Kenneth Spencer Research Library

St. Patrick’s Day is this Sunday, March 17, so we thought we would highlight a fascinating artifact from the Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s rich Irish holdings.

This autograph book, dating from 1921, contains entries by inmates at Ballykinlar Internment Camp.  Located in County Down in what is now Northern Ireland, Ballykinlar was a British-run camp that housed Irish prisoners during the Anglo-Irish War, also known as the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921).

Top: opening featuring an embellished camp credit ticket (left); Middle: opening featuring an inscription in Irish (right); Bottom: opening featuring a sketch and an inscription in shorthand.  Autograph Book, Ballykinlar Internment Camp, 1921. Call Number: MS K19. Click images to enlarge.

The book’s pages are filled with the internees’ inscriptions, drawings, patriotic sentiments, quotations, and poems (composed in English, Gaelic, and even shorthand).  Prisoners were housed in huts, as depicted in the sketch below, and many, like the author of the poem on the facing page, included their hut numbers when they signed their names.

Last stanza of the poem “The Angelus Bell”, written in the autograph book by a Ballykinlar internee:

[….]

Falls soft the light on the Altar white
When fragrant flowers and incense blend
And as the Aves raise in devout appraise
Men’s souls to Mary, the sinner’s friend.
But faint’s the knell of the Angelus bell,
So the prisoner turns in his barbed-wire pen
To wait the day whenev’r Risings may [?],
The sun of Freedom shall shine again.

Poem “The Angelus Bell”  inscribed by an internee and facing page sketch of the camp. Autograph Book, Ballykinlar Internment Camp, 1921. Call Number: MS K19. Click images to enlarge.

This manuscript volume came to the Spencer Library from Ireland as part of the 25,000 item collection of Irish nationalist, civil servant, and book collector, P. S. O’Hegarty (1879-1955).  The collection is particularly strong in publications and ephemera related to Irish politics as well as literature of the Irish Literary Renaissance.  O’Hegarty’s  library contains another internment camp autograph book from the early twentieth century.  This second book belonged to a man named Paul Cusack, who was first a prisoner at Frongoch Internment Camp in Wales in 1916 following the Easter Rising and then later at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin in 1921 (Call Number: MS K18).  The portion of Cusack’s autograph book that dates from 1916 includes an inscription that appears to be by fellow Frongoch inmate Terence MacSwiney.  MacSwiney later became Lord Mayor of Cork and died during a hunger strike while incarcerated in Brixton Prison in 1920.  Autograph books such as these offer insight into an important period in Irish history.

To learn more about the Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s Irish Collections, visit the overview of Spencer’s Irish holdings on our website or delve deeper with our Irish Collections Lib Guide (especially helpful for identifying our Irish manuscript holdings).

Looking for St. Patrick’s Day-themed activities in town?  Lawrence’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade will take place on March 17, 2013 at 1:30pm. On March 23, the Irish Roots Cafe will host a musical event at the Grenada, which will include Sean Nós style song in the Irish language.

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian

In honor of Presidents’ Day (and the upcoming Academy Awards with a certain Lincoln movie in the lead with twelve nominations), we highlight this Presidential pardon signed by Abraham Lincoln on November 25, 1864.

He pardoned one Gordon Lafitte, alias Gibson, for “making counterfeit coin.” Mr. Lafitte had served 4/5ths of his 5 year sentence and was pardoned for good behavior while behind bars.

Pardon for Gordon Lafitte. Signed by Abraham Lincoln and William H. Seward. November 25, 1864.
Call number: MS Q2:1. Click images to enlarge.

Whitney Baker
Head, Conservation Services

Pliny the Elder, that most famous and trustworthy of the ancient Roman naturalists, was too curious about natural phenomena for his own good; as every school-child knows, he was asphyxiated by volcanic dust and gasses when he went to investigate the same eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii in 79 A.D.

Aristotle and Pliny are the names that come to mind when we think of naturalists of the ancient world.  Aristotle was the originator of biological classification; in contrast to the Biblical groups of animals as “clean” or “unclean,” he established categories based primarily on anatomical and other observable characteristics. His was a coherent natural system. The Spencer Library has several editions of Aristotle’s Historia Animalium, the earliest printed in 1493.

The only surviving work of Pliny is the encylopedic Naturalis Historia, the earliest extant manuscript of which dates from the 10th century.** His work was a compilation of all the animals and plants that he knew of or had heard about, and contained little that was original. He was not yet a systematist and there was little order in his arrangement, but we have him to thank for the survival of some of the writings of others, and he is regarded as THE authority on natural history from the days of Imperial Rome through the Middle Ages.

Pliny, the Elder. Caji Plinii Secundi … Bücher und Schrifften von der Natur, Art und Eigenschafft der Creaturen oder Geschöpfe Gottes … [Naturalis historia. German.] Franckfurt am Mayn : Feyrabend und Hüter, 1565. Call Number: Summerfield E1059. Click images to enlarge.

Beginning with the earliest printing of Pliny in 1469, there were at least 42 printings in numerous languages, including English, before 1536. The Kenneth Spencer Research Library houses 21 separate editions produced between 1476 and 1685. This German version contains books 7-10 and part of book 11. The translation was made by J. Heyden Eifflender von Dhaun and is illustrated with woodcuts by Jost Amman and Virgil Solis.

Sally Haines
Rare Books Cataloger
Adapted from her Spencer Research Library exhibit and catalog, Slithy Toves: Illustrated Classic Herpetological Books at the University of Kansas in Pictures and Conservations

**Author’s Note: This is the information we had at the time of publication of Slithy Toves in 2000; Mr. Roger Pearse has recently pointed out that in fact there do exist fragments of 5^th century codices of Pliny.

Sometimes deterioration can be a useful tool for discovering how a book was made. This example, in poor condition, allows us to see how the book’s boards were constructed. Rather than one piece of wood or paperboard, the boards are made from layers of stiff paper glued together with starch paste. Each board is comprised of twelve layers of “printer’s waste,” or discarded pages from other books available for use by the bookbinder. The printed pages used were printed in both black and red ink, probably dating from a 15th century bible.

Andreas Fabricius. Chemnicensis. [Germany?, 1549?]. [Bound with printed work: Joachim Camerius, 1500-1574 . Capita pietatis et religionis Christianae versibus Graecis comprehensa ad institutionem puerilem […], Lipsiae: V. Papa, 1547]. Call number: MS B38. Left: binding open to see the book’s insides; Right: title page for the manuscript; Bottom: book open to show the layers of board.  Click images to enlarge.

The tooled pigskin cover is detached, allowing us to see how the book was sewn on three pairs of linen cords. The cord ends were frayed out and glued to the outside of the “boards.” Linen cords were used as a core to sew on decorative endbands at the head and tail (top and bottom) of the spine.

Left: the book’s tooled pigskin cover; Right: detail of frayed cords.  Click images to enlarge.

The text of this book is a combination of printed and manuscript pages. The subject appears to be a handbook of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. It is a true composite object!

Click on the thumbnails below for additional  images:

Whitney Baker
Head, Conservation Services

Note: For more detailed information regarding the contents of this volume, please see entry M115 in A Checklist of Medieval Manuscripts in the Department of Special Collections at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library (Revised edition, 1996), which is available in the library’s reading room.

The only image of St. Petersburg more plentiful in western books about 19th century Russia than the bronze horseman, is the ice hill, or “flying mountain,” a peculiarly Russian entertainment that may have something to do with the fact that Petersburgers are flatlanders. Paris, Rome, Athens, and Lawrence have their high points, hogbacks, and hills, but at no point on the delta on which Peter built his city is there a spot over thirty feet above sea-level. Of all the ailments that have plagued that city – typhoid fever, typhus, cholera, giardia, influenza, malaria, diphtheria, syphilis, smallpox, and the common cold – altitude sickness has not been one of them, and actually the hill provides some relief from high barometric pressure if not from a queasy stomach.

Scenes in Russia; Describing the Manners, Customs, Diversions, Modes of traveling, &c. of the Inhabitants of that Country. London: printed for J. And E. Wallis, 1814. Call Number: Children 5310  (click image to enlarge).

This contraption seems to be a combination of ski-jump and roller coaster: each person climbs into a small 4-wheeled shallow sided box at the top of a platform and careens downhill on a track. Sometimes ridges (moguls?) are added to increase velocity coming down enough to send them up the other side. When the River Neva is frozen the flying mountains are erected on the ice.

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

Sally Haines
Rare Books Cataloger