Kenneth Spencer Research Library

In celebration of the 150^th birthday of the beloved children’s author and illustrator, Beatrix Potter, I am featuring a few examples of her beautiful work found in our Special Collections here at Spencer Research Library. Please enjoy the selections below along with a short biography introducing you to one of the most influential figures in children’s literature from the twentieth century.

Beatrix Potter was born on July 28, 1866 in London, England. Although she was a lonely child, she was able to find joy in drawing and painting things from the natural world, recording the plants and animals of the English countryside in stunning detail. As an adult she continued to illustrate, even drawing in the margins of letters sent to the children of her former governess, Annie Moore. Her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit came about from the drawings on one of these very letters from September 4, 1893!

Front cover and pages 34-35 of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit published in Philadelphia
by H. Altemus in 1904. Special Collections. Call Number: Children 5159. Click images to enlarge.

After partnering with the publishers of Frederick Warne & Co., twenty-two ‘little books’ with lovely color illustrations were produced. Some of these stories even featured her own pets, like the hedgehog Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.

Front cover of Beatrix Potter’s The tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle published
in New York by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1905. Special Collections.
Call Number: Children 2972. Click image to enlarge.

Because of her skill with writing exciting stories, painting detailed and colorful pictures, and using clear language, Potter’s works quickly became children’s classics.

Here is an excellent example of Potter’s ability to capture humor and action in both the text
and accompanying illustration from pages 52 & 53 of Beatrix Potter’s The Roly-Poly Pudding
published in New York by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1908. Special Collections.
Call Number: Children C606. Click image to enlarge.

She eventually married William Heelis, a solicitor, in 1913 and retired to her farm, Hill Top, to become a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep and a champion for local land conservation. After her death on December 22, 1943 she left 15 farms, several cottages, and over 4,000 acres of land to her husband and on his death to the National Trust, a conservation organization for the United Kingdom.

Potter’s fascination with nature is evident in the loving detail of both plants and animals
found in this example from page 56 of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher published
in New York by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1906. Call Number: Children 2983. Click image to enlarge.

To learn more about Beatrix Potter and view her delightful books, come visit us at Spencer Research Library and check out a few of these items:

• Peter Rabbit & other tales : Art from the world of Beatrix Potter. New York: New York University, [c1977]. Shelved at Spencer Research Library. Call Number: C18290.
• Potter, Beatrix. Beatrix Potter’s letters. London: Warne, 1989. Shelved at Watson Library. Call Number: PR6031.O72 Z48 1989.
• Potter, Beatrix. Transcribed from her code writing by Leslie Linder. The journal of Beatrix Potter, 1881-1897. London; New York: F. Warne, 1989. Shelved at Watson Library. Call Number: PR6031.O72 Z52 1989.
• Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. New York: Frederick Warne, [c1903]. Shelved at Spencer Research Library. Call Number: Children A78.

Mindy Babarskis
Reference Specialist
Public Services

In honor of Father’s Day this coming Sunday, this week’s blog post highlights a book in Special Collections that provides guidance for fathers: William Cobbett‘s 1829 work Advice to Young Men, and (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life, In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.

Cobbett begins his “Letter to a Father” with a statement about the blessings of children and the important role of fathers.

The beginning of William Cobbett’s “Letter to a Father,” in
Advice to Young Men, and (Incidentally) to Young Women.
London: The author, 1829. Call Number: B5060. Click image to enlarge.

Cobbett then continues on for roughly 116 pages, offering advice to fathers on a wide variety of topics including the importance of breastfeeding; the use of midwives and servants; the role of resolution, tenderness, and courage in parenting; the use of cradles; the controversy of smallpox inoculation; the roles of good food, clean air, exercise, book-learning, and schooling (by subject) in educating children; and the importance of impartial treatment of adult children, compared with their siblings.

On the surface, some of Cobbett’s advice seems surprisingly modern, as seen in the two excerpts below.

In section 249 of his “Letter to a Father,” Cobbett offers this advice:
“Let no man imagine that the world will despise him for
helping to take care of his own child.” Click image to enlarge.

“Men’s circumstances are so various,” Cobbett acknowledges in section 289.
“In giving an account, therefore, of my own conduct, in this respect, I am not to be understood
as supposing, that every father can, or ought, to attempt to do the same.” Click image to enlarge.

Other sections of Cobbett’s advice may seem more humorously outdated to 21st-century readers, such as his description of bath time.

A great deal, in providing for the health and strength of children, depends upon their being duly and daily washed, when well, in cold water from head to foot. Their cries testify to what a degree they dislike this. They squall and kick and twist about at a fine rate…Well and duly performed, [bathing children] is an hour’s good tight work; for, besides the bodily labour, which is not very slight when the child gets to be five or six months old, there is the singing to overpower the voice of the child. The moment the stripping of the child used to begin, the singing used to begin, and the latter never ceased till the former had ceased. (section 257).

You can read Cobbett’s work in its entirety through Project Gutenberg.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

To celebrate architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s 149^th birthday on June 8^th, I’m highlighting a few photos from the Wright Collection. This collection deals specifically with Frank Lloyd Wright and his buildings, but we have a number of other architecture items in our Special Collections. Come visit us anytime this summer from 9-5 pm on weekdays and explore these amazing collections yourself!

Photograph of Olgivanna and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Special Collections, Spencer Research Library.
Call Number: Wright P:III:4:67. Click image to enlarge.

Photograph of the Juvenile Cultural Study Center (Also known as the Harry F. Corbin Education Center)
in Wichita, Kansas by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, 1957. Special Collections, Spencer Research Library.
Call Number: Wright P:I:7:3. Click image to enlarge.

Color print of the Bott residence in Kansas City, Missouri by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, 1956.
Special Collections, Spencer Research Library. Call Number: Wright P:I:49:1. Click image to enlarge.

Mindy Babarskis
Reference Specialist
Public Services

Much as Martha Stewart sought to guide the American home-makers of the 1980 and 1990’s through the intricacies of family care and entertaining, so were authors such as Sarah Rutledge endeavoring to do over one-hundred years earlier. Rutledge published The Carolina Housewife by a Lady of Charleston in 1847 to provide her contemporaries with “receipts for dishes that have been made in our own houses, and with no more elaborate abattrie de cuisine than that belonging to families of moderate income” (Rutledge, p. iv, 1979 edition). As a longtime reader of books related to cooking and the domestic arts, I have observed that writers of these tomes feel a fierce pride about their local flora, fauna, and the manner in which these things are combined to create meals. Additionally, they often feel it is their duty to give instruction to the readers that as keepers of home and family; they are also guardians of the physical and moral well-being of the body of their community and even their nation.
KSU

While researching Rutledge’s book, I was pleased to find the work of a contemporary in the Spencer Research Library collection. While not strictly a cookbook, Resources of the Southern fields and forests, medical, economical, and agricultural, by Francis Peyre Porcher, fits nicely within the domestic economy genre. Porcher, a physician for the Confederacy during the Civil War, was granted a stay from service to write and publish this “Hand-book of scientific and popular knowledge, as regards the medicinal, economical and useful properties of the Trees, Plants and Shrubs found within the Southern States, whether employed in the arts, for manufacturing purposes, or in domestic economy, to supply for present as well as future want” (p. v, 1869 edition). The contents of its nearly 800 pages are a rich repository of botanical information, important today as they describe many plants now extinct or nearly so, including the much-beloved heirloom grain, Carolina Gold Rice.

Title page (l) and text page (r) of Resources of the
Southern Fields and Forests
(Charleston: Walker, Evans & Cogswell, 1869).
Call Number: C6678 item 1. Click images to enlarge.

It is in Porcher’s introduction to the Spencer’s 1869 edition, though, that we gain a peek into some less than botanical thoughts running underneath this seemingly straightforward text; those being about the abolishment of slavery and its effect on the southern states. The 1869 introduction is seven pages longer than the 1863 edition (written during the war), much of its added length owing to Porcher’s description of how the south’s many swamps and bogs must continue to be converted into farmable land. This was work that until emancipation, had been carried out by African and African-descent people held in slavery in the southern states. He writes, “[i]t is true that much of this work was done under the system of primogeniture, when it was in the power and to the interest of the owner of the soil…to look for the permanent welfare of his descendants.” While not mentioning slavery, Porcher seems to imply that the “owner of the soil” also “owns” the workers of the soil. Porcher acknowledges that the task of reclamation will be impossible without governmental assistance.

