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.

A minor bibliographical conundrum on the Wilde side

A modest cover.

The primary joy of cataloging rare books is that you never know what you will find next or where your bibliographical travels will take you.  My hope is that someone out there will help guide me to my destination on my current journey!

Or at least help an aging medievalist (did someone say "15th-century German religious plays?") to catalog this book!!!

I have been cataloging a large gift of books that come to our library in the summer of 2012.  Many of these books from the Anderson Collection are about Minnesota history, life, and literature.  As such, they provide a strong core of materials to support the study of local history at our parent institution, Saint John's University, and its sibling institution, the College of Saint Benedict.

One book caught my attention--an 1898 edition of Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol.  I have to confess that while I have found the history and art of fin-de-siecle Europe quite fascinating (especially as it developed in places like Vienna, Austria), I know sadly little about this author and his work.  What especially caught my attention, however, was the pencilled note on the inside of the front cover that this was a "1st ed[ition] with auto[graph]."  Spoiler alert -- it does not appear to be a first edition, but it does have an autograph pasted in.

The title page of Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, with his name given as his cell number in the jail/gaol: "C.3.3." = Cell 3 on the third landing of gallery C.

My searches in OCLC/WorldCat did not produce any exact matches to the item I had in my hand.  While the title page matched the descriptions I found, I soon ascertained that there were six different editions that appeared from the same publisher in 1898, each one slightly different from the other.  However, the copyright statement on the first edition did not match that on this copy. The limitation statements on other editions did not appear on this copy either. I turned to published bibliographies in an attempt to verify which edition this really is.  Fortunately, two early bibliographies were available for free at www.archive.org.

Copyright statement for February 1898. Note the lack of any kind of limitation statement.

Christopher Millard's 1914 Bibliography of Oscar Wilde indicates that the very first edition of the Ballad bears a copyright statement from January 1898--ours states "February 1898." This matches the second to sixth editions.  Several textual variants cited in Millard also indicate that this is not from the January version, but one of the later ones.

Autograph of Oscar Wilde glued into the Ballad.

The second edition of the Ballad appeared in 1000 copies, with the edition statement on the verso of the title page, followed a short while later by a third edition (99 copies, each signed by the author on the copyright leaf), and then a fourth (1200 copies, in March), a fifth (1000 copies in March), and a sixth edition (1000 copies, in May 1898).  Millard states clearly that the second and sixth editions bear the number of the edition on the verso of the title page--he does not say this explicitly for the fourth and fifth editions.

So here's the problem:  The verso of the title page has been covered with a glued-in piece of paper signed by Oscar Wilde and dated March 22.  From my limited experience, I would say this looks like other autographs of the author that appeared in the bibliography (or online).  So, I am hoping it is genuine.

My assumption was that the edition statement could be found under the autograph sheet.  Unfortunately ...

Looking through the title page from behind.

When I held the title page up to the light, I could see through both leaves, and the text on the title page, the autograph and even the watermark were all clearly visible.  Unfortunately, no edition statement was forthcoming!

So, my primary question is this:  did the fourth or the fifth edition have an explicit edition statement on the verso of the title page?  Were there editions from 1898 that did not bear any edition statement on them?

A corollary:  Was it common to glue an autograph sheet into early editions of this work?  I've not seen something quite like this, so I am assuming that a later collector added the sheet.

My hope, as I tried to say earlier, is to identify this edition so I can catalog the piece. So any clues that those more experienced in late 19th-century authors like Oscar Wilde and their publishing history will be greatly appreciated!!

Until next time,

peace!

Can You Read This? Early Scripts in HMML's Collection

Along with the millions of manuscript pages photographed by the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library over the past 48 years, the library has also collected several manuscripts and manuscript fragments of its own.  Nearly all of these have come as gifts, although a few have been purchased.  In reviewing samples of early scripts in the HMML collections, I came up with the following gallery, arranged somewhat chronologically from the 10th to the 20th centuries, for consideration. I have attempted to crop the pictures below so that they will appear very large on computer screens, thus making the script easier to see.

Some of these may also find their way as paleographic examples into vHMML (http://vhmml.wordpress.com/), a set of tools being developed for manuscript studies.

All of these samples can be enlarged by clicking on them.  They also reside in a Picasa folder at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/112955289865277743856/EarlyLatinScriptsInHMMLManuscripts?authuser=0&feat=directlink

If any of my readers are skilled at paleography, I invite comment on any or all of these descriptions. Some of these examples have only come to my attention within the past few days. So, who knows what may still be lurking out there!?!

10th or early 11th century:

Ms. Frag. 1: Mass book with musical notation. Introit from the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. Removed from a bookbinding. Click on image to enlarge.

Ms. Frag. 1 (see above)
Click on image to enlarge.

12th century:

Ms. Frag. 15: Martyrology with the story of Saints Alexander, Eventius and Theodolus.
Click on image to enlarge.



Ms. Frag. 15: Martyrology with the story of Saints Alexander, Eventius and Theodolus.
Click on image to enlarge.



Ms. Frag. 24: Lectionary from Italy. Mounted between two plates of plexiglass.
Click on image to enlarge.

Ms. Frag. 24: Lectionary from Italy (detail)
Click on image to enlarge.

Ms. Frag. 2: from a Bible, book of Daniel.
Click on image to enlarge.

Ms. Frag. 2: from a Bible, book of Daniel.
Click on image to enlarge.

J. G. Plante Ms. 15: from a Lectionary. Removed from a bookbinding. Given to Father Oliver Kapsner, OSB, who received it as a gift from the Abbey of Nonnberg (Austria).
Click on image to enlarge.

J. G. Plante Ms. 15: from a Lectionary. Removed from a bookbinding. Given to Father Oliver Kapsner, OSB, who received it as a gift from the Abbey of Nonnberg (Austria).
Click on image to enlarge.

Early 13th century:

Ms. Frag. 3: from a copy of Cicero, Distinctiones verborum latinorum.
Dated as 12th-13th century. Removed from a bookbinding.
Click on image to enlarge.

Ms. Steiner 54: from a 12th or 13th-century copy of Isidore of Seville's Etymologies.
Click on image to enlarge.



Ms. Barton Williams no. 1, pastedown:  from a collection of sermons by Peter Comestor. Dated as early 13th century.
Click on image to enlarge.

Ms. Barton Williams no. 1, pastedown: from a collection of sermons by Peter Comestor. Dated as early 13th century.
Click on image to enlarge.

13th century:

Arca Artium fragment, aap2251: from a glossed Bible. Here, from Psalm 49.
Click on image to enlarge.

Ms. Frag. 19: from a glossed Bible. Here from the Gospel of Luke.
Click on image to enlarge.

Ms. Frag. 19: from a glossed Bible. Here from the Gospel of Luke.
Click on image to enlarge.

Arca Artium, aap1304: from a Bible. Here from 1 Kings 13.
Click on image to enlarge.

Arca Artium, aap1306: from a Bible. Here from Jerome's prologue to Chronicles.
Click on image to enlarge.

SJU Ms. 12: Latin New Testament. Here: the opening of the Gospel of John.
Dated as mid-13th to early 14th century.
Click on image to enlarge.

Early 20th century:

Arca Artium, aap2736: from a practice sheet by Edward Johnston (1872-1944).
Click on image to enlarge.

 I invite your comments!!