Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created the series because I genuinely believe there is something in our collections for everyone, whether you’re writing a paper or just want to have a look. “That’s Distinctive!” will provide a more lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique materials at Spencer – including items that many people may not realize the library holds. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this page.

Did you know that Spencer Research Library houses an extensive collection of Moby-Dick editions and adaptations? The more than 100 books in the collection range in type and size, so today I am sharing just a few with you.

Published in 1851, Moby-Dick; or, the Whale was written by American writer Herman Melville. The book “recounts the adventures of the narrator Ishmael as he sails on the whaling ship, Pequod, under the command of the monomaniacal Captain Ahab.” Though it is now considered a great American classic, Moby-Dick did not gain traction until the early 1900s. According to Wikipedia, “the novel has been adapted or represented in art, film, books, cartoons, television, and more than a dozen versions in comic-book format. The first adaptation was the 1926 silent movie The Sea Beast, starring John Barrymore.”

Many of the copies and versions of Moby-Dick at Spencer Research Library, including those shown below, were donated to the library by Elizabeth A. Schultz. Schultz, an emerita professor from KU’s Department of English and a former Fulbright Lecturer, advocates “for both the arts and the environment in Douglas County.” As a scholar and avid enthusiast of Herman Melville, Schultz published Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth-Century American Art (1995), which examines artistic interpretations and illustrated editions of the novel. “Deftly interweaving words with images,” notes the University Press of Kansas, “Elizabeth Schultz radically reframes our most famous literary symbol and provides a profoundly new way of “reading” one of the key texts in American literature.” Along with the donated books, Spencer houses a copy of Schultz’s book.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Student Manuscripts Processor and Museum Studies Graduate Student Sarah Adams revises her ideas about the nineteenth century after working on the collection of British poet L. E. L.

When we think of English society in the nineteenth century, we often associate it with what we’ve read in classic novels. British literature and culture of that era seemed to me to lean heavily on polite social decorum and chaste modesty. With such stringent moral codes, people from these periods can at times appear dull compared to modern society. However, after working on a certain nineteenth-century collection in the processing department, I have a hard time believing this to be the case.

 

Two portraits of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.). Left: by S. Wright del; S. Freeman sc.; Right: by D. Maclise ; J. Thomson. Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) Collection. Call Numbers: MS 223 E1 (left) and MS 223 E2 (right). Click images to enlarge.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838), or L.E.L., was an English poet and novelist in the early nineteenth century.  She was controversial in her time due to rumored inappropriate relations with a man, a broken engagement, and her suspicious death (perhaps by suicide). Her small collection at the Spencer Research Library (MS 223) includes some of her poetry as well as personal correspondence. In her letters, L.E.L. displays a certain frankness that I was surprised to see in that time period. She could be quite harsh on those she felt were unexciting or uninspired.

In one passage from a letter to Mrs. E. Lytton Bulwer [1834?], she said this of her cousin Caroline:
“My cousins have all good constitutions, complexions, and tempers. They have always lived surrounded with every comfort and have ideas as regular as the lines in a copy book. They hold rouge to be endangering your immortal soul, the opera as sinful, and theaters the downright profession of the devil. In short, Caroline’s idea of London, where she spent a few weeks after their bridal excursion, is that of the whole set, my that ‘it is a great, wicked, expensive place.’”

In another passage, she writes regarding her cousins’ ideas of recreation:
“I have no taste for innocent pleasures.”

 Detail from the first page a letter from L. E. L. to Mrs. Bulwer.  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) Collection.
Call Number: MS 223 Bc2.  Click image to enlarge

And further:
“One of my little cousins has a gold chain to which she attached at least as much the idea of dignity as of vanity. Her younger sister first implored her to give it – no – then to lend it. The negative nod even more decided. At last the petition became a ‘farther looking hope’ and she exclaimed, ‘Will you Annie leave it me in your will?’ ‘No,’ replied the cautious Miss Annie, ‘I shall want it to wear in Heaven.’”

This attitude toward her cousins likens L.E.L. to one of the many “villains” of Victorian literature. Perhaps, though, there was another side to nineteenth-century English society that some modern readers choose to ignore in the interest of romantic ideals we’ve grown to love in our favorite classics.  I, for one, find it much more exciting to imagine this slightly wicked side in our beloved heroes and heroines.

Curious about L.E.L.’s work? Click here for a link to one of her poems, “Revenge.”

To read the entirety of the letter from  L. E. L. to Mrs. E. Lytton Bulwer discussed in this post (MS 223: Bc.2), please click on the thumbnails below.

   

Sarah Adams
Student Manuscripts Processor and Museum Studies Graduate Student

Editor’s Note: An online finding aid for the Spencer Library’s Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) Collection will be available through our finding aids search portal in the coming weeks.

On a hot July morning two Mondays ago, a bus pulled up in front of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library and out stepped seventeen scholars.  The erudite visitors were participants in Jane Austen and Her Contemporaries, a five-week NEH Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers held at the University of Missouri and led by Dr. Devoney Looser. After some much-needed tea and victuals in Spencer’s North Gallery (the bus had left Columbia, MO at 5:45 am, after all), the scholars settled in for a day of workshops and research.  No time for pianoforte or leisurely games of cards for these visitors!  The morning’s activities included sessions with Spencer Library staff addressing genres of documents prevalent during Austen’s time, 18th- and 19th- century handwriting, and reference resources for working with rare books and manuscripts.

Say “Northanger Abbey!”:  Participants in the NEH Summer Seminar “Jane Austen and Her Contemporaries”
with Spencer Library staff.

In the afternoon, the scholars retired to the reading room where they threw themselves into conducting research with some of Spencer’s late 18th- and early 19th-century manuscript collections. Read the rest of this entry »