{"id":5278,"date":"2015-02-05T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T15:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=5278"},"modified":"2015-02-05T10:29:41","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T15:29:41","slug":"shea-a-maniac-maniac-and-thats-for-sure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2015\/02\/05\/shea-a-maniac-maniac-and-thats-for-sure\/","title":{"rendered":"She’a a maniac, maniac and that’s for sure!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"IMG_0031\"<\/a>\u00a0 The Maniac<\/em> pictured here is a reprint of the original 1909 edition which claims to be an account of madness from a patient’s point of view. \u00a0Mahlon Blaine is the actual illustrator of The Maniac<\/em> though he used the name G. Christopher Hudson among other pseudonyms throughout his career. \u00a0Little is known of the real life of Blaine mainly because he seemed to change his story about his origins and life according to his mood. \u00a0Apparently he did work for a variety of clients including publishers, pornographers, and even Hollywood movie producers. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is known is that Blaine\u00a0created the original covers for John Steinbeck’s first two novels\u00a0Cup of Gold<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\"Cup<\/a>\u00a0and To A God Unknown<\/a>\u00a0\"God<\/a>
\nboth of which can be found in Houghton and are pictured here. \u00a0Blaine also designed the endpapers for\u00a0To A God Unknown<\/em>. \u00a0\"God<\/a>Blaine and Steinbeck met in 1925 on the steamship Katrina\u00a0<\/em>where they\u00a0became friends. \u00a0Later on when Steinbeck wrote\u00a0Cup of Gold<\/em>\u00a0the publisher contacted Blaine hoping\u00a0his recognizable style would draw readers to this new author’s work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Maniac<\/em> is written anonymously\u00a0and the author refers to herself as a “Human Document” and urges the reader to use her narrative\u00a0as an instructive text on madness. \u00a0Today this would most likely be\u00a0termed a psychotic break or the descent into schizophrenia. \u00a0The illustrations in the text reflect many perspectives within a single image with layers of multiple scenes depicted. \u00a0This was a technique that Blaine had used in previous work, but the context seems particularly appropriate in this case. \u00a0The captions don’t provide much insight into what is happening in the image but seem more like a title of a work.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0032\"<\/a>\u00a0\"IMG_0033\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The maniac \/ illustrated by G. Christopher Hudson. New York : Books for the Few, 1941 RC516.T38 1941<\/a> can be found at the\u00a0Countway Library<\/a>\u00a0at the Harvard Medical School in Longwood.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager and Joan Thomas, Rare Book Cataloger at Countway for contributing this post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. \u00a0 The Maniac pictured here is a reprint of the original 1909 edition which claims to be an account of madness from a patient’s point of view. \u00a0Mahlon Blaine is the actual illustrator of The Maniac […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4490,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[72745],"tags":[119915,131728,131730,72720,20048,131729,131731,131732,131734],"class_list":["post-5278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-countway-library-harvard-medical-school","tag-20th-century-america","tag-cup-of-gold","tag-g-christopher-hudson","tag-julio-mario-santo-domingo-collection","tag-madness","tag-mahlon-blaine","tag-steinbeck","tag-the-maniac","tag-to-a-god-unknown"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-1n8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4490"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5278"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5635,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278\/revisions\/5635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}