Rare Book Room Research Articles

The Frances Hooper Collection of Virginia Woolf Books and Manuscripts

This article discusses the correspondence between Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey from the Frances Hooper Collection of Virginia Woolf Books and Manuscripts, housed in the Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College. Some of the quotations in this article are published for the first time. Physical and intellectual content of the letters are reviewed, highlighted by the lives of VirginiaWoolf and Lytton Strachey. Biographical information about the collector Frances Hooper is included as well as a list of her collection.

The Rare Book Room:

The rare books and special collections found in the typical rare book room can be an excellent source of materials for research in popular culture. A sample profile of some of the special collections in one large university library is presented to illustrate the possibilities.

Black Laughter

Under two centuries of contempt and neglect lies a rich deposit of eighteenthand nineteenth-century Jamaican literature. Much of it is an expression of folk culture and is therefore to be assessed quite separately from written material otherwise encountered. All of it survives through the agency of European literary conventions, and some is almost purely in this tradition. In other cases there is a fragile English framework for the expression of a Black creole consciousness, and the whole structure is steeped through and through in the Jamaican oral tradition. This period of Jamaican literature is largely unknown because of its inaccessibility. Isolated and often crumbling copies of novels, journals, and accounts of domestic manners by White writers are to be found in specialized collections and rare-book rooms rather than in general libraries and bookstores; but the work of collection is underway and a representative selection of this literature will shortly be available.' For this article, it is enough to say that among and often within full-length publications by White writers are songs, tales, anecdotes, and letters by Jamaican Blacks. Much of what survives in the form of Annancy tales, for example, has its own structural integrity, but a great deal else is buried in the midst of a European medium so that a certain dualism exists in literary structure and content. These literary survivals are in part the heritage of eighteenth-century English literature, which reflects a rising interest in folklore and ethnography, a trend that gathers momentum in the nineteenth century and materializes in romantic

Jefferson's Music Library, His Catalogue of 1783, and A Revision of Lowens's Haydn in America

Jefferson's Music Library, His Catalogue of 1783, and A Revision of Lowens’s Haydn in America R o NA L D R. KIDD It is by now well known that among Thomas Jefferson’s bewildering assortment of talents, music also takes its place. While still a student in Williamsburg, he gained access to the highest rank of society. This access was due in part to his competence as an amateur violinist, capable of tak­ ing his place in informal chamber music. Music was always an important part of life at Monticello, first during his brief marriage and later with the Randolphs, his daughter’s family. His carefully maintained account books inform us that he attended the theater and concerts whenever they were accessible to him in Williamsburg, Philadelphia, London, and Paris.1 Several articles on the subject of Jefferson and music have appeared in popular periodicals over the years, and there also exist single chapters within broader studies.2 Only one book-length study has been published—that of Helen Cripe in 1974.3 The contribution of that study lies in the compilation of references to various musical matters scattered throughout the family correspondence and other documents. Numerous questions, however, remain unanswered. One area that has not received much attention is that of Jefferson as collector and bibliographer of music. This lack is unfortunate, because Jefferson’s music library is undoubtedly the best documented private col­ lection from that period of American life. On this basis alone Jefferson’s music library merits a more thorough investigation than it has yet received. The subject of “Jefferson and music bibliography” may be regarded as an extension of Jefferson’s activities in the world of books and documents, 319 320 / KIDD an area which has attracted much attention. In this field, the most weighty study is the recently reissued, five-volume descriptive catalogue of Sowerby ,4 which focuses on the second of Jefferson’s four collections, the one sold to Congress in 1815. In addition to a catalogue of this collection print­ ed for Congress, Sowerby’s main guide was the manuscript catalogue made by Jefferson himself and completed in its earliest state by 1783.5 (Despite subsequent expansion it is generally referred to as the 1783 catalogue.) Sowerby did not have access to Jefferson’s enlarged catalogue of 1812, only recently recovered in a fair copy.6 Sowerby’s investigation encompassed the chapter of the catalogue of 1783 which lists “music theory” books, as most of these were included in the sale to Congress and, in fact, are still preserved in the Rare Book Room. The ensuing chapters of musical scores she skipped over altogether, as these were not sold to Congress. These chapters then have never been subjected to the careful scrutiny and analysis which Sowerby brought to the rest of Jefferson’s library. So far as we know the 1783 catalogue re­ mained Jefferson’s guide to his musical scores and was not replaced (as in all other subjects) by any later catalogue. It must therefore serve also as our chief reference in interpreting Jefferson’s library of music. In the original state of the 1783 catalogue these musical scores, includ­ ing both owned items and desiderata, were laid out on four successive verso pages, three of which were quite full. Two pages were reserved for vocal works, two for instrumental. Items which were already in the library received a check mark; desiderata did not. With the exception of the penul­ timate opening, the music chapters of the catalogue are quite orderly, as they were not subjected to the extensive additions and emendations charac­ teristic under other subject headings, such as law and agriculture. [Illus­ tration I shows in skeletal outline the contents of the several openings of the music chapters, including that for music theory. In the original state of the catalogue, items would have appeared on the verso pages only.] The catalogue of musical scores documents possession — not in 1783, but at a later date—of roughly 130 printed collections, in addition to loose collections of sheet music, manuscript copies, and desiderata. Each col­ lection would contain many songs, or, in the case of instrumental music, three...

Roving Across Fields: A Conversation and Uncollected Poems, 1942–1982 by William Stafford, and: Smoke’s Way: Poems from Limited Editions 1968–1981 by William Stafford

Reviews 319 The nineteen essays by prominent authors, scholars, and critics are divided into six categories: The Old Guard, an assessment of the Dobie/ Webb/Bedichek triumvirate;The Old Order, an investigation of the Southern heritage; The Vanishing Frontier; The Texas-Mexican Perspective; The Texas Mystique; and The Sixties and Beyond. Although Larry McMurtry’s name is a leitmotif throughout the volume, a transcript of the panel in which he participated is not included. The book does not suffer from the omission. A related publication is William II. Goetzmann, Texas Images and Visions (Austin: Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery of the University of Texas, 1983), the catalog of “a notable exhibit of paintings and sketches, by the famous and the obscure, that attempt to portray Texas in the visual arts” (p. 7). This exhibit was on display during the conference. SYLVIA ANN GRIDER Texas A&M University Roving Across Fields: A Conversation and Uncollected Poems, 1942-1982. By William Stafford. (Daleville, Indiana: The Barnwood Press, 1983. 51 pages, $6.95 paperback.) Smoke’s Way: Poems from Limited Editions 1968-1981. By William Stafford. (Port Townsend, Washington: Graywolf, 1983. 112 pages, $6.00 paperback.) Anyone who has a shelf of little magazines could probably find enough uncollected poems by William Stafford to fill a chapbook. The books from Harper & Row, his major publisher, represent him without really collecting him : there are poems in the magazines and in pamphlets and chapbooks that we wouldn’t want to do without. Keats suggested that poetry should come as easily as leaves to a tree, and this is the case with Stafford. Two recent books have gathered some of the leaves. Roving Across Fields is a beautifully produced book. Thom Tammaro has assembled nineteen fugitive poems from the last forty years and prefaced them with an interview with Stafford that he recorded in 1976. The interview is not one of Stafford’s best, though it has some good observations. The poems are not among the best either, but as Tammaro points out, it is interesting to see that Stafford’s vision and tone have remained consistent over forty years. The first poem, dated 1942, is a fable about “The Country of Thin Moun­ tains.” The people in that country have only false mountains painted on cardboard, and they don’t care, being caught up in profit and self-importance. But one of their mountains is real, a joke on them that the poet shares with us. This little story could come right out of Someday, Maybe. It makes its point in a way typical of Stafford’s voice: not insistent, but persistent. A more substantial collection is gathered in another beautiful book, Smoke’s Way. There are more poems, and some preliminary sorting has been 320 Western American Literature done by the poet, since the contents first appeared in fourteen limited editions — and not everything in those has been reprinted. Stafford has provided helpful section titles and the poems are in chronological order. Hence this is a book rather than a miscellany. I am glad to have so many elusive booklets brought together. I remember copying out In the Clock of Reason for myself in a Rare Book Room, and ordering a copy of Braided Apart (an interesting book in collaboration with his son, Kim) from a small press distributor in New Mexico. There are no surprises in the collection — we are in Stafford’s familiar world of rain, wind, cold and sunlight — but there are plenty of happy dis­ coveries. It is a world the poet is definitely not alienated from; it sustains him, breath by breath. The chief sacrament in Stafford’s religion is the simple act of breathing: count the poems in which that act is crucial. Dark things happen, but they can be accepted with a certain grace. Stafford learns patience not from Bruce’s spider but from something equally common. Here is the conclusion of “Smoke” : I saw Smoke, slow traveler, reluctant but sure. Hesitant sometimes, yes, because that’s the way things are. Smoke never doubts, though: some move will appear. Wherever you are, there is another door. Smoke may join wind, rain and light as one of Stafford’s key symbols...

