Transformation: Or, the Romance of Monte Beni. 2 vols.

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Transformation: Or, the Romance of Monte Beni. 2 vols.

Leipzig:

Bernhard Tauchnitz,

1860.

2 copies: copy 1, Ex Libris Ava Stewart; copy 2, Ex Libris Emma Danforth Wiley.

In the 1840s, books began to be illustrated with photographs. Within two decades, publishers and booksellers capitalized on the availability and affordability of albumen prints, as seen here with Tauchnitz’s publication of Hawthorne’s Transformation (appearing in America as The Marble Faun). Italian booksellers and bookbinders allowed purchasers (usually tourists) to customize their copies from a range of photographs suited to their budgets and tastes. These two copies contain different albumen prints of the Faun of Praxiteles: one reader’s copy contains an image with the statue’s genitalia covered with a fig leaf, while another reader’s copy remains uncensored.

From the collection of Rare Book School