Special Collections Research Center

Highlights of Special Collections

Soaring Flight. . . Edward Chalmers Huffaker

E. C. Huffaker was an engineer and aeronautical experimenter. He built gliders or early flying machines based on his observations of bird flight. Huffaker worked at one time under Samuel P. Langley at the Smithsonian as part of their aeronautical staff, and later for famed aviation pioneer Octave Chanute.

   

Crerar Manuscript 294 contains a manuscript and drawings
of Huffakers Soaring Flight. The drawings of a glider are
depicted from several angles, and contain considerable
description of the glider and its parts. The manuscript
appears to be handwritten observations of the machine
in flight, along with some general principles of flight.

Announcing New Acquisitions!

Special Collections has acquired two unique items of great interest for the study of manuscript production and illumination and the transition from handwritten manuscripts to printed books in the first century after the invention of printing. One of the new acquisitions is a Prayerbook in Latin and French, c. 1500-1520; the other is a printed Book of Hours, c. 1515-1530.

 
Left: Unfinished Prayerbook, f.36v, Two Angels Holding Scrolls

Right: Printed book of Hours, f.12v, Four Cardinal Virtues

 

The Prayerbook has several distinct features: there are decorations inspired by the Gőttingen Model Book, produced in Mainz in the mid-15^th century and used in manuscripts and early incunabula in the Lower Rhine; the text and illustrations are incomplete, enabling study of the work patterns in a medieval scriptorium; there is an initial of St.-Trond (infrequently depicted), suggesting an original provenance in the diocese of Liege; and linguistic evidence in the vernacular portions suggests that the Prayerbook or this part of it was made for a woman.

 
Unfinished Prayerbook, f.13, Historiated initial O (43x43mm) of St. Trond the Abbot, who holds a cross.
A scroll identifies the Saint: Sancte Trudo ora pro me.

Unfinished Prayerbook, f.24v, Crucifixion

The woodcuts in the Book of Hours (printed in Paris by Gillet Hardouyn, ca. 1515) are heavily painted by hand and are accompanied by added gold architectonic frames. The volume is so lavishly illuminated that is was most likely done by an artist active in the production of illuminated manuscripts, rather than a “colorist” employed by printers to create something that looked like an illuminated manuscript.

Printed Book of Hours, f.26, Nativity

      
The style resembles artists active in the workshop of Jean Pichore, who contributed designs for the large miniatures, which come from several different series of prints over different years.
Most of the smaller woodcuts are adaptations by the Master of the Très petites Heures of Anne of Brittany.

  
Printed Book of Hours, f.36, Fight Into Egypt

Highlights of Special Collections

The Margaret Burton Collection

The Margaret Burton Collection, recently inventoried by the University of Chicago Library, contains the papers of Margaret Burton, daughter of University president Ernest DeWitt Burton. Ms. Burton, apparently a well-traveled graduate of the University, was a missionary to China and Japan in 1909 and published several books on the subject.

 
Margaret Burton

This collection contains some of her correspondence, one example of which shows that Ms. Burton made some very high-ranking friends in her travels. The envelope that the letter came in, marked “From the Headquarters of the Generalissimo,” is the most arresting sign of its importance.

The letter itself, written in 1937, is written by none other than Madame Chiang Kai-shek. It reveals that she and Margaret Burton were close friends and corresponded regularly at the time. The letter is also notable for the almost eerie comments made on the international situation at the time. She writes: “…out in this part of the world the ambitions of the Japanese Army leaders are likely at any time to start a conflagration the result of which there is no foretelling. The day of treaties seems almost to have passed… but I must confess that I have lost a lot of faith in what is called international justice, as well as in the sanctity of treaties.” The letter gives valuable insight into the sense of foreboding that prevailed before World War II, as well as the close friendship shared by Margaret Burton and Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

Discovered by Laura Alagna

Digitizing Archives and Manuscript Collections

 

The University of Chicago's Special Collections Research Center has started a program to digitize selected archives and manuscript collections. The digital images are being made available via the online finding aid for each collection. This will recreate for the online user the experience of a researcher encountering the original materials in the SCRC Reading Room, with documents displayed as they are housed in each folder, and with description of the contents in the form of folder headings.

Individual, high-resolution images of each page will be permanently preserved in the Library's digital repository, and can be made available for publication or other research needs. Digitization efforts are currently focused on materials in the public domain, or those for which the University of Chicago holds copyright.

Collections with digitized content now available online include:

 

 

• The Ida B. Wells Papers: The collection contains diaries, correspondence, manuscripts and photographs documenting the life of the teacher, journalist,
and anti-lynching activist.
 

 

• The Dr. Harry Bakwin and Dr. Ruth Morris Bakwin Soviet Posters Collection:
Nineteen Soviet political posters produced in the early 1930s, collected by the American physicians Dr. Harry Bakwin and Dr. Ruth Morris Bakwin during two trips to the Soviet Union.

• The Fielding Lewis Papers: Business, personal, and legal records documenting life on a plantation on the
James River in Virginia, both before and after the Civil War.

 

 

• The University of Chicago Laboratory
School Work Reports:
These reports are about the
Elementary and Secondary division
of the Laboratory School, and
document classroom activities in
the School's first decade.

 

This initiative is a collaborative effort between University of Chicago Library Special Collections, Preservation, and the Digital Library Development Center. Many thanks to Eileen Ielmini, Kathleen Feeney, Daniel Meyer, Kathy Arthur, Karen Dirr, Charles Blair, and the student scanners in Preservation.

Popular Literature Collection - Entertaining and Enlightening

The University of Chicago Library recently completed an inventory of the Popular Literature Collection, a large collection of approximately 2,000 paperback novels and science fiction magazines.  The collection represents many of the major paperback publishers of the 20^th century, including Bantam, Popular Library, Permabooks, Ace and Dell.  It also covers a wide variety of subject matter, from the classic paperback genres (romance, mystery, science fiction) to the … less common, somewhat more lurid titles. The titles date from the 1930s to the 1960s.

As paper rationing ended after World War II, the paperback business boomed in the United States.  Many classic works of American literature got their largest exposure from paperback sales, and old favorites were often re-issued over and over again.  The low costs of publishing paperbacks also allowed smaller publishing houses to get into the game, and the collection includes many presses that only published a few titles.  These include some gay and lesbian literature, always produced by small presses in this era, and erotica. 

The most alluring part of these books is the cover art.  Paperbacks were designed to attract attention, and these certainly do.  The combination of lurid, often sexually suggestive covers with flashy titles (often changed from the hardcover edition to attract more readers), make for entertaining browsing today.  Many also capitalize on the American fascination with exotic lands: titles like “Musk, Hashish and Blood” and “Celeste, the Gold Coast Virgin” took readers on a (potentially inaccurate) journey away from their regular lives.

The science fiction magazines in the collection constitute nearly complete runs of some of the major magazines of the era, including Galaxy, Astounding Science Fiction, and Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Many of the most famous science fiction writers of the 20^th century, including Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and others were originally published in these magazines, and the collection extends from the late 1930s to the early 1970s.

A finding aid for the collection will be available online soon.

A Window into German Popular Literature 1775-1875

The University of Chicago Library has completed full cataloging of the Lincke’sche Leihbibliothek, sometimes referred to as the Lincke Collection. 

In 1930, the Library purchased from Otto Harrassowitz a collection of 6,990 titles in 14,110 volumes  that had been part of the Lincke’sche Leihbibliothek in Leipzig. This rental library was founded in 1791 by the bookdealer and publisher W. Lincke and located at Ritterstraße 4 across from the historic Nicolaikirche. The collection provides an extraordinary record of Trivialliteratur published in German between 1775 and 1875 (principally 1820 to 1850).

Only a small percentage of the German literature is by noted literary figures (including the Heinrich Heine’s Das Buch der Lieder pictured above), the remainder being by popular authors of the day. Approximately 30% of the volumes are translations into German, largely from English (including Walter Scott) and French (including Balzac); also included are works translated from Swedish, Danish, Dutch, and eight other European languages.Chicago’s catalog holds a descriptive record for the collection, in which a click on Linckesche Leihbibliothek under “Other Authors” retrieves records for the individual titles. The records are available in WorldCat as well. 

Publishing Basil Bunting's "Chomei at Toyama"

The Special Collections Research Center holds three archival collections that document the modernist Northumbrian poet Basil Bunting’s attempts to publish his early long poem, "Chomei at Toyama."

On January 21, 1932, Bunting mailed a letter to Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, expressing apprehensions about his recently submitted article "English Poetry Today" (Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Volume 39, January 1932). In this piece, Bunting commented ambiguously, somewhat critically on T.S. Eliot. He also, by way of an aside, recommended "a man called Becket" [sic] as a promising young poet to solicit for work (Samuel Beckett’s first, slim book of poems, Whoroscope, appeared in 1930). At this time, Bunting was living in Rapallo, Italy, and writing under the influence of resident expatriate Ezra Pound.

As a postscript to the letter, Bunting acknowledged that he enclosed a batch of poems meant for submission to the magazine: "The material is from the HO JO KI… I have condensed about half of it into verse…."

Thus begins Bunting’s efforts at publishing his work in progress, "Chomei at Toyama," a verse translation and distillation of the13th century Japanese prose work Hojoki of Kama no Chomei.

For over a year, Bunting continued to haggle with Poetry about placing the poem. In the meantime, he also sent the poem to James Leippert, later known as Ronald Lane Latimer, publisher of the magazine Lion and Crown. “Copies of Chomei are in the hands of [William] Carlos Williams, whose magazine, I daresay, will expire before he gets round to printing it,” wrote Bunting to Poetry staffer Morton Dauwen Zabel, “and [in the hands] of Leippert, editor of the new Lion and Crown (why the public-house name?) who probably will print it; and I will get no dollars from him if he does.”

Bunting made it clear to Leippert in a letter of January 4, 1933, that he needed cash and that Poetry would pay it. “Arriet [sic] Monroe, it now transpires, is thinking of publishing parts of my ‘Chomei.’ She pays: and there are also prizes: so it is better for me that she should do it than you.”

[Click to enlarge: From a letter from Bunting to Morton Dauwen Zabel, January 4, 1933, from the Morton Dauwen Zabel Papers]

In the course of corresponding, Bunting made comments on his work, on Pound's lifestyle and influence, and on the work of other poets.

On March 24, 1933, Bunting at last conceded to Morton Dauwen Zabel’s suggestions to publish the poem in shortened, edited form. The version appeared in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Volume 42, September 1933.

[Click to enlarge: Typescript of "Chomei at Toyama" (undated) with editor's markings from the Morton Dauwen Zabel Papers]

The Basil Bunting correspondence and poetry typescripts are found in the Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Records, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Papers, and the Ronald Lane Latimer Papers.

The poem itself can be read at the Poetry Foundation website: Chomei at Toyama.

Sounds from Tomorrow's World: Sun Ra and the Chicago Years, 1946-1961

Sun Ra and His Arkestra, Jazz in Silhouette, Saturn LP 5786, 33 1/3 rpm, 1959.

The University of Chicago Library is pleased to announce a new web exhibition, Sounds from Tomorrow's World: Sun Ra and the Chicago Years, 1946-1961.

From the exhibit's introduction:

Sounds from Tomorrow’s World explores Sun Ra’s time in Chicago, it should be noted that this exhibit represents just a small portion of [The Alton Abraham Collection of Sun Ra]’s full scope. The exhibit includes scores and poetry written by Sun Ra, vinyl records, album artwork, promotional materials, and several of Sun Ra’s early controversial broadsheets.

Portrait of Herman Sonny Blount, undated.

All of the material from this exhibit is drawn from the Alton Abraham Papers of Sun Ra, located in the Special Collections Research Center, The University of Chicago Library. The collection, which contains material from throughout Sun Ra's career, was generously donated and by acquired from School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor, jazz writer, and Sun Ra scholar John Corbett and writer, cultural critic, and faculty member at the School of the Art Institute Terri Kapsalis in 2007 and forms part of the University of Chicago's Jazz Archive....

This exhibit was curated by Andrew Rea, Music Public Services Assistant in Regenstein's Music and Recordings Collection. It was designed by Kerri Sancomb, former Exhibits Specialist in the SCRC.

Visionaire 55: Surprise

The Library recently acquired the 55th installment of Visionaire.

According to its website, "Visionaire is a multi-format album of fashion and art produced in exclusive numbered limited editions. Since its inception in the Spring of 1991, Visionaire has offered a forum for works by both famous and emerging artists from around the world as well as personalities, fashion designers, art directors, and image-makers."

The 55th album, entitled Surprise, presents a series of pop-up books designed by several contributors and executed by the paper engineer Bruce Foster.

The collection of books is here to be explored in the Special Collections Research Center. 

Students Protest Milton Friedman, 1976

[Pictured: Student views protest poster related to Milton Friedman and Chile, 1976?, photo from the Maroon photo archives]

On November 9, 1976, Milton Friedman appeared for a book signing at the University bookstore for his recently released book, There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. A student group, the Spartacus Youth League, staged a "teach-in" protest event simultaneously, in the same bookstore, only four feet from the table where Friedman was signing books.

Students protested what they perceived as Friedman's "collaboration" with the military government of Chile. Friedman argued in the media that he was unjustly blamed for economic policies adopted by the Chileans.

The University of Chicago has a rich history of student protest. Photos of protests are available in the newly acquired photo collection of The Maroon, the independent student newspaper, as well as the Archival Photographic Files. Archival documents can be found in several collections, such as the papers of faculty and administrators at the University. Use our archival findings aids search screen to discover them!