Books from Blocks

Fragments from the Biblia Pauperum
Netherlands, ca. 1460-1470

Wood has been used as a method of communication for time out of mind, typically by expressing an artistic ideal through the the grain and texture of the material. However, as printing evolved, the use of wood to express both a literal and figurative meaning at the same time became more prevalent. The inclusion of both text and imagery on the same block was initially most widespread in Japan, China and other Asian regions, though in Europe it actually flourished most widely at around the same time as movable type was developed. These "block-books" eventually fell into decline and wood came to be employed mainly for creating imagery to accompany the text.

Leaves By The Wayside
Title page block for first book
printed in the Graphic Arts
Workshop at Dartmouth College, 1948.

The process of creating a woodblock for printing is a fairly simple one in concept. The desired image or text is drawn onto the block surface, but reversed from the way it will eventually appear on the paper or other page material and the "white space" is removed with a variety of woodworking tools. The remaining wood surface is then covered in ink and a sheet of paper is pressed onto it. The ink transfers from the wood to the paper, but only on those sections that have not been removed. The thickness of the woodblock is typically matched to the height of the type so that a full page can be printed in one step.

Prajnapamita Sutra
Japan, ca. 14th century

The more elaborate the design the more care must be taken in executing it.  The wood itself must be chosen and prepared with care to minimize cracking and warping due to the wood's natural movement as it interacts with its environment and the stresses that the block undergoes in the printing process. Even a small press can produce a tremendous amount of force. An example of a block which cracked can be found in our collection of Barry Moser's Alice in Wonderland.

The examples pictured here are taken from various collections. Ask for Val 898.1 D14 U7 (Prajnapamita Sutra), Rare Book Z 241 .B6 (Biblia Pauperum) and Lansburgh 30 (Leaves By The Wayside title page illustration).

"Trembling for the Relics of Their Dead"

In 1810, a group of Dartmouth Medical School students was caught removing a body from the Norwich, Vermont, cemetery. Bodies for dissection were hard to come by at the time and grave robbing was not as uncommon a practice as one might think. Normally, medical schools obtained bodies from prisons as condemned criminals were often further punished by having their bodies given over to science. However this offered only a limited supply of cadavers for study. The same year Dartmouth opened its medical school, the state of New Hampshire stiffened the penalties for grave robbing knowing that there would be increased demand for the dead.

This letter of apology is telling of the students' attitudes toward the public. In their apology, stated "with the most pungent sensations" they put the burden back onto the people of the town:

Painful considerations force themselves upon us, with increased effect, when we contemplate our fellow citizens, in the neighboring villages, trembling for the relics of their dead, which, they have long been educated, to hold sacred; the unlawful removal of which, in their view, can be nothing short of sacrilege.

The villagers are reduced to trembling, uneducated peons who seem unable to differentiate between the relic and the reality. It seems the medical students are not so much sorry about what they did, but that the superstitious townspeople believe it wrong.

There are gruesome stories in the Archives. This letter is featured in the current exhibit, The Body: Depressed, Flayed, and Stolen from the Grave curated by members of Sienna Craig's "The Values of Medicine" class.  It will be on display through June 20th, after which you can ask for Mss 810900.6.

Harriet Burleigh Janes

"I had Dr. Mason call to see me first--before dark--He left some medicine which relieved me in a short-time, but I do not think I was really well or happy during my sojourn there. It was so vastly different from the pleasant home I had left. While at Mo__ I endeavored to entertain myself by crocheting and sketching a little. As I had brought my maltese kitten--'Tony' with me, she helped to while a few lonesome hours away."

This quotation appears in diary we just acquired by Harriet Burleigh Janes. Janes was a Laconia, New Hampshire, native who wrote fiction under the name Effie Ray. Born May 27, 1845, Harriet Burleigh was writing and illustrating hand-sewn miniature books by the age of seven. At 18, her work was in print; A Letter From Effie Ray was published in the Trumpet and Freeman: A Universalist Magazine in 1863. Over the next several years, her short stories appeared in The Yankee Blade and The American Union. She was working on a novel, Leander, or The Haunted Manor, at the time of her death at age 30.

The diary will join her papers housed in Rauner Library. The collection includes her miniature books, drawings and other manuscripts. Perhaps the most curious part of the collection is the "spirit writings," many purportedly by Harriet Janes, that her grieving family received after her early death.

To learn more about this little known writer, ask for MS-844.

