Selected
Acquisitions
Compiled by the curatorial
staff of the
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
October 2002
- Sacramentary. Vienne, 11th century.
Ten complete leaves from an important early eleventh-century Sacramentary
from the Cathedral of St. Maurice in Vienne, with Romanesque decorated
and historiated initials, notated musical pieces, and extensive corrections
indicating that the manuscript was in use in Vienne for several centuries.
The surviving leaves include formulas for exorcism and baptism, the
Litany, specific to the cathedral of Vienne, and the sanctoral from
September eighth to November first. The manuscript is the oldest surviving
Sacramentary for the use of Vienne.
- Manuscripts from the library of B.S.
Cron. Various places, 11th-15th centuries.
A group of seven medieval manuscripts from the distinguished collection
of the late B.S. Cron of Kew, Surrey. The manuscripts are especially
noteworthy for their elegance, their age, and their provenance; and
we were fortunate to acquire most of the medieval manuscripts in the
collection.
Included are a substantial fragment of an eleventh-century Lectionary
from the Santa Cecilia in Rome, with important musical and liturgical
information about the church, and an impressive curse against book
thieves; a thirteenth-century treatise on virtues and vices from the
monastery of St. Benignus in Dijon, with a treatise on interpreting
dreams by an early owner, who also inscribed a diary of important
events in his life from 1290 to 1320; an English manuscript,
in an early binding, of Raymundus’ Summa, dated ca. 1291;
an elegantly decorated thirteenth-century copy of Gregory’s Homilies
on the Gospels, from Royaumont Abbey; a beautifully written thirteenth-century
Petrus Riga from Citeaux Abbey; a late fifteenth-century Liber
taxarum, that is a direct copy of the Spinelli manuscript of that
text; and a brilliantly illuminated volume with the Collationes of
Cassian, produced in Bologna in the fourteenth century.
- Palimpsest of Ovid’s Heroides.
Italy, 14th century.
This fifteenth-century manuscript of the Algorismus of Johannes
Sacrobosco hides beneath its writing the traces of a fourteenth-century
manuscript of Ovid’s Heroides, the letters of famous heroines
to their lovers. Popular in the schools of the late Middle Ages and
Renaissance, the Heroides were extensively read and annotated.
This manuscript has glosses and commentary filling its margins, and
this circumstance, combined with the format and writing of the text,
indicates that it was read in an early Renaissance school.
- Book of Tobias.
Italian translation. Naples?, 15th century.
The Book of Tobias from the Vulgate, the story of Tobias’
travels, made appropriate reading matter for young travelers during
the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This elegantly illuminated manuscript,
with a miniature showing Tobias on the road and two magnificent pages
of calligraphic capitals, was probably produced for a Neapolitan aristocrat
around 1450. Interestingly for a pre-Reformation manuscript, this
is a vernacular Italian translation, indeed a previously unrecorded
translation, not the Latin text. It is preserved in an early blind-stamped
leather binding.
- Artists’ recipe books. Italy,
15th century.
Two manuscripts, one in Latin, one in Italian, of artists’ recipe
books, providing instructions for preparing various pigments for paint
colors, gold and silver ink, etc. The watermarks in the paper and
various indications within the texts show that they were copied around
1440. One of the manuals seems to be targeted directly for manuscript
illuminators, as it also has information on preparing parchment and
paper, on recycling parchment, on gold-leaf techniques, and on how
to prepare and dye leather. Both of the manuscripts are working copies
of practicing artists, and are full of practical advice, such as how
to hammer a Florentine gold florin into thin sheets of gold leaf.
The texts appear to be unique and are unknown to scholarship and unpublished.
- Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury.
D. Anselmi Cantuariensis . . . in omnes sanctissimi Pauli Apostoli
epistolas. Cologne, 1543.
From the library of John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury (1522-71), with
his signature, extensive underlining and marginal marking on virtually
every page, annotations, and examples of his distinctive marginal
numbers. In a contemporary Oxford binding. Saint Paul’s Epistles
were one of Jewel’s key texts, being cited numerous times in
his works, and Anselm’s commentary would have been essential
to his researches.
