De architectura

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman of the first-century B.C. He served in several of Julius Caesar's campaigns, most likely as an engineer responsible for the construction and maintenance of the army encampment. Little else is known about his life save what is revealed in his only surviving work De architectura, a treatise on architecture which detailed then current Roman practices as well as methods and designs from Greece and earlier cultures. His philosophy on design is often summed up by his statement that a structure should incorporate elements that make it solid, useful and beautiful. Rediscovered in the 15th-century, De architectura had a profound effect on Renaissance design and served as inspiration for Da Vinci and others.

De architecura is divided into ten books and is commonly known as the Ten Books on Architecture. Each book focuses on a related subset of design and construction methods or decorative motifs.  These include sections on temples (book 2), water and aqueducts (book 8) and Roman engines - primarily military in nature (book 10).

Rauner holds several editions of De architectura, the earliest being the first illustrated edition published in Venice in 1511 which is notable not only for the illustrations but also for Fra Giovanni Giocondo's revisions and corrections to earlier published editions. Rauner's copy additionally features numerous notations in the margin. Other editions include the first (1521) and second (1526) Italian translations.

Ask for Red Room 871 V92 1511 to see the first illustrated edition. Other editions can be found by searching the catalog.

The Real Little Women

It's no secret among Little Women fans that Louisa May Alcott based her beloved novel on her life growing up with three sisters. However, fewer people know just how much of the Alcott family's work lies within the walls of Rauner Library. Though we are missing works from Abigail May (the wise mother) and Lizzie (who, like her Little Women representation Beth, died young), Rauner has works of the other three sisters and their father: controversial transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott.

Amos Bronson Alcott's role as "Father" in Louisa May Alcott's fictional books is mostly off-stage, either due to his fighting in the Civil War or extended recovery from injuries. In reality, Bronson was a huge and active part in the Alcott sisters' lives. The Alcott girls were Bronson's four most consistent pupils. Bronson's innovative and controversial method of teaching art, music, nature study and a curriculum of social reform led many students to withdraw and forced the family to move twenty times in thirty years. However, Bronson's views remain documented in Observations on the Principles and Methods of Infant Instruction. He became well known for his work across New England, forming a Concordian community with transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In addition to published works by Bronson, Rauner has one of his private letters of recommendation for a young woman pursuing a musical education, showing just how far-reaching the Alcott family's influence was by the 1890s.

True Little Women fans will remember Amy March's artistic aspirations (as opposed to Jo/Louisa's literary ones). In light of her fictional counterpart, May Alcott's representation in Rauner is unsurprising: a book of sketches of the Alcott's home in Concord and a copy of Little Women illustrated by May. Like her fictional counterpart (Amy), May became a moderately successful artist in Europe. However, while Amy returned to America married to Laurie (to the fury of fans who predicted his eventual pairing with Jo), May Alcott married a Swiss violinist fifteen years her junior at age 38, then died in childbirth in Paris.

Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt's representation in Rauner echoes her place in Little Women even more strongly. Comic Tragedies, written by "Jo" and "Meg" and acted by the "Little Women" smudges the lines between the fictional characters and the realities of the Alcotts' lives. On the first page are pictures of Louisa and Anna, labeled "Daguerreotypes of Jo and Meg," with a quote below from Mrs. Cheney's Life of Louisa M. Alcott. In the introduction, "Meg" describes the complex interplay of personalities and limited cast that caused the enclosed plays to be structured as they were. In fact, Anna Pratt (Meg's real life persona) published the book in 1893, and likely wrote the introduction herself. As Louisa May Alcott died five years prior to the publication, it is unclear if the melodramatic plays were collected from her Little Women material, or from a memory of her and Anna's childhood. Indeed as founding members of the Concord Dramatic Union, Louisa and Anna's love for the stage was greater than, or equal to, that of the March sisters.

Rauner has – of course – a number of writings by Louisa May Alcott, including numerous copies of Little Women, but also lesser-known works, like Louisa's Hospital Sketches and A Free Bed.  Come peruse a copy of Little Women, then read more from the family that inspired the novel!

Ask for Mss 872554 for Bronson's Letter; 1926 Collection A39 for Little Women (Illustrated by May Alcott); Rare PS1019.A2 C65 for Concord Sketches: Consisting Of Twelve Photographs From Original Drawings; and Rare PS1017.C6 1893 for Comic Tragedies, written by "Jo" and "Meg" and acted by the "Little Women."