A Treatise on the Blood: Inflammation and Gunshot Wounds

This is the kind of book one can occasionally examine only under the watchful eye of a jealous librarian in the rare-book room of a prestigious library. A gorgeous leather-bound, gold-embossed facsimile of Hunter's first edition, it is the first book in the surgical series of the Classics in Medicine. The format of the contemplated 58 future surgical classics is similar to that of other book clubs. It is difficult to interest students or busy practitioners in surgical history. Most are fighting to hold their own against the flood of current literature, and though they sense the value of understanding our professional heritage, it is just too much bother to hunt up copies of classics and browbeat a librarian into permitting a few minutes' reading time. Scholarly historians and senior professors inadvertently make the matter worse by deifying the author. John Hunter is a case in point, both in England

Sir Edward Dering's Milton

Between May 1630, when he posted an original of the Magna Carta to Sir Robert Cotton (I have closed King John in a box and sent him away),1 and February 1642, when he lost his seat in the Long Parliament and thereafter his fortune by committing to print his own book of speeches, Sir Edward Dering, Bart., 15991644, amassed a great collection of books, manuscripts, and legal documents. This collection has been dispersed.2 A hint of its original value remains in the Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.b. 297, a catalog of Dering's books compiled circa 1635-1642, which consists of eighteen leaves, not in order, listing hundreds of volumes, most of them on religious subjects. This manuscript, autograph in part, gives the date, place of publication, cost, location by classis and volume number, and, usually, the size of each volume. Dering and his scribe were conservative catalogers, generally including only information that could be obtained by perusing the item. I should like to concentrate on an exception to this policy. On folio 17v, call number 49.21 (i.e., vol. 21 in classis 49) refers to fourteen quarto pamphlets bound together, for which Dering paid seven shillings. The first item in this volume, whose contents Dering's scribe has entered in the catalog, is De emendatione Ecclesiae [libellus], by Petrus de Aliaco, Cardinaliso Cameracensis [Valentin Curio, Basle, 1525], undated in the catalog. The last title in the volume, an edition of Abraham Ortell's Deorum dearumque capita e veteribus numismatibus, dated Antwerp, 1612, is the only nontheological item, except insofar as it provides accounts of divinities represented on coins. Twelve of the pamphlets deal with current affairs in the church of Archbishop Laud, whom Dering vigorously opposed. The place and date of publication of eleven of these, including Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnnuus, are correctly given as London, 1641. The remaining item, the seventh pamphlet in the volume, is identified as Milton: the plott discovered. London 1640. Mrs. Laetitia Yeandle, Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger, first showed me this item; and the Columbia edition of works, which lists The Plot Discovered among the prose works erroneously ascribed to Milton, led me to a letter in the London TLS, dated October 24, 1936, and headed Milton's Library.3 In this letter, Mr. Kenneth W. Cameron announced his discovery of eleven tracts bound in one volume in the rare book room of the General Theological Seminary, Chelsea Square, New York City. Claiming to have found an unrecorded Milton

