Rare Books and Manuscripts Library

Highlighting our collections and the work that we do

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467 Years Old and Still Kicking: Cervantes at Ohio State

Don Quixote in battle

September 29th marks the birthday of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1547.  Author of Don Quixote, Cervantes is often credited as being the first novelist in the western literary tradition, the novel being considered as a separate literary genre from chivalric romances that Don Quixote satirizes.

The Cervantes holdings in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library are among the richest of our collections, beginning with the 1605 first edition and other editions of Don Quixote through the ages up to Edith Grossman’s 21st century translation in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of that monumental work.  I append John M. Bennett’s introduction to the Cervantes finding aid, which can be fully accessed at  http://library.osu.edu/finding-aids/rarebooks/cervantes.php:

a later engraving The Talfourd P. Linn Cervantes Collection is a significant gathering of Cervantes Materials, especially strong in the areas of early editions of Don Quixote in Spanish, fine and illustrated editions, translations into English and French, and translations into numerous other languages. It also includes other valuable materials, such as early and important editions of Cervantes’ other works, including Las Novelas Ejemplares and Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, adaptations, criticism, illustrations, and works by other authors inspired by Cervantes. As of the end of 2001, the collection consisted of more than 425 titles.

The core of the collection is a 1965 gift from the family of Talfourd P. Linn, a noted attorney from Zanesville and Columbus, who collected Cervantes materials throughout his life. His collection consisted of 114 titles, and includes some of the most important pieces in the collection, such as the 1605 first edition of Don Quixote, and the 1614 first edition of Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda’s “falso Quijote.”

Shortly afterwards, the library acquired the Cervantes collection of Oscar B. Cintas, a Cuban industrialist and ambassador to the United States. This consisted of some 171 titles, and enormously enriched the collection as a whole.

The collection has also grown due to the efforts of the librarians and staff of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, who have acquired numerous titles over the years and continue to do so. Today the Talfourd P. Linn Cervantes Collection must be regarded as one of the best in its field, and as a major resource for research not only into Cervantes, but into the fields of book publishing, bindings, translations, and the illustrated book.

In this guide, entries are arranged chronologically by publication date, except in the Adaptations and Other Literary Works, and Illustrations sections.

Further bibliographic details on the titles in the original Linn gift may be found in A Catalogue of the Talfourd P. Linn Collection of Cervantes Materials, 1963, Z8158 L5.

John M. Bennett, PhD
November 2001

Sancho Panza celebrates the birthday!

Happy Birthday, Man Ray!

ManRay-CD-plate4-120w
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) was born in Philadelphia on this date,  August 27, in the year 1890.

The Ohio State University owns copy number 3 of a limited edition portfolio of Man Ray’s prints, Champs délicieux: album de photographies (1922).  This was a 1969 gift of David Howald Shawn, in memory of his great-uncle, Ferdinand Howald.  Howald, of Columbus, Ohio acquired an impressive collection of Modern paintings, of which a significant number were donated to the Columbus Museum of Art (then the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts).  Howald also provided financial support to Man Ray during his early years in Paris.  In return for that patronage he selected works of his choice from Man Ray’s production.  It is not clear exactly how the portfolio came into the possession of the art collector, but this selection of photographs, and the letters written by Man Ray to Howald remained in the family until donated to OSU.

Champs délicieux: album de photographies

Each copy of the portfolio contains his own photographic reproductions  of a  selection of “rayographs,” images made on photo-sensitive paper without the use of a camera (photograms).   Man Ray’s illusions of space, texture, translucency and opaqueness in these works have served as an inspiration to photography students, who often try their own hand at this process.

Man Ray describes the project briefly in a letter to Howald dated May 28, 1922.  Excerpts are provided below.  ( I also include his comments about the more abstract quality of some of his paintings at that time, and mention of his new friends.)

