Not So Wise After All

The other day, while searching for something else altogether, we stumbled across a letter written by an individual who is arguably best characterized as a celebrity villain within the small world of special collections. Thomas James Wise (1859-1937), the anti-hero of our story, was once a well-respected rare book collector who had begun amassing his own collection as a boy. He garnered an international reputation as an expert in the first printings of 19th-century English literary publications even as he continued to acquire books printed as far back as the 1500s for his private library. Wise's opinion on the authenticity of published works held such authority that in many cases his word was considered sufficient validation for newly discovered variants and privately printed editions of works by famous English authors.

As you've probably guessed, Wise was not only an astute bibliophile but an adept forger. In fact, he was so skilled at secretly printing and then selling fake editions of works by famous authors like Elizabeth Barrett Brownings that he wasn't found out until he was in his late seventies. In the meantime, Wise had accumulated various honors and prestigious positions based upon his bibliographic acumen: an honorary master's degree from Oxford, an honorary fellowship from Worcester College, and the presidency of the Bibliographical Society, among others. If not for the investigative work of two fellow book collectors, John Carter and Henry Pollard, Wise would very likely have gotten away with it. However, in 1934, the two men published a pamphlet titled "An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets" that exposed Wise's decades-long deception and ruined his standing in the community. In a somewhat cheeky move, the pamphlet's epigraph is a quotation by Wise himself that avers the impossibility of creating a forgery able to elude expert detection.

In December of 1933, only months before Wise's world would be turned upside, he responds to a previous letter from his friend and prolific author E. V. Lucas. Lucas was in the midst of editing a centenary collection of Charles Lamb's letters and sought Wise's input. Wise replies that he owns two letters written by Lamb and thanks Lucas for dedicating the soon-to-be-published work to him. We have to wonder if Lucas ever regretted that decision, given that Wise's fame would soon turn to infamy. To see our letter, come to Rauner and ask to see MS-407, Box 2, Folder 14. We also have a large collection of his forged works. To find then out, search the catalog for "Thomas Wise Forgeries."

Camp Cookery

"The first thing to parties bent on roughing it is the selection of a tent." Maria Parloa's 1878 book Camp Cookery: How to Live in Camp begins with some general guidelines and "hints for comfort" when supplying a camping trip. She walks the reader through how big one's tent should be, how to set it up, how to select a camp stove, what to wear -- "both ladies and gentlemen should dress in flannel throughout" -- provisions to bring, and how to observe perfect cleanliness. This is all prelude to her main objective: how to cook.

Parloa's handbook makes it clear that being in the great outdoors should not come at the sacrifice of eating well. Her instructions include ambitious projects like a clam bake for "ten to twenty persons," as well as practical instructions for the less accomplished cook, ensuring that her readers know how to prepare basics like coffee and scrambled eggs. Of particular note is the large selection of puddings and baked goods, as well as various gruels for those who find themselves ill while roughing it.

After finding success with her first cookbook in 1872, Maria Parloa (1843-1909) shifted from working as a cook to a long career of teaching others. After the publication of Camp Cookery, she traveled to Europe to study additional cuisines and their accompanying pedagogies. Back home, she led classes, gave popular lectures, and published additional books. She founded her own cooking school and became a sought-after guest at other institutions. She expanded her expertise in other areas of household management and established herself as a trusted authority in the developing field of home economics. Highly successful if no longer well-known, we thought a look at her life and work would be a good way to christen the holiday week.

To look at Camp Cookery, ask for Rare Book TX823 .P25 1878.

Look What We Found!

Sometimes we "acquire" a book simply by discovering it in our collections. Every week we receive dozens of catalogs and offers from rare book and manuscript dealers. We are pretty picky about what we buy. We need to know that a book or manuscript will get used--we are not really adherents of the "build it and they will come" model of collection development. We are more focused on what do people need now and how can we build the collections to support them. Anyway, we are frequently tempted by pricey books and wrack our brains to figure how the book can do enough work for us to justify the cost.

A couple of weeks ago, a catalog came to us and we were ogling a very cool book: George Bartisch's Ophthalmodouleia, das ist Augendienst, the first work on ophthalmology from 1583. We could envision a lot of uses--we do a lot with the history of medicine--but the price was pretty steep so we were hesitant. Would the book do THAT much work for us? As we pondered, we checked the catalog, and, glory be, we already had a copy! Not only that, but all of its flaps still work and it still has its original metal clasps--so it is a dandy copy. Someone bought it for the library back in 1938 for a tiny fraction of what it costs today. A book unknown to us was sitting there all along just waiting to catch someone's eye. You can bet we will be using it now, and that it will find its way into Dartmouth classes.

 Come feast your eyes on it by asking for Rare RE41 .B3.

Today is World Digital Preservation Day!

Today we celebrate World Digital Preservation Day, which occurs on the first Thursday of every November. The day is meant to celebrate digital preservation and raise awareness of the challenges inherent in the task of recording human memory that exists in a digital format.

An interesting case for digital preservation exists in the Charles Furlong papers (Mss-197). Charles Wellington Furlong was the first American to explore the southernmost part of the Americas, the interior of Tierra del Fuego, in 1907 and 1908; we've blogged about him before. While there, he made wax cylinder recordings of the Onas and Yahgan peoples talking and singing. Obviously, there is no easy way to play a 100+ year old wax cylinder recording in the modern world. Even if there was, it is possible that the fragile, decaying media would only have one play left before it disintegrates, so one had better be prepared to capture the audio when it is being played. There is also a chance that the attempt at playing the item would destroy it before any audio could be heard.

Instead of potentially damaging the wax cylinders by playing them, we sent them to a specialist who digitized the recordings by taking extremely-high resolution photographs of the cylinders using a laser, and then played the digital file from the high-resolution digital images! Although the audio quality is scratchy and echoey, the recordings can now be heard.

The digital files for this collection include hundreds of files, including exotic file formats like .bri (used for 3-D modeling) and .trk files (used for workflows tied to proprietary and unique software packages). However, the images of the cylinders are also saved as more accessible .jpg and .tif files while the audio recordings are also available as .mp3 files. We have made all of the files, like this one for example, available online to researchers. The files are checked for viruses, re-built from scratch (in a process called recharacterization), and given a checksum by Preservica, our digital preservation system, which also synchronizes the files with our description system. 

In honor of World Digital Preservation Day, a lighthearted look at the world of intangible zeroes and ones is available by way of a physical object: a photocopied zine! They are available at Rauner Special Collections, the circulation and welcome desks of Baker-Berry library, and the Book Arts Workshop. If you'd like to examine an actual wax cylinder, come to Rauner and ask to see one from the Charles Furlong papers (Mss-197).           

                    

The Outsiders

Outsider: a person who does not belong to a particular group.

What does it mean to be an outsider? For the women who arrived at Dartmouth in 1972, it meant stepping foot on a campus that wasn’t created for them. How do you find a safe space in a place you’re not wanted? For some women at Dartmouth it was found in a journal, a room, and a shared sense of isolation.

By the early 80s, women still lacked a support system, and despite other schools already having implemented a Women’s Resource Center, Dartmouth still hadn’t given these women solace by providing a place for “organizing programs and speakers for the community, providing information and referrals, centralizing diverse women’s groups, and supplementing academic women’s studies programs” (Womyn’s Review). Despite the absence of support, women used a room in Robinson Hall and considered this the ‘center.

In 1981, the unofficial ‘center’ became a refuge—an outsider’s sanctuary. A journal sat on a table, inviting women to write down their thoughts. In the very first entry of this journal, a student writes:

“This room has become my haven from the madness and cynicism of the world. I come here sometimes when I feel an intense desire to be alone and read a book, or when I’m feeling lonely and introspective…”

Recurring themes in most of these entries were loneliness, pain, and isolation. With the option to remain anonymous, these women wrote about the struggle of being a woman at Dartmouth. One student in particular wrote about her frustration with counseling at Dartmouth:

“I am angry that counselors at Dick’s House aren’t interested in dealing with my pain of being a woman at a place like Dartmouth or listening to me discuss my joy/confusion/pain of being involved with women or my struggle to be politically active. Instead, they would rather ask how many orgasms I had with my male lover and whether I always wanted to be a sex object to my father.”