The Beatrix Potter Collection

The Beatrix Potter Collection Priscilla A. Ord Tucked away carefully in the Rare Book Room of the Free Library of Philadelphia is the largest collection of original Beatrix Potter drawings in the United States. The greater portion of this enviable holding is the result of two separate and generous bequests. The first, the gift of Mr. H. Bacon Collamore, includes a complete set of first edition copies of all of Miss Potter's printed books and a nearly complete set of first editions of those volumes which have been printed in America, along with numerous pencil and water color sketches of rural scenes, animals, and fungi. The original manuscript of Little Pig Robinson and a notebook containing the Tailor of Gloucester in manuscript form with preliminary drawing are also a part of this gift. The second important part of the Beatrix Potter Collection is a number of autographed letters, some of which are illustrated, and several early examples of Miss Potter's Christmas cards and post cards. These were donated to the library by Mrs. Richard K. Stevens. A set of porcelain figurines depicting Beatrix Pottei creatures, Peter Rabbit among them, was a gift of the Royal Dalton Company who manufactures them. This nucleus of Beatrix Potter treasures is supplemented by magazine articles on Miss Potter and her works; authorized and unauthorized reprints of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and other tales, some with illustrations by other artists; continuations by other authors of a few of Miss Potter's stories, Peter Rabbit and His Pa for example; and other memorabilia featuring her creations, including wrapping paper, puzzles, portraits, coloring books, and so forth. Due to the value of the Beatrix Potter Collection, it is preserved for the purpose of scholarly research and is not available to the general public. A portion of the works, however, was on loan during 1977, as part of an exhibit entitled Peter Rabbit and Other Tales: Art from the World of Beatrix Potter. The exhibit appeared in three cities: New York (Grey Art Gallery, New York University), 4/1-5/14; Toronto (Toronto Public Library), 6/17-7/9; and Boston (Museum of Fine Arts), 8/16-10/16. [End Page 11] Click for larger view View full resolution Copyright © 1978 ChLA Newsletter

Music in the Rosenbloom Collection of Hunt Library at Carnegie-Mellon University

In 1974 Carnegie-Mellon University acquired a priceless collection of rare books from the estate of Charles J. Rosenbloom, a Pittsburgh philanthropist who had served on the university's board of trustees from 1940 until 1973, the year of his death. He established the C. J. Rosenbloom Fine Arts Fund of some $30,000, served as chairman of the Music Department Visiting Committee, and was a member of the Hunt Library Visiting Committee. He was also a former vice-president of the Pittsburgh Symphony Society and a prominent financial supporter of the symphony. Rosenbloom was the owner of one of the nation's most significant private art print collections; he assembled as well a large collection of invaluable rare books, including many first editions. Over the years he had donated more than 100 volumes to the university, including several first editions and special editions. Among these were original editions of two Beethoven sonatas, Opus 47 (1804) and Opus 96 (1816, see Appendix). Upon his death Rosenbloom willed the remainder of his collection to various institutions, principally to Yale,' where he had graduated in 1920 and where he was an honorary life trustee of the Yale Library Associates, and to Carnegie-Mellon. His bequest to Carnegie-Mellon totaled 300 volumes, nearly all first and special editions. Among the most notable items now housed in the Rare Book Room of the Hunt Library are: the first four folio editions (1623-1685) of Shakespeare's plays; a 1518 copy of the first complete Bible printed and published in Greek; James Boswell's 1791 presentation copy of his Life of Samuel

A Sailor's Discharge and the Consuls of A. D. 209

T HE IMPORTANCE OF THIS TEXT is the establishment of the names of one of the consuls of the year 209 as Aurellius Commodus Pompeianus (a grandson of Marcus Aurelius). Acquired by purchase from a dealer in 1972, the text is now housed in the Rare Book Room of Perkins Library at Duke University. Originally 18.5 cm. high and 14.5 cm. wide and ranging in thickness from 1.5 to 2.5 mm., the bronze tablet is now missing its lower left-hand corner. There is one large fragment and a smaller fragment which joins at the left in the middle of the plaque. Both outer and inner surfaces have suffered damage. As is generally true by this date the outer surface is more carefully inscribed and is much more easily read. Unfortunately at a crucial point in line 23 the surface is badly rubbed and unreadable. Likewise it is now not possible to recover the name of the sailor whose diploma this was. Over much of the outer surface a good deal of encrustation makes reading the text difficult. I have used a number of photographs taken in various degrees of raking light and have used a binocular microscope equipped with low power (3.5X magnification) lens illuminated by raking light. I report below all that I can see. One is helped most, of course, by parallels; the text of diplomata militaria was conservatively maintained over the centuries, and the wording of this text is similar to that of other discharges from the fleet.

