Digital Comics

Two important early comic books from our collections are now available digitally through the efforts of the Library's digital production team:  The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck (1842) the first graphical novel published in the United States, originally published in French in 1837 as Les Amours de M. Vieux Bois; and The Fortunes of Ferdinand Flipper (185?), the first graphical novel written in the United States.  Both digitized comics will be used by students this term in English 67: Graphic Novels.

To see the good old fashioned paper copies, ask for Rare Book NC1659.T58 A6213 1840z and Rare Book NC1420.F68.

The Power of Satire

Ten years before the 13th Amendment became law, an advertisement for a slave auction appeared in the July 1855 issue of the Dartmouth Oestrus. Knowing the political and satirical nature of this undergraduate publication, Dartmouth College students at that time surely were not fooled into believing the advertisement was real. President Nathan Lord's pro-slavery stance, defended in his Letter of Inquiry to Ministers of the Gospel of all Denominations on Slavery, was a frequent target for the anger of the largely abolitionist campus. Advertising an auction at which Lord's wife Betsey and their children would be sold as slaves, was an acceptable level of protest against his stance on the "peculiar institution."

In more recent years, the ad has enjoyed some success as a hoax. The College Archives does receive inquiries about mid-19th century slavery in Hanover, occasionally based on researchers discovering this item. Out of the context of the publication and its times, even our readers on April Fools Day might have found it possible to believe the cruelty of slavery also touched Hanover, before reading further.

Ask for the The Dartmouth Oestrus, DC History LH 1 D2D282 and Letter of Inquiry to Ministers of the Gospel of all Denominations on Slavery, 4th edition, DC History E 449 L654 1860.

March Madness

In 1942, the Dartmouth basketball team reached the finals of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament by first defeating Penn State and then dominating the Kentucky Wildcats--the winningest men's college basketball program.  They lost in the finals to Stanford. The Big Green was headed up by team captain Charles "Stubbie" Pearson '42 whose college scrapbook provided these images.

Pearson is a tragic hero in the history of Dartmouth College. He was the 1942 valedictorian, captain of both the football and basketball teams, a poet, scholar, and inspirational leader on campus. Along with dozens of his classmates, he joined the Navy upon graduation and became a Navy pilot. In 1944 he was killed in action in the Pacific while dive bombing an enemy ship.

Looking through his scrapbook from his college days is an emotionally wrenching experience. It takes you from his freshman excitement through his achievements as a scholar and a athlete, culminating with his patriotically charged valedictory address. Surrounding materials from the College Archives and manuscript collections tell the rest of the story: letters from training camp to a Dean's daughter with a terrible school-girl crush, letters back to administrators telling of life in the Navy, and finally the story of his death told by eye-witnesses from his squadron.

But today, we will celebrate basketball.

To see his scrapbook, ask for Rauner Manuscript 895.

Dartmouth Rose

The Dartmouth College Library is delighted to announce the addition of an important manuscript to its holdings: a richly illuminated copy of the Roman de la Rose created in Paris between 1300 and 1325.

The Roman de la Rose is arguably the most important literary text produced in France in the middle ages. Much more than just an allegory for the pursuit of carnal love, the Roman de la Rose very quickly became one of the most popular and far-reaching texts of the Middle Ages.  This particular manuscript was produced only a few decades after the completion of the poem making it an important source for medievalists at Dartmouth and elsewhere.

In recent years, Rauner Special Collections has added three significant medieval secular manuscripts to its collections: The Brut Chronicle (England, ca 1425) and a fragment of the Chronique anonyme universelle (France, 1461), and Boccaccio’s L’Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (Italy, ca 1450).  All three of these manuscripts have been heavily used in Dartmouth classes and have attracted world-renowned scholars to do work in Rauner Library.  They have helped to fill an important gap in Rauner’s holdings by adding secular historical manuscripts to the collections.  The Roman de la Rose adds a new literary text to the holdings and cements Rauner Library’s importance in the realm of medieval scholarship.  Most importantly, it now provide students, faculty, and visiting researcher at Dartmouth the opportunity to work with a truly remarkable set of manuscripts.

The manuscript has been scanned and is available digitally through the Roman de la Rose Digital Library

A Classic Tear Jerker

John P. Jewett knew he had a runaway bestseller with Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (Boston: J. P. Jewett, 1852), and he was determined to sell the book like no book had ever been sold before. He commissioned noted poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier to write a poem that could be set to music based on the emotionally charged death of Little Eva.  It began "Dry the tears for holy Eva!"  The song became a sheet music bestseller, and Jewett saw another opportunity to market the book: a printed handkerchief to help readers dry their tears.

Framing the image of Little Eva teaching Uncle Tom in the garden is a decorative border touting the novel's record setting sales: "Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is a Picture of American Slavery, not overdrawn, since Southern Publications themselves give as facts accounts of characters and incidents fully matching any thing this work presents--115,000 copies or 230,000 vols. have been sold in 6 months."

This marketing artifact is a perfect complement to our presentation copy first edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Ask for Rauner Val 816 St78 X711 to see the first edition.

Middleton Quarto

It doesn't look like much, but then, it wasn't supposed to.  This unassuming book is a quarto edition of Thomas Middleton's The Spanish Gipsie (London: Printed by I.G. for Richard Marriot, 1653).  In the 16th and 17th centuries, most plays were seen by printers as ephemeral materials, and they issued them as inexpensive quartos, loosely stitched together with flimsy paper covers. If a reader of a play decided to keep the cheap publication, he or she would usually bind it together in an assemblage of plays collected over a period of time.  In the 19th century, collectors broke up these assemblages and had them individually bound--often in very expensive bindings expressing the new importance society placed on these publications.

This first printing of one of Middleton's plays somehow managed to escape being stripped of its original paper wrapper and survived to the present day with cover intact.  It is now a perfect example of the way plays by Rowley, Middleton, and Shakespeare appeared to their first readers.

You can see this extraordinary survival by asking for Rare PR2714.S7 1653.

Washington Didn't Sleep Here

To the best of our knowledge, George Washington never graced the plains of Hanover, but we do have a relic associated with him: a lock of his hair bound into John Marshall's The Life of George Washington (London: Printed for Richard Phillips, 1804-1807).  This particular copy was "extra illustrated" by a collector, meaning that the original book was disbound, interleaved with additional material such as illustrations from other sources or manuscript materials associated with events described in the book, then rebound.  The collector's prize, a documented lock of Washington's hair, was framed into the binding of the first volume.

This is not the only lock of hair in the collection.  Others can be found within manuscript collections and an extra-illustrated edition of Samuel Picard's Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1894) has a lock from the graying poet.

While the hair is an interesting fetish object, our collections also hold original Washington material of high scholarly value.  MS-1033 contains original correspondence, a mathematical exercise attributed to a 13-year-old Washington, as well as a copy of Washington's Valley Forge announcement to the people of Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

To see Washington's hair ask for Rare E312.M34 1804 v.1; to see the manuscripts, request MS-1033.