Oct 21st, 2009 by houghtonmodern
Selections from a recently-acquired group of 19th century chapbooks (click on the images to enlarge them):
The storm at sea,*2009-246
An address to the unfortunate female, *2009-239
A peep into a gin shop!, *2009-233
To find these and other chapbooks in Houghton’s collection, search HOLLIS for “chapbook” and refine your search to “Houghton Library” with the facets on the right of the screen.
Oct 7th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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 20th 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.
Sep 22nd, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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.”
*2009-181. Purchased with the P.D. Howe fund. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Image may not be reproduced without permission.
Aug 19th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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.
Aug 5th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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.
Jul 17th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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.
Jun 25th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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.
Jun 11th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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.
Jun 3rd, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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 »
Apr 27th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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.
*2008-2071. Purchased with the Andrew Preston Peabody Fund. Images may not be reproduced without permission. To request an image of this item, or any items displayed on this blog, please contact the Houghton Library Public Services department, houghref at fas.harvard.edu.
Mar 26th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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.
*2008-2030. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Image may not be reproduced without permission.
Feb 24th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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.
Feb 6th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
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.
Feb 6th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) is best remembered for his work on the evolution of plants and animals, including his theory of natural selection. 2009 marks not only the bicentennial anniversary of Darwin’s birth, but also the sesquicentennial anniversary of the publication of his most famous work, On the Origin of Species. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” a new exhibition at Houghton, celebrates the two anniversaries.
Origin first appeared in 1859 and went through six heavily revised editions in Darwin’s lifetime. Literary in style, it appealed to readers of all types in its simple explanations and conversational tone. Although Darwin had no knowledge of how variations in species occurred, the work is mainly a demonstration that they do occur. The work stresses a natural, as opposed to a divine, presence in this process, and it provoked intense debate in both the public and private circles of a very religious society. It remains a highly-regarded and popular work of scientific research, and Darwin’s theories are debated just as heavily today as when they were first published.
The exhibition, on display in Houghtons’ Amy Lowell Room, includes a page from Darwin’s original manuscript, correspondence with friend and Harvard professor of zoology and geology Louis Agassiz, the first and several early editions of the book itself, and a few contemporary reactions to Darwin’s theories.
The exhibition is free and open to the public. More information can be found on Houghton’s website.
For information on Darwin-related events at Harvard, visit the Darwin Day 200 at Harvard website.
Image: Darwin photographed around 1874 by Leonard Darwin. Portrait File. May not be reproduced without permission.
Nov 24th, 2008 by houghtonmodern
The Library’s traditionally strong holdings of texts in English dialects, particularly dialect poetry, have been further enhanced with the acquisition of the James Stevens-Cox Collection of William Barnes of Dorset. Barnes (1801-1886) was one of those remarkable self-educated Victorian polymaths: schoolmaster, clergyman, philologist, artist, and (most importantly) poet.
Born into a farming family of seven children, Barnes was educated at the village school. His excellent handwriting won him his first job as an engrossing clerk at a solicitor’s office at the age of 13, which marked the end of his formal education. However, determined to further educate and better himself, he pursued music, engraving, classical and modern languages, science, archaeology, and a host of other subjects on his own. He was further spurred to better himself when he fell in love with Julia Miles, the daughter of a supervisor of the excise. Barnes began teaching in 1823, and he and Julia were married in 1827. Julia’s organizing ability, combined with Barnes’s scholarly and teaching accomplishments, made their school flourish; and Barnes published on a wide range of topics, from mathematics to philology to local history to, most importantly, poetry.
Barnes secured his reputation as a poet with the publication of Poems in the Dorset dialect (1844). His admirers included Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Edmund Gosse, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Alfred Tennyson, his Dorset neighbor Thomas Hardy (who edited his Selected Poems) and, in succeeding generations, W.H. Auden, Siegfried Sassoon, and Christopher Ricks. While Barnes did publish poetry in “standard” English, it is his dialect poems that are most admired. As Hardy put it: “…his ingenious internal rhymes, his subtle juxtaposition of kindred lippings and vowel-sounds, show fastidiousness in word-selection that is surprising in verse which professes to represent the habitual modes of language among the western peasantry” (Preface, Selected Poems). Much of his best poetry was inspired by his wife. The poignant “The Wife a-Lost,” written after her death, gives a flavor of his verse, beginning:
Since I noo mwore do zee your feace,
Up steairs or down below,
I’ll zit me in the lwonesome pleace,
Where flat-bough’d beech do grow;
Below the beeches’ bough, my love,
Where you did never come,
An’ I don’t look to meet ye now,
As I do look at hwome.
The Stevens-Cox collection is a near-complete assemblage of Barnes’s scholarly and poetical works, in multiple editions, issues, and binding variants. In addition to Barnes’s published works, it includes some unpublished poems in manuscript, documents, important family letters, proofs of his wood engravings, and photographs, and well as posthumous publications of his poetry. The collection provides the raw materials for a much-needed bibliography of the work of a major, somewhat neglected, nineteenth-century poet.
Manuscripts and images, *2008M-32. Images may not be reproduced without permission.
Researchers should contact the curator to obtain access. A list of items in the collection may be found here.
Nov 21st, 2008 by houghtonmodern
By examining a reader’s annotations in the margins of a book, it can be possible to obtain insight into what might have influenced that reader’s own writing. We recently acquired both a copy of J.W. Mackail’s Latin Literature owned and annotated by T.S. Eliot, as well as Allen Ginsberg’s copy of T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems, in which Ginsberg extensively annotated “The Waste Land.”
Poet, dramatist, Harvard graduate and Nobel Prize winner T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) began to study Latin while a student at Smith Academy from 1898-1905, and continued to study languages, both modern and ancient, through college. Eliot probably acquired J.W. Mackail’s Latin Literature while studying at Harvard. While he made few annotations to the text itself, Eliot also made extensive notes in pencil on several blank pages throughout the book. Eliot’s bookplate is also pasted inside the front cover (Eliot’s bookplate includes his family’s motto Tace et fac, “be silent and act.”) Examples of Eliot’s early handwriting are uncommon, and as Eliot made extensive use of his linguistic skills within his poetry, it is always interesting to catch a glimpse into his study of them. (Click on the images to magnify them.)
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was one of the most important figures in the Beat movement of the mid-twentieth century. Two years after graduation from Columbia University, while working in New York as a market researcher, Ginsberg purchased this 1936 edition of Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-1935, which he signed “Allen Ginsberg / October 1950″ on the front free endpaper. Ginsberg’s extensive annotations to The Waste Land document his efforts to work through the poem.
Mackail, Latin Literature. New York: Scribners, 1895. *2008-1002.
Eliot, Collected Poems, 1909-1935. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. [1936] *AC95.G4351.Zz936e.
Houghton Library, Harvard University. Images may not be reproduced without permission.
Nov 7th, 2008 by houghtonmodern
Prince Hall (1738-1807), known as the father of Black Freemasonry in the United States, worked as a minister, abolitionist, civil rights activist, and proponent of education for black children. Details on Hall’s birth and early life are vague; the first record of Hall reveals he was a servant to William Hall of Boston. Legally a slave (although not in practice), Hall was freed following the Boston Massacre. As an adult, Hall became a leader within the African-American community of Boston. In 1775, Hall and fourteen other black men were initiated into Military Lodge No. 441 in Boston, which was then affiliated with the British Army. Following the Revolution, facing discrimination, (to be initiated into a Lodge, a Mason needs to gain a unanimous vote, but as votes are contributed anonymously, it would be impossible to identify any one dissenting individual), black Masons began urging Hall to organize a separate lodge. African Lodge #1 was formed as 1776, and Hall continued as Worshipful Master. In 1848, African Grand Lodges across the country changed their name to the Prince Hall Grand Lodge. For more information on Hall, see Prince Hall: Life and Legacy, by Charles H. Wesley (1983).
