Michael Drayton, et al. Annalia Dubrensia: vpon the yearly celebration of Mr. Robert Dovers Olimpick Games vpon Cotswold-Hills. London: Robert Raworth, for Mathewe Walbancke [i.e. Printed for Dr. Thomas Dover], 1636 [i.e. 1720?]

While working on a project to create detailed catalog records for items of interesting provenance, I came across an 18^th-century type-facsimile of a charming collection of poetry from 1636 called the Annalia Dubrensia (“Annals of Dover”), one of only two documented copies in this country. The poems are dedicated to Robert Dover (1582-1652) and were contributed by more than thirty poets, among whom are such luminaries as Ben Jonson, Thomas Randolph, Michael Drayton, and Thomas Heywood. The volume includes a humble response in verse by Dover himself. An attorney and former scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, Dover is most famous as the founder, or more likely the resuscitator, of the Cotswold Games, a two-day sporting festival held in a valley (sometimes called a “natural amphitheater”) in the Cotswold Hills near Chipping Camden in Gloucestershire, England, starting around 1612. This was only one of many such regular events which are documented from this period, but it became distinguished under the management of Dover, who saw the rise of Puritanism in England as standing in opposition to the freer and more playful spirit which seemed to be in the nature of the English people. Dover believed that physical strength gained through exercise was necessary for the defense of the realm, but he also wished to unite rich and poor in a sporting atmosphere. The games were quite popular and received the approval of King James I. Some scholars believe that Shakespeare (who may have known Dover) makes reference to them in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

The frontispiece illustration from the 1636 edition reprinted in our copy shows an assortment of the activities which went on during the games. At middle-ground in the center of this woodcut is a curious edifice known as Dover Castle, a portable wooden structure balanced on a single pedestal, from which a standard bearing the motto “Heigh for Cotswold!” was flown and cannon were fired during the events. Across the landscape, participants are depicted engaged in several of the events, including sword fighting, wrestling, leaping, coursing with hounds, quarterstaff, casting the hammer, and spear throwing. One man even stands on his head. In the upper left-hand corner of the woodcut, three women in ruffs and long dresses dance, accompanied by a piper.

The games were as famous for their accommodations and refreshments as for their activitie. Poet Nicholas Wallington writes in this work that “None ever hungry from these games come home, / or ere made plaint of viands, or of roome.” At the foot of the hill on which the castle stood (or teetered) are tents set up for competitors, in front of which a group of men are having a meal at a long table. From the style of the illustration, it is hard to tell whether this party are seating on a mat or other covering on the ground as if at a picnic, or if a hole was dug into the ground, at the edge of which they sat enjoying their meal. The square ornamental device at the middle-right may be one of the yellow “ribbands” which Dover famously awarded to all participants. In the midst of all of this revelry and sport rides Dover himself, whose importance is indicated by his size in relation to the other figures. He is elaborately dressed in a feathered hat, ruff, coat, and boots which were a gift from King James out of his personal wardrobe.

Dover’s games continued annually, with the support of the Royal Family, until it was suppressed during the English Civil War in 1642. After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, the games were revived and continued on and off until 1852. In 1966, they returned as a regular event under the patronage of the Robert Dover’s Games Society, and are still enacted today in the same location as the original games, near what has come to be called Dover’s Hill, featuring such popular events as shin-kicking and tug-of-war.

The rediscovery of this work in the vault of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library is a timely one, considering the start of the 2012 Olympics in late July. In fact, Dover’s Cotswold Games themselves came to be known as “Olimpick” – a term which was the product of the age’s renewed interest in Classical mythology and culture. The British Olympic Association has acknowledged these games as the “first stirrings” of the British Olympic heritage. Furthermore, it seems that the first Cotswold Games celebrated under Dover’s administration were probably held in June, 1612, exactly 400 years ago. Sources say that the Games took place on the Thursday and Friday after Whitsunday (a traditional name for the festival of Pentecost), which is the seventh Sunday after Easter. This would place the date of the inaugural games on the 14^th and 15^th of June, 1612.

