Printed at the Sign of "The Penguins"

We have plenty of contemporary artists' books in Rauner that make inventive use of ordinary objects, but it's much rarer to find an older book bound with materials as strange as packing crates and harness leather. Aurora Australis, an anthology of poems, essays, and illustrations about life in Antarctica, has an excellent reason for its odd binding -- it was printed by the members of Ernest Shackleton's 1907-1909 Nimrod Expedition in the middle of an Antarctic winter.

Pressed for space in its small ship, the expedition brought along an iron handpress, an etching press, paper, ink, and type, but planned to improvise a binding from the lightweight wood boards of the expedition's packing crates. The editor was Shackleton himself, and the printers were two sailors who had had only three weeks training in presswork and lithography. The end result is both charmingly quirky and astonishingly professional given the conditions in the hut where the press was set up. As one sailor described:

Dust from the stove fills the air and settles on the paper as it is being printed.... It is too cold to keep the printer's ink fluid; it gets sticky and freezes... the printers were called away while the candle was burning, and... when they returned they found that the plate had overheated and melted the inking roller of gelitinous substance. I believe it was the only one on the Continent and had to be re-cast somehow.

In all, about 90 copies of Aurora Australis were printed, bound, and distributed to the members of Shackleton's expedition. Rauner's is affectionately known as the "Oatmeal Copy" for the label which is partially visible on the inside board cover.

Ask for Stefansson G850 1907 .A8 to see Aurora Australis for yourself. Also, make sure to take a look at an historical introduction to the text in our facsimile copy: Stefansson G850 1907 .A8 1986.

Posted for Anne Peale '11

Freshman Caps

Had you been a College freshman 99 years ago, you would at this moment be purchasing your freshman cap, a newly instituted requirement intended to make it easier to identify members of the entering class.

On October 26, 1911, The Dartmouth proclaimed:

Freshman caps will henceforth add a touch of the picturesque and a deeper hue to Dartmouth's campus.  The custom just initiated is worthy of continuing down the long years of the history of the College until it becomes a tradition as fixed and revered as the traditions that cluster about the old pine or the senior fence.

It is curious how few years are required to establish a new custom and to give it all the authority of a habit handed down from antiquity.  Four years hence, when all the classes now present in College have graduated, the freshman cap will have become a permanent feature of Dartmouth undergraduate life, and the ordinary student will associate its origin with the Indians, Eleazar Wheelock, the "Dartmouth Song," and the founding of the College.

In actuality, the freshman cap tradition lasted not quite sixty years.  The style of cap, or beanie, changed somewhat over the years, as did the consequences of not wearing it.  In the 1950s a Dartmouth Night tug-of-war with the sophomore class determined whether freshmen could stop wearing the caps or had to keep wearing them until mid-November.  The class of 1973 was the last class, as far as we know, to wear the beanies.

Ask for Realia 93 to examine our collection of distinctive headgear.

Gibson Girls

This original 1896 edition of Pictures of People by Charles Dana Gibson is currently on display in the Hood Museum's Space for Dialogue, in an exhibition curated by Sarah Peterson '10.  Sarah describes the compilation of Gibson's early pen and ink drawings as follows:

The book mainly focuses upon the Gibson Girl and her exploits while finding a mate: It was of principle importance to the Gibson Girl to secure a husband while she was young and beautiful. Therefore many of Gibson’s drawings explore the themes of love and courtship. This focus is present in “A Little Story: By a Sleeve.” The Gibson Girl in this image circa 1896 is wearing the most fashionable dress of her day. Interestingly, it is her garment that is central to the action of the scene. In the 1890’s the sleeves of dresses became increasingly large, until in the mid-1890’s they reached balloon-like proportions. Here, the Gibson Girl’s dress serves as evidence that the young man and woman were sitting inappropriately close to one another just before the servant arrived.

The Gibson Man was made by Charles Dana Gibson to accompany his leading female in her search for love. He is strong chinned, slim, and attractive, yet at times rendered powerless by the mystifying allure of the young Gibson Girl. However, ultimately he will succeed in his pursuit of the free and independent lady and she will in the end accept marriage and motherhood or be doomed to the fate of becoming an old maid.

You can see the Gibson Girl on display with the rest of Sarah's exhibit at the Hood Museum through January, 2011. After that, ask for Rauner Illus G357pi.

