Making the Pages Come Alive: Four Centuries of Natural History In Print

Walter Havighurst Special Collections (3rd floor, King Library)

January 14 – May 10, 2013

From Thomas Say’s American Entomology

We’re happy to announce that our new spring semester exhibit is open to visitors!  This was a very fun exhibit to curate and a great excuse to look at pretty pictures of birds, flowers and animals in our collections.  So often our exhibits are focused on the arts and the humanities, we wanted to make sure we had an opportunity to highlight our science-related collections, as well.  The images shown here are just a few of the beautiful natural science illustrations on exhibit.

From Thomas Pennant’s Arctic Zoology

The field of natural history, the observation-based study of plants and animals in their environment, has its origins in the ancient Greco-Roman world, most notably in the pages of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia completed between AD 77 and 79.  However, humans have been recording their observations of nature in multiple ways since the first cave paintings portrayed animals and plants.  During the middle ages artistic interpretations of the natural world could be found in sculpture, paintings, and folk crafts, while early scientific findings were recorded in the pages of illuminated manuscripts called herbals and bestiaries. 

From John James Audubon’s Birds of America

As with all scholarly information of the period, the advent of print in the 15^th century provided natural history scholars, and their talented illustrators, a wider audience for their work and more accuracy in the dissemination of their findings.  

The books showcased here demonstrate the various ways that natural history subjects have been depicted in print from the 16^th through the 19^th centuries.  The oldest book in the exhibit is a 1534 edition of Pliny’s foundational work, while the most recent publication is Sherman Foote Denton’s Moths and Butterflies of the United States, published in 1900, which is noted for the author’s innovative method of illustration.

From Pier Antonio Micheli’s Nova plantarum genera

Whether it’s an early woodcut engraving of an exotic animal, a famous bird illustration by John James Audubon, or the colorful flowers of The Botanical Magazine, the illustrations on these pages truly make nature come alive.

Kimberly Tully
Special Collections Librarian

While sorting through old files recently I came across a folder with notes on some of my preservation projects from my early years in Special Collections. Inside was a worksheet that I had used to make my first clamshell box.  This had been a special project for me, and seemed a fitting topic for my first blog of the year.

Each of our clamshell boxes was constructed for a specific book. The books were measured so that the box would hold the book snugly.  A clamshell box is comprised of two three-walled containers that are hinged to close one over the other. The boxes are sturdy and are designed to give solid protection for their fragile contents. The construction of clamshell boxes is very time consuming, which, therefore, makes them expensive.

I learned to make clamshell boxes so that I could then train student workers on how to construct them. I needed to make several boxes so that I could understand the process and be able to answer questions and provide quality control. I made several clamshell boxes for certain fragile items, but for this first box I was told that I could pick the book that I wanted to make the box for. I selected our first edition of Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

Walden was an easy choice for me. This account of Thoreau’s simple life in a cabin in the woods, devoted to personal introspection, had captured my imagination since I first encountered it in college. I was thrilled that we had a first edition of this book.

Preservation work is very rewarding. Creating an enclosure that would protect Walden for many years to come  made this work a labor of love, and I feel a sense of pride every time I have reason to handle this book.

Jim Bricker
Senior Library Technician

Image from the Charles M. Shield Postcard Collection

Best Wishes to All for a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year!

 From the Staff of the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, the Miami University Archives and the Western College Memorial Archives

The most accurate observation about Russia that I came across recently was by Eliot Borenstein of New York University: “Russia after the dismantling of the Soviet Union has the dubious honor of being perhaps the only country in the world that is both pre- and post-apocalyptic at the same time. It’s not that the world doesn’t end, but it never stops ending.” Russians’ tendency to live every day like it is their last is probably developed by a constant string of near-apocalyptic events throughout Russian history. The event best represented in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections is the Great October Revolution, 1917-1921. There are materials in the collection reflecting both sides, for and against the revolution and smaller groups with more complex agendas, as well as general apocalyptic behavior, literature, and art of the Russians.  I chose two book examples with interesting histories that represent two of the facets of that end of the world.

I have always been intrigued by the number of rare editions we have of “Twelve” by Aleksandr Blok. Some are cataloged and others are still waiting, editions in different languages and illustrated by different people. It is not surprising that the poem was published so many times. It was Blok’s most controversial work, a harsh, cold poem about twelve unsympathetic Bolsheviks marching through Petrograd, their only emotion being violent hatred of the old world and people who were comfortable in it. In the context of the text this quality is a positive one.

This poem alienated Blok from both his admirers, who accused him of betraying his ideals and siding with the Bolsheviks and Bolsheviks themselves, who were uncomfortable with the mention of Christ at the end of the poem. There is, however, a theory that Blok’s work is a sarcastic view of the unwavering dedication of the revolution to violence and callousness as the means of killing everything old and starting anew. Here I chose the edition illustrated by IUrii Annenkov, whose style and composition depict the apocalyptic nature of the times and the poem perfectly.

“Tam!..” (roughly translated as There! Pictures of the Soviet Heaven) is a very rare, émigré edition of a book of anti-Soviet satire from the early 1920s, vividly illustrated by an anonymous artist. The authors, Lolo (L. Munstein) and Leri (V. Klopotovsky), are relatively well-known satirical poets of the post-revolution Russian diaspora. Their subject is less about the cruelty of the Soviet regime and more about the decadent nature of the “apocalyptic” Russia. The bright, simplistic illustrations go perfectly with the angry wit of the text, mocking the lower class now ruling the country.

Both works to me are apocalyptic in nature. At the time of Revolution the decadence movement was in full swing, contrasted by the violence of the thorough effort to kill the old world. There is a wealth of materials on these facets along with many other aspects of the Revolution in Special Collections.

Masha Stepanova
Slavic Librarian

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog to bring you this news. A special bookplate has been placed in a magnificent 4-volume book in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections in celebration of Dean Judith Sessions’ career at Miami. Dean Sessions will retire from Miami after serving nearly 25 years as Dean and University Librarian.

The book is Jean Baptiste Du Halde’s Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l’empire de la Chine … Paris: P.G. Le Mercier, 1735. It’s a beautiful set in 4 folio volumes, bound in contemporary dark blue straight-grained gilt-ruled morocco and was only recently acquired.

This is a superbly bound copy of the first edition of this extensively and handsomely illustrated work, the most influential and interesting work on China published in the 18^th century. In addition to its fascinating full page engravings depicting the natural and cultural life of China, the work contains the first appearance of 43 maps by the celebrated French cartographer, d’Anville; the first separate map of Korea and a previously unpublished history of Korea by the Jesuit J.B. Régis; the first separate European mapping of Tibet and its districts; and the first printed report of Bering’s 1725-1728 expedition, with the accompanying map, “Carte des Pays traversés par le Capne. Beerings,” containing the first printed configuration of any part of Alaska.

The bookplate, shown at right, acknowledges her leadership of the Miami University Libraries. A special framed presentation copy of the bookplate, superimposed on a facsimile of a double-page engraving from the Du Halde, seen below, was presented to Dean Sessions as a keepsake by Provost Bobby Gempesaw at her retirement reception on Monday, Dec. 10.

We are proud to serve as the caretakers of this wonderful book and delighted that it can serve the additional purpose of honoring Dean Sessions. Thanks to Jim Bricker and Lori Chapin for their help in making the bookplate and its presentation a reality.