Letter from Man Ray to Ferdinand Howald, May 28, 1922

 

 

ManRay rayograph #11

Spotlighting the Photograph Collections: Berenice Abbott (1898-1991)

July 17

Berenice Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio on this date in 1898.  She was raised in the Buckeye State and graduated from Lincoln High School in Cleveland, Ohio in 1917.  In the autumn of that year she returned to central Ohio to begin her studies at The Ohio State University.  The freshman soon left Columbus however, moving with friends to New York in 1918.  She developed an interest in the arts, and moved to Paris in 1921 to study sculpture.  It was there that she met Man Ray, and was hired as his darkroom assistant.  Man Ray’s Champs délicieux: album de photographies (a copy is owned by OSU), is representative of his experimental work at the time.

Abbott found her true calling in photography.  She set up her own studio in Paris in 1926, and remained there until 1929, when she returned to New York and established an independent studio in the U.S.  She operated from that studio until 1966, while doing freelance and contract work, as well as teaching courses in photography.  Abbott was also fascinated with science and challenged by the limitations of the equipment available to her.  She explored alternatives, receiving six patents for her inventions.

Soon after arriving in New York in 1929 she began shooting architectural images inspired by the Paris views of Eugène Atget, and from 1935-38 directed the “Changing New York” Project, part of the Federal Arts Project within the Works Progress Administration.  The photographs owned by OSU were made as part of that effort.   The following is a small selection from the collection.

Cathedral Parkway, No. 542, Manhattan

Cathedral Parkway, No. 542, Manhattan

Brevoort Hotel and Mark Twain House

Brevoort Hotel and Mark Twain House

Of course, nothing can substitute for the experience of seeing the original prints in person.  One appeal of these photographs is their integrity as artifacts.  All but one are signed, still affixed to the boards that Abbott mounted them on, and include labeling related to the WPA project.

Brevoort Hotel and Mark Twain House

Brevoort Hotel and Mark Twain House, labels on verso

Jefferson Market Court and 647-661 Sixth Street

Jefferson Market Court and 647-661 Sixth Street

While some works lure us into a seemingly comfortable pace of everyday life in the 1930s, others present a more daring approach to space and perspective.

Squibb Building, Fifth Avenue at 58th Street

Squibb Building, Fifth Avenue at 58th Street

 

In 1986 OSU held a symposium and an exhibition of the works of Berenice Abbott and awarded the photographer an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.   For more information about her visit consult the 1986 issues of The Lantern  The “Changing New York” prints held in Rare Books and Manuscripts represent one part of that exhibit.  Also included were some of her scientific images.  For a more complete view of the career of the artist, visit the galleries of the online archive.

To see some actual prints that were touched by the artist herself, visit the Special Collections reading room in Thompson Library.

 

 

 

“Things You Never Got To See” Tour to Include Special Collections in Thompson Library

Please join us for a special event on Wednesday, April 30th from 11am-4pm in The Jack and Jan Creighton Special Collections Reading Room (room 105, Thompson Library). Thompson Special Collections will be a stop on the “Things You Never Got To See Tour”, part of the university’s Commencement Week activities. Everyone is welcome!

Items to view will include:

William Charvat Collection of American Fiction: Come see rare first editions of some of your favorite American authors. On display will be classics by Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Henry Miller, J.D. Salinger, James Baldwin and many more.

Rare Books & Manuscripts: On display will be some of your favorite works by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Rudyard Kipling. Take this opportunity to see the original publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Would you like to see the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, the most complex and heavily illustrated book printed during the fifteenth century? What about Henry Billingsley’s 1570 translation of Euclid’s Geometry, the first geometrical “pop-up” book printed in sixteenth-century England? Have you ever wondered what the first edition of the King James Bible looks like? How about original seventeenth-century Shakespeare publications? Or would you like to handle and examine a range of medieval parchment manuscripts produced between 1100-1500? Authentic photographic prints of famous images like Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother and Harold Edgerton’s Shooting the Apple will be available, as well as a number of very early photographic formats.  All of these items, and much more, will be on display for graduating seniors and their families at the Thompson Library Special Collections Reading Room during Commencement Week.

Also on display will be selections from The Hilandar Research Library and The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute. 

(Everyone attending will be asked to place their personal belongings in lockers just outside the reading room. A key to a locker will be provided upon your arrival).