The Armstrong Lecture. Physicians, patients, and decisions.

One of the rewards for being selected for the George Armstrong lectureship is that you find yourself compelled to rush to the rare book room of a nearby library to read about George Armstrong. Until now I had only heard of him. It was great fun to make his acquaintance more directly when I found a charming leather-bound copy of the second edition of his work, On the Diseases Most Incident to Children , published in 1772. For those of you who do not know, I will just mention briefly that George Armstrong opened the first pediatric outpatient department (OPD) in London in the 18th century. Like all OPD directors he worked very hard, was insufficiently appreciated, and had insufficient funds. His ultimate fate, fortunately not shared by many of his successors, was to land in jail for his debts. Some of his ideas were not only very advanced for his

LINNAEUS'S BIBLIOTHECA BOTANICA

TAXONVolume 19, Issue 3 p. 363-411 Taxonomic Literature LINNAEUS'S BIBLIOTHECA BOTANICA John L. Heller, John L. Heller Department of the Classics, University of Illinois, Urbana, Ill., U.S.A.Search for more papers by this author John L. Heller, John L. Heller Department of the Classics, University of Illinois, Urbana, Ill., U.S.A.Search for more papers by this author First published: June 1970 https://doi.org/10.2307/1219065 The author expresses his warm thanks to Dr. Marian Harman and staff in the Rare Book Room of the University of Illinois Library, to Dr. G. H. M. Lawrence and staff of the Hunt Botanical Library at Carnegie-Mellon University, to Mr. Th. O'Grady and staff at The Linnean Society of London, and to Dr. F. A. Stafleu of this journal — all for their kindness in letting me use books or photocopies of books in their keeping — and especially to the Council of The Linnean Society of London for allowing me to quote from ms. notations made by Linnaeus in his copies of the Bibliotheca Botanica and Philosophia Botanica, now in the Library of The Linnean Society. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume19, Issue3June 1970Pages 363-411 RelatedInformation

Expenses for Ben Jonson's The Masque of Beauty

EXPENSES FOR BEN JONSON'S THE MASQUE OF BEAUTY Thomas W. Ross Thomas W. Ross (B.A., M.A., Colorado College; Ph.D., University of Michigan) is chairman of the English department at Colorado College. Mr. Ross served as NATO Visiting Professor at the University of Regensburg, Germany in 1969 and has edited Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy for the Fountainwett Drama Texts Series. Anne of Denmark, James I's queen, loved spectacle and ostentation. She was Ben Jonson's patroness for several of his masques, including The Masque of Beauty, which was presented in the new Banqueting House at Whitehall on 10 January 1608.1 We have always known that these works, performed for and by royalty, were cosdy entertainments. An official record of accounts, here reproduced for the first time, provides detailed evidence of just how outrageously expensive was a show like The Masque of Beauty.2 On 27 December 1607 the Venetian ambassador Giustiziani reported that the Queen was preparing a masque "at her own charges."3 Anne was notoriously and dangerously pro-Catholic and pro-Spain, and she used even this performance to make public her preferences. Ladies from the foremost English Catholic families were persuaded to appear.* The French ambassador was snubbed, the Spanish ambassador was invited, and thus Anne had her petulant and pernicious way. The Court of James was shot through witii religious fanaticism and 1BeI* Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson (Oxford, 19251941 ), VII, 193. Subsequent references are to this edition (cited as H&S). 2TlIe document, a folio leaf with the Queen's signature at the bottom, is in the collection of royal autographs owned by Professor Mark Lansburgh of the Art Department and Curator of the Rare Book Room, Colorado College. It was obtained from a private dealer in 1964. Written in a clear secretary hand, it is in perfect condition except for a small stain in the lower right which obliterates a few letters and figures. However, the letters can be dependably conjectured, and are supplied in brackets, since they are a part of the accountants formulas. And the amounts of money can be safely guessed by casting Lord Knyvet's sums and making up the differences. The standard works on Jonson and the masque make no mention of the accounts recorded in this document, although H&S, X, 457 ff., reproduce entries from other official papers which include expenses (also very large) for the furnishing of the new Banqueting House. Entries from the document are reproduced faithfully, though abbreviations are silently expanded and the Roman numerals for the sums are translated into Arabic. I should like to express my gratitude to Professor Lansburgh for permission to publish the new data, and to my students Jack Berryhül, Janis Rosenthal, and James Schwanke for their help in preparing this paper. SH&S,X,455., „ *H&S, X, 458. In addition to the Queen, the participants included Lady Arabella Stuart (James's cousin); the Countess of Arundel, Derby, Bedford, and Montgomery; and Ladies Guildford, Peter, Winter, Windsor, Clifford, Nevill, Hatton, Gerard, Chichester and Walsingham. The List of Masquers and Tilters (H&S, X, 440 ff.) provides biographical information about all these amateur actresses. 170RMMLA BulletinDecember 1969 homosexuality. The trauma of the Gunpowder Plot, with its aftermath of restrictive statutes against the Catholics, did not prevent Anne (a fairly recent convert) from flaunting her papistic sympathies. On occasion, James himself was publicly tolerant, hoping for an eventual reunion with the Roman Church.5 Furthermore, he had recendy acquired a new minion, Robert Carr, who was married to a member of the Howard family, the most influential Catholics in the realm, and the Queen was learning "to acquiesce in her husband's ineradicable homosexuality."6 To make Anne's bad taste even more obvious, everybody knew that Jonson and Inigo Jones, who created the designs for the masque, were botii Catholics too.7 It is unlikely, therefore, that James was much concerned with a troupe of overdressed females who were to dance an accompaniment to Jonson's allegorical verse. The masque, with its ponderous neo-Platonic symbolism, was unexceptionably moral. But Anne used it to flatter the Catholic faction. "The King did not deny her what she wanted; the expenditure of the...

