World History & Culture (LTPSC) » Collection highlights

Middle Eastern manuscripts in Special Collections

Maggie Gallup — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:51:47 +0000

Special Collections owns over 50 manuscripts in Arabic and Persian, including this 18th century Koran. This group of manuscripts range in date from the 13th to early 20th centuries and contain diverse texts, including the hadith, Islamic prayer books, Diwan poetry, and medical, juridical, religious, and historical treatises. Special Collections also owns two Coptic Christian liturgical manuscripts written in Arabic.

These manuscripts can be found through the library catalog by searching Special Collections holdings. In the catalog, limit the search to Special Collections and perform a genre search using the keywords “manuscripts, arabic” or “manuscripts, persian.”

International Year of Astronomy

Maggie Gallup — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:39:05 +0000

To commemorate The International Year of Astronomy, Special Collections is once again highlighting books and manuscripts from our History of Science collection. 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope, and we are displaying some key items related to Galileo and the history of astronomy. Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems and an early description of how to construct his telescope will be exhibited. Other items include Christiaan Huygens’ published account of Saturn’s rings, early 20th-century photographs of the Milky Way, and manuscript astronomical observations by Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre, the father of the metric system.

The exhibit will be viewable in L. Tom Perry Special Collections’ lobby area through the month of October.

The Three R’s

Maggie Gallup — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:49:09 +0000

L. Tom Perry Special Collections’ Rare Book Collection includes over 200 American textbooks dating from 1819 to the 1950’s, including readers and spellers, grammar and composition books, and arithmetic texts. The readers include some 17 McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers, which were the most widely-used schoolbooks in America from their introduction in 1836 up until the First World War. The collection provides an interesting overview of children’s education and instructional methods in 19th and early 20th century America.

Here is a look at two items from this collection:

This 1866 arithmetic textbook was once owned by Lucy Woodruff Smith, the wife of George Albert Smith, who served as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from 1945-51.

This Civil War-era reader features hand-colored illustrations on the title page and the first page, shown here. It was published in New York in 1861.

Bastille Day

Maggie Gallup — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:49:11 +0000

Bastille Day is France’s national holiday, which commemorates the storming of the Bastille fortress by the citizens of Paris on July 14, 1789. The storming of the Bastille was the symbolic beginning of the French Revolution and the rebellion of common citizens against the nobility.

Special Collections has a few first-hand accounts of the storming of the Bastille, including a political pamphlet entitled La capitale delivrée par elle-même and a celebratory poem, Les nouvelles philippiques, ou, Le Te Deum des françois, après la destruction de la Bastille. These and other primary source materials related to the French Revolution can be found by performing a subject search in the HBLL catalog, using the search string “France History Revolution 1789-1799″.

Victorian Gardens

Maggie Gallup — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:37:59 +0000

Lithographed plate from The Flower Grower's Guide, 1898

Gardening, whether indoors or out-of-doors, was as popular a pastime in the Victorian Era as it is today. Like modern publishers, Victorian printers produced a wide array of books and periodicals for the avid gardener, from deluxe botanical illustrations to how-to manuals and hobbyists’ magazines. Many such works were profusely illustrated. Typically, illustrations were created as wood or metal engravings, which could be left as black and white prints or hand-colored. Lithography was another process which allowed color illustrations to be produced on a printing press. Both lithography and hand-coloring could be highly labor-intensive, and the final products could be quite expensive.

Hand-colored plate from Moore's British Ferns, 1859

The Victorian and Edwardian collections contain a number of illustrated works on botany and gardening, including the cultivation of flowers, vegetables, and that most popular houseplant of the Victorian era, the fern. These items can be found by performing a subject search of Special Collections holdings in the library catalog on one of the following terms:

Botany
Floriculture
Gardening
Horticulture

Managing the 17th Century Household

Maggie Gallup — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:53:09 +0000

Looking for ways to live providently during tough economic times? Take the advice of this collection of six tracts printed in London in 1657 entitled, “A Way to Get Wealth.” Subtitled “six Principall Vocations, or Callings, in which every good Husband or Huswife, may lawfully employ themselves,” the tracts give advice on planting your own crops and raising your own animals, from cows and horses to goats and rabbits. It even provides directions for building your own fishponds and orchards. Besides improving land to raise plants and farm animals for income, the tracts instruct “Husbands” how to raise hunting dogs and fighting cocks, and “Housewives” are given a variety of home remedies for illness and recipes for the table, as well as information on cloth-making, brewing, and making flour, butter, and cheese.

Celebrate Astronomy with Special Collections!

Maggie Gallup — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:03:23 +0000

2009 is being commemorated worldwide as The International Year of Astronomy. This year marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope, and activities to celebrate the history and impact of astronomy and science are taking place on the local, national, and international levels.

Here at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, we will celebrate the International Year of Astronomy with a month-long display of highlights from our History of Science collection during March 2009. The exhibit will repeat in October. We will be showcasing some of our most important works of Renaissance Astronomy, including a copy of Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems and manuscript astronomical observations by Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre, the father of the metric system.

Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, 1809-2009

Maggie Gallup — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:19:58 +0000

Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln are both in the news this week, since today marks the 200th anniversary of both men’s births. Television and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and museums are all offering the chance to learn more about Darwin, Lincoln, and their legacies. But did you know that you can study Darwin and Lincoln from their original writings just by coming to BYU Special Collections?

Special Collections owns several first editions of Darwin’s work, including On the Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, and the narrative of his voyage on the Beagle.

The manuscript collections contain a pardon issued by Lincoln in 1864 as well as letters and legal documents dating from his presidency and his time as an Illinois lawyer in the 1840’s and 1850’s. Special Collections also owns an 1863 copy of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by the US Government Printing Office.

These books and documents can be found in the library’s catalog by performing an author search and limiting your search to “HBLL Special Collections.”

Christopher Columbus

Maggie Gallup — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:45:16 +0000

In the United States, Columbus Day is observed on the second Monday of October to mark the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World in 1492. While Columbus’s legacy in the Americas is a source of dispute, his historic voyages are a popular topic for book collectors. Special Collections has a number of facsimiles of Columbus’ writings, including his manuscripts, letters, and his personal copies of early printed books, including:

Cristobal Colon, Libro de la primera navegacion. A facsimile of an original manuscript copy of Columbus’s manuscript diary of his first voyage, which was extracted by Fray Bartolome de las Casas. This manuscript is held by the National Library of Madrid.

Libro de las profecias. Facsimile of a manuscript commonplace book begun by Columbus in 1502. The manuscript, in the Biblioteca Capitular y Colombina de Sevilla, contains letters, Latin quotations, and extracts from the Bible.

Marco Polo, Libro de las maravillas del mundo. A facsimile of Christopher Columbus’ copy of a Latin translation of Marco Polo’s work, originally printed in the Netherlands between 1483 and 1485. The facsimile reproduces Columbus’s marginal annotations.

Libro copiador de Cristobal Colon. This 3-volume work reproduces many of Columbus’s letters to the Spanish Court.

Letter of Christopher Columbus describing his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere. A 19th-century facsimile of the Columbus letter first published by Stephan Plannck at Rome in 1493.

Travels in China

Maggie Gallup — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:55:48 +0000

With the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the world’s eyes have turned toward China with a renewed interest in that country’s culture, politics, landscape, and peoples. China has been an object of fascination for Westerners for centuries, especially during the Early Modern period, when European explorers, merchants, and missionaries established relations with the Chinese. As the two cultures exchanged goods and ideas, European readers became interested in accounts of China, including its natural history, costume, and topography. Travel accounts by Jesuit missionaries were a major source of information about the Chinese empire and the Far East. Later, as European and American imperialism increased Western contact and trade with China, the country became a popular subject for 19th century armchair travelers both in Great Britain and the United States.

Special Collections has several dozen published accounts by European visitors to China, dating from the 16th century through the 1930’s. They can be found through a quick catalog search. Limiting the results to “HBLL Special Collections” from the library catalog, perform a subject search for “China description and travel.”

Another great resource for Chinese history at L. Tom Perry Special Collections is the Helen Foster Snow Collection, a manuscript collection created by one of the first Western reporters to write about the Chinese Communist Party and Mao Zedong in the 1930s.