Recent Acquisitions

BIRD & BULL PRESS. Four volumes printed at Henry Morris’s Bird & Bull Press, each quite different in content and appearance from its companions, augment our present collection of nearly 40 volumes from this Pennsylvania fine press. The earliest of the four additions (number 58 of 215 copies printed) is Henry Morris’s own Roller-Printed Paste Papers for Bookbinding (1975) describing methods he devised for creating his own decorated paper and presenting 24 sample swatches of papers he has used. Ego and Art in Walt Whitman (1980) is the text of a talk given by John Updike, printed in an edition of 350 copies. Japanese Paper Balloon Bombs: the First ICBM (1982) is a miniature book, one of 375 copies, and carries a dedication “to the memory of the six Americans who died on May 5, 1945, by Japanese bomb explosion, near Bly, Oregon—the only place on the American continent where death resulted from direct enemy action during World War II.” The Sandars and Lyell Lectures (1983) is a chronological checklist prepared by David McKitterick, one of 300 copies printed at Morris’s new location in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

BLUNDEN, EDMUND. Of four first editions published in Japan, one is a Christmas poem, “From the Japanese Inn Windows” (Tokyo, 1949), and one is a four-page brochure, “The King’s Arms Hotel” (Kobe, 1951) with a presentation inscription to Kenneth Hopkins. Reprinted Papers (Tokyo, 1950) collects several fugitive pieces by Blunden concerned mainly with the English Romantic poets, and Influential Books (Tokyo, 1950) is a gathering of lectures given at Waseda University in 1948 and 1949. All are recent additions to our Blunden Collection.

BRIGHT, TIMOTHY. A first edition of a rare book, said to be the first English work dealing with psychiatric disease as a special entity, Timothy Bright’s A Treatise of Melancholy (London, 1586) has been added to our History of Medicine Collection. Gift of John Martin, M.D.

CHAUCER. An illustrated edition of “The Merchant’s Tale” which juxtaposes the Middle English of the Ellesmere text against Neville Coghill’s modern English version was published in 1960 by the Lion and Unicorn Press at the Royal College of Art in London. The 15 full-page illustrations by Derek Cousins, and ours is copy number 10 of 200 copies printed. Facsimiles of two Chaucer manuscripts presently in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University (MS Tanner 346 and MS Bodley 638) constitute volumes one and two of a projected series of scholarly texts which complement such facsimiles already among our holdings as the important Hengwrt manuscript (original in the National Library of Wales) and the famous Ellesmere manuscript (original in the Huntington Library). These recent additions to our Chaucer resources were purchased on the William J. and Lucile Jones Paff Fund.

CORYCIAN PRESS. From the Corycian Press in Iowa City have come two hand-printed volumes of poetry. Paradigms of Fire (1980) by Brian Swann is number 32 of an edition of 200 copies cloth bound by Joanna Deligiorgis, with woodcuts by Ann Khan. Mamagruia (1981) by Miron Georgescu, number 22 of 200 copies, is a collection of poems translated from Romanian by Stavros Deligiorgis, with drawings by Keith Achepohl.

DERMATOLOGY. Perhaps the greatest French work on dermatology is Anne Charles de Lorry’s Tractatus de morbis cutaneis (Paris, 1777). The copy of this historic book recently acquired for our History of Medicine Collection was, according to an inscription on the title page, presented as a prize to the father of Gustave Flaubert by the director of the School of Medicine in Paris. Gift of John Martin, M.D.

DUNCAN, HARRY. Five essays by “the dean of American hand printers” are collected in a volume entitled Doors of Perception: Essays in Book Typography (1983). The essays are “The Cummington Press,” “The Technology of Hand Printing,” “The Art of the Printed Book,” “My Master Victor Hammer,” and “The Permanence of Books.” This collection of Harry Duncan’s essays is one of 325 copies designed by Carol J. Blinn at Warwick Press and printed by Daniel Keleher at Wild Carrot Letterpress.