The Maclure Collection of French Revolutionary Materials: A New Research Tool for the French Revolution

The Maclure Collection of French Revolutionary Materials, which was announced by the University of Pennsylvania Press almost two years ago, finally is in print. This work should help to stimulate research on the French Revolution in the United States, and should serve libraries as a checklist for their own holdings. The Maclure Collection is an especially interesting one in that it was formed during the French Revolution itself, and was acquired shortly after 1815 by William S. Maclure. Maclure is famous as our country's first scientific geologist; he also is known as Robert Owen's associate in founding New Harmony, Indiana. His strikingly radical political and religious views led him to take a great interest in the French Revolution. This huge collection of some 16,000 pamphlets plus 653 volumes of periodicals and serials was bestowed first on the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and then on the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. For over 130 years the collection gathered dust on the shelves of these institutions, virtually unknown, and-with a few notable exceptions was practically unused. In 1949 it was acquired by the University of Pennsylvania. It now occupies one entire tier in the Rare Book Room of the Van Pelt Library. Some time before 1821 the pamphlets were organized substantially in their present arrangement by some unknown librarian or archivist to whom we owe a great debt, since the bound volumes containing these pamphlets are for the most part topical. French Revolutionary materials in libraries usually are arranged alphabetically by author, or chronologically, or simply according to the order in which the item

Notes, Documents, and Critical Comment

As Early as 1860 Matthew Arnold began to record in his unpublished diaries (Rare Book Room, Yale University) his income from writing. The financial entries are brief; for the most part, they include the source of the money, the amount received, and the date, but not the titles of the contributions for which the money was paid. These accounts have been helpful in suggesting the identity of a large number of anonymous and pseudonymous articles contributed by Arnold to the Pall Mall Gazette; they have, however, been scarcely used for identifying his contributions to other periodicals.

Stephanus Hugoneti and his ‘Apparatus' on the Clementines

The Rare Book Room of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries has recently acquired an early fourteenth-century manuscript (Lat. 95) of a hitherto unknown Apparatus on the Clementines. The author is Stephanus Hugoneti (from southern France, possibly Narbonne), whose work as a canonist has gone unknown, and whose ultimate though brief emergence from historical obscurity as bishop of Bologna has hardly been noticed.

