Armitage designed more than forty books for which he wrote essays and/or edited; he designed more than sixty books for other authors and had a long affiliation with New York publishers Weyhe and Duell, Sloan, and Pearce. When he “retired”, Armitage moved to Yucca Valley, California, where he continued to write, design, and publish books under the imprint Manzanita Press until his death in 1975.

Armitage knew and authored books about some of the finest artists of the century, among them Igor Stravinsky, Martha Graham, George Gershwin, Pablo Picasso, and Rockwell Kent, to name a few. A participant in the circle of artists and writers surrounding local rare-book dealer Jake Zeitlin, Armitage supported the work of his friends such as Edward Weston and Ramiel Mcgehee. Armitage authored and designed the first published monograph about Edward Weston. Scholars have written of Armitage’s background in artist promotion as the beginning of his life-long interest in re-imagining-- and innovating --the design of printed books for the modern age.

In Notes on Modern Printing, Armitage offers eleven ideas for designing a book; of these ideas, number six is a good summary of his aesthetic: “Understand the text…know your primary aims…let form follow function.”

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)

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.

On the page facing the title John Taaffe has written the following note:

"This poem was given me by its lamented Author. The notes are my own, and were written by me one night at Florence: and I now copy them from the original which I have given to my beloved sister Fanny. J. Taaffe. Fano. May 1834."

The margins of every page are filled with Taaffe's notes, elaborating on the poem, explaining its allusions and sources. On the final blank, Taaffe has written an account of Shelley's death concluding, "I can't look upon this poem at present without a crowd of most sorrowful recollections". The notes are written in ink and pencil; the ink has bled through, rendering reading the notes quite difficult in many places.

Our copy of the Pisa edition of Shelley's "Adonais" was a gift from William Clary. William Clary graduated from Pomona College in 1911; was an attorney at O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles; a trustee of Pomona, Harvey Mudd, and Pitzer colleges; a founding trustee of Claremont College (now, separately, Claremont University Consortium and the Claremont Graduate University); and founding member of the Zamorano Club. His collection on the history of the University of Oxford and its colleges is one of the most distinguished of our Special Collections, along with his collections of Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Milton.

Robert and Alice Jennings both graduated from Pomona College in 1900 and were married soon after. Their grandson, Robert A. Jennings, and his family recently gave to Pomona College two accounts of their 1904 Yosemite trip: a diary and a photo album. While the photo album records views of the trek to Yosemite that no longer exist--a dirt track created by wagons through Tejon Pass; the gargantuan grapevine that gave its name to that area, the "Grapevine"; unpopulated canyons--the diary tells of the extremes of the landscape and of the weather but also of the fun that the couple had on their journey.

Alice Jennings in the covered wagon, drawn by "Samanthy" and "Jim":

At Wawona Point:

Monday July 18th, diary entry for the Wawona visit:

The Jennings' photo album and diary of their trip to Yosemite in 1904 can be viewed in person at Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library.