Yesterday was the anniversary of Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al., the landmark case effectively ending the racial segregation in public schools, by declaring the concept of separate but equal unconstitutional.
In the General historical manuscripts, documents, and photographs collection (1981.008) we have two typed and signed draft opinions in the cases, 1954 (1981.008.8.7.1) and 1955 (1981.008.8.7.2), each signed by Justice Earl Warren.
Eliot Bliss was born Eileen Bliss in a Jamaican army garrison in 1903. She adopted the first name Eliot because of her admiration for T.S. Eliot and George Eliot. Bliss was educated in convent schools in England before rejoining her family in Jamaica in 1923. In 1925, she left the Caribbean for good and returned to England.1
Her two novels, Saraband (Peter Davies, 1931) and Luminous Isle (Cobden-Sanderson, 1934), are autobiographical, based on her experiences growing up as a child of Anglo-Irish descent in Jamaica. The Bildungsromane examine the development of young female characters aspiring to independence in their dominant colonial society.
Our initial Eliot Bliss holdings consist of letters between her and Jean Rhys, which were acquired for the Jean Rhys archive in 1994 (coll. no. 1976.011). In the introduction of the 1984 Virago Press reprint of Luminous Isle, Alexandra Pringle writes about Bliss and Rhys becoming good friends due to the West Indian childhood they shared in common.
They met in 1937, and Jean would often invite Eliot over for dinner. “She used to make me delightful West-Indian suppers, and we used to drink an awful lot. Well she could hold it, but it used to make me ill, frequently ill. And she had a delightful husband who used to leave us, go out. Well, often he would come home and find us drunk. He once picked her off the floor. And he was furious if he found we’d drunk his wine.”2
Their friendship lasted for decades, and they corresponded until Rhys’s death in 1979.
The Eliot Bliss diaries (coll. no. 1995.001) consist of 19 volumes of daily diaries dating from January 1959 to December 1960 and January 1963 to August 1980. Additional notes, correspondence, poems, photographs, and sales receipts are laid into many of the diaries.
Most recently, we acquired the Patricia Allan-Burns collection of Eliot Bliss (coll. no. 2011.009) in February of last year. The collection includes proofs and published copies of Bliss’s own works, other books from her personal library, correspondence, a manuscript from her mother, photographs, and ephemera.
Authors represented in her library include Rhys, Natalie Barney, Radclyffe Hall, and Emily Dickinson. After returning to England from Jamaica, Bliss “moved in with a female companion and established herself in the lesbian literary scene. She befriended Vita Sackville-West and Dorothy Richardson and later entered an intimate relationship with Anna Wickham (a poet and the rejected suitor of Natalie Barney).”3 As the collection’s name suggests, this purchase, as well as the previous two acquisitions, came from Patricia Allan-Burns. Allan-Burns, the dedicatee of Luminous Isle, was Bliss’s aforementioned companion in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire for over half a century.
Together with her novels, the correspondence, manuscripts, diaries, and ephemera of Eliot Bliss offer a direct insight into the experience of modernist women writers, postcolonial literature, and an author who was mostly forgotten during her own lifetime.
Notes
[1] Bliss, Eliot. Saraband. 1931. London: Virago, 1986. Print.
[2] Pringle, Alexandra. Introduction. Luminous Isle. By Eliot Bliss. 1934. London: Virago, 1984. xi-xix. Print.
[3] Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha. Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. p. 71. Print.
Due to the university’s employee appreciation week and an extended Memorial Day weekend, the department will be closed at the following times:
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We encourage researchers to contact the department and confirm our service hours and the availability of collections before visiting.
Most people are familiar with Addison and Steele’s periodical The Spectator, but have you ever heard of The Female Spectator?
Tremendously popular in her own time, Eliza Haywood was one of the first female novelists. Yet she fell out of recognition in the ensuing centuries. Only recently has scholarship begun to take her writing seriously and contemporary editions of her works have just become available. Haywood wrote prolifically, producing novels such as Love in Excess and The History of Betsy Thoughtless, as well as a satire of Richardson’s best-selling novel Pamela, entitled Anti-Pamela, or, Feign’d Innocence Detected. In between writing novels, Haywood produced issues of The Female Spectator, which consisted of a single informal essay that was released once a month.
Periodicals were very prevalent in the mid-eighteenth century. Aimed at a variety of audiences, it was not unusual for periodicals to be directed towards women. However, even female-oriented periodicals were mostly written by men. Haywood’s The Female Spectator is unique in that it is a periodical addressed to women, written by a woman. Although Haywood is the sole author, she created four fictional characters who ostensibly write the essays.
Special Collections owns a second edition of The Female Spectator, which consists of four volumes. The second edition is dated 1748; The Female Spectator was first published monthly from 1744-1746.
First published in December 1764, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto is considered the first Gothic novel. Walpole initially published the novel anonymously, prefacing the text with a fabricated claim that it was a translation of a manuscript dated 1529, which had been discovered recently in Italy. After the novel received a favorable reception, however, Walpole acknowledged the work as his own and admitted that it was fiction.
The Castle of Otranto explores the lord of the castle, Manfred, and his descent into depravity. The novel opens memorably with the sudden death of Manfred’s son Conrad, who is crushed to death on his wedding day by a giant helmet that falls from the sky. Prompted by lust and his sudden need for an heir, Manfred decides to divorce his wife in order to marry Isabella, the princess originally intended as his son’s bride. Yet Isabella has no intention of marrying Manfred, and the pace of the novel moves swiftly as she attempts to escape. The Castle of Otranto features supernatural elements and characters with hidden identities.
Special Collections owns a first edition The Castle of Otranto. This copy is known as the Frank J. Hogan-Borowitz copy, which features the 4th Earl of Newburgh’s device in gilt on the spine.
Tulsa area science fiction and fantasy author and educator K. D. Wentworth passed away last night (18 April 2012) from complications stemming from a long illness and pneumonia. She was 61. During her career, the multiple Nebula Award nominee wrote a number of novels including The Imperium Game, The House of Moons Chronicles, the Hrinn Series, This Fair Land, and collaborated with Eric Flint on The Course of Empire and The Crucible of Empire. Her wide array of short stories have been published since 1989, and several original pieces are as yet forthcoming. She was a regular judge for the Writers of the Future contest, having begun her career as a winner thereof. She regularly gave support to young writers as a member of the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers group in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was past secretary of the Science Fiction Writers of America and an alumna of The University of Tulsa.
Her papers were acquired by the Department of Special Collections in 2007/8. These consist of 12 linear feet of manuscripts, newsletters, and offprints. Their processing remains incomplete.
In preparation for this Thursday’s Walt Whitman Poetry Reading, we would like to highlight our collection of Whitman materials, as well as this particular poet’s significance to the history of Special Collections. In the late 1940s through the 1950s, a group of Tulsa book collectors known as “The Tulsa Bibliophiles” determined to amass as complete a collection of material by and about Walt Whitman as possible. The result was an impressive compilation of Whitman first editions and critical works, as well as a number of Whitman-related ephemeral objects. The collection was placed on deposit with the University of Tulsa in 1956, and in 1966 the surviving Bibliophiles donated the collection to the university. Although the University of Tulsa had been acquiring rare materials since the first decades of the twentieth century, prior even to the creation of a Special Collections department, the majority of our holdings were Native American materials until we received the Tulsa Bibliophiles donation, which became the foundational gift for our literary collections.
One of our most notable Whitman acquisitions is a first edition Leaves of Grass. First published by Whitman himself in 1855, he continued to edit and revise Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892. Thus, there is great variation between the text of the first edition and that of the final edition. Out of the 795 copies that Whitman produced during the first printing, it is estimated that a mere 200 survive today. Since Whitman employed a handset press, the first edition could not be reprinted as there were no plates. The type was redistributed after Whitman completed the printing. Further, the handset type on the press shifted during the printing, arguably making each first edition unique.
After reading Leaves of Grass, Ralph Waldo Emerson immediately wrote to Whitman, memorably remarking, “I greet you at the beginning of a great career […]”. Please join us this Thursday, April 19, at 7 p.m. in the Ann & Jack Graves Faculty Study for a reading of selections taken from the first edition Leaves of Grass.
McFarlin Library’s rich Special Collections include materials related to many poets from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, including Oscar Wilde, Ezra Pound, Stevie Smith, Richard Murphy, Robert Frost, Phillip Larkin, and many others. We are celebrating these collections with a series of poetry readings that feature the works of major poets represented in our Special Collections. For this exciting new project, we have enlisted the aid of three doctoral students in our outstanding English Department: Melissa Antonucci, Kristen Marangoni, and Ashley Schoppe. All of these women have worked as graduate assistants in our Special Collections and know the collections well. Each of them has picked a poet of interest and will organize a selection of works by that poet. TU students and local actors will be assembled to read the poetry in the Ann & Jack Graves Faculty Study; you are invited to join us for these public events (no RSVP is necessary)!
The second event in this series is dedicated to the poetry of Walt Whitman. Melissa Antonucci has selected a number of Whitman’s poems from Leaves of Grass for our enjoyment. Please join us next Thursday, April 19, at 7 p.m. in the Ann & Jack Graves Faculty Study for this exciting event.
Come check out our newest purchases and gifts!
Ellis, Edward Sylvester. Nathan Todd: or, the Fate of the Sioux’ Captive. New York; London: Beadle and Company, 1860. (PS1589.E3 N38 1860 Undrsz)
- The sequel to a previously purchased dime novel, Bill Biddon, Trapper, by the same author.
Thomas, Henry J., Mrs. The Prairie Bride: or, the Squatter’s Triumph. New York: Beadle and Company, 1869. (PS3030.T38 P73 1869 Undrsz)
General Federation Clubwoman. Washington, D.C.: General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1941-1970s. (HQ1871 .G46)
- “Magazine of the World’s Largest Organization of Women.” The library has 34 issues from 1954-1959.
Joyce, James. The Cats of Copenhagen. Dublin: Ithys Press, 2012.
Numbered copy (PR6019.O9 C387 2012), Lettered copy (PR6019.O9 C387 2012b Ovrsz)
- For more information on this groundbreaking Joyce publication, please see our previous post or the publisher’s blog.
Kermaire, Christine. Memory of Al-Mutanabbi Street. Charleroi, Belgium: Christine Kermaire, 2012. (N7433.4.K47 M46 2012 Art Undrsz)
- Kermaire’s second artist’s book created for the “An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street” project to commemorate the 2007 car bombing on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, which was the center of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community.
Owen, Narcissa, and Karen L. Kilcup, ed. A Cherokee Woman’s America: Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831-1907. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. (E98.C8 O94 2005)
- A gift copy signed by the editor.
Waltower, Earl. Home from the Nam: a Three Act Play. 1972. (PS3573.A4745 H66 1972)
- A play set in Harlem about a young soldier dealing with drug addiction after his return from Vietnam.
Starry, Starry TU (Coll. no. 2012.009)
- Artwork created by the University School’s fifth grade class. On display near the library’s circulation desk.
TU ephemera (Coll. no. 2012.012)
- 11 pieces of University of Tulsa ephemera, primarily flyers and brochures, from approximately 1945-50. A gift from The Ohio State University.
Marc Carlson gift of theatrical negatives (Coll. no. 2012.013)
- A group of 4 movie production stills and 2 stills from unidentified stage productions.
Edna Griggs Welch Hall Lowe theatrical ephemera (Coll. no. 2012.015)
- Theater programs, program covers, and related press reviews.
KKK letter (Coll. no. 2012.017)
- A 1928 letter from the Imperial Wizard, Hiram Wesley Evans.
Application for Phi Beta Kappa membership for the University of Tulsa (Coll. no. 2012.020)
- A gift from the Office of the Provost.
“War Book” U.S. School of Aeronautics (Coll. no. 2012.023)
- A World War I war book from the United States Army’s School of Aeronautics.
Carroll P. Crosby WWI diary and address book (Coll. no. 2012.024)
- An original manuscript diary kept by Carroll P. Crosby, American doughboy from Massachusetts, recording his service on the western front in France and his accompanying address book.
The name Sherlock Holmes instantly calls to mind the detective clad in a deerstalker cap and inverness cape with the astonishing ability to solve crimes through reason and logic. Though Sherlock Holmes remains an intensely popular figure, few today are aware of the origins of his character or the iconic image that we associate with Holmes.
Motivated by the decrease in paper prices and increase in literacy that occurred towards the end of the nineteenth century, George Newnes founded The Strand magazine in 1891. The Strand’s target audience was the growing number of men living in the suburbs surrounding London, who therefore had to ride a train to and from the city each day. The Strand could be purchased in railway bookstores and featured short stories that were brief enough to be read during the ride home. When Newnes asked Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to contribute short stories to The Strand, Doyle had the idea to write a self-contained story for each copy, while continuing the characters from issue to issue. In this way, Doyle resolved the central flaw of serialized novels: if readers missed an issue, they would miss key plot events, which meant they might lose interest in the story entirely. Doyle’s strategy was successful. The Strand generally circulated 300,000 copies, but when a Sherlock Holmes story was featured, circulation instantly increased to 500,000.
Newnes also solicited Sidney Paget to contribute illustrations to accompany Doyle’s writing. Newnes insisted that the illustrations be central to the story. For each Holmes short story, Newnes required an illustration on every spread, if not on every page. Paget represented Holmes as tall and slender, frequently smoking a pipe. Watson was stout with a prominent mustache. Paget’s illustrations are responsible for the images we traditionally associate with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson today.
Special Collections owns two runs of The Strand magazine, as well as an issue from the American edition of the magazine.
McFarlin Library Special Collections Flickr Page
