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Pomona College student, circa 1900
New in Special Collections is the 1874 California edition of Noticias de la Nueva California by Fr. Francisco Palou (San Francisco, Imprenta de Edouardo Boxqui y Cia, 1874). Ours is number 17 of 100 copies, numbered and initialed by John T. Doyle, who wrote the introduction. Printed in four parts, Special Collections' copy is bound in two volumes. Noticias is a comprehensive source book on the histories of the California missions from 1767 to 1784.
Part one, tipped in after page 192
Padre Francisco Palou, a Franciscan priest, missionary, and close colleague and friend of Fr. Junipero Serra, is called by some 'the father of California history' because of the depth and breadth of the primary sources that he gathered and reproduced in Noticias.
Most notable in this edition are the eighteen mounted albumen photographs and is one of only 21 California books illustrated with original photographs before 1890. Some of the photographs relate to San Diego and include a city view, San Diego Mission, Commercial Bank of San Diego, and olive orchard and palms at the Mission; others are of Mission Santa Barbara, Mission San Carlos, the old customs house San Francisco. The photographs were taken by prominent photographers, including Bradley & Rulofson, John R. Jarboe, E.J. Muybridge, and W.W. Stewart.
Part two, tipped in after page 272
Above is a WW2 era pamphlet showing Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito stranded on a boat in the middle of the ocean.
A new collection on World War II propaganda is available for research in Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library. This collection contains documents such as pamphlets, newspaper articles, posters, booklets, coloring books, and broadsides in German, French, Spanish Japanese, and English about Chinese exclusion in America, anti-labor unions in regard to Negro workers in Chicago, and pro-British and pro-Ally documentation, and anti-Nazism. Come to Special Collections to see this new collection and explore possible ideas for a research on propaganda during World War II.
Above is another powerful image from a pamphlet, "So Hitler Shall Reap", a good example of anti-Nazi material in this collection.
We have a new addition to our collection on Mormonism: Chad Flake's definitive bibliography on Mormonism from 1830-1930. This second edition is revised from the 1978 edition.
This massive bibliography of Mormon imprints, a work first begun by the noted historian Dale Morgan in the 1940s, contains over ten thousand entries on Mormonism's first century including pro and anti Mormon books, pamphlets, broadsides, periodicals and printed ephemera. (Scallawagiana 100)
After Morgan died much of his projected work on Mormon and Utah themes was unfinished. Later writers benefited from his extensive bibliographies, “tool books”, and his initial chapters of a work on Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. He was the moving force behind the first National Union Catalogue of works about Mormonism, which others expanded from its initial 700 entries. Using these documents, Brigham Young University librarian Chad J. Flake completed and published A Mormon Bibliography, 1830-1930 (1978), with an introduction written by Morgan before his death, which is considered an indispensable reference work for Mormon historians. However, according to Phillip Walker, 1000 crates of Morgan's personal papers, research notes, working drafts and bibliographies were deposited with the Bancroft library, and remain uncatalogued and unavailable to researchers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Morgan)
Crispin 12 is a missal, a service book containing texts for performing the mass, copied in France in the mid 1400s for John III de la Rochefoucauld, bishop of Mende and thirtieth abbot of St. Amant-de-Boixe, in the diocese of Angoulême. De la Rochefoucauld's arms, or a cross gules, supported by two angels, appears in the lower margin of the image below.
This illumination depicting the symbols of the Evangalists, based on John's vision in the Apocolypse--Matthew as Man, Mark as Lion, Luke as Ox, John as Eagle-- along with another full-page illumination of the crucifixion of Christ, comprise a bifolium that was added to the manuscript in the early 1600s.
The Crispin Collection of exquisite examples of early bookmaking and fine binding was given to Honnold Library by Dr. Egerton Crispin during the 1950s and early 1960s. Nearly fifty Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, including 12th century sermons, 13th century Bibles, 14th and 15th century books of hours, missals, psalters and antiphonals are among the contents of the Crispin Collection.
Denison Library on the Scripps College campus, and the library at the Claremont School of Theology also hold significant collections of medieval and renaissance manuscripts. These collections are cataloged definitively in Dutschke and Rouse, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Claremont Libraries (University of California Press, 1986), call number Z 6621 .H5814 1986
An interesting and charming bit of 18th century Americana from the historical manuscripts collections at Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library: Alexander Little's "cypheren book", a manuscript bound in homespun blue cloth, comprising mathematical principles and tables, including financial calculations as well as tables of weights and measures and avoirdupoise. It was created by Little between Nov. 12, 1795 to Aug. 12, 1796, when he was 16 years old, perhaps during an apprenticeship.
The manuscript numbers 26 folded sheets; here are two sample pages:
We know a little bit about Alexander Little. He was born February 20, 1779 in Virginia. He married Rachel Robinson, daughter of William and Ann Robinson. At some point, he lived in Mercer County, Kentucky, then moved to Indiana where he died July 26,1849.
Newly published in the Claremont Colleges Digital Library is a collection of original architectural drawings of some of the buildings that comprise the beautiful campus of Scripps College, one of the seven institutions of The Claremont Colleges consortium. http://tinyurl.com/ltjj5m
Founded in 1926, Scripps College was the first undergraduate institution added to The Claremont Colleges, a system of linked educational institutions organized by Pomona College (1887) in 1925-26.
Architect Gordon Kaufmann prepared a comprehensive campus plan for Scripps College in 1926, and during the next thirteen years, designed eight buildings for the campus, including residence halls, academic buildings and a walled garden. The buildings are Mediterranean in style and are laid out among formal gardens, courtyards, and lawns designed by landscape architect Edward Huntsman Trout.
The Scripps College Architectural Drawings collection includes architectural drawings for Eleanor Joy Toll Hall (1927) and the Ella Strong Denison Library (1931).
FMI, contact Denison Library 909-607-3941 or denison@libraries.claremont.edu
A donation to the Woodford Collection, this hand-colored map depicts coal deposits in the Forest of Dean, located in Gloucestershire, bordered by the Wye and Severn rivers, the site of important British mining operations in the early 19th century. This cross section map includes several overlays that depict alternate geological views of the hills.
A closer view of one section of overlays:
"Section of the Strata of the Forest of Dean" by David Mushet, reprinted from the Transactions of the Geological Society of London (1824), accompanies the cross section map. Mushet was an influential industrialist and metallurgist who established an ironworks in the Forest of Dean.
The personal library of Alfred O. Woodford, head of the Pomona College Geology Department from 1915 until 1955, is the nucleus of the Woodford Collection. The Collection has continued to develop through departmental purchases, devotedly guided by Donald B. McIntyre, department chair from 1955 to 1984, and more recently, through personal donations from Pomona College alumnus, H. Stanton Hill.
A collection of books, articles, and manuscripts by, about, and directly relating to Edward John Trelawny (1792–1881), author of several popular and influential works and memoirs about Byron and Shelley, is now part of the Libraries of The Claremont Colleges and is housed in Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library. Accumulated over a period of fifty years by Donald B. Prell, the core of the Collection comprises nearly 140 volumes.
Of particular note in the Collection is a manuscript notebook of Edward Ellerker Williams dating from about 1819–1820. Williams, a retired military officer, was living in Switzerland with Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin when he was introduced by Medwin to Shelley. Also, about this time, Trelawny joined Medwin, Williams, and Shelley, living together during those fateful days leading up to the sailing accident in which Shelley and Williams were drowned.
In his notebooks Williams recorded his travels during his stint in the Navy then afterward on the Continent with his friends and family, and are an important source for study of Shelley's last days. Williams' notebook in the Prell Collection contains many sketches, botanical specimens, fragments of poems, and one particular pencil portrait that might be of Shelley, pictured above.
From our collection of art photography, a portrait photograph of Mexican composer Carlos Chávez by Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo, inscribed by Chavez in 1934. Print dimensions: 2 7/8 in. x 3 3/4 in.
Carlos Chávez received formal training as a pianist, but was largely self-taught as a composer. He grew up during the period of intense nationalism in Mexico brought about by the end of the Mexican revolution. His investigation into native folk music and dance were a significant influence in his music. Chávez was also a distinguished teacher and had an active conducting career, working with nearly every major symphony orchestra in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
Álvarez Bravo studied painting and music in Mexico City; in 1922, he began to take photographs. Through his life he knew many of the artists and writers who lived or visited Mexico including Tina Modotti, Diego Rivera, Paul Strand, and Cartier-Bresson, to name a few. In 1930, when Modotti left Mexico, he provided illustrations for Francis Toor’s book Mexican Folkways. In 1938 he met André Breton; Breton published some of Álvarez Bravo's photographs in Minotaure.
Álvarez Bravo influenced younger generations of photographers in Latin America because of his subject-matter, which often focused on indigenous peoples, and because in his work he combined awareness of current trends in international photography with an appreciation of his own country’s traditions.
