Miscellaneous Oddities from Garrett Scott, Bookseller

Lyman Stowe takes on numerous issues of the world in his all-encompassing Poetical Drifts of Thought; or Problems of Progress. Treating Upon the Mistakes of the Church, the Mistakes of the Atheist, Infidel and Materialist, God not the Maker of the Universe, Progress the Evidence of a Merciful, but not All Powerful, God. Reconciliation of Science and Christianity. The Formation of the Solar System – Evolution – Human Progress – Possibilities of the Future – Including Spicy Explanatory Matter in Prose... If there's something Stowe neglected to cover in this 1884 book, I'm not sure what it is (the title is actually substantially longer). From the “possibilities of the future,” see his illustration of aerial warfare on this page. In all fairness, this was two decades before the invention of the airplane, so predicting bombing runs was a futuristic yet accurate prediction, though one suspects his airplanes would have had a rough time getting off the ground. Item 69. $450.

We return to England for this broadside of anti-Catholic propaganda from 1857, with the caption title Romish Kidnapping. This is the story of Alice Anderson, who was being lodged and sent to a school operated by the Church of England by her uncle while her father “is now absent in Australia.” Perhaps Dad was off on a trip to observe kangaroos, but since English criminals were still being transported to Australia at the time, one wonders if this isn't a gentle euphemism. Evidently, one day her mother (and what claims on the child should she have?) showed up with “a Roman Catholic school master” and spirited her away. Poor Alice was “screaming bitterly 'Mamma, I won't go!'” But off she went anyway, to “points unknown.” The anonymous writer exclaims, “We cannot help thinking but that some Jesuit is the instigator of all these cruel proceedings, and that it is he who has compelled this poor deluded woman to blight not only the child's future prospects, but her own and the remainder of the family.” Item 5. $250.

Garrett Scott, Bookseller may be reached at 734-741-8605 or garrett@bibliophagist.com. The website is www.bibliophagist.com.