Date: 1904

Notes: In black ink on white or cream paper it depicts a nude male figure riding a Pegasus in the upper left surrounded by a swirl of stars, planets, and other astronomical bodies. Another nude, winged male figure in the lower right holds a quill pen in his right hand and in his left, the end of a ribbon on which EX LIBRIS / AD ASTRA is written. A dark dome, possibly representing a planet, occupies the lower left. There are blue smudges, possibly ink, across the lower third of the bookplate. The creator of the bookplate is listed as E. J. W. ; Bookplate Type : Pictorial ; Bookplate Function : OwnershipOwner may have been George Francis Steele (1858-1937). Steele was the son of George McKendree Steele, who was the third president of Lawrence University (then Lawrence College) in Appleton, Wisconsin, from 1865-1879. Steele attended Lawrence College starting as a student in the preparatory school beginning in the fall of 1870 and graduating from the college proper in 1878. After Steele's first wife, Jessie Dewey, passed away, he married Alice Frederick of Chicago in 1912. According to the Lawrence College Alumni Record of 1915, Steele entered into the paper manufacturing business in Wisconsin in 1879 and was later employed by the Deering Harvester Company, the International Harvester Company, and Brunet Falls Manufacturing Company. Steele had a turbulent tenure as secretary of the News Print Manufacturers' Association and later became general manager of the Canadian Export Paper Company of Montrealfrom 1917 to 1922. Steele died at the age of 78 after a long illness. Illustrator is unknown, but possibly Edward J. Wheeler (ca. 1848-1933), a painter and black and white artist who contributed small drawings and decorations to Punch, a humor and satire magazine, starting in 1880. Ad astra is a Latin phrase meaning to the stars, which appeared in Virgil's Aeneid and Seneca the Younger's Hercules Furens. ; Personal

Source: Original Format: University of British Columbia. Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Thomas Murray Collection