Special Collections thanks our six graduating seniors for the work they have done for us processing collections, assisting visitors, reshelving books, shifting collections, scanning documents, and assisting our rare book catalogers.
Rob Browne, American Studies
Brendan Coyne, Classics
Shannon Gaylord, Psychology
Hannah Herbst, History
Gabrielle Rogoff, Anthropology
Zach Trewitt, Mathematics
A fine, first edition of one of the most influential works of European literature and the most taught novel in universities—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—enhances our European literature collection. The stunning volumes now complement our holdings of the first illustrated edition (third overall edition) published in 1831 by Colburn and Bentley and the first American movie tie-in edition printed by Grosset and Dunlap in 1931.
Shelley’s novel was first printed anonymously in three volumes in 1818 for the London publishing firm Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mayor, and Jones in an edition of 500 copies. RBSC’c set is tastefully bound in contemporary style in 20th-century tan, smooth morocco. Spines are gilt-ruled in compartments with black morocco title labels and the sides are bordered with a double gilt rule.
The acquisition of the first edition of Frankenstein was made possible by the Hesburgh Libraries, a Nanovic Institute for European Studies Library Grant, the Department of Political Science (Notre Dame), and Professor Eileen Hunt Botting in memory of her brother, Kevin E. Hunt.
Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein will be the centerpiece of a spotlight exhibit, It’s Alive! Frankenstein in the Arts and Sciences, in Special Collections in Fall 2018. The exhibit will be part of a series of campus-wide events celebrating the bicentennial of Frankenstein.
Special Collections will also host a multidisciplinary panel discussion on Friday, October 19, 2018 with faculty from both Indiana University School of Medicine at South Bend and the University of Notre Dame exploring Frankenstein’s relevance to 21st-century medicine and medical ethics.
Please join us for the following events being hosted this summer in Rare Books and Special Collections:
Thursday, June 1 at 2:00pm | Exhibit Talk — “21st Century Digital Approaches to Rethinking 19th Century Catholic Print” – Kyle Roberts (Loyola University Chicago).
Monday through Friday, June 12-16 at 9:00am to noon | RBSC Nuts & Bolts — ARCHIVES! Intensive Workshop for Conducting Archival Research – Rachel Bohlmann, Ph.D. (Notre Dame, American History Librarian) and Julie Tanaka, Ph.D. (Notre Dame, Curator in Special Collections).
The current exhibit, “Preserving the Steadfastness of Your Faith”: Catholics in the Early American Republic, will run through the summer and close on August 11, 2017.
The current spotlight exhibit, “Exhibition of Artifacts from Mother Cabrini’s Archive”, will close May 19. The summer spotlight exhibit will highlight North American Antebellum friendship albums and will open the following week.
by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian
We’ve just acquired an emblem book that may be of interest to Catholic Reformation researchers, Principio Fabricii’s Delle allusioni, imprese, et emblemi del. sig. Principio Fabricii da Teramo sopra la vita,opere, et attioni di Gregorio XIII pontefice massimo libri VI (Rome, 1588). This first edition contains 231 numbered emblems, drawn from the Bible, classical mythology, and other emblem collections, as well as events and buildings from Pope Gregory XIII’s papacy.
Gregory XIII (birth name: Ugo Boncompagni) reigned from 1572-1585 and, in addition to his famous calendar revision, energetically continued the implementation of reforms articulated at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). These reforms included the insistence that bishops reside within their sees and the foundation of many new schools for the training of the clergy.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Please join us for the following events being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections (102 Hesburgh Library):
Thursday, April 13 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar — “Visualizing Fascism” by Ruth Ben-Ghiat (New York University). Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.
Thursday, April 27 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar — “Living on borders: Cityscapes in transformation in Italian literature and cinema of the ‘Economic Miracle’ ” by Alberto LoPinto (Notre Dame). Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.
The current exhibits are:
“Preserving the Steadfastness of your Faith”: Catholics in the Early American Republic.
To schedule a class or group tour, please contact Rachel Bohlmann via email or phone: (574) 631-1575.
Spotlight Exhibit: Exhibition of Artifacts from Mother Cabrini’s Archive
by Aedín Ní Bhróithe Clements, Irish Studies Librarian
The Weekly Freeman Cartoons contains 48 full-page cartoons bound into a single volume. The cartoons cover the period from December 1886 to December 1887 and were published on Saturdays as weekly supplements to the Freeman’s Journal.
The Freeman’s Journal, the major Irish nationalist newspaper, was published in Dublin from 1763 to 1924. During the 1880s the newspaper was owned by Edmund Dwyer Gray, who was a Home Rule MP. During his ownership, circulation went up to over 30,000 copies per day.
“IN THE HOUSE” (12 February 1887) shows Charles Stewart Parnell, MP, leader of the Irish Party and of the Irish National Land League (founded by 1879), addressing Prime Minister Salisbury, who sits uncomfortably beside a woman representing the evicted tenants of Glenbeigh. Like most cartoons in this volume, this one comments on relations between Britain and Ireland, and in this case refers to the Land War and to the infamous evictions at Glenbeigh, County Kerry.
While the eviction of tenants for nonpayment of rent was relatively frequent, the Land War brought new attention to the Irish and British public about individual evictions through the use of images and descriptions. The Glenbeigh Evictions were much reported at the time and dramatically illustrated in the Illustrated London News. Glenbeigh, County Kerry in the southwest of Ireland was the scene of these evictions. An economic recession and poor harvests had increased agitation among tenant farmers faced with eviction. The landowner received very little rent on the many smallholdings on his land that he inherited, and with high arrears owed in rent, a court ordered 70 of the 300 tenants to pay one year’s rent. However, Father Thomas Quilter, the tenants’ parish priest, and J. D. Sheehan, their MP, advised the tenants to reject this offer.
And so the evictions began on 11 January 1887. Bailiffs burned down cabins and broke down walls to ensure that the evicted families could not return. These evictions received widespread attention, and by the end of January forty families had been evicted. The Detroit Free Press of 22 January 1887 reported on the evictions with the following headline: “POVERTY-STRICKEN PEOPLE. Father Quilter, of Glenbeigh, Says His are too Poor to Pay Rent. THEY ARE LARGELY DEPENDENT ON THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF OTHERS.” Newspaper reporting fluctuates widely between sympathy for the tenants in the face of barbarity such as in the Chicago Daily Tribune and consistent condemnation of the tenants and their leaders from the Irish Times.
The caption for “IN THE HOUSE” in the Weekly Freeman from 12 February 1887 reads:
Parnell to Salisbury. — You thought to force this poor creature into the Poorhouse, and shut her up there, but I have brought her into your own House, where she shall be seen and heard too.
Accompanying the cartoon is a ballad, “Parnell to Salisbury” that expands upon this theme. In the second verse, the victim, represented by the woman in the cartoon, also represents the many stories and illustrations of this eviction. The Roe mentioned here is Lanford Roe, the landlord’s agent who directed each eviction in Glenbeigh.
The truth is out! your victim stands
And tells her tale of confiscation,
Of burning cots, evicting bands,
Famine, and widespread desolation!
You little thought Roe’s brutal brands
Would raise so fierce a conflagration!
This volume of cartoons and accompanying ballads and verses appears to have belonged to nationalist archbishop Thomas William Croke (1823-1902). On its flyleaf appears the following inscription:
To His Grace, The Most Revd. Dr. Croke, Archbishop of Cashel.
White Abbey Bazaar 1888
With Father Staples Prayers and Best Wishes.
Felix M, Larkin’s essay, “‘A Great Daily Organ’: The Freeman’s Journal,” History Ireland 14 (2006): 44-49 is an excellent introduction to the newspaper. For information on the Glenbeigh Evictions, see L. Perry Curtis, Jr., The Depiction of Eviction in Ireland 1845-1910, University College Dublin Press, 2011.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian
To honor Women’s History Month we are highlighting a new acquisition by a cartoonist who turned her sardonic eye on women and men in the WWII workplace.
Dorothy Bond drew on her working life in Chicago offices to create sarcastic, witty cartoons, which she turned into nationally syndicated comic strips after WWII. In 1940 Bond, a divorced mother of two, began working as the civilian executive secretary for a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy. The result was this self-published Life with the Navy by Navy Nora, a wry, biting, and affectionate look at office life during wartime. Bond dedicated it to “those unsung heroes and heroines who work in shore establishments for the finest Navy in the world – the United States Navy.”
In one cartoon (seen here), Bond mocked male self-importance and tweaked gender expectations by portraying a female secretary’s hesitation to interrupt a group of men in conversation. While she delayed, Bond revealed the men’s mundane discussion—about clothes (where to buy the cheapest, best-quality overcoats). In the panel opposite Bond caricatured the government’s wartime production expectations and the gendered labor market it exploited. While the young woman secretary doubled down, using two typewriters simultaneously, her male superiors merely observed and rationalized her work speed-up.
Bond made a career of capturing, in drawings and words, the absurdities and gender politics in American offices. After publishing two more cartoon books about women and office work, she became a nationally syndicated cartoonist with a daily panel called The Ladies in 1945. From this success Bond created a comic strip that she dedicated to secretaries, Chlorine, Champion of the Working Girl. Her post-war office humor included cartoons like, “Whatever It Is, No!” and “Out Looking for a Man. Back at ___.” Bond continued to publish cartoon books on timely post-war topics like Life with the Boss (1947) and Your First or Second Baby? (1956), and later in her career, broke into advertising.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Please join us for the following events being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections (102 Hesburgh Library):
Wednesday, March 22 at 4:00pm | Exhibit Talk — “Saint Elizabeth Seton: A Reading Life” by Catherine O’Donnell. Co-sponsored by the Hesburgh Libraries and the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism.
NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED
Thursday, March 30 April 27 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar — “Living on borders: Cityscapes in transformation in Italian literature and cinema of the ‘Economic Miracle’ ” by Alberto LoPinto (Notre Dame). Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.
The current exhibits are:
“Preserving the Steadfastness of your Faith”: Catholics in the Early American Republic.
Join co-curators Rachel Bohlmann (American History Librarian) and Jean McManus (Catholic Studies Librarian) for a guided tour Thursdays at 12:30 pm through March (excluding Spring Break, March 16), and learn more about American Catholic history held in the library’s Rare Books and Special Collections and ND Archives. Tours will last up to an hour.
To schedule a class or group tour, please contact Rachel Bohlmann via email or phone: (574) 631-1575.
Spotlight Exhibits: Bram Stoker’s Lecture on Abraham Lincoln and The Nathaniel Rogers Sermon Notebook, ca. 1634-1645.
Please join us for the following event being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:
Thursday, Feb. 23 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar: Graduate Student Presentations — “Memory, narration and intertextual references: Shakespeare’s presence in the works of Primo Levi” by Valentina Geri, and ” ‘I don’t like labels’: Reactions to the Publication of The Complete Works of Primo Levi” by Lorenzo Bonaiti. Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.
Tuesday, Feb. 28 at 4:30pm | The book launch for A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts of the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College by Dr. David T. Gura. Sponsored by the Hesburgh Libraries, Medieval Institute, and University of Notre Dame Press.
The exhibits during February are:
“Preserving the Steadfastness of your Faith”: Catholics in the Early American Republic.
Birds! Winged Wonders in Naturalists’ Eyes concludes this week and a new exhibit goes in showcasing a 13th-c. Bible leaf from a Parisian Bible painted by the Dominican Painter, once in the possession of Chester Beatty: A Leaf from the Chester Beatty Bible (W.116).
by Hye-jin Juhn, East Asian Studies Librarian
Included in the recent gift from the University of Chicago is Lu Xun’s famous The True Story of Ah-Q published by Kaiming Book Company during the Sino-Japanese War (1939-1945), with illustrations by Feng Zikai. According to Feng’s preface, the set of illustrations in this edition was done for the third time after his first two sets were lost in the chaos of the war. The Libraries’ copy is the ninth reprint of the 1939 (Minguo 28) publication.
