SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES IN ROME (Vol. I)

Macmillan, 1905-01-01. Hardcover. Very Good. 0x0x0. Bound in publisher's black cloth. Hardcover. No dust jacket. Good binding and cover. Shelf wear. Minor rubbing/chipping to edges. Generally clean. Bookplate of Helen Tanzer on front end page. Stamped. 2 preliminary leaves, iii-viii, 220 pages illustrations, XVIII plates (some folded, including maps, plans, facsimiles) 30 x 24 cm. <br> Helen Henrietta Tanzer was born in New York City in February 1876 to German-speaking Jewish parents Arnold and Ida Tanzer. She had a brother, Lawrence (b. 1874), and a sister, Edith (b. 1877). She graduated from Barnard College in 1903, with a senior thesis titled "English Usage, as shown by the Recent revision of the Bible." She taught Greek and Latin at Hunter College, New York, and received her doctorate from Johns Hopkins in 1929. In that same year, she began teaching classics and archaeology at Brooklyn College, where she remained until her retirement. She spent much time abroad, studying at the American School of Classical Studies in Rome and working for the Belgian Information Service (1918-1919) and as editor of the Belgian Bulletin. Named to the Chevalier Order of Leopold II by Belgium, she also held the post of honorary attache to the Belgian embassy in Washington. As an author, her first known published work is "Juvenal on Education," in Essays in Honor of M.B. Wilson (1922). In 1948, Tanzer received the Medal of Merit at the bicentennial celebration of the excavation of Pompeii. Her book The Common People of Pompeii: A Study of the Graffiti (1939) examines that city in the context of everyday life, thus foreshadowing the interest of students at the end of the twentieth century. Tanzer's most important role, however, may have been as a propagator of classical and archaeological texts through her work as a translator. Her introduction to and translation of The Villas of Pliny the Younger (1924) familiarized generations of students with these villa/garden complexes. Because Pliny’s letters describing in detail his Laurentine and Tuscan villas are the only contemporary comprehensive documents of this ancient Roman type of habitation, a prototype for Renaissance country houses, Tanzer's modest book became an important source. Enhanced by descriptions of earlier classical references for this building type, it contains fifty-six plates showing the varied reconstructions of Pliny’s summer and winter villas. Included are the well-known plans of Scamozzi (from 1615), Felibien, Castell, Schinkel, and Bouchet. Also featured is the author’s own reconstruction with a clay model built by her students in 1912: Tanzer notes "with unbecoming lack of modesty [that it is] in every respect much better than that made by any other student of Pliny . . . [drawn] from the text alone." Refreshing too is Tanzer's critique of Schinkel's 1841 perspective for introducing "gratuitously, features which were not mentioned in Pliny." Almost as useful to the student is Tanzer's edition of The Letters of Pliny the Younger (1936), which was designed to serve as a companion guide to the author’s epistles. <br> This is an oversized or heavy book, which requires additional postage for international delivery outside the US.