ExLibris plates from Saint John's

(this never seems to happen to me ...)

I've reported on previous occasions on the "manna experience"--finding something in the rare book room and asking "what is it?"

As always, click on any picture to see it enlarged or to see a gallery of the pictures in this article.

Getting into the spirit of the subject ...

Today's "manna" comes from a single box that was last organized in 1994.  This box contains a collection of book plates or ex libris from the the time of the last turn of the century (i.e., circa 1890-1910).  Twenty years ago the plates were listed and partially identified.  More recently (last year), an intern at HMML expanded the information for many of the plates; however, there remains much to learn about the artists and the owners for whom these plates were created.  Here is a small gallery of images from the more than 1500 bookplates in the Saint John's bookplate collection.

Some of the plates are rather romantically "medieval" in character:

"Buecher-Sammlung Karl Anklam."

"Ex libris Kurt Th. Friedlaender."

Some are humorous:

"Maria Wertheimber."

"Akademischer Gesang-Verein Muenchen."

Some are outright satirical:

Caricature of Beethoven by L. Brunet.

Caricature of Liszt by L. Brunet.

Some are very modern:

"Ex libris Philipp Vock."

Some are playful:

"Ex libris Dr. Iosef Klueber."

Some are even "monastic" (at least in spirit):

"Ex libris Philipp Treier."

The Bookplate Collection is now in the process of moving from the book collections to the art collection under Arca Artium.  There it will fit in well with the broad holdings of printed works from the 15th to 20th centuries, and can provide further evidence of turn-of-the-century taste and art.

The librarian speaks ...

Finding HMML at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (aka "Kalamazoo")

Finding HMML at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 9-12, 2013)

From the Malta Study Center exhibit. Click to enlarge.

As in other years, the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library is participating in several sessions and activities at the International Congress on Medieval Studies next month.  I've listed sessions below where HMML staff will be involved.  In addition to sessions with papers, HMML will again hold its own reception on Friday night, but this time in the Fetzer Center (room 2020).  We hope you can join us!


The Malta Study Center has arranged for a display of panels commemorating the 900-year anniversary of the papal bull of Pascal II and the establishment of the Knights of Malta. The display will be at the Department of Special Collections in the Waldo Library. For a preview of these panels, go to Theresa Vann's Melitensia Blog:

http://melitensia.blogspot.com/2013/03/900-years-of-faith-in-action-1113-2013.html

Here is a listing of HMML staff activities at Kalamazoo:

Thursday 10:00 am Session 4 Valley II 202	War and Schism in Iberia of the “Calamitous Fourteenth Century” Sponsor: De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History Organizer: Donald J. Kagay, Albany State Univ. Presider: Theresa M. Vann, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library Pere III of Aragon and His Sons in War and Schism: Warfare and Religion in Fourteenth-Century Iberia Donald J. Kagay Castile’s Fourteenth-Century Peninsular Wars within the Framework of the Great Western Schism L. J. Andrew Villalon, Univ. of Texas–Austin
Friday 8:30 pm Fetzer 2020	Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) Reception with open bar
Saturday 3:30 pm Session 500 Schneider 1275	New Developments in Digital Resources on Medieval Austria, Germany, and Switzerland Sponsor: Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML); Society for Medieval Germanic Studies (SMGS) Organizer: Matthew Z. Heintzelman, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library Presider: Theresa M. Vann, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library Digital Resources on Things in a Domesticated Space Ingrid Matschinegg, Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Finding What You’re Looking For: Hill Museum & Manuscript Library’s Online Search Systems and Finding Aids Wayne Torborg, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library The vHMML Project: At the Crossroads of Digital Humanities and Manuscript Studies Matthew Z. Heintzelman
Sunday 8:30 am Session 524 Valley II 202	The Nine-Hundredth Anniversary of the Order of the Hospital: Hospitaller Rules and Statutes I Sponsor: Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) Organizer: Theresa M. Vann, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library; Helen J. Nicholson, Cardiff Univ.; and Jochen Burgtorf, California State Univ.–Fullerton Presider: Jochen Burgtorf Living Up to an Ideal: The Hospitallers in L’Estoire de Eracles Philip Handyside, Cardiff Univ. The Function of Hospitaller Houses in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales Christie A. Majoros, Cardiff Univ. Interpreting the Regulations: The Hospitallers’ Interpretations of the Rule and Statutes in England and Wales Helen J. Nicholson

