Books at Iowa 46 (April 1987)
Pages 3-7
https://doi.org/10.17077/0006-7474.1134
The Indicator
This number marks the appearance of a new column, named for a popular printer's mark shown above. Leigh Hunt used the indicator mark, also called a fist, hand director, or index to sign his column in the Examiner and later chose the Indicator as the title for his new journal that ran from October 1819 through March 1821. In its epigraph, Hunt explained that the African indicator bird, when looking for honey, would issue "a cheerful cry'' to indicate sweets to its followers. The editors hope that this column will serve a similar purpose. The Indicator will be used to direct special attention to various topics, including forthcoming programs and speakers, exhibitions, and news of selected acquisitions.
The twenty-third annual spring dinner of the Friends will be held at the Highlander Inn and Supper Club on Friday evening, April 10, 1987. The speaker will be Don E. Fehrenbacher, William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies Emeritus, Stanford University. Professor Fehrenbacher is no stranger to Iowa. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell College in 1946 and was an assistant professor at Coe College from 1949 to 1953. The author of many books and the recipient of numerous awards, Professor Fehrenbacher is perhaps most famous for his book The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1979.
James Norman Hall, the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitu tion, and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám will be the subjects of exhibitions in the Special Collections Department in 1987. This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Iowa author James Norman Hall (1887-1951), a native of Colfax who is most famous for Mutiny on the Bounty. Books and manuscripts by Hall will be on view. To celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution, books in the department that touch on the laws and principles of the United States will be presented to the public. Finally, late in 1987 editions of the Rubáiyát by the Persian scientist and poet will be on exhibit.
During the fall of 1986, The University of Iowa Libraries received a variety of gifts, ranging from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries, which significantly enhance its resources for the study of early printing, English and American literature, and Iowa authors.
Charlotte Smith has given a handsome copy of Werner Rolewinck's Fasciculus Temporum (1490), a popular illustrated world chronicle, which reveals the contemporary status of knowledge and notions of history and chronology in Germany, the Low Countries, and France. The woodcuts are vividly hand colored in red, green, and yellow.
Leola and Gustav Bergmann have donated a group of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century editions of works by Ovid, Virgil, and Caesar, in original bindings, that Professor Bergmann purchased during his student days in Europe. Also included are a monumental Corpus Juris Civilis (1652) and a minutely annotated Norse law text (1768).
Ruth Gannett has presented an extensive collection of Omar Khayyám's Rubáiyát comprising 140 volumes, with transcriptions of the Persian sources and renderings by several translators into English, French, Spanish, and German. The collection was formed by the late Wright K. Gannett, a mechanical engineer whose recreational interests in mathematics and astronomy may have been partly responsible for his attraction to the works of Omar, the astronomer-poet of Naishapur.
When Moses Eskolsky read The Quest for Corvo, he became an avid collector of writings by and about Frederick Rolfe, who created himself Baron Corvo to fit one of his several careers— novelist, journalist, inventor, photographer, painter—and developed aliases and personalities for each. Rolfe has been described as an eccentric genius with a "contortuplicate" personality who wrote incongruous masterpieces. The highlight of the Eskolsky collection is Tarcissus: The Boy Martyr of Rome (1880), Rolfe's earliest surviving published work. Also included are 34 editions and printings of Corvo's works, from Stories Toto Told Me (1898) to limited editions of Corvo's letters, issued posthumously. This gift from Iryne B. Patt and David Patt, heirs of Moses Eskolsky, neatly complements the library's Corvine interests, previously discussed by Clarence A. Andrews in two issues of Books at Iowa (nos. 1 and 45).
A collector's devotion to a prolific pseudonymous author has resulted in an important addition to the library's substantial gathering of works by Mildred Wirt Benson, writing under "Carolyn Keene" and at least ten other names. Geoffrey Lapin has presented, for the Iowa Authors Collection, 59 titles constituting early editions and works with variant texts, many in scarce dust jackets. Benson is the author of more than one hundred books, most featuring teenage heroes, written under contract with the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Lapin's study of the bibliographical complexities in these works is a valuable complement to his gift of the books themselves.
Copyright: © 1987 The University of Iowa