You Can Go Home Again

You Can Go Home Again

Geoffrey D. Smith

Thieves of Book Row:  New York’s Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It by Travis McDade (Oxford University Press, 2013) chronicles the free-wheeling looting of collegiate and public libraries in the 1920’s and 1930’s.  Raiding primarily East coast libraries, particularly the New York Public Library, the book thieves would fence their books on Book Row, the legendary used book store center on Fourth Avenue in New York City. Though most book sellers were reputable, others were complicit in the thefts though criminal prosecution proved difficult. Library security was extremely lax those many decades ago and even volumes sequestered as rare books were easily accessible and vulnerable to theft.  Most libraries, then, were easy targets for the highly organized gangs of book thieves who victimized “Columbia, Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, and other small university and public libraries throughout the Northeast.” (144)

Current security measures in rare book libraries are much more stringent than they were eighty years ago.  Standard operating procedures in most contemporary rare book libraries include dual coverage of reading rooms, sign in sheets and ID requirements, security cameras and improved documentation of holdings.   Still, at Ohio State (and many other institutions) many older, relatively rare books were kept in the general collections for decades and were not transferred to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, on a large scale, until the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.  A systematic review of general collections at many research libraries was incited by the influential report “Preserving Research Collections:  A Collaboration between Librarians and Scholars” (1999) issued by the Task Force on the Preservation of the Artifact made up of the Association of Research Libraries, the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association with input from numerous other learned societies.  Although the transfer process at Ohio State secured many valuable items from general circulation, it also revealed that many volumes were missing, most likely due to theft.

 This past summer, it came to my attention  from John Howell,  a west coast bookseller, that several volumes of eighteenth-century French books, which were being offered for sale, had markings from the Ohio State University Library (perforated title pages, a practice frowned upon today, but, as evidenced here, an effective means of book identification). A search of our catalog records revealed that the items were, indeed, listed as part of OSUL, but that they had been missing since 2001, the period when Rare Books was doing its sweep of the general collections.  Although the items were identified as being missing since 2001, their actual disappearance may have been ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more years earlier.  Heaven knows where they had been in the meantime, but they were now in the hands of Dato Mio, a New York City artist, who cooperated greatly in expediting their return to Ohio State. They are now stored in the Rare Books stacks rather than the general collections.

We can only estimate how many other early books have left the OSUL shelves over the years.  In terms of rare book value, the returned items were modest, $1,500 –  $2,000, but their scholarly value may be of great significance to our faculty, students and visiting scholars.  More importantly, especially during this festive time of year, their return restores faith in the good intentions of people everywhere:  time cannot face good works or good deeds.

Joyce, Yeats, Beckett Collections on Exhibit until January 2014

The Ohio State University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library is currently exhibiting of some of their Irish literary holdings, including first printings and signed editions of some very influential and revered Irish writers. Visitors will explore the moment at the end of the nineteenth century and through the twentieth century when Irish writers burst boldly onto the international literary scene as they laid claimed to their cultural identity and political independence.Irish-poster-blog

Of What is Past, or Passing, or to Come:  The Irish Literary Renaissance is now open at the Thompson Library at The Ohio State University  and will run through January 5, 2014, and is located in the Exhibit Hall on the first floor of the Library.

The exhibit features the works of William Butler Yeats, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. This remarkable trio were not only the predominant writers of 20th century Ireland, but they are also considered among the greatest influences of world literature. Yeats’ The Tower is among the most appreciated volumes of modern poetry, and Joyce’s Ulysses and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot are arguably the greatest novel and drama, respectively, of the 20th century.  In 1923, Yeats became the first Irish writer to win the Nobel Prize; in 1969 Beckett won his.  James Joyce remains the greatest modern writer not to win the Nobel Prize.

Other Irish writers are featured as well, particularly Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, who died this summer on August 30, 2013; historical pamphlets from the Irish quest for independence from Britain; and selected works from the Cuala Press, a fine press established by Elizabeth and Lily Yeats in 1902.

For further information contact Geoffrey D. Smith, Professor and Head of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, at smith.1@osu.edu or 614.688.4930.

