In the Spotlight

Our Newest Gems: Bloomsbury, Art Nouveau, Ichthyology, and More

Enhancing an existing strength in Bloomsbury-related materials, the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections at Northwestern has just acquired the archive of the Garnett family at Hilton Hall near Cambridge, England. In the twentieth century, the Garnetts were closely associated with Bloomsbury, the literary circle that included Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, and many other well-known figures. Actually, the Garnetts had been connected with British cultural, social, and political movements since the nineteenth century. In the assessment of English professor Christine Froula, who reviewed the archive on site in June: "Extending vertically through four generations of a family prominent in British intellectual and cultural life, and radiating laterally through their connections with all sorts of famous, well-known, and relatively obscure but interesting people over a century and a half, this incalculably rich archive of papers offers a treasure trove not only to literary historians of Bloomsbury such as myself but—and if anything, even more—to cultural, intellectual, and social historians of modern Britain."

Support for the acquisition of the Garnett Family Archive was provided by the Charles Deering McCormick Fund for Special Collections. Northwestern's Special Libraries—Africana, Art, Digital Collections, Music, Special Collections, Transportation, and University Archives—invest about $2 million annually in their collections, buying books, subscribing to thousands of journals, and acquiring rare manuscripts, maps, scores, and photo collections.

Also new in Special Collections is an iconic Art Nouveau work, Marcel Schwob's La Porte de Rêves (Paris, 1899), with illustrations by Georges De Feure. Northwestern's copy is distinguished in many ways, but especially by an astonishing contemporary molded binding by Louis Deze in full polished calf, on the front cover depicting a sleepwalker with flowing robe and tresses standing by an open French window invaded by imps and ghouls, and a rear panel of the same sleeping woman with spectral faces at her shoulder, caught in a mirror, with horned bearded trolls balanced on the mirror's elaborate Art Nouveau frame. Support for the acquisition of this extraordinarily rare book was provided by the Margery Barker Memorial Fund, used for the purchase of early printed books and fine bindings, and the Theodore Wesley Koch Memorial Library Fund, named after Northwestern's University Librarian from 1919 to 1941. For details, see the more extensive description at Special Collections' website.

Special Collections also acquired a remarkable 500-year-old volume on ichthyology, the study and history of fish. Published in 1524 in Rome by Paolo Giovio, a friend of the Medicis and of many popes, De Romanis Piscibus Libellus ad Ludovicum Bornbonium Cardinalem Aplissimimum deals with fish known to the anglers and cooks of Rome since earliest antiquity. It describes how both ancient and contemporary Romans prepared fish as food and relates many interesting customs surrounding them. De Romanis Piscibus also contains the first known reference in any printed book to the fish of the New World, discovered just three decades earlier by Columbus. Support for this acquisition came from the Joseph S. Beck Fund.

The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies has acquired an extremely interesting album of 50 albumen photographs of Ashanti men and boys from the 1880s. This album belongs to a series of ethnographic studies commissioned and produced by Prince Roland Bonaparte (1858-1924). Prince Roland, a gentleman anthropologist, was a grandson of Lucien Bonaparte, who in turn was brother of Emperor Napoleon I of France. Support for this acquisition came from a number of endowments, among them those named in honor of Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits, George and Mary LeCron Foster, Laura G. and James J. Ross, and Florance Walter Taylor, as well as from the Library's Board of Governors.

The Art Collection's notable new acquisitions include a nearly comprehensive set of back issues of the quarterly journal CIRCA: Contemporary Visual Culture in Ireland. Published in full color and intended for a broad readership of artists, students, researchers, arts administrators, and those working in related fields, CIRCA is Ireland's leading magazine for contemporary visual arts. Despite its importance, only the Art Institute of Chicago and two other libraries belong to Northwestern's Midwestern consortium, the CIC, subscribe. Northwestern has now almost completed its set of CIRCA, which began publication in 1981.

As a joint effort, the Art Collection and the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections acquired a rare copy of the first major work executed with photo-lithographic plates in the United States: Villas on the Hudson (New York, 1860). The 31 plates show plans and brown and green stencil tinted views of thirty large villas, each identified as to place, owner and architect. Some of these villas, photographed just after completion, are quite startling in their nouveau riche splendor. Northwestern's is one of just two copies of this work owned by North American libraries. Support for this acquisition was provided by the Taylor-Federico-Kamen Fund.

Northwestern's Music Library has acquired an important manuscript page from the hand of American composer John Corigliano (1938– ), his "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra," composed for violinist Joshua Bell in 2003. The work represents an expansion upon Corigliano's score for the film "The Red Violin" (1998), for which he received an Academy Award. The single leaf now at Northwestern contains 27 measures from the fourth and final movement, "Accelerando Finale," which Corigliano describes as "a rollicking race in which the opposed forces of soloist and orchestra vie with each other. They each accelerate at different times and speeds, providing a virtuoso climate befitting a last movement." This acquisition was supported by the Board of Governors' Special Acquisitions Fund,

A final acquisition reflects Northwestern's continuing development of its Hans Christian Andersen collection of award-winning children's books, now numbering over 3000 titles from 50 countries of the world. 450 new additions to the Andersen collection recently arrived from Dublin, along with comprehensive dossiers on the 45 candidates nominated for the 2008 Hans Christian Andersen Medals, won by Jürg Schubiger of Switzerland and Roberto Innocenti of Italy. Among the books received: an illustrated version of Don Quixote from Greece; the complete Grimms' Fairy Tales in Czech from Prague, illustrated by Adolf Born; an extraordinary children's Bible from Denmark with illustrations by Lilian Brøgger; and a collection of works by a brilliant young Australian artist, Shaun Tan, including his prize-winning book about refugees and immigrants, The Arrival (2006).

Northwestern's Special Libraries also receive donations of valuable collections and individual items throughout the year. University Archives, especially, depends on Northwestern faculty and alumni to contribute their papers and other materials of enduring value to the collections. This past year, for example, the papers of many noted Northwestern faculty were deposited with University Archives, among them Fred Hemke (Music), Lawrence Lipking (English), and T. H. Heyck (History).

For more information about any of our new acquisitions, contact Jeff Garrett, Associate University Librarian for Special Libraries, jgarrett@northwestern.edu.