Recent Acquisitions

Interesting and valuable research materials in a number of fields have been acquired by The University Libraries during the past year.

Several Latin American periodicals have been obtained including a few apparently unknown in other North American libraries. El Apuntador, nos. 1-24, Mexico City, 1841, was one of the earliest attempts in Mexico to produce a journal devoted to the theatre and belles lettres. Virtually every major novelist, poet, and essayist of Mexico of the day contributed to this organ. Revista Literaria, nos. 1-35, Caracas, 1865, may well be the earliest journal of Venezuela devoted exclusively to literature.

Fine copies of two of the well-known and important English literary periodicals have been acquired: The Tatler and The Spectator, eighteenth-century journals edited by Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele. Some interesting bibliographical points in our copy of The Spectator have already been noted in comparing it with a large number of copies detailed in a recent study.

A number of magazines stemming from the various art and literary movements of the twentieth century have been obtained in varying states of completeness. Many of them are obtainable only issue by issue as they turn up in various parts of the world. Two of these which have recently been completed are Lacerba, Volumes 1-3, Florence, 1913-1915, an important Futurist publication; Axis, nos. 1-7, London, 1935-1937, an avant-garde organ for art and letters; and Repères, a rare Surrealist series published in Paris in the 1930’s in twenty-five issues, each consisting of a single poem by such significant figures as Paul Eluard, André Breton, Franz Kafka and René Char, with original prints by such equally important artists as Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Picasso, and Max Ernst.

A collection of first editions of George Bernard Shaw as well as more than twenty items of correspondence from Shaw form a significant addition to the English literature collections. English literature is further represented by letters and/or manuscripts of T. S. Eliot, Stephen Spender, Siegfried Sassoon, Edith and Osbert Sitwell, Arthur Symons, Richard Le Gallienne, and Lawrence Durrell. The Leigh Hunt collection has acquired eight autograph letters and three manuscripts of Hunt, a letter from Thomas Carlyle to Hunt, and the manuscript of an unpublished book by Hunt’s son, Thornton. To the Edmund Blunden collection has been added an extensive correspondence comprising about one hundred letters from Blunden to a friend as well as carbon copies of the letters to Blunden. Another collection of interesting correspondence is a gift from Mr. Ferner Nuhn consisting of forty-four letters to Ruth Suckow and Mr. Nuhn from Dorothy Richardson, Sigrid Undset, Robert Frost, John Dewey, and others.

A number of eighteenth and nineteenth century novels have been acquired, among them a first edition of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s first book, A Voyage to Abyssinia, London, 1713, as well as first editions of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, London, 1748, and of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, London, 1811.

Representative of American letters are a first edition of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana, 1702, a gift of the Old Gold Development Fund; Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, London, 1792, a gift of Professor Ernest Horn; and William Faulkner’s Salmagundi, Milwaukee, 1932. In addition to its rarity, our copy of Salmagundi has the added attraction of a full page autograph comment by the publisher and designer of the book, Paul Romaine, who recounts the inception of this first Faulkner anthology.

Among a number of items of interest to the study of the Renaissance and Reformation are the following:

Eck, Johann von. Repulsio Articulorum Zuuinglii Ces. Maiestati Oblatorum, no place (ca. 1530). Eck, the arch-defender of orthodoxy, castigates the great Swiss reformer, Zwingli, in a vehement attack on the latter’s treatise, Ad Illustrissimos Germaniae Principes.

Hotman, Jean. Anti-Choppinus, Wilobran 1593. The diplomat, Hotman, addresses his treatise to the jurist, Choppin, in the effort to reconcile French Catholics and Protestants under Henri IV.

Morzillo, Sebastian-Fox. De Historiae Institutione Dialogus. Antwerp, 1557. A significant Renaissance treatise on the historical method, citing history as the mirror of the present and the future.

Pigna, Giovanni Battista. Il Principe. Venice, 1561, A refutation of Machiavelli’s Prince, in which the author contends that a prince can strengthen his rule through statesmanship and virtue, education and courtly qualities.

Several historical manuscript collections have been received. Professor Curtis D. MacDougall, of Northwestern University, presented a very sizable collection of Progressive Party materials from the period 1946 to 1954. Included are letters from Henry A. Wallace, Louis Adamic, Elmer Benson, Rockwell Kent, John J. Abt and others, together with memoranda, directives, press releases and speeches. From former Congressman Leonard G. Wolf has come a gift of campaign materials (1956-1960) which includes correspondence from Robert F. Kennedy, Paul H. Douglas, Sam Rayburn, Estes Kefauver, Albert Gore, Chester Bowles, and others. Among the papers received from former Congressman Karl M. LeCompte are letters from Richard Nixon, Cordell Hull, Wendell Willkie, and Ezra Benson.

A fine collection of literary manuscripts has been presented by the contemporary Chilean author José Donoso. Extending through twenty-two holographic notebooks, this material from the years 1955-1960 relates in large part to the prize-winning novel Coronación (available in this country in an English translation published by Alfred A. Knopf). In addition to early drafts, working notes, structural outlines, and character sketches for Coronación, these notebooks include discussions of ideas, settings, and structures for five other novels, as well as similar materials for short stories and plays. The collection is remarkable for the fullness with which it documents the creative process.

Collections of materials pertaining to motion pictures and television have been received from Robert Blees, motion picture and television writer; David Swift, producer; Arthur Ross, writer; and Albert Cohen, producer. These include extensive groups of scripts in various stages of revision, research and production records, correspondence, photographs, drawings, paintings, costume and set designs, and the various daily and long-term records of motion-picture production.

The foregoing is but a small sampling of the many important and useful acquisitions of The University Library during 1966. It is to be hoped that increasing quantities of such works may find a permanent home with us. Our needs grow daily with the growth in numbers of students and scholars and specialized fields of research interest.