Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Recently, this book came into the conservation lab with a detaching spine and separated boards. It is volume 2 of a version of The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale in Texas by Captain Mayne Reid. The gold-stamped cover caught my eye. It features this curious gentleman, minus head, but with boots and spurs.

Left: The Headless Horseman, before treatment. Right: A detail of the cover.
Call number C3400, Special Collections. Click images to enlarge.

To bring the book back to a usable condition, first I removed the previous paper spine lining with a softener called methylcellulose.

Application of methylcellulose to the spine lining to soften it. Click image to enlarge.

A layer of thick Japanese paper, applied with paste, served as a method for consolidating the spine and reattaching the boards, all at once. The Japanese paper extended onto the boards, under the lifted cloth.

Next I applied a lining that included a tube of paper (called a “hollow”), used to keep the fragile original spine pieces from bending inward when the book is opened. Finally, I dyed some red Moriki Japanese paper to match the cover cloth, and applied that over the tube and under the lifted cloth.

Left: Applying the hollow over the Japanese paper lining. Right: Applying dyed paper over the hollow.
Call number C3400, Special Collections. Click images to enlarge.

The final step was to reattach the loose spine pieces. The spine is still fragile, so I added a polyester dustjacket as a final precaution.

The finished conservation treatment (before the dustjacket).
Call number C3400, Special Collections

The Headless Horseman is ready to ride again!

Whitney Baker
Head, Conservation Services

It’s been an exciting week or two in Lawrence for scholars and fans of William S. Burroughs.  Wednesday, February 5 was the centenary of the writer’s birth, and around town events and exhibitions have been exploring his writing, art, and deep ties to Lawrence.  Burroughs made Lawrence his home during the last fifteen years of his life, and now, thanks to a gift from James Grauerholz, executor of the Burroughs estate and a KU alumnus, the influential author’s last journals will join the collections of KU Libraries.

Burroughs helped revolutionize the post-WWII literary landscape with novels like Naked Lunch and Nova Express, the latter a part of his cut-up trilogy.  To celebrate the gift, five of the ten journals will be on display in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s lobby through February.  These notebooks, which span from November 1996 to Burroughs’ death in August of 1997, were the basis for Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs, a volume edited by Grauerholz and published in 2000.  In their pages we see literature, politics, art, and philosophy collide with everyday life.  A reference to speaking with an ailing friend, poet Allen Ginsberg  (“His voice over the phone from Beth Israel Hospital in NYC sounded very weak”), appears alongside a reminder to buy disposable razors.  The final entry (see below) offers a meditation on conflict and love.  To the left Burroughs has written:  “Love? What is it? / Most natural pain / killer what there is. / L O V E.”

William S. Burroughs’ final journal. Image courtesy of Chuck France / KU Office of Public Affairs. Click here for a larger version.

On display through February in Spencer Research Library’s lobby: five of the ten journals donated by the Burroughs estate.

In addition to the journals, the gift also includes typescripts and draft materials for the edition Grauerholz produced. Once cataloged, these “last words” of William S. Burroughs will be available for researchers and the public to consult at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library.

Elspeth Healey,
Special Collections Librarian

Last week, the poet, playwright, and critic Amiri Baraka died at the age of 79. Baraka (who was born Everett Leroy Jones and published as LeRoi Jones until the late sixties) was a founder of the Black Arts Movement.  As his New York Times obituary suggests, his career took many turns and was punctuated by both accolades and controversy, but there can be little doubt that he was a significant figure for post-WWII American literary culture.  The Kenneth Spencer Research Library houses over 45 items by or containing contributions from Amiri Baraka, with more than double that amount in the KU Libraries circulating collections. Spencer’s holdings include several scarce or ephemeral items, such as an advance proof of his important study Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963), a 1965 fundraising letter for the Black Arts Repertory Theater/school of Harlem, the illustrated broadside A Traffic of Love (1967), and the 13-page mimeograph edition of his play Slave Ship, An Historical Pageant (ca. 1967).

Yugen, edited by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and Hettie Cohen. Nos. 1-8 (1958-1962). Call Number: Ser C170. Click image to enlarge.

 Among our earliest holdings for Baraka is a complete run of the journal Yugen (1958-1962), which he edited with his first wife, Hettie Cohen. Only eight issues of the magazine were published, and it included contributions from writers such as William Burroughs, Robert Creeley, Diane DiPrima, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder. Spencer’s holdings are strongest for the first decade and a half of Baraka’s career, from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, during which time he was associated first with the Beats and then the Black Arts Movement.

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian

The statue of The Bronze Horseman (= Peter the Great, the inspired hero, rash, speedy, proud, majestic, handsome, and yes, six and a half feet tall in real life!) symbolized a powerful upsurge in Russian energy (and the horse and his rider are pointed westward). Indeed it is the subject of many a frontispiece in our holdings of St. Petersburg travel literature, and is immortalized in Pushkin’s poem, “The Bronze Horseman.”

Statue of Peter the Great: Frontispiece from Augustus Bozzi Granville’s St. Petersburg.
A Journal of Travels to and from that Capital. 2nd ed., carefully revised and with considerable
additions. London: H. Colburn 1829. 2 vols. Call Number: C9755, v.1. Click image to enlarge.

French sculptor Étienne-Maurice Falconet was commissioned by Catherine II on recommendation of Diderot to erect a memorial to Peter I. Falconet apparently had only unhappy experiences during his Russian years and never came back to see his masterpiece in place and ready to leap into the no longer frozen future. Falconet knew that Catherine abhorred allegory, and he himself did not want a “Peter in Roman armor.” On this matter he locked horns with Ivan Betskoi of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. In the end he had his way artistically, but we have seen no images amongst our holdings that do it justice for display. Obviously this is one statue that must be seen “in the flesh.”

The story of the hauling from Finland of the granite block on which this saddle-sore Peter and his horse are erected is as dramatic as the story of obtaining the rock and wooden underpinnings of St. P., the city, in 1703. Both were the death of many a good Russian.

The biography of Granville, from whose travel journal the above frontispiece illustration is taken, reads like Candide: his Cornish mother’s death-bed wish was that he take a British last name, but in fact he was an Italian patriot and political rabble-rouser, journalist, actor, and eventually physician. He first visited Petersburg in 1827, a second time in 1829 as physician, when he predicted Nicholas would die before July 1855.

Sally Haines
Rare Books Cataloger

Adapted from her Spencer Research Library exhibit, Frosted Windows: 300 Years of St. Petersburg Through Western Eyes.

Recently, conservation student assistant, Jordan Key, constructed a series of scroll boxes from scrap materials we had on hand: corrugated board, cord, and posts for post bindings. The directions for these scroll boxes were provided by KU’s Japanese Studies Librarian, who received them in a workshop in Japan. Although we could not read the text in the scroll housing directions, the diagrams were easy to follow.

Box closed (L) and opened (R). Great Britain. Court of Chancery. Decree rolls. 1726-1728.
Call number: MS Roll 1. Special Collections.

Jordan added foam inserts on the ends for scrolls wound on wooden dowels to prevent these scrolls from being crushed. I was pleased by the final results–quick to make, elegant in appearance, and easy to use. This is a wonderful solution for materials that are too long to store flattened.

Previously, Spencer Library’s scrolls were either stored with many rolled items to a box, or not boxed at all. Now that they are each in their own box, paging these scrolls for patrons will be easier and safer.

Whitney Baker
Head, Conservation Services