Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady was a publishing sensation in the 1920s. Penned by the experienced screenwriter Anita Loos, it chronicles the absurd life of a naive and dim-witted flapper as she rises through society. It has been reported that Loos was inspired to write the novel after watching a young woman of less-than-stellar intellect woo the great curmudgeon of the 1920s, H. L. Mencken.

Rauner Library is fortunate to have not only the first edition of this comic masterpiece but also Anita Loos' typescript copy of the 1926 Broadway staging.  It was scripted anew in 1953 for Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe.

"... kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever."

Come to Rauner and see it yourself by asking for Rare Book PS3523.O557 G4 1925.

Is this Cricket?

The earliest known image of Dartmouth appeared in the February 1793 issue of Massachusetts Magazine, illustrating a brief article on the College. The artist was Josiah Dunham, Dartmouth Class of 1789, then a preceptor at Moor’s Indian Charity School, and later to become a local newspaper editor.

However, it is possible that the image has another claim to fame. Thirty years ago, the College Archives received a request for a copy of the Dunham engraving from the curator of the Marylebone Cricket Club in London, who believed it might one of the earliest depictions of cricket being played in the United States or former colonies. At that time, he was not aware of anything in his collection that predated it. According to subsequent correspondence with the C.C. Morris Cricket Library at Haverford College, the American cricket archives there contain nothing earlier either. Although the playing of cricket in what is now the United States is documented in histories and newspapers back to the 1730's, the Dunham engraving of Dartmouth College might be the first visual proof!

The College Archives would be delighted to learn of an earlier likeness of the campus, or an earlier image of cricket in the United States or the thirteen colonies.

To see it yourself, ask for Rauner Iconography 399.

How to Enjoy James Joyce

In 1933, Random House challenged the obscenity ban on James Joyce's Ulysses. The controversial novel had been available since 1922 from Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Co. bookshop in Paris, but banned in the United States. The celebrated obscenity case was decided in December of 1933. Random House capitalized on the book's notoriety by issuing the first U.S. edition in January of 1934.

Fearful that readers would be intimidated by Joyce's "obscure" text, they provided booksellers with a handy flyer entitled "How to Enjoy James Joyce's Ulysses." It promised that the book's "thrilling" adventure would be neither "difficult to read" nor "harder to 'understand' than any other great classic." The advertising campaign combined with the book's salacious reputation to make Ulysses a best seller for Random House.

You can see the flyer by asking for Rare PR6019.O9U4 H6 1934.  For the 1922 Paris edition, with the original prospectus laid in, ask for Val 827 J853 X71.

The Whiteness of the Whale

After decades of searching, Special Collections has finally acquired one of the holy grails of nineteenth-century American Literature, the first edition of Herman Melville's Moby Dick published in London as The Whale (London: R. Clay for Richard Bentley, 1851). This edition completes our superb Melville collection assembled by two alumni of the College that includes the first American edition and the second London edition.

The irony of the difficulty of the hunt for this elusive edition is not lost on us, but no library staff lost any limbs in the process.

This acquisition opens up many teaching possibilities with the Melville collection. The first London edition was rife with errors including the deletion of 35 passages, it lacked the all-important epilogue where Ishmael lives to tell the tale, and relegated Melville’s "Etymology" and "Extracts" to an appendix. All of these errors were corrected in the first American edition that came out one month later but were perpetuated by the 1853 London edition issued from the 1851 sheets. Taken together, the three editions show how different markets were responding to very different texts while providing an example of how the format of a text effects its reception.

In 1941 a collection of twenty-nine English and American editions of the works of Herman Melville was presented by George Matthew Adams 1931 in memory of his father, the Rev. George Matthew Adams. The original gift included a fine copy of the American first edition of Moby Dick (1851), into which is bound a letter by Melville dated "Pittsfield Dec 14th 1853." Also provided by Mr. Adams were works of biographical and critical importance. The collection totaled nearly two hundred books, pamphlets, and other printed items before the 1991 gift by William S. Clark 1942 of over two hundred and thirty American and foreign editions of Moby Dick, representing over thirty languages, plus nearly seventy related items.

Go to Rauner and ask for Melville PS2384.M62 1851

Connecticut River Scroll Map

Recently received records of the Hanover Water Works Company contain an 1890 scrolled map of the Connecticut River from Olcott Falls (current site of the Wilder Dam) to the Lyme Bridge. The map was drawn by Robert Fletcher, an 1868 graduate of West Point and the first Director of the Thayer School of Engineering.

Set in a portable wooden case with a compass, the map was probably used for fieldwork, and shows locations of water tanks, water depths, and distances along the river from Ledyard Bridge, as well as "other facts."

To see the scroll, come to Rauner and ask for DH-26, Box 9145.

Martin Luther King Jr. at Dartmouth

On May 23, 1962, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to an overflow crowd in 105 Dartmouth Hall. His speech, "Towards Freedom," was part of Dartmouth's famed Great Issues course.

But it wasn't so simple to get King to campus. He had agreed to speak at a Union service on May 15, 1960, followed the next day by a question/answer period with the Great Issues class. On April 5th, he wrote to cancel his visit because of a pending income tax case in Alabama. He rescheduled for May 21, 1961. This time he made it to campus, but was forced to leave town the morning of the talk upon hearing reports of racial unrest in Alabama. On May 23, 1962, he was finally able to deliver his address. According to accounts in The Dartmouth, he warned idealistic students to be wary of the "myth of educational determinism."  Education alone could not solve the problem, the law was still necessary to regulate behavior. He ended with a call for President Kennedy to issue a second Emancipation Proclamation declaring all segregation unconstitutional on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Learn more about Dartmouth's 2010 celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, "Where Do We Go From Here?"

Ski Futurista

"Sci" and "Atletica Leggera" are two images from a set of 10 xilographs.  What are xilographs?

Xilographs are a type of woodcut or engraving on wood emphasizing the grain of the wood.

These images are part of Aerosilografo, Aeropittore, Aeroscultore, Futurista -- a work by Renato Di Bosso and F.T. Marinetti from about 1941.

As part of the 16 page monograph, there is also a one-page text by Marinetti and a facsimile of the Futurist manifesto l'Aerosilografia by Di Bosso.

The powerful original graphics include an abstract portrait of Marinetti and images of men moving, playing, and working.

A simple yet beautiful work combining old techniques with new ideas.