Geoffrey Smith | Rare Books and Manuscripts Library

Author: Geoffrey Smith (page 1 of 2)

The Fruits of Research: A Public Symposium

May 11, 2015 / Geoffrey Smith / Comments Off

Professor Elizabeth Renker of the Department of English has been among the most stalwart users of the holdings from the William Charvat Collection of American Literature. Of especial note, Professor Renker originated and developed a literary archives course that, over the years, has enlightened both undergraduate and graduate students on the rewards of hands-on research of primary materials. Her students have won numerous research awards for their papers on nineteenth-century American culture, particularly, Sarah Piatt, other period poets, story papers, sheet music, trade catalogs and more.

On May 25, 2015 (Memorial Day) members of the 2015 literary archives course will be presenting their research at a special event sponsored by Mac-O-Chee Castle, a private, family-owned museum that interprets over 200 years of history of the Ohio land and Ohio people. The event is part of Castle’s Centennial Season that celebrates the cultural ideas that defined the 19th Century.

Program and contact information can be found at: http://library.osu.edu/documents/rarebooks/events/PiattCastlesSalonMay2015.pdf

467 Years Old and Still Kicking: Cervantes at Ohio State

September 29, 2014 / Geoffrey Smith / Comments Off

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:

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

You Can Go Home Again

December 3, 2013 / Geoffrey Smith / Comments Off

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

September 29, 2013 / Geoffrey Smith / Comments Off

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.

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 20^th 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 20^th 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

May 10, 2013 / Geoffrey Smith / Comments Off

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.

Digital Scholarship

January 17, 2013 / Geoffrey Smith / Comments Off

At semester’s end, Autumn 2012, Professor Lewis Ulman, Department of English, and students from his latest electronic textual editing seminar (English 8982) presented the results of their course length project, a digital edition of a selection from the Lucius Clark Smith Diaries (1859 – 1862) (http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/ulman1/LCSmithDiaries/default.cfm ). Professor Ulman and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library have partnered on such projects since Winter quarter of 2003. Essentially, Rare Books scans an unpublished manuscript from its collections and Professor Ulman’s students, “working as a collaborative editorial team . . . edit and publish on the Web a portion of [the] manuscript. . . . Students . . . learn to transcribe, encode, annotate, and describe manuscript materials—from any period—and reflect on the information gained and lost in the preparation of electronic representations of cultural artifacts.” The partnership has proven to be mutually beneficial: Professor Ulman’s students learn much about the theory and practice of textual scholarship in addition to invaluable real world, technological skills while Rare Books adds new online research resources that are easily accessible and highly searchable.

Over the years a number of manuscripts have been digitized and edited by Professor Ulman and his classes and many are available online while others await further development: Sophie Peabody Hawthorne letters (correspondence from the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne to her sister Elizabeth Palmer Peabody) (http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/ulman1/Sophia_Hawthorne_Letters/ ); Valentine Peers Collection (letters and documents of a Kentucky family from the Revolutionary period to the Civil War); William B. Anderson letters (correspondence of an Ohio River boat captain to his wife during the Civil War) (http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/ulman1/WBAnderson_Letters/); Samuel S. Cox journal (a future U. S. Congressman’s honeymoon tour of Europe and the Orient in 1851) (http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/ulman1/SSCoxJournal/); the Louisa A. Doane journal (a young woman’s account of two voyages, the first to Marseilles [1852] and the second to Mexico and Peru via Cape Horn [1852 – 53]) (http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/ulman1/LADoaneJournal/default.cfm); the Stephens Family letters (correspondence of a teenage girl who traveled to El Paso, Mexico, the Northwest and the Yukon in the early 20^th century); and, the Lucius Clark Smith diaries noted above (the thoughts of a New Albany, Ohio schoolteacher and famer, 1859, 1861 – 62).

Much has already been written about the contributions of digital works for the advancement of knowledge and learning. If you are like me, you have read about or heard lectures upon the death of the book dozens if not scores or hundreds of times, a hysterical reaction to the growing influence of digital texts. On the issue of rapid digitization of texts, I think we should welcome the democratization of knowledge. On the death of the book, I believe the declamation is premature. It will be a long, long time before all texts in print or manuscript will be digitized. The digital documents edited by Professor Ulman’s class are surrogates of but a fraction of the 2,500+ linear feet of manuscripts in the Rare Books collection and our collection is a but a fraction of the myriad manuscript collections in institutions around the world. Virtual access to manuscripts can generate from its users further information and knowledge about the subjects of the documents; it can encourage social reading of personal texts; it can solicit links to other like and related documents; and more. Also ,what may appear counter intuitive, the production of digital surrogates actually leads to more use of the original physical documents because of their unique artifactual value and their intrinsic historicalness, prevailing allures for the serious scholar.

Geoffrey D. Smith

Private Libraries and more

October 30, 2012 / Geoffrey Smith / Comments Off

One of the joys of being head of an institutional rare book collection is the opportunity to get away from the office and view private collections. Such viewings always lead to musings upon the importance of the books themselves, why people collect, the physical place of a book in any given space and any given moment in time, and more. Often the musings go somewhat astray as they did after I viewed a magnificent private library last week.

The library was comprised of primarily twentieth-century first editions of major authors although there was substantial representation of other major nineteenth-century American authors and notable nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and Irish authors. As I viewed the array of many of my favorite authors I would look to see if the author’s first book was among the collection: Robert Frost’s A Boy’s Will, first English edition, 1913 (it was there, though I did not look for or expect to find Frost’s 1894, extraordinarily rare, vanity edition called Twilight); Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, first trade edition, 1925, Boni and Liveright (it was there). I checked for landmark books: James Joyce’s Ulysses, Paris, 1922 (it was there, in addition to the first British publication by the Egoist Press, also 1922); T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land published by Boni and Liveright, 1922 (it was there and I had moment to pause to consider the astounding literary prescience of the publisher Boni and Liveright).

I could not help but compare with our own holdings in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library and the Charvat Collection of American Fiction. Yes, we had the 1913 A Boy’s Will, but not nearly in as good of condition as the private collector. We also had the 1925 In Our Time, but, again, not nearly in as good of condition. (A significant difference between institutional libraries and elite private libraries, for several reasons, tends to be condition.) Charvat does, however, have the private press editions of In Our Time, (Paris, Three Mountains Press, 1924, and, an abbreviated edition, titled Three Stories and Ten Poems, Dijon, 1923) both in very good condition. Our Ulysses (two first editions) compare very well. One copy in original wrappers has recently received treatment from Harry Campbell, Book and Paper Conservator for Special Collections. An interesting two volume edition of Ulysses in Rare Books is an item smuggled, due to censorship, into the country contained in the bindings for the putative volumes Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and The Little Minister by James M. Barrie. The private collector did not have such a copy.

We have three copies of the first edition of The Waste Land and they compare favorably with the copy I saw in the private library. But editions other than the first can have significance as well. For instance, Rare Books has a third printing of The Waste Land in good condition. It is a copy from the library of Francis Utley, Professor of English and Folklore at The Ohio State University from 1935 to 1973. Professor Utley’s copy is from a class he took as a graduate student from the renowned Harvard scholar and teacher, George Lyman Kittredge. The copy is replete with extensive notes from that class and offers the vicarious experience of sitting in on one of Professor Kittredge’s classes. Although Kittredge was primarily a medievalist, early modernist and folklorist (a love he passed on to Utley), he was undoubtedly attracted to the classical allusions and flood imagery that pervade The Waste Land, a modernist text.

This Ohio State connection to Kittredge caused me to ruminate further. Kittredge taught at Harvard from 1888 until his retirement in 1936. (Kittredge had a B.A. only. An apocryphal story still circulates that when asked why he didn’t have a Ph.D., Kittredge famously answered, “but who would examine me?” ) Francis Utley received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1936, so he studied with Kittredge at the very end of his career. A colleague and friend Tim Lloyd, Executive Director of the American Folklore Society, who centers his scholarly activities at Ohio State, studied under Utley toward the end of his career. The scholarly careers of three individuals span from 1888 to 2012 (and continuing), 124 years. It hardly seems possible, but it is true, an historical fact that generated from a visit to a private library.

The Paris Review

October 9, 2008 / Geoffrey Smith / Comments Off

The Rare Books and Manuscripts Library has acquired this past summer a complete run of The Paris Review from its very first issue in 1953 through the Spring issue of 2008. The Paris Review is arguably the most pretigious and influential literary journal of the latter half of the twentieth century. Its contributors form the pantheon of twenthieth-century iconic writers and include Nobel Prize, Pultizer Prize and National Book Award winners in addition to winners of virtually every international literary award. A select, very seclect list of those writers will indicate the distinction of The Paris Review: Samuel Beckett, Ernest Hemingway, Gabrial Garcia Marquez, Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney, Vladimire Nabokov and Harold Pinter. And, I reiterate, these are just a few of the hundreds of contributors to The Paris Review over the past 55 years. In addition to the writing, the decorative design of the literary review is remarkable and will please students of the book arts. The collection, which is in very good condition, was acquired from Ralph Sipper Books in Santa Barbara, California.

Welcome Eric Johnson

September 29, 2008 / Geoffrey Smith / Comments Off

I have been remiss in my blogging but vow to be more consistent with announcing important news about the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. In particular, our new Associate Curator, Eric Johnson, introduced himself when I should have made such an announcement. Eric has been with us just over a month and we have had many productive and enlightening talks. You can see from Eric’s earlier blog, that his education and experience are exceptional. And, I can emphasize that his personal presence is every bit as impressive as his paper credentials. Eric is ever thinking and planning. For instance, he has brought forward the idea of a summer rare books “academy,” which would be offered to Columbus area youth. We have met with a supporter of Rare Books who would also be interested in launching children’s programming, an activity that Eric has extensvie experience with. Eric will be working closely with John King, Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies, in his Reformation History class this Fall quarter and will assist Richard Firth Green, Humanities Distinguished Professor of English, in a medieval manuscripts class in the Spring of 2009. I hope that many of you will meet or contact Eric in the days ahead.

Poets Against War update

July 25, 2008 / Geoffrey Smith / Comments Off

In addition to noted poets Sam Hamill and Eleanor Wilner, Breyten Breythenbach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breyten_Breytenbach) will be in Columbus on October 29th and 30th for events to promote the Poets Against War movement. Please reserve these dates and additional information will be forthcoming.

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Rare Books and Manuscripts Library

Highlighting our collections and the work that we do

Author: Geoffrey Smith (page 1 of 2)

The Fruits of Research: A Public Symposium

467 Years Old and Still Kicking: Cervantes at Ohio State

You Can Go Home Again

Joyce, Yeats, Beckett Collections on Exhibit until January 2014

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

Digital Scholarship

Private Libraries and more

The Paris Review

Welcome Eric Johnson

Poets Against War update

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