Minns, Susan 1839-1938

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MINNS, Susan 1839-1938

PERSONAL: Born August 21, 1839; died August 1, 1938; daughter of Constant Freeman Minns (translator and merchant) and Frances Ann Parker. Hobbies and other interests: Breeding silkworms.

CAREER: Collector of death memorabilia, 1850s-1922; silkworm breeder.

WRITINGS:

Book of the Silkworm: A Plea for the Cultivation of Silk and the Silkworm in the United States, National Americana Society (New York, NY), 1929.

SIDELIGHTS: Susan Minns is best known for her lifelong pursuit of death. She collected representations of death—particularly books and prints depicting the danse macabre—for about seventy years, and during the first two decades of the twentieth century she even converted a portion of her house into a death gallery. There she displayed poison cups, prints, prayers for and invitations to funeral services, death notices, bills of mortality, and illuminated texts.

Minns' family had a printing background. Her father, Constant Freeman Minns, was a translator and her grandfather, Thomas Minns, was a publisher of the Massachusetts Mercury and was printer to the Massachusetts legislature.

Minns credited her fascination with morbidity as steming from an early interest in woodcuts. "As a child I was given books illustrated by [Alexander] Anderson, [Thomas] Bewick, Birket Foster, [Carl August] Richter and others. I was shown how woodcuts were printed and even tried my hand at blocks," she once wrote, as quoted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "So that quite early I began to buy anything that had a woodcut." Soon, death in its many forms appealed to her. According to a Dictionary of Literary Biography critic, Minns read Francis Douce's The Dance of Death Exhibited in Elegant Engravings on Wood, with a Dissertation on the Several Representations of That Subject. Inspired, she studied Recherches historiques et littéraires sur les danses des morts et sur l'origine des cartes à four, by Gabriel Peignot; Literatur der Todtentänze, by H. F. Massman; and Essai historique, philosophique et pittoresque sur les danses des morts, by E. H. Langlois.

Minns began to concentrate exclusively on representations of death, particularly anthropomorphizing representations. Her primary fascinating, apparently, was ars moriendi, those texts and images that counseled people to prepare for death. She also collected some remarkable prints and texts over seventy years.

She purchased a copy of the 1490 edition of Guy Marchant's Danse macabre, the earliest known book depicting the dance of death. She also found a 1568 edition of La grande danse macabre des homes & des femes hystoriee et augmentee de beaulx dictz en Latin, as well as other editions of these texts. The danse macabre was central to each; as the Dictionary of Literary Biography writer explained: "The Dance of Death was a procession of all ranks and orders of society. Hierarchically arranged, each person was shown in his or her encounter with Death, who took the form of a skeleton."

Minns also collected horae, or books of hours, illuminated prayer and meditation books. Inside, one might find pictures of death, or prayers, or descriptions of related preparations. The Dictionary of Literary Biography critic wrote: "The subject matter included death and burial scenes, the raising of Lazarus, and various depictions of Death Triumphant, Death as the Grim Reaper with his scythe, Death on a coffin, Death carrying a coffin, Death seated on an open tomb, Death riding an ox, Death on horseback, as well as the Dance of Death." In Minns' collection, death approaches the living in many forms: in Pierre Michault's La dance des aveugles death is a blind guide; in Sebastian Brand's Stultifera Navis death charts the water. In Hans Holbein's Les simulachres et historiees faces de la mortes each human "type" is imagined interacting with death in a particular way.

Minns sold her memories of death in 1922, at the American Art Association in New York. "I have had the pleasure of collecting," she said. "Let others have the same." Her collection, however, inspired little interest, despite its aesthetic value. Minns had donated $12,500 to the Committee for the Restoration of Louvain, earmarked for the purchase of her own collection, but the entire sale produced only $5,500 more than that. As the Dictionary of Literary Biography critic said: "she was in effect the chief buyer at her own sale." Few shared Minns' taste for skeletons, swinging dark capes, and little persons hiding desperately from the inevitable.

After taking up silkworm breeding, she wrote a tract, Book of the Silkworm, but again found little public interest.