This past Wednesday, students from the Yucatec Maya Summer Institute visited Wilson Library to learn about the rich resources of the Stuart Collection in the Rare Book Collection.
Stuart Folio-2 F1435.1.P2 B73 1866 superv'd / Brasseur de Bourbourg, Monuments anciens du Mexique (Paris, 1866)
Sponsored by the UNC-Duke Consortium, the Institute offers beginning, intermediate, and advanced level instruction of modern Yucatec Maya. The RBC’s Stuart Collection, gift of George Stuart (UNC Ph.D. 1975) and Melinda Stuart, supports the study of Maya archaeology, culture, and language, and the extensive Maya-related curriculum of UNC Chapel Hill.
Following the viewing of Stuart rarities, students had the chance to look at artists’ books made by the Taller Leñateros of Chiapas, Mexico – collected for UNC by Teresa Chapa, Librarian for Latin America, Iberia, Latina/o Studies.
The Rare Book Collection is excited about all things Maya in 2012. It looks forward to partnering with UNC colleagues to present “13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012,” October 25-26, a symposium on Maya civilization in recognition of the end of the current great cycle in the Maya Long Count calendar. Noted scholar Víctor Montejo will give the keynote address; there will be open classrooms, poetry readings, exhibitions, and more. Follow our web site for details to come in the next weeks.
Last week, a congenial group gathered for Russian tea (and American coffee) in the Friends of the Library room in Wilson to hear visiting researcher Ekaterina Turta speak about the Russian writer A. M. Remizov.
As Ms. Turta explained, “Remizov was a writer who belonged to the generation of Russian emigrants leaving Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. He lived first in Berlin, then in Paris, where he died in 1957. His works were not published in Russia for a long time and in just the last ten years his personality and creative works have become a subject for Russian scholars. Most of the first editions and other related primary source documents are not available in Russia, but rather in the United States: The André Savine Collection (Rare Book Collection, Wilson Library, UNC Chapel Hill), Remizov Papers (Amherst Center for Russian Culture), The Bakhmeteff Archive (Columbia University Libraries).”
Ms. Turta, who was engaged in postgraduate study at Tyumen State University in Russia, has spent the past year at Chapel Hill as a Fulbright Visiting Student Researcher, exploring the rich modern Russian holdings of the Savine Collection. UNC-Chapel Hill acquired the more than 10,000 volumes of books, serials and newspapers, rare manuscripts, and photographs collected by André Savine (1946-1999) – proprietor of the Parisian bookstore, Le Bibliophile Russe – in 2002, enabled by a generous donation from Van and Kay Weatherspoon of Charlotte, North Carolina.
“The Savine Collection contains the first foreign editions of Remizov’s novels, criticism on them, and other rare materials related to him,” notes Ms. Turta. “The most exciting experience for me was to read the thin Remizov books based on Breton, Polish, and Druid legends, and on Old-Russian novels, all of which came out of the Paris publishing house “Opleshnik” in the 1950s: Круг счастья: легенды о царе Соломоне (Savine PG3470.R4 K84 1957), Повесть о двух зверях: Ихнелат (Savine PG3470.R4 P55 1950), Мелюзина. Брунцвик (Savine PG3470.R4 M45 1952), etc. The first editions of these books are available only at a few libraries throughout the world: Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne, The British Library, National Library of Israel. Here at Wilson Library you can find them all together!”
On display were a number of the works that Ms. Turta consulted. She spoke eloquently to the group about the importance and power of first editions and praised the strong supporting and allied holdings in UNC’s Davis Library and the Rare Book Collection, which made thorough research possible, since her studies concentrate on the problem of translating Remizov, the perception of his works in England and America, and the influence of English Literature on his writings.
BX605 A8 A3 1924 / Remizov is acknowledged for his assistance in the translation of this famous Russian work, published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press
The connections between Remizov and Western modernists, such as the Bloomsbury Circle and James Joyce, prompted much discussion in the question and answer session. Ms. Turta acknowledged how convenient this was to explore at Wilson, given the RBC’s fine holdings of Joyce and early twentieth-century British literature.
In conclusion Ms. Turta reiterated “that it is a great pleasure to have access to such marvelous resources as Davis and Wilson Libraries” and expressed her gratitude to “the wonderful, always-ready-to-help, patient, and enthusiastic librarians who work there. Thank you for providing me with unlimited access to such amazing materials!”
Last weekend was graduation. Students and their families and friends celebrated on campus. And more than a few wandered into Wilson to experience its amazing architecture in the Grand Reading Room, as well as some of the amazing books RBC holds. Among the treasures from UNC alumni on view were the Hanes Book of Hours (Bruges, mid-15th century), bequest of Dr. Frederic Hanes (B.A. 1903); James Joyce’s Ulysses (Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922), gift of Mary M. Patton and James R. Pattton (A.B. 1948); and Washington Irving’s notebooks of his Tour in Scotland, 1817, gift of Preston Davie (L.L.D., 1946), a collateral descendant of UNC founder William Richardson Davie.
