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SELECTED RECENT ACQUISITIONS
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.
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 the author of several successful plays, including 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, whose minister of the interior, Eduard von Schenk, was Beer’s friend and supporter, and later edited his collected works. Meyerbeer composed incidental music for Struensee.
Letters to Tocqueville
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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.
Whitridge 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
College at 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.
April
- Josephus. Jewish Antiquities . Murbach Abbey, ca. 800.
A single leaf on vellum, recovered from a book binding, of a pre-Caroline manuscript of the Latin translation of Josephus' work. Originally composed in Greek, Josephus was translated into Latin in the sixth century under the direction of Cassiodorus, and provided the medieval West with most of its historiographical knowledge of Jewish history. This leaf is written in the distinctive script of the Alsatian abbey of Murbach and is the earliest surviving witness to the portions of the text that it preserves. The manuscript from which the leaf derives is listed in the ninth-century catalog of the Murbach library, and like many manuscripts from Murbach, was dismembered by bookbinders in nearby Strassburg in the sixteenth century.
- Marco Fabio Calvi. Antiquae urbis romae cum regionibus simulachrum . Rome, 1532.
A suite of woodcuts constituting the earliest attempt to represent pictorially the various stages in the development of classical Rome. The plates show the early walls of Rome, important monuments, and outstanding topographical features of the city. The engraved calligraphy is the work of Arrighi.
- Theodorus Bibliander. A Godly Consultation unto the Brethren and Companyons of the Christen Religion, Antwerp: Matthias Crom, 1542.
The first and only edition of the first extensive account in English of Islam. Principally inspired by concern about the Turkish advances in Eastern Europe, Bibliander was among the leading Protestant scholars and opponents of Islam. So great was the European fear of the Turks that any works about the Muslims, even treatises like this one that are critical of Mohammed and of Islam, fell under suspicion, and the printer and place of printing of this book are disguised on the title page (which claims the book was printed in Basel by “Radulphe Bonifante”). The English translator is likewise not named and has never been identified. This copy is from the Bute library.
- Georgette de Montenay. Emblemes ou devises Chrestiennes . Lyon, 1571.
First edition of the first emblem book written by a woman as well as the first emblem book by a Protestant. The volume includes one hundred engravings by Pierre Woeiriot, with Georgette's verses printed beneath each engraving. This copy includes the author's portrait and shows the engravings in an exceptionally crisp state.
- Livio Sanuto. Geografia . Venice, 1588.
An important geographical compilation on the continent of Africa, Sanuto's work also constitutes the first printed atlas of Africa. Its twelve full-sheet maps depict sections of the coastline, the final map showing the entire continent. Cities, mountains, rivers, and lakes are delineated, and the text supplies considerable ethnographic information on the inhabitants of the different regions and their various customs.
- António Enriquez Gomez. Sanson Nazareno. Poema heroico . Rouen, 1656.
The author of this epic poem based on the Biblical story of Samson was born in Segovia in 1600 in a Portuguese Jewish family. Having enlisted in the army and risen to the grade of captain, he was forced to leave Spain in 1636 for religious reasons and sought refuge in Bordeaux, then Rouen and Paris, where he was appointed secretary to King Louis XIII. His career as a poet, a novelist, and a playwright took place in France. His work includes twelve comedies in the style of Calderon, the satirical poem El siglo pitagórico , and the picaresque novel La visa de don Gregorio Guadaña. Sanson Naza-reno, influenced by Gongora, was one of his last works. The book is illustrated with copperplates by Dacquet.
Funeral in Ferrara
- Francesco Berni. L'esequie trionfali del marchese Guido Villa... celebrate nel tempio di San Francesco in Ferrara il dì 22 febraro 1649 . Ferrara, 1656. Bound with Il colosso guerriero inalzato fra le Pompe de' funerali all immortalita fama dell'illustrissimo et eccellentissimo Sig. Marchese Guido Villa... spiegato in Aste nella chiesa di S. Francesco . Turin, 1657.
This impressive volume depicts in considerable detail the grandiose funeral pomp honoring Guido Villa, a military commander who served against the Spaniards, eventually becoming the ambassador of the Court of Savoy to England, then France, and superintendent of the French armies in Italy. He died of a cannon shot at the siege of Cremona in 1648. Francesco Berni devised a spectacular baroque celebration in the church of San Francesco, which became famous as one of the richest and most complex ever organized, combining architecture, sculpture, music, and scenography.
The present volume is illustrated with a gigantic folding plate as well as a frontispiece and five additional folding plates. The companion title commemorates Villa's funeral oration delivered in Asti (where the son of Guido Villa was governor) by a Barnabite friar. This printing is unknown to all bibliographies.
- Missal . Ethiopia, 1729.
A complete illustrated manuscript in Ge‘ez of the Ethiopic missal. The present manuscript is dated in an original colophon, and thus is among the very few dated examples of Ethiopic manuscript decoration. It also contains musical notation, the only example of Ethiopic music in the Beinecke collection. The manuscript is preserved in its original binding and with a leather carrying bag.
- Thomas Gray. His copy of T he Secret History of Persia . . . translated from the French Original, with a Key, and some explanatory notes . London, 1745.
In the index, the poet Thomas Gray has meticulously identified the characters and places in his neat and minute autograph—a considerable labor, suggesting that he read and re-read the text carefully. Perhaps he prepared it to lend to friends—Horace Walpole, for instance, immensely enjoyed just this sort of curiosa and seems not to have possessed a copy of his own.
- Richard Tickell. A sprightly letter from this dramatist and wit to a close friend, Edward Tighe of Dublin. Tickell (1751-93) refers to “the inestimably sublime Samuel Johnson” and discusses the succession of Forster as Headmaster of Eton, lauding the event in a short Latin address, relating that Forster “flogs well, walks well, may think well, but cannot act well yet .”
Guy Johnson Papers
Colonel Guy Johnson succeeded his father-in-law, Sir William Johnson, in 1774 as Superintendent of Indian Affairs in New York, inheriting his large estate near Fort Johnson on the Mohawk. He sided with the Crown during the War of Independence and refused an offer of immunity by Congress, thereby forfeiting his properties, for which he received only a mediocre settlement. The collection of his papers recently acquired by the Beinecke, and complementing the Johnson Papers received as part of the bequest of Paul Mellon, comprises 150 documents, including a copy of the will of Sir William Johnson, documents relating to the Johnson estate, correspondence both from and to Johnson (relating, in particular, to Indian movements), contemporary accounts of Indian affairs, and additional documents, ca. 1774-1837.
- Edmund Burke. Autograph letter, signed, to an unnamed correspondent, April 1787.
The letter is about the proceedings against his arch bête noire, Warren Hastings: Burke expresses his vehement feelings about Hastings . . . “that nefarious Villain has made a war of corruption & oppression on the Landed interest of Bengal for twelve years . . . .” Hastings was indicted in May 1787 shortly after this letter was written, and the case for impeachment opened in February 1788. In 1794 Burke delivered a nine-days' speech for the impeachment in reply to the defense; Hastings was acquitted the following year.
- Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, et. al. Die Versuche und Hindernisse Karls. Eine deutsche Geschichte aus neuerer Zeit . Berlin & Leipzig, 1808.
The first edition of one of the curiosities of German literature, a novel written by a committee of Romantic writers living near Berlin, one author continuing where the last left off. The publisher (Realschulbuchhandlung), not caring much for the result, did not put the firm's name of the title page and issued only a very small edition, with the result that this is one of the rarest German literary books of the period.
- Hugh Peter Browne, 2nd Marquis of Sligo. Letters from the Levant, August-December 1810.
The young Marquis of Sligo, a Cambridge contemporary of Lord Byron, describes in nineteen letters to his mother plus seven to friends his travels in Greece and Asia Minor, including his elaborate entertainment by Veli Pasha, his experiences travelling with Lord Byron and meeting Lady Hester Stanhope, and his shipment of “vases and other treasures” home to Ireland from digs in Greece.
- Sophie von Knorring. Julie Saint Albain (Dresden, 1801); Dramatische Fantasieen (Berlin, 1804); Evremont (Breslau, 1836).
Sophie von Knorring, who is often cited as Sophie Bernhardi after her first husband, was the sister of Ludwig Tieck and one of the most gifted women writers of the early Romantic period in Germany. Julie Saint Albain , an epistolary novel, is her first publication. The second book is a collection of three dramas on fairy-tale themes, while the third, an ambitious historical novel, was published posthumously by her brother.
Travel Diary
The diary of two Continental tours, ca. 1821-36, by Mrs. E. A. Kenah, wife of a military officer. Mrs. Kenah has taken great care to record their travels and to capture images of them. The drawings are almost always captioned and often relate to pertinent examples in the text. At the end are additional attractive watercolors, presumably done after her return to England.
Italian Costume Book
- Costumi e descrizione delle processioni conosciute in Genova sotto il nome di Casacce ricavati da quella di San Giacomo il Maggiore delle Focine . Genova, 1828.
This handsome oblong plate book, gorgeously illustrated with twelve full-page color plates, documents one of the most ancient, original, and solemn religious processions held in the city of Genova, known as the “Casaccia,” originally on Maundy Thursday, then on 3 May for the feast of the Invention of the Cross. The plates are the work of the very young artist Giovanni Fontana, on designs by the even younger Francesco Baratta. The book is unrecorded in any bibliography.
- Jacques Offenbach. Le désert . Autograph manuscript, ca. 1846.
This early cantata for four-part chorus and orchestra is a parody of Félicien David's hugely popular “ode-symphonie” of the same title, a work inspired by David's committed involvement in the Saint- Simonian utopian movement. Offenbach's version dates from the composer twenty-eighth year, the year of his visit to London, marriage, and conversion to Roman Catholicism. It takes a characteristically light-hearted approach to the topic, in which Allah rhymes with “Oh là là,” the dearth of fromage is equated with lack of civilization, and the desert weather deemed decidedly “embêtant.” The work was performed at the salon of the Comtesse de Vaux in 1846 but remains unpublished.
Masonic pamphlets
Nearly 500 pamphlets concerning the Masonic movement throughout the United States. Acquired jointly by the General Collection and the Western Americana Collection, the pamphlets include obscure, early imprints from all parts of the country and greatly extend Beinecke's coverage of American printing and social history.
- J. Willis Menard. Lays in Summer Lands . Washington: Enterprise Publishing Company, 1879.
The first and only edition of poetry written by J. Willis Menard, the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress, in 1868. Menard's white opponent appealed the vote and was awarded the congressional seat in spite of Menard's clear victory in the polls. When he spoke before Congress in defense of his election, Menard became the first African American to address the U.S. Congress.
- W. J. Van Patten. A typescript account of his Western overland trip, 28 April-18 June 1887.
Van Patten, Attorney General of Vermont, provides an articulate and interesting account of his trip west to San Francisco and return through Yellowstone, offering detailed comments on Mormon communities in Utah, with observations on polygamy, on San Francisco and its Chinese inhabitants, and on Yellowstone National Park. He travels by steamer, train, six-horse coach, and horseback—and occasionally on foot. He says much about roads and the lack thereof and devotes numerous pages to describing Yellowstone Park and the surrounding region. Although typed, the account appears to be unique; no other copies are located in any of the major bibliographic databases nor in the Vermont Historical Society's on-line catalog.
- Thomas Hardy. The Spectre of the Real . Typescript with autograph corrections, 1893.
The short story The Spectre of the Real was Hardy's only genuinely collaborative work. It was written in October 1893 and first appeared in November 1894 in the winter number of To-Day . Hardy's collaborator was Florence Henniker, daughter of Richard Monckton Milnes, first Lord Houghton, and one of the models for Sue Bridehead in Jude the Obscure . Florence Henniker included The Spectre of the Real in her volume In Scarlet and Grey in 1896, the year following the publication of Jude the Obscure , which met with much hostility. The story was found “gruesome” and “repulsive” and Mrs. Henniker chastised for her tasteless choice of a collaborator.
The manuscript of the story having been destroyed by common understanding between the authors, the present material is all that survives to document the extent of Hardy's role in the composition: a typescript with copious autograph corrections by him; a carbon typescript, also considerably annotated; and a set of corrected galleys from To-Day . These items came from the Hardy collection of Frederick B. Adams, Jr., one of the two great gatherings of Hardy material, which came up for auction at Sotheby's, London, in November 2001. The other great Hardy collection, now preserved in the Beinecke, is, of course, that of Richard Little Purdy, Yale 1925.
Decorated & Pictorial Bindings
The collection of Leonard & Lisa Baskin
The 868 largely American and English books that make up this collection document the era of publishers' decorated bindings. Bookcloth was introduced in the late 1820s and quickly became the dominant covering material for books in England and the United States. Ornamented at first to blend quietly into parlor decoration, after the mid-century their possibilities as point-of-purchase marketing tools were seen. Cloth covers became the focal point of the books. It was worthwhile for publishers to employ highly skilled bookbinders, engravers, and artists to create appealing designs. In the 1890s a number of gifted women artists entered the field, including Margaret Armstrong, whose work is richly represented in the collection. This artistic opportunity came to an end with the emergence of the printed book jacket in 1910, leaving behind an extraordinary burst of imaginative, beautiful, and provocative work.
Some 200 volumes from the collection will be shown at the Beinecke this summer in the exhibition "Gleaming Gold, Shining Silver," (26 July-12 October) curated by Sue Allen.
- John Francis Lee. The Prince in Ebony (No place: Privately printed, 1907), the author's second book.
- Umberto Giordano. Mese Mariano . Autograph manuscript, ca. 1910.
Giordano's career as a composer began with a one-act opera, the still unpublished Marina , submitted to the 1889 Sonzogno contest, which was won by Cavalleria Rusticana . Two decades later, long after the triumphs of Andrea Chénier (1896) and Fedora (1898), he returned to the one-act form with this Verismo tragedy based on the play by Salvatore di Giacomo. The action is set in Naples, at the Albergo dei Poveri, and revolves around the death of a child born out of wedlock and the plight of his mother—a story more than slightly reminiscent of the one Puccini treated in Suor Angelica a few years later. The premiere took place in Palermo on 17 March 1910. It was not a success but the opera was admired by connoisseurs (Mascagni for one). It has recently been recorded.
This preliminary draft in pencil, abundantly corrected, was until her death in 1985 in the possession of Giordano's widow, Olga Spatz.
Gottfried Benn
The German Literature Collection recently acquired a collection of almost all the published works of the poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956), comprising over forty first editions. Benn was trained in medicine, and his earliest poems, published during the First World War, reflect his experiences as a doctor. He served as a medical officer in both wars and afterwards returned to private practice in East Berlin. After 1948, linguistic experimentation began to play a prominent role in his work, and on this basis he achieved international recognition.
- Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway . London, 1925.
This first edition of Virginia Woolf's most celebrated novel, published by the Hogarth Press, with a pictorial dust-jacket by Vanessa Bell, comes from the collection of Frederick B. Adams, which was dispersed at Sotheby's, London, in November 2001.
The Robert Graves Collection of William S. Reese
“I settled on Graves as an author to collect almost by chance,” writes William S. Reese in the introduction to the centennial Robert Graves exhibition he presented in 1995 at the Grolier Club, New York. He began the collection in 1982 after reading Good-bye To All That , Graves's memoir of the First World War and its aftermath.
The collection includes several hundred Graves letters, all “A” items in his extensive bibliography, many of which are presentation copies (notably to Siegfried Sassoon), as well as important poetic manuscripts.
Miguel Torga Collection
One of the most important Portuguese writers of the twentieth century was Adolfo Rocha, in real life a doctor, who published under the pseudonym of Miguel Torga. Born in 1907 in Tras-o- Montes, he was sentfont>The collection now in the Beinecke Library contains Rampa (Coimbra, 1930), the first and only edition of his second (and rarest) book, and copies of Pao azimo (1931), Terceira voz (1934), Outro livro de Job (1936), Criaçao do mundo (1937), and Diario (1941-64), all inscribed by Torga to his friend Alvaro Tavira.
- James Merrill. Jim's Book: A Collection of Poems and Short Stories . New York: Privately printed, 1942.
A fair copy of the poet's first book, printed by his father as a surprise when Merrill was just sixteen. Fewer than 200 copies of this scarce volume were issued. With a collection of Merrill materials including assorted books, manuscripts, typescripts, correspondence, and photographs from this Pulitzer Prize winning poet.
Italian Architecture & Design, 1900-1970
The now widely recognized supremacy of Italy in the field of design, as well as its numerous architectural achievements in the modern period, are intimately linked with the impact of Futurism on literature and the arts, so splendidly documented in the Beinecke's Marinetti collection. This flourishing was by no means interrupted or even comprised in the Fascist period, as it is a well-known fact that Fascism, instead of condemning modernism as Nazi Germany did, embraced it and sought to fashion it into an instrument of propaganda.
Nearly seven decades of Italian architecture, urban planning, and design are represented in this collection of 220 books, catalogues, pamphlets, periodicals, photographs, and original material, including works by Vinicio Paladini and Gio Ponti.
- Ludwig Bemelmans. Madeline and the Bad Hat . Original dummy with pencil illustrations.
Born in Meran, in Austrian Tyrol (now Merano, Italy), Ludwig Bemelmans grew up in Regensburg, Germany, and emigrated to America in 1914, enlisting in the U.S. army in 1917 to fight against his home country. He was both a successful decorator and a “serious” painter, but he achieved fame through his children's books, especially the Madeline series.
The first one, entitled simply Madeline , came out in 1939 and won a Caldecott Honors Award. The sequel, Madeline's Rescue , was published only in 1953 and was awarded the Caldecott Medal the following year. The third book, Madeline and the Bad Hat , was published in December 1956 in a limited edition and in March 1957 in a trade edition. Then came Madeline and the Gypsies in 1958 and Madeline in London in 1961. Bemelmans died the following year.
The dummy acquired by the Beinecke is a complete early draft for the book (possibly the very first draft), with the illustrations drawn in pencil on onion-skin rag paper, accompanied by a typescript text, as well as two watercolor drawings representing Pepito.
- Pierre Lecuire. Portrait et autoportrait . Paris, 1988.
The twenty photographic portraits by Jean-François Bauret show the artist of the book and several of his friends: painters Asse, Lanskoy and Serge Charchoune, sculptor Étienne Hajdu, musician Pierre Boulez, his printers Fequet and Baudier... The photographs span the years 1955-87 and are preceded by a written self-portrait. Lecuire, who just turned eighty, was the subject of a large retrospective of his work at the Bibliothèque nationale in the fall of 2001.
This copy was enriched by him with two additional Bauret photographs. He has also supplied a calligraphed manuscript especially written for the Beinecke Library: entitled “En miroir,” it comments on each of the photographs of the series.
- Leslie Marmon Silko. An extensive archive of Gardens in the Dunes , the author's eighth book, including first draft, corrected typescripts, revised drafts, and advance uncorrected proofs. The novel was published by Simon & Schuster in 1999.
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