Collection highlights, news about acquisitions, events and exhibits, and behind-the-scenes looks at the work and services of Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) at Notre Dame.
Friday, May 4 at 1:00pm | Awards ceremony for the annual Undergraduate Library Research Award (ULRA), followed by a reception in the Special Collections Seminar Room (103 Hesburgh Library).
The main exhibit this spring is In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in 19th-Century Peru. This exhibit is curated by Erika Hosselkus and draws on strengths of Rare Books and Special Collections’ José E. Durand Peruvian History collection. Together these items offer diverse perspectives on Peruvian political events and cultural and religious practices and preferences from the colonial era, through the country’s birth in 1825, and beyond the turn of the twentieth century.
The spotlight exhibits during early April are From Distant Waters: Whaling Manuscripts in Special Collections and Baseball and Tin Pan Alley: Sheet Music from the Joyce Sports Collection, both curated by George Rugg. The baseball exhibit will end mid-month, with the exhibit Chaste, Choice and Chatty: Irish-American Periodicals of the Nineteenth Century, curated by Aedín Ní Bhróithe Clements, opening for the second half of the month and continuing through the summer.
The Game: An Occasional Magazine was first issued in 1914 by Eric Gill, Edward Johnston, and Hilary Pepler. This publication became the main forum for members of the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic.
The Easter 1917 issue featured here is from the Eric Gill Collection. It contains Eric Gill’s woodblock prints, “The Resurrection” and “Paschal Lamb” accompanied by text from The Easter Sequence by Wipo (d. 1048).
Rare Books and Special Collections will be closed in observance of Good Friday on March 30. We will reopen at 9am on Monday, April 2, 2018.
Happy Easter to you and yours from Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Notre Dame.
The periodical press claimed to civilize Peru. The first, official news periodical, Gazeta de Lima, described itself as something that quickly disseminated “a brief accounting of occurrences.” Then, in less than two centuries the literary magazine, Prisma, appeared. On the front cover of the September 1906 issue is a photograph depicting the civilizing power the press could have—two boys from among an aristocratic elite in Peru are attired in velvet suits with lace collars and leather shoes reading an issue of Prisma. It seemed that the periodical press accomplished what it claimed to do. Yet, at the same time, other periodicals argued that Peru was the exact opposite—uncivilized. This became the subject of articles filling the pages of periodical after periodical. What exactly did it mean to be civilized?
Moving from being a source of general news to a resource that generated thought, discussion, and public discourse, Peruvian periodical literature—newspapers, magazines, circulars, and other similar types of imprints—was used to show how Peru could become a civilized nation. This development of the periodical press in Peru is examined in Special Collections’ current exhibit, In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Peru curated by Erika Hosselkus (Curator of Latin American Collections).
Featured in this exhibit are materials from Rare Books and Special Collections’ José E. Durand Peruvian History Collection. Durand (1925-90), a native of Lima Peru, professor of Spanish literature, writer, and bibliophile, amassed an impressive research library. His library reconstructed the type of library the important 16th-century Peruvian writer Garcilaso Inca de la Vega possessed. In addition, Durand built a significant collection of early printed books and literary, historical, economic, and ecclesiastical manuscripts. Distinguishing this collection are numerous unique items, including the only existing copy of a 17th-century play, Tragicomedia de la Ystoria de Joseph, and a dialogue between two friends discussing conditions in colonial Peru. Another important part of the Durand collection is his personal collection of rare literary and historical journals pertaining to late Colonial and 19th-century Peru. Noteworthy is Peru’s first newspaper, Gazeta de Lima—more than fifteen of the Gazeta issues in the Durand collection are held only at Notre Dame.
Selections of these materials document both the history of periodical literature in Peru and the wealth of research opportunities in the Durand collection. Hard-to-find circulars from the Independence period provide a window into political interests of the time while rare cancioneros (popular song and verse imprints) featuring polkas, waltzes, and Latin American music show how cultures were intersecting and what people were interested in buying. Lithographs in periodicals and books show the advances in technology beginning in the 1860s. The development in types of illustrations used in official periodicals—lithographs, engravings of city scenes, portraits of important Peruvian leaders and other figures—culminates around the turn of the century with the introduction of color lithographs and photographs.
In a Civilized Nationfeatures only a small portion of the materials held in the José E. Durand Peruvian History Collection. Erika lamented how difficult it was to select materials because there were so many items that could and should be on display. Her dilemma speaks to the breadth of this collection.
“I extend my thanks to David for introducing me to the Durand collection and for his always thoughtful and enthusiastic collaboration. He is missed in so many ways.” -EH
In memoriam David Dressing (1964-2017) Latin American and Iberian Studies Librarian
Erika would also like to extend special appreciation to Sara Weber for her visual design work.
In a Civilized Nation runs through August 2018. The exhibit is free and open to the public, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. An expanded digital exhibit is forthcoming in late spring.
Weekly exhibit tours are offered Tuesdays at noon through the end of April. Special tours can also be arranged for classes or other visiting groups, including K-12 audiences. To schedule a group tour, please contact Erika Hosselkus.
This lithograph was printed in Philadelphia at a time when the general impression of Irish immigrants was that of an impoverished people, unfavorably viewed by native-born Americans. Irish immigration to the U.S. in the 1830s and 1840s was becoming dominated by poor, unskilled rural Catholics, and in the decades following the Great Famine, American cities were inundated by waves of impoverished Irish peasants.
“St. Patrick’s Day in America. Commemorative of Ireland’s unswerving fidelity to her ancient religion and the devotion of her exiled children to the sacred principles of her freedom and redemption as a nation.” Washington: John Reid, 1872. Lithograph by Hunter and Duval. [i]
Hence, according to historian Kerby Miller, all Irish immigrants were viewed negatively, including those who arrived with education, skills, or capital. He states that “in the eyes of native-born Protestants, middle-class Irish Catholic immigrants were by religion and association not ‘good Americans’, but in the opinion of many of their own transplanted countrymen, they were not ‘good Irishmen’ either.” [ii]
Considering this attitude to Irish immigrants, then, the lithograph doubles as an effective piece of propaganda and a heartwarming picture of family life. The mother and children are respectably dressed, and the sewing machine suggests an industrious household. Symbols of Ireland include the statue of St. Patrick while the portrait on the wall, of an American soldier, suggests a relative, perhaps even the absent father, fought in the American Civil War.
The mother is pinning a shamrock on the boy’s lapel. The shamrock, emblematic of St. Patrick, is a popular symbol of Irish identity. The family is clearly preparing to take part in the celebration of their Irish identity, while at the same time the image proclaims American middle-class orderliness and industry.
To read about St. Patrick’s Day, see the following books in the Hesburgh Library:
Cronin, Mike and Daryl Adair. The Wearing of the Green: A History of St. Patrick’s Day. Routledge, 2002. Hesburgh Library GT 4995 .P3 C76 2002
Skinner, Jonathan and Dominic Bryan (eds.) Consuming St. Patrick’s Day. Cambridge Scholars, 2015.
Hesburgh Library GT 4995 .Pe S556 2015
Fogarty, William L. The Days We’ve Celebrated. St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah. Printcraft Press, 1980. GT 4995 .P3 F63.
Dupey, Ana María (ed.) San Patricio en Buenos Aires: Celebracionse y rituales en su dimensión narrativa. Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 2006. GT 4995 .P3 S25 2006.
[i] To learn more about the lithographers of Philadelphia, see Erika Piola (ed.) Philadelphia on Stone: Commercial Lithography in Philadelphia 1828-1878, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.
[ii] Kerby A. Miller. Ireland and Irish America: Culture, Class, and Transatlantic Migration. Dublin: Field Day, 2008, p. 260.
Please join us for the following event being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:
Thursday, March 1 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar: MA Presentations — “Alessandro Blasetti’s Cinema and the Fantastic: A Closer Look at the Unmarried Woman” by Genevieve Lyons, and “Representations of Self: Dante’s Use of First Person in the Vita Nova” by Katie Sparrow. Co-sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame and the William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies.
