Illustration for the poem “In The Firelight,” written by Eugene Field (1850-1895) in September 1885, and taken from My Book. Field prepared the book in 1887 and 1888 for his friend, William C. Buskett, writing out the poems in his own hand. The illustrations are by the German artist Carl Maria Seyppel.
The illustration shown above includes the first of three stanzas of the poem, written in an ABBA rhyme scheme known as an envelope or enclosed quatrain. It reads:
The fire upon the hearth is low
And there is stillness everywhere—
And like wing’d spirits, here and there
The firelight shadows fluttering go.
And as the shadows round me creep,
A childish treble breaks the gloom—
And softly from a further room
Comes “Now I lay me down to sleep.”
Carl Maria Seyppel (1847-1913) was a German painter, based in Dusseldorf, known for his genre paintings and caricatures. In the early 1880s, he started corresponding with the Egyptologist and writer Georg Ebers. He began producing what were known as “Ancient Egyptian” humoresques printed on what he called “mummy paper.” The colored sketches were a predecessor to comics, and he became widely known for them. The illustrations for My Book are consistent with these humoresques and all depict Egyptian motifs.
The well-known St. Louis-based book collector, William K. Bixby, acquired the original My Book from Buskett and in 1905, funded a high-quality facsimile reproduction of which less than 500 copies were printed on vellum and Japanese paper. The cover featured a photograph of the original front cover which was made of oak boards, covered with canvas and bound with iron. John Glessner met Bixby in February 1905 when the Commercial Clubs of Chicago and St. Louis visited Cuba together. In October of that year, Bixby sent Glessner one of the facsimile copies of My Book, numbererd 336. Tucked inside the book is the letter of transmittal from Bixby to Glessner, and a facsimile of the letter from Buskett to Bixby when he sold him the book.