February 2, 2012 by Maggie Kopp
The 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens is this Tuesday, February 7. At Special Collections, we are celebrating with a small exhibit on this beloved author’s life and works. The exhibit features first editions of A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby in parts, and an original steel printing plate used to produce an illustration in the first edition of David Copperfield.
“The World of Charles Dickens” will be on display all month in Special Collections’ lobby area. The exhibit was curated by Lisa Jackson New, an intern at Perry Special Collections.
January 23, 2012 by Maggie Kopp
One major area of emphasis in the Victorian and Edwardian Literature Collections is work by British women novelists. Special Collections owns first editions of beloved authors like the Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot; but there is a wealth of literature by novelists who are less celebrated today but produced best-sellers in their own time.
Some of the newest additions to the Literature collections by female authors include:
Elizabeth Gaskell, The Moorland Cottage (1850). An early novella by Gaskell, which depicts the life of a young girl, Maggie Browne, whose mother mistreats her but spoils her brother Edward.
Lady Anne Isabella Ritchie, Mrs. Dymond (1885). This novel, by the daughter of author William Makepeace Thackeray, is a family drama set in England’s Lake District and Paris at the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71).
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, All Along the River (1893). Braddon was a bestselling author of sensation fiction. The heroine of this novel is tempted to leave her husband, who is away on a tour of duty in India. Her choice, and its consequences, drive the plot.
December 13, 2011 by Maggie Kopp
The following books are a sampling of some of the recent works of criticism acquired for the Herman Melville Collection. To find these books and others, search the library catalog for the subject “Melville, Herman” or “Melville, Herman, 1819-1891–Criticism and interpretation.”
David Dowling, Chasing the White Whale: The Moby-Dick Marathon; or, What Melville Means Today. University of Iowa Press, 2010.
Stanton Garner, The Two Intertwined Narratives in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd: A Study of an Author’s Literary Method. Edwin Mellen Press, 2010.
Birgit Mara Kaiser, Figures of Simplicity: Sensation and thinking in Kleist and Melville. State University of New York Press, 2011.
Jamie Lorentzen, Sober Cannibals, Drunken Christians: Melville, Kierkegaard, and Tragic Optimism in Polarized Worlds. Mercer University Press, 2010.
Geoffrey Sanborn, Whipscars and Tattoos: The Last of the Mohicans, Moby-Dick, and the Maori. Oxford University Press, 2011.
November 22, 2011 by Maggie Kopp
The United States Civil War period has inspired many writers of fiction, and has provided a rich setting for novels as diverse as Little Women, Gone With the Wind, Rifles for Watie, and The Killer Angels. Special Collections contains an array of important Civil War-related fiction, including literature by those who experienced the war firsthand (Louisa May Alcott, Ambrose Bierce) and 19th and 20th century authors born after the war’s end (Stephen Crane, Margaret Mitchell, William Faulkner). First editions of important novels like Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and story collections like Bierce’s Tales of Soldiers and Civilians or Faulkner’s The Unvanquished can all be found in Special Collections. The literary collections also contain a number of 19th and early 20th-century boy’s adventure books set during the Civil War, by authors like G. A. Henty, Gordon Stables, Oliver Optic, and Joseph Altsheler.
Civil War fiction can be found in the library catalog by performing a subject search using the terms “United States history Civil War fiction.” Note: leaving out the term “history” will bring up dystopian science fiction and fantasy along with Civil War fiction.
November 10, 2011 by Kristi Young
An exhibition entitled Women & Creativity is showing in the Perry Special Collections foyer November 3-22. One of the areas of creativity discussed is literature. Jessica Day George is the featured author. Her first book Dragon Slippers is demonstrated through manuscript, drawing, correspondence, and a French edition. George’s manuscripts have recently been published and are available at MSS 7550. It is an expanding collection and within six months the manuscript for George’s new novel Tuesdays at the Castle will become part of the collection.