Thursday, March 8 at 3:00pm-5:00pm | A Celebration of the Life of David Dressing (Latin American Studies Librarian). An opportunity to share memories will begin at 3:30pm. Friends, colleagues, and students of David’s from across campus are welcome.
The main exhibit this spring is In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in 19th-Century Peru. This exhibit is curated by Erika Hosselkus and draws on strengths of Rare Books and Special Collections’ José E. Durand Peruvian History collection. Together these items offer diverse perspectives on Peruvian political events and cultural and religious practices and preferences from the colonial era, through the country’s birth in 1825, and beyond the turn of the twentieth century.
The spotlight exhibits during March are A Beneventan Fragment, curated by David Gura, and Baseball and Tin Pan Alley: Sheet Music from the Joyce Sports Collection, curated by George Rugg.
Hesburgh Libraries have just acquired the first edition of an important work on astronomy by the early modern Jesuit polymath, Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), entitled Itinerarium exstaticum quo mundi opificium (Rome, 1656). The work generally defends the theories of Tycho Brahe, who combined elements of both the Ptolemaic and Copernican views of our solar system. Although the Jesuits had officially adopted Brahe’s cosmology by this time, the work apparently ran afoul of sixty-five theses listed in their own Ordinatio pro studiis superioribus, issued in 1651.
These difficulties led to a second edition being published in 1660 (Iter extaticum coeleste). This revision accomplished by Kircher’s friend, Gaspar Schott, contained twenty-seven pages of apologetics. Our Medieval Institute Library holds a 2004 facsimile of the Iter, so that now—with both editions available here at Notre Dame—scholarly comparisons of both works are possible.
Among the holdings of Rare Books and Special Collections are thousands of manuscripts which span over two thousand years. These manuscripts encompass a myriad of origins, physical properties, languages, and genres. Since each manuscript is produced by hand, each is a unique item. In addition to being the rarest materials within the department’s holdings, manuscripts are consulted and used for a variety of purposes. Their research and pedagogical values lie not only in the content of the their texts, but also in the physical properties of their construction, later modification, and even ownership.
The oldest manuscripts in the collection are representative specimens of writing in the Ancient World. They include over one hundred clay tablets and a cylinder from the Ancient Near East and date as early as ca. 2300 BC. These objects offer a view into the civilizations of Sumeria, Babylon, and Egypt of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods as well as different writing systems and formats.
Cod. Lat. b. 2, f. 125r. Dominican Psalter. Germany, 15th c.
In addition, Special Collections holds over 300 medieval manuscripts which span from the mid ninth-century to the sixteenth. These manuscripts present a variety of scripts, book-making techniques, and texts. The majority are in Latin, but there several examples in Greek, Italian, Old French, Middle English, and Middle German from European countries as well as Byzantium. Genres heavily represented are largely liturgical, devotional, and scholastic in nature.
A small number of manuscripts in Arabic and Persian, Ge’ez (the classical language of Ethiopia), Pali, Chinese, and Japanese spanning the seventeenth to nineteenth century are also held. These materials are largely for pedagogical purposes. They include a variety of formats and supports such as Ottoman paper, parchment, palm leaf, and other eastern paper stocks.
Personal letter on patriotic letterhead of Union Civil War soldier Elhanan W. Moberly, Co. C, 6th Indiana Infantry. (MSN/CW 1005-27)
North American manuscript holdings are arranged into five chronological or topical classifications. Manuscripts of Colonial and Revolutionary America include manuscript groups originating before the year 1788 in the British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard of what is now the United States, or are American manuscripts of the Revolutionary and Confederation eras. Early National and Antebellum manuscripts are comprised of manuscript groups originating, wholly or primarily, in North America in the years 1788 to 1860. Civil War manuscripts include all manuscript groups originating, wholly or primarily, in North America in the years 1861 to 1865, and also include manuscript groups dated later but of immediate relevance to the Civil War. Modern American manuscripts include all manuscript groups originating, wholly or primarily, in North America since the end of the Civil War. The Sports Manuscripts include manuscript material of all periods relating to athletic sports, physical culture, health and exercise, and outdoor leisure and recreation. Besides handwritten and typewritten texts, listings include other non-published formats with some claim to uniqueness, most notably scrapbooks and photographs.
