Lines from the Library

This week I took my first voyage to southern seas via the Indian Ocean Collection:

This collection came to NYU last Fall, the gift of Larry W. Bowman who gathered together books, periodicals, maps, and other materials on the Indian Ocean littoral - from Cape Town to Fremantle, with a focus on Mauritius and Seychelles. I spent the better part of my day today identifying items to be added to our general Special Collections holdings.

There are some amazing books in this collection -- great 19th-century volumes of exploration, trade, and seamanship. Most appropriate for Fleet Week in NYC.

Here's an excellent example:

That's the cover of this one:

The Sailor's Horn Book from 1860.

There are books about India, books about pirates, books about Madagascar, books about whaling. All sorts of good things. It will take a while for everything to turn up in BobCat, but this is a nice complement to the Victorian-era fiction about travel and exploration and empire.

Stay tuned for more choice selections.

Here's another gem from the Indian Ocean collection. This one is simply called The Ocean (1845)

I haven't done anything but drool over the amazing illustrations in this book, but it's very interesting that it's published by the SPCK. I wonder if there is an element of evangelism in this book, or if it's just straight-up natural history.

I'm just glad we have a nice handful of mid-19th-century examples of non-fiction to complement our Melville holdings.

And this one has a nice Arthur Gordon Pym vibe to it: