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.

“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.

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.

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.

Aside from being an intriguing example of proto-feminism, the book has an equally intriguing association.  It belonged to book collector Francis Mary Richardson Currer (1785-1861), one of the first famous female book collectors in Europe.  Currer added several pages of her own manuscript notes to the book, agreeing with the defense that, “no one can think that Miss Orford sustained any loss of happiness, by her loss of Mr. Cole.”  Currer also lists several similar cases between Mr. Cole and other local women, one of whom claimed Cole attempted to leave her at the church door, ” ‘No, no Mr. Cole, as we have got so far we will go on’, or words to that effect…As might be expected after living a short time together most unhappily, she left him…”

*2009-109.  Houghton Library, Harvard University.

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.

Pictured here is an image of McCloud’s initial survey of students’ knowledge:

McCloud’s “Essential topics for teaching a short unit on the Vietnam War”:

McCloud also spoke to elementary school students about the war.  His papers contain letters from a group of the children he visited:

b*2009M-2.  Houghton Library, Harvard University.  Images may not be reproduced without permission.

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.

In 1950, perhaps because of Harvard philosopher and psychologist William James’s well-known interest in psychic phenomena, Coombe Tennant placed with her lawyer four locked boxes of her papers, directing that the boxes remain sealed for fifty years after her death and then offered to Harvard University. Houghton accepted this gift, and recently received this collection, which includes over thirty years of Coombe Tennant’s correspondence with Balfour, along with numerous scripts, or automatic writings, from their work with the Society for Psychical Research.  In death as well as in life, Winifred Coombe Tennant maintained a distinction between her public work as a Welsh nationalist, and her private life as a m edium.

At the request of the family, several of Winifred Coombe Tennants diaries, included in the bequest, were given to them to complete the series of diaries they hold.  A transcription of the diaries is in preparation, and after its publication it is the family’s intention to present the diaries to the National Library of Wales to join the Coombe Tennant archive there.

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

*2008M-11.  Images © The estate of Winifred Coombe-Tennant.  Images may not be reproduced without permission.

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.

In Blanchot’s criticism (writing, for example, about Beckett, Holderlin, Kafka, Mallarmé, Proust, Rilke, Sade), he asked the question: what is literature? In philosophical dialogue with Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, he analyzed ontological and ethical questions.  He developed a theory of writing and the book that moved away from metaphysical truth toward a sense of absence and an ethics of the Other (‘community’) that was irreducibly plural.

Having disengaged from his right-wing political nationalist writings during the 1930s, he re-engaged on the left in 1958 with the Algerian War and the events of May 1968 in France.  He is the author of Awaiting Oblivion, The Book to Come, Death Sentence, The Madness of the Day, The Space of Literature, The Step Not Beyond, Thomas the Obscure, The Unavowable Community, The Writing of the Disaster, and The Infinite Conversation, among other works.

Houghton Library recently acquired page proofs of Blanchot’s 1969 major work, L’Entretien Infini (The Infinite Conversation).  Blanchot seemingly did not preserve the records of his literary work; these were (according to the dealer from whom they were purchased) salvaged from a rubbish bin by the husband of Blanchot’s long-time housekeeper.  The proofs contain numerous handwritten annotations by Blanchot, along with typewritten sheets inserted into the proofs (of which some are small slips taped over pages, and some are multiple pages in length).  Four pages are pictured below (click on each one to enlarge it).

An article providing an overview of the new material uncovered in the proofs, by Smith Professor of French Language and Literature Christie McDonald, along with a brief history of their journey to the Library by Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts Leslie Morris, will appear in the the new online journal of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, The Romance Sphere.

MS Fr 497.  Purchased with the Class of 1952 Manuscript Fund, the Amy Lowell Trust, and the Patrick Grant Second Memorial Fund 1928.  Houghton Library, Harvard University.

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.

In the March 2, 1864 issue, an unsigned poem titled “Flowers” (”Flowers – Well – if anybody”) appeared.  A poem titled “Sunset” (”Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple”)  was published March 5, and “October” (”These are the days when the birds come back”) appeared March 11.  It was not until 1984 that scholar Karen Dandurand** attributed these poems to Emily Dickinson.  The Drum Beat was edited by the Reverent Richard Salter Storrs, Jr.,  a graduate of Amherst College and acquaintance of Emily’s brother Austin Dickinson.  Dandurand believes that Dickinson voluntarily contributed these poems to the war effort, perhaps through her brother, perhaps on her own.  (Prior to this discovery, scholars believed Dickinson felt ambivalent towards the Civil War, and gave up seeking publication of her work following numerous rejections.)

*See http://www.forttejon.org/ussc/ussc.html for more information on the USSC.

** See Dandurand, “New Dickinson Civil War Publications,” American Literature 56.1 (March 1984), p. 17.

US 6090.33 F*.  From the bequest of Evert Jansen Wendell, 1918.  Houghton Library, Harvard University.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.