LILLY LIBRARY NEWS & NOTES

October is Archives and Special Collections Month! This year’s event is entitled Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Documenting the Great Depression, and not only is the Lilly Library hosting an exhibition and a musical performance this month – please visit the event website for details – but there are also related online resources available from the Lilly Library year–round.

One of the Lilly Library’s first online exhibitions is called The Works Projects Administration* in Indiana. Created in 1997 by Lilly Library intern Patrick Dawson, this exhibition draws upon Great Depression–era materials donated by John K. Jennings (WPA Administrator for Indiana 1935–1943), including video and audio clips, as well as many photographs from various WPA projects carried out in Indiana.

*Introduced in 1935 as the Works Progress Administration, the WPA became known as the Works Projects Administration in 1939.

–Virginia Dearborn, Reference/Technical Assistant

The Lilly Library actively collaborates throughout the year with other cultural heritage institutions in the exchange of materials for exhibition purposes. Current loans include materials from the Delany manuscript collection, included in the exhibition Mrs. Delany and Her Circle (September 24, 2009 – January 2, 2010) on display at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut in partnership with Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, England. Other ongoing exhibitions include Lincoln: The Man You Didn’t Know, at the Northern Indiana Historical Society, Inc. and the South Bend Center for History located in South Bend, Indiana.

A recently completed exhibition loan included a selection of correspondence to and from Thomas Mann seen at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York City in their exhibit: Publishing in Exile: German-Language Literature in the U.S. in the 1940s.

After returning from exhibitions, all of these materials are available for use in the newly renovated Lilly Library Reading Room by researchers and interested members of the general public.

— Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

View more images from the Delany mss. collection.

One of the many services the Lilly Library provides for researchers is that of “digitization on demand.” A recent successful and much appreciated example of this service was the digitization of the “Testamentaria,” a manuscript from the Lilly Philippine mss. II Collection.

Requested by Prof. Ted Bergman, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Department of Modern & Classical Languages at California State University Fresno, Prof. Bergman noted in his request:

The ‘testamentaria’ of Charles Connelly, an Irishman from Crosswell (near Glinsk in County Galway), contains much information on financial communications between Ireland, Spain and the Philippines. In the late eighteenth century, Connelly served in Mexico and the Philippines, where he participated in the Sociedad Económica del País by planting cash crops in an effort to increase the Spanish Crown’s profits. Connelly’s estate was being settled at the height of the Spanish Enlightenment. The communications include several mentions of Fr. Thomas Connelly and Fr. Thomas Higgins, co-authors of the monumental Diccionario nuevo de las dos lenguas espanõla é inglesa (1797-1798) as well as transactions carried out through the merchant banking house of Patricio Joyes e Hijos. In addition, the document contains a copy of a letter from Charles Connelly’s family members in Ireland certified by Leandro Fernández de Moratín, which made its way into the record in Manila.

Other scholars, when notified by Dr. Bergman about the completed project, agreed that “it sounds like an incredibly rich source, particularly for people working within our network of scholars on Ireland and the Spanish and Spanish American world.”

In addition, Professor Bergman provided us with links to other organizations and researchers working in this area of studies who would find the manuscript a valuable resource:

http://www.irishinspain.org

http://www.irishinspain.org/participantes.html

– Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

View more images from the Lilly Philippine mss. II Collection

The Lilly Library recently acquired an extraordinary new addition to our collection of military manuscript diaries. In a series of illustrated letters to his fiancée, Miss Elise Buckingham of Zanesville, Ohio, Lt. Mason Abercrombie Shufeldt documents his voyage on the U.S.S. Enterprise from Cape Henry, Virgina to Capetown, South Africa, from December 27, 1882 to March 31, 1883. Describing his travels and his devotion to his “far-off sweetheart” in depth, Shufeldt decorated each of the three volumes with an elaborately hand-drawn and colored cover with nautical themes and incorporated a series of hand-drawn maps and views throughout. Included in the archive is a small envelope dramatically labeled “The Lash.” Enclosed in the envelope is a letter from Miss Buckingham ending their engagement.

A son of Robert Wilson Shufeldt, an important naval officer who played a major role in opening trade with Korea and China in the early 1880’s, Mason Shufeldt served as an officer under his father’s command aboard the Ticonderoga during its around-the-world voyage in the late 1870’s and became deeply interested in the largely uncharted island of Madagascar during an extended stop there. After receiving news of the end of his engagement, Shufeldt received permission to explore the Madagascar interior, leading a team of men of which only 153 survived to reach the waters of Mozambique Channel. At least fifty are said to have “perished in the battles which he fought with the Sakolava slave-dealers” according to a New York Times article published October 8, 1884. Shufeldt died in Capetown in 1892 at the age of thirty-nine.

– Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

View more images from The Broken-Hearted Sailor.

Boris Karloff (born William Henry Pratt on November 23, 1887 in Camberwell, London) was a 44-year-old journeyman actor when director James Whale, unable to convince Bela Lugosi to accept the role, cast the mild-mannered Englishman as “the Monster” in the 1931 Universal horror film, Frankenstein. The actor’s sensitive portrayal of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s creature made him an immediate star, but forever typecast him in increasingly low-budget horror and science fiction films from the 1930s to the late 1960s. In 1966, the veteran actor who had made some of the most notable genre films in the history of motion pictures (Bride of Frankenstein, 1935; The Body Snatcher, 1945) had been reduced to appearing in cheapie productions like The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, although that same year he had done the winning narration for the now-classic animated television production of Dr. Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

In 1968, 29-year-old film critic turned director Peter Bogdanovich gave Karloff his last memorable screen role as aging horror movie star, “Byron Orlok,” in Targets. Bogdanovich’s directorial debut (which he also produced, co-wrote, and edited) was inspired by ex-Marine Charles Whitman’s deadly 96 minute rampage on the campus of University of Texas-Austin on August 1, 1966. Hours after murdering his mother and wife in separate incidents, Whitman amassed a small arsenal of high-powered rifles, and positioning himself atop the university’s Tower, killed 13, and wounded 31 before being shot to death by a campus security guard. In a more sedate scene from Targets featured on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfXOx04d6m4) , Bogdanovich (seated on couch) convinces Karloff to retell W. Somerset Maugham’s short piece, “Appointment in Samarra” (1933). Karloff died on February 2, 1969, but not before footage taken of him in late 1968 was added to four low-budget films shot in Mexico: Cult of the Dead, Alien Terror, House of Evil, and The Fear Chamber.

The Bogdanovich mss, purchased from the filmmaker in 1995 and periodically supplemented, is housed in the Auxiliary Library Facility (ALF). Materials must be requested in advance for use in the Lilly Library by using the Bogdanovich mss. collection description and inventory in conjunction with IUCAT. Among the collection’s more than 100,000 items are production materials, research, related business correspondence, and scripts for his films including Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), Directed by John Ford (1971), Paper Moon (1973), Daisy Miller (1974), Saint Jack (1979), Mask (1985), et al. Also included are reel-to-reel audiotapes of interviews conducted by Bogdanovich with directors George Cukor, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Sidney Lumet, Otto Preminger, Raoul Walsh, and Orson Welles. The accompanying photos feature a unique item from the collection: a 3-pound hand painted fiberglass casting of Karloff’s bust by veteran Hollywood make-up man and F/X sculptor Norman Bryn commercially available through Classic Creature Craft, LLC.

– David K. Frasier, Reference Librarian

The Lilly Library has recently received two new works charmingly illustrated with remarkable depictions of military themes. The first, Odelette Guerrière (1870), by Catulle Mendès, is a small ode characterized by an erotic or jovial theme with a predominately descriptive narrative. The Lilly Library’s copy is unique because it is illustrated with 5 original water colors signed by French artist/illustrator Albert Bligny interspersed throughout the text. In addition, the luxurious volume was bound by Marius Michel in full red Morocco with gilt decorations, green silk and marbled end papers.

The second, a folio collection of 115 drawings and water colors by A. Rochet and R.P. Germain, depicts daily life on the home front in Dijon, France during the First World War (1914-1918).

– Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

View additional images from Odelette Guerrière and the Rochet and Germain folio

Not every American regional writer is destined to become a Mark Twain, a William Faulkner, or even a modest success. Such is the case of Emmett Gowen (1902-1973), an obscure Tennessee-born writer who published two forgettable novels in the early 1930s with Indianapolis publisher Bobbs-Merrill. Court-martialed from the Marine Corps, Gowen served three years in the Naval Prison at Parris Island, South Carolina before being dishonorably discharged in 1923. He taught himself the craft of writing as a reporter on several Memphis newspapers while churning out stories for pulp magazines.

In 1932, Bobbs-Merrill published Gowen’s first novel, Mountain Born, a chronicle of the lives and loves of Tennessee hill folk, to mild critical acclaim, but lackluster sales. Undeterred, Gowen pressed on with the writing of a second novel contracted by the publisher, but ran into a problem faced by many would-be professional scribes — lack of money to complete their work. On October 29, 1932, Bobbs-Merrill received “Cards on the Table,” Emmett Gowen’s clever and artistic plea for a life-saving advance against royalties that would enable him to finish a racy novel on the trials and tribulations of Southern tenant farmers. The ploy worked. The amused publisher advanced Gowen $200.00, but their relationship ended after Dark Moon of March (1933) generated fewer sales than his first book. Gowen persevered, becoming a regular contributor of articles featuring rugged men in the “great outdoors” to magazines like Field and Stream, Argosy, True, and Outdoor Life. In the late 1950s, he assumed the presidency of Emmett Gowen, Ltd., an outfitting and guide service for hunters and fisherman vacationing in Mexico and Central America. His most successful book, The Joy of Fishing, was published by Rand McNally in 1961.

Gowen is among the several hundred authors (Irvin S. Cobb, Ring Lardner, James Whitcomb Riley) represented in the Bobbs-Merrill mss. (1885-1957) housed at the Lilly Library. The papers of the Indianapolis publisher are arranged by author and include autobiographical questionnaires, correspondence, reader’s opinions, promotional material, and royalty records. The 131,056 items in the collection have been partially described in “Studies in the Bobbs-Merrill Papers,” edited by Edwin H. Cady, in The Indiana University Bookman, no. 8 (March, 1967), pp. 1-166. A dissertation in 1975 by Jack O’Bar entitled A History of the Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1850-1940: With a Postlude Through the Early 1960’s (LZ2 .O124) was derived largely from the Bobbs-Merrill mss.

– David Frasier, Reference Librarian

View larger images of Gowen’s letter

The Lilly Library is pleased to announce the recent acquisition of the Dvořàk/Thurber mss., ca. 1885-1937, which consists of documents, correspondence and ephemera relating to Antonìn Dvořàk, Jeanette M. Thurber, and the history of the National Conservatory of Music in America (NCMA). These materials were a gift from Prof. Robert Aborn, whose dissertation “The Influence on American Musical Culture of Dvořàk’s Sojourn in America,” may be read in its entirety at: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3462.

Jeanette M. Thurber founded the National Conservatory of Music in 1885, which was based on the Paris Conservatoire model. In addition to replicating the European Conservatories to which American students had been turning in order to obtain a first class musical education, she also hoped to train as yet untrained students, the handicapped, and blacks as well as to encourage an indigenous music culture in the United States. Initially tuition free, the Conservatory was originally located at 126-128 East 17th Street; however that building was demolished in 1911. Unsuccessful attempts to revive the school and relocate it in Washington DC persisted through the 1920’s. The staff included Victor Herbert, Rafael Joseffy and Henry Finch as well as the noted composer, Antonìn Dvořàk, who was the director from 1892-1895. It was at the Conservatory that Dvořàk met his pupil, Harry Burleigh, one of the earliest African-American composers. Burleigh introduced traditional American Spirituals to Dvořàk at the latter’s request.

Antonìn Leopold Dvořàk (September 8, 1841 – May 1, 1904) was a Czech composer of Romantic music. During his time in America, among other compositions, Dvořàk wrote Symphony No.9 “From the New World,” String Quartet in F (the “American”), and the String Quintet in E flat, as well as a Sonatina for violin and piano.

– Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

Image: Jeanette M. Thurber (photo)

View a copy of letter (copy made by Mrs. Thurber) from Dvořàk to Littleton discussing his initial contract with the NCMA.

In the March/April 2009 issue of Harvard Magazine, Harvard senior Brittney Moraski writes about her visit to the Lilly Library to use the papers of poet Sylvia Plath. Moraski reflects on her experiences working in libraries and archives and concludes that “we have to be curators of our own lives”. Read the full article: http://harvardmagazine.com/2009/03/life-in-detail

The Lilly Library first acquired a small collection of Sylvia Plath’s poetry manuscripts in 1961. The extensive collection of Sylvia Plath letters, papers, and memorabilia that the Lilly Library acquired in 1977 came from her mother, Aurelia. Included in that collection are diaries, letters, poetry manuscripts, school papers, articles and prose pieces submitted for publication, scrapbooks, memorabilia, drawings and paintings, and more than 200 books from her library. To learn more about these materials, see the Guide to the Sylvia Plath Materials in the Lilly Library.

Highlights from the Lilly Library’s collection of illuminated Islamic manuscripts and books were the focus of a Saturday morning symposium held on March 7, 2009, at the Hope School of Fine Arts. Papers presented by Prof. Christiane Gruber and her students, who have been studying the collection in detail, elaborated on previously unexamined aspects of the collection. The papers will be published by the Indiana University Press in December, 2009, with accompanying illustrations. The symposium complemented the on-going exhibit at the IU Art Museum:

From Pen to Printing Press: Ten Centuries of Islamic Book Arts
March 6–May 10, 2009
Special Exhibitions Gallery, first floor

The exhibition and related programs are made possible with support from Indiana University’s New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Program, funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc., and administered by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research; the Thomas T. Solley Endowment for the Curator for Asian Art; and IU Art Museum’s Arc Fund. The exhibition was curated by: Judy Stubbs, The Pamela Buell Curator for Asian Art, organizing curator, and Professor Christiane Gruber, guest curator.

– Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

View a larger image of Allen mss 10.