Posted for Kate Taylor '13

Wheatley's Iliad

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American poet: born in West Africa in 1753, brought to America on the slave ship, The Phillis, she was sold into slavery at age eight to the Wheatley family in Boston. The Wheatley children provided her with a solid classical education and she began writing poetry.  Her Poems on Various Subjects was published in London in 1773, and she became a celebrity in Europe and America.

We have several important pieces by Wheatley, two manuscript poems in her hand, a presentation copy of her first book, and her 1770 Elegy on the Death of George Whitefield, but the object that often stands out is something she did not write.

It is a memento of her 1773 trip to London where she was presented to London society and even invited to visit King George III. During the trip she met Lord Dartmouth, yes, our Lord Dartmouth, who offered her a gift of an edition of Pope's translation of the Iliad. The gift must have had a certain resonance for Wheatley: according to most accounts she had studied Pope and read Virgil in Latin. Holding the book forces you into a very foreign world, one where a young woman could be feted in London and held up as a celebrated poet, yet remain a slave to a Boston family.

Did the book travel with her through the rest of her life? Probably not. It is likely she had to sell it for money. Freed in 1778, she married a free black grocer. They ran into financial difficulties and he was put into debtors prison. Placed into a different sort of bondage by poverty, Wheatley became a domestic servant to support herself and died at age 31.

You can see all of these pieces: ask for DC History PA4025.A2P6 1771 for The Iliad; Ticknor PS866.W5 1773 for the Poems; Ticknor 772501.1 for the manuscript poem above; and Rare PS866.W5 E5 1770 for the Elegiac Poem.

Trendy in Rauner

Looking through the glass case from the reading room, Rauner seems to be filled to the brim with rare books and manuscripts. While the library has its fair share of those, its shelves hold more than books. Our Realia collection, which supplements collections of books and manuscripts, has enough clothing to fill a walk-in closet. Unsurprisingly, with the number of free T-shirts Dartmouth doles out, one of the most popular items of clothing to enter Dartmouth's historical record is the humble T-shirt. What better to serve as a snapshot into the mindset of the students than the messages in words and images they have chosen to wear on their bodies at different points in time?

Marysa Navarro, among the first women professors at Dartmouth, has an extensive manuscript collection in Rauner that includes a wide range of materials: correspondence, newspaper clippings, reports, proposals, committee meeting minutes, pamphlets, videotapes, photographs... and two T-shirts. Dartmouth feminist groups created the shirts soon after co-education in the 70s. One has "Women of Dartmouth" inscribed on a drawing of a woman. A more elaborate black shirt reads "Pyro Feminism" with a picture of two women charging around the Homecoming bonfire. On the back is the abbreviation "B.T.M.F.D.": "Burn The Motherf***ers Down." The mental image of young women at Dartmouth in these shirts defines a historical moment in a very different way than a paper on radical feminism on college campuses would.


The College's two sets of workout gear offer a way to compare gym time at Dartmouth that could be alternatively titled "Tanks Through the Ages." A wool knit tank top with a "D" sewn on the front, paired with knit sweatpants show the promise of a more formal (and sweatier) uniform for physical education in the early 1920s. The 1990's tank sold by the Dartmouth Review is closer in style and fabric to what most of students expect to see on treadmills in 2012. Featuring the "Dartmouth Indian" lifting weights on the back, the shirt serves as a glimpse of Dartmouth's former mascot's role in campus life. While the Indian stopped being used officially by the college in the 70s, the Dartmouth Review has continued the promotion of the mascot since the publication's founding in 1980. Though Native Americans at Dartmouth have protested the formal and informal use of the stereotypical "Indian" as a mascot since the 70s, the Review defends its continued use, producing T-shirts and referring to sports teams as the "Indians" in the publication.

Other shirts in Rauner's collection have a less obvious message than "Pyro Feminism" or the use of the Dartmouth Indian. Where did a Dartmouth Lorax shirt from 1991 come from? What does a Tucker Foundation shirt from the 70s reading "Visit beautiful downtown New Jersey" mean? Kappa Kappa Kappa has five shirts from the 1980s in Rauner. Are the similarities between these shirts and those seen on Tri Kap's around campus in 2012 mark of tradition or just a pattern?

Viewing these T-shirts is a reminder that books are not the only way to understand the past. What people wore every day bears marks of the ideas, values and norms of a certain point in time. What would your T-shirt collection tell future generations at Dartmouth if they show up in Rauner in a few decades?

For the Old school gym uniform, ask for Realia 65; the Dartmouth Review shirt is Realia 212, and the Lorax T-shirt is Realia 222

Posted for Kate Taylor '13

Before He Was Anybody

Peter Rabbit is one of the most famous characters in the world of children's literature. But he wasn't always that well known. In fact, as with almost every other author, Beatrix Potter was initially unable to find a publisher for her story due to the usual rejections and her own insistence on a specific format and quality. Instead of compromising her vision, she decided to have a small run of the story privately printed.

The first private edition ran to 250 copies and was printed by Strangeway's in London in December 1901. A second run of private printings was completed in February of 1902. Finally, later that year, the first commercial edition was published by Frederick Warne & Co. The Tale of Peter Rabbit quickly became a commercial success and paved the way for numerous additional tales set in the same world.

Rauner holds one of the original first printings from the 1901 private edition.  Ask for Val 827P849 X to see Peter before he was famous and read about his misadventures.

The Playfully Morbid World of Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey described his mission in life as "to make everybody as uneasy as possible... I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that's what the world is like." As a writer and artist, Gorey has created his own uneasy world, through thousands of macabre illustrations. Gorey's world is equal parts morbid, silly, and exquisite. It expanded and evolved through books, pictures and even beanbags.

However, Gorey isn't for everyone. To find out if you find him delightfully creepy or just plain morbid, look at one of his best-known works, The Gashlycrumb Tinies. It is a short book, styled on a traditional children's alphabet book. However, the rhymes and pictures within aren't suited for most preschoolers. Instead, the book details the absurd deaths of a series of children in alphabetical order. Gorey begins with a bang: "A is for AMY who fell down the stairs" and "B is for BASIL assaulted by bears." The alphabet continues all the way to Zillah (who drank too much gin). If you find the image of the toddler Zillah drinking with a skeleton in a dress more delightfully ridiculous than offensive, there are a few other works to check out in Rauner's extensive collection of rare Gorey works.

Gorey wrote over one hundred books, all striking a delicate balance between gruesome and playful. One standout is The Loathsome Couple, about two child murderers and their casually miserable marriage. The book contains the inner flap description, "This book may well prove to be its author's most unpleasant ever." Another Gorey classic is The Gorey Alphabet, arranged in a similar style as The Gashleycrumb Tinies (and, like many of Rauner's works, signed by Gorey himself). The 'B' in this alphabet reads: "The Baby, lying meek and quiet/Upon the customary rug/Has dreams about rampage and riot/And will grow up to be a thug." One of the Gorey's less structured works is F.M.R.A. Published in 1980, F.M.R.A. is a box containing a mishmash of everything from dark Valentines to an envelope full of tiny pictures. Dartmouth owns one of the 426 copies created, signed (as all copies were) by Gorey.

Gorey also illustrated a number of books by other authors including Freaky Friday by Mary Rogers and The Recently Deflowered Girl: The Right Thing to Say on Every Dubious Occasion by Phypps Hyacinthe.

Gorey's work is popular outside of the world of literature. Rauner has an Edward Gorey board game, if you want to play with some friends, as well as a "Fantoid Pack" if you wish to predict your future (warning: it will not be bright). If you’re tired of the typical cheeriness of Christmas cards, check out Rauner's Edward Gorey Christmas Cards collection. Or, if you’re too stressed to study, seek the company of one of the Gorey's cuddlier creations: cat and pig beanbags. Through his illustration, Edward Gorey has created a vast and nonsensical universe. Come to Rauner to live in it for a few hours.

Take a look at F.M.R.A., Illus G675fmr; Pig Beanbag, Realia 504; The Fantoid Pack, Illus G675fan; and The Gashlycrumb Tinies, Illus G675gas.

Posted for Kate Taylor '13

Mourning a Prince

Four hundred years ago this week, Henry, Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, died at the age of 18. The death of the popular prince, which cleared the way for the later ascension of his younger brother Charles I, was met with a great show of public grief. One slender volume in our collection, Three Elegies on the Most Lamented Death of Prince Henrie (London: William Welbie, 1613) by Cyril Tourneur, John Webster, and Thomas Heywood, shows the depth of mourning through its very printing.

The book's title page expresses loss by inverting the usual woodcut printing process to print white text on black. But the printers carried the grief throughout the book by alternating pages printed in black opposite each page of text. The dark ink on each verso bleeds through the paper so the text rests on a somber, dark background.

Between the elegies, a period of sorrow is enforced by two-page spreads of black.

For a moment of reflection and grief, ask for Rare PR1195.E5T68 1613.