This circa 1720 edition of the Annalia Dubrensia is differentiated from the 1636 version by the addition of an anonymous poem and the inclusion of a note at the end of the dedicatory epistle on leaf A2 verso, stating that this new edition was undertaken because “Dr. Dover [i.e. John Dover, d. 1725] thought it his Duty to perpetuate the Memory of that Good Man his Grandfather.” An armorial bookplate, with the motto “Do ever good,” was pasted onto one of the fly-leaves, with the name of Dover’s father, John Dover of Norfolk, written in what may be a nineteenth-century hand. Below this is a coat-of-arms incorporating the above crest, drawn in pen and accompanied by notes in the same hand, indicating that “These Supporters and other Additions were granted to Robert Dover his Son the Institutor of the Cotswold Games, who died 1652.” It is believed that King James I himself may have been the grantor of these arms. A nineteenth- or early twentieth-century owner of this volume (perhaps Ernest E. Baker, F.S.A., whose bookplate appears on the front paste-down) pasted clippings and copied several quotations related to the games or the Annalia Dubrensia onto the rear fly-leaves. This copy was acquired by the Library in January of 1941. TB

A visit to our library by the Urbana High School French Club this past spring sent me to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library vault in search of materials from the French Revolution era. On this Bastille Day week-end, let’s take a look at some of my (re)discoveries.

 Official documents

Acte constitutionnel : précédé de la Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen présenté au peuple françois par la Convention nationale, le 24 juin 1793, l’an deuxième de la République. A Strasbourg : Chez J.G. Treuttel, libraire, [1793]. 24 p.

This slim publication, also known as Constitution de l’An I (Constitution of the Year I) contains an expanded Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen that adds several rights to the text from 1789, such as the right to work and to public assistance, the right to public education, the right to rebel, the duty to do so when the government violates the right of the people, and the abolition of slavery. Although it was ratified, the Constitution of 1793 was never put into effect as the National Convention set it aside in October 1793, until exterior and interior wars ceased and peace came. Two years later, the Constitution of the Year III (1795) marked the beginning of the Directory. While it was never implemented, this seminal document inspired subsequent generations of revolutionaries and legislators, well into the 20th century.  It can be found under call number 342.442F83521793.

Rapport fait au nom du Comité de salut public par Maximilien Robespierre; sur les rapports des idées religieuses et morales avec les principes républicains, et sur les fêtes nationales. Séance du 18 floréal, l’an second de la République française, une et indivisible. [Paris? : S.n., 1794?]. 48 p.

This report on the relationship between religious and moral ideas and republican principles, and on national celebrations, which was immediately adopted by the National Convention, opens with the statement that “the French people recognize the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul”. It establishes a series of republican virtues to be celebrated on each “Décadi”, the last day of each decade or ten-day period, which had replaced the seven-day week in the revolutionary calendar that went into effect in October 1793. In addition to the “weekly” celebration, the report establishes four national celebrations to commemorate 14 July 1789 (Bastille Day), 10 August 1792 (end of the Bourbon monarchy), 21 January 1793 (execution of Louis XVI), and 31 May 1793 (fall of the Girondist faction), as well as a national celebration of the Supreme Being. Jacques Louis David, the politician and painter, wrote a detailed and very enthusiastic plan for the first celebration which is appended to the report.

Excerpt from Robespierre’s report. Item VII lists several republican virtues to be celebrated each ‘décadi’.

Instruction sur les mesures déduites de la grandeur de la terre, uniformes pour toute la République, et sur les calculs relatifs à leur division décimale; par la Commission temporaire des poids & mesures républicaines, en exécution des décrets de la Convention nationale. Paris: Imprimerie nationale exécutive du Louvre, an IIe. de la République [1794] xxxii, 224, [27] p.