The display underscored our wishes for our graduates. May they experience good fortune and beautiful books in their odysseys to come!
The Rare Book Collection is pleased to celebrate Women’s History Month by highlighting two recent acquisitions by notable female authors. It just so happened that last month, we were in the right place at the right time to acquire two exemplary works by women writers. Adding to the serendipity of it all is the fact that the books in question were published within a year of one another, in 1688 and 1689.
PR1213 .P6 1688 / William A. Whitaker Fund
The earlier volume is Jane Barker’s Poetical Recreations: Consisting of Original Poems, Songs, Odes, &c. with Several New Translations (London, 1688). According to Kathryn King’s book Jane Barker, Exile: A Literary Career 1675-1725 (Oxford, 2000): “By any reckoning Jane Barker was a remarkable figure. A devoted Jacobite who followed the Stuarts into exile, a learned spinster who dabbled in commercial medicine, a novelist who wrote one of very few accounts of female same-sex desire in early modern Britain, she was also one of the most important women writers to enter the literary market-place during the Augustan period.” Poetical Recreations is her only volume of verse, and our particular copy of it is an appealing one, complete with the license leaf bearing the woodcut publisher’s device.
PQ7296 .J6 A6 1689 superv’d / Leslie Weil Memorial Fund
Our second acquisition was published the following year in Madrid and is nothing less than the first book of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, widely regarded today as the first published feminist of the New World. A child prodigy who was born in Mexico in the middle of the seventeenth century, Sor Juana has been lauded as the most outstanding writer of the Spanish American colonial period. In the twentieth century, scholars rediscovered her poetry, and she is now taught as part of the Baroque literary canon, including here at UNC Chapel Hill. Indeed, UNC’s Prof. Rosa Perelmuter is the author of two books on Sor Juana: Noche intelectual: la oscuridad idiomática en el Primero sueño (Mexico, 1982), and Los límites de la femineidad en Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: estrategías retóricas y recepción literaria (Pamplona, 2004).
The volume that the Rare Book Collection has purchased is, quite wonderful to say, the first edition of Sor Juana’s first book, Inundación castálida de la única poetisa, musa dézima, Soror Juana Inés de la Cruz, religiosa professa en el Monasterio de San Gerónimo de la Imperial Ciudad de México (Madrid, 1689). This rare edition is truly a touchstone for those studying Spanish and New World literature, and we look forward to sharing it with students and scholars.
Both Inundación castálida and Barker’s Poetical Recreations build upon RBC’s strong holdings of women writers and give witness to the enormous literary contributions of women over the centuries.
We’ve been hibernating for a few weeks, but now it truly is Spring – and time to reappear! Indeed, Chapel Hill is covered in a dusting of yellow pollen. And at the Rare Book Collection, we’ve turned to our shelves of James Thomson’s Seasons. We have shelves and shelves of editions, so enormously popular was the poetical work on nature’s cyclical changes. Our excerpt of the first lines of the poem Spring comes from the first separate edition of 1728. The complete work with poems for all four seasons was published in its first version in 1730.
February has one extra day this year, and that gives us the chance to do one last post for Black History Month. While Christina Moody’s Tiny Spark is a favorite recent purchase, this inscribed copy of Claude McKay’s A Long Way From Home is a treasured gift to the Rare Book Collection from Mr. Theodore Jones.
The volume is the autobiography of the Jamaica-born writer McKay in the first edition, published in New York in 1937. Its original cloth cover with foil label is quite worn, but open up, and there’s a surprise, a wonderful page of inscriptions, one from the author to Naomi Davis, the alias of Frances Daniels.
PS3525.A24785 Z46 1937
Daniels, Mr. Jones’s mother, was a young African-American or – shall we say – “Aframerican” woman, involved in the literary and political world of 1930s Harlem. Mr. Jones tells us that she was associated with the People’s Bookstore and the Leftist periodical The Liberator, traveling on assignment to the Soviet Union.
Unknown is the identity of Henry, who wrote the first inscription on the book’s front free endpaper, from March 3, 1937: “To Frances, This taken of admiration and affection.” Author McKay adds the second and final inscription, addressing Ms. Daniels by her other name: “And now from the Author for this deliciously sweet Aframerican friend Naomi Davis by Claude McKay.”
McKay employed the adjective Aframerican, now fallen into disuse, extensively in his writings and in the title of his 1940s novel, Harlem Glory: A Fragment of Aframerican Life, published posthumously in 1990. The elision in the word perhaps pleased the ear of the accomplished poet McKay.
The RBC copy of A Long Way From Home certainly proves that inscribed books have more than sentimental value. Its front endpaper transports us to a particular historic and linguistic moment at the end of the Harlem Renaissance, as only material culture can. Here’s to the association copy as documentary evidence for Black History.
In recognition of Black History Month, we highlight one of our favorite RBC purchases of 2010-2011, Christina Moody’s Tiny Spark. Imagine a sixteen-year old African-American girl publishing a book of poetry in 1910: some of it in dialect, some of it provocatively proud of her race, grappling with serious issues – like how a Negro can pledge allegiance to the American flag – as well as the problems of “Chillun and Men.”
The actual book is rare, with only five copies listed in WorldCat. However, you may read her words on the Internet Archive, where the Library of Congress’s copy has been digitized. But know that you can’t see the earnest young poet there, because the LC copy lacks the frontispiece author portrait, which our copy preserves.
Indeed, it goes without saying for those of us who love books, seeing it on the web just isn’t the same. In particular, one doesn’t have the same awareness that the book *is* tiny, the size of one’s hand. Tiny, but electrifying, when you open up and see Christina, and read her verse.
This February 2012, we celebrate the great tradition of African-American poetry and RBC’s fine holdings of it with Christina Moody’s Tiny Spark.
Libraries often appear to be lonely-hearts clubs. Look around one most any day, not just Valentine’s Day. The act of silent reading is a solitary one. Sometimes, it can seem a bit sad.
But there can be love in libraries – hidden between two covers. The Rare Book Collection is noted for its strong holdings of English poetry, including love poetry. And we continue to add volumes, like this one, with amorous poetry from all periods, published in 1849 and purchased by RBC in 2011.
Looking for love in all the wrong places? The right place is Wilson Library and its Rare Book Collection. Happy Valentine’s Day!
February 7, 2012, is truly a hallowed date for the history of English literature, marking as it does, the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great writer Charles Dickens. We could not forget, because the RBC includes a wonderful Dickens collection, begun by donor William A. Whitaker (UNC A.B. 1904), as well as strong holdings of the graphic work of George Cruikshank, one of the most important illustrators of Dickens.
For our post, however, we choose not a picture but – quite aptly, we believe – an image of the opening chapter of David Copperfield, “I Am Born.”
Indeed, today we celebrate Dickens as the hero of his own life!
Why collect more than one copy of a book? Books have histories: How were they made? Who owned them? How were they used or read, and by whom?
The RBC holds two copies of the first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass,published in 1855, and many other versions of the poem published in later editions. The first edition is one of the most sought-after American books of the 19th century. One might expect to find two identical books with identical texts in the RBC copies. But this isn’t so.
The unopened books have evident differences. One has been “rebacked,” with a new leather spine added to the original cloth-covered boards. Both books, however, are in what is known as “binding B,” with only the title appearing on the cover in gilt. (In “binding A” the ruling on the cover also appears in gilt, as does the title on the back of the book, and the edges of the pages are also gilt.) Both books contain the yellow endpapers typical of “binding B.”
Spine view of "rebacked" 1855 Leaves of Grass (Call #: Rare Book Collection Folio PS3201 1855b)
But even though both fit the description of “binding B,” there are slight but noticeable differences. The “blind” stamping—that is the decorative impressions made on the covers—appear in slightly different places and upon very close inspection, one notices that they were made by placing the decorative pieces in different places.
Front cover view of "1855a" (Call #: Rare Book Collection Folio PS3201 1855a)
Whitman bibliographer Joel Myerson (1993) describes the ornamentation of the front cover of “binding B” as “blindstamped triple-rule frame surrounding five blindstamped leaf-and-vine designs at top and bottom (the tip of the center ornament at the top has two leaves going to the left and one to the right, that of the center ornament at the bottom has two leaves going to the right and one to the left).” This accurately describes one of RBC’s copies (above). But in our second copy (below), the top center ornament has two leaves going to the right instead of the left, and the center ornament at the bottom has two leaves going to the left and one to the right.
Front cover view of "1855b"(Call #: Rare Book Collection Folio PS3201 1855b)
Whitman did not have all copies of Leaves of Grass bound when the book was printed in July of 1855 because of expense. Existing records show that the 1855 edition was bound on no less than four occasions and by at least two binders: first by Charles Jenkin’s Brooklyn firm, who later subcontracted the bulk of the binding to the firm of Davies & Hands. An invoice shows that in December of 1855, Davies & Hands printed 169 of the books in “binding B,” and 93 more in January 1856.
The differences between RBC’s two bindings may well indicate these two different dates when decorative metal ornaments and the ruled lines that contain them may have been set up a second time upon the press used to emboss the covers.
Which goes to show that you can perhaps judge the history of a book (or a part of its history) by its covers.
The Rare Book Collection is excited about all things Maya in 2012. It looks forward to partnering with UNC colleagues to present “13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012,” October 25-26, a symposium on Maya civilization in recognition of the end of the current great cycle in the Maya Long Count calendar. Noted scholar Víctor Montejo will give the keynote address; there will be open classrooms, poetry readings, exhibitions, and more. Follow our web site for details to come in the next weeks.
