Tag: recent acquisitions

Recent Acquisition: Miniature Books on the Four Elements

by Julie Tanaka, Curator, Special Collections

Les Quatre élémens appeared around 1830 in Paris printed by Maulde and Renou. These four miniatures—a mere 3.25 x 2 inches—were designed to teach French children about the properties of the four elements: earth, fire, water, and air.

Each volume is a tricesimo-secondo, more commonly referred to as a “32mo”. In book production, these terms refer to a single sheet that has been folded to produce 32 leaves (64 pages).  Each volume has glazed pastel paper boards (covers) in lavender, yellow, green, and pink. Each front cover is blindstamped with a decorative frame that surrounds a raised vignette representing the element featured in the volume.

Inside of each book are two wood engravings. One of the engravings in La Terre depicts a family fleeing an earthquake (below) and its other shows farmers harvesting crops.

Le Eau contains wood engravings of a fisherman (above) as well as a flood. In Le Feu, children see a volcano erupting (below) as well as a display of fireworks.

In the fourth book, Le Air, a mother and her children look upon a hot air balloon (above) and in the other wood engraving, the winds blows a man’s hat off.

Special Collections’ acquisition of this fine example of nineteenth-century science education in France was a collaboration with Professor Robert Goulding (Program of Liberal Studies, Director of the Reilly Center, and Director of History and Philosophy  of Science). Professor Goulding states that this set is “probably one of the last publications to teach the old system of the elements as a scientific theory.”

Recent Acquisitions: Rare Life of a 16th-Century Female Poet

by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian

Hesburgh Libraries has just acquired a rare and interesting biographical first edition, Luis Munoz’s Vida y virtudes de la venerable virgen dona Luisa de Carvaial y Mendoca (Madrid, 1632). Mendoza (1566-1614), a Spaniard, is an unusual figure in the history of the English Recusant period: a Jesuit-educated female who travelled to England in 1605 to preach and teach with the aim of bringing Anglicans back to the Catholic Church. She also became known for her charitable works in London, taking care of the poor and helping those engaged in prostitution. Mendoza was also an accomplished religious poet, in the mystical tradition of great Spanish literary figures such as St. John of the Cross; the last section of the book includes her spiritual poetry.

We have located only two other North American library holdings of this edition.

National Hispanic Heritage Month 2019

We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month.

Latinx Ephemera Collection

by Erika Hosselkus, Curator, Latin American Collections

In observance of Hispanic Heritage Month, Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to highlight our newly acquired Latinx Ephemera Collection. This collection came to us from the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies. Many of the materials in the collection were acquired by Gilberto Cardenas, founding director of the institute and Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame.

This collection is comprised of pamphlets, reports, journal issues, flyers, and magazines related to Latinx culture that date primarily between 1966 and 1999. Some materials are political or historical in nature, addressing topics such as migrant labor, the work of iconic Latinx activists such as César Chávez, and grape boycotts. Others examine socio-economic conditions among Latinx populations, access to education, civil rights, employment, and immigration. Held together in one collection, these rare materials provide a diversity of insights into Latinx life and issues in and around the U.S. during the second half of the twentieth century.

A sample of collection highlights follows:

A report on the East Los Angeles Youth Speak-Out held on May 20, 1967. This event was attended by 175 delegates and adult leaders from the East Los Angeles Latinx community. Participants used the event to discuss activities available to local youth and to strengthen communication with local officials.

 

Volume 1, Issue, 1 of Encuentro Femenil, along with the initial letter to subscribers announcing the publication of the magazine and explaining its unique contribution to the field of Chicana literature.

 

A 1969 issue of Fiesta Magazine, dedicated to the spirit of Emiliano Zapata and presenting Latinx poetry and short literary pieces.

 

Number 132 of 1000 copies of Year 1, Number 1 of The Broken Line/La Linea Quebrada, a border arts publication from 1986. This innovative journal combines poetry with visual presentations to address key Latinx issues and present Latinx perspectives.

 

This collection is open for research. A full list of collection contents is available online.

Related Previous Blog Posts:

National Hispanic Heritage Month 2017: Sergio Sánchez Santamaría
National Hispanic Heritage Month 2018: Puerto Rican Artists

Recent Acquisition: An Album of Needlework Samples

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

Album D’Ouvrages [album of work] by E. Carlier [Belgium, 1844]
The pages of this 1844 album contain not poetry, fiction, or a personal journal, but rather very fine samples of embroidery, sewing, and lace making. Created and assembled by a young Belgian girl, E. Carlier, the album displays her skills. It also shows her abilities in penmanship and calligraphy; she executed a decorative title page for her album, which served as a dedication (to her mother).

