December 2006
- Israel Perkins Warren (1814-1912). Snow-flakes: A Chapter from the Book of Nature. Boston: American Tract Society, 1863.
The tiniest speck that is lost in the countless multitudes that robe the earth is as perfect as if the skill of the Creator had been expended upon this alone. The flake that falls in the vast polar solitudes, where no eye of man will ever see it, or that plunges to instant death in the ocean, is wrought with as much care and fidelity as if it were to sparkle in a regal crown.
If there be apparent exceptions to this general statement, they are only apparent, and even these confirm the fact. In ordinary storms, large portions of the flakes are broken, sometimes reduced almost to shapeless dust. … A few cases have been observed where a ray or point of a star has become the germinating center of a twin or parasitic star, forming together a structure anomalous as a whole, though regular in each of its individual parts. (Page 99 fig. 2.)
Part scientific examination of snowflake structure, part religious tract, and part anthology of snow poems, Snow-flakes unites these disparate musings under chapter titles such as ‘Purity,’ ‘Beneficence,’ and ‘Gloom.’ Each chapter explores a particular quality of snow through the methods of science, poetry, and religion. Bound with gilt-edged pages, the text is accompanied by illustrations, which are both informative and lovely in their geometrical simplicity.
Israel Perkins Warren produced Snow-flakes as the secretary and editor of the Boston branch of the American Tract Society. The constitutional mission of the Society was “to promote the interests of vital godliness and good morals, by the distribution of such Books and Tracts as may be calculated to receive the approbation of Christians of all denominations usually termed evangelical.” To this end, Warren simultaneously described the meteorological phenomenon of snow and ascribed moral and religious values to snowflakes.
Gould Library Special Collections
November 2006
- John Shaw Billings (1838-1913) and Washington Matthews (1843-1905). On composite photography as applied to craniology, by J.S. Billings; And On measuring the cubic capacity of skulls, by Washington Matthews.
Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences; v. 3, 13th memoir. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1886.
Six Adult Male Sandwich Island Skulls was made by recording images of many skulls on a single photographic plate. With composite photographs, John Shaw Billings and Washington Matthews believed that they could create an “average” or “typical” example of a racial or ethnic group that could be used for classification and comparison. In their paper, published by the National Academy of Sciences, Billings and Matthews describe the specialized stands designed to hold the skulls and the camera so that each cranium is photographed from precisely the same angle and at the same scale. Through the consistent application of uniform standards, Billings believed that photography could be an objective tool for researchers working in the field of craniometry, a now discredited
area of study.
Gould Library Government Documents Collection
October 2006
- Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Old Manse. Designed by Bruce Rogers. Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1904
By and by, in a little time, the outward world puts on a drear austerity. On some October morning there is a heavy hoar-frost on the grass and along the tops of the fences; and at sunrise the leaves fall from the trees of our avenue without a breath of wind, quietly descending by their own weight.
In 1842, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his new bride moved to an old house in Concord, Massachusetts. In The Old Manse, Hawthorne vividly describes life in this house and the surrounding countryside. Though Hawthorne was deeply happy in the idyllic countryside, the house and its surroundings inspired eerie tales of ordinary life tainted by supernatural evil. In Mosses from an Old Manse, witches and scarecrows mingle with ordinary people, beautiful maidens are suffused with deadly poison, and journeys into the forest lead to encounters with the devil.
American book designer and typographer Bruce Rogers designed this edition of The Old Manse for the Riverside Press, a division of Houghton, Mifflin and Company that produced limited-edition, fine press books. Rogers believed that all aspects of a book’s design— from the type style, to the format of the pages, to the binding—should complement the text of the book.
This volume is number 246 of an edition of 530 copies printed at the Riverside Press for Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
Gould Library Special Collections
September 2006
- Joseph Gladding Pangborn (1844-1914) The Rocky Mountain Tourist: the tour from the banks of the Missouri to the base of the Rockies. Topeka, Kan.: T.J. Anderson, 1877. 2nd Edition.
Here we are—as free from fatigue as when we left home—at Kansas city, which, with Atchison, Kansas, form the eastern termini of that grandest of all great Western enterprises, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad.
The Rocky Mountain Tourist was published and distributed by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. By 1876 the railroad’s tracks ran from eastern Kansas to Pueblo, Colorado. To develop passenger and freight traffic on the newly-built line, the railroad promoted the region to both tourists and settlers. It set up real estate offices in Kansas, offered discount tickets to prospective buyers, and published this illustrated guide for the curious traveler. The Rocky Mountain Tourist describes the beauty of the landscape, the abundant natural resources, the health benefits of the Colorado mountain air – and, of course, the ease and convenience of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad.
Gould Library Special Collections
July 2006
- Trevor Fairbrother. Painting Summer in New England. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum, 2006
The exhibition Painting Summer in New England presents classic images of the New England summer as depicted by a selection of favorite New England painters. The reproductions displayed here show how two painters captured both the sense of place and the sense of season highlighted by the exhibition.
Noontime, St. Botolph Street, Boston was painted by George Luks (1867-1933), a member of the Ashcan School who focused on the realistic depiction of daily life in poorer urban neighborhoods. In this painting, Luks uses raking sunlight and deep shadows to suggest a hot summer day in urban Boston. The street is empty save a single slouching figure hauling what looks to be water bottles.
Old Street in Gloucester was painted by Jane Peterson (1876-1965), an American painter strongly influenced by the French modernist painters of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Peterson often depicted everyday town scenes in bright colors with broadly handled paint. In this painting of Gloucester, she uses color to create a sense of depth: the brilliant, light yellows in the foreground shade to deeper ochres, violets, and greens in the distance. Like Luks, Peterson evokes a vivid impression of a bright and hot summer day.
June 2006
- Walker Evans (1903-1975), with an essay by Lincoln Kirstein. American Photographs. New York : The Museum of Modern Art, 1938
March 2006
- Mary Logue, with wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec. A House in the Country.Stockholm, Wisconsin: Midnight Paper Sales, 1994.
February 2006
- Pleschette Robinson (1980–). Historical Women: Three Poems. Racine, Wis. : Arcadian Press, c1995. Edition of 50, unnumbered.
January 2006
- Gerhard Richter (1932-). War Cut. Köln: Walther König; Paris: Muśee d’àrt moderne, 2004.