October 28, 2011 by Maggie Kopp
Several new critical works on William Wordsworth, his contemporaries, and English Romanticism have been added to the Edward M. Rowe Collection of William Wordsworth. These include:
- Arthur H. Bell, “The child in Wordsworth’s major poetry: a master metaphor and its implications.” Lexingford Publishing, 2010.
- Jacqueline Labbe, “Writing romanticism: Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, 1784-1807.” Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
- Gregory Leadbetter, “Coleridge and the daemonic imagination.” Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
- Eric Lindstrom, “Romantic fiat: demystification and enchantment in lyric poetry.” Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
- Reeve Parker, “Romantic tragedies: the dark employments of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley.” Cambridge University Press, 2011.
These titles may be consulted in Special Collections’ Reading Room during normal operating hours.
October 13, 2011 by Maggie Kopp
Illustration by Hablot Knight Brown in J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery, (1851)
Victorians were avid readers of ghost stories. Many novels and short stories of the time period touch on the supernatural, mystical, the Gothic, and the occult. From “A Christmas Carol” to “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” some of the most famous supernatural tales in literature date from the Victorian period.
To get into the Halloween spirit, Special Collections is exhibiting collections of ghost stories by well-known and lesser-known Victorian authors in our reference area, starting October 14, 2011. Highlights include a Rudyard Kipling story collection printed in India, a ghost story written by six authors (including Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Elizabeth Gaskell), and the adventures of a ghost-hunting psychic detective.
Looking for more ghost stories? One great resource is the “Guide to Supernatural Fiction” by Everett Bleiler, which can be found in Humanities Reference on level 5 of the library. You can also do a genre/form search in the library catalog for “ghost stories” to find examples of stories and novels across the library’s holdings.
September 28, 2011 by Maggie Kopp
A recent addition to the Edwardian literature collection is a copy of Beatrix Potter’s “The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit” (1906). This little book is one of two Potter tales originally published in a concertina, or accordion, format. Special Collections has a nearly-complete set of first editions of Potter’s 23 tales, as well as other Potter titles like “Peter Rabbit’s Almanac” and “The Fairy Caravan.” Special Collections also has a number of children’s books by other authors which use Potter characters, particularly Peter Rabbit. “Peter Rabbit and his Pa,” published in Akron, Ohio in 1908, is one such title.
“The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit” was acquired with the generous assistance of the Friends of the Harold B. Lee Library.
September 6, 2011 by Maggie Kopp
Books and documents from the Louisa May Alcott Collection will be on display at the Springville Museum of Art as part of the museum’s new exhibit, The Illustrated Life of Louisa May Alcott: Works of Bethanne Anderson. The exhibit features Anderson’s original artwork for the illustrated biography “The Life of Louisa May Alcott” by Yona Zeldis McDonough (2009). This exhibit runs from September 10 to October 14, 2011.
August 18, 2011 by Maggie Kopp
Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” is one of many famous novels which were published 150 years ago, in 1861. Dickens released the novel serially in his magazine “All the Year Round” beginning in December 1860; the novel finished in the August 1861 issue. London publishers Chapman and Hall then released “Great Expectations” in a three-volume book format. Special Collections contains examples of both printing formats: original copies of “All the Year Round” can be found in the Victorian Collection, while a first edition copy of the three-volume “Great Expectations” is housed in the Vault Collections.
Why collect both the serialized and the book formats of “Great Expectations” and other 19th century novels? Much longer fiction of the 19th century was published in both serial and multi-volume book form, and having both formats available can better help students and scholars interpret how a text was produced, published, and received. Was the text changed between the time it was published serially and in book form? Did serialization and “volumization” affect how the author chose to structure the novel, or how readers experienced and interpreted the text? Did the audience of a novel in a given periodical differ from the audience who read the novel in book form? These questions and others can be addressed by examining the differing early editions of a novel like “Great Expectations.”
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