Modern Books and Manuscripts

You are cordially invited to

Emily Dickinson and the Sublime

A talk by Helen Vendler, Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University; and author of Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries (2010)

31 March 2011

5.30 P.M.

Edison and Newman Room

Houghton Library, Harvard University

Admission is free, and open to the public.

Space is limited.

Sponsored by

Houghton Library, Harvard College Library

The Woodberry Poetry Room;

and Harvard University Press

37 audio tapes from the Solidarity Collection, an archive of Poland’s “Solidarność” independent trade union movement in the 1970s and 1980s, have recently been digitized. Andrea Bohlman, a doctoral candidate in Historical Musicology in the Harvard University Department of Music, contributed a post on the tapes to the blog of the Loeb Music Library, available here:  http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/loebmusic/2011/03/16/polish-solidarity-tapes-digitized/

While unprocessed, the materials in the Solidarity Collection, including the digitized audio files, may be accessed in the Houghton Library reading room with the call number *2009M-97r.

Several months ago, Assistant Curator of Early Modern Books and Manuscripts John Overholt was in the Houghton stacks when he happened upon a brown paper-wrapped package tied with twine. We soon discovered that the package contained previously unknown photographs of Spanish fortifications Havana, from 1899 or 1900. The photographs were sent to the photo conservators at the Weissman Preservation Center. Photograph conservator Elena Bulat contributed this post.

A box with folded and stacked photographs arrived to the Weissman Preservation Center from Houghton Library for treatment.  The photographs were composite panoramas of Havana and envelopes with identifying information and one paper document containing information about the project.  It was clear from the beginning that this project posed several challenges for us.

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The Houghton Library’s Dickinson Collection holds one of only two authenticated portraits of Emily Dickinson: the 1840 Otis Allen Bullard portrait of the three Dickinson children. Ten-year-old Emily is depicted holding a rose and a book illustrated with flowers, indicating her early interest in gardening and nature; Lavinia holds a drawing of a cat (unlike her older sister, who preferred dogs, Lavinia was a lifelong cat lover).  That cat, however, has always been difficult to see, as it was partially obscured by the painting’s frame.

A need to reprint the Houghton postcard of this iconic image led to a decision to re-photograph the portrait without its frame, in order to see the entirety of the canvas.  The back of the painting was also photographed.  The digital photography was done in the Harvard College Library Imaging Services studio.  The color reproduction is more faithful to the original than in the older (scanned) color transparency; and indeed one now sees the seven-year-old Lavinia’s beloved cat more clearly.

http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/23152304?buttons=y [front]

http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/23152305?buttons=y [back]

The portrait of the Dickinson children is on display in the Houghton Library Emily Dickinson Room, which can be visited during Houghton’s weekly tours. Reproduction of Bullard’s portrait requires the department’s permission.

Just in time for the holiday, we’ve acquired a collection of nearly 40 hand-drawn valentines. Most likely all the work of one artist, the valentines were probably created in the UK between 1850 and 1860. The practice of exchanging paper valentines was popularized in the early 19th century, and mass-produced valentines were made available by the late 1840s. Manuscript valentines most likely continued to appear along with their print counterparts, but few examples from this period survive.

Some take the form of more traditional valentines, and feature flowers, happy couples, and romantic verses. The one to the left reads “Fresh from the spring of affection.”

Others offer more comic sentiments, illustrated with exaggerated images of the characters described in acerbic verse (these were known as ‘cruel’ or ‘vinegar’ valentines). A few have moveable parts, including the one pictured at right, which features an older woman beating a younger man (if the tab on the bottom is pulled, her arm, holding the birch, moves up and down).

The verse reads, “You nasty and ugly and crabbed old scold/ I shall pity your husband, poor man!/ If e’er you inveigle one into your snare/ which you doubtless will if you can./ But I will not marry a vixin [sic] like you/ So do not hope me, to ensnare/ Who know if I wed you we should not/ Be a very affectionate pair.”

Many of the cards are tailored towards members of a specific profession. If your valentine is, for instance, a butcher, you might send him this token of your affection:

The verse reads, “Dearest loved one of my heart/ From thee, I never will depart/ Altho’ you are a butcher born/ And go for many days unshorn.”