This volume introduces a stable, simple and uniform system of measures to be used across the French Republic, established by a Temporary Committee of Republican Weights and Measures, presided at the time by René Just Hauÿ (whose works on crystallography were highlighted in a recent exhibition in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library: Crystallography—Defining the Shape of Our Modern World. (Curators: Gregory S. Girolami and Vera V. Mainz) 30 April through 13 July, 2012.). This decimal metric system was to be applied to all areas of measurement, including time. Days were to be divided in 10 hours of 100 minutes, and each minutes divided in 100 seconds. While the length, volume and weight measures spread throughout Europe during the 19^th century, the proposed division of time was never implemented.

Foldout plate from Instruction sur les mesures… with sample decimeter (second ruler from top).

The Press

Le Publiciste Parisien: Journal Politique, Libre Et Impartial. [Paris] : Veuve Hérissant, 1789.

Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793), a physician and scientist turned radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution, whose assassination by Charlotte Corday was depicted by another famous revolutionary, the painter Jacques Louis David, first published on 12 September 1789 Le Publiciste parisien. The publication became most famous under the title it acquired after the first few issues: L’Ami du peuple (the Friend of the People), which came to designate both the journal and its author. The title varied, changing after some time to Journal de la République française and Le Publiciste de la République française. The Rare Book & Manuscript Library owns five hundred issues out of the nearly thousand issues published between 1789 and Marat’s death on 13 July 1793. These issues were bound in several volumes, and then disbound, except for one volume. They can be found under call numbers IUB 01044 through IUB01049.

Révolutions De France Et De Brabant. [Paris : De L’imprimerie De Laillet & Garnéry, 1789-1791].

In the fall of 1789, another young journalist and famous orator of the Revolution, Camille Desmoulins (1760-1794) started Révolutions de France et de Brabant, a weekly journal in which he shared his views on prominent political figures of the time and on many debates of the new National Assembly. This title was published in 86 issues from 28 November 1789 until July 1791. The Rare Book & Manuscript Library has issues 1-71 (call number 905REVF).

Panckoucke, Charles Joseph,eds. Gazette Nationale: Ou, Le Moniteur Universel. Paris, 1789-1901.

La Gazette nationale, ou le moniteur universel, created by Charles-Joseph Panckoucke (1736-1798), the publisher of l’Encyclopédie méthodique, which had succeeded Diderot’s famed Encyclopédie. From the first issue on 24 November 1789, the Gazette included complete transcripts of the debates of the Assembly, with the help of stenographers, making it an invaluable source for historical research. It became the official publication of the government in early 1800 and lasted until 1901.

As early as 1790, the Gazette became so popular that Agasse, an associate of Panckoucke, issued a new “historic” edition, which he had start on May 5, 1789, the opening day of the General Estates! These apocryphal issues misled some generations of historians and tarnished the reputation of the whole publication, which may explain why relatively few copies were preserved to this day. The History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library owns a copy, found under call number 905MONA, from 1789 until 1868, which includes the early apocryphal issues.

Massacre Of The French King!: View Of La Guillotine, Or The Modern Beheading Machine, At Paris, By Which The Unfortunate Louis XVI. (late King Of France) Suffered On The Scaffold, January 21st, 1793. London : Printed At The Minerva Office, For William Lane. And Sold Wholesale At One Guinea Per Hundred. And Retail By Every Bookseller, Stationer &c. In England, Scotland And Ireland, [1793].

Woodcut illustration from Massacre of the French King!

This British broadside, which appears to marvel at technological progress (“The Modern Beheading Machine”) at the same time that it decries the execution of Louis XVI, offers a translation of the decree of the French National Convention from 15, 17, 19, and 20 January 1793 setting forth the execution: “Louis Capet, last King of the French, having been found guilty of conspiracy against the Liberty of the Nation, and of a crime against the general Safety of the State (…) shall undergo the punishment of Death.”

