A Child's Garden of Drafts

Our manuscript collections are full of first tries. Drafts of novels, stories and poems abound. Many never got beyond the initial draft, others seem to have been born fully decked out and ready for the publisher. Here are two very different examples. The first is a short story from Frances Hodgson Burnett, an inspired writer if there ever was one. Her draft of "The Plain Miss Burnie" from 1911 almost matches the final published version in Munsey's Magazine. There was no need to leave space for changes because revision would be almost unnecessary.

On the other end of the spectrum is Robert Louis Stevenson's draft of the poem "Historical Associations" which appeared in A Child's Garden of Verses. It is written out on paper that he reused. Whole stanzas are crossed out, and the ordering changes within the draft then again in publication.

Come see the contrasting styles by asking for Codex Ms 003180 and Codex MS 002473.

For other interesting drafts see Aldous Huxley's introduction for Edna St. Vincent Millay and Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad.

$300 Reward

We just acquired a simple document that says so much. This broadside from 1857, printed in Washington, D.C., for a slave owner in nearby Prince George County, Maryland, offers a reward for the capture of the runaway slave Lewis. At first glance, you are struck by the paucity of details concerning Lewis's appearance: his height, "about" 5' 5"; his "stout and full" face; and his slowness of speech. It would be difficult for anyone to make a positive ID from such a description, but it speaks to how the owner could not see Lewis as a person with unique characteristics.

But it is the details of the reward that caught our attention. Issued well after the Fugitive Slave Law was enacted, the reward is graded to match the potential difficulty of recovering Lewis. The full $300 reward is contingent on his retrieval from a free state--a capture within Prince George County only warrants a $50 reward. Set next to a broadside posted in a free state warning fugitive slaves of the presence of a slave hunter (that we blogged last year), this document helps illustrate the divisive nature of the Fugitive Slave Law, an act originally designed as a compromise to preserve the union.

Find this item under Broadside 001467.

Chinese Comics

Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 antiwar novel All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) became an international bestseller, selling nearly two million copies worldwide and translated into over 20 languages the year it was published. Pirated editions appeared in China, along with a stage play. When the American film of All Quiet on the Western Front was produced the following year, there was an effort to ban it in China because of a perception that its antiwar message would undermine national resistance to Japanese aggression. This is the cultural context for one of Rauner Library's newest acquisitions, Lianhuan huatu xixian wu zhansi, or "The Cartoon-Illustrated All Quiet on the Western Front," published in Shanghai in the 1930s.

Despite the government's official intolerance of antiwar messages, there was some cultural resistance in urban areas of China during the 1930s. The visual arts were also flourishing in Shanghai during this time, and comics, or lianhuanhua, were enormously popular, particularly for younger and less educated readers. The lianhuanhua were sold at street bookstalls, and were issued serially, like many comics today. Readers could rent installments as they came out, rather than purchase copies. After a full run of a comic was completed, the publishers issued a box for the collection. Serialized comics usually don't survive well, because of the cheapness of their production and materials, and because they were often handled by many readers. Our copy of Lianhuan huatu xixian wu zhansi is in excellent shape, and came to us in its original box. Several of the parts, or fascicles, are stamped "Made in China," suggesting that the copy was exported to other markets, which may account for its preservation.

After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the comics industry in Shanghai came to an end. Some comics magazines survived as war propaganda, but Remarque's story of young soldiers who face the futility of war was likely less popular.

To see this remarkable book, ask at the Rauner Reference Desk for Rare PN6790.C6 X59 1930z.

Lord Ruthven

Though most people associate the modern vampire with Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, the less well known, but equally suave and predatory Lord Ruthven from John Polidori's The Vampyre (London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1819) predates the Count by almost eighty years. Polidori's Ruthven is the first depiction of the vampire figure as an aristocratic man possessed of an almost irresistible power over others, especially women.

Ruthven has all of the, by now stereotypical, traits of the vampire. He is pale, attractive to women, ruthless, murderous, and ultimately indifferent to rest of the world.

In spite of the deadly hue of his face, which never gained a warmer tint, either from the blush of modesty, or from the strong emotion of passion, though its form and outline were beautiful, many of the female hunters after notoriety attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection.

Polidori was Lord Byron's personal physician and accompanied him on several of his trips abroad, including the famous trip to Lake Geneva in 1816 where Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was conceived. Polidori was inspired by a story fragment that Byron wrote at the time and used this as a basis for his own tale of the supernatural. This is alluded to in the introduction in an extract of a letter from an unnamed person in Geneva.

It was afterwards proposed, in the course of conversation, that each of the company present should write a tale depending on some supernatural agency, which was undertaken by Lord B., the physician, and Miss M. W. Godwin.

An asterisk next to Godwin's name leads to the footnote: "Since published under the title of "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus."

Another interesting connection is the origin of the name "Ruthven" which was most likely borrowed wholesale from Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon. The characters in Glenarvon were thinly disguised and often unflattering portraits of London society. The Glenarvon Ruthven is based on Lord Byron, with whom Lamb had a tumultuous affair in 1812 and about whom she coined the phrase "mad, bad, and dangerous to know."

Ask for Rare Book PR 5187 .P5 v36. Our earlier posts on the First Illustrated Frankenstein and A Dissertation Concerning Vampires may also be of interest.

Letters

In 1959, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, the German-born historian and social philosopher, stated in an addition to his bibliography that "the printed word was not radically different to me from the words spoken or written between friends. Fittingly, letters have played an immense role in my life. …Many books got started as letters."