MS Eng 1666. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Purchased with the Frank Brewer Bemis Bequest, 2011.

“Charles Olson, 1910-1970: a Centennial Selection from the Ralph Maud Collection,” on exhibit in Houghton Library’s Chaucer case (on the ground floor) since November 3, will be extended through February 7.  The exhibition celebrates both the centennial of the birth of this influential American poet, and the 2009 gift to the Houghton of the Ralph Maud collection of Charles Olson.

Charles Olson greatly influenced his contemporaries through his poetry, his essays, and his teaching during the 1950s at the innovative arts school Black Mountain College. His ties to New England were many and deep. Olson was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, and spent summer vacations in the coastal town of Gloucester, Mass. He earned a B.A. and an M.A. from Connecticut’s Wesleyan University, taught at Clark University in Worcester, and was enrolled in the doctoral program in American Studies at Harvard. He settled in Gloucester in 1957, following the dissolution of Black Mountain College, and lived there for the rest of his life. His major work, The Maximus poems, while wide-ranging in content, directly concerns the town of Gloucester, its geography, its history, and its relationship to the poem’s narrator, Maximus.

The Ralph Maud collection of about 200 items represents a near-complete collection of Olson’s publications.  It includes first editions and selected later editions of his major works and first appearances of many of his poems in literary magazines of the 1950s and 1960s, some of which were ephemeral and are quite rare today.  Ralph Maud received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. He is a distinguished Olson scholar and biographer, and was a friend of Charles Olson.

This post was contributed by Houghton Library Rare Book Cataloger (and cataloger of the Olson collection) Elaine Shiner.

Images:

Above: Cover of Charles Olson Reading at Berkeley. f AC95.Oℓ843.966c.

Right: Design by Nikola Cernovich.  Created to accompany This, a poem by Charles Olson. Black Mountain, NC: Black Mountain College Graphics Workshop, 1952. *2010-836.

Below:  Canyon de Chelly, by Charles Olson. Published by Simon Fraser University and the Chax Press for the Charles Olson Centenary Conference, June 4-6, 2010, Simon Fraser University. *2010-835.

The summer of 2010 saw the debut of the department’s Dickinson portal, one-stop shopping for those who want to discover Dickinson-related resources at Harvard.  The portal announced the beginning of a project to digitize books in the Dickinson Family Library, to provide wider access to these often-fragile volumes. Three new titles have just been added, bring the total to six:

• EDR 445 Dana, Charles Anderson, 1819-1897, ed. The household book of poetry…sixth edition. New York & London, 1860.  http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/21564366

• EDR 566 Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. The old curiosity shop, and other tales… Philadelphia, 1842. http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/21566047

• EDR 523 Milton, John, 1608-1674. Paradise lost… Philadelphia, 1819. http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/21567348

The books in the Dickinson Family Library exhibit a variety of marks of use: corners folded; entire pages folded vertically; underlinings; vertical marks in the margins; small x-es; and, very occasionally, cut-outs.

Here is an example of the latter, from chapter 54 of Dickens’s  Master Humphrey’s Clock (in EDR 566): http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/2156…

Dickinson attached this illustration, with another cut from page 359, to a poem she sent her sister-in-law Susan around 1859:

Interestingly, the book bears the ownership inscription of the poet’s father, Edward Dickinson; if the dating of the poem is correct, his daughter felt free to cut snippets from his books while he was around to discover her biblio-vandalism. Or perhaps the poet knew he wouldn’t be reading a novel?

To browse the digital Dickinson Family Library quickly, go to the finding aid for the collection and click on the tab “Digital Content.”  New volumes are added on an irregular basis, but will be announced here.  Next to appear: Emily Dickinson’s Bible (EDR 8)!

A list of print items in the Modern Books and Manuscripts department accessioned from July 2009 through June 2010 can now be viewed online here:
 http://tinyurl.com/3aahave

Accessions included books from the John Updike Book Archive, a complete collection of the publications of Argentine writer Juan Filloy, and many others.

Books found in the list linked above may be requested for use in the Houghton reading room using our new online registration and request system, Aeon, or by clicking on “Request item” in an item record in HOLLIS or HOLLIS Classic.