Mademoiselle Carlier carefully sewed each piece of needlework onto the album’s pages and pasted in a short label written in a neat hand. The first item, which she called simply, “Marque,” is an alphabet sampler. The following pages include an embroidery sampler and sewing exercises, and miniature examples of a shirt, an apron, a dress, a corset, and an embroidered fichu, as well as samples of crochet, knitting, and other lace making.

Up through the middle of the nineteenth century, girls expressed significant accomplishment in needle arts through the form of sampler albums. This one is particularly finely done, but learning to sew and mastering more advanced skills of lacemaking remained an important part of many girls’ education.

This item is still in process and does not yet appear in the catalog.


Recent Acquisition: Making a Pact with the Devil – Goethe’s Faust

by Julie Tanaka, Curator, Rare Books and Joe Ross, Original Cataloger for Special Collections

Enhancing the German literature holdings is the recent acquisition of Faust: Eine Tragödie, the first edition of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s work published in 1808 by J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung in Tübingen.

Faust, the two-part epic poem written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), a masterpiece of German literature, reflects the transforming world in which Goethe lived. Begun in the waning years of the Holy Roman Empire (the final dissolution marked by the abdication of Francis II on August 6, 1806) and almost a century before the unification of Germany in 1871 into a nation-state, Goethe’s work exhibits his understanding of the world in upheaval—the revolutions in America and France and the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Romanticism in literature and art, the Kantian Revolution in philosophy, the Industrial Revolution in science, technology, and economics.

Goethe, drawing upon Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s call for German dramatists to establish their independence from the French and to treat the Faust tragedy as a specifically German theme began composing his version around 1773. Goethe’s work went through numerous stages. The earliest version, known as the Urfaust, was probably finished by 1775 and the next revision, known as Faust: Ein Fragment, appeared in 1790. After almost a decade, Goethe returned to Faust, adding the prologues, the second part of “Night”, and “Walpurgis Night.” This version now referred to as Part I was finished in 1806 and published two years later. Goethe continued to work on Faust sporadically in the 1820s and completed Part II in 1831 but sealed the completed manuscript—though he made a few final corrections in early 1832—to be published only after his death.

In composing Faust, Goethe drew upon the so-called Faust tradition of texts dating to the early Christian period, but this source base forms only a small part of what he used in his composition. Goethe anchors his Faust firmly in the European tradition, alluding to and parodying ancient Greek and Roman authors including Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Apollonius, and Ovid as well as the more contemporary figures of Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Calderón de la Barca.

This copy was bound by René Kieffer (1875-1964), one of the foremost Parisian binders of the early twentieth century. Kieffer was trained in classical techniques and worked as a gilder for a decade at the Chambolle-Duru bindery in Paris. After opening his own shop in 1903, he found new inspiration from the father-son binders Jean Michel (1821-90) and Henri François (1846-1925) in Paris. The influence of the latter’s use of curved stamps to work floral and leaf forms is evident in Kieffer’s work.

A fine example of Kieffer’s adoption of the Art Nouveau style, this copy of the first edition of Faust is bound in gilt-tooled green morocco over stiff paper boards. Four rectangular panels on the upper and lower boards display four central lily ornaments. Each rectangle has a floral ornament in the center with four lily corner-pieces. The covers bear a single gilt fillet border, and the spine is gilt-tooled morocco with five raised bands with panels that have a central rose with foliate ornaments on either side. “Goethe / Faust” in gilt lettering appears in the title panel at the top and the bottom panel bears 1808 below the floral ornament. Inside the book are brown morocco doublures (decorative linings, shown above) with a gilt broken circle. Lily ornaments break the line between the four large lily ornaments at top and bottom and either side. A single fillet border surrounds the five floral ornaments that form the upper and lower border. The free end-leaves are silken with diagonal beaded line grain, a full-page floral water-color on verso of free end-leaves. This fine volume is housed in a slip case also designed by Kieffer.

 

Works Consulted
  • Brown, Jane K. “Faust.” In The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Edited by Leslie Sharpe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. 84-100.
  • Sharpe, Leslie. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Edited by Leslie Sharpe Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. 1-5.
  • Sanjuan, Agathe. Les éditions René Kieffer, 1909-1950. Paris: A. Sanjuan, 2002. <http://www.chartes.psl.eu/fr/positions-these/editions-rene-kieffer-1909-1950/>.
  • Arwas, Victor. Art Nouveau: The French Aesthetic. London: Andreas Papadakis Publisher, 2002.
  • Roberts, Matt, Don Etherington, and Walter Henry. “Michel, Marius.” In Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2003. <http://cool.conservation-us.org/don/dt/dt2225.html/>.

Recent Acquisition: Defending Papal Primacy

by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian

The Hesburgh Libraries’ Rare Books Collection has recently been enriched by an interesting title, Michel Lequien’s Panoplia contra schisma Graecorum (Paris, 1718).

Lequien (1661-1733), a French Dominican theologian writing under the pseudonym “Stephano De Altimura”, wrote this defense of papal primacy in order to refute the claims of Nektarios, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1661-1669, in a work first published in Greek in 1682. Nektarios’s book was later translated into Latin and printed in London in 1702, then reissued in 1717—we hold these editions in electronic format under the title: Tou pany kyr Nectarii…

We have discovered only two other North American library holdings of this response by Lequien.

Recent Acquisition: Spina’s 16th-century tracts on witchcraft

by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian

The Hesburgh Libraries has recently acquired an interesting addition to our already extensive holdings on the 16th-century Inquisition period in church history, Bartolommeo Spina’s Quaestio de strigibus (Romae, 1576). This title is actually comprised of three tracts on witchcraft written by the author around 1523, taking as his model Sprenger and Institoris’s Malleus Maleficarum (“Hammer of Witches”) from the late fifteenth century and emphasizing witches’ characteristic behavior in particular. A renewed interest in Spina’s works followed the establishment of the Roman Inquisition in 1542 and these tracts were collected for the first time in this edition. We count only four other North American libraries holding this initial publication of the title.

Recent Acquisition: the “Golden Book” of St. John Chrysostom

by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian

Hesburgh Libraries has recently acquired an interesting and quite rare first edition by the great early Christian preacher and writer St. John Chrysostom (349-407). Usually referred to as his “Golden Book” in English translations, De educandis liberis liber aureus (Paris, 1656) discusses the Christian education of children. Printed in parallel Greek and Latin translation, the latter was added by the book’s Dominican editor, Francois Combefis. In the preface, Combefis notes that he had discovered the manuscript of the work in the collection of Cardinal Mazarin, who was responsible for the upbringing of the young Louis XIV, and expresses the hope that it will be useful for his education.

Interestingly, this tract was not included in collected editions of Chrysostom’s works because its authenticity was questioned, and it was not until 1914 that a new edition of the Greek text was issued by Franz Schulte (which Hesburgh Libraries holds in its general collection). This seventeenth-century “editio princeps” is held by only two other North American libraries.

Recent Acquisition: Hugo Achugar Papers

by Hannah E. Sabal, Processing Archivist for Special Collections

The Hugo Achugar Papers have been recently described and are open to students and researchers.

Hugo Achugar (1944-) is a Uruguayan literary critic and prolific writer of poetry and essays. He has held teaching positions at universities in both Latin America and the United States, including Universidad de la República, Uruguay; Universidad Católica, Venezuela; Northwestern University; and Dartmouth College. He currently serves as a member of the Emeritus Faculty at the University of Miami. Some of Achugar’s better-known works include Ideologías y estructuras narrativas en José Donoso, 1950-1970, a literary essay on the works of José Donoso; Hueso Quevrado (cuaderno de la Bahía), a collection of poetry; and Falsas Memorias: Blanca Luz Brum, a fictionalized account of the life of Blanca Luz Brum.

Conference Materials, 1991, 2008

The collection consists of manuscripts, photographs, clippings, and journals, all forming a record of Achugar’s professional career. Included are correspondence, notes and research files, lecture and conference materials, and poetry. The collection also includes Achugar’s personal library, which will soon be cataloged.

“Hueso Quevrado (Cuaderno de la Bahia),” Drafts, 2004-2006 (folder 1)

The highlight of the collection is the series of articles and drafts, comprised of drafts of both published and unpublished essays, poetry, and fiction. For some works, there are multiple drafts written at different points in time, allowing researchers to follow Achugar’s writing process. For example, in the series exist various drafts, notes, and preparatory materials for Hueso Quevrado, representing Achugar’s process from research to draft to revision.

“Hueso Quevrado (Cuaderno de la Bahia),” Drafts, 2004-2006 (folder 2)

For more information on this collection, please view the online finding aid.