The decree is followed by the report of the council who communicated the decree to Louis, Orders for the Day (“The execution shall take place Monday the 21st, at La Place de la Révolution, ci-devant Louis XV”), and a full account of the procession and the execution. A note at the bottom of the broadside indicates that “a more particular account of this machine may be seen in Twiss’s Trip to Paris, lately published”.

Richard Twiss (1747-1821) provides vivid tales of executions with the guillotine, as well as a history and description of beheading machines, in his account A Trip to Paris in July and August, 1792 (London: Minerva Press, 1793) and points his readers to several publications where illustrations can be found. His own book opens with a frontispiece depicting an execution. The execution of Louis XVI in January 1793 provided him with a unique opportunity to advertise his book…

This broadside is bound with another periodical, Mirror of the times (London, 179?-1810), and can be found under call number F. 052 MIRROR.  CS

Martyn Beardsley, author of Deadly Winter: The Life of Sir John Franklin, has brought to my attention that the poem written in the University of Illinois’s copy of Franklin’s Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea is in fact by Franklin’s first wife, Eleanor Porden.  In his research, Beardsley examined unpublished letters from Porden and Franklin in the Derbyshire Public Record Office.  This poem, originally appearing in a December 1822 letter to Franklin, was written by Porden in response to Franklin’s letters to her about the difficulty of writing his Narrative (Beardsley 101).  Beardsley includes this poem and several others by Eleanor Porden in an appendix to his Franklin biography.

Eleanor Porden (1795-1825) was a published poet.  Her collection of poetry, The Veil; or the Triumph of Constancy, was published to some praise in 1815.  Coeur de Lion, or, The Third Crusade followed in 1822.  She and Franklin were married on 6 August 1823.  Eleanor tragically died of tuberculosis in 1825 while Franklin was away on his second overland expedition to the Canadian Arctic.

Franklin’s second wife, Lady Jane Franklin (1792-1875), is well known for her exhaustive efforts in the search for Sir John Franklin’s expedition and is certainly the most famous wife of an Arctic explorer.  Because of Eleanor’s early death and Lady Jane Franklin’s fame, Eleanor Porden is relatively forgotten today.  A single biography by a family member, Edith Mary Gell, was published in 1930.  Eleanor was an interesting and complex woman whose life and achievements deserve to be explored in greater depth today.

As mentioned in the previous post, the University of Illinois copy is inscribed by John Franklin to John Richardson’s first wife, Mary Stiven (1795-1831).  This may provide some clue as to why Eleanor’s poem is written in the book.  Perhaps Eleanor Porden had some hand in John Franklin’s presentation of the book to Mary Richardson.  A presentation copy involving the wives of two of the most renowned nineteenth-century Arctic explorers is certainly something of interest to Arctic historians.  Although the poem does not provide direct autobiographical insight into John Franklin’s character, it certainly does tell us more about his mindset upon his return to England, his attitude toward writing, and his relationship with his first wife.

Thanks again to Martyn Beardsley for his help in identifying this poem. AD

Further Reading on Eleanor Porden and Sir John Franklin:

Beardsley, Martin. Deadly Winter: The Life of Sir John Franklin. London: Chatham Publishing, 2002.

Gell, E.M. John Franklin’s Wife, Eleanor Anne Porden. London: John Murray, 1930.

Sutherland, Kathryn. ‘Porden , Eleanor Anne (1795–1825)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10088, accessed 18 May 2012]

Musee retrospectif de la classe 90. Parfumeries (matieres premieres, materiel, procedes et produits) a l’exposition universelle internationale, a Paris. Rapport de M. le comte Robert de Montesquiou

[Retrospective Museum of Class 90. Perfumeries (raw materials, equipment, processes and products) at the universal, international exhibition, in Paris. Report by Count Robert de Montesquiou.]

