Harold B. Lee Library

Scary Stories in Special Collections

October 29, 2009

Special Collections’ dim-lit stacks hold rare copies of some of the most famous tales of horror, mystery, and otherworldly terror!  I thought I’d highlight a few in the spirit of Halloween:

1.  Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the wanderer: a tale (second edition, 1821).  This famous Gothic novel, by the great-uncle of Oscar Wilde, tells the story of the life and wanderings of a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for a prolonged life.
2.  Edgar Allen Poe, “The Raven” (1845).  Poe first published his famous poem in the magazine American Review in February 1845.

3.  Bram Stoker, Dracula (first edition, 1897).  This copy of the most famous vampire story of all time is signed by Stoker to an unnamed recipient on the front flyleaf.

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19th century children’s magazines

October 13, 2009

The Rare Book and Victorian collections contain a wide variety of periodicals printed in the US and Great Britain for children and young adults. They offer an intriguing glimpse into the experiences of juvenile readers on both sides of the Atlantic in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as how adult authors socialized children into gender and class roles.

Many publications provided their young readers with educational articles intermixed with uplifting fiction. Especially in magazines published by religious organizations, such as The Children’s Magazine, issued by the General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union in New York, or The Child’s Companion and Juvenile Instructor, issued by London’s Religious Tract Society, pious and moral fiction is interspersed with true stories from foreign missions and religious instruction.  The illustration at the left comes from the popular serialized novel “Willy Maitland,” a tale of the short and exemplary life of a pious little boy, found in the 1862 volume of The Child’s Companion and Juvenile Instructor.

Juvenile magazines betray prevailing attitudes toward gender roles.  In England, periodicals like The Boy’s Own Paper and The Union Jack printed adventure and sports stories and tales of heroism for boys. These stories promoted an ideal of manhood characterized by moral rectitude, Christian values, bravery, and protection of the weak. In contrast, girls’ periodicals in Victorian England provided “elevating” stories for young ladies, teaching them to fulfill their duties as sisters and daughters in preparation for duties as wives and mothers.

In magazines like The Girl’s Own Paper, fiction was interspersed with poetry and articles on homemaking skills and dress and grooming. Stories aimed at girls often preached gratitude for one’s blessings and the supremacy of domestic responsibilities over creative pursuits. These tales differ in tone from girls’ stories appearing in juvenile periodicals across the Atlantic. In the American children’s magazine St. Nicholas (founded 1873), girls are portrayed as socially and economically independent than their English counterparts. Contributions by Louisa May Alcott and others describe girls in artistic, musical, and performing careers; by the late 19th century, St. Nicholas was publishing stories about women college students.

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Jack Weyland’s Papers Come to BYU

September 11, 2009

Jack Weyland began publishing novels in 1980 with his well-known and loved Charly.  Previously he wote short stories for The New Era.  Given the vibrant LDS literature community today, it is hard to believe that before Charly there was little in the way of Mormon fiction.  Jack has opened doors for many LDS writers who have followed in his path.

We are pleased to announce that Jack Weyland has donated his papers to Perry Special Collections.  At this point the papers consist of letters and critiques from his publisher and others from 1979-2002.  Jack’s writing career is still in full swing with two books recently published.  As a result the collection will continue to grow.

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New critical works on Walt Whitman

September 9, 2009

The following scholarly monographs have recently been purchased for the Whitman Collection.   They are the newest additions to the hundreds of unique holdings by and about Whitman here at BYU Special Collections.

• Ronald Knapp, Of life immense: the prophetic vision of Walt Whitman.  Outskirts Press, 2008. A study of Whitman’s belief in universal religion.

• J. R. LeMaster, Walt Whitman and the Persian poets: a study in literature and religion.  Ibex, 2009. An examination of the influence of Persian mystic poetry on Whitman, including a critical comparison of Whitman with poets Rumi and Hafez.

• Robert Roper, Now the drum of war: Walt Whitman and his brothers in the Civil War. Walker, 2008. Drawn from family letters and Whitman’s poems, this book chronicles the Whitman family’s experience during the Civil War.

• Kanwar Singh, ed.,  The poetry of Walt Whitman: New Critical Perspectives.  Atlantic, 2009. A collection of critical and interpretive essays on Whitman by global scholars.

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Michele Ashman Bell’s Papers

August 27, 2009

Perry Special Collections is excited about the authors that are choosing to donate their papers.  Our newest author is Michele Ashman Bell.  Known for her romance novels, Michele also writes the popular Latter-day Spies books for children.  She is also the author of several Christmas books.  She has even delved into non-fiction with Happily Forever After.   In 2010 the second and third volumes of her Butterfly Box series will be published.  We are glad to have Michele as part of our collection of Mormon Literature Manuscripts.

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Two hundred years of Tennyson

August 10, 2009

Special Collections is celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of Alfred, Lord Tennyson this month with a small exhibit in our lobby area on the first floor of the library.

Alfred Tennyson, first Baron Tennyson (born August 6, 1809), was the preeminent English poet of the 19th century.  His writing career spans nearly the entire Victorian period and reflects much of the social, intellectual, and theological turmoil of the era.  Tennyson tackled such subjects as women’s education, domestic relations, patriotism, and the tension between religious faith and doubt.

Alfred was the fourth of 12 children of a Lincolnshire clergyman; his elder brother Charles was also an esteemed poet.  Alfred attended Cambridge University, publishing his first collections of poems while still a student.  He published few poems during the 1830’s, finally bowing to pressure from publishers for new work in the 1840’s.  Tennyson published his greatest work, In Memoriam, in May 1850.  At the end of the same year, Tennyson was appointed England’s Poet Laureate, succeeding William Wordsworth to the post.  Besides the patriotic and nationalistic verse he wrote in the office of laureate, he continued to write poems and plays, including poetry inspired by Arthurian legends. Queen Victoria, an admirer of Tennyson’s poems, offered him a baronetcy several times (which he finally accepted in 1884).  Tennyson died at the age of 84 in October 1892.

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Frances Eleanor Trollope

July 17, 2009

One of the newest additions to the Victorian Collection is Madame Leroux, a three-volume novel by Frances Eleanor Trollope (1835-1913). Frances is an interesting figure because of her place in the realm of Victorian arts and letters. She was a successful actress and writer who was related by birth and by marriage to other well-known 19th-century actors and authors.

Born Frances E. Ternan, she was the oldest daughter of actors Thomas Ternan and Frances Jarman. She and her sisters performed on stage as “infant phenomena” as children, and continued their stage careers as young women. Her youngest sister, Ellen, is best remembered today as Charles Dickens’ mistress. The middle Ternan sister Maria made a career as an artist and journalist.

Frances moved to Florence, Italy to study opera as a young woman. She eventually found employment as a governess to the daughter of Thomas Adolphus Trollope, a widowed author. T.A. Trollope, known to the family as Tom, was the son of Fanny Trollope and the brother of Anthony Trollope, both well-known and prolific novelists.

Frances and Tom were married in 1866 (he was 25 years older than she). They spent much of their life together in Italy, supporting each others’ writing careers. Frances authored a number of novels; Tom, who was an Italian historian, also wrote novels to supplement their income. Together they wrote a book on Italian travel. After her husband’s death, Frances wrote a biography of her famous mother-in-law.

Special Collections contains an extensive collection of works by this talented family, particularly Fanny and Anthony. We continue to search out and acquire the writings of writers like T.A. Trollope and Frances E. Trollope, whose output is less familiar to modern readers and critics.

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New Mormon Literature Collections

June 26, 2009

L. Tom Perry Special Collections is happy to announce two new Mormon literature collections. 

G.G. Vandagriff is the author of the popular Alex and Briggie genealogy mystery series.  Her fifth volume in the series, The Hidden Branch, will be out in August of 2009.  This spring a novel of romance and intrigue set in Austria from World War I to the early years of World War II, The Last Waltz, was released and has been very successful.  G.G. has donated files, notes,  and early drafts of The Lost Waltz and other novels.

Aubrey Mace is a new writer who is quickly making a name for herself.  Her debut novel, Spare Change, received the Whitney Award for best romance in 2008.  A young adult novel, My Fairy Grandmother, was published this spring.  A third novel, Santa Maybe, will be released in the fall.  Aubrey donated writing notebooks from Spare Change and My Fairy Grandmother.  Notecards and early drafts were also part of her papers.

We look forward to a long working relationship with these two fine authors.

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

May 20, 2009

Sherlockians and other fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) are celebrating the author’s 150th birthday this month.  I wanted to mark the occasion by highlighting a few of the many Doyle works found in Special Collections’ Victorian and Edwardian literature collections.

Doyle began his writing career during his days as a medical student in Edinburgh, Scotland. He published his first short story and his first non-fiction medical article in the same month, September 1879.  He continued to publish a number of short stories in the early 1880’s, earning critical acclaim for his first tale of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet, first published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887 and later published in book form.  The novel was successful enough that the publisher, Ward Lock, commissioned a sequel (The Sign of the Four).  Doyle also published a number of historical novels and other mysteries in serial form in such periodicals as The Cornhill.

Doyle found his greatest popular success in the early 1890’s with the Sherlock Holmes stories published in the Strand Magazine.  But Doyle began to fear that he would only be known as Holmes’ creator.  He published “The Final Problem,” in which Holmes and his nemesis Professor Moriarty apparently perish.  This enabled Doyle to turn his attention to writing historical fiction, including the Brigadier Gerard stories and The Great Shadow (1892).  He also published other mysteries, medical stories, and two books defending British policy in the Boer War. Doyle returned to Holmes and Watson with The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1902, and, thanks to an offer of $45,000 from an American magazine, wrote the new stories collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905). Doyle continued to write in various genres: historical fiction (Sir Nigel, 1906), science fiction (The Lost World, 1912), and detective fiction (The Valley of Fear, serialized 1914-1915).  During the First World War, he served as a military correspondent and wrote several histories of the war from the perspective of the Allies.  In his last decade, Doyle published his memoirs and became a proponent of the spiritualist movement, the subject of most of his last books.

Special Collections owns many first editions of Doyle’s novels, including some inscribed by the author; periodicals in which Doyle’s stories and novels first appeared; and even the original manuscript copy of one of Doyle’s historical novels, The Refugees: A Tale of Two Continents (published 1893).  To find them in the library catalog, limit your search to “Special Collections” in the “library” field, then perform an author search for “Doyle, Arthur Conan.” All the Doyle works in Special Collections can be accessed in our reading room.  Please be aware that Vault Collection items (which are noted as such next to the call number in the library’s catalog records) are only available before 5 p.m. Monday-Friday.

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New acquisitions to the Wordsworth Collection

May 14, 2009

Two notable recent additions to the Rowe Collection of William Wordsworth:

William Green, A description of a series of 60 small prints (1814).

This book contains etchings of the Lake District by an artist from Ambleside.  Green originally intended to include a tourist guide as well, but the cost of printing the illustrations alone prohibited including anything more than brief descriptions of each plate.  The book was published the year after the Wordsworth family moved to Rydal Mount.

Joanna Baillie, ed. A collection of poems, chiefly manuscript, and from living authors (1823).

Baillie collected over 80 original poems from contemporary authors, including two sonnets by Wordsworth, “Not love, nor war, nor the tumultuous swell” and “A volant tribe of bards on earth are found.” Wordsworth altered these sonnets before republishing them in later collections of his poetry.

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