Friday, April 2, 2010

Digital Comics

An illustration featuring  the central image of a man in work clothes hauling a bucket, surrounded by the title "The Fortunes fo Ferdinand Flipper." Around him are several smaller images of people engaged in various activities, such as fishing and bathing. A long secondary title is also included.Two important early comic books from our collections are now available digitally through the efforts of the Library's digital production team:  The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck (1842) the first graphical novel published in the United States, originally published in French in 1837 as Les Amours de M. Vieux Bois; and The Fortunes of Ferdinand Flipper (185?), the first graphical novel written in the United States.  Both digitized comics will be used by students this term in English 67: Graphic Novels.
A two-panel comic illustration, the first featuring an outdoor scene of a man watching a woman some distance from him. It is captioned "Mr. Oldbuck's first sight of his lady-love." The second image shows him leaning against a tree, captioned "Mr. Oldbuck beholds her vanishing in the distance."
To see the good old fashioned paper copies, ask for Rare Book NC1659.T58 A6213 1840z and Rare Book NC1420.F68.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The Power of Satire

A satirical printed advertisement for the auction of "The Girl Betsey," "Sarah," and "The Boy Frank," as well as several implements of slavery and 300 copies of "Letter of Inquiry by a Northern Presbyter."Ten years before the 13th Amendment became law, an advertisement for a slave auction appeared in the July 1855 issue of the Dartmouth Oestrus. Knowing the political and satirical nature of this undergraduate publication, Dartmouth College students at that time surely were not fooled into believing the advertisement was real. President Nathan Lord's pro-slavery stance, defended in his Letter of Inquiry to Ministers of the Gospel of all Denominations on Slavery, was a frequent target for the anger of the largely abolitionist campus. Advertising an auction at which Lord's wife Betsey and their children would be sold as slaves, was an acceptable level of protest against his stance on the "peculiar institution."

In more recent years, the ad has enjoyed some success as a hoax. The College Archives does receive inquiries about mid-19th century slavery in Hanover, occasionally based on researchers discovering this item. Out of the context of the publication and its times, even our readers on April Fools Day might have found it possible to believe the cruelty of slavery also touched Hanover, before reading further.

Ask for the The Dartmouth Oestrus, DC History LH 1 D2D282 and Letter of Inquiry to Ministers of the Gospel of all Denominations on Slavery, 4th edition, DC History E 449 L654 1860.