The bureaucratic-looking title is barred by a bold inscription in purple ink, in the unusual, flourishing handwriting of Robert de Montesquiou, a well-known, if misunderstood figure of the Belle Epoque.

Born in one of the oldest families of the French nobility, Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1855-1921) was a prolific poet, novelist, art critic, chronicler, memoirist, as well as a designer, book collector and patron of the arts. He had ties with countless authors, artists, composers and craftsmen of the time. He was portrayed by numerous artists, including Laszlo, La Gandara, Whistler, and inspired characters in books by J. K. Huysmans, Jean Lorrain, and, most notably, Marcel Proust. His origins, lavish lifestyle and colorful personality contributed to his reputation as a ‘dilettante’, which prevented him from being recognized as the original and talented creator that he was. Montesquiou was a lifelong friend of Proust and served as a mentor before he was surpassed by his pupil, who borrowed some of his traits for his character, Charlus. Their correspondence, held in part in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library’s Proust collection, is peppered with references to Montesquious many publications, most of which can be found at Illinois either in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library or the Kolb-Proust Archive for Research. While they were primarily acquired to support the Professor Philip Kolb research on Proust’s correspondence, they constitute a rare collection of works by an author who was also a bibliophile and an important patron of binders and other book artists of his time.

This book is one of many Musées rétrospectifs published in the wake of the 1900 Paris World Fair, whose mission was to present all domains of knowledge, science and technology in one location. A detailed classification arranged disciplines into twenty groups, which were further subdivided into numbered classes. “Parfumerie”, belonged to class 90 of the chemical sciences group. The planning committee for that class was composed of influential members of the French perfume industry, including Victor Klotz, owner of the Edouard Pinaud perfumery, whose collection of perfume bottles and beauty-objects made up the bulk of the retrospective exhibition at the World Fair.

This Musée rétrospectif is closely related to another book by Montesquiou housed in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library: Pays des Aromates, of which only 150 copies were printed. Pays des Aromates was commissioned by Mme Victor Klotz on the occasion of the World Fair exhibition, according to biographies. The Musée rétrospectif incorporates a tamer version of Pays des aromates, from which biting anecdotes about thinly veiled contemporaries have been excised.

Pays des aromates (Land of Scents) provide an overview of perfume usage from Antiquity onward, followed by a detailed commentary of the show, and a detailed catalog of all objects and books from the Victor Klotz collection. The Musée rétrospectif follows the same template, with added descriptions of a few objects and books contributed by other collectors. (Proust reviewed “Pays des aromates” in Chronique des Arts et de la curiositéon 5 January 1901)

Because the Musée rétrospectif is undated, biographers have assumed that it was published at the time of the Fair, which opened on April 15, 1900, and that it therefore preceded Pays des Aromates, which is dated July 10, 1900. The Musée, however, contains a nod to the poem Le coeur innombrable by comtesse Anna de Noailles, whose book first appeared in May 1901. Bibliographie de la France – Journal général de l’imprimerie et de la librairie, which records all books received under French legal deposit laws in biweekly installments, lists Pays des Aromates in its August 18, 1900 issue, while the Musée rétrospectif doesn’t appear until the November 14, 1903 issue, along with a dozen other Musées rétrospectifs of the 1900 World Fair.

Abel Hermant (1862-1950), the recipient of this particular copy of the Musée rétrospectif, was a novelist, playwright and satirical observer of fin-de-siècle Parisian society. He was the brother of Jacques Hermant, the architect in charge of the various “musées centenaux” at the Paris World Fair. Montesquiou, who was famous for his wit, once wrote about Hermant: “L’écrivain le plus charmant, c’est Abel au bois d’Hermant” (“The most charming writer, is Abel Hermant”), which plays on Hermant’s name and “La Belle au Bois Dormant” (“Sleeping Beauty”). The dedication features another play on “pois de senteur” (“sweet peas” or, more literally, “scented peas”). This alludes to the flower of the sweet pea plant and also suggests that each item in the catalog is its own “pea” of “scent”:

     à Monsieur Abel Hermant, ces pois de senteur. Comte Robert de Montesquiou

*****************************************************************

Bibliography

Willa Z. Silverman. « Unpacking His Library : Robert de Montesquiou and the Esthetics of the Book in Fin-de-siècle France ». Nineteenth-Century French Studies, vol. 32, issue3&4, Spring-Summer 2004, pp. 316-331

Antoine Bertrand. Les Curiosités esthétiques de Robert de Montesquiou. Genève : Droz, 1996 (2 vols.)

On Wednesday, June 1, the Rare Book & Manuscript Library welcomed book-binding historian Julia Miller to the library.  Ms. Miller is the author of “Books Will Speak Plain: A Handbook For Identifying and Describing Historical Bindings” (The Legacy Press).  In the morning, we invited Ms. Miller to join catalogers, binders, and others interested in the book arts in a stump the expert session at the library.  We were unable to stump Ms. Miller, however,  with any of the many and varied types of bindings we pulled from the vault. She taught us much about binding types and techniques and she was impressed with some of the examples we were able to show her.  From sealskin to pastepaper and from bullet clasps to home-spun coverings on scabbard bindings, we studied and talked as two and a half hours flew by.

Later in the day, Ms. Miller did a presentation  on “American Scaleboard Binding” at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, our co-sponsor for the day’s events.

Scaleboard, also known as scabbard, is thin wood that was used for bindings in Europe and Britain until around 1600 and much less so thereafter. Scaleboard was used in America for bindings in the 1680s and earlier, and the thin wood covers continued to be used until at least the 1840s. Scaleboard was used in place of paste or pulpboard long after those materials were widely available in America. Ms. Miller’s talk explored this humble, yet fascinating binding technique, while showing plenty of examples of this uniquely American binding technique.

Ms. Miller holds a MA in archival administration and was previously a senior conservator at the University of Michigan Conservation and Book Repair Lab; she was also a co-founder of the Midwest chapter of the Guild of Book Workers. She continues to work in private practice and regularly teaches bench bookbinding workshops around the country, primarily focusing on early book structures.

The Rare Book Library is pleased to announce the acquisition of the William Paul Schenk Papers from his estate early in 2011.

In addition to many of his own manuscripts, the William Schenk papers contain a treasure trove of articles, correspondence, and photographs concerning Carl Sandburg and his family. Schenk greatly admired the famous poet and worked for him briefly as his secretary and research assistant. Many of Schenk’s photographs were taken during the time he lived with the Sandburg family on their goat farm in North Carolina. They capture Sandburgs day-to-day activities including writing in his office, spending time with his family, and sitting in his chair playing his guitar.

 

William Schenk

Born in Chicago in 1913, William Schenk was a writer, editor, and photographer.  Schenk pursued a degree in English at the University of Chicago and later founded Hull House Magazine with fellow writers Willard Motley and Alexander Saxon. Financial troubles during the Great Depression forced Schenk to drop out of the University before completing his degree. Fortunately, his good friend, Carl Sandburg, found work for him as a ghostwriter. Shortly thereafter, the University of Chicago hired Schenk as a writer, and later as an editor, for their alumni publications in the Department of Public Relations. He continued his work with a variety of other publications; writing on a wide range of topics. These included: biographies of famous artists, science articles in encyclopedias, and history pieces for travel magazines.