GARLAND, HAMLIN. Among some two dozen newly acquired letters or notes from Hamlin Garland are communications to H. S. Green, R. G. Shortledge, Lydia Avery Coonley, and Ellis Robb (of Eldora, Iowa), along with two photographs of Garland conversing with fellow author Irving Bacheller.

GILL, ERIC. The Engravings of Eric Gill (1983), designed by Christopher Skelton and printed at Skelton’s Press, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England, brings together in a single work, in their exact dimensions, reproductions of all of Gill’s engravings from some 150 separate publications, dating from 1907 to 1940. Purchased on the Frank S. Hanlin Memorial Book Fund.

GODWIN, GAIL. Gail Godwin received both M.F.A. and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Iowa and later taught in the Writers’ Workshop at Iowa. Among first editions of her publications now in our special collections are The Perfectionists (1970); Glass People (1972); advance uncorrected proofs of The Odd Woman (1974) which draws upon an Iowa City background; Dream Children (1976), her first collection of short stories; Violet Clay (1978), an inscribed copy; advance unrevised proofs of A Mother and Two Daughters (1982); and both advance proofs and first edition of Mr. Bedford and the Muses (1983), which is a second collection of her stories.

HAMMETT, DASHIELL. The Arion Press edition (1983) of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon is illustrated with period photographs of San Francisco Bay Area locations (circa 1928) named or implied by Hammett in his classic detective story. The edition is limited to 400 copies.

HOLBEIN, HANS, the Younger. Eighty-five color reproductions of drawings are made available in the recently published Drawings by Holbein from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (1983), which also includes a text and catalogue by Susan Foister. These facsimiles are the work of the Curwen Press, and the library’s copy is number 15 of 520 sets of the English edition.

HUNT, LEIGH. From Australia has come an album of letters and manuscript fragments relating to Leigh Hunt—drafts of poems from The Town; letters from Hunt to one of his sons and to Charles Ollier; a letter to Hunt from Mary Meredith, daughter of Thomas Love Peacock and wife of George Meredith; and a letter from Richard Garnett to a grandson of Leigh Hunt. From other sources have come seven additional letters from Hunt to Mark Lemon, Caroline Orger, Sir Robert Peel, and others. Printed volumes include a recent facsimile edition of Hunt’s antiwar poem, Captain Sword and Captain Pen (1835), with a new introduction by Rhodes Dunlap, published in 1984 by the Friends of The University of Iowa Libraries; an inscribed copy of Leigh Hunt and Some of His Contemporaries (1984) by Richard H. E. Russell, who is a great-great-great grandson of Leigh Hunt; and a very rare item, The Literary Pocket-Book; or, Companion for the Lover of Nature and Art (1819), edited by Leigh Hunt, a presentation copy to Robert Balmanno which was later owned by the American bibliographer Charles Evans. Gift of the Friends of the Library.

IOWA AUTHORS. John Kemmerer’s Two Stories (1932), number 59 of 100 signed copies; R. A. Lafferty’s Archipelago (1979), number 94 of 100 signed copies; and John Sladek’s Red Noise (1982), number 108 of a total edition of 200 copies, have been acquired for our Iowa Authors Collection, along with advance uncorrected proof copies of Byron Farwell’s Burton: A Biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton (1963), MacKinlay Kantor’s The Children Sing (1973), Frederick Manfred’s Sons of Adam(1980), and Max Allan Collins’s True Detective (1983).

KELMSCOTT PRESS. The Kelmscott Press edition of William Morris’s The Earthly Paradise is an eight-volume collection of tales which Morris brought together and retold in his own verse. Among the stories are “Atalanta’s Race,” “The Story of Cupid and Psyche,” “Pygmalion,” and “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” Publication of the edition was begun in 1895 but not completed until 1897, nearly a year after Morris’s death. Printed in Golden type, one of 225 copies, our beautifully preserved set is a gift of the Friends of the Library.

MINIATURE BOOKS. Thomas R. Smith’s Yesterdays: Recollections and Reflections on Growing Up in Newton, Iowa (1982) is one of 250 copies designed by Norman W. Forgue and published under the imprint of the Black Cat Press of Skokie, Illinois. The Model E (1984), also by Thomas R. Smith, one of 250 copies, recounting his design development of a well-known Maytag wringer washer, appears under the imprint of the Tamazunchale Press of Newton, Iowa. David Swan, a Fantasy (1984), one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales,” comes also from Tamazunchale and is one of 250 copies printed in Holland and bound in France. Mark Twain’s How I Edited an Agricultural Paper (1982) is a production of the Scott Free Press of Overland Park, Kansas. John J. Walsdorf’s Printers on Morris (1981) boasts a frontispiece by Barry Moser; the hand binding, in paper engraved by Sarah Chamberlain, was done at the Mute Swan bindery. Two bibliographies of miniature books, themselves of diminutive size but considerable usefulness, are The Bibliomidgets of Achille J. St. Onge (1979) by Robert E. Massmann, one of 1,000 copies printed at Art Press; and Bibliography of the Hillside Press, 1971-1980 (1980), number 214 of 300 numbered copies, printed at the Hillside Press, Buffalo, New York.

PHONOGRAPH RECORDINGS. Native Indian and traditional music of Mexico, classical music of Portugal, a small collection of Spanish zarazuelas, German music of the Weimar and Nazi era, and German operas and operettas are featured on some 165 phono discs which have been received as a gift of Kenneth J. Oberembt.

POETRY. Ruth Lechlitner’s Only the Years: Selected Poems, 1938-1944 has long been on our list of desiderata, and we have now acquired a copy of this scarce volume, printed in 1944 at the Press of James A. Decker, Prairie City, Illinois. Our signed copy of Amy Clampitt’s Multitudes, Multitudes (1973) was printed at the Washington Street Press in New York City. Norman Dubie’s The Window in the Field (1980) is one of 250 copies of an edition printed in Wales and published in Copenhagen, Denmark. Mel Bohn’s Annex 22: An Anthology of Omaha Poets (1981) is one of 100 copies printed at the Fine Arts Press, University of Nebraska at Omaha. Auden: Five Poems was printed in the summer of 1983 in Athens, Ohio, by Richard Bigus of Labyrinth Editions, who has recently moved his press to Cedar Falls, Iowa.

RAILROADIANA. Six unusual pieces have been added recently to our burgeoning resources on railroads. One is John Plumbe’s Memorial against Mr. Asa Whitney’s Railroad Scheme (1851). While Plumbe was an advocate of a railroad to the Pacific, he was against giving a monopoly to one man. Report Given by Col. Geo. A. Mix, Dubuque, of the Exploration of the Proposed Route of the Dubuque & Pacific Railroad (1855) deals with a roadway from Dubuque to the Missouri River for the railroad that would become the Illinois Central. Judge Dillon, and His Father-in-Law, Hon. Hiram Price: A Conspiracy (ca. 1877) involves the Central Railroad of Iowa, a forerunner of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway. And three items relating to the Union Pacific: Effingham H. Nichols, The Nature and Extent of the Obligations of the Pacific Railroad Companies to the Government, in Reference to the Bonds Issued by the United States in Aid of the Construction of the Union Pacific Railroad and Its branches (1871); also Nichols, Argument before the Hon. S. F. Phillips, Solicitor-General of the U.S. on the Occasion of the Central Branch Union Pacific Railroad Company (1872); and Joseph B. Stewart, The Bastille. Testimony of Joseph B. Stewart before a “Select Committee,” Given on the 18th and 29th of January, 1873, with Remarks about His “Contempt"  (1873), concerning Stewart’s service for the Union Pacific and the Credit Mobilier.

RED OZIER PRESS. William Goyen’s story Precious Door (1981) was printed in an edition of 115 copies and hand bound by William Anthony. The woodcut illustrations are by John De Pol. Robert Bly’s The Traveller Who Repeats His Cry (1982) is a small collection of poems with a title-page illustration by Barry Moser, number 98 of 160 copies. A Sound of Feathers (1982), number 48 of 130 copies, combines prose-poems by Joan Digby with zinc engravings by John Digby. The wrappers of the latter two volumes were handmade at the press’s own Tidepool Paper Mill.

ROTZ ATLAS. An addition to the library’s collection of publications of the Roxburghe Club (see Books at Iowa, no. 35), The Maps and Text of the Boke of Hydrography Presented by lean Rotz to Henry VIII now in the British Library, edited by Helen Wallis with a foreword by Viscount Eccles (Oxford, 1981), is a large folio volume with colored plates and a splendid reproduction of one of the masterpieces of Renaissance cartography. Purchased on the Sara and Harold Lincoln Thompson Travel Literature Fund.

SEMMELWEIS, IGNAZ P. One of the great books in medical literature, a rare volume coveted by collectors, is Semmelweis’s Die Aetiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers (Pest, Vienna & Leipzig, 1861). Semmelweis showed conclusively that puerperal fever was infectious and that it was commonly transmitted by careless, unsterile technique in the obstetrics wards. For his efforts he was ridiculed to the point that, sensitive person that he was, he was driven to insanity and died, in an asylum, of septicemia incurred in his work on the wards of patients suffering this deadly infection. Our copy of this book by one of medicine’s martyrs is a gift of John Martin, M.D.

SHELLEY, MARY. The Pennyroyal Press edition (1983) of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is illustrated by Barry Moser. This edition, based on the text of 1818, includes essays by Ruth Mortimer, Emily Sunstein, Joyce Carol Oates, and William St. Clair. Ours is copy number 93 of an edition of 350. An additional suite of plates is enclosed in an accompanying portfolio. Purchased on the Frank S. Hanlin Memorial Book Fund.

SHIEL, M. P. Seven first editions of novels recently acquired are The Yellow Danger (New York, 1899) in gray cloth binding with the variant long subtitle; The Man-Stealers; An Incident in the Life of the Iron Duke (1900); the Weird O’ It (1902), which Shiel once called the world’s longest detective story; The Lost Viol (New York, 1905), third variant of the second issue; This Knot of Life (1909), in which the novel proper is preceded by Shiel’s essay “On Reading”; The Dragon (1913); and This above All (New York, 1933) in the original dust jacket. Another addition is M. P. Shiel’s copy of Wind over Wisconsin (1938) by August Derleth, an inscribed presentation volume from the author bearing the Shiel-Gawsworth “Realm of Redonda” bookplate.

SÖMMERING, S. T. von. In De Basi encephali et originibus nervorum cranium egredentium (Göttingen, 1778) Sömmering named the cranial nerves in their serial order, recognizing 12 pairs. His writing is precise, and the four folding copperplates in this book are very fine. Gift of John Martin, M.D.

SWAN, JOSEPH. An unusual and little-known book in the history of medicine is the elephant folio edition of Joseph Swan’s A Demonstration of the Nerves of the Human Body (London, 1830). A number of its life-sized lithographic plates show the autonomic nervous system, the cranial nerves, and the spinal nerves from both the left and the right sides. Gift of John Martin, M.D.

TORCH PRESS. Among recent acquisitions of earlier publications printed by the Torch Press of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are a first edition of L. Bradford Prince’s A Concise History of New Mexico (1912); George Clary Wing’s Early Years on the Western Reserve (1916), one of 150 copies; the two volumes of William W. Woollen’s The Inside Passage to Alaska (1924); Thomas L. Johnson’s The Early Years of the Saturday Club (1921), number 124 of 125 copies printed for the Rowfant Club of Cleveland; and a nearly complete run of The Step Ladder, a monthly journal of the Bookfellows (Chicago) which was issued from 1919 to 1959.

WIRT, MILDRED. Twelve titles previously lacking from our Iowa Authors Collection, now received as gifts, include six volumes written by Mildred Wirt under her own name and six volumes that she wrote under various pseudonyms (Carolyn Keene, Helen Louise Thorndyke, and Julia K. Duncan). Gift of Geoffrey S. Lapin.