Au Claire de la Lune Then, Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) Now

Deborah Zabarenko of Reuters News recently reported on the recovery of Alexander Graham Bell’s voice from “a wax-covered cardboard disc on April 15, 1885.”  (More details are available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/29/usa-bell-voice-idUSL2N0DG12P20130429.)  As astounding as the Alexander Graham Bell preservation effort is, I was even more impressed by other recovery work, especially “that scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California [the same group that recovered Bell’s voice] had retrieved 10 seconds of the French folk song Au Clair de la Lune from an 1860 recording of sound waves made as squiggles on soot-covered paper. That was almost 30 years before Thomas Edison’s oldest known playable recording, made in 1888.”  First, I am stunned that “squiggles on soot-covered paper” can produce sound.  Secondly, I am floored that someone has preserved that dirty paper for over 150 years.  And, finally, of course, I am absolutely flabbergasted that the sound was recovered, as noted above.

The Rare Books and Manuscripts Library contends with immediate conservation and long term preservation issues every day.  Barring incidental floods, fire, vermin or mold, books are relatively easy to preserve if housed in a stable and secure environment and monitored constantly from now until eternity.  Of an equal preservation challenge are non-print media – audio, video, computer, etc. – when time has yet to determine the life of these fragile media.  In addition to the materials themselves, there is the challenge of guaranteeing that old formats can be reformatted for new equipment without compromising sound or image.  We are all familiar with the development of audio formats from vinyl records to cassette tapes to CD’s to I-pods.  And, the change will continue: what will people be listening to in 2163?  Rare Books, then, and other special collection libraries around the world, preserve multiple formats of materials with the hope that even if we cannot reformat all our current holdings on a timely basis, technology will prevail.  Certainly, the conversion of “squiggles on soot-covered paper” to an audible version of Au Claire de la Lune is a hopeful sign.  The key, remains, however, to preserving the originals.  The 15th-century print versions of the Bible and the classics would not have been possible had manuscript versions not survived.  Listening to Hard Knock Life 150 years from now will not be possible without conserving some version of it today.

“Things You Never Got To See” Tour to Include Special Collections in Thompson Library

Please join us for a special event on Wednesday, May 1st from 12pm-5pm in The Jack and Jan Creighton Special Collections Reading Room (room 105, Thompson Library). Thompson Special Collections will be a stop on the “Things You Never Got To See Tour”, part of the university’s Commencement Week activities. Everyone is welcome!

Items to view will include:

William Charvat Collection of American Fiction: Come see rare first editions of some of your favorite American authors. On display will be classics by Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Henry Miller, J.D. Salinger, James Baldwin and many more.

Rare Books & Manuscripts: On display will be some of your favorite works by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Rudyard Kipling. Take this opportunity to see the original publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Would you like to see the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, the most complex and heavily illustrated book printed during the fifteenth century? What about Henry Billingsley’s 1570 translation of Euclid’s Geometry, the first geometrical “pop-up” book printed in sixteenth-century England? Have you ever wondered what the first edition of the King James Bible looks like? How about original seventeenth-century Shakespeare publications? Or would you like to handle and examine a range of medieval parchment manuscripts produced between 1100-1500? Authentic photographic prints of famous images like Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother and Harold Edgerton’s Shooting the Apple will be available, as well as a number of early daguerreotypes.  All of these items, and much more, will be on display for graduating seniors and their families at the Thompson Library Special Collections Reading Room during Commencement Week.

The Hilandar Research Library: The Hilandar Research Library (HRL) has the largest collection of medieval Slavic manuscripts on microform in the world. In addition to millions of pages of manuscript material on microform, Hilandar also has facsimiles of codices, and a small collection of original manuscripts and artifacts from the medieval Slavic and Eastern Orthodox world. We will have on display an original Slavic manuscript from the late 15th century, and a facsimile of a richly illuminated 11th-century Greek codex.

The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research InstituteEnjoy the beauty of stage and screen with costume and scene designs, models, and costumes by Broadway, regional, international, and Hollywood designers; film posters from the silent era on; and photographs of stars.

 

(Everyone attending will be asked to place their personal belongings in lockers just outside the reading room. A key to a locker will be provided upon your arrival). 