Throughout my research, I’ve noticed the strong association between feelings of isolation and its negative effects on mental health. For women, this isolation at Dartmouth was both physical and emotional. The lack of support systems—both institutional and social—created the feeling of being outsiders, leaving these women to fend for themselves on a campus not made for them. One woman describes the journal as“a selfish present to myself- I was feeling depressed and came up here to write…”

These reflections by women students during coeducation show how women at Dartmouth were left battling not just with external hostility, but with the internal toll of their isolation. The unofficial Women’s Resource Center—and the journal within it—became a place where they could at least begin to tackle the loneliness and frustration that came with being left outside of the main bubble.

To read the journal, ask for DO-61, Box 6591 at Rauner Library. To read the Womyn's Review, request D.C. History HQ1101 .W6692.

Posted for Arielenny Perez '26, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2024 fall term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in the college's past. For more information, visit the program's website.

Happy Sukkot! / Chag Sukkot Sameach!

This year, the Jewish holiday of Sukkot begins at sundown on October 16 (Tishrei 14 in the Hebrew calendar.) If you're not sure what Sukkot (pronounced "soo-coat") is, Rauner happens to have a text that explains it in vivid, poetic detail. Written by Henry Ware, Jr., and published in 1837, "The Feast of Tabernacles: A Poem for Music" is set in ancient Jerusalem during the Temple period on the final day of Sukkot. Ware prefaces his poem with a short "Advertisement" in which he lays out his intentions for writing the poem and explains the holiday for a gentile audience:

The Feast of Tabernacles was one of the three great festivals of the Jewish people... It took place in the autumn, at the gathering-in of the corn harvest and the vintage, and continued for seven days; during which time the people dwelt in booths, formed of branches of trees, to commemorate their ancestors' dwelling in tents in the wilderness.

Though Ware writes in the past tense, Sukkot still is very much a major Jewish holiday that takes place in the harvest season and involves temporarily living in a sukkah or booth.

"The Feast of Tabernacles" describes the scene at the Temple on Sukkot, with the ancient Israelites waving symbolic plants, burning incense, and preparing an animal sacrifice:

Wave the willow and the palm !
Bow the knee, and chant the psalm !

Throng the holy altar round !

Bid the lofty courts resound !

Now let the morning sacrifice begin !

Fire the rich censer ! Let the incense rise

In rolling clouds of fragrance, till it fill

The Holy Place

Another book of ours includes depictions of some Sukkot customs. Printed by the Stinehour Press in 1995, Maḥzor = Mahzor Corfu is a partial facsimile of an illustrated 18th century prayer book produced by the Jewish community of the Greek island of Corfu, containing the liturgies for the three major festivals (Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot) and Shabbat. It also contains some charming illustrations of Sukkot scenes. On the left is a man holding a lulav (palm, willow, and myrtle branch) and etrog (citron). On the right are four men sharing a meal under the thatched roof of a sukkah.

To see "The Feast of Tabernacles," come to the reading room and request Smith J pam.vol. 35:12. To see Maḥzor = Mahzor Corfu, request Presses B667mahz

Finding John Rae

John Rae was one of the more controversial figures in the history of Arctic exploration. Working for the Hudson Bay Company, he explored and mapped vast regions of the Arctic, which should have made him a hero. But he developed habits the British found disturbing. He started dressing like the peoples indigenous to the North and he even learned to make temporary shelters using ice and snow--like the people who LIVED there and knew what they were doing! The British preferred to bring their own ways into a new environment and maintain proper decorum even if it often meant death.

But it was Rae's discovery and reporting of the remains of the John Hope Franklin party that really got him in trouble. He found clear evidence that the party had perished but also that they had done the unthinkable and resorted to cannibalism. When he reported this back to England, the press first sensationalized his claims, then turned against him. How could we trust this suspicious character who lives like a savage? Charles Dickens lead the charge--ridiculing and lampooning Rae to ensure that the truth he found would remain in doubt.

We have two very special maps in our collection hand annotated by Rae. They chart his discoveries and document his incredible achievements. They also show a man holding grudge, quietly raging against the world that would not acknowledge his rightful place in the pantheon of great explorers.

To see the maps, ask for Stef G3270 1878 .S7 (pictured above) and Stef G9780 1855 .G7 1876.