This collection provides a unique look at a writer who was passionate about many topics and disciplines. It also serves to further expand the University’s extensive resources regarding Carl Sandburg. PG

Just came upon something interesting in the vault: A 1752 sermon entitled:

The Thirty-seconde of March / On the dangers of calendar reform / and touching upon the false method of rectifying the seate of Easter. With godly warnings to the Parliament that seekes to deprive good Christians of eleven dayes of life.  A sermon. By P. Lloyd, A. M. Curate of Roxwell, in Essex  (London : printed for C. Bathurst, at the Cross-Keys, over-against St. Dunstans Church, Fleetstreet, M.DCC.LIII. [1752])

The brief sermon was in response to the 1752 act of Parliament that altered the calendar in England and its colonies, so as to bring it into line with most other countries of Western Europe. England’s Julian Calendar was replaced by the Gregorian Calendar and the formula for calculating leap years and Easter was changed.  The beginning of the legal new year was moved from March 25 to January 1.  In addition,  11 days were dropped from the month of September 1752.

Apparently many people, including the Rev. P. Lloyd who wrote our sermon, thought that their lives were being shortened thereby.

He also argues that by changing the date of Easter and other holy days, the prayers of Christians would be rendered ineffective since they would be delivered up to God on the wrong day!

After this sermon was delivered, a large group of workers rioted and marched on Parliament because they believed that they were going to lose eleven days’ pay. People also feared losing 11 days of their lives.  They went through the streets of London, crying  “Give us back our eleven days!” Rioting spread to Bristol, in those days the second largest city in England, where several people were killed in stampedes. VH

A collection of German Christmas songs (call number IUA15239) from the library of Richard Aron passed through Quick and Clean Cataloging a few months ago. This Sammelband contains 38 pamphlets published between 1774 and 1828. Most of the pamphlets are only two to four leaves in length and contain the lyrics to German Christmas and New Year songs. The pamphlets are all printed in a simple manner and were produced in Berlin. These pamphlets may have been collected by a single individual at Christmas masses over the years and later bound together in paper-covered cardstock boards.  An illegible ownership inscription appears on the title page of the first work and is dated Berlin, 1835. This pamphlet collection would provide a wealth of information to anyone studying the history of popular culture, music, or religion in Germany in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century.

In 1913, the University of Illinois library purchased approximately 20,000 volumes from the library of the Berlin elementary school teacher Richard Aron. Richard Aron (1854-1912) collected books pertaining to education in Europe and especially in Germany. Aron is one of many German collectors whose collections the University purchased from the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.  The acquisition of the collections of these German and German-American collectors and scholars such as Karl Dziatzko, Johannes Vahlen, and Heinrich Armin Rattermann greatly strengthened our holdings of German-language materials. AD

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 “Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas.” During World War II, over 120,000 persons of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry were then removed from these military areas and relocated to internment camps in the Western United States–most for the duration of the war.

One of these camps was placed in the abandoned town of Manzanar in California’s isolated Inyo County, where a population of 7,600 was spread out over 10,000 square miles. This camp would grow to over 800 buildings and process over 11,000 detainees during the war. Two-thirds of the detainees held behind Manzanar’s barbed wire were American citizens.

On April 11, 1942, the first issue of the camp’s Manzanar Free Press was published. The first newspaper to be published in a U.S. internment camp, this independent record of the internees’ lives at Manzanar was distributed in the camp until shortly before Manzanar closed on November 21, 1945.

In May, 2010, the “Quick & Clean” cataloging unit of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library processed and cataloged a collection of over 300 issues of the Manzanar Free Press from the RBML cataloging “backlog.” Though this same collection was microfilmed sometime in the late 1970s, the original issues were never fully-cataloged or inventoried.

Interestingly, the Manzanar Free Press combined a national outlook with a newsletter feel. One can find articles on such topics as mess hall rules, school graduations, and results of games in the camp’s eight-team baseball league alongside articles touting the contributions of Japanese-Americans citizens and soldiers to the national war effort.

Editorially, the Manzanar Free Press was both unalloyed in its devotion to the highest expressions of American patriotism and mindful of the synthetic distinction of ethnicity made to limit Japanese-American participation in the war.  In a January 1, 1944 editorial addressed to the “People of America,” the paper eloquently captured the resolve of these loyal, yet nonetheless demonized internees:

In three months, we will have spent two years in these centers. We have had time to rationalize our own predicament. The tragic experience of evacuation, the untold volume of business losses of the evacuees, the unwarranted hatreds engendered toward us by some people because of our hereditary kinships with the Asiatic foe—these we write off our ledger.

Unfortunately, the provenance of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s copies of this important record could not be determined. Issues of the Manzanar Free Press are available under call number IUZ00262. A moving photographic tribute to the people of Manzanar, “Born Free and Equal” was published by the photographer Ansel Adams in 1944 and is available from the Main book stacks, at 940.947273 Ad1b. DS

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library recently discovered that we hold a complete set of the Dobell catalogs, which appear to have been owned by the Dobell family.  On 16 July 1956, Gordon N. Ray purchased 22 volumes of the catalogs from Days Bookshop in England.  These volumes are uniformly bound in three-quarters brown goat and have four raised bands and four gilt-stamped fleurons on the spine, in addition to the gilt titles.  Bertram Dobells signature appears on the front free endpaper verso and below it, inscribed in pencil in a similar hand, is the note: Not for sale.  The catalogs may have been sold to Days Bookshop following the death of Percy J. Dobell on 23 January 1956.  A printed remembrance of Percy J. Dobell is tipped-in at the beginning of the 8 Bruton Street catalogs for 1921-22.  The catalogs are largely unmarked, but a few have information regarding their exact date of publication and the number of copies issued inscribed in both pencil and ink at the top of the first page.  The library also owns four further volumes of Dobell catalogs bound in library buckram, catalogs which may have been purchased by Gordon Ray at the same time, but in an unbound state.

 

Bertram Dobell (1842-1914) was a London bookseller and scholar who issued his first catalog in 1876 and had issued 237 more before his death in 1914.  At his death, his sons Percy and Arthur carried on the business under the name of P.J. & A.E. Dobell until their partnership was dissolved in 1946.  At that point, Percy took full ownership of the Tunbridge Wells shop and Arthur the London shop.

The Dobell family ran their bookselling business from several locations in London and then Tunbridge Wells throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.  Bertram Dobell’s first shop was located at 62 Queen’s Crescent.  In 1887, the business moved to 54 Charing Cross, and in 1894, a second London shop was opened at 77 Charing Cross.   In 1921, a location at 8 Bruton Street replaced the shop at 54 Charing Cross, and in 1934, a location at Tunbridge Wells replaced the Bruton Street branch.

Several series of catalogs were issued by the Dobell family under various names and from various different locations, and as are follows:

Bertram Dobell: no.1 (Apr. 1876)-no.27 (Dec. 1884) (nos. 6-11 issued as nos. I-VI of Dobell & Watson’s)
Bertram Dobell:  (New Series) no.1 (July 1885)-no.238 (1914)
P.J. & A.E. Dobell at Charing Cross: no.239 (1915)-no.461 (1946)
P.J. & A.E. Dobell at 8 Bruton Street: no.1 (Mar. 1921)-no.139 (Dec. 1934)
Dobell’s Antiquarian Bookstore at Tunbridge Wells: no.1 (Nov. 1933)-no.87 (1945)
Percy J. Dobell at Tunbridge Wells: no.88 (1946)-?

Bertram Dobell’s archive is located at the Bodleian Library and the discovery of the location of these catalogs adds significantly to the amount of material available for the study of the Dobell family and the London book trade.  Gordon N. Ray (1915-1986) was a professor of English at the University of Illinois beginning in 1946 and was a major influence on special collections at the University.  In the summers of 1950-57, Ray went on book-buying trips to England for the University.  He was responsible for purchasing the H.G. Wells collection, the archives of the British publishers Grant Richards and Richard Bentley, and also the Tom Turner Collection of Victorian literature.  These rediscovered catalogs further support Ray’s stature as an important and forward-thinking collector of English literature. AD

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