Sunday 10:30 Session 576 Valley II 201

The Nine-Hundredth Anniversary of the Order of the Hospital: Hospitaller Rules and Statutes II Sponsor: Texas Medieval Association (TEMA) Organizer: Theresa M. Vann, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library; Helen J. Nicholson, Cardiff Univ.; and Jochen Burgtorf, California State Univ.–Fullerton Presider: Helen J. Nicholson William of Saint-Stephen’s Saterian (1296): Reflections on a Hospitaller Legal Treatise Jochen Burgtorf Who were the Hospitallers' 'Poor?' Jyri Hasecker, Westfälische Wilhelms-Univ. Münster Issues of Textual Authority: Additions, Emendations, and Glosses on the Statutes of the Order of the Hospital Theresa M. Vann

We hope to see you in Kalamazoo!!!!

Peace

Look inside the book. Remember, always look inside the book ...

Oscar Wilde autograph, dated March 22 (1898?).

[Please note that digital images in this posting are mostly smaller than usual.]

A few weeks ago I struggled with an anomalous copy of Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol.  The problem was that our copy did not match any described copies that I could find in online or printed bibliographic resources. I did finally decide to catalog the item as possibly a "second edition" copy with a first edition title page.

One trait of that copy stood out, however: there was what appears to be an authentic signature of Oscar Wilde pasted onto the verso of the title page. Pretty cool to find an autograph of a famous person in an unexpected spot. In fact, recently I have come across several such surprises. 

HMML does have collections of signatures that were intentionally gathered--the best-known example is the Kritzeck Collection, which contains dozens of signed documents from popes, saints, kings, emperors, tsars, and presidents.  Visitors are always impressed when we can pull out letters signed by Henry VIII or Elizabeth I of England. This collection came to Saint John's University in the 1960's.

More recently we have been inventorying a very large collection of handwritten documents from Italy, divided into sub-collections of popes, nobility, cardinals, artists, and other noteworthy (chiefly Italian) personalities. Unfortunately, most of the persons represented in the Jude Koll, OSB, Collection are hardly household names today, although among the nobility is at least one letter signed by Louis XIV of France.  But we continue to work on making these materials available to the outside world.

Biography of Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., and the
younger Lindbergh's story of his historic flight in 1927.

 Just this past week, however, I was reminded of the immediacy of so much of our history.  In the course of processing books from a large donation of materials on Minnesota history and culture (the Anderson Collection), I found a biography of the first Charles A. Lindbergh (1859-1924), a prominent lawyer and politician, as well as the father of the famous aviator. Earlier in the week I had cataloged a later edition of the younger Lindbergh's The Spirit of Saint Louis (1975), which I discovered contained an autograph of Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001)!

My initial instinct was to send Lindbergh of Minnesota (1973) to our general university library for the circulating collection, only to find that it had been autographed on the title page by both the author (Bruce L. Larson) and by Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.!

Autographed title page.

Considering the fact that Lindbergh grew up on the Mississippi River, only about 25 miles north of where I now live, I was struck by how close this signature made me feel to an historical figure from a very different time. For a collection dedicated to Minnesota history and culture, this autograph from a "famous son of the state" makes this copy much more special.

This copy of the Spirit of St. Louis is signed on the half-title page by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Since this discovery--which I shared with my colleagues at HMML--I have found three additional titles by Anne Morrow Lindbergh in which she signed her name or inscribed the volumes.

It is not entirely unusual for me to find signatures in our books, although most often they are signature of the author or are there to verify the authenticity of the book.  Many of these appear in colophons and include prominent book artists like Eric Gill or Rockwell Kent.  Among the author's signatures we have Tennessee Williams, Kurt Vonnegut, Maud Hart Lovelace, Sinclair Lewis, and several others.

Another name that appears in our books is Harry Reasoner (1923-1991), the famous television journalist, who studied for a while in Minnesota, and who wrote a novel that takes place in the Twin Cities--Tell Me About Women (1946). Younger readers may not remember this name, but for many baby boomers, Reasoner was regular presence in national television news for decades.

Cover of Harry Reasoner's Tell Me About Women (1946) and Harold Stassen's Where I Stand (1947).

Inscription by Harry Reasoner.

A very young (23-years old) Reasoner inscribed this copy of his novel to "Bob + Mary Adams - with pleasant memories of military life + all the best always" and dated it April 16, 1946.

Former Minnesota governor, Harold Stassen (1907-2001).

Harold Stassen (1907-2001) served as Minnesota governor from 1939 to 1943, and later ran several times for the Republican nomination for U.S. president, as well as for other offices.  Here he has signed a copy of his manifesto, Here I Stand! which came out shortly before the 1948 presidential election cycle in which he was very active and influential.

This leaves us with two final examples today:  James J. Hill and Henry H. Sibley.

Like Stassen, Henry Hastings Sibley (1811-1891) served as governor of Minnesota, being the first in that capacity (1858-1860). He also led troops during the 1862 Dakota War, and his stone house still stands in Mendota, Minnesota.

"with best wishes of his old friend"

In a copy of the second edition of Edward Neill's The History of Minnesota from the Earliest French Explorations (1873), we find an inscription from H.H. Sibley to "N.W. Kittson with best wishes of his old friend." Suddenly, this volume, which was merely a duplicate copy (and not the one in better condition) previously, had become a link back to the earliest days of statehood in Minnesota!  Not only that, the inscribee (so to speak), is none other than Norman Wolfred Kittson (1814-1888), a prominent fur trader and entrepreneur in early Minnesota, and for whom Kittson County (in the uppermost northwest corner of Minnesota) is named.

Edward Neill's History of Minnesota came out in at least five editions between 1858 and 1883.

Finally, one of my favorites, because it is linked directly to the name of our library:  HMML has also received two copies of James Jerome Hill's Highways of Progress (1910) as part of the Anderson Collection that came in 2012.  I was somewhat disappointed to find that the Saint John's University library already reported having a copy of this title, only to find upon further investigation that their copy was a 1960 reprint, while our two copies (both signed by James J. Hill) were from the original 1910 edition.

Title page of Highways of Progress (1910).

One of the two copies is inscribed to Walter Henry Sanborn (1845-1928), who came to Minnesota from New Hampshire in the 1870's and practiced law for several years, before being named to a federal judgeship in Minnesota in 1892, where he served until his death.

Inscription to the "Hon. Walter H. Sanborn," dated Oct. 12th, 1910.

As with so many items in our special collections, these books bear witness to friendships, collaborations, contacts, and other kinds of special relationships of the past.  These names bring back to life a time that would be harder to imagine without these very human indications that the book actually passed through the hands of the author and/or belonged to someone significant in Minnesota history.

Perhaps on another occasion I can write about some of our other "autographs!"

Peace.

Never before seen ... on the HMML blog!

Three new books for the Saint John's Collections, with brown tape for binding.

So my boss comes to me last week and says something to the effect of "oh, by the way, there are about three boxes of books in my office that are to be reviewed for addition to the rare books collections."  Oh, OK.

This happens every so often: a box arrives, or the phone rings, or an e-mail pops up with news of a gift (or intended gift) to the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library and/or Saint John's University Rare Books.  In recent weeks I have written about the largest gift from the past few years--the Anderson Collection of Minnesota history and culture.  I am excited to say that examples from this gift are on display at the library until the summer of 2013.

This week, however, I would like to look a couple books from the latest gift to the library (with apologies for any fuzzy photos from my "point-and-shoot").

Ostrich racing?

For many years the Benedictine community at Holy Cross Abbey served the area round Canon City, Colorado.  Like Saint John's Abbey, Holy Cross was an offshoot from Saint Vincent's Archabbey in Pennsylvania.  The community started with just two monks in 1886, although it grew over time.  For many years they operated a school, just like Saint John's, but the school closed in 1985.  The abbey itself closed in 2006.

During their time at Holy Cross, the monks gathered a small collection of rare books, some of which have been donated to Saint John's.  I will share three of the more interesting items with you today.  The first is volume 2 (only) of Hinrich Lichtenstein's travels to southern Africa in 1803-1806.  HMML has a small collection of materials related to eastern Africa (in particular, Ethiopia), but (I believe) this is the first in our holdings to offer material on the southern tip of that continent.

Title page of Lichtenstein's Travels.

Map of Southern Africa.

Images from Southern Africa.

Another title adds to our small holdings in the natural sciences.  Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501-1577) was born in Siena, Italy. He practiced medicine at the Hapsburg courts and made major contributions in the area of botany.  This gift included a 1573 edition of Mattioli's Discorsi, which provides an encyclopedic overview of plants--based on the Dioscurides of medieval traditions--along with some explanations of animal life, as well as agricultural scenes (dairy farming, bee-keeping).

Title page of Matthioli's Discorsi.
Click on any image below to see it enlarged.

I'm not sure this should be "mele" or "melee"!

Also in Matteoli's volume is a brief discourse on distilling, which includes pictures of a few distillation furnaces:

 

 

Since Saint John's already has a substantial collection of Bibles, it is great that we can point to an addition to our holdings here as well.  In 1657 the German publisher Christian Kirchner (with the help of printer Johann Wittigau) produced a very large "polyglot" Bible, although substantially smaller than the polyglots from Spain, Antwerp, or London.  In this case, the languages include Greek, Hebrew and Latin (not the many other languages that often appear in polyglot Bibles). This Bible comes in one volume, with the pages starting at both the front and the back.  In the front appears the Greek New Testament, along with the Old Testament books that do not appear in the Jewish Bible.

In the back of the same volume appears the title page for the Old Testament in Hebrew (with interlinear Latin translation):

This edition is linked back to the Antwerp Polyglot of Christopher Plantin (also called the Biblia Regia, published about 1570) and the Complutensian Polyglot from 1514-1517, thus showing the continuing influence of sixteenth-century scholarship.  The Arca Artium Collection at Saint John's includes a copy of the the Plantin Polyglot, in eight volumes; meanwhile, our neighbor, Alcuin Library, has a facsimile of the Complutensian Bible, as well.  Combine this with the London Polyglot (in the Saint John's Rare Books Collection), and we have a very good offering for those studying the Bible, the transmission of the Bible, as well as Early Modern and/or Reformation history.

There are other books in the gift from Holy Cross Abbey, to be sure.  Perhaps I will discuss some of those on another occasion. For now, these three volumes have made the pilgrimage to Brother Andrew, the "book doctor" at Saint John's.  All three volumes had been repaired at some point with heavy brown tape, which has dried and is falling off (leaving a residue).  In addition, a couple have yellow tape holding in some of the pages.  Brother Andrew will remove the tape and do what he can to repair the bindings responsibly, without major loss of binding information!

Until next time, happy reading!

Peace.

Minnesota History at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library

The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library has just put up a new display from the Saint John's Bible (the Epistles and the book of Revelation). In conjunction with this exhibit, I was given the opportunity to "showcase" some of our newest acquisitions from the Anderson Collection on Minnesota history and culture.  One case is dedicated to "Non-fictional Minnesota" and two to "Fictional Minnesota."  Included in the fiction are several novels that take place in Minnesota.

Click on any image to see it enlarged!

OK, so the author just got his hair cut today (March 14)--he still does not look (quite) this bad.
From Father Louis Hennepin's account of his travels in North America.

The Anderson Collection includes important works on Minnesota and the Upper Midwest from the time of the earliest western explorations by Hennepin and Carver up to the era of European settlers and even into the twentieth century. Other early editions of travels in Minnesota (not on display this time) are J.C. Beltrami’s Pilgrimage in Europe and America (1828), George Catlin’s Letters and Notes (1841), G.W. Featherstonhaugh’s Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotor (1847), Daniel Williams Harmon’s Journal of Voyages and Travels (1820), and William Keating’s Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of the St. Peter’s River (1825). Although these are first editions, many of these titles are also in the Collection in later reprints.

"The Sieur de la Salle unhappily assassinated" ... From Fr. Hennepin's New Discovery (1698).

From the era of the early settlers come several titles from the likes of Mary Eastman, Jane Grey Swisshelm, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, John H. Pitezel, as well as the Minnesota Year book and the Immigrants’ Guide to Minnesota in 1856.

The list of resources is quite expansive, including several volumes of individual county and city histories, biographies and works bearing the autographs of people like Henry H. Sibley and James J. Hill.

Title page of A New Discovery.

Father Louis Hennepin. A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America. London: Bentley, Tonson, et al., 1698.

Father Louis Hennepin, OFM (1626-1705), traveled into Wisconsin and Minnesota in the 1670’s as an extension of the peregrinations of René Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle. Father Hennepin first gave an account of these explorations in French (1683), and these were later translated into Italian, Dutch, German, and eventually even English. His report of the St. Anthony Falls was the first printed reference to this natural landmark. On display is the earliest map of the Upper Midwest in the Saint John’s collections.

Page 182: “The Navigation of the Meschasipi is interrupted ten Leagues above this river of the Grave [the St. Croix River], by a Fall of fifty or sixty Foot high, which we call’d The Fall of St. Anthony of Padua, whom we had taken for the Protector of our Discovery. There is a Rock of a Pyramidal Figure, just in the middle of the Fall of the River.”

The Eastern part of North America, from Father Hennepin's Discoveries (1698). 
One the two oldest maps of North America in the Saint John's collections.

 

Close-up of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Manitoba.

Jonathan Carver. Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America. 3rd ed. London: C. Dilly, … etc., 1781.

Jonathan Carver (1710-1780), a colonist from Massachusetts, traveled into Wisconsin and Minnesota in the 1760’s to search for a Northwest Passage to the Pacific. While he provided vastly improved maps of the river systems in Minnesota and Wisconsin, a disgreement led him to London in his final years, seeking payment from the English king. The third edition is the first to appear after Carver’s death, and its editor (John Coakley Lettsom) included the unusual assertion that two chiefs of the Naudoissies signed over much of Minnesota and Wisconsin to Carver. In the exhibit we can see the beginning of the transcript of this “document” that gives the land to Carver:

“from the fall of St. Anthony, running on the east banks of the Mississippi, nearly south-east, as far as the south end of Lake Pepin, where the Chipeway river joins the Mississippi, and from thence eastward five days travel, accounting twenty English miles per day, and from thence north six days travel, at twenty English miles per day, and from thence again to the fall of St. Anthony, on a direct straight line.” (p. 13)

Saint Anthony Falls circa 1770.

The Anderson Collection is particularly rich in early fictional works that take place in Minnesota. Here we find stories of lumberjacks, farmers, entrepreneurs, explorers, ox-drivers, and even a 1920’s flapper. Minnesota literature extends well beyond the famous pair of Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who are themselves well-represented. Other authors and poets in the collection include Margaret Culkin Banning, John Berryman, Kay Boyle, Jon Hassler, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Maud and Delos Lovelace, Frederick Manfred, Walter O’Meara, Sigurd F. Olson, Martha Ostenso, Mabel Seeley, Sigurd Jay Simonsen, and Arthur Upson. There is even an early novel by Harry Reasoner (yes, the CBS news reporter!) set in the Twin Cities.

These authors created a “fictional Minnesota,” often (loosely) based on their own experiences in the 32nd state. Many of the books come with dust jackets that provide a colorful taste of the contents. In this exhibit, the descriptions with each title are excerpted from these blurbs. In several instances the copy of the book is from the first (or an early) printing of the first edition. Some copies have been inscribed or signed by the author.

On display are works (with dustjackets) by Maud and Delos Lovelace, Bernard Francis Ederer, Darragh Aldrich, Martha Ostenso, Sabina Adler, Paul de Kruif, Margaret Culkin Banning, and Sarah Lockwood.


The Hill Library & Manuscript Library is open Monday through Friday, from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm.  Come visit our galleries!

Peace, now and always.