One of the pleasures of summer reading – or of any season for that matter – is settling in with a quirky but capable detective who will unravel the tangled threads and right the wrongs of modern life.

Who better than Sherlock Holmes himself?

One can debate who originated the modern detective story – Poe? Gaboriau? Collins? – but there is little doubt that Arthur Conan Doyle created the world’s first Great Detective. In Sherlock Holmes he created a character who was immediately popular and who, over a hundred years later, still fascinates us. Doyle’s Holmes novels and short stories have been constantly in print and have been repeatedly the subject for theatre, film and television versions. After illustrator Sidney Paget established the character in the original publications, actors William Gillette, Basil Rathbone, and Jeremy Brett personified Holmes for several generations. Now Robert Downey, Jr. (film), Benedict Cumberbatch (BBC) and Jonny Lee Miller (CBS) are providing updated spins on the character.

Holmes is also part of the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, most notably in our collection of The Strand Magazine (our holdings start with volume 1 in 1891 and run to 1928).  After publishing two Holmes novels elsewhere, the new Strand Magazine became Doyle’s publisher of choice for his Holmes short stories and two later novels, beginning with A Scandal in Bohemia in the July 1891 issue. Ten years later The Strand began serializing the classic novel Hound of the Baskervilles. The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place was the last Holmes story to be published there in April of 1927. Although you can find a variety of Sherlock Holmes volumes in the Miami University Libraries and online, there is a special thrill to reading them as they were initially read, for the very first time, with the classic Sidney Paget illustrations.

Among some Holmsiana miscellanea, including a copy of the novel The Sign of the Four entirely in Gregg’s shorthand (!), a highlight is an offprint from the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America titled Sherlock Holmes, Rare Book Collector: A Study in Book Detection, by Madeleine B. Stern (1953). This tongue-in-cheek essay by the great 20^th century dealer reconstructs Holmes’ library at 221B Baker Street based on references in the stories and a little deductive reasoning of her own.

Arthur Conan Doyle was a prolific writer who authored a wide variety of novels and short stories distinct from the Sherlock Holmes canon. Yet it is with the Great Detective that Doyle’s fame was established and remains today. If you only know Holmes and Watson from TV and the movies, give the original versions a try. There’s a reason these stories have remained in print for a hundred years.

After all, it’s summer.

Elizabeth Brice
Assistant Dean for Technical Services and
Head, Special Collections & Archives

The Native American Women Playwrights Archive (NAWPA) is a collection of original materials by Native women playwrights of the Americas. NAWPA hopes to identify playwrights, collect and preserve their work, try to make it widely known, and encourage performances and continued creativity.  This collection includes manuscripts and plays as well as production materials such as programs, posters, flyers, photographs, correspondence, articles, and audio visual materials.  The collection also includes materials relating to the archives such as correspondence and administrative documents, as well as materials relating to conferences and events sponsored by the archive.

NAWPA also serves as a repository for Spiderwoman Theater. Spiderwoman Theater is the country’s longest running women’s performance group, founded in 1976 by Lisa Mayo, Gloria Miguel, and Muriel Miguel, three Native American sisters of Rappahannock and Kuna heritage.  The group has included various other performers throughout its history, most notably the Colorado sisters.  Spiderwoman Theater has held workshops and residencies as well as performances in venues and festivals all over the world.  The group uses a specific working technique they call storyweaving, which is “creating designs and weaving stories with words and movement.”

Three different promotional flyers for “Lysistrata Numbah!”

The archive houses many original Spiderwoman Theater materials including histories and biographies of the group and its members, articles and interviews. The archive is also home to a large collection of photographs, including photographs of performances and appearances, as well as childhood and family photographs.

In addition, the archive houses various plays written and performed by Spiderwoman Theater including Women in Violence; The Lysistrata Numbah; Winnetou’s Snake Oil Show From Wigwam City; Cabaret:  An Evening of Disgusting Songs and Pukey Images; and Sun, Moon, and Feathers, as well as many others.

Most of the Spiderwoman Theater manuscripts found in the archive do not contain the plays in their entirety, but are rather a collection of bits and pieces scattered throughout the hand written partial scripts and working personal notebooks of the group.  The collection also contains materials relating to the various plays, including promotional materials and posters, programs from different performances, production photographs, articles/reviews, and several taped performances.

Included in the archive are materials relating to festivals and events in which Spiderwoman Theater participated, such as Festival of Fools, Festival Mondial du Theatre, and Humora.  These materials include programs, posters, and articles/reviews.

The collection also houses a few materials relating to individual works and performances by members of Spiderwoman Theater, including items such as a program from a performance of Grandma and Grandpa directed by Muriel Miguel, and a flyer for a performance of Lizzie & Lisa, a one woman show by Lisa Mayo.

Some of my favorite pieces from the collection are the various posters and flyers used to promote Spiderwoman Theater performances, many of which are shown throughout this blog post. For more information on Spiderwoman Theater visit the Native American Women Playwrights Archive, located in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, or visit the Spiderwoman Theater website!

Ashley Jones
Preservation Librarian

I am a Miami University graduate student in the History department. My exhibit, “’Domestic Memory’: The Journals, Correspondence and Artifacts of Henrietta McGuffey Hepburn” opened this month in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections and will remain in the exhibit cases through July 28^th. My exhibit is focused upon a local woman and connects her life to the cult of domesticity, memory, and ideals of femininity in the nineteenth century.

Henrietta McGuffey was born to William Holmes McGuffey and Harriet Spining McGuffey in Oxford, Ohio on July 10^th, 1832. She had a long and full life, and lived through many changes and challenging eras in American history. She married Andrew Dousa Hepburn in the 1850s and the couple had two children, Charles McGuffey Hepburn and Henrietta Williamson Hepburn. My exhibit focuses upon the connections between individuals, their material objects and the values of the society in which they lived.

I started the research that led to this project last spring. I read through Henrietta McGuffey Hepburn’s journals, reminiscences and some of her correspondence and knew that I wanted to use them in some way. My adviser and I decided that a non-traditional thesis would be a better fit for me. I really liked the idea of curating an exhibit. Henrietta McGuffey Hepburn’s written records of her life, primarily during the years between 1851 and 1910, are the heart of this project. Once I was familiar with what Henrietta had written I tried to locate photographs and material objects that had belonged to her or had been in use in her home.

Curating an exhibit provided me with new experience in every stage of the process of installation. I was able to conduct extensive research at the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, the Miami University Archives, and the William Holmes McGuffey Museum.

Determining the themes that I wanted to show in the cases was a part of the process that required some flexibility. I wanted to show Henrietta McGuffey Hepburn’s connections to similar groups of historical women. It was also very important to me that this exhibit represents her home and her life. Henrietta was connected to some really important figures in Miami University history including her father, William Holmes McGuffey, and her husband, Andrew Dousa Hepburn, but I wanted this exhibit to tell her story.

I am really proud of how “Domestic Memory” has come together. I learned a lot of practical skills and was able to engage with the different types of sources that I used for this exhibit in creative ways.  This project gave me a chance to work closely with staff and volunteers in various departments on campus that I may not have even met if I had selected a different thesis project. No matter where life takes me next, I know that I will use the skills that I learned in the last year to make the ideas of this exhibit a reality in future projects.

Erin Toothaker
Miami University MA Class of 2013

Last week, we brought out an assortment of materials from our collection to show to the visiting ‘Egypt Camp’ class. It is always a pleasure to see so many fascinating treasures on display, but for me there are few more remarkable than our leaf from the Gutenberg Bible.

Gutenberg Leaf (recto)

As our visiting class knew, credit for the invention of the printing press goes to Johann Gutenberg (c. 1347-1468), a German smith and printer from Mainz. His press came into operation in 1450 and the immense project of printing the Bible began soon after. Though not the first book to be printed, the Gutenberg Bible marks one of the most significant moments in the history of writing and, indeed, human history itself. Although this was not the beginning of printing – wood and metal block printing had developed in Asia more than a millennium earlier – Gutenberg’s movable type was revolutionary in reducing the time, cost, and skill needed to create copies.

Gutenberg Leaf (verso)

It is not known precisely how he made his first types, but modern research points to the use of sand-casting to create molds which his unique metal alloy would be poured into to create the nearly 300 different characters used in printing the Gutenberg Bible. Like the movable type-pieces, the press itself greatly improved on older methods such as rubbing by shortening the time needed to produce a copy and allowing for writing on both sides of the page. The oil-based ink Gutenberg developed was also innovative. This ‘printer’s ink’ more closely resembles paint than traditional ink and was able to adhere to the metal types better than water-based inks. The excellent condition of our leaf is a testament to the quality of materials used, with the ink still vibrant more than five and a half centuries later.

The small strokes used to create the ‘i’ ‘u’ ‘m’ and ‘n’ are called ‘minims’. Gutenberg’s press replicated the Gothic Quadrata minims perfectly.

The lettering of the type-pieces imitates the Gothic script that dominated Europe at the time. Some believe that Gutenberg created his type-pieces to specifically mimic handwriting in order to make his novel style of writing more palatable to a new audience, but the evenness and consistency of the letters surpassed even the best scribes.

Although there were no page numbers, our leaf has a small letter – possibly an e or l – followed by 3 or 4 in the margin of each side.

Of the roughly 180 copies, three-quarters were printed on paper – including our own leaf – with the rest on vellum. Initially, Gutenberg chose a double-columned, forty line format, and the rubrication (the red lettering) was intended to be a second pass through the printing press after the black ink had dried. However, Gutenberg shortly after opted to increase the lines to forty-two per page and abandoned the colored press, leaving the copies to be rubricated and illuminated by hand. Although ours is rubricated, it lacks illumination – not uncommon to many extant copies of the Gutenberg Bible.

Once plans to rubricate the text with a press were abandoned, the process was outsourced beyond Gutenberg’s shop. Some extant copies of the Bible are accompanied by Gutenberg’s instructions for rubrication. Completed sometime in late 1454 or early 1455, it took nearly five years for the Gutenberg Bible to be printed. The final production held 1,286 pages and each volume weighed roughly 14 pounds!

The printing would leave the spaces to be rubricated blank.

This leaf, from the Book of Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach), is an artifact of astounding cultural and artistic significance. While we know few details of its history as it crossed the Atlantic and came to us, we do know that it came from a damaged copy purchased by a New York book dealer named Gabriel Wells in the 1920’s. After acquiring the copy, Wells disassembled it into sections and leaves which he sold individually.

Combining the headings of the verso (back) and recto (front) with Photoshop, we have the title of the book

Regardless of its provenance, we and the entire Miami University community are extremely fortunate to have this little piece of history here in our library, and it was a true pleasure to share it with our visiting class.

Marcus Ladd
Special Collections Librarian