The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University has recently given Houghton a Masonic initiation certificate signed by Hall (above). Dated June 23, 1799, the certificate initiates abolitionist Richard P.G. Wright, and is signed by George Medallion (SW), Jube Hill (JW) and William Smith (as secretary), and by Hall. A detail of the document, showing Hall’s signature, is below.
This important document is the latest in a series of gifts from the Du Bois Institute to Houghton Library designed to strengthen Harvard’s increasingly significant research resources for African and African-American history and literature. Past gifts to Houghton Library have included the papers of playwright Suzan-Lori Parks (*2005M-10); a beautifully illuminated 17th-century Ethiopian manuscript prayerbook; the unique first issue of Fortune’s Freeman; and numerous other rare books and recordings. Joint purchases have included the papers of Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka; novelists Chinua Achebe and John Edgar Wideman (*1999M-1(b)); writer Albert Murray (*1998M-1), including his correspondence with Ralph Ellison; and several smaller collections (at Houghton), and the June Jordan papers and the Shirley Graham Du Bois papers (at Schlesinger Library) (Links are provided to the finding aids of processed collections).
f MS Am 2642. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Images may not be used or reproduced without permission.
Oct 16th, 2008 by houghtonmodern
José García Villa (1908-1997) grew up in Manila, and as a teenager began to receive attention – both positive and negative – for his poetry. He moved to the United States in 1930 and enrolled at the University of New Mexico, where he founded the literary magazine, Clay, and began to write short stories. He turned back to poetry by the 1940s, playing with formalism, and developed “reversed consonance” and “comma poems,” poetic techniques that drew both contention and critical praise. He worked briefly at the New Directions Publishing Corporation, and beginning in the 1950s, taught and lectured in New York, where he lived until his death. Villa left a large body of work, and is credited with establishing modern writing in English in the Philippines.
Houghton has recently acquired the papers and a collection of the works of Villa, which can be perused on HOLLIS. Pictured to the left is Villa’s first collection of stories, Footnote to Youth, published in 1933.
PR9550.9.V48 F66 1933. José García Villa, Footnote to Youth. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933. Image may not be reproduced without permission.
Sep 12th, 2008 by houghtonmodern
In 1785, Jean Jacques Audubon was born in Haiti, the illigitimate son of a French naval officer and his mistress. Audubon immigrated to the United States at age 18 (anglicizing his name to John James Audubon), and almost immediately began to study its ornithology, hoping to illustrate the birds he observed in a more realistic manner than was common at the time. His famous work, Birds of America, was published after years of study, from 1840-44.
116 of Audubon’s early drawings, held at Houghton Library and at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, have been published together for the first time in a new publication, Audubon: Early Drawings, available this month from the Harvard University Press. The drawings are enhanced by an essay on the sources of Audubon’s art by his biographer, Richard Rhodes; transcription of Audubon’s own annotations to the drawings, including information on when and where the specimens were collected; ornithological commentary by Scott V. Edwards, along with reflections on Audubon as scientist; and an account of the history of the Harris collection by Houghton Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts Leslie A. Morris. More information on the book can be found on the Modern Books & Manuscripts website, the Harvard College Library website, and a slideshow of images from the book may be found here, on the Harvard University Press website.
In the video below, by David Braun of National Geographic, Scott Edwards talks about the book and shows a few of the images:
Image above: MS Am 21 (88). Juglane oliveformia. Carolina Parrot in[?] Willow from imitation of colors [?] Psittacus Carolinensis. N.p., 1811 June 9. 1 drawing: watercolor, pastel, graphite, and ink on paper; 43 x 28 cm.
Aug 25th, 2008 by houghtonmodern
In 1846, while living at Brook Farm (the Transcendentalist utopian experiment in communal living) in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, artist Marianne Dwight (later Orvis) compiled this album of watercolor flower portraits. Dwight (1816-1901) made a living creating lampshades and paintings, and her detailed punchwork designs can be seen on the cover of the album (click the images to enlarge them):
The album contains twelve paintings of spring and summer flowers.
Pictured below are Lobelia Cardinalis, or Cardinal Flower, for August:
