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~ News from the Rare Books Department of Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah

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Tag Archives: libraries

Sassy Faith

05 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Physical Exhibitions

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Tags

5oth Anniversary, books, faith, Friends of the Library, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jon Bingham, Jonathan Sandberg, libraries, Luise Poulton, Lyuba Basin, rare books, Scott Beadles, Wallace Stegner

“To erect a great library in the year 1968 is an act of stubborn and sassy faith.” — Wallace Stegner, from his dedication address for the opening of the J. Willard Marriott Library

Rare Books joins in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the J. Willard Marriott Library, recognizing the work of the Friends of the Library, past, present, and future, in its charge to keep our collections safe and growing at a time when digital matter consumes students and administrators alike.

Long live the Book! Long live libraries!

J. Willard Marriott Library
Level 1 lobby
Friday, January 5 through Sunday, March 18

Curated by Lyuba Basin and Luise Poulton with help from Scott Beadles, Jonathan Sandburg, and Jon Bingham.

For more information, contact Luise Poulton 

 

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Rare Books goes to Argentina!

22 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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Tags

Argentina, artists' books, bookstores, bookworm, characterization, Comparative Literature/Cultural Studies, creative writing, creativity, English, Faulkner, fight, Fulbright Scholarship, Hemingway, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jonathan Safran Foer, La Lucha, language, Latin America, libraries, literary analysis, literature, Luise Poulton, Lydia Davis, Lyuba Basin, magical, materiality, rare books, Rare Books Classroom, Rare Books Curator, Rare Books Department, setting, short story, story, strikes, students, teachers, teaching assistant, text, textbooks, Universidad Nacional de la Pampa, University of Utah, UNLPam, whiteboard, Wolfe

“Rare Books helped me develop a different perspective on literary analysis.” – Lyuba Basin (Class of 2015 and graduate student in Comparative Literature/Cultural Studies, The University of Utah)

Lyuba Basin, former Rare Books Curator, writes from Argentina, where she is spending eight months on a Fulbright Scholarship.

“Today marks 12 weeks in Argentina. When I look back at it now, it seems like nothing. Yet, I can clearly remember the daily struggle of trying to adapt to this new culture, to adjust my ears and tongue to this new language, and to push aside the loneliness that often attached itself to my mind when I felt so far away from home. Despite the struggles and the cultural differences, I have relished my position as a teaching assistant at the Universidad Nacional de La Pampa. Unlike the large campus back home, UNLPam is a small and simple building located in the very center of the small and simple city. Standing only five stories tall, it blends in with the other shops and apartments located around the plaza; but what makes it distinct is the colorful murals that decorate the entrance and the classrooms inside. On top of that, the students and teachers, with their weekly strikes, create a sense of theatrics, a performance we call La Lucha, the fight.

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I have come to realize that this fight, while manifesting in a variety of ways, is universal. The fight to grow up, to succeed, to get ahead, to make ends meet. I see the same look of desperation in the eyes of my students that I had just one year ago. It is the same look of fear as they sit and wonder “What I am going to do with my life?” I look back in silence, because I’m afraid to tell them that after graduation, you probably still won’t know. I look back with the same question in my mind. However, of all the things I don’t know, I do know this: there will always be a constant in my life, regardless of where I travel or how far.

My love of literature.

As an English language teaching assistant at UNLPam I have transformed into a self-proclaimed literary expert. Of course, expertise is relative when you are one of two native English speakers in a university of thousands. Nonetheless, I am proud of the insight I have been able to provide and glad to see my bookworm tendencies finally come to fruition. I have been lucky enough to teach my students short stories by some great classics, such as Faulkner, Hemingway and Wolfe.
PS3511-A86-T6-1957-coverPS3511-A86-I5-1948-coverPS3511-A86-H38-cover
PS3515-E37-F6-coverPS3515-E37-F37-coverPS3515-E37-O4-1952-cover
PS3573-O558-U5-1975-cover

But what makes the experience all the more fulfilling is being able to introduce new, contemporary literature into the classroom, with works by Lydia Davis and Jonathan Safran Foer, demonstrating to the students the diverse ways we can use and play with language.

As my lesson plans evolved I realized that the students did not have the same exposure to literature as I was fortunate to have back home. With only three small bookstores, two libraries, and no access to online orders, contact with literature outside of Latin America is quite difficult.

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In order to expand my students’ horizons I had to think creatively. Luckily, I still had an amazing team back home to help me out. The Rare Books Department at the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, was where I learned how to truly appreciate literature, and now I hope to share that with my students, and hopefully with the University of La Pampa as a whole.

In my most recent lecture, I decided to focus on my time as a Rare Books employee and remembered the presentations Luise Poulton gives on the ‘Materiality of the Book’. So I reached out and desperately asked Luise for help. I wanted to introduce the topic of Artists’ Books and explain why materiality could be as important to consider in the process of creative writing as characterization or setting. Using my own book arts project as an example and Luise’s notes from the Rare Books Classroom whiteboard, I was able to illustrate the magical thing that occurs when text becomes material. I was ecstatic to find the students wide-eyed with amazement, none of them having seen or even heard of such things before. Students excitedly came to me after class to discuss ideas, and even the professor encouraged them to develop their own creative interpretations for the short story assignment ahead.

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Working in Rare Books taught me that there is not just one way to tell a story; that creativity does not have to be stifled by what we learn in tedious textbooks. I was able to share what I have learned and bring it all the way to Argentina, changing the perspectives of fifteen students and one professor. While it seems like a small number now, I know that the experience I have passed down will continue to flow, from student to student, year to year, until the Universidad Nacional de La Pampa has a Rare Books department of its own.”

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Book of the Week – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn…

01 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Tags

American, banned, Chatto & Windus, England, Ernest Hemingway, first English edition, immorality, libraries, literature, London, Mark Twain, novels, pictorial cloth, profanity, publisher's advertisements, schools, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, United States

Adventures of Huckleberry FinnAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, frontispiece, title-pageAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ch XII

“I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right, then, I’ll GO to hell.’”

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN…
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
London: Chatto & Windus, 1884
First English edition

Written over an eight year period, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was at first blasted by the critics for, among other things, “blood-curdling humor,” immorality, coarseness, and profanity. The story is still banned by libraries and schools in the United States. Nonetheless, it is one of the defining novels of American literature. Ernest Hemingway said of it, “All modern literature comes from [it]. It’s the best book we’ve had…There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” It was published in England a few months before the American edition was published. Publisher’s advertisements in the back of this copy are dated October 1884. This copy is thread-sewn, one of two states of gatherings for the first English edition. Bound in original gilt-and black-stamped red pictorial cloth.

 

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Join Us! – “Alphabets of Creation”

20 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Events

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Tags

Albrecht Dürer, alphabets, American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Publishers Association, Arabic, Berkeley, Christian, creation, Gould Auditorium, Grolier Club, Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, Gyles Calvert, Harold Bloom, Hebrew, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jacob Behmen, Jakob Bohme (1575-1624), Jelaluddin Rumi, Jerusalem, libraries, London, M. Simmons, MacArthur Fellowship, Miryam Bartov, Muslim, mysticism, National Jewish Book Award, New Jersey, New York, Paterson, PEN Translation Prize, Peter Cole, poetics, poetry, Quelquefois Press, rare books, Rare Books Classroom, Seattle, Sefer Otiyot Shel Rabi Akiba, Sinai, Spain, Special Collections Gallery, Tabula Rasa Press, Tel-Aviv, The Nation, The University of Utah, Zohar

“Alphabets of Creation: Libraries, Mysticism, Poetics”

How might archives give rise to art? Is obsession with the letter a threat to spirit? When does the lamp shed light on life, and when does it simply make learning stink? In a playful and probing presentation, poet and translator Peter Cole will explore the role of language, libraries, and mystical linkage in the process of poetic creation.

Peter Cole has been called an “inspired writer” (The Nation) and “one of the most vital poets of his generation” (Harold Bloom). He is the author of four books of poetry. Cole’s translation from Hebrew and Arabic, The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, c. 950-1492, received the National Jewish Book Award and the American Publishers Association’s Award for Book of the Year. He has received numerous honors for his work, including a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and the PEN Translation Prize. In 2007 he was named a MacArthur fellow. Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Cole now divides his time between Jerusalem and New Haven, where he tends small gardens that fill his poetry.

PeterCole2
Wednesday, October 21

Lecture
5:30-6:30PM
Gould Auditorium, Level 1
J. Willard Marriott Library
The University of Utah

Reception, book signing, and Rare Books presentation
6:30-8PM
Special Collections Gallery & Rare Books Classroom, Level 4
J. Willard Marriott Library
The University of Utah

Free and open to the public.

These pieces and others from our rare book collections helped inspire Peter. How will they inspire you?


THE EPISTLES OF JACOB BEHMEN
Jakob Böhme (1575-1624)
London: Printed by M. Simmons, for G. Calvert, 1649
BV5080 B6 1649


BM517-O8-1708-Title
SEFER OTIYOT SHEL RABI AKIBA
BM517 O8 1708




OF THE JUST SHAPING OF LETTERS
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)
New York: Grolier Club, 1917
NK3615 D7313 1917


PZ90-H3-B323-1958
ALEF BET
Miryam Barṭov
Tel-Aviv: Sinai, 1958
PZ90 H3 B323 1958




THE ALPHABET OF CREATION: AN ANCIENT LEGEND FROM THE ZOHAR
Seattle: Tabula Rasa Press, 1993
N7433.3 A46 1993


PK6480-E5-C6-1993
ONE-HANDED BASKET WEAVING
Jelaluddin Rumi
Berkeley: Quelquefois Press, 1993
PK6480 A21 1993

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A Donation Makes Poly Poly’s

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

agriculture, alphabet, Amsterdam, anatomy, Antonio Blado, Antwerp, architecture, astrology, astronomy, Barbara Chavira, Basel, Bible, Bonaventura Elzevir, bookbinders, booksellers, celibacy, censored, Christianity, Christopher Plantin, commerce, creation, Daniel Elzevir, Elizabeth Isengrin, England, English, engraved, Ethiopian Church, Europe, expurgated, fable, festivals, French, frontispiece, German, God, Greek, Hebrew, heresy, hunting, Index of Forbidden Books, indulgences, initials, Italian, italic, Judaism, King Arthur, Latin, law, Leonhart Fuchs, libraries, Louis Elzevir, Lucovico Arrighi, Lyons, magic, Martin Luther, mathematics, medicine, Michael Isengrin, minerology, monks, music, navigation, paganism, painting, pharmacology, physics, Polydore Vergil, Pope Gregory XIII, priest, printer, printing, Protestant, Rare Books Division, Reformation, religion, Roman, Roman Catholic Church, Rome, Salt Lake City Public Library, Shakespeare, Spanish, sports, theater, Thomas Guarin, Tournai, trade, typography, Utrecht, vellum, vignettes, weaponry, winemaking, writing

The Salt Lake City Public Library donated a sixteenth century book to the Rare Books Division, thanks to the well-trained eye of City Library staffer Barbara Chavira. Barbara worked part-time in the Rare Books Division for many years. Her passion for the art of books, in all forms and over the centuries, brought us this important and welcome addition to the rare book collections. Thank you, Barbara ! Thank you, City Library !

PA8585-V4-D4-1576-a4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

POLYDORI VIRGILII VRBINATIS DE RERVM INVENTORIBVS…
Romae, apud haeredes antonij, Bladij, Impressores Camerales: Anno. M.D. LXXVI (1576)

Polydore Vergil (ca. 1470-1555), an Italian priest, spent much of his life in England. He is recognized for his history of England, a work that Shakespeare is known to have used as one of his sources. Vergil used critical analysis in his narration of historical events. His thesis that King Arthur was little more than fable, for instance, shocked contemporary readers.

It is his second published work, however, for which he was best known in his time. First printed in 1499, De rerum inventoribus (On Discovery), was a work unlike anything that had been published before. An inventory of historical “firsts,” it combined a wide array of subjects in an attempt to determine which individual or culture first invented things such as the alphabet, astronomy, magic, printing, libraries, hunting, festivals, writing, painting, weaponry and religion. Vergil culled much of his work from a wide range of ancient and contemporary writers. He focused on the genius of man in the origin or invention of all things – heretical thinking at the time.

In Book I he investigated the creation of the world, the origin of religion, the origin of the concepts of “god” and the word “God.” He suggested that much of Christianity had been adapted from Judaism or Roman paganism. Books II and III were studies of a wide-range of topics, mostly concerning the practical and mechanical arts including anatomy, astrology, law, medicine, commerce, mathematics, mineralogy, music, pharmacology, physics, trade, agriculture, architecture, sports, theater, navigation, and winemaking. The work was translated into French in 1521, German in 1537, English in 1546, and Spanish in 1551.

In 1521, more than two decades after he wrote the first three books, and at the dawn of Martin Luther’s protestant reformation, Vergil added five more books concentrating on Christianity. Vergil reworked his discussion of Christianity in deference to the Roman Catholic Church, which objected to Vergil’s reference to religion as a matter of scientific investigation. In spite of this concession, Vergil anticipated the scientific approach to religion that would become the norm a century later. The intended salve to the church failed when Vergil criticized monks, priestly celibacy, and indulgences. In 1564 the work was declared heretical and all editions were added to the Index of Forbidden Books. However, the work was so popular that two censored editions were printed after the ban.

This 1576 expurgated edition was sanctioned by Pope Gregory XIII in its front matter.

PA8585-V4-D4-1576-a2

PA8585-V4-D4-1570-CaGlorius

It is significant that this edition was printed by the heirs of Antonio Blado’s shop.

PA8585-V4-D4-1576-titlepage

PA8585-V4-D4-1576-regestvm

Blado worked in Rome from 1515 to 1567 as a printer in the service of the papacy. He was well-known for his scholarly works in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; and a 1549 document in Ethiopic type for the Ethiopian Church. Blado is also known for his use of an early italic type created by Ludovico Arrighi. The Rare Books Division holds five books printed by Antonio Blado.

This 1576 edition of Vergil joins an edition from 1570 and another from 1671, already in the rare book collections.

PA8585-V4-D4-1570-titlepagePA8585-V4-D4-1570-colophon

POLYDORI VERGILII VRBINATIS, DE RERUM INVENTORIBUS…
Polydore Vergil (1470? – 1555)
Basilea: 1570

Printer Thomas Guarin (1529-1592) was born in Tournai. He worked in Lyons as a bookseller, but by 1557 was in Basel, where he married Elizabeth Isengrin, the daughter of a printer. Guarin took over his father-in-law’s small press at Michael Isengrin’s death. Michael Isengrin had printed one of the many editions of De rerum inventoribus to be published in Vergil’s lifetime. Each of these editions contained significant variations. Isengrin printed Leonhart Fuchs’s sumptuous De Historia stirpivm. Along with the reprint of classical works, Guarin issued several editions of the Bible, published in both Latin and German, and one in Spanish. His printer’s device was a palm tree.

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PA8585-V4-D4-1671-frontispiece

POLYDORI VERGILII URBINATIS, DE INVENTORIBUS RERUM…
Polydore Vergil (1470?-1555)
Amstelodami: apud Danielem Elzebirius, 1671

Daniel Elzevir came from a distinguished family of booksellers, bookbinders, printers and publishers. Louis Elzevir (1546-1617), a Protestant émigré, began the business in Antwerp in about 1565, after he left a job with Christopher Plantin’s print shop. The Elzevir enterprise became one of Europe’s largest printing houses. Louis’s sons expanded the business with branches in The Hague, Utrecht, and Amsterdam. The Amsterdam branch was established in 1638 by Louis III. His partner was Daniel Elzevir, son of Bonaventura Elzevir, son of Louis. Daniel continued the family reputation for fine typography and design work. This edition of De Rerum inventoribus also contains another of Vergil’s works, Prodigiis, written in 1526 but not printed until 1531. The engraved frontispiece for this edition includes the invention of printing as one of its main themes. Numerous carved initials and vignettes. Bound in contemporary vellum.

Shakespeare is coming! The First Folio will arrive at the City Library in October.

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Join Us! – Book Collector’s Evening

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by rarebooks in Events

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Tags

Alta Club, Book Collectors' Evening, Fort Union, J. Willard Marriott Library, Karl Bodmer, libraries, Missouri, Nicolas Basbanes, rare books, University of Utah

Bodmer, Fort Union of the Missouri#b50101

Bodmer, Fort Union of the Missouri

Mark your calendar for the fourth annual Book Collector’s Evening

March 25, 2014
6:00 PM
Alta Club 100 East South Temple

Join the University of Utah’s Friends of the J. Willard Marriott Library for an eventful evening including a display of rare books, a silent auction, and a presentation by well-known speaker, bibliophile and writer, Nicolas Basbanes. In his presentation,  “Fruits of a Gentle Madness,” Basbanes will use anecdotal, specific, up-to-the-minute examples to illustrate how great libraries and important research collections have relied on, over decades and to this day, the passion and eccentricities of the private collector.

The evening will provide an opportunity to share your book collecting adventures and favorite books with fellow aficionados.

Reservations: Please contact Judy Jarrow by March 20, 2014 at 801-581-3421 or judy.jarrow@utah.edu. $40 per person

alluNeedSingleLine

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