Special Collections Research Center

Galloping Down the Midway

  

Horses and equestrian sports are not commonly associated with an urban campus such as the University of Chicago, but as late as 1969 a riding club existed on campus, whose member lists can be found in the Office of Student Activities Records.

 

The riding club first appears in the 1927 Cap and Gown, with a short mention under "Minor Sports" within the Women's Section of the yearbook, and states that lessons were being offered. By 1929 a club is listed among Women's Athletics, and as this 1931 photo illustrates, the club had become popular, even continuing during winter by training in an indoor arena elsewhere in the city. 

 

 

 

Prior to the establishment of women's riding clubs, polo matches were held on the Midway. Polo was housed within the Military Sciences department that was created in the wake of World War I, but its existance as a sport was limited to the 1920s. Results of matches can be found in the Department of Physical Education and Athletics Records .

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.

Decorative Bookplates!

Some generous donors personalize their gifts with decorative bookplates. These bookplates commemorate their gifts and add to the history of the books they cared for.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Their Very, Very Long Manuscript

In 1399, two brothers, Melchior and Benedict Nucci, found themselves in an unpleasant dispute with their uncle Giacopo over the family’s extensive land holdings in the northern Italian city of Verona. The brothers’ tutor and guardian, Giovanni D’Aleo, advised them that in confronting their uncle it would be wise to draw up a comprehensive inventory of all of the properties that they owned, along with the land holdings of their uncle, and include copies of all the legal instruments by which each parcel had been acquired.

Accordingly, a complete Nucci family real estate inventory was compiled and inscribed on a single, enormous scroll—just over 81 feet long, assembled from 37 individual pieces of parchment. Today, this remarkable manuscript is held in SCRC, where it forms part of the Samuel and Marie Louise Rosenthal Collection of Northern Italian Documents, a large group of notarial and other legal documents dating from the 12th to the 17th centuries. Now identified as Rosenthal Ms. 2454, the Nucci brothers’ scroll was recently unrolled down the main hallway of SCRC.

The text of the scroll was written by three separate scribes working in the Communal Palace of Verona.  The listing of the Nucci properties is arranged according to the parishes within the city of Verona and the surrounding countryside. For each land parcel, the Nucci scroll describes the location and extent of the property and the manner in which it was acquired by the family, followed by a recounting of each of the legal instruments involved. The earliest of the transactions took place in 1346 and the last in 1388. 

It’s not known how or even if the two gentlemen of Verona were ever able to resolve their differences with their uncle Giacopo, but the official record of their quarrel with the older man continues to be preserved in SCRC in all its fascinating and impressive length.