Of the antient characters called ogam, 1819? (MSE/IR 1400-01)
There are over 70 manuscript collections relating to Irish Studies. They range from single items such as an account book from an 1847 Famine soup kitchen to large collections of papers. The papers of contemporary Irish writers Patrick McCabe and Eilís Ní Dhuibhne will allow future scholars to study early drafts and trace the development of the literary works, while letters such as those written by the diplomat and Easter Rising leader Roger Casement to his friend Robert Lynd provide a vivid glimpse of the personality behind the historic figure.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Coplas”. Hand drawn illustration of a couple dancing the tango with accompanying verse. (MSH/SCL 1044-01)
Rare Books and Special Collections is home to significant Spanish-language manuscript collections, from both Iberia and Latin America, dating from the fifteenth century through today. The Harley L. McDevitt Inquisition collection documents activities of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (1478-1834) in early modern Spain, Portugal, Rome, Mexico, and Peru. It includes over one hundred manuscript items. Trial and sentencing documentation, annotated procedural manuals, and ornate manuscript broadsides appointing Inquisition familiars are highlights. The José E. Durand Peruvian History collection includes more than 40 colonial and nineteenth-century literary, historical, financial, and ecclesiastical manuscript items. Among these are some totally unique items such as the only existing copy of a seventeenth-century Peruvian play entitled, Tragicomedia de la Ystoria de Joseph.
RBSC also holds modern literary collections representing South American and Caribbean writers. Manuscript highlights include the letters of Gabriela Mistral, Silvina Ocampo, Norah Borges, and Manuel Puig, as well as a few items by Jorge Luis Borges. The department’s South American historical mauscripts represent major figures of the independence era as well as some of the region’s earliest female activists, including Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane and Isabel Giménez de Bustamante.
The immigrant experience and family correspondence are another strength of the department’s Hispanic holdings. Collections include materials produced by Irish, Italian, German, and North American immigrants to Latin America.
Russian and East European Studies collections range in date from the early nineteenth century to the present. Papers and manuscripts focusing on human rights and the unofficial non-conformist culture of Soviet Russia (also known as Russia’s second culture) constitute a particular strength within the Russian and East European Studies holdings. The materials include letters from the Gulag, literary and political works of Samizdat, manuscripts, official documents, diaries, correspondence, and photographs. A number of personal collections by important Russian political and cultural figures are represented among the Special Collections’ holdings. These include the papers of the Human Rights activist and the first executor of the Solzhenitsyn Fund Alexander Ginzburg (1936-2002), the writer Eugenia Ginzburg (1904-1977) and the poets Inna Lisnianskaia (1928-2014) and Semion Lipkin (1911-2003), the concept artist and writer Vagrich Bakhchanyan (1938-2009), the Human Rights activist and literary scholar Elizabeth Markshtein (1929-2013).
Bound in modern calf decorated with blind stamped ornaments is a collection of letters written by the sixteenth-century Italian writer, Paolo Giovio. Known as a historian, Giovio became one of the foremost and innovative letter writers of his time. He drew upon his historical knowledge of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to recount in vivid detail contemporary events including the sack of Rome, the election of Pope Hadrian VI, and the Marquis of Pescara’s troops plundering his native home, Como. He made his biting political commentary about these events all too clear in the letters contained in this volume. Giovio practically turned the art of letter writing into a new genre; his letters in many ways were a precursor to journalism.
This collection of letters, titled Lettere volgari di mons, is the first edition published by Lodovico Domenichi. It bears the publisher’s dedication to Matteo Montenegro, a Genoese nobleman, dated April 1, 1560. There are annotations in two hands throughout and also a printed bookplate bearing the name of William Wickham.
Paolo Giovio (1483-1552), a native of Como, began studying Greek language and literature in Milan but moved to Pavia within a year to pursue medical science and philosophy, earning his degree from the University of Padua in 1511. Fleeing an outbreak of plague, Giovio settled in Rome around 1516, where he wrote the work for which he is best known, Historiarum sui temporis (History of His Time). Among his other notable works are De Romanis piscibvs (On Roman Fish) and Descriptio Britanniae, Scotiae, Hyberniae, et Orchadum (Description of Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and the Orkneys).
Please join us for the following event being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:
Thursday, March 1 at 5:00pm | The Italian Research Seminar: MA Presentations — “Alessandro Blasetti’s Cinema and the Fantastic: A Closer Look at the Unmarried Woman” by Genevieve Lyons, and “Representations of Self: Dante’s Use of First Person in the Vita Nova” by Katie Sparrow. Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.
The spring exhibit, In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in 19th-Century Peru, officially opens on February 9. The exhibit is curated by Erika Hosselkus and draws on strengths of Rare Books and Special Collections’ José E. Durand Peruvian History collection. Together these items offer diverse perspectives on Peruvian political events and cultural and religious practices and preferences from the colonial era, through the country’s birth in 1825, and beyond the turn of the twentieth century.
The spotlight exhibits during February are Reading the Emancipation Proclamation, curated by Rachel Bohlmann, and Baseball and Tin Pan Alley: Sheet Music from the Joyce Sports Collection, curated by George Rugg.
January 29 is National Puzzle Day, a day to appreciate puzzles of all sizes, shapes, and forms. This holiday was started in 2002 by Jodi Jill, a syndicated newspaper puzzle maker and professional quiz maker. In honor of the holiday, the curator of our next exhibit, “In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in 19th-Century Peru,” shares a couple of puzzles from two of the serials that will be featured in the exhibit. The exhibit will open in early February.
The periodicals of nineteenth-century Peru often featured puzzles, from riddles (charadas) to rebuses (geroglíficos).
The March 13, 1875 issue of La Alborada, a weekly magazine on literature, art, education, theater, and fashion, featuring the writing of Peruvian women, contains a word puzzle in the middle of the third column. Readers decoded riddles such as this one to discover a one-word or multi-word solution. In this case, the puzzle creator provides clues about the three syllables comprising the word camisa (shirt), her one-word solution.
A loose translation:
Although foreign, it is known
That when I join my first syllable to my third,
It results in a familiar mansion.
Creating a similar union
Between my third and my first syllables;
I obtain a verb and a “sack,”
“larger than” any other.
My second (syllable) is a pronoun
And it runs into my third,
Each week, every person
Should go (to this) at least once.
I will say, in conclusion
That something that you find on me
And that you find also on yourself
Will turn out to be the solution.
A.A.A.
The author of this puzzle offered up a prize to be given to one of the first four subscribers to submit a solution.
Solutions to the puzzle (Soluciones á la charada del núm. 22) appear in a later issue, shown below. Some answers, like the one sent in by Ubalda Plasencia, are written in verse, like the puzzle itself. As Ubalda points out, the syllables indicated by the puzzle are “ca” “mi” and “sa,” resulting in the word camisa, or “shirt.”
Word searches (laberintos) are also featured in Peruvian periodicals, as are rebuses, like the one found at the bottom of the page below from El Perú Ilustrado of June 16, 1888. The prize for decoding this puzzle was 200 packs of cigarettes. Fittingly, the sponsor of the puzzle was a tobacco vendor. In English, the solution to the puzzle (shown at the bottom of the last image) is: “If you know what is good, in terms of tobacco, I advise you to buy the brand «El Sol de Oro» from Oliva brothers.”
Moving from being a source of general news to a resource that generated thought, discussion, and public discourse, Peruvian periodical literature—newspapers, magazines, circulars, and other similar types of imprints—was used to show how Peru could become a civilized nation. This development of the periodical press in Peru is examined in Special Collections’ current exhibit, In a Civilized Nation: Newspapers, Magazines, and the Print Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Peru curated by 
