Modern Books and Manuscripts

While we don’t usually acquire multiple copies of the same book, we broke that rule with two recent accessions.

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) published Das Lied von der Glocke (“The Song of the Bell”) in 1798.  It remains one of the most well-known German poems, and has been translated into many languages.

In 1873, the Dryden Press in London privately published an English translation of the poem (which has not been successfully attributed).  A number of copies of this edition were illustrated with original pen and ink sketches by artist Julia Pocock (fl. 1870-1903).  Not very much is known of Pocock, nor is there information on any other copies of this poem that she illustrated.

Houghton’s two copies of the work both include 13 drawings by Pocock, and while the drawings illustrate the poem, the two books include quite different drawings.

Included here are portraits of Schiller that appear on the first page in each book, and two very different domestic scenes illustrating the fifth section of the poem.

*GC7.Sch33.Eg873s and *GC7.Sch33.Eg873sa.  Both purchased with the Stanley Marcus Fund.

On June 24, 1910, Thomas Stearns Eliot graduated from Harvard College in an all-white, all-male class one-tenth today’s size.  A new small exhibition celebrates the 100^th anniversary of the graduation of Harvard’s most famous poet, and includes Eliot’s transcript, a copy of the letter placing him on academic probation his freshman year, his student paper on Kipling, a first edition of Prufrock and other observations, and more; from the collections of the Houghton Library and Harvard University Archives.  The exhibition was prepared by Carey Adina Karmel, Harvard Class of 1979.

3 May- 31 July 2010

Chaucer Case, Houghton Library

For further information contact Leslie Morris, 617-495-2449

Image above:   T.S. Eliot in 1910 Class Album.  Courtesy Harvard University Archives,  HUD 310.04.5

In the summer of 1869, Transcendentalist philosopher, essayist, and famed Concordian Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was presented with a challenging task.  Harvard College assigned him to obtain donations from fellow members of the Class of 1821.  The College wished to raise a sum of $500,000, a substantial sum even today.

Emerson did not rush to this task, remembering how few of his classmates had chipped in a few years earlier, when he sought donations towards the building of Harvard’s Memorial Hall.

On June 1, Emerson wrote to a number of his fellow alumni, including former Massachusetts state representative Charles W. Upham (1802-1875).  Houghton recently acquired this unpublished letter.  Describing the situation, Emerson wrote, “I found my name on the Committee to work in obtaining subscriptions for the proposed sum of $500,000 to be raised in ten years by the friends of Harvard College, to lift it out of a poverty which is becoming ridiculous…I write today to the best friends the College has in our distinguished band…Can you & will you act in this?”

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Charles Armitage Brown (1787-1842) is perhaps best known for his friendship with the poet John Keats.  A skilled amateur artist, Brown is responsible for one of the most recognizable images of his friend.

Houghton recently acquired a bound album of Brown’s drawings, produced between 1809 and 1811.  The ink drawings include sixty-four heads, studies Brown copied from William Hogarth’s 1733 series A Rake’s Progress, and are so fine they almost appear to be engravings.  Brown presented the volume to Henry Heath (perhaps the caricaturist) in memory of Brown’s brother James, who died in October 1815.  Displayed here are studies of “A woman behind receiving the Watch” (above), “A French Dancing-Master”, and “A Teacher of the French horn, giving a specimen of his musical powers” (below).

Houghton’s collections also include pieces of Brown’s correspondence  (MS Keats 4.3.1 – 4.3.25), Brown’s manuscript “Life of John Keats” (MS Keats 4.3.27) several Brown transcripts of Keats’s poetry (in MS Keats 3), published works by Brown, including his biography of Keats, and other material, which can be found by searching HOLLIS.

MS Eng 1641.  Purchased with the Amy Lowell Trust and Evelyn Ryan Pope Book Fund.

Marianne Tidcombe, in her Women Bookbinders, 1880-1920 (1996), explores in detail how the simultaneous growth of educational opportunities for women and the birth of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England at the end of the 19^th century resulted in a dramatic increase in women bookbinders.  Houghton’s shelves are already graced with the handiwork of such famous English binders as Katharine Adams, Sarah Prideaux, Jessie King, and the Guild of Women Binders. To those ranks we can now add an exquisite example by Irma T. Rowntree of Lancashire, England.

Irma Thusnelde Rowntree was born in 1870 in Oldham, the daughter of the senior partner of the distinguished law firm of Rowntree and Ritson. As a young woman she earned a reputation as a talented bookplate and book designer and binder and her bindings were exhibited widely in Britain. In fact, her work was so highly valued that it won showings in international exhibitions around the world, from St. Louis (the 1904 World’s Fair) to New Zealand (1906-1907 New Zealand International Exhibition).

Though prized by contemporaries, few examples of her work are recognized today. It is known that she worked in a variety of leathers and her skills included gold-tooling. Houghton’s acquisition is a delicately-painted vellum binding on an 1895 edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (London: George Harrap; printed at the Colonial Press in Boston). The front cover has an outer geometric border and an inner border of (appropriately) Lancashire roses, all executed in rich red and green with gilt accents; the spine and back continue the same motif, with the title in gilt on the spine. Irma has added an additional flourish in the form of similarly-decorated yapp edge covering the fore-edge of the textblock. The binding is signed at the foot of the inner back board with her initials and is dated 1911.

Rowntree seems to have given her art up after her marriage to Ambrose John Wilson in 1914 and genealogical sources list her as dying in Gloucestershire in 1938. We welcome additions to this scant biography and the identification of more of her bindings – they certainly are worth more recognition.

*EC85.B8214S.1895. Purchased with the Stanley Marcus Endowment for Rare Books.  Image of Rowntree used with the permission of the Bury Museum and Archives.

This post was kindly contributed by the head of Houghton’s rare book team, Karen Nipps.

Modern Books & Manuscripts has recently acquired a collection of works by Egyptian-French poet Edmond Jabès (1912-1991).

Born to a Jewish family of Italian nationality in Cairo, Jabès published his first book of poetry, Illusions Sentimentales, at the age of eighteen.  During the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, Jabès published books of poetry along with poems in French and Egyptian literary journals.  When the Egyptian government expelled Jews in 1957, following the Suez Crisis, Jabès immigrated to Paris, becoming a French citizen in 1967.  He continued to publish poetry, becoming a member of publisher Gallimard’s collection “blanche”.   Over the course of his career, Jabès wrote 27 books of poetry and prose, and was awarded Le Prix des Arts, des Lettres et des Sciences de la Fondation du Judaïsme français (1982), Le Grand Prix Nationale de Poésie (1987), and was appointed Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1952.

Houghton’s collection, compiled over 20 years by Roger Stoddard, Jabès bibliographer and retired Curator of Rare Books at Houghton Library, includes nearly all publications by Jabès, many of which have inscriptions by and close associations with Jabès and his collaborators, fugitive works, collaborations with artists, and other material.  No comparable collection of this rarity exists anywhere in the world, including the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

The material in this collection will become available in HOLLIS as it is accessioned.

In 1818, poet John Keats (1795-1821) met Fanny Brawne (1800-1865), his neighbor in Hampstead.  Keats was immediately intrigued by Brawne’s intelligence and beauty.  The two fell in love, despite the obstacles of Keats’s health and poor finances.  They exchanged frequent letters, and Brawne inspired some of Keats’s most well-known poetry.

Houghton is currently exhibiting items relating to Keats’s and Brawne’s relationship, including a selection Keats’s letters to Brawne, a lock of Brawne’s hair, Oscar Wilde’s response to the 1885 auction of Keats’s love letters, and more.

The exhibition will be in Houghton’s Amy Lowell Room until mid-January.  The Lowell Room is open to the public Tuesday-Thursday, 9 AM – 7 PM, and Monday, Friday, and Saturday 9 AM – 5 PM.  For more information on Houghton’s hours, see Houghton’s website.

Selections from a recently-acquired group of 19th century chapbooks  (click on the images to enlarge them):

The storm at sea, *EC8.A100.820s2

An address to the unfortunate female, *EC8.A100.820a4

A peep into a gin shop!, *EC8.A100.819p

To find these and other chapbooks in Houghton’s collection, search HOLLIS for “chapbook” and refine your search by location “Houghton Library”.

The John Updike Archive, a vast collection of manuscripts, correspondence, books, photographs, artwork and other papers, has been acquired by Houghton Library. The Archive forms the definitive collection of Updike material, said Leslie Morris, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at Houghton Library, and will make the library the center for studies on the author’s life and work.

“Many scholars would argue that John Updike is one of, if not the, novelist of the late 20^th century,” Morris said. “No one can really write about the American novel without taking Updike into consideration.”

Although portions of the Archive were given to the library during Updike’s lifetime, and have been available for research at Houghton since 1970, they represented only a small fraction of the full collection. For decades, Updike had been depositing his papers, including manuscripts, correspondence, research files, and even golf score cards, in the library, but the material was available only with the author’s permission, and was not integrated with the material the library owned.

Cataloging the newly acquired material so it can be used by scholars is now one of the library’s “highest priorities,” since the Archive will not be available for research until that process is completed, Morris said. However, scholars will still be able to access materials given to the library by Updike before 1970, including early short story manuscripts written for the New Yorker; Telephone Poles, Updike’s early poetry collection; and nearly complete documentation on the creation of the novel that brought him his first taste of fame, Rabbit, Run (1960).