The book portion of the John Updike Archive is now cataloged and available for research use.

The 1,635 volumes establish Updike as his own greatest collector. For example, the collection includes roughly ninety editions and printings of Rabbit, Run, including those in translation. Many of these volumes bear Updike’s annotations, which not only correct typographical errors and emend the text, but also zero in on aesthetic discordances such as flattened margins and faded or ink-heavy printing. Nor was Updike always satisfied with a single round of corrections: in a 2004 printing of Pigeon Feathers, he edits the 1961 story “A&P” for its inclusion in a new anthology. His changes rearrange the checkout aisles in the titular store.

More extensive annotation, and an occasional window into Updike’s own writing process, can be found in the volumes he reviewed and criticized. The manuscript text of the poem “Mass. Mental Health” covers the rear endpaper of Updike’s copy of The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1913; and in M. Ageyev’s Novel with Cocaine, which Updike reviewed for the New Yorker in 1986, there is a brief sketch of the plot and characters of S., published two years later.

The collection ranges from mass-market paperbacks to letterpress broadsides, but several items are rarer still. A publisher’s dummy for a book titled Travels of Frank Folly, and illustrated by Warren Chappell, suggests a storybook for children or young adults, but the title was never published (see image, right). And to commemorate Updike’s fiftieth book, the essay collection More Matter, his longtime publisher A.A. Knopf produced a special edition of one, exclusively for the author. Laid inside the brown leather slipcase is a menu for the private luncheon at which the volume was presented (see images, above left and below left).

The collection also includes the books on Updike’s writing desk at the time of his death, those he needed close at hand while writing his last, unpublished novel.

As a thorough catalog of Updike’s published work, from Fawcett reprints of The Witches of Eastwick to Swedish and Estonian translations of The Centaur, the collection serves as a portrait both of the author’s prolific career and of book publishing in the latter half of the twentieth century.  Through the generosity of the John Updike Literary Trust and Knopf, the collection continues to grow with the addition of posthumous editions.

All titles are included in HOLLIS, the Harvard online catalog, located at this link. Under the ‘Other call number’ search type, search for AC95.Up174 to see all titles in the collection. For a direct link to the collection in HOLLIS, click here.

This post was contributed by Houghton Library Bibliographic Assistant Ryan Wheeler, who cataloged the books and other print materials in the John Updike Archive.

Images, from top:  More Matter, *AC95.Up174M9.1999 (B); Travels of Frank Folly, *AC95.Up174T2.1999; Luncheon menu, *AC95.Up174M9.1999 (B).  Images may not be used without permission of the Houghton Library.

Signature from Emily Dickinson. Note and poems sent to Susan Dickinson, [early 1862] MS Am 1118.5 (B44). Gift, Gilbert H. Montague, 1950.

Houghton Library’s holdings of American poet Emily Dickinson include some 700 autograph poems, including 40 fascicles; some 300 letters; close to 600 books that might have been read by the poet; and furniture and objects, including the writing desk and chair from her bedroom at the Homestead—all material that descended by inheritance from Martha Dickinson Bianchi to Alfred Hampson, from whom it was purchased by Gilbert Montague, Harvard Class of 1901, in 1950, and given to Houghton Library.

The “Dickinson Collection”, however, is not monolithic; it consists of a number of smaller collections, some of which actually predate Montague’s gift to Harvard.  If one goes to OASIS (the Harvard finding aids database) and browses for collections listed under “Dickinson”, one finds 15 separate collections—and then one needs to add in the various Bianchi, Higginson, and other collections.

To facilitate navigation of these many collections, and to offer information on the their history, as well as access, permissions, and other resources, we’ve recently mounted a new “portal” to all things Dickinson at Houghton, available here:  http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/collections/modern/dickinson.cfm

We hope the new site will make the Dickinson collections more easily navigable; we welcome any questions or comments by email, houghton_modern AT harvard DOT edu.

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.

Keats 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 the photograph of Jabès above, the photographer is unknown.

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,*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.

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.”

*2009-181.  Purchased with the P.D. Howe fund.  Houghton Library, Harvard University.  Image may not be reproduced without permission.