Recent Acquisitions

ACHEPOHL, KEITH. Fourteen original pen and ink drawings which were reproduced as relief etchings in the Abattoir Editions publication A Thousand Little Things and Other Poems by Norman Dubie [and] Weeds from Pen Drawings by Keith Achepohl (1978) have been presented to the Libraries by the artist, Keith Achepohl. These drawings complement manuscript materials relating to this book presented earlier as a gift from Norman Dubie.

ARCHITECTURE. Observations sur l’architecture (1765) by M. A. Laugier; Abrege des dix livres d’architecture de Vitruve (1674); La theorie et la pratique du jardinage (1722) by A. J. Dezallier d’Argenville; Examples of Gothic Architecture (1838), volume one, by A. Pugin; Historical and Descriptive Essays Accompanying a Series of Engraved Specimens of the Architectural Antiquities of Normandy (1841), edited by John Britton; and Bertotti Scamozzi’s four-volume work entitled Le fabbriche e i disegni di Andrea Palladio (1786), second edition, are all included in a gift of books on architecture from the library of the late E. P. Schoentgen of Council Bluffs, Iowa, who was a long-time member of the Iowa Board of Regents, and were presented by John P. Schoentgen and Jane Schoentgen Geiser.

ASHENDENE PRESS. Vita di Santa Chiara Vergine, a late fifteenth-century life of Saint Clare, printed from the original manuscript in 1921 by C. H. St. John Hornby, is the sixth Ashendene Press imprint to join our collections.

BLAKE, WILLIAM. The Trianon Press has recently made available a facsimile edition of Blake’s Illustrations of Dante (1978). The edition consists of 440 copies made from a proof set in the possession of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, who has written introductory notes on the seven engravings. Blake’s original copperplates of these illustrations are now in the Library of Congress.

BLUNDEN, EDMUND. Thirteen autograph letters and five postcards written by the English poet Edmund Blunden (1896-1974) have been acquired in recent months for our Blunden Collection. They are addressed to such correspondents as Enid Bagnold, R. W. Chapman, Dom Moraes, and J. W. Nance.

BYRON. Lord Byron’s The Island, or Christian and His Comrades (1823) is a narrative poem relating to the mutiny on the Bounty. Our first edition was published in London by John Hunt, elder brother of Leigh Hunt.

CHILDREN. Two first editions of medical books concerning the diseases of children are Nicolas Andry’s l’Orthopédie ou l’art de prévenir et de corriger les enfans, les deformités du corps (Paris, 1741) and Michael Underwood’s A Treatise on the Diseases of Children (London, 1784). Andry coined the word orthopedics (orthos, straight; paidos, child), and his treatise is largely concerned with the prevention of poor body posture. Underwood’s treatise on the care and feeding of infants, preventive health measures in the young, and the treatment of diseases peculiar to children went through at least ten English editions as well as several American, and eventually became a large two-volume work. Gifts of John Martin, M.D.

DAY-LEWIS, CECIL. The Posthumous Poems of C. Day-Lewis, poet laureate, were published by the Whittington Press of Gloucestershire, England, in 1979 in an edition of 250 copies. Ours is one of 25 copies bound in full Oasis leather. The introduction was written by the poet’s widow, Jill Balcon. Gift of the Friends of the Library.

DICKINSON, EMILY. Illustrations suggested by five poems of Emily Dickinson have been designed, engraved, and handprinted by Linda Karel Sage in a publication entitled An Emily Dickinson Portfolio: Five Poems with Engravings (1980). The five handprinted poems and the five engravings relate to five of “nature’s people”— the bee, the bird, the snake, the fly, and the rat. Printed in Bembo and Castellar types at the Maecenas Press, Solon, Iowa, and enclosed in a folding case made at the Black Oak Bindery, Iowa City, this attractive publication is limited to 100 copies, of which ours is number 7. Gift of the Friends of the Library.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE. Of a gift of more than thirty-three hundred fifty volumes, largely English and American literary works, some one hundred sixty are novels or books of poetry inscribed by their authors to Paul Engle. A few of the more significant items are Edmund Blunden’s Choice or Chance (1934, including a 12-line holograph poem by the author), T. S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday (1930), Robert Lowell’s Land of Unlikeness (1944), and signed copies of William Butler Yeats’s The Trembling of a Veil (1922) and A Vision (1925). Gift of Paul Engle.

EUSTACHIUS. The Opuscula anatomica (Venice, 1564) of Bartolomeo Eustachi includes treatises on the kidney, the ear, the venous system, and the teeth. The treatise on the kidney is one of the first accurate descriptions of the anatomy and position of the kidneys; the treatise on the ear gives an account of the eponymically named Eustachian tube and the tensor tympani and stapedius muscles; the treatise on the teeth is one of the great treatises on dentistry, and in it is the first account of the first and second dentitions. This work includes eight copperplates drawn and engraved by Pier Matteo Pini; his illustrations on the kidney are considered more accurate than those of Vesalius. Gift of John Martin, M.D.

FACSIMILES. Three very different facsimile editions of original manuscripts relate to works by Geoffrey Chaucer, John Keats, and Charles Darwin. Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer Ltd., 1978) is a photographic facsimile of Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 61, with introductions by M. B. Parkes and Elizabeth Salter. It reproduces an early fifteenth-century unfinished manuscript copy of Chaucer’s poem. Hyperion (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1905) is a folio-size facsimile of Keats’s autograph manuscript, once owned by Leigh Hunt. This edition is one of 225 copies, and the introductions and notes are by Ernest de Selincourt. The Journal of a Voyage in H.M.S. Beagle (Guildford, England: Genesis Publications, 1979) is a facsimile of the primary record of Charles Darwin’s daily activities during his voyage of four and three-quarter years. It is one of 500 copies.

GERMAN LITERATURE. More than four hundred fifty volumes from the personal library of the late Professor Erich Funke center largely on modern editions of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century German novelists, poets, and playwrights, but also include certain earlier works. Among the special volumes are Louis Maimbourg’s Histoire du Lutheranisme (Paris, 1681), the Chronicon of Albertus Stadensis (Helmstadt, 1587), and inscribed copies of Thomas Mann’s Lotte in Weimar (1940) and Der Zauberberg (1939). Gift of Mrs. Erich Funke.

GOLDEN COCKEREL PRESS. Two titles new to our collections are The Golden Bed of Kydno (1935) by Evadne Lascaris, with twelve line-engravings by Lettice Sandford, limited to 200 copies, and Letters of Maria Edgeworth and Anna Letitia Barbauld ( 1953), selected from the Lushington Papers, one of 300 copies.

HOGARTH PRESS. The recent acquisition of eight titles printed at Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s private press raises to 24 the present number of our Hogarth Press imprints. These additions are Ena Limbeer’s To a Proud Phantom (1923), Conrad Aiken’s Senlin: a Biography (1925), Herbert Palmer’s The Judgment of François Villon (1927), Richard Fox’s Drifting Men (1930), Victoria Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst (1931), Iris Origo’s Allegra (1935), Francesca Allinson’s A Childhood (1937), and Christopher Lee’s Poems (1937).

HUNT, LEIGH. Two printed volumes added to our Leigh Hunt Collection are a second edition of Hunt’s play A Legend of Florence (1840), a presentation copy to Southwood Smith, and a first edition of Hunt’s Autobiography (1850), which contains a 12-line holograph addition by Hunt. This latter work was once owned by Sir Percy Shelley. Also augmenting this collection is a draft of Hunt’s sonnet “To the Grasshopper and the Cricket” (presumably written in rivalry with Keats, who on the same day—December 30, 1816— wrote his sonnet “The poetry of earth is never dead”), as well as a manuscript leaf from Hunt’s Feast of the Poets (in a wrapper with an inscription by Edmund Blunden) and two Hunt letters, one to J. Keymer and one to Charles Ollier.

INCUNABULUM. The ninth edition of the Opus pandectarum (Venice, 1498) of Mattheus Silvaticus was the first to contain the Synonyma medicinae of Simon Januensis (Simon of Genoa), physician to Pope Nicholas IV toward the close of the thirteenth century. Silvaticus’s work in any edition is rare. Our copy of the ninth edition is a gift of John Martin, M.D.

IOWA AUTHOR MANUSCRIPTS. Book-length manuscripts recently presented to our Iowa Authors Collection include Healing Time by Anthony O. Colby, M.D.; Are Cats People? by Paul Corey; Island of Mystery by Arlene Hale; Ruth Buxton Sayre: First Lady of the Farms by Julie McDonald; What Are Little Girls Made Of? by Martin Yoseloff; and Time of My Life by Thomas Yoseloff. All are gifts of their respective authors.

IOWA CITY IMPRINTS. Three publications produced in Iowa City, new to our collections, are Philip Levine’s Silent in America (1965); D. H. Lawrence’s When I Went to the Circus (1979); and Selected Poems (1979) of William Butler Yeats. The Levine booklet carries the imprint “Shaw Avenue Press,” and its colophon indicates that 47 copies were “printed by Glover Davis in the Typographic Laboratory of The University of Iowa School of Journalism, June 1965.” The Lawrence poem is one of an edition of 15 copies, hand set in Times Roman and Goudy Open types, accompanied by a suite of seven hand-colored wood-cuts designed and printed by Cecily Dunham. The Yeats selection is a small folio set in 14-point Bembo type, one of 70 copies, accompanied by a suite of five aquatints designed and printed by David Harvey.

KEMMERER, JOHN. John Kemmerer, a native of Guthrie County, Iowa, currently resides in New York City. Around 1930 his stories and sketches appeared in such periodicals as The Midland and Hound & Horn, but since the forties he has turned more and more to poetry. His latest gift volume of poetry, entitled Atlantis (1980), is one of 40 copies printed at the Press of A. Colish in Mount Vernon, New York. This volume joins fourteen earlier limited editions of Mr. Kemmerer’s writings, all of them presented during the past decade to the Iowa Authors Collection as a gift from the author.

KING LIBRARY PRESS. Rabinal, An Ancient Play of the Quiche Indians of Guatemala, Rendered into English by Eleanor Wolff (1977) is one of 65 copies of a handprinted book from the University of Kentucky, illustrated and printed by Christopher Meatyard. The translator has unfortunately truncated the text, but the illustrations and printing are superb.

LEAF BOOK. A Testament of Faith (Boston, 1979) is the title of a leaf book printed at the Stinehour Press in an edition of 87 copies. It contains an original leaf from a copy of the first American Bible, translated into the language of the Algonquian Indians by John Eliot and printed at Cambridge in the year 1663. The commentary for this leaf book was written by John Alden.

MELVILLE. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick was printed by Andrew Hoyem at the Arion Press in San Francisco in 1979 in an edition limited to 265 copies. The handset type is Goudy Modern, the paper is handmade Barcham Green, and the illustrations of this handsome folio edition were drawn and engraved by Barry Moser.

MINIATURE BOOKS. To this Library’s small accumulation of miniature books we note two small additions: A Bestiary: Wood Engravings by Sarah Chamberlain (1979), one of 125 copies printed at the Chamberlain Press in Cancelleresca type; and Ra, the Sun God (1979), one of 200 copies, illustrated with hand-colored linocuts, printed in Lydian type at the Splendid Press & Paper Works, Ltd.

MURDOCH, IRIS. To our Iris Murdoch collection we have added an attractively produced copy of A Year of Birds (1978), poems by Iris Murdoch, with engravings by Reynolds Stone. The edition is one of 350 copies set in Monotype Dante, printed at the Compton Press, Wiltshire, England, and signed by both author and illustrator.

MUSCLES. One of the great anatomical works of special artistic appeal is the Myotomia Reformata: or an Anatomical Treatise on the Muscles of the Human Body ( London, 1724), by William Cowper (1666-1709). This work was first published in 1694 under a somewhat different title, but that edition cannot compare with the present sumptuous edition, edited by Richard Mead. Gift of John Martin, M.D.

PAPERMAKING. Geoffrey Wakeman’s English Marbled Papers: A Documentary History (Leicestershire: Plough Press, 1978?) and Christopher Weimann’s Marbled Papers (Los Angeles: Bird & Bull Press for Dawson’s Book Shop, 1978) are both surveys which include samples of hand-marbled papers. Papermaking by Hand by J. Barcham Green (Maidstone, 1967) is an introductory manual, and A Survey of Hand-Made and Fine Mould-Made Papers, compiled by G. A. Beale (London: Cadenza Press, 1977), is in part a country-by-country directory of mills. P. Falcot’s Traité de la Fabrication des Tissus, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1852) is a three-volume encyclopedic work, of which volumes 2 and 3 are illustrative plates. Armin Renker’s Das Buch vom Papier (1929) and Thomas N. Fairbanks Company’s Italian & French Book Papers (1930) both include samples of papers.

PERISHABLE PRESS. Seven lacunae in our holdings of publications from the Perishable Press Limited are filled with the acquisition of The Brand; a five-part poem (1969) by Toby Olson, one of 140 copies; Songs from the Decline of the West (1970) by Keith Waldrop, one of 120 copies; Going Home Again (1971) by DeWayne Rail, one of 125 copies; Two Stories (1973) by Kenneth Bernard, one of fewer than 150 copies; Doctor Miriam (1977) by Toby Olson, one of 144 copies; Goat Cottage Dream Poems (1978) by Laurence Giles, one of 119 copies; and Tuft by Puff (1978) by William Stafford, one of 240 copies.

PHILOSOPHY. Six philosophical works recently added to our rare book collections are the Opera philosophica (1668) of Thomas Hobbes, Logik (1800) and Vorlesungen über die Metaphysik (1821) by Immanuel Kant, Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (1799) by F. W. J. Schelling, Opera posthuma (1677) of Benedict de Spinoza, and Kaiser Octavianus (1804) of Ludwig Tieck. These are a gift from Professor Moltke S. Gram.

POE. In addition to two different editions of The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, a New York edition of 1858 which includes illustrations by John Tenniel and Birket Foster, and an Edinburgh edition of 1872 with illustrations by Clark Stanton and others, our Mabbott-Poe Collection has received a copy of the Comet Press edition of The Gold Bug set in W. A. Dwiggins’s Electra type, with illustrations by Howard Morris, and a Chiswick Press printing of The Raven [and] The Pit and the Pendulum (London, 1899) with seven lemercier-gravures by W. T. Horton.

RAMPANT LIONS PRESS. Eighteen titles printed by Will Carter or his son Sebastian at the Rampant Lions Press in Cambridge, England, are presently represented in our holdings. Our two most recent acquisitions from this press are The Chester Play of the Deluge (1977), with 10 wood engravings by David Jones, and Mr. Chesterton Comes to Tea (1978), with 16 previously unpublished pencil drawings by G. K. Chesterton.

SCIATICA. The first detailed description of the cerebrospinal fluid is given in a book by Domenico Cotugo (1736-1822), in his De ischiade nervosa commentarius (Naples, 1764), in the course of describing the symptoms and etiology of sciatica. Our first edition is a gift of John Martin, M.D.

SHELLEY. Shelley and Mary (1882) is a four-volume compilation of all the unpublished poems, letters, diaries, and other documents by or relating to Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley that were in the hands of the Shelley family in 1882. Only 12 copies (according to Thomas J. Wise) were printed, at the Chiswick Press, for private circulation. Our copy, recently acquired for the Brewer—Leigh Hunt Collection, is inscribed “To Sarah Frances Spedding from Jane Shelley, January 21st, 1885, with love and perfect trust.” In addition to six inserted printed leaves, this copy includes three manuscript leaves by Lady Shelley as well as her manuscript annotations in the text.

SURGERY. One of the most beautiful scientific books of the Renaissance is Guido Guidi’s Chirurgia e Graeco in Latinum conversa (Paris, 1544). Printed at the private residence of Benvenuto Cellini, its more than two hundred woodcuts depict many of the instruments and surgical procedures of the early Christian period. Its text is a rendering into Latin of a Byzantine manuscript containing surgical works of Hippocrates, Galen, and Oribasius, to which Guidi added commentaries of his own. Guidi was a Florentine surgeon who served on the faculty of the University of Paris, where one of his pupils was the young Vesalius. This very rare book was considered a rarity even in the sixteenth century. Gift of John Martin, M.D.