born!
The whole of the little magazine, to tell the
truth, appears naive and ingenuous now. For
instance, there is for this July an “Original Letter
XCIII