recent acquisitions – Page 12

Women’s History Month: A Woman’s Sardonic Eye

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.

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Recent Acquisition: A masterpiece of Chinese literature

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.

Recent Acquisition: Mini Book about John Carroll

Francis J. Weber provides a glimpse into the life of John Carroll, the first Jesuit bishop and archbishop of the United States and father of Georgetown University, In John Carroll and the Vernacular Liturgy, also summarizes Carroll’s views about vernacular liturgy.

Weber’s book is a limited edition miniature book. Special Collections copy is number 20 in an edition of 135. The book is 5.6 x 5.5 cm and is bound in paper boards covered with gold foil and a black leather spine. Affixed to the frontispiece is a postage stamp issued in 1989 by the Vatican to commemorate the bicentennial of the establishment of the Catholic hierarchy of the United States. The text is printed on Neenah Classic paper using a Chandler and Price Pilot Press.

Recent Acquisition: Cultural Revolution novel

by Hye-jin Juhn, East Asian Studies Librarian

Zhu Jian’s Qing shi bao, a Cultural Revolution novel published in 1976, includes illustrations by Chen Danqing that are examples of Cultural Revolution art, and also of the artist’s works in that time period as an “educated youth” in rural areas. Approximately one year later, Chen completed his famous painting “Writing a Letter to Chairman Mao,” and traveled to Tibet where he got inspired for his Tibet series.

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Recent Acquisition: Pre-Reformation pamphlet attacking concubinage

by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian

Hesburgh Libraries has just purchased a rare pre-Reformation pamphlet, Avisamentum de concubinariis non absolvendis (Strasbourg, 1507), that features a scathing attack on the practice of concubinage (consorting with prostitutes) among the clergy. Usually attributed to Jakob Wimpfeling, a humanist in the circle of Erasmus, this is an interesting example of the role print played in the disseminating works that detailed clerical abuses in the years leading up to the Reformation.

Hesburgh’s copy is rubricated throughout and contains marginal annotations in two different contemporary hands. There are only four other known North American holdings of this edition.

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Recent Acquisition: Leaf from a 13th-century illuminated Flemish Psalter-Hours

by David T. Gura, Curator, Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts

Frag. I. 36 is a single leaf from a type of devotional manuscript known as a Psalter-Hours. As its name implies, the book contained a Psalter as well as the Hours of the Virgin accompanied by other texts. The Psalter-Hours grew in popularity among the laity in the mid to late thirteenth century, whereas the few earlier examples were used by monastics. The Book of Hours became far more common in later centuries for the laity and eventually displaced the Psalter-Hours, though not completely.

This particular leaf contains a portion of the Office for the Dead, which the living would pray to ease the departed’s time in Purgatory. The end of Job 10.20 is followed by a responsory and a versicle. The text on the verso breaks off at Psalm 22.2.

The decorative borders are typical of Flemish painting during the thirteenth century. The initials are inhabited by grotesques and a playful illustration of a dog chasing a hare occupies the lower margin of the verso.

This fragment is fully described in David T. Gura, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts of the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), pp. 452-53. Expected publication: November 2016.

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Recent Acquisition: De laude monasticae religionis opusculum

by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian

Hesburgh Libraries has just acquired the first (and only) edition of De laude monasticae religionis opusculum (Paris, 1513) by the Flemish theologian Josse Clichtove (1472?-1543). This prolific Catholic apologist of the Reformation era wrote a spirited defense of monasticism. In this work, he attacked the anti-monastic views of the famed Christian humanist, Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), although Erasmus is not mentioned by name in the text. This would be the first of numerous polemical exchanges between the two.

In addition to Notre Dame’s copy, there are only six other North American holdings of this title.

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Recent Acquisition: Cristina Peri Rossi Papers

Poster promoting publication of Peri Rossi’s novel, La nave de los locos. — Poster promoting publication of Peri Rossi’s novel, *La nave de los locos*.

by David Dressing, Latin American and Iberian Studies Librarian, and Erika Hosselkus, Curator, Latin American Collections

Since the late 1960s, Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi has written 5 novels, 10 collections of short stories, 18 books of poetry, 4 books of essays, and innumerable cultural articles published in major European newspapers. Her works have garnered critical praise and won her many international awards over the years.

