BOOK REVIEWS Philadelphia in the Romantic Age of Lithography. An illustrated history of early lithography in Philadelphia wifh a descriptive list of Philadelphia scenes made by Philadelphia lithographers before 1866. By NICHOLAS B. WAINWRIGHT. (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1958. [xii], 261 p. Index. $10.00.) Here is a book that devotees of the American past have long been waiting and hoping for. The iconography of Philadelphia is richer, perhaps, than that of any American city. Yet far too little has been written about it, and there is an almost scandalous dearth of good Philadelphia picture books. Mr. Wainwright's book is more than good: it is a joy to behold and read. It is an outsized quarto volume, printed with meticulous care and taste. The no illustrations are all full-page in size, and they are so beautifully repro- duced in lithographic offset that some of them could almost pass for original prints. These scenes of nineteenth-century Philadelphia are indeed roman- tically charming, as the title implies. But they are also honest in detail, and teeming with life and energy. They show the city hard at work, as well as having fun. This effect has been achieved by including a number of the large lithographed "trade cards'* of business firms—iron works, hat factories, hotels, harness shops, etc.—which were used as advertising posters, and often feature a busy array of customers, clerks, and passersby. There are so many delightful pictures here that it is hard to pick out favorites. This reviewer would certainly want to include the "Commis- sioners Hall, Northern Liberties" with its gay foreground scene of sleighing parties and snowball-throwing boys. "Railroad Bridge over the Wis- sahickon" offers a fascinating glimpse of an 1834 locomotive and two open- air passenger coaches rolling across the bridge at Manayunk. There is a wonderful peep into an 1830 oyster cellar, and two lively views of skaters on the Delaware. J. C. Wild's 1838 panorama of the whole city from the tower of Independence Hall is reproduced in all four of its views—east, west, north, south — the nearest thing to an aerial look that the period affords. In fact, one can find here almost everything that was amusing or interesting to look at in Victorian Philadelphia: steamboats, prisons, bridges and fountains, the Chinese Pagoda and the Fairmount Waterworks, hearses, ice wagons and handcarts, even a fancy dress ball and a parade of Civil War Zouaves. And, of course, a constant display of parasols and beaver hats. 95 $6 BOOK REVIEWS January No single volume could contain the whole pictorial record of the city. Mr. Wainwright has done an intensive job on one kind of art, lithography, and a limited period, 1828 to 1866, when lithographed views and genre scenes were at their best. He has written an absorbing account of the be- ginnings of lithography in Philadelphia, its early failures and its full tide of success, and the rapid technological changes in the industry to the end of the Civil War. He has brought together much new information on the leading printers and publishers: Cephas G. Childs, J. C. Wild, P. S. Duval, J. T. Bowen and others who made the city a headquarters for the production of handsome and popular prints. He makes it clear that Philadelphia lithography was quite a different matter from the crude "sentimentals" of New York's Currier and Ives. (Nathaniel Currier, incidentally, was a failure in Philadelphia, where he had his first business in the 1830's.) The Philadelphians, Mr. Wainwright says, "concentrated on making prints of artistic merit." They employed talented artists, including the famous deaf-mute Albert Newsam, who had no equal in portrait lithography. During this period the Philadelphia firms turned out many groups of prints which had national and historic impor- tance: the Indian portfolios of McKenney and Hall, the Huddy & Duval plates of military organizations and uniforms, the octavo Audubon birds and quadrupeds, for example. A Philadelphia lithographer, Thomas Sin- clair, published the first colored view of San Francisco after the discovery of gold in 1849. Another, Duval, made the famous illustrations for Com- modore Perry's report of his expedition to Japan. Lithography became a sizable business in Philadelphia. In 1856 there were sixteen firms operating 177 presses, many of them driven by steam and using new processes for color printing that foreshadowed the early arrival of mass-produced chromos. This book is by far the best account of the many individuals and firms whose careers in lithography were centered in Philadelphia. As such it will have permanent value to historians and researchers everywhere. The same can be said of the "Print List of Philadelphia Views" which occupies more than half of the text pages. Here is a numbered list of 480 lithographed views and scenes, all within the time limits of the book, with descriptive notes on each, and locations for most. It is the longest list yet assembled of Philadelphia views for any period. This is a volume to be put alongside Stokes's Iconography of Manhattan Island, and the great compilations of Harry T. Peters, on any shelf of pic- torial history. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, which published the book, the Philadelphia firms that produced it, and the author who wrote it have every reason to be proud. Hartwicky N. Y. ROGER BUTTERFIELD 1959 BOOK REVIEWS 97 Crane Hook on the Delaware, 1667-1699. An Early Swedish Lutheran Church and Community with the Historical Background of the Delaware River Valley. By JEANNETTE ECKMAN. (Newark, Del.: Published for the Delaware Swedish Colonial Society by the Institute of Delaware His- tory and Culture, 1958. xvi, 144, [vi] p. Illustrations,maps, bibliography, index. Paper, $3.50.) To form a congregation, build a church, and engage a pastor to preach and minister to them was an ambition held by many seventeenth-century settlers in the New World. Whether it was land, trade profits, or the quest for a "New Jerusalem" that brought them here, along with the building of cabins and blockhouses, the clearing of land, and the planting of a crop, the newcomers were equally concerned about the nourishment and security of their souls. But frontier conditions imposed numerous obstacles to the attainment of formal church organization and to modes of worship that were spiritually satisfying. Miss Eckman's account of the Swedish Lutherans who settled on the Delaware in the 1630's is a documentary description of a more than fifty- year effort to achieve a permanent religious establishment with an adequate edifice, a learned and eloquent pastor, and a congregation faithful in at- tendance and generous in support. From the familiar secondary sources the history of New Sweden is retold in several introductory chapters—dis- covery and exploration, the first settlements of the Swedes and Dutch, re- lations with the Indians, and the changing control of the region from Swedish to Dutch to English. Glimpses are given of the religious life of the settlers, in many ways reflecting the crude, rough, vigorous life they lived. Bibles, psalmbooks, and catechisms were few but well worn in the first places of worship, a log building at Fort Christina, a church at Tinicum, and another at Wicaco (Philadelphia). Respect and support to their pastors, Reorus Torkillus, the first Lutheran minister in America, Laurentius Carolus Lokenius, and Magister Jacobus Fabricius, were sometimes with- held or grudgingly given because of the poverty of the parishoners, ec- clesiastical factionalism, or the bizarre conduct of the men of the cloth. If the sermons of Lokenius and Fabricius reflected to any degree their secular actions—as pictured by contemporaries—they should not have wanted for full and attentive audiences on Sunday mornings. Turning to church records, court records, deeds and surveys, documents and letters in Swedish archives, and a 1731 Upsala University dissertation written by the son of a later pastor, the author stitches together the history of Crane Hook Church from 1667 to 1699. The location and acquisition of the church site is described through a tedious recital of surveys and prop- erty holders. Reference to the two maps prepared by Jeremiah Sweeney and Leon de Valinger at the back of the volume would have sufficed. The log church, built like a blockhouse, was erected under the eye of Pastor Lokenius who was described by two Dutch Reformed clergymen as "... a man of 98 BOOK REVIEWS January impious and scandalous habits, a wild, drunken, unmannerly clown, more inclined to look into the wine can than into the Bible. He would prefer drinking brandy two hours to preaching one; and when the sap is in the wood his hands itch and he wants to fight whomsoever he meets." But this is possibly slander uttered by men who lacked the Christian virtue of charity, for in other sources Lokenius, despite his crudities and quirks, is praised as a faithful and zealous clergyman. He was succeeded in 1688 by the elderly, blind Fabricius who had been serving at Wicaco. Lay readers, particularly Charles Springer, were the stalwarts who aided these pastors and looked after the church's material concerns, particularly real estate acquired over the years. Gifts of Bibles, psalmbooks, books of sermons, catechisms, and ABC books were made to the congregation by King Carl XII of Sweden. William Penn also presented the congregation with a chest of Bibles and other re- ligious literature. In 1697 Swedish Lutheran authorities sent several young ministers to serve the Delaware congregations. Erik Bjork became pastor at Crane Hook and Andreas Rudman at Wicaco. Within a short time both congregations began constructing new, stone churches as more fitting monu- ments to the glory of God.