Literature (LTPSC) » New acquisitions

New acquisitions: Women’s literature

Maggie Kopp — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:09:04 +0000

A brief sampling of literary works by women authors that have recently been added to Special Collections’ holdings:

Victorian and Edwardian Literature

Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, first British edition (Vault 823 W88vo 1915)

Elizabeth Gaskell, Sylvia’s Lovers (Victorian 823 G212sy 1863)

Amelia B. Edwards, My Brother’s Wife (Victorian 821 Ed955my 1855)

American Rare Literature

Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Redwood: A Tale (Rare PS 2798 .R4 1850) and Hope Leslie (Rare PS 2798 .H63 1827)

New critical works on Romanticism

Maggie Kopp — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:47:51 +0000

Here are some of the newest additions of critical works to the Rowe Collection of William Wordsworth. And check out the new LibGuide for the Rowe Collection at http://guides.lib.byu.edu/speccoll/wordsworth.

Rowan Boyson, Wordsworth and the Enlightenment Idea of Pleasure. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Laura Dabundo, The Marriage of Faith: Christianity in Jane Austen and William Wordsworth. Mercer University Press, 2012.

Mary Jacobus, Romantic Things: A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud. University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Adam Potkay, Wordsworth’s Ethics. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.

New Books for the Louisa May Alcott Collection

Maggie Kopp — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:37:19 +0000

Some new biographical works on Alcott and her family:

Eve LaPlante, Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother. Free Press, 2012.

Lisa Stepanski, The Home Schooling of Louisa May Alcott. Edwin Mellen Press, 2011.

Some new literary works based on Alcott and her characters:

Gabrielle Donnelly, The Little Women Letters. Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Little Women and Me. Bloomsbury, 2011.

Literary Cookbooks (and more)

Maggie Kopp — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:28:16 +0000

Planning your Thanksgiving feast? You might want to get inspiration for dishes from one of your favorite authors.

One of Special Collections’ newest acquisitions for the literary collections is Peter Brears’ Cooking and Dining with the Wordsworths (Rowe Collection TX 717 .B7289 2011), which shares recipes and menus used in William Wordsworth’s household. If English poets aren’t your style, you could also peruse the Louisa May Alcott Cookbook (Alcott Collection TX 715.A5663 1985). Alcott and her novels have inspired a number of cookery books, including ones inspired by Little Women and a collection of recipes and home remedies compiled by Louisa’s mother, Abba.

Just search the library catalog for the subjects “cooking” or “cookbooks.” Special Collections owns a wealth of themed cookbooks, all relating to different collecting areas: Utah and Mormonism, the Victorian era, and even Yellowstone Park!

New critical works on Whitman and Melville

Maggie Kopp — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:39:58 +0000

Special Collections’ exhibit “Voices of the Civil War” features Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, who both tried to grapple with the violence and suffering caused by the American Civil War through their poetry. On display are first-edition copies of Whitman’s Drum-taps and Melville’s Battle-Pieces and Aspects of War.

The library collects all printed works by and about Whitman and Melville, from their earliest works to modern editions, biographies, and literary criticism. Here are some of the newest additions to these collections:

John Michael Corrigan, American Metempsychosis: Emerson, Whitman, and the New Poetry. Fordham Univ. Press, 2012.

William E. Engel, Early Modern Poetics in Melville and Poe. Ashgate, 2012.

International Melville Society Conference (2007). Secret Sharers: Melville, Conrad and Narratives of the Real. M-Studio, 2011.

Nathaniel Philbrick, Why Read Moby-Dick? Viking, 2011.

Joseph Conrad in Special Collections

Maggie Kopp — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:13:43 +0000

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, the son of Polish aristocrats. When Conrad was a child, his parents were sentenced to political exile in northwest Russia. Conrad was largely taught by his father, who introduced him to literature, but Conrad was orphaned at age 11. His maternal uncle helped him to enter the French and British merchant marines, where he served on a number of ships. Conrad gained his certificate as a master mariner in 1886 and also became a British citizen. However, changes in the shipping industry made it increasingly hard for Conrad to find positions. In 1894, he received an inheritance and was able to retire. He had already been writing his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, which was accepted and published in 1895, thus launching him into a career as one of England’s foremost men of letters.

Many of Conrad’s major works were written between 1897 and 1911, including ”Heart of Darkness” (1899), Nostromo (1904), and The Secret Agent (1907). These works won Conrad much critical acclaim for their innovation, but his writing did not earn him substantial amounts of money until after this period. Further reprints, popular later novels like Chance (1914) and Hollywood movie rights to his early novels secured Conrad the financial success to match his critical reputation.

Special Collections has a substantial collection of first editions by Joseph Conrad, including a number of presentation copies. One highlight is an advanced copy of Lord Jim signed to friends. Our newest acquisition is a first edition of Nostromo, shown here.

Transcendentalism in Special Collections

Maggie Kopp — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:15:49 +0000

L. Tom Perry Special Collections contains many early publications by the Transcendentalists, from works by major figures of the movement like Ralph Waldo Emerson (including his seminal essay, Nature), Henry David Thoreau (a first edition of Walden is pictured here), and Theodore Parker; to lectures given at the Concord School of Philosophy.

These works are complemented by the Louisa May Alcott collection, which encompasses the work of her father, Transcendentalist philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott. Special Collections’ newest acquisitions of works by Transcendentalist writers include a 1903 anthology, The Poets of Transcendentalism, which collects many of the poems printed in the short-lived periodical The Dial, and the first edition of Bronson Alcott’s memorial collection Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Estimate of his Character and Genius (1882).

Civil War nursing

Maggie Kopp — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:27:14 +0000

Two of the newest acquisitions in the Rare American Literature collection are memoirs by Civil War-era nurses. These books complement the memoirs of more famous Civil War nurses in Special Collections, including Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman.

Notes of Hospital Life is an anonymous work which relates the experience of a Union nurse working in a Philadelphia army hospital in 1862 and 1863. The narrative ends with the arrival of the wounded and dead from Gettysburg. Mrs. Anna M. Holstein’s Three Years in Field Hospitals of the Army of the Potomac relates some of her experiences as a battlefield nurse. She began her duties in a field hospital during the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam (Oct. 1862), and served as a nurse at Gettysburg and other battlefields for the duration of the war. She also nursed former prisoners of war after they were released by the Confederacy.

Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”

Maggie Kopp — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:19:20 +0000

Did you know that Special Collections’ Walt Whitman Collection contains around 80 separate editions of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, including most of the editions issued by the poet during his lifetime? Whitman was constantly revising and reorganizing Leaves of Grass, so a collection of the various editions he released provides scholars with a picture of how the text, and Whitman’s poetic expression, evolved. The newest addition to the Whitman collection is the fifth edition of Leaves, published in 1871.

Victorian novels: recent acquisitions

Maggie Kopp — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:10:38 +0000

One major area of emphasis in the Victorian and Edwardian Literature Collections is work by British women novelists. Special Collections owns first editions of beloved authors like the Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot; but there is a wealth of literature by novelists who are less celebrated today but produced best-sellers in their own time.

Some of the newest additions to the Literature collections by female authors include:

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Moorland Cottage (1850). An early novella by Gaskell, which depicts the life of a young girl, Maggie Browne, whose mother mistreats her but spoils her brother Edward.

Lady Anne Isabella Ritchie, Mrs. Dymond (1885). This novel, by the daughter of author William Makepeace Thackeray, is a family drama set in England’s Lake District and Paris at the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71).

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, All Along the River (1893). Braddon was a bestselling author of sensation fiction. The heroine of this novel is tempted to leave her husband, who is away on a tour of duty in India. Her choice, and its consequences, drive the plot.