Modern Books and Manuscripts

Alfred Tennyson first published his poem “Sea Dreams. An Idyll” in Macmillan’s Magazine in its January 1860 issue (for which he was paid between £250 and £300, an enormous sum for a single poem). We recently acquired the page proofs for this printing of the poem, with numerous manuscript annotations by Tennyson. (click on the image to enlarge it.)

At the bottom of the page, the poet wrote, “Can’t the printers manage to put this song altogether. [sic] It looks very awkward thus divided – or at least to put the 1st stanza altogether before the eye?” He was referring to the last stanza on the page, a song that begins “What does the little birdie say,” and concluded with two lines on the next page. The printer must have paid attention, as the published version of the poem appears exactly as Tennyson requested (image from Google Books):

*2007M-64. Purchased with the Amy Lowell Fund. Houghton images may not be reproduced without permission.

Norman Mailer (1923-2007; Harvard class of 1943) leapt onto the literary stage in 1948 with the publication of his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, a partly autobiographical work based on his experiences during World War II. While he entered Harvard intending to major in engineering, he soon turned whole-heartedly to literature, joining the Harvard Advocate his sophomore year and winning the Story Magazine national college contest for best short story by an undergraduate. Over the course of his long career he published more than 30 books, winning the Pulitzer Prize twice. His public persona was opinionated, provocative, and sometimes violent. Yet Gore Vidal, with whom he often feuded, said of him “…of all my contemporaries I retain the greatest affection for Norman as a force and as an artist. He is a man whose faults, though many add to rather than subtract from the sum of his natural achievements.” (quoted in the New York Times obituary, 10 November 2007).

Two recent acquisitions give Mailer a continuing presence at Harvard, and testify to his concern with literary technique, and his efforts to continually improve his own writing and that of others: the papers of Richard G. Hannum, and those of Carole Mallory.

Richard Hannum collaborated with Mailer on the 1986 off-Broadway play Strawhead, about Marilyn Monroe, based on Mailer’s Of Women and Their Elegance (1980). Mailer had had a huge success with his 1973 biography of Monroe, Marilyn: A Novel Biography, in which he stated that she was murdered by agents of the FBI and CIA who resented her supposed affair with Robert F. Kennedy. Hannum’s papers include his correspondence with Mailer, and drafts and final script for Strawhead. Pictured below is a page from Hannum and Mailer’s script for Strawhead, with Mailer’s handwritten notes (click on the image to enlarge it):

(Image © Richard G. Hannum and The Norman Mailer Estate.)

Carole Mallory began her career as a model, then turned actress, playing a Stepford wife along with Paula Prentiss, Katherine Ross, and Tina Louise in 1975. She met Norman Mailer in 1982, and he helped her to begin a career as a writer and journalist. She published a novel, Flash (1987) described by Gloria Steinem as “fast, smart, irresistible to read.” Her interviews—of Gore Vidal and Mailer; Mikhail Baryshnikov; and Warren Beatty, among others, appeared in Esquire, Elle, G.Q., Cosmopolitan, and others. The collection consists primarily of material relating to Norman Mailer, including correspondence, Mallory’s unpublished novel, heavily edited by Mailer, along with his edits to her interviews of him; transcripts and printed interviews of other notables; publishing contracts; and printed material. Pictured below is a page from an interview of Mailer conducted by Mallory in mid-1980s, with Mailer’s handwritten corrections (click to enlarge):

Both collections add to the wealth of material available for research and teaching about the writer’s craft: how writers develop their style and substance, often, as in these cases, through layers of revision. Mailer, in particular, thought of his writing as “a job. . .you have to work at it every day” and both of these collections testify that it was a job he took seriously, as evidenced in this selection, also from the Carole Mallory papers:

*b 2007M-59 and *2007M-63. © Carole Mallory, Richard Hannum, and the Norman Mailer Estate. Images may not be reproduced or quoted from without permission.

Mikhail Gerasimov (1889-1939) was one of the most popular Russian writers of the early twentieth century. A member of the working class, Gerasimov joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1907, and published work extensively in Bolshevik journals. (He became disillusioned with the Party and left it in 1921.) He was also a leader in Proletkult, a Russian movement to promote the proletariat and suppress bourgeois elements in art.

Gerasimov’s work often focuses on modernist topics, such as the melding of the industrial and artificial with the natural. Rather than denounce the new industrial age, Gerasimov seems to have wanted to reconcile both a simpler past and a progressive present.

Ėlektropoėma is a collection of Gerasimov’s poems published in Moscow in 1923. The work is bound in a colorful, decorative cloth:

The title page is characteristic of Russian avant-garde book design, which often included the use of red and black angular designs:

*RC9.G3125.923e. Purchased with the Bayard L. Kilgour, Jr. Fund for Russian Belles Lettres. Images may not be reproduced without permission.

At a loss for a new rainy day activity? Need to work on your dating skills? Try this parlor game from the 1820s…

The set, which arrived in its original box, includes forty hand-colored cards depicting men and women. The twenty cards picturing men each contain a member of a different profession and a rhyming, nineteenth-century, pick-up line. The cards featuring women contain various polite (and not-so-polite) rejections, along with a few acceptances. Presumably, players could match different cards to form various comic, romantic scenarios, thus practicing for their own courtships.

Included in the images below are examples of six different cards. (I’ve added some punctuation for clarification.)

Soldier: With sword, gorget, and sash, can you love Captain Flash?

Woman: Upon my word, you graceless Elf, I’ll keep that answer to myself.

Man: Reading improves the mind they say. Are you fond of Reading, pray?

Woman: How provoking you are thus to torment me so. But I’ll give you my answer – it is certainly No.

Man: The Bee is a pattern to all in this Life. Can you be a good & industrious Wife?

Woman: Well that’s very civil, I thank you for this. And I’ll be as civil; I answer Sir, Yes.

More playing cards can be found in the James Edward Whitney collection.

*EC8.A100.820p. Purchased with the Melvin R. Seiden Houghton Library Book Fund for Music. Images may not be reproduced without permission.

This is the first of four parts of a juvenile geography, titled Di li shü lin væn-koh kwu-kying z-tì yiu-tin kong-tsing, and published in China in 1852. Its author, William Alexander Parsons Martin (1827-1916), was an American Presbyterian minister who lived and worked in China and Japan for almost forty years. The book is block-printed in a Chinese colloquial dialect spoken in Ningbo, in the northeastern Zhejiang province. The Chinese has been transliterated into Roman characters, although the titled page is in both Chinese and Roman characters. This copy is inscribed by Martin to the Rev. E. W. Syle, a pioneer in education for the blind in China and Japan. The book also contains several folding woodcut maps, including this one (click on the map to see a larger image):

*AC85.Sy521.852d. Purchased with the Sydney J. Watts Fund. Images may not be reproduced without permission.

On June 14, 1865, the following telegram was sent from Inspector General James Allen Hardie (1823-1876) to Dr. John Gray:

The telegram reads: “The secretary of war requests that you come immediately to Washington for the purpose of making a medical examination of Payne the man who attempted to assassinate Sec. Seward please answer how soon you can start & reach this city. J A Hardie, Inspec. Genl. U.S.A.”

Dr. Gray was called in to examine Lewis Paine, who had been arrested for his involvement in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln. Paine (an alias of Lewis Powell, (1844-1865)) was in league with John Wilkes Booth and a group of other individuals, and had attempted to assassinate Secretary of State William Seward on April 14, 1865 (the same night Lincoln was shot). Powell was captured and imprisoned several days later.

John Purdue Gray (1825-1886) was one of the foremost forensic psychiatrists in the second half of the nineteenth century, and was involved in several notable murder trials where the mental stability of a defendant was in question. Gray was one of at least six physicians called to examine Powell when Powell’s attorney wished to use an insanity defense. The doctors could not find proof of any mental instability, and Powell was ultimately hanged for his part in the conspiracy.

This telegram is one item in a large collection of Lincolniana held at Houghton. Other items may be found by perusing Hollis, Harvard’s online library catalog.

*2007M-42. Purchased with the Bayard Livingston and Kate Gray Kilgour Fund. Image may not be reproduced without permission.

Benedict von Wagemann (1763-1837), a physician in Ehingen, Germany, published Die konstitutionelle Monarchie der Thiere in 1823. The work describes, in rhyming verse, a council of animals who meet to discuss their current political situation. The animals rebel against their king, design a constitution, and elect representatives to govern themselves.

The engraved frontispiece depicts this council, with over twenty cloaked and spectacled animals of various species discussing their new government:

It is possible that this work inspired a somewhat more famous 20th-century political allegory featuring animals, however, this seems to be the only known copy outside of Germany and the Netherlands. (Feel free to contradict me if you happen to know more; there is very little bibliographic information on this book that I could find.)

As always, clicking on the images will make them larger.

*GC8.W1227.823k. Purchased with the Harry K. Mansfield Book Fund. Images may not be reproduced without permission.