- Salomon Schweigger. Ein newe Reyssbechreibung
auss Teutschland nach Constantinopel und Jerusalem. Nuremberg,
1608.
Schweigger was a young Protestant clergyman who, in 1577, joined the
embassy sent by Emperor Maximilian to the Grand Turk in Constantinople.
For the next four years he travelled extensively through Syria, the
Holy Land, Sinai, and Egypt. His account of the Ottoman Empire was
the first substantial such study published in German. Its three parts
cover the journey from Tübingen to Turkey; the second is devoted
to the Sultan and the city of Constantinople in all its aspects, religious
and secular; and the third to Schweigger’s journey from Constantinople
to Jerusalem and his return. The book is abundantly illustrated: a
frontispiece portrait of the author, seven folding plates (one supplied
in facsimile in this copy), an additional woodcut plate, and 83 woodcuts
in the text. The book is particularly interesting for its references
to Islam. Schweigger, in fact, translated the Qur’an into German,
even though he compared the book with the Till Eulenspiegel stories,
finding more truth in them. The book was reprinted eight times in
the seventeenth century, but no copy of this first edition is recorded
in America.
- Ovid. Metamorphoses. Oxford,
1632.
This copy has the signature of Dorothy Osborne on the title page and
is only book known to have belonged to her. In her celebrated letters
to Sir William Temple, whom she married in 1655, she alludes to Ovid:
“Do you remember Arme [the island Herm] and the little house
there? Shall we go thither? That’s next to being out of the world.
There we might live like Baucis and Philemon, grow old together in
our little cottage, and for our charity to some ship-wrecked strangers
obtain the blessing of dying both at the same time. How idly I talk:
‘tis because the story pleases me—none in Ovid so much.”
Italian
festival books
Giacinto Lodi. Amore prigioniero in Delo. Torneo fatto da’
Signori Academici Torbidi in Bologna li 20 di marzo 1628. Dedicato
all’ Altezza Serenissima di Ferdinando II Gran Duca di Toscana.
Bologna, 1628.
The tournament held in Bologna on 20 March 1628, during the carnival,
in the presence of Ferdinando II de Medici, grand duke of Tuscany,
was one of the grandest festivities held in Bologna during the seventeenth
century. Lodi’s account is illustrated with 15 superb plates.
Pietro Paolo Bissari. Fedra incoronata, drama regio musicale.
Monaco, 1662. [Bound with] Antiopa giustificata, drama guerriero.
Monaco, 1662. [And with] Medea vendicativa, drama di foco.
Monaco, 1662.
First edition of this trilogy, first performed at the Monaco opera
house in September 1662 as part of the festivities celebrating the
birth of Massimilio Emanuele, first son of Ferdinando Maria, duke
of Bavaria and imperial elector. The sumptuous theatrical machinery
and scenography are documented by 19 folding plates throughout the
volume.
Giuseppe Castaldi. Tributi ossequiosi della dedelissima città
di Napoli, per gl’applausi festivi delle nozze reali del cattolico
monarca Carlo secondo re delle Spagne con la Serenissima signora Maria
Luisa Borbone. Naples, 1680.
This abundantly illustrated book (31 full-page, double-page, and folding
plates) relates the festivities held in Naples from 10 January through
4 March 1680 to celebrate the wedding of Charles II of Spain with
Maria-Luisa of Bourbon, coinciding with the Neapolitan carnival.
- Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo. Traicté
de la proportion naturelle et artificielle des choses. Toulouse,
1649.
Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’arte della pittura, the major
exposition of the principles that guided the work of Italy’s
great cinquecento mannerist painters, was published in 1584 without
illustrations. This French translation by the Toulousain painter Hilaire
Pader, limited to the first book of Lomazzo’s treatise, is lavishly
illustrated with 36 plates after Dürer, Lautensack, and others.
It was the first book published in France on the theory of painting,
two years before the first translation
of Leonardo’s treatise. It influenced Nicolas Poussin, among
others, who drew upon this translation of Lomazzo in developing his
Neoplatonic interpretation of the art of painting. Pader subsequently
published a commentary on Lomazzo’s second book.
- Sir Thomas Browne. “Concerning
Artificiall mounts, and raised hills without fortificaetions attending
them.” Manuscript, 1658.
The manuscript is in a scribal hand, with an autograph subscription.
Browne had leapt to archaeological prominence on the publication of
his treatise Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall earlier in the year.
The present manuscript was enclosed in a letter to another important
antiquary, Sir William Dugdale, which survives in the British Library.
A major document in the early history of English archaeology, the
manuscript links two leading antiquaries of the seventeenth century.
Copyright
Andrew Millar. The question concerning literary property, determined
by the Court of King’s Bench on 20th April 1769. London,
1773.
[Bound with] James Boswell. The decision of the court of session,
upon the question of literary property; in the cause of John Hinton
of London, bookseller, pursuer; against Alexander Donaldson and John
Wood, booksellers in Edinburgh, and James Meurose bookseller in Kilmarnock,
defenders. Edinburgh, 1774.
[Bound with] The cases of the appellants and respondents in the
cause of literary property, before the House of Lords: wherein the
decree of Lord Chancellor Apsley was reversed, 26 Feb. 1774. With
the genuine arguments of the Council, the opinions of the judges,
and the speeches of the Lords, who distinguished themselves on that
occasion. With notes, observations, and references. London, 1774.
[Bound with] Petitions and papers
relating to the Bill of the Booksellers. [London, 1774].
[Bound with] Remarks on the booksellers’ petition [London,
1774].
[Bound with] William Enfield. Observations on literary property.
London, 1774.
This Sammelband documents the battle over literary copyright in Britain
at the end of the eighteenth century, a battle which had repercussions
on American definition of copyright. The first title reports on the
case won by Andrew Millar against Robert Taylor for reprinting Thomson’s
Seasons without authorization.
The second relates to a case won by Alexander Donaldson with the help
of the young Boswell as junior counsel; this printing is the genuine
first edition, first issue, differing from Tinker 330 by the mention
of “shops” rather than “shop” in the imprint.
The third title has to do with the case of Donaldson v. Becket in
1774, which resulted in the 1709 copyright law being upheld.
The particularly rare fourth title relates to the attempts on the
part of major bookdealers to reimpose some form of perpetual copyright.
Petitions of the two points of view are printed, followed by “Observations”
of the bookdealers’ evidence, which is the work of Oliver Goldsmith.
This copy is annotated by William Fox, a member of the book trade
who was nonetheless opposed to perpetual copyright. The fifth title
is an unrecorded broadside opposing perpetual copyright, and the sixth
a contribution to the debate by the divine and teacher William Enfield.
- Sir William Jones. Scribal manuscript
of part of Ghulam Hussain Kahn’s Syar-ul-mutakherin,
ca. 1786.
This history of India from the death of Aurangzeb in 1701 to 1781,
in Persian, includes an interlinear autograph translation into English
by the great orientalist, the first English scholar to master Sanskrit,
and the translator of great works of oriental literature. In a letter
of 1786 to Sir Charles Boughton-Rouse,
Jones writes of “an excellent impartial modern history of India
. . . to the late Revolution at Benares, containing very just Remarks
on the Administration of Government and Justice of our Nation.”
- Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore. 31
letters to George Aust, 1768-1808.
The compiler of The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry writes
to his kinsman, a government official in London, with various enclosures
and related letters to and from each of them. The letters, entirely
unpublished, add a wealth of detail to Bishop Percy’s concerns—humanitarian,
antiquarian, political, and personal—in his comparatively undocumented
last years.
- Johann Gottfried Herder. Rede bei der
Taufe des durchlauchtigsten Erbprinzen Carl Friedrich. Weimar, 1783.
_____. Kantate bei dem Kirchgange
der regierenden Herzogin von Sachsen-Weimar und Eisenach . . . nach
der Geburt des Erbprinzen. Weimar, 1783.
Among the luminaries gathered in Weimar around Goethe and Duke Karl
August was the philosopher and historian Johann Gottfried Herder.
The first of these two publications is Herder’s sermon on the
occasion of the birth of Karl August’s first son, Karl Friedrich,
the second is a cantata text celebrating the child’s mother’s
first attendance at church after her confinement. Karl Friedrich succeeded
his father as grand duke of Sachsen-Weimar in 1828.
Unrecorded
New Haven broadside
The United States in Congress assembled. Friday, September 28,
1787. New Haven, 1787.
This previously unknown document is also the only known printing of
the official call to the Connecticut convention to ratify the Federal
Constitution. Signed by George Wyllys, Secretary, it conveys the news
of the drafting of the Constitution (in which the Connecticut delegate,
Roger Sherman, played a pivotal role) and invites the eligible citizens
of Connecticut to convene town meetings on 2 November to choose delegates
to the convention that will be held in Hartford on the first Thursday
in January 1788. No state printing of this call is recorded in the
standard bibliographical sources.
First Boston directory
The Boston directory. Containing, a list of the merchants, mechanics,
traders, and others, of the town of Boston; in order to enable strangers
to find the residence of any person. To which is added, publick offices,
where, and by whom kpt. Barristers and attorneys at law, and where
residing. Physicians, surgeons, and their places of abode. President,
directors, days and hours of business at the bank. Names and places
of abode of all the engine-men. Illustrated with a plan of the town
of Boston. Boston, 1789.
The first Boston directory, preceded by the Philadelphia directory
of 1785. It contains a folding plan of the town by Osgood Carleton,
engraved by Samuel Hill. Pages 51-55 list the names and streets of
residence of the members of the town’s eleven fire engines. Page
56 is devoted to “Omissions” and the next and final page
to “Errors and omissions.” At the end is a note indicating
that the author proposes to issue the directory annually. The next
edition was in fact published in 1796, with subsequent printings in
1798 and 1800.
- Adolph von Schaden. Katersprung von
Berlin über Leipzig nach Dresden. Dessau, 1821.
This little travelogue is a gossipy compendium of observations, essays,
politics, and humor, framed by the charming conceit that the author
rides from city to city on the back of a leaping cat. He is shown,
thus transported, in the frontispiece. Adolph von Schaden (1791-1840)
was born in Bavaria and wrote other travelogues.
- Wilhelm Hauff. Der Mann im Mond. Stuttgart,
1826.
Wilhelm Hauff (1802-27), whose promising career was cut short by an
early death, aspired to success in the world of high literature. But
like many young authors, he found his path blocked by an older writer
people actually wanted to read, Karl Heun (1771-1854). Under the pen
name “Clauren,” Heun had achieved popularity with a mixture
or sentimentality and lasciviousness despised by more fastidious writers.
Hauff attempted to expose him with this parody, The Man in the
Moon, or the Tendency of the Heart is the Voice of Fate, published
under Clauren’s name. Clauren sued the publisher, winning an
indemnity and the withdrawal of the book. But—as in many such
cases—he lost the war, for the episode made Hauff famous and
other writers imitated his tactic.
- Michael Beer. Struensee. Trauerspiel.
Stuttgart & Tübingen, 1829.
Michael Beer (1800-33), the scion of a wealthy Berlin Jewish family
and younger brother of the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, was a struggling
playwright whose one success was Struensee, a tragedy about a court
physician who, as the lover of the queen of Denmark, tried to promote
progressive policies but was balked by aristocratic interests and
beheaded in 1772. The play was dedicated to King Ludwig I of Bavaria,
who became Beer’s protector. Meyerbeer composed incidental music
for it.
Letters to Tocqueville
This collection includes 55 letters written to Tocqueville between
1832 and 1859 (the year of his death) by prominent American politicians,
historians, and friends. Correspondents include President John Quincy
Adams, Edward Everett (6 letters), Jared Sparks (4 letters), John
C. Spencer (4 letters), N.W. Beckwith (3 letters), William H. Prescott
(2 letters), George Bancroft (2 letters), Edward Childe (2 letters),
Charles Sumner (2 letters), George Sumner (2 letters), Isaiah Townsend
(3 letters), and Robert Walsh (4 letters), with a letter from Theodore
Sedgwick to Harper & Brothers, concerning L’ancien régime
et la Révolution, and their reply. In his letter dated
12 June 1837, the former United States President congratulated the
author of Democracy in America in the warmest terms and denies,
contrary to a claim made by Tocqueville in the first edition the book,
that he had fired civil servants appointed by his predecessors. Tocqueville
modified his text accordingly in the following edition.
This extraordinary group of letters, which sheds much light on the
relations between Tocqueville and his American contacts, is the most
important addition to Yale’s great Tocqueville collection since
the gift of George Wilson Pierson more than ten years ago.
Earliest known likeness of George Eliot
Caroline Bray. Sketch of George Eliot. [Coventry, mid-1842].
In November 1841, the twelve-year old Mary Ann Evans—the future
George Eliot—was taken to meet the writer and religious reformer
Charles Bray and his wife Caroline, née Hennel and known as
Cara. Cara and her sister Sara became close friends. When Mary Ann’s
father died in 1849, she went to live in the Bray household. As we
know from a letter she wrote to her sister in September 1842, Cara
Bray painted a watercolor drawing of her young friend, now in the
National Portrait Gallery. This pencil on paper drawing, previously
unknown, is quite different and, in all
likelihood, preceded it. The intelligence and directness of the gaze,
as well as the characteristic facial features, are unmistakable. As
an inscription shows, the drawing was given by Mrs. Bray in 1899 to
Warwick H. Draper, a relative, from whose family it recently reemerged.
Correspondence and writings by or relating
to Matthew Arnold
Letters to Frederick W. Whitridge
Two groups of materials relating to the family of Matthew Arnold add
to those already in the Tinker collection and further the Yale association
with the Arnold family. (Arnold Whitridge, grandson of the poet, was
first master of Calhoun College.) Among the items given by Arnold
Whitridge’s son, Frederick Whitridge, are a number of letters
between Matthew Arnold and members of the Arnold family, letters from
Cardinal Newman, Edward Bulwer Lytton, T. H. Huxley, and others as
well notes on Italian literature by Matthew Arnold (ca. 1833-87).
One endearing letter to Matthew Arnold from his father, Thomas Arnold,
headmaster of the Rugby School, includes encouraging words from father
to son about the tribulations of Greek Grammar lessons.
Also given were a group of letters addressed to Frederick W. Whit-ridge
from Theodore Roosevelt and a group of response letters to Frederick
W. Whitridge, concerning speaking engagements at Amherst College,
from Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russel Lowell, Samuel Clemens, William
Cullen Bryant, William Dean Howells, and others, 1859-1917.
Kipling’s first book
Rudyard Kipling. Schoolboy lyrics.
Lahore, 1881.
Kipling was a sixteen-year old student at the United Services Collegeat
Westward Ho!, Devon, when a collection of 23 of his poems was published
for private circulation by his parents, who were still living in India
(where Kipling himself was born in 1865). The 46-page brochure was
printed at the press of the Civil and Military Gazette, where Kipling
became assistant editor when he returned to India the following year.
All the poems but one were later collected in 1900 in the volume Early
Verse in the Outward Bound edition of his works. This copy, in the
original brown wrappers, has a particularly distinguished provenance,
having been in the collections of Jerome Kern and H. Bradley Martin.
Letters to Jules Massenet
When Massenet’s widow died in 1937, well into her nineties, a
substantial part of his archive and art collections was dispersed,
mostly at auction—the rest remaining with his grandson Pierre
Bessand-Massenet.
The group of letters just acquired by the Beinecke contains more than
130 letters to the composer. Correspondents include Victor Capoul,
Marthe Duvivier (the first Salomé in Hérodiade),
Léonce Escalaïs, Marie Heilbronn, the original Manon (4
letters [ca. 1884-85], one showing interest in a version of the opera
with recitatives replacing the original melodramas), Amalie Materna
(the first Brünnhilde at Bayreuth in August 1876), the fabled
baritone Victor Maurel, the first Iago, Falstaff, and Tonio (2 letters,
both 1896), Coquelin Aîné and Coquelin Cadet (8 letters,
a particularly interesting one concerning Werther in Vienna,
1892), conductor Édouard Colonne (8 letters, 1881-1902), fellow
composers Giovanni Bottesini (1883), Ernest Guiraud (6 letters, 1883-89,
one mentioning Debussy), Victor Massé (concerning Massenet’s
oratorio Marie-Magdeleine, undated), Max d’Ollone (1899),
Henri Reber (1877), and Camille Saint-Saëns (4 letters, 1885-1911),
writers Henri de Bornier, Maurice Bouchor (1890), François
Coppée (concerning a possible collaboration, undated), Francisque
Sarcey (4 letters, undated), and
Victorien Sardou (17 letters, undated, some concerning a projected
Circé), painters William Bouguereau (3 letters, 1888-1894)
and Ernest Hébert (undated, one of them concerning Xavier Leroux
[ca. 1885]).
The collection also contains a fair copy of a speech Massenet gave
for the inauguration of the monument to Ernest Reyer in Le Lavandou.
Some letters have annotations in the hand of the composer or his wife,
to whom a few letters are addressed.
Charlotte
Mew manuscripts
Called by Virginia Woolf “the greatest living poetess,”
Charlotte Mew was born in London in 1869 into a family of seven children.
Three of her brothers died when she was a child, and later two more
of her siblings were committed to mental institutions. This tragic
family background colored Mew’s inspiration when she started
writing. Her first story, “Passed,” appeared in The Yellow
Book in 1894. She came to prominence in 1912 with the narrative
poem “The farmer’s bride.” This became the title of
her verse collection, published by Harold Monro’s Poetry Bookshop
in 1916, earning her the admiration of the greatest writers of the
age. Following the death of her beloved sister Anne in 1927, Mew sank
into mental illness and committed suicide in 1928. The posthumous
collection The rambling sailor came out in 1929.
The collection acquired by the Beinecke was formed by Frederick B.
Adams, Yale 1920 and former director of the Pierpont Morgan Library.
It contains various poetic drafts, in manuscript and typescript, and
letters from Mew to Elkin Matthews and Kate and Sidney Cockerell,
among others.
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Ausgewaehlte
Gedichte. Berlin, 1903.
The first edition of Hofmannsthal’s first volume of poetry, published
by Stefan Georg’s Verlag der Blätter für die Kunst,
one of 300 copies on handmade paper. The cover illustration is by
the German artist Ludwig von Hofmann.
- L. Frank Baum. Oz toy book: Cut-outs
for the kiddies. Pictures by John R. Neill. Chicago, 1915.
Perhaps the rarest of all Oz books produced during L. Frank Baum’s
lifetime, this “toy book” is a set of colored illustrations
of familiar characters from the Oz book series. Mounted on thin card,
they were meant to be cut out and used by “kiddies” as playthings.
It goes without saying that it is nigh on impossible to find a book
like this in original condition. Though slightly bumped at its edges,
this copy appears to be one of the few intact ones known to survive.
Another reason for its legendary rarity is that the book, created
by the illustrator John R. Neill, was never approved by Baum, who
was reportedly astounded when the book appeared in the 1915 Reilly
& Britton catalog.
- Paul Zech. Der schwarze Baal.
Leipzig, 1917.
- _____. Das Grab der Welt. Eine
Passion wider den Krieg auf Erden. Hamburg & Berlin, 1919.
- _____. Der Turm. Sieben Stufen zu
einem Drama. Leipzig, 1924.
Paul Zech (1881-1946) wrote in many genres, but is best remembered
as a poet of the Expressionist generation. In 1933 he emigrated to
South America, where he died.
Der schwarze Baal is a collection of novellas set in the coal
mining region of Germany. Zech saw active service in World War I,
an experience that led to the diary-like antiwar observations and
outbursts in Das Grab der Welt
(“The grave of the world. A passion against war on earth”),
first published shortly after the end of the war. In the 1920s, Zech’s
meager means of support came from work associated with the theater.
Der Turm, seven dramatic scenes on religious themes, comes
from that period. These books were among some 200 volumes of twentieth-century
literature in German recently purchased from the library of the Swiss
restaurant critic and cookbook author Silvio Rizzi.
Gilbert
Cannan papers
Born in Manchester in 1884, Gilbert Cannan
studied at King’s College, Cambridge and abandoned a planned
law career for literature. His first publication was a translation
of Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe, which took him four
years to complete. Hired by J.M. Barrie and his wife as secretary,
he soon started an affair with Mary Barrie, which led to the Barries’
much publicized divorce trial. His first novel, Peter Homonculus
(1909), was largely autobiographical. Two plays, Miles Dixon and
James and John, brought him success in 1910-11, as did his
second novel Devious ways. His next two works, Little brother
and Round the corner, were attempts to deal with his difficult
childhood and family background. A pacifist during the war, he published
in 1916 Mendel, a story of youth, a roman à clef based
on the Jewish English painter Mark Gertler and his friendships with
Carrington and Dorothy Brett. By the end of the war, Cannan was separated
from his wife and his mental health deteriorated, though he continued
to publish through 1923. Following a major breakdown, he was interned
in 1924 and never recovered his sanity. He died in 1955.
The papers just acquired by the Beinecke are all that remains of his
literary archive (he destroyed many of his personal papers in 1923):
manuscripts and drafts of novels (including Mendel), short
stories, essays, plays, verse, and articles, much of it unpublished.
Benjamin Fondane Papers
The avant-garde Rumanian poet Benjamin Fondane was born Benjamin Wechsler
in 1898 (Fundoianu was his original nom de plume) and grew up in Bucharest.
In 1924, he settled in Paris, where he got married, and from then
on (like other Rumanian writers of his generation) adopted French
as his language. In 1944, he was arrested by the French police together
with his sister. Efforts to have him freed were about to succeed,
but he refused to be separated from her and they both died at Auschwitz.
This is the Rumanian part of his archive, containing about 650 poems
in Rumanian, drafts of prose works and articles, and theatrical sketches,
reading notes, poetical translations (Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Shakespeare,
Baudelaire, Verlaine...), the manuscript of his first book, Tagaduinta
lui Petra (The denial of Peter), published in 1918 in an edition
of 42 copies, school diplomas, and family correspondence covering
three decades. Fondane’s address book, dating from about 1931,
is a veritable Who’s Who of the Parisian avant-garde. With the
archive also came 19 of the 23 published issues of the Zionist periodical
Hatikvah, published in Galatzi in Eastern Rumania in 1915-16,
and to which the precocious, talented Fondane contributed regularly.
Letters and manuscripts from the archive
of
Christian Melchior-Bonnet, 1922-81
This collection of manuscripts from the recently dispersed papers
of the journalist, editor, and writer (1902-95) includes letters from
Marcel Achard (11 letters, 1957-61), Juliette Adam, Francis Ambrière
Philippe Ariès, Gérard Bauër, André Billy,
Binet-Valmer, Eugène Brieux, Pierre Champion, Francis de Croisset,
Francis de Curel, Lise Deharme, Maurice Donnay, Roland Dorgelès,
René Doumic, Marie-Jeanne Durry, Franc-Nohain, Jean Giono,
Gyp, Émile Henriot, Charles
Le Goffic, H.-R. Lenormand, Maurice Martin du Gard, Henri Mondor,
Paul Morand (more than 200 letters, 1923-76), François Porché,
Jules Romains, André Roussin, Jean Schlumberger, Philippe Soupault,
and Jules Supervielle.
The collection also includes manuscripts by Henry de Montherlant (one
concerning the unique performance of his play Pasiphaë
in 1938, one entitled “Pourquoi j’ai écrit ‘Mors
et Vita’”), the manuscripts of the revised version of Morand’s
Le voyage, published in 1964, with a dedication to Melchior-Bonnet,
an undated film scenario entitled “La jeune fille aux pivoines
(A Chinese ghost story)... d’après le Folk-lore chinois
du R.P. Léon Wieger,” and his article “Les grands
tournants de l’histoire” [1969].
There is as well a typescript compiled by Morand at the time of his
controversial and unsuccessful attempt to join the French Academy
in 1958 and on his literary and administrative activities between
1940 and 1944. The collection also contains a letter from the celebrated
critic Fernand Brunetière (1893) and a holograph page from
the manuscript of Victor Duruy’s Histoire des Romains.
Bettina
Bergery Papers
Bettina Bergery, originally from Staten
Island, found herself in the middle of the Parisian intellectual and
cultural haut-monde in the 1920s when working with Elsa Schiaparelli.
She married the politician Gaston Bergery in the 1934, with whom she
travelled to important foreign posts as Gaston was made ambassador
for the Vichy government, first to Moscow, then to Ankara. The years
following the war found the couple travelling in the world of kindred
spirits: the von Papens, Jose Sert, the Midvanis, and the Duke and
Duchess of Windsor.
Throughout her life, Bettina kept diaries in which she recorded goings
on in the world of politics, fashion, and literature. Among her other
friends were Caresse Crosby, Salvador Dali, Edward
James, Angelo Roncalli (Pope John XXIII),
Natalie Barney, Marie-Laure de Noailles, and Martha Gellhorn. Along
with her voluminous diaries (spanning the 1940s through the 1970s),
the papers came with several hundred books, many of which were annotated
by Bettina Bergery.
- Wallace Stegner. Mormon Country.
New York: Sloan and Pearce, 1942.
_____. The Preacher and the Slave. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1947.
_____. The City of the Living. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956.
_____. Wolf Willow. New York: Viking, 1962.
_____, The Sound of Mountain Water. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,1969.
First editions of Stegner titles, including
a novel, book of stories, and collection of essays. One of the most
influential American prose writers, Stegner was awarded a Pulitzer
Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle during
the course of his career.
- Gerhard Rühm. Kleine Billardschule.
Berlin, 1968.
_____. Farbengedicht. Berlin, 1968.
_____. DA. Eine Buchstabengeschichte für Kinder. Frankfurt
am Main, 1970.
Born in Austria and now resident in Germany, Gerhard Rühm trained
as a musician and composer, but his creativity has veered toward the
border areas between music and literature, literature and art. Kleine
Billardschule of 1968, which might seem from its paper wrapper
to be a book of somewhat earlier vintage, appears to be a kind of
concrete poem about billiards. Farbengedicht of the same year,
with a much more modern look, combines color swatches with repeated
words and a lot of variously deployed white space. DA, subtitled
a letter-story for children, recounts the adventures of the letters
DA (“there” in German), who don’t like standing apart
on the page and finally succeed in merging via reverse white-on-black
typography. From the library of Silvio Rizzi.
- Robert Lowell. 4. Cambridge:
Laurence Scott, 1969.
Original, hand-tied marbled wraps; four broadsides accompany the book.
The frontispiece and broadsides are all signed by the illustrator/designer/printer,
Laurence Scott. The total edition of the book was limited to 100 numbered
copies and twenty-six hors commerce lettered copies. This is copy
R. Signed on the colophon by Robert Lowell.
- Raymond Carver. Furious Seasons and
Other Stories. Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1977. First edition;
one of 100 numbered, hardbound copies signed by the author.
_____. Intimacy. Concord: Ewert, 1987. An edition of 75 copies
numbered and signed by Carver.
- William S. Burroughs. Mummies,
with etchings by Carl Apfelschnitt. Düsseldorf & New York:
Gunnar A. Kaldewey, 1982.
One of five copies, in an edition of 75, printed in gold on black
Japanese paper; five etchings by Karl Apfelschnitt are printed in
red. Bound by C. Zwang in flexible pink calf with the gilt ornament
of the press on the upper board and housed in a grey cardstock clamshell
box. Inscribed by Burroughs.
- Sarah Plimpton. Steps to Answer.
New York: Grenfell Press, 2000.
One of twenty copies. Written, designed, and illustrated with original
woodcuts by Sarah Plimpton. Signed by the author.
|
