Apple Pie Abecedaries

Fall is in the air, and with it, the beginning of a new academic year and the arrival of apple season. While brainstorming autumnal-themed entries, I came across several books about apples, and eventually realized that there was a strange current running through these books.

They were all alphabet books, or abecedaries, that began with an apple pie and ran through all the letters until the pie was eaten. To my surprise, the  "Apple Pie ABC" is actually a famous nursery rhyme. The first version of the rhyme was published in the late-eighteenth century in England and became wildly popular in English-speaking countries by the nineteenth century.

One of the earliest versions in our collection comes in the form of a miniature chapbook. The final few pages are dedicated to "the Tragical Death of an APPLE-PYE." Rather dramatic, though I later realized that it would indeed be a tragedy from the pie's point of view.

In this rhyme, all the letters in the alphabet want to eat a single apple pie, but unless they establish an order, there won't be any pie for some of the less-greedy letters. Curiously enough, the rhyme includes "&" as the final letter, for a total of 27 letters, unlike the 26 we think of today.

The late nineteenth century brought a fantastically illustrated version by Kate Greenaway. This edition centers around a group of children, each named after a letter, and their adventures with a massive apple pie. They are alternately polite (D dealt it) and wicked (F fought for It). G is perhaps my favorite letter, showing a boy with a stick beating off the other children, who drop their plates as they run away. Greenaway skimps out on the end of the alphabet, declaring "UVWXYZ all had a large slice and went off to bed."

To read more about the tragic demise of the apple "pye," ask for Miniature 147. We have several versions of Kate Greenaway's book, including a first edition and a 1978 reprint, demonstrating the rhyme's enduring popularity.

At the Hop

Every day, the Dartmouth Coach enters the small town of Hanover and pulls up in front of the Hopkins Center. I remember stepping down the short bus steps and looking around the Dartmouth campus for the first time. As I gazed at its scenic landscape, I obtained a sense of the history that took place here. Across the green from where I stood is Rauner Special Collection Library. Inside, one can find endless documents on the history of Dartmouth College, starting from its origins up to the present day. The evolution of Dartmouth’s campus and its buildings represents the numerous different time periods this College has experienced. Altering one space on this historic campus can change Dartmouth’s “feel”. Until I researched the changes of Dartmouth’s physical plant during World War I for a history class, little did I know that the place I first pulled up to, Hopkins Center, was one of the most controversial buildings to be built.

As one can see from the photos accompanying this post, the Hopkins Center has a different style of architecture than the rest of the campus. In the late 1920s, Dartmouth College’s Advisory Committee on Plant Development created a plan for constructing a new social center. However, the College needed to overcome some challenges before the plans for the building could be approved. In the late 1950s, the Board of Trustees and Dartmouth community as a whole felt that Georgian architecture was out of style and was no longer suited for its campus. The Advisory Committee on Plant Development asked Wallace Harrison to develop a design for this new social center. Harrison’s design was modern, which resulted in countless debates if this was the direction Dartmouth College wanted to go. The location for the Hopkins Center was another massive issue that resulted in delayed approval, given that the Hanover Green was a highly desirable location in town. However, after many years, the development plans for Hopkins Center were approved and the facility was built in 1961.

The Hopkins Center has become one of the key buildings on this campus. It has awakened students' interests in the art community and provides an educational environment that allows students' creativity and passion for art to explode. Information on this building is just a small fraction of the historical documents that the Rauner Library collections contain about Dartmouth’s campus.

For more information on Dartmouth’s historical campus, go to Rauner Library and look at Dartmouth College Historical Evolution and Preservation:Strategies for the Landscape(D. C. Hist LD1422.9 .D334 1996). To see more great photos of the Hopkins Center, and other buildings on the Dartmouth College campus, browse the images in our Photographic Files and Photographic Records collections, many of which are available for free download online.

Posted for Danny McManus '17, HIST 62 class.