In 1950, in Key West, playwright Tennessee Williams finished a second draft of “The Rose Tattoo,” a play he had begun the year before in Rome. Williams called this draft the “kitchen sink” draft, reasoning that “I have thrown into it every dramatic element I could think of. Perhaps all of them will work. Perhaps none of them will work. Probably a few of them will work.”

A few of Williams’ annotations in pencil can be seen on this draft:

Williams showed this draft to director Elia Kazan, who felt it still needed work. Williams went through several more drafts before the play opened on Broadway on February 3, 1951. The play subsequently won Williams a Tony award for Best Play in 1951.

Williams stated in his note to the draft that he wanted “the male part to be offered to Marlon Brando.” Eli Wallach was cast instead, opposite Maureen Stapleton, who both went on to win Tony awards for their performances in the play.

MS Am 2660. Purchased with the Douglass Roby Fund for the Harvard College Library and with funds from the Amy Lowell Trust. Images may not be reproduced without permission.

We recently added this first edition of Alfonso Reyes’s El Testimonio de Juan Peña to our collections of Latin American writers and artists:

A Mexican writer, philosopher, and diplomat, Reyes served as Mexican Ambassador to Brazil from 1930-36, publishing this work in Rio de Janeiro in 1930. The story is semi-autobiographical, and explores ideas of cultural nationalism through the experiences of a young man.

Reyes remains an important figure in Latin American literature. His 1912 short story “La Ceña” is considered a forerunner of surrealism and of Latin American magical realism. Jorge Luis Borges referred to him as “the best prose writer in the Spanish language of any period.”

Our copy, unopened, and in wrappers, was inscribed by Reyes to Cuban/French poet and book collector Armand Godoy (1880-1964):

“Para Armando Godoy, siempre muy querido, recordado y admirado. Alfonso Reyes, Rio 1931.”

*LMC9.R3305.930t. Purchased with the Bennett Hubbard Nash Fund. Images may not be reproduced without permission.

In 1910, Horace de Vere Cole and five friends, including Virginia Stephen (who would marry Leonard Woolf in 1912) and her brother Adrian Stephen (a classmate of Cole’s), coordinated and successfully carried out an elaborate hoax against the Royal Navy.

Cole began by sending a telegram to the HMS Dreadnought, moored in Dorset, telling the crew to expect a visit from a group of North African princes.

Dressed as the “The Emperor of Abyssinia” and his attendants, the group was received by the Dreadnought‘s crew, and was given a tour of the ship. The group spoke to each other in broken Latin, and shouted made-up words to show their appreciation.

Following the event, Cole sent this photograph to the Daily Mail to reveal the ruse. When the Royal Navy demanded that Cole be punished, he countered that it was they who should be punished for allowing themselves to be fooled.

In the photo of the group, Virginia Stephen can be seen, in beard and turban, on the far left. (Click on the image to see an enlarged version.)

An account of the “Dreadnought Hoax” was written by Adrian Stephen and published in 1936 by Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press. 2530 copies of the book were printed, though 1530 copies were later pulped.

Unlike earlier Hogarth publications which were handprinted by the Woolfs and decorated with unique handmade papers, The Dreadnought Hoax is rather simple, printed commercially, and decorated only with photos of the adventure. The photo above is the frontispiece.

*EC9.W8827.Z936s. Purchased with the Theodore Sedgwick Library Fund. Image may not be reproduced without permission.

For our inaugural post, may we present:

Published in the mid-1820s, Musée des Dames et des Demoiselles includes six small books covered in lavender paper and packed together in a blue and gilt paper gift box. Each book covers a different area of science appropriate for delicate demoiselles: fruit, flowers, minerals, butterflies, insects, and birds. Along with a hand-colored paper onlay on each cover, each book includes a stipple-engraved hand-colored frontispiece.

Books like these encouraged women to explore the natural world. The three women pictured on the box are in motion, interacting with various items discussed in the books. (Notice, too, that the “natural” items pictured are all confined and domesticated – the birds in cages, the trees in planters, and even the butterfly about to be caught – leaving this realm of nature somewhat less wild for the “gentler” sex.)

Our copies look as if their particular demoiselle was perhaps uninterested in nature – but we were delighted to find how new they looked!

(Click on the images to magnify them.)

*FC8.A100.825m. Purchased with the Andrew Oliver Book Fund and the Melvin R. Seiden Houghton Library Book Fund.

Images may not be reproduced without permission. See our permissions webpage for details.

Welcome to the new acquisitions blog for Modern Books & Manuscripts at the Houghton Library.  Check back here to see what we’ve added to our collections!