Special Collections will be closed Wednesday morning, May 9th. We will open at one p.m. Wednesday and close at our regular time at 4 p.m. We will return to our normal summer hours of 8 a.m. – 4 p.m. on Thursday.
Special Collections will be closed Wednesday morning, May 9th. We will open at one p.m. Wednesday and close at our regular time at 4 p.m. We will return to our normal summer hours of 8 a.m. – 4 p.m. on Thursday.
Welcome to the inaugural post in our Signed, Sealed, Delivered blog series, where we’ll highlight some of our favorite, and most fascinating, letters from the Walter Havighurst Special Collections! Miami’s special collections contain thousands upon thousands of original pieces of correspondence across a wide range of manuscript collections. All too often it seems that the art of letter writing and composition in formal correspondence has been lost or forgotten in this modern age of informal e-mail and text communications. Maybe you’ll be inspired by these letters from the past to take out pen and paper instead of your preferred mobile device the next time you want to say hello!
Our Miscellanea Collection contains hundreds of examples of letters from notable people, including former United States presidents, well-known authors, and historical figures. Most of the letters were preserved for their content’s historical and research value, while others were also prized for the “autograph” at the end of the letter. One of the letters in the Miscellanea Collection is this brief one page communication between the famous showman and circus owner, P.T. Barnum, and David Swing (1830-1894), a prominent teacher and clergyman and a 1852 graduate of Miami University. Though we do not know what was contained in Swing’s letter to Barnum, Barnum acknowledges the receipt of a letter from Swing and writes, “My chief desire is to leave a permanent ‘Greatest show on earth’ which shall be educational moral & amusing. I fancy that it is so well systematized & in such good hands that it will exist for a century.”
Public Domain
Well, of course, the Barnum circus enterprise has lasted much longer than a century! Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1891) founded the circus that eventually became known as the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus and still delights American audiences to this day. In 1871, Barnum took the popular exhibits from his American Museum in New York City on the road, establishing P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome, which by 1872 was billing itself as “The Greatest Show on Earth.”
Shown here are the letter in Barnum’s hand and his official business envelope, with Barnum and his associate J.A. Bailey’s portraits, addressed to Swing. Click on the images to enlarge and enjoy!
Kimberly Tully
Special Collections Librarian
Special Collections will begin Summer Hours on Monday, May 7th. We will be open from 8 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Other hours available by appointment.
I can always tell it’s the end of the school year by my level of fatigue, and this year is no exception. But otherwise it’s hard to believe that we’ve reached Finals Week and another class of students will soon depart Miami.
It’s a time of year when we think about transitions. In Special Collections we have to say good-bye to two outstanding graduate assistants, Brittany DelSignore and Adrienne Chudzinski. They’ve been key players on the staff, Adrienne for this past year, Brittany for the past two, and both have made significant contributions to our work. Adrienne will move on to work on her doctoral degree, and Brittany will jump into the “real world” of teaching. We’ll miss them, and we wish both every success in their new adