Kenneth Spencer Research Library

On Tuesday, legendary writer Ray Bradbury died at the age of 91.  James Gunn,  writer, scholar, and founder of KU’s Center for the Study of Science Fiction, has memorialized Bradbury as being “[…] a bridge between the two cultures – not [C. P.] Snow’s science and literature but science fiction and literature.”  KU Libraries holds close to one hundred editions Bradbury’s work, including thirty-five volumes housed the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. We are also fortunate enough to hold a smattering of letters by Bradbury in several of our science fiction collections, including in the papers of editor and publisher Donald A. Wollheim, writer and critic P. Schuyler Miller, and writer Theodore Sturgeon.

Ray Bradbury’s letters to Ted Sturgeon are a particular delight: playful, comic, and frank, with plenty of talk of writing and sex.  He opens one missive with the salutation, “Dear Word-That-Rhymes-With-Virgin.”  Indeed that letter, written in April of 1947, captures Bradbury at a particularly significant moment in his career.   His first book, Dark Carnival (1947), was just about to be published, but Bradbury was too caught up in the process of proofing to boast.  “It’s a swell book,” he writes to Sturgeon, “but, Christ, the ennui, the vertigo, the inertia that overcomes one after hours of reading stuff you don’t want to read anymore.”

Indeed, as the letter shows, Bradbury navigated his early successes with a good deal of self-effacing wit.  When Sturgeon congratulated him on the literary coup of publishing a story, “The Man Upstairs,” in the March 1947 issue of Harper’s, Bradbury joked about his new-found ego: “Since my sale to Harper’s I’m not speaking to anybody.  Especially my grocer, my cleaner, my clothier, my radio man; to all of whom I owe money […].”  Now, sixty-five years later, it’s hard to imagine that Bradbury’s place in the annals of American storytelling was ever anything but assured.

To celebrate this influential author’s  life and writings, we share below three covers from Bradbury volumes in the Spencer Library’s collections (click images to enlarge).  Rest in peace, Mr. Bradbury.

Clockwise: The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury.  Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1950 (Book Club Edition). ASF C194; The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1951 (First Edition). ASF C55; I Sing the Body Electric, by Ray Bradbury. New York: Knopf, 1969 (First Edition). ASF C790.

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian

Both the French and the Germans were intrigued with Russian military uniforms and with good reason (see the image below). But one would think the tassels and plumes and chinstraps would have slowed a guy down and made him want to scratch rather than fight. And imagine the combatants’ manly gossip: “Tsk tsk, Yuri’s frockcoat is full of moth holes and he doesn’t know his shako from his kepi.”

Armée française et armée russe. Paris: A. Taride, [1886?] Call Number:  C5407

When Peter I created a standing army early in the 18th century he introduced standard uniforms for each branch. These uniforms evolved through the decades with each change of the guard, most starting out quite complicated and later becoming simpler and more comfortable. But how much time and energy was spent just getting fitted for these elaborate get-ups? And since the purpose of the covering was to distinguish the enemy from the fellow-traveler, how much fashion schooling did a soldier need not to take out his brother with friendly fire? Indeed sometimes the designs backfired when the color of a coat in certain terrain exposed its wearer on the battlefield. Camouflage became the order of the day in the early 20th century: 1904 in Britain, 1906 in Russia, but not until 1908 in the USA. WWI saw the re-appearance of metal headgear: the steel helmet, but the Soviets didn’t begin wearing it until the 1930s. As for hair, compare the powdered wigs of officers and the braids of infantrymen under Paul I of Russia (1796-1801) with the buzz cuts of today.

In the Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s  collections is an Austrian publication with equally attractive plates, Die Russische Armee im Felde, Wien: [s. n.] 1888, (call number: B5201).

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

Easter Sunday …  after dinner they brought us an enormous sort of cake to look at – it is made of flour, lard, cheese, & quantities of eggs – the name is Pizza – or Torta – one of these we saw must have been 4 feet in circumference – it is made at Easter – only in this part of the country not in Rome – it is rather good – very light – but too strong of the cheese – they eat this cake – sausages – eggs which have been blessed (so has the cake) and wash it down with the best wine which is stored up for the occasion – such is their Easter feast. …

Entered by Pauline Trevelyan in her diary,  Spoleto, Italy, 27 March 1842 , call number: MS C133

Traditional pizza recipes vary greatly in different regions of Italy. In her journal entry for Easter Sunday 1842 Pauline Trevelyan describes her first taste of Umbrian Easter pizza, a tall round loaf of cheese-flavored bread traditionally served with sliced Italian sausage and hard-boiled eggs. The photograph featured below shows the tasty recreation of that meal submitted to the recent University of Kansas Libraries edible book competition.

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In Medieval Europe books were a precious commodity. Books were hand-copied manuscripts, and might be fashioned with metal hardware to chain them to a bookcase or desk to protect them from theft.

Sermones de sanctis by Frater Soccus. [Germany?] ca. 1370. Call Number: MS D84

This book is a bound manuscript likely from Germany, dated circa 1370. The text is Sermones de sanctis (call number: MS D84), writings of Frater Soccus, a monk from the Cistercian order.  The pigskin binding, tooled all over the covers, has a chain attached to the back board at the top. Storing this on a modern shelf created problems, as the chain drapes down the back cover and makes it impossible to place another book next to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that the Kenneth Spencer Research Library has a KU-themed Monopoly game or a memory game created by Mark Twain?  Come see the diversity of the Spencer Library’s collections presented in a new exhibition entitled “Riddle Me This: A History of Games and Puzzles.”

“Riddle Me This” exhibition. Right: Gavitt’s Stock Exchange (G-S-E).
Topeka, Kan.: W.W. Gavitt Printing and Publishing Co., 1903. Call number: RH E615

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