Calligraphic Emblems

We have a strong collection of emblem books that try to create a visual vocabulary of classical themes and emotions and we also have another collection that documents 19th-century calligraphy. So, you can imagine how pleased we were to find this little gem of a book, Arabesques mythologiques (Paris: Charles Barrois, 1810) which combines the two ideas in one.

Illustrated with 54 hand-colored emblems representing the characters of Greek and Roman myth, the book was a kind of primer for children to learn the classical gods and the myths surrounding them. The visual clues create more lasting memories than text alone and each emblem tries to capture the essence of the actors. But, unlike other emblem books, there is text intertwined into each image. Turn them sideways, and you find the names beautifully scripted into the images--each is an elegant design loaded with cultural meaning.

Ask for Rare BL725 G4 1810.

Trains, Trains and Railroads

Trainspotting can be something of an acquired taste, but for the true aficionado we present the Chase-Streeter collection. Formed mainly from gifts made by Judge William Martin Chase, Dartmouth 1858, and Thomas W. Streeter, Dartmouth 1904, the collection focuses primarily on the early history of New England railroads. It consists of over fifteen hundred items ranging from charters, annual reports of the various railroads to their stockholders, broadsides, and surveys of railroads, many with maps, to hearings before legislative bodies and pamphlets concerning legal disputes.

The collection also contains some more unique items such as a series of photographs documenting damage done to the Central Vermont Line during the 1938 hurricane. These images are eerily reminiscent of similar havoc caused by Hurricane Irene.

Other ephemeral items include a small set of timetables for various railroads, including several western lines, and a sampling of stock certificates for the New York Central Railroad and it's subsidiaries.

Search the Library catalog for all of the cataloged items in the collection. The items highlighted here are from Chase-Streeter New England C42 18 (hurricane damage), Chase-Streeter N45 1 (stock certificates) and Chase-Streeter U.S. General 10 (timetables).

Children at the Pole, with Penguins

Jack and Jill went up... to where? To the North Pole, naturally. We just acquired a very odd little book published not long after Cook purportedly reached the North Pole. The Children of the North Pole (London: George Harrap, 1914) is a sing-song verse describing the journey of parka clad Jack and Jill on their adventure to find the Pole. Along the way they ski, meet up with Eskimos, and encounter a friendly polar bear. But it is the trip home with the biggest surprise: dog sledding along they find themselves on Penguin Island.

The book's accordion fold structure allows it to open into kind of panorama. If you turn the book over and start reading from the other side, a prose version of the same story is told without pictures. In the prose version the penguins are explained. They came all they way north to congratulate the children and "to see whether the North Pole is like the South Pole." To Jack's question of whether there was a difference, the oldest penguin replied, "it is exactly like the South Pole, only it is day-time here when it is night with us."

Come take the journey by asking for Stef G614.C35 1914.

Peter Pan

Peter Pan is remembered as the boy who would "never grow up." Made famous by the 1904 play, Peter Pan, and the 1911 novel, Peter and Wendy, Peter is a classic character in children’s literature. Often, however, people forget that there is more to Peter Pan's author J. M. Barrie than Neverland. A quick search through Rauner can show Barrie's path to Pan and much more about the author’s professional and personal life.

J. M. Barrie began his literary career in 1888, with the Auld Licht Idylls. While Auld Licht and other sentimental novels allowed Barrie to achieve moderate success, his fame stemmed from his character Peter Pan. Peter first appeared in 1902, as a minor character in Barrie's novel for adults, The Little White Bird. It was in the 1904 play, however, that Peter made it big. Revisiting Peter Pan and Peter and Wendy, you might be surprised – the books are a bit darker than the Disney cartoon images I have in my mind. If you want to expand your Barrie repertoire, Rauner has many of Barrie's other less well known works, including "Der Tag:" or The Tragic Man and What Every Woman Knows.

Rauner also offers glimpses behind-the-scenes into Barrie's life. A letter in response to an invitation for a dinner honoring Stephen Crane at The Sing o' the Lanthorn gives us a taste of Barrie's connections. While Barrie was unable to make the dinner, he wrote of his enjoyment of The Red Badge of Courage. His correspondence with Gabriel Wells shows Barrie as an established author, with a well-regarded publisher and book-dealer pursuing his work. Or, you can flip through a scrapbook of material from 1888 to 1928 showing the transformation of Peter Pan from a fragment of Barrie's imagination to a film sensation.

To see the original The Little White Bird ask for Rare Book PZ 3.B277 Li2; the Peter Pan illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman is Illus H997ba; the Gabriel Wells Correspondence is in MS-585; and the Peter Pan Scrapbook is MS 118.

Posted for Kate Taylor '13