"More like Dr. Watson than Sherlock Holmes"

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, lost his son Kingsley during the 1918 influenza pandemic, two weeks before the Armistice that ended the First World War. Over the course of the war, Conan Doyle’s brother, two brothers-in-law, and nephew also died. In the wake of these losses, he became devoted to promoting spiritualism, which may have provided consolation in his grief, as it did to many who sought contact with departed loved ones. Many of Conan Doyle’s spiritualist writings omitted identifying him as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Among Rauner Library’s collections is the archive of the Arctic explorer Viljhalmur Stefansson, who taught at Dartmouth from 1947 to 1962. Stefansson first met Conan Doyle in London in 1913, and the two corresponded during Stefansson’s Arctic travels and through the First World War. Stefansson visited Conan Doyle in England in 1920, and wrote later in his autobiography that in terms of spiritualism, he found Conan Doyle’s “ready acceptance inconsistently naïve. Confronted with the spirit world, Doyle was more like Dr. Watson than Sherlock Holmes.”

Despite his friend’s skepticism, Conan Doyle enlisted Stefansson’s help in debunking a fraudulent séance during his 1922 American lecture tour. When Conan Doyle returned to England, he wrote to Stefansson that he felt his work in America had brought “knowledge and comfort to a lot of people.” He went on to write: “How strange our tasks! You are working on reindeer and I on disembodied spirits & both are equally part of the great whole. I quite see the Imperial aspect of your work.”

Come and see these materials and many others at the new exhibit in Rauner Special Collections Library, “The Adventure of the Archives: Detecting Sherlock Holmes in Rauner,” in the Class of 1965 Galleries. The exhibit was curated by Laura Braunstein and will be on display through December 22.

Nevermore

The famous last word and repeating refrain from Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem The Raven is arguably a one word summary of the entire work. First published in 1845, the poem follows an anonymous narrator as he mourns the "lost Lenore" and attempts to divine his own fate by questioning a mysterious raven whose only response is "Nevermore." The supernatural atmosphere and imagery evoked by the story and language of the poem have inspired many artists, including John Tenniel of Alice in Wonderland fame and Édouard Manet.

One of the more famous illustrated editions of the poem was published in 1884 (New York: Harper & Brothers) and features works by Gustave Doré who completed the twenty-six illustrations only a short time before his own death in 1883. Doré's visual interpretation perfectly complements the gothic nature of the poem and certainly adds additional elements of the eerie and haunted to the experience.

"Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before."

Ask for Illus D73po to see all twenty six illustrations.

The Reliquary, the Relic

It is hard to know where to start with this object. It is a set of Shakespeare's plays, in nine miniature volumes. The full text is there, printed by William Pickering in 1825. It is a case where a beloved text was produced to serve as a kind of fetish object--too small to be read comfortably, the set represents the larger whole, the whole of Shakespeare.

But there is an added twist. If we think of the edition as a fetish, we have to pay attention to the way it is housed and revered. The wooden box holding the nine volumes is a relic in and of itself: according to its nineteenth-century collector, the box is constructed from wood that was part of Shakespeare's house. A fragment of the true house, so to speak, creating a reliquary for the precious volumes. Together they create layers of culture encrusting a text.

Ask for Miniature 122.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

One of the most well known American stories, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Chicago; New York: G. M. Hill Co., 1900) was first published in 1900 and has spawned many companion books and adaptations, including the classic 1939 film.  It chronicles the adventures of Dorothy and her famous companions - the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion - through the land of Oz where they encounter Munchkins, witches, flying monkeys, and other bizarre creatures.

According to the introduction, Baum intended the book to be a departure from the "historical" tales of old.  He wrote "the time has come for a series of newer 'wonder tales' in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf, and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incident," adding "It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out."

Dorthy Meets the Scarecrow

More recently, author Gregory Maguire has revisited the land of Oz in his book Wicked (New York: ReganBooks, 1995).  This revisionist adaptation returns to a darker, more Grimm-like context, where the morality of the characters and their actions is explored and certainly contrasts with Baum's attempt to "dispense with all disagreeable incident."  To learn more, come hear a talk by Maguire this Sunday, October 24, in Alumni Hall in the Hopkins Center at 3:00 PM, co-sponsored by the Friends of the Dartmouth College Library.

Ask for Rare Book PS 3503 .A923 W59 1900 to see the first edition from 1900.