When the cataloging of the Archive is completed, the Updike Archive will offer students and scholars unparalleled insight into the working life of the man hailed as America’s last true man of letters.

Read the full press release here.

Above:  Updike at home.  Image  © Martha Updike, John Updike Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Right: Modern Books and Manuscripts student assistant Taylor Ferracane (left) and Assistant Curator Heather Cole unpack boxes of books from Updike’s collection.

We’ve just received a new addition to our collection of association copies, an 1897 edition of Benito Pérez Galdós’s realist novel, Doña Perfecta, owned and annotated by American intellectual Ezra Pound (1885-1972).

Pound probably acquired the work in 1905, and annotated the text with numerous notes and translations.  In a letter written to Iris Barry, circa 1916, Pound wrote, “Spain has one good modern novelist, Galdós.”

*AC9.P8654.Zz897p.  Purchased with the P.D. Howe fund.  Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Modern has recently acquired the Report of the Proceedings in the Cause of Mary Alice Orford, versus Thomas Butler Cole, Esq. for a breach of promise of marriage…, published in 1818 following the trial on March 30th of that year.

This sensational case was, according to The Times, “the subject of general conversation throughout the country of Lancaster for several months… We do not remember any former occasion when the public curiosity was more excited.”

The plaintiff summarized the situation thus: “The declaration states, that in consideration that the plaintiff promise to marry the defendent, he, the defendent, undertook to marry the plaintiff; but that instead of doing so, he had married another woman.  The plaintiff pleads the general issue.”  The defense argued that the defendant was truly “the meanest reptile on earth” but concluded that Miss Orford had not lost much in losing her fiance to another woman.  The jury ruled on the side of Miss Orford, who was awarded a £7,000 settlement.

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In 1987, Oklahoma junior high school teacher and Vietnam veteran Bill McCloud wanted to begin teaching his students about the Vietnam War.  After conducting a survey to determine what Oklahoma students already knew about the war (and finding that they knew very little, and that little was taught), McCloud began writing letters to a number of individuals involved directly and indirectly with the war.  He asked each person what he or she thought was the most important aspect of the war to teach young people.

Those who replied, sometimes at great length, included U.S. presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush; secretaries of defense and members of Congress;  high-ranking military officials; reporters; writers of fiction and non-fiction, including Kurt Vonnegut, Tim O’Brien, Philip Caputo, and Ken Kesey; folk singers Pete Seeger and Country Joe McDonald; and many more, totalling over 100 respondents.

In 1989, McCloud published a book, titled What Should We Tell our Children About Vietnam?, which included some of the responses he had received.

McCloud’s archive has now come to Houghton, and includes the letters McCloud received, along with his teaching materials and student papers, and McCloud’s publications on these topics.

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Winifred Coombe Tennant (1874-1956) was a Welsh writer, politician, suffragette, and patron of the arts.  While her work to promote Welsh art, history, and culture are well known–and is extensively documented in her papers at the National Library of Wales–a group of papers bequeathed by Mrs. Coombe Tennant to the Houghton Library sheds new light on her other, less well known career as a gifted medium and automatic writer.

Under the pseudonym “Mrs. Willett,” Coombe Tennant was welcomed into the Society for Psychic Research, and there are many accounts of her spirit communications, and of her writings, in the Society’s Journal.  Her work as a medium remained unknown outside a small circle of close friends, many also members of the Society.   This group included Gerald Balfour,  brother of the Prime Minister and a member of the Society, with whom Coombe Tennant had a lengthy affair.

*2008M-11.  Images appear with permission of the Estate of Winifred Coombe Tennant.  Images may not be reproduced without permission.

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In celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), a new exhibition focuses on the poet’s great Arthuriad, Idylls of the King, a twelve-part cycle of poems composed and published over the course of nearly thirty years. The exhibition includes early manuscript drafts and variants, published editions, and artists’ interpretations of the Idylls.

The exhibition is free and open to the public.  More information can be found on Houghton’s website.

For details, contact exhibition curator Heather Cole, 617-495-2449.

Image:  Tennyson from the Houghton Library Portrait File.  May not be reproduced without permission.

Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), novelist, literary theorist, philosopher, and journalist –  though a reclusive figure in the literary world – had a profound impact on twentieth-century thinkers such as George Bataille, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, among others.  A recent acquisition by the Library, a joint purchase by Modern Books and Manuscripts, the French, Italian, and Scandinavian Collections of Widener Library, and an anonymous donor, will help shed new light on this elusive figure.

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In 1861, President Lincoln  signed a bill making the United States Sanitary Commission into a government agency. Organized by thousands of women volunteers across the country, the commission succeeded in raising almost twenty five million dollars  during the course of the Civil War, and worked to cut the disease rate of the Union Army in half.*

In early 1864, the USSC held a “Sanitary Fair” in Brooklyn and Long Island to raise money for their efforts. The group published a daily newspaper titled The Drum Beat from 22 February to 5 March, with an extra issue on 11 March 1864.  The paper was professionally edited, illustrated, and printed, included work by leading writers and artists, and sold nearly 6000 copies per day at the fair and by subscription.  While an interesting example of a Civil War publication in its own right, the newspaper holds special significance for our collection at Houghton. Continue Reading »

At the turn of the twentieth century, Spanish publishers the Maucci brothers commissioned Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913) to illustrate a new series of children’s stories on the history of Mexico, the Biblioteca del niño mexicano.  Each story was published with a colorful, and often rather gruesome, wrapper illustration depicting the contents within, and several black-and-white illustrations within the text.  One of the first attempts to bring history to Mexican children, the stories were sixteen pages each, and were bound together, at about the same time, in thematic groups of about twelve.

Houghton Library, with funding from Widener Library’s program on Latin America, Spain and Portugal, has recently acquired a set of 85 of these stories, bound in seven volumes.  Three of Posada’s covers can be seen here:

More of Posada’s covers for the series can be seen here, from a collection at the University of Hawaii Library.

*LMC8.F9100.899b.  Purchased with the Andrew Preston Peabody Fund.

While best known as a Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) held government posts in the British government of Malta from April 1804 to September 1805.  The location was chosen in part to aid the poet’s poor health.

From April 1804 to September 1805, Coleridge served in Malta as Secretary to the Governor, Sir Alexander Ball.  Coleridge enjoyed his work, practicing his Italian (the official language used in the Maltese government) as he signed himself “Segretario Pubblico dell’ Isole di Malta, Gozo, e delle loro dipendenze” many times each day.  Ball was a popular figure, and Coleridge later described him as a “truly great man.” Privately, however, Coleridge was unhappy in Malta, and was frequently ill.

Hostility towards the Maltese Jewish population was increasing in the Spring of 1805.  On May 22, Coleridge wrote two official notices for the Governor; the first condemned the “popular prejudice” against the Jews, and the second alerted its readers that three people will be whipped and exiled for inventing and spreading false rumors, and advised those who would commit similar offenses that they will be treated the same way.

This kind of Coleridge ephemera is rather rare, and is an exciting addition to Houghton’s extensive holdings of Coleridge material, which include books from the poet’s library, Coleridge’s own publications, and manuscript collections of compositions and correspondence, all of which can be viewed by searching Hollis.

 *EC8.C6795.805m2.  Houghton Library, Harvard University.

German-born Winfried Georg Sebald (1944-2001) is widely known in the German-speaking world for his visionary novels, collections of poetry, and astute literary criticism.

Sebald’s award-winning fiction includes the novels Schwindel, Gefühle (Vertigo)(1990), Die Ausgewanderten (The Emigrants) (1992),  Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine Englische Wallfahrt (The Rings of Saturn) (1995), and Austerlitz (2001), among others, focus on themes of European history, the collective memory of the postwar generation, and the chaos of the modern world.  The novels are not entirely fiction, and have been described as part memoir, part travelogue.  Sebald’s work is frequently illustrated by uncaptioned photographs and other images throughout his text, often meant to evoke the indistinct nature of memory.

Houghton has recently acquired a collection of over thirty works by and about Sebald, a gift of Sebald bibliographer Roger Stoddard.  The materials from this accession have been cataloged separately, but may be viewed by searching Hollis.

Much of Sebald’s work has been translated into English by Michael Hulse.  For more Sebald at Houghton, see the Michael Hulse translations of W.G. Sebald papers, MS Eng 1632.

Image above is from the dust jacket of the 2001 Verlag edition of Austerlitz.

The career of John Updike (1932-2009), Harvard ’54, is well known: more than 50 books of fiction, poetry, short stories, and criticism; two Pulitzer Prizes; four National Book Awards; and a host of other honors. He is, indisputably, one of America’s pre-eminent men of letters. To honor his many contributions to his alma mater, Houghton Library has mounted a small exhibition, John Updike’s Harvard, with items drawn from Updike’s own archive and from other Houghton collections. Included are his yearbook, a Lampoon cover he drew, a short story with comments by his English professor, Albert Guerard, and more.

This exhibition is free and open to the public.

Image, above, John Updike as a Harvard senior, 1954   Image, below, Updike (left) with his staff at the Harvard Lampoon, 1954.    Both images © Harvard Yearbook Publications. Images may not be reproduced without permission.