Rare Books and Manuscripts Celebrates the Buser Collection

Charles Aubrey Buser

Charles Aubrey Buser

Please join us at an end-of-the-year event to celebrate the American Indian Studies program at OSU and to mark the completion of a multi-year archival project to digitize and repatriate The Charles & Patricia Buser Collection Devoted to American Indian Languages and Cultures.

A reception will be held in 165 Thompson Library, beginning at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 16.  Following the reception, guests will be invited to move into the Special Collections Reading Room to interact with the collection.

In addition to members of the University Libraries and American Indian Studies communities the event will feature remarks from Stephen Buser, the son of the late Charles Buser and an emeritus professor at Ohio State, Margaret Newell, Associate Professor of History, and representatives from the Wyandotte Nation and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation.


The Story of the Collection:

Charles Aubrey Buser (1922-2010) and Ardis Patricia Anderson Buser had a strong personal interest in Wyandotte language and culture.  They traveled widely, throughout the United States and Canada, making many enduring friendships along the way.  They explored the history and traditions of the Wyandotte, as well as other native peoples, gathered genealogical information, and in the process sought to record as much as possible of the languages, both in text and audio recordings.  Charles Buser‘s research proved to be valuable to the Wyandotte people on more than one occasion, and he was honored for his contributions.

Stephen Buser, Professor Emeritus of the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, recognized the research value of his parents’ papers and was a major contributor to a digitization project that will make the collection available for research at the OSU Libraries.

The Buser collection in its original physical state, which is now held by the Wyandotte Nation in Oklahoma, consists of 13 boxes of photocopies, notes, books, pamphlets,  government documents, clippings, audio recordings, and a great deal of personal correspondence.  The finding aids maintain the order in which the collection came to us for scanning, and thus they are divided into box and folder categories.  Additional binders and boxes of note cards were used to track historical events and form the beginning of a dictionary.  The collection contains a wealth of information that will be an essential research resource for historians, linguists and genealogists.  The contents are of value for researching the history of the Wyandotte people in general, and individual families in particular.  Buser, who also documented cultural practices and details about clothing design, was at times consulted by the Wyandotte because of the extent of his knowledge in these areas.

Our Celebration:

We will have five visitors joining us for this event:
Chief Billy Friend, Wyandotte Nation, Oklahoma
Lloyd Divine, Culture Committee Chair, Wyandotte Nation, Oklahoma
Sherri L. Clemons, Tribal Heritage Director, Wyandotte Nation, Oklahoma
Chief Ted Roll, Wyandot of Anderdon Nation
Chief Glenna Wallace, Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma

We hope that you can join us in welcoming these representatives of the Wyandotte and Shawnee to OSU.

 

 

Armory Show opening: February 17, 1913

Armory Show catalogYesterday marked 100 years since the opening of The International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York, the “Armory Show,” long recognized for its significant role in introducing Americans to the avant-garde of modern European art.  Works like Matisse’s Blue Nude and Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No.2 startled visitors and elicited strong negative responses, but also heralded a new direction in American art.   Holding the catalog of the exhibition in your hands stirs the imagination and opens a portal to the sights and sounds of that era.

While there had been a number of independent exhibitions of the works of these artists held in Europe previously, one must not assume that the new styles had become mainstream there.

The complete run of the Paris Salon catalogs are also housed in Rare Books and Manuscripts.  As an art historian, I felt compelled to reach for the catalogs that marked critical years in the careers of Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet or Edouard Manet, but reason suggested that I should highlight the one from 1913.  One will not find works like the Blue Nude or Nude Descending a Staircase No.2 here.  While Realism and Impressionism had gained more acceptance, the traditional Academic fare still dominated the Paris show.1913 Salon Catalog  One finds little change in what was presented to the Parisian public between the years 1863 and 1913. 

Being able to see an artist’s works within the context of an entire exhibit is of tremendous value.  Shelley Staples tackled such a challenge for the Armory Show back in 2001, creating a web site that attempts to recreate the full experience: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~museum/armory/armoryshow.html  Once you enter you can move from gallery to gallery following the exhibit layout provided in the catalog.  If you’ve not visited this site before, take time to commemorate this centennial by exploring the Armory Show yourself!

 

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