Organization and Service

I N SPEAKING on the problem of . the organization of a university rare book room I am tempted to take as my text a statement I find in Andre Gide's Pages de Journal: "As soon as I do not differ, I keep silence." This is not to emphasize differences for the sake of differing, but is a recognition of the fact that there is little point to rehearsing those things upon which we all agree. The questions on which I am to speak are closely related to the basic precepts discussed by Mr. Wyllie and Mr. Powell. Obviously the objectives of the organization of a rare book collection are but the activation of the philosophy and the purposes of such a collection. My own "philosophy" of the rare book collection embodies in part an element of regret. I find it unfortunate that such a setup is necessary. The rare book collection places, in many ways, a false emphasis upon certain types of material, and distorts the general purposes of a university library when more or less arbitrarily chosen classes of books must be segregated for special treatment among traditionally lush surroundings. Would it not be better for all concerned if it were not necessary to have rare book collections at all? But the day when, they will not be called for is not yet with us. It will require, progressively through the ranks of the library ladder, stack boys who respect books as physical objects, catalogers who can discriminate between the relative importance of cataloging details,· reference assistants who see books as more than answers to readers' questions, and even library administrators who have the courage to make qualitative rather than quantitative comparisons. I do not mean to imply, however, that the entire university library should be run like a rare book collection. But only by setting up a rare book collection have we so far found the means of facing the problems· created by the need for the special treatplent of rare books in the face of the leviathan which the great university library has become. The very bulk of a sizeable research library loosens and demoralizes its standards, and to offset this the university librarian has happily recognized-or been shamed into recognizing-his responsibility to certain types of books, namely, those books, "those treasures whose emotional and intellectual values are so high that they are difficult to compute," to use one definition of the phrase "rare books." The establishing of techniques which minimize the personal element is apparently essential to the function~_ng of a huge institution, but the elimination of such personal elements, as far as a rare book collection is concerned, is a loss rather than an advantage. In the rare book collection a knowledge of techniques is far less significant than individual intelligence, and it is to preserve such factors that my own organization is designed. This is rather hard on the person concerned with supplying candidates for my staff positions, who finds it difficult to accept my insistence that I am more interested in intellectual potentialities

Texas Adopts the Brontës

Abstract It is by many an odd and surprising turn of events that the University of Texas celebrates simultaneously the Centennial of Texas' Statehood and the one hundredth anniversary of the Bronte sisters' first book. While the lower corridors of the Library Building display documents pertaining to the metamorphosis of the sovereign Republic of Texas into the twenty-eighth state of the American Union, Rare Book Rooms show Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, surrounded by manuscripts of its authors in microscopic hand-printing, telling the fascinating story of an imaginary world in which the Bronte genius was shaped and developed. These Bronte manuscripts are by all odds favourites among the thousands of rarities shown in the Rare Book cases from time to time.

Rare Book Rooms in Libraries

Previous articleNext article No AccessRare Book Rooms in LibrariesWilliam Warner BishopWilliam Warner Bishop Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Library Quarterly Volume 12, Number 3Jul., 1942 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/615212 Views: 2Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Patriotism in carmine: 162 years of July 4th oratory

AMONG the noteworthy collections of Americana housed in the archives of the Rare Book Room of the Library of Congress, certainly one of the most unique is that of the Independence Day orations. This special collection contains hundreds of different orations from 1777 down until the present time, and it has been built up over a period of many years. And quite fittingly, so far as this collection is concerned, the Rare Book Room itself is designed as a replica of the hall in which the Declaration of Independence was drawn up. An examination of a representative number of typical orations indicates definite trends in a division of American forensics with a history and tradition all its own. Since the Nation's birthday presumably calls forth the country's finest in education and eloquence, a perusal of this collection unfolds to the student of public speaking the historic evolution of the highest form of American oratory, as well as changing concepts of patriotism. During the early years of precarious existence of the Republic the patriotic fervor mirrored in these orations was pitched at a high plane. A large number of them, as might be expected, wound up on the same old tremolo note on the arbitrary nature of George III, while in all of them is a strong admixture of religious allusions. earliest oration in this collection was delivered by the Rev. William Gordon, before the general court at Roxbury, Massachusetts, on Friday, July 4, 1777. It bore the peculiar title: The Separation of the Jewish Tribes, after the Death of Solomon, Accounted for, and Applied to the Present Day. purpose' of the speaker was to show how George III, like the ancient Rehoboam, had split an empire by tyranny. He appealed to his audience in closing: