Recent Acquisitions

ASHENDENE PRESS. Two titles from the press of C. H. St. John Hornby: The XI. Bookes of the Golden Asse containing the Metamorphosie of Lucius Apuleius (1924), one of 140 copies printed on paper bearing the “Knight in Armour” watermark; and The Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach, commonly called Ecclesiasticus (1932), one of 328 copies printed in Subiaco type on paper bearing the “bugle” watermark, with initial letters hand colored by Graily Hewitt and his two assistants, and bound in limp orange vellum with silk ties.

BASKERVILLE, JOHN. The 1759 quarto edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, with a frontispiece portrait by T. Miller, has recently joined on our library shelves several other publications printed in Birmingham by the eighteenth-century printer John Baskerville. Among these earlier Baskerville acquisitions are the four-volume octavo Ariosto of 1773, the Lucretius of 1772, and the quarto Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius of 1772, the latter volume having been received as a gift from the library of Thomas Ollive Mabbott.

BISSELL, RICHARD. Printer’s copy, showing a number of editorial deletions, of My Life on the Mississippi, or Why I Am Not Mark Twain (1973); also an unpublished holograph essay by Bissell on the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Library, Leningrad. Gift to the Iowa Authors Collection from Richard Bissell.

BLAKE, WILLIAM. One of Blake’s lesser works, The Book of Ahania, was completed by Blake in only one copy. This unique volume once belonged to Richard Monckton Milnes, and today it forms part of the Rosenwald Collection in the Library of Congress. A facsimile edition, with commentary by Geoffrey Keynes, has recently been published by the Trianon Press, and ours is copy number 69 of the 808 copies produced.

BLUNDEN, EDMUND. Seventeen autograph letters or cards addressed to such correspondents as Joseph Braddock, Charles Ede, Edward Finneron, John W. Robertson, Sir Michael Sadler, and Nettie Tillet. Also one holograph poem of six stanzas entitled “Can You Remember?” and a 20-page manuscript in Blunden’s characteristically neat hand, dated March, 1933, entitled “Hasty Notes relating to Leigh Hunt, Shelley, Lamb, Keats, Byron and Others. Collected from Ms. books kept by John Watson Dalby.”

BRADLEY, DUANE. A native of Clarinda, Iowa, Duane Bradley has written nine children’s books, of which the most recent is a biography of the American-born Benjamin Thompson, who is better known as Count Rumford. He was an experimental scientist, and among his writings is an 1812 essay describing the drip coffee pot. Among our recently acquired manuscripts are the author’s notes, typescript, source materials, and correspondence relating to Count Rumford (1967), which have been received as a gift to the Iowa Authors Collection from Mrs. Duane B. Sanborn.

The CATFISH PRESS of Davenport, Iowa, is operated by Father Edward M. Catich of St. Ambrose College. His recent volume on Reed, Pen, & Brush Alphabets for Writing and Lettering (1972), accompanied by a portfolio of plates, now joins on our shelves two earlier Catich volumes from the Catfish Press: Letters Redrawn from the Trajan Inscription in Rome (1961), with a portfolio of 93 plates, and The Origin of the Serif: Brush Writing & Roman Letters (1968), one of 50 hard-bound copies containing 23 additional sheets on which the author brush-wrote each letter of the Roman Imperial alphabet.

CLEMENS, SAMUEL L. The first two volumes to appear in The Works of Mark Twain, the new edition being published for the Iowa Center for Textual Studies by the University of California Press, are Roughing It, with introduction and explanatory notes by Franklin R. Rogers, and What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings, edited by Paul Baender. Two other items of Twain interest recently acquired are a note about the weather, in Twain’s hand, and a splendid photograph of Mark Twain in his white suit, taken in 1908. These two items have come as a gift from Philip Adler.

COREY, PAUL. Thirty years ago when the Iowa Authors Collection was in its infancy, one of the first authors to donate original manuscripts was novelist Paul Corey. During the past year we have received a large addition of manuscripts consisting of unpublished stories and articles, files of correspondence, reviews and royalty statements relating to twelve of his books, as well as three editions which we lacked, including a German translation of Five Acre Hill (Der Fünf Morgen Hügel) published in Bremen in 1949. Gift to the Iowa Authors Collection from Paul Corey.

CRANE, STEPHEN. A photographic facsimile of the original manuscript of Stephen Crane’s best-known novel was published for the first time in 1973 in The Red Badge of Courage: A Facsimile Edition of the Manuscript (Washington, D.C.: Microcard Editions). The fine-screen photographs in volume two were prepared by the Meriden Gravure Company, at four-fifths the size of the original, and the first volume consists of a letterpress introduction and apparatus by Professor Fredson Bowers of the University of Virginia. This facsimile edition includes leaves from discarded drafts as well as revisions in the hand of Hamlin Garland.

CUMMINGTON PRESS. Five Cummington Poems (1939) is the earliest item to be included in Mary L. Richmond’s bibliography of the Cummington Press (Books at Iowa, No. 7); we have recently acquired copy number 29 of 300 printed. The Wedge by William Carlos Williams is one of 380 copies printed in 1944. And our copy of Robert Lowell’s Land of Unlikeness (1944) with an introduction by Allen Tate, one of 250 copies, bears a presentation inscription from Lowell to his “Aunt Alice” (Alice Winslow Sommaripa).

DIME NOVELS. Albert Johannsen’s The House of Beadle and Adams and Its Dime and Nickel Novels devotes more than three pages to the novels of Iowan Oll Coomes. Johannsen states that “Coomes was one of the best of the dime novelists. He wrote very convincingly of the early Indian days in the middle west and of western and northwestern Iowa, the country he knew best.” During the past year we have acquired thirteen of Coomes’ novels published in “Beadle’s Half-Dime Library,” among them Baby Sam, the Boy Giant of the Yellowstone; The Sky Demon, or Rainbolt the Ranger; Old Tom Rattler, the Red River Epidemic; and Hercules the Dumb Destroyer.

EVERSON, WILLIAM (“Brother Antoninus”). Poems: MCMXLII was printed by the author, in an edition of 500 copies, at the Untide Press, Waldport, Oregon, in the years 1944-1945; and The Last Crusade, a folio volume on Arches paper, was designed and printed by Graham Mackintosh in 1969 in an edition of 165 copies signed by the author.

FIRBANK, RONALD. Firbank’s first two publications, “La Princesse aux Soleils” and “Harmonie” appeared in 1904 and 1905 in a French periodical, Les Essais. These two early pieces are reprinted for the first time in an attractive little volume published in London in 1974 by the Enitharmon Press in an edition of 200 copies. The English translations are by Edgell Rickword, the introductory note is furnished by Miriam J. Benkovitz, and the illustrations are by Philippe Jullian. Our copy is a gift from Miriam J. Benkovitz.

FITZGERALD, F. SCOTT. A photographic facsimile of the original manuscript of Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is made available in an edition prepared by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Washington, D.C.: Microcard Editions, 1973). This one-volume facsimile edition includes rejected material as well as holograph and typescript drafts of later insertions and samples of revised galleys.

FREDERICK, JOHN T. Nine letters, 1919-1922, addressed to Paul L. Benjamin concerning the magazines The Midland and The Survey, and including comments on Edwin Ford Piper. Gift to the Iowa Authors Collection from Paul L. Benjamin.

GOLDEN COCKEREL PRESS. Two publications from the 1930’s: Maya (1930), a play by Simon Gantillon paraphrased into English by Virginia and Frank Vernon, with thirteen wood engravings by Blair Hughes-Stanton, one of 500 copies; and Initiation (1932), translations from poems of the Didinga and Lango tribes by J. H. Driberg, with decorations by Robert Gibbings, one of 325 copies.

GRABHORN PRESS. For more than fifty years the Grabhorn Press in San Francisco has issued well-printed publications, among them such standard titles as Henry R. Wagner’s The Plains and the Rockies (1937) and Carl I. Wheat’s The Maps of the California Gold Region (1942). In our various collections can be found more than seventy-five titles printed at the Grabhorn Press. Our most recent addition is a beautiful copy of Tumult at Dusk, Being an Account of Ecuador, Its Indians, Its Conquerors, Its Colonists, Its Rebels, Its Dictators, Its Politicians, Its Land-owners, Its Artists, and Its Priests, with a prologue and an epilogue by Walker Lowry, one of one hundred copies printed in 1963.

HOUGH, EMERSON. Among publications recently acquired are a copy of Hough’s The Lady and the Pirate (1913) in the publisher’s original pictorial dust jacket; a brochure, ca. 1924, issued by the C. B. and Q. Railroad Company for which Hough wrote “An Appreciation of Yellowstone National Park”; and The Firefly’s Light, a small undated volume bearing the imprint of the Trow Press of New York, which reprints from the Saturday Evening Post an essay by Hough first published in 1916. This latter volume is a gift to the Iowa Authors Collection from Mrs. Charlotte M. Smith.

HUNT, LEIGH. Autograph letters to Henry Cole and to George Henry Lewes and a letter from Benjamin R. Haydon to Hunt; an autograph draft of nine stanzas for one of Hunt’s Robin Hood ballads; and a manuscript draft of thirty-three pages comprising the first act of a drama entitled Love Will Find Out a Way. Also four printed items: 1. Leigh Hunt’s copy of Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks (sixth edition, 1737-38), with Hunt’s signature in each volume. 2. A three-volume set of Hunt’s only novel, Sir Ralph Esher, bearing the 1832 date on the title pages but with half-titles in volumes one and two reading “Memoirs of Sir Ralph Esher,” as in the presumed edition of 1830. 3. A Copy of Verses Written for the Bellmen (1970), being twelve poems by Leigh Hunt reproduced from broadsides in the John Johnson Collection in the Bodleian Library, hand-printed in a few copies only, a gift from Michael L. Turner. 4. A copy of the first edition of Hunt’s five-act play A Legend of Florence (1840), disbound and interleaved with production notes and drawings in an unidentified hand, a gift from William Matheson.

LEGGETT, JOHN. Notes of interviews, two copies of the manuscript, material discarded in revision, and correspondence from family, friends, publishers and associates relating to the biography Ross and Tom (1974) by John Leggett. Includes, among much else, letters from Catherine Drinker Bowen, John Dos Passos, Mary Hemingway, Arthur Koestler, Joshua Logan, Allen Tate, and Emlyn Williams. Gift of John Leggett.

LEONARDO DA VINCI. Scientific diagrams for water pumps, canals, pulleys, lathes, drills, weaving machines, mortars, crossbows, musical instruments, and an incredible variety of other devices and inventions by Leonardo da Vinci will soon be available in a splendid twelve-volume full-color facsimile edition of the Codex Atlanticus (New York and Florence: Johnson Reprint and Giunti-Barbera, 1973- ), of which five folio volumes have already been received. The original manuscript of some 4,000 sheets is today in the Ambrosian Library in Milan, having earlier passed through occasional vicissitudes such as capture and transport to France by Napoleon’s army. Although other important Leonardo manuscripts survive, the Codex Atlanticus has been called “the single most important source for the history of science, art history, and Renaissance and Leonardo studies.”

MABBOTT COLLECTION. Edward Coote Pinckney (1802-1828) of Baltimore and Charleston stands somewhat apart from other nineteenth-century American poets in his harking back to the aristocratic tradition of the English Cavalier poets. His output was small and his collected poems scarcely fill the little volume of seventy-two pages, entitled simply Poems, which we have recently added to the Mabbott Collection in the rare second edition of 1838. Pinckney was considered by Edgar Allan Poe to be the finest American lyric poet of his time. Purchased on the Mabbott Fund.

MENCKEN, H. L. Two letters, ca. 1932, to Cora T. Dunsmore concerning the literary critic Percival Pollard. Mencken mentions that Ambrose Bierce was one of the few mourners at Pollard’s funeral and he indicates that “Iowa will take a high place” in a series of articles in The American Mercury designed to establish the relative rank of the states “in actual civilization.” Gift of Cora T. Dunsmore.

OLD TESTAMENT. The five sturdy volumes of Geniza Bible Fragments with Massorah and Vocalization (Jerusalem, 1973) bring together, in photographic facsimile, fragments of Biblical manuscripts with Babylonian vocalization. The original fragments are widely scattered in libraries in Leningrad, Paris, Berlin, Jerusalem, New York, London, Oxford, Cambridge, and elsewhere.

PIPER, EDWIN FORD. Six letters, dating from 1920 and 1921, addressed to Paul L. Benjamin, concerning Piper’s book Barbed Wire. The letters are rich in autobiographical details and include comments on the social history of the South Platte area of Nebraska in the 1870’s and 1880’s as well as comments on Professor Clark Fisher Ansley and on the poetry of Carl Sandburg. Gift to the Iowa Authors Collection from Paul L. Benjamin.

POSTERS. Several World War II posters, among them two by Norman Rockwell and one depicting the Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, now supplement the Library’s earlier collection of posters from World Wars I and II, including a “Bundles for Britain” poster by Grant Wood. Gift of Edwin B. Green.

RAGNAROK PRESS. Several colorful leaflets and poetic broadsides were issued during the past year by the Ragnarok Press from its new location in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Water Astonishing is a paper-bound booklet of poems by Lynn Sukenick, one of 200 copies, with drawings by Bosiljka Raditsa; and Water, Light, Woman is one of 125 copies of a haiku card by Rochelle Holt and D. H. Stefanson. Among other recent items from the press are Rochelle Holt’s The Sun and the Moon, her Poems for Amaefula, and Holly Springs: A Letter. In addition to broadside poems by Laurie Velger, W. Rasch, and Kathleen Mannozzi, special mention should be made of D. H. Stefanson’s The Class of ’54: An Ode to Ben Jonson.

REDPATH, JAMES. Letterpress book of 742 pages, October 23 to December 15, 1869, containing retained copies of outgoing correspondence. Included are copies of letters written to Mark Twain, Charles Sumner, Josh Billings, Frederick Douglass, Grace Greenwood, Horace Greeley, and other platform lecturers. Gift to the Redpath Chautauqua Collection from the estate of the late Carl E. Backman.

ROSEN, JACK. Original caricature, in color, of Henry A. Wallace drawn by artist Jack Rosen and autographed by Wallace. Gift of Jack Rosen.

STONE WALL PRESS. The Stone Wall Book of Short Fictions (1973), edited by Robert Coover and Kent Dixon, is one of 325 copies of a collection printed by hand in Iowa City. Among the contributors are W. S. Merwin, Jorge Luis Borges, Richard Brautigan, Joyce Carol Oates, Gail Godwin, and twenty other contemporary authors.

VAN VECHTEN, CARL. Two publications inscribed to his bibliographer, Scott Cunningham: Five Old English Ditties, with Music by Carl Van Vechten (1904), one of 100 copies of Van Vechten’s first published work; and Interpreters and Interpretations (1917), one of only ten large-paper copies. Together with a pamphlet inscribed by Van Vechten to Ben Ray Redman: The Tow-Headed Blind Boy by Samuel Hoffenstein, “being a footnote in ash and scarlet on Carl Van Vechten’s brilliant and amusing novel The Blind Bow-Boy,” one of 250 copies privately printed in 1923 by the Laurance Press of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

WINDHOVER PRESS. A Cub Tells His Story, the only surviving example of the apprentice journalism of John O’Hara, was printed in 1974 by the Windhover Press of Iowa City in an edition of 150 copies, with a preface by Matthew J. Bruccoli. Gift of the Windhover Press.