IMPORTANT BOOKPLATE OF FLORENCE BRONSON WINDOM, DESIGNED BY RUDOLPH RUZICKA WITH INSCRIPTON GRACES THIS ORIGINAL ANTIQUE 1892 PRINTING OF “JOURNAL OF MAURICE DE GUÉRIN” EDITED BY G. S. TREBUTIEN WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL AND LITERARY MEMOIR BY SAINTE-BEUVE” This rare antiquarian work was published by Dodd, Mead, and Company, New York, 1892. Guérin was an esteemed French poet whose life was cut short by consumption, but his work attracted the attention of Sainte-Beuve, a penultimate literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history. THE BOOK PLATE IS THAT OF FLORENCE BRONSON WINDOM, DAUGHTER OF WILLIAM WINDOM, AMERICAN POLITICIAN, AND IS INSCRIBED TO “AUNT SADIE FROM F.B.W. JANUARY FIFTEENTH 1895.” RUDOLF RUZICKA DESIGNED THE FLORENCE BRONSON WINDOM PLATE.

RUDOLF RUZICKA Rudolph Ruzicka (1883–1978) prominent Czech-born American wood engraver, etcher, illustrator, typeface designer, and book designer. Ruzicka designed typefaces and wood engraving illustrations for Daniel Berkeley Updike's Merrymount Press, and was a designer for, and consultant to, the Mergenthaler Linotype Company for fifty years. He designed a number of seals and medals, including the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and the Dartmouth Medal of the American Library Association.

Ruzicka emigrated to the United States from Bohemia at age ten, living first in Chicago where he took drawing lessons at the Hull House School before becoming an apprentice wood engraver. From 1900 to 1902 he attended further classes at the Chicago Art Institute. In 1903, he moved to New York to work as an engraver at the American Bank Note Company. In subsequent years he attended classes at both the Art Students League of New York and the New York School of Art.

In 1910, Ruzicka received his first major art commission from System magazine. Many exhibitions followed, including such venues as the Societe de la Gravure, Paris, the Grolier Club, and the Century Association, New York. In 1935 Ruzicka was awarded the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and in that same year began work with the Typographic Development staff at Mergenthaler Linotype Company, for which he was to produce typeface families including Fairfield, Lake Informal, Primer, and Ruzicka Freehand. He moved to Massachusetts in 1948 and eventually settled in Vermont.

Over the years, D. B. Updike and Ruzicka collaborated on a number of well-respected book designs, including Newark and the Grolier Club's Irving, as well as a fine series of Merrymount Press annual keepsakes. Ruzicka also provided substantial consulting for Updike's book Printing Types. Today Ruzicka's art is collected in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Institute, Library of Congress, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

BOOK PLATE INSCRIPTION HISTOR/GENEALOGY: William Windom (May 10, 1827 – January 29, 1891) was an American politician. He served in the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate as a Republican from Minnesota in the 36th, 37th, 38th, 39th, 40th, 41st, 42nd, 43rd, 44th, 45th, 46th, and 47th congresses. He was born in Belmont County, Ohio. He moved to Minnesota Territory in 1855. He served in the House from March 4, 1859 to March 3, 1869, representing the state of Minnesota. He is also the great-grandfather of actor William Windom. GENEALOGY OF WINDOM- Father: Hezekiah Windom-Mother: Mary Spencer Windom-Wife: Ellen Towne Hatch (m. 20-Aug-1856, one son, two daughters)-Son: William Douglas (b. 1859, d. 1926)-Daughter: Ellen Hatch ("Nellie", b. 1866, d. 1941)-Daughter: Florence Bronson (b. 1870).

BIOGRAPHY AND WORKS OF MAURICE DE GUÉRIN: Georges Maurice de Guérin du Cayla (August 4, 1810 - July 19, 1839), was a French poet. Descended from a noble and rich family, he was born at the Chateau of Le Cayla in Languedoc. He was educated for the church at a religious seminary at Toulouse, and then at the Collège Stanislas, Paris, after which he entered the society at La Chesnaye in Brittany, founded by Lamennais. It was with continuing doubts that, under the influence of Lamennais, he joined the new religious order in the autumn of 1832; and when, in September of the next year, Lamennais, who had come under the displeasure of Rome, severed his connection with the society, Maurice de Guérin soon followed his example.

Early in the following year he went to Paris, where he was for a short time a teacher at the Collège Stanislas. In November 1838 he married a Creole lady of some fortune; but a few months afterwards he died of consumption. In the Revue des Deux Mondes for May 15, 1840, a memorial of Maurice de Guérin by George Sand was published, to which she added two fragments of his writings--one a composition in prose entitled "The Centaur", and the other a short poem. His Reliquiae (2 vols., 1861), including the "Centaur", his journal, a number of his letters and several poems, was edited by G.S. Trébutien, and accompanied with a biographical and critical notice by Sainte-Beuve; a new edition, with the title Journal, Lettres et Poèmes, followed in 1862; and an English translation of it was published at New York in 1867. His sister Eugénie was a great influence on him and published some of his works after his death.

Though he was essentially a poet, his prose is more striking and original than his poetry. Its peculiar and unique charm arises from his strong and absorbing passion for nature, a passion whose intensity reached almost to adoration and worship, but in which the pagan was more prominent than the moral element. According to Sainte-Beuve, "no French poet or painter has rendered so well the feeling for nature--the feeling not so much for details as for the ensemble and the divine universality, the feeling for the origin of things and the sovereign principle of life."

CONDITON: This 193 paged antiquarian book remains very good condition with the following noted: bumps to corners; gilt on spine cover slightly faded. Please see pictures.