In the early 1970s, Peri Rossi was exiled from Uruguay to Spain as the country came under control of a military regime. The political violence endemic in Uruguay and the broader Southern Cone during the 1970s and 1980s is allegorized in many of her works. This violence and censorship affected an entire generation of authors and intellectuals from Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile and influenced their work. In recent critical studies, these authors have been recognized as the “Generation of ’72,” with Peri Rossi often being identified as the leading voice of this group.

The Cristina Peri Rossi Papers at Notre Dame include manuscript drafts of her published novels as well as unpublished poems and short stories, handwritten diaries, photographs, recorded interviews, and correspondence with family, friends, and other major Latin American and Spanish authors and intellectuals.

Draft of Peri Rossi’s poetry collection, Estado de exilio, with note signed by the author and the book, published in 2003, by Colección Visor de Poesía. The collection won the XVIII Premio Internacional Unicaja de Poesía Rafael Alberti. City Lights Publishers produced a bilingual (Spanish/English) edition of the book in 2008. — Draft of Peri Rossi’s poetry collection, *Estado de exilio*, with note signed by the author and the book, published in 2003, by Colección Visor de Poesía. The collection won the XVIII Premio Internacional Unicaja de Poesía Rafael Alberti. City Lights Publishers produced a bilingual (Spanish/English) edition of the book in 2008.

Two photos showing Peri Rossi with others. — Top photo: Peri Rossi with Julio Cortázar and two friends, Barcelona, 1974.
Bottom photo: Peri Rossi with publisher and poet, Carlos Barral, Barcelona, 1989.

Letter to Peri Rossi from Uruguayan poet, essayist, and critic Hugo Achúgar.

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Recent Acquisition: An Irish Priest in 19th Century Rome

by Marsha Stevenson, Visual Arts Librarian

The Very Rev. Jeremiah Donovan, D.D., professor of Rhetoric at Maynooth College, travelled to Rome in the 1830s and resided there for nine years. He documented his observations and recounted his impressions in his four-volume Rome, Ancient and Modern and Its Environs, printed privately by Crispino Puccinelli in 1842-44. Enhancing the text are 62 copperplate engravings by Roman artist, Gaetano Cottafavi.

The preface delineates the text’s arrangement as a “rapid historical sketch . . . with notices geological, statistical, political and religious,” followed by an admirably detailed description of the modern city’s “churches, palaces, museums, galleries, charitable institutions, hospitals, prisons, schools, colleges, universities, and other public establishments.” The work continues with “the antiquities ranged for the most part in chronological order” and “conducts the stranger through the environs of Rome” before concluding with a “copious and accurate index.”

Donovan emphasized his “personal observation and methodical description” and does not spare his subjects “unflinching but impartial criticism” even in light of Rome’s “transcendent and peculiar charms.”

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Recent Acquisition: Medieval Manuscript Facsimile

by Julia Schneider, Medieval Studies Librarian

The Bamberg Apocalypse facsimile is an original-format copy of a manuscript commissioned by Otto III (980-1002 AD). After his untimely death, the manuscript was left unfinished in the scriptorium of the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau in Southern Germany. His successor, Henry II (973-1024 AD) ordered it finished. Thus, the manuscript dates to 1000-1020.

Containing 106 leaves in total, the first fifty-seven leaves of the Bamberg Apocalypse (Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc. Bibl. 140) contain the text and images of the Apocalypse of St. John from the Bible (a.k.a., Revelation). The remaining leaves of the manuscript include gospel pericopes (extracted readings) for specific feasts. There are a hundred decorated initials throughout the manuscript along with fifty-seven images, or miniatures, forty-nine of which provide striking visual interpretations of the prophecies contained in the Apocalypse concerning the end of the world and the final judgment, all with significant gold decoration.

The image shown above, described in the facing text, depicts Apocalypse 12:1-5. The woman, who has brought forth a man child, is clothed with the sun and has the moon under her feet. The great dragon with its seven heads and ten horns looks on in the foreground. Though the text describes a red dragon, the image features a multi-colored dragon—red, gold, and purple. Standing in the background is the Church that houses the Ark of the Covenant.

There were many ornate apocalypses and apocalypse commentaries produced during the Middle Ages, and, while we do not own the manuscripts, Hesburgh Libraries’ Rare Books and Special Collections houses facsimiles of several in addition to this recently acquired version. Be sure to search “apocalypse” in our database of facsimiles for more information on these fascinating, illustrated manuscript facsimiles.