Tag Archives: Rare Books

RESCHEDULED – ARB’s "50 Minutes" Lunchtime Series Returns for the 2014-2015 Academic Year

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By:  Kevin Grace

This presentation has been rescheduled for TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25.  The series of monthly talks in the Archives & Rare Books Library will return this fall  for its fifth year.  Each month at noon, ARB holds a casual presentation in 814 Blegen Library with a focus on its collections, local heritage, or book history.  In the past, we’ve hosted talks ranging from the Depression-era Cincinnati WPA guide to the smallest book in the world, from Frankenstein to a book bound in human skin, from William Blake to John Milton; and from Don Quixote to the Arabian Nights.  Our presentation originally scheduled for Wednesday, August 27 has been rescheduled for Tuesday November 25.  This presentation will be about rare books and coffee, looking at how coffee production, trade, heritage, and lore have been portrayed by ethnographers, historians, and explorers.

Please join us for this 50 Minutes-One Book talk.  Bring your lunch and your conversation, and of course, coffee will be served!  Other upcoming presentations include the first female graduate of UC back in 1878; Irish poetry during the Great War, the Easter Rising, and the Irish Civil War; UC during World War II; the Hellfire clubs of the 18th century; and fairy tale and fantasy illustrators.  We are also open to any ideas or presenters for these talks.

50 Minutes November

 

“Bitter Bierce”?

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By:  Michael Tipton, Archives & Rare Books Library intern

 Ambrose Bierce headshot     Shortly after the conclusion of World War II in 1945, a Mr. Myles Walsh of Oradell, New Jersey traveled to Cincinnati for the purpose of visiting his daughter, who at the time worked in the city.  While on an extended stay, Mr. Walsh decided to take some coursework in the Classics Department at the University of Cincinnati.  So impressed was Mr. Walsh with the courses and the campus of the university that he decided to donate to UC some very rare and unique letters personally written and addressed to him from noted American author and journalist Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?).

Though they were consulted once or twice by scholars over the past half-century, the fifty-nine donated letters have never been generally accessible for research and teaching.  In 2011, the letters were digitized and now, with the development of a Bierce presence on ARB’s website, they have assumed their rightful place on the internet for all to study and enjoy. Continue reading →

Poetry Month and ARB-Dublin's Easter Rising

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By: Kevin Grace

A Voice of Insurgency     Ninety-eight years ago in 1916, the Irish Republican Brotherhood staged an uprising during Easter Week, the intent being to reclaim Ireland from the British and establish a republic.  Though the rebellion failed, as so many others had in the previous two centuries, the rising galvanized the Irish people in a way that would ultimately lead to the country’s independence following a bloody civil war.  The Easter Rising and the years following it are complicated ones in sorting out the loyalties and issues, though there has been no shortage of histories and autobiographies and polemics.

In the Rare Books Collection, there is another view of the rising: a poetry chapbook by Maeve Cavanagh.  Entitled A Voice of Insurgency, Cavanugh’s collection of verse documents the six days of the rebellion from Monday, April 24 through Saturday,April 29 and the men and women who were in the forefront of it as gunshots and cannon fire reverberated around Dublin.  Cavanagh was a dedicated supporter of the republican movement, and friends with many of the leaders of the insurgency.  Her poems capture the fear and exhilaration of that Easter week. Continue reading →

Poetry Month and ARB-Phillis Wheatley's Poetry

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By:  Kevin Grace

anthropodermic binding     Last week we had the pleasure of hosting an English Department lecture by visiting University of Texas professor John Rumrich on John Milton’s poetry, who spoke on the sometimes very literal connection between a physical book and an author.  In the case of Milton, Professor Rumrich related the poet’s work to the curious custom that developed in the 18th century of binding books in human skin.  And, in preparation for his remarks, Rumrich examined the Archives & Rare Books Library’s anthropodermic binding.

An odd volume in our holdings for over half a century, this binding encloses the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, an 18th century African American poet.  Though there is no indication at all that the binding has a connection to the poet in any way, and really is an altogether other topic for discussion, it did call our attention to the Wheatley body of work, appropriate enough for a month devoted to poetry. Continue reading →

On John Milton and "Reading Blood"

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By:  Kevin Grace

On the south parapet of Blegen Library are carved these words from John Milton’s Areopagitica written in 1644:

For books are not absolutely dead things

But do contain a potencie of life in them

To be as active as those whose progeny they are.

John MiltonMilton (1608-1674) is one of the greatest poets and essayists in the English language.  The quote, which is part of his work condemning censorship and pleading for free speech, is part of the architectural design in the library, which opened as the University of Cincinnati’s Main Library in 1930.  Intended to inspire students and scholars, they are words meant both to establish the primacy of books and the written word in human culture and to draw the reader within the building to explore, to learn, to consider, and to share knowledge.

The Department of English and Comparative Literature sends this information for a lecture this Friday at 1:00 pm in 814 Blegen, the Schott Seminar Room in the Archives & Rare Books Library: Continue reading →

National Poetry Month and ARB

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By:  Kevin Grace

Poem Illustration of TrumpeterBecause April is celebrated as National Poetry Month, over the next few weeks the Archives & Rare Books Library will blog about some of its significant holdings in the Rare Books Collection.  Perhaps the best subject with which to begin is ARB’s outstanding collection of 18th century poetical pamphlets.  Eighteenth-century literature is one of the hallmarks of the rare books holdings, encompassing drama, poetry, fiction, philosophy, theology, travel, history, and geography.  And the core of this area is what we have traditionally called the Anonymous Poetical Pamphlet Collection.

Poem Illustration Continue reading →

Culture of Books and Reading Students Deposit A Ghost Story in the Archives

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By:  Kevin Grace

Recently returned from a study tour to Edinburgh, Scotland over spring break, the students in the University Honors Program seminar “The Culture of Books and Reading” added one of their assignments to the ARB website – a story entitled “The Sin-Eaters Ghost.”  A group project written by each student contributing a page, the story is just one of the assignments for this course in which the traditional and emerging reading habits and the heritage of books are explored in cultures around the world.

Edinburgh Skyline

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ARB's Final Lunchtime Lecture for 2013-2014

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By:  Kevin Grace

McCay Little NemoThe Archives & Rare Books Library will hold its final “50 Minutes-1 Book” presentation of the academic year on Thursday, April 17, at 12 noon in 814 Blegen Library.  Greg Hand, associate vice president for Government Relations and University Communications, will talk about Winsor McCay, a recognized pioneer of American comic strips.   McCay’s genius as an artist, cartoonist and animator has been hailed by Maurice Sendak and celebrated by a “Google Doodle.” His “Little Nemo In Slumberland” is recognized as the pinnacle of comic strip art and his “Gertie The Dinosaur” was unsurpassed until the Golden Age of Walt Disney and Chuck Jones. It is little known that McCay spent 13 years in Cincinnati. Continue reading →

A Heart-Shaped Book for Lovers

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By Mark Palkovic, CCM Library

In honor of St. Valentine’s Day this Friday, the CCM Library and the Archives and Rare Books Library present an item from the Rare Books Collection, Le Chansonnier Cordiforme, or Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu. The original manuscript dates from the 1470s and is owned by the Bibliothèque de France (Ms. Occ. Rothschild 2973). The UC Libraries’ copy is a facsimile of the original, bound in red velvet and created by Vicent García Editores of Valencia, Spain in 2007.

Open book

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