Looking at his body of work, which we recently completed processing, one can find many examples that support his statement. Foremost among them is Judaism Despite Christianity: The Wartime Correspondence Between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig, a seminal work, which delivers an insight into the intellectual minds of both men. Rosenstock-Huessy, like many of his generation, was an avid letter writer who often used this format to express his thoughts and ideas to friends and colleagues. Among his correspondents are Martin Buber, Helmuth and Konrad von Moltke, Julian Morgenstern, May Sarton and many others. Rosenstock-Huessy's long correspondence with former student and psychologist Cynthia O. Harris between 1943 and 1963 formed the basis for another book - the unpublished manuscript Letters to Cynthia.

The collection also includes correspondence known as the "Gritli" letters, though these involve Rosenstock-Huessy only tangentially. The primary correspondence is between Margrit "Gritli" Rosenstock-Huessy, Eugen's wife, and Franz Rosenzweig, the Jewish theologian and philosopher who was a close friend. Scholars consider the letters, that begin in 1917 and last until 1922, a vital resource into the thoughts and emotions of Rosenzweig during the time he wrote his major work The Star of Redemption. Rosenzweig had a passionate love for "Gritli" whom he considered to be his muse. The relationship appears to have been condoned by Rosenstock-Huessy but less so by Rosenzweig's wife Edith.

To learn more about Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and his writings ask for MS-522. A guide to the collection is available.

Contending Forces: A Novel for Social Change

We just acquired a copy of Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (Boston: Colored Co-operative Publishing Co., 1900). As the title suggests, this is a novel bent on affecting social change. Hopkins was a prolific and popular writer of the turn of the century. Much of her work appeared in Colored American Magazine, where she worked as an editor, and she published several full-length novels. Her writings positioned her as a major public intellectual of the time.

What makes our copy particularly interesting is two letters laid in, one, a fair copy written by Emma S. Burnett of Kalispell, Montana, praising Hopkins for the book.

I have just finished reading your most interesting book "Contending Forces." it is grand. I wish every man and woman in the universe might read it. Especially of the more favored race for surely then they could not help but look upon us with more favor. We are living almost at the two extremes of this country yet your forceful words have come to us on the western side of the Rockies. I shall do all I can to have my friends in this section secure a copy as I feel that it will be food & strength for them. One of your own townsmen whom I met while visiting Boston last Sept sent me the book. I will once more pass my tribute of thanks to you for the good work you have done for the race.

Hopkins's answer lies along side. In a neat script (she earned her living for a time as a stenographer at M.I.T.), she thanks Burnett for her words of encouragement and answers in the rhetoric of struggle and purpose:

Sometimes one becomes discouraged and is unable to see any good accomplished by the most faithful work. Your letter found me at such a time, and it has strengthened me to press forward in the good fight that we are all waging against wrong and oppression.

The voices of the two women united in cause, one in Boston, the other in Montana, help to carry today's reader into the social world that the text was responding to and trying to change.

You can see it by asking for Rare PS1999.H4226 1900.

The Dartmouth Murders

While Dartmouth has had its share of real murders, this particular Dartmouth Murders, is the title of a work of fiction, possibly the first work of murder mystery fiction to feature the College, at least in book form. The story was perpetrated by Clifford Orr, Class of 1922, who would have lived through a real murder at the College in his sophomore year, but that’s a different story!

Clifford’s fictional murder is nothing like the real one. Instead it starts with the main character, Kenneth Harris, finding the body of his roommate hanging by his neck from the fire escape (in those days the fire escape was a rope that student would have to shimmy down in the event of a blaze). What appears at first to be a suicide quickly turns more sinister.

Orr first published the piece in serial form in College Humor under the title "The Dartmouth Mystery," though there is little if any humor in his piece. The story was then picked up by Farrar and Rinehart in the company’s inaugural year (1929) and made into a book. While Orr went on to publish another mystery with them, The Wailing Rock Murders, his final book, allegedly set on the Cornell campus, never made it into print. The Dartmouth Murders was made into a movie in 1935, titled A Shot in the Dark. The New York Times panned the movie version for which Orr wrote the script.

The Dartmouth Murders is full of familiar Dartmouth locations and references. For instance Kenneth Harris is a resident of North Mass, just as Clifford Orr was as a student. But when the clock strikes the hour it is not the Baker Tower clock as it would be today, but the Dartmouth Hall clock (Baker hadn’t been built when Orr was a student). Webster Hall, the Chapel and the Inn also get at least passing mention. Hanover establishments of yore also make appearances, The Dartmouth National Bank and Campion’s for instance, but ultimately the book is more about the mystery and Dartmouth is very much a backdrop.

In addition to several copies of the book, some signed by the author, we also have the original manuscript as well as Orr’s own letters home to his mother during his years at Dartmouth.

Orr, who started out as a literary associate at Doubleday, Dorn & Co., and later became a literary editor at The New Yorker, also published some short literary pieces in The New Yorker and wrote song lyrics. He died in Hanover in 1951 after “a long illness” at the age of 51.

To read The Dartmouth Murders, ask for: DC History, PZ3.O749 Dar or Rauner Alumni O75d
To see the College Humor version of the story ask for: DC History PZ3 .O749da
To see Orr’s papers and the manuscript version of the novel, ask for: MS-532
To watch A Shot in the Dark, go to Jones Media Center and ask for: Jones Media DVD 8519