In his final paragraphs, he writes, “the State; which should, when it becomes necessary, perform for its citizens those acts of public utility, the right or ability to do which depended on systems and institutions which it has, from reasons of policy or interest, abolished or destroyed, and being deprived of which, they suffer” (p. xv). Once again, Porcher does not mention slavery directly, but instead uses the word “institution” in its place. The idea of slavery being an institution was first made popular by the South Carolina statesman, John Calhoun, when he spoke of it as the South’s ‘peculiar domestick(sic) institution’. Though veiled in euphemism, Porcher makes clear that he believes that the end of slavery is a punishment for the southern states; a punishment by which “they suffer”. This deprivation renders its population unable to protect its physical and moral interests.

Advertisement page from
Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, 1869.
Call Number: C6678 item 1.
Click image to enlarge.

Roberta Woodrick
Assistant Conservator, General Collections
Conservation Services

Charlotte Brontë was born on April 21, 1816 in Thornton, England to the Reverend Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë. Charlotte’s life was marked by tragedy, losing her mother when she was five, the aunt that raised her, and all five of her siblings. Yet despite these sorrows, she was able to use the experiences from her life to become one of the greatest writers of the Victorian era. Her passionate, honest, and rebellious stories continue to inspire authors and readers alike.

Front cover of the Thompson Brother’s Fireside Library edition of Jane Eyre: an Autobiography
with an illustration of Charlotte Brontë, [Nov. 1891?]. Special Collections, Spencer Research Library.
Call Number: O’Hegarty C2307. Click image to enlarge.

Jane Eyre, her most popular work, has bewitched audiences for more than 150 years with its poignant tale of an orphan girl who became a governess and dared to overcome societal constraints by finding true love and gaining financial independence. Although the story in itself is exciting, one of the main reasons for Jane Eyre’s continued popularity is the perfect blend of romance with realism. By pulling from her own life, Charlotte Brontë infuses her novel with verisimilitude. When Jane grieves over the death of Helen Burns, rages against the stifling life of a governess, and despairs over the impossibility of her love, Charlotte is letting us into her personal thoughts, emotions, and experiences. The images I have selected from one of our editions of Jane Eyre highlight these fictionalized autobiographical moments.

Lithograph by Ethel Gabain from Imprimerie Nationale’s 1923 edition of Jane Eyre.
This illustration depicts Jane Eyre at the puritanical Lowood School visiting her dying friend, Helen Burns.
As a child Charlotte lost two sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, to pulmonary tuberculosis due to the terrible conditions
at the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge. Lowood was modeled off of the Clergy Daughters’ School
and the character of Helen Burns was inspired by her oldest sister, Maria, who had been like a mother to Charlotte.
Special Collections, Spencer Research Library. Call Number: G64. Click image to enlarge.

Lithograph by Ethel Gabain from Imprimerie Nationale’s 1923 edition of Jane Eyre.
This illustration depicts Jane, as a governess, sitting ignored by her employer, Mr. Rochester,
and his upper class visitors. Charlotte Brontë served as a governess for a school and for private families
and found it degrading, as she explains in this quote from her letters cited in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
“I see now more clearly than I have ever done before that a private governess has no existence,
is not considered as a living and rational being except as connected with the wearisome duties she has to fulfill.”
Special Collections, Spencer Research Library. Call Number: G64. Click image to enlarge.

Lithograph by Ethel Gabain from Imprimerie Nationale’s 1923 edition of Jane Eyre.
This illustration depicts Jane weeping over her wedding dress after discovering that her groom, Mr. Rochester,
was already married. While teaching in Brussels, Charlotte fell in love with her French tutor, Constantin Heger,
a married man, but her love was not returned. She sent many letters to him with no response,
sending her into depression that would often manifest itself in headaches.
Special Collections, Spencer Research Library. Call Number: G64. Click image to enlarge.

If you’re interested in learning more about Charlotte Brontë or her other works, come visit us at Spencer Research library and check out these resources:

• Brontë, Charlotte. Napoleon and the Spectre: a Ghost Story. London: C. Shorter, 1919. Call Number: D916
• Brontë, Charlotte. The Professor: to Which are Added the Poems of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, Now First Collected. London : Smith, Elder and Co., 1860. Call Number: Yeats Y290. [William Butler Yeats personal copy].
• Brontë, Charlotte. Shirley: a Tale. London : Smith, Elder and Co., 65, Cornhill, 1849. Call Number: C217. [First Edition].
• Brontë, Anne, Brontë, Charlotte, and Brontë, Emily. Poems. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1846 [i.e. 1848]. Call Number: B2118. [Fist Edition, Second Issue].
• Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. London: Smith, Elder, 1857. Call Number: C4771.

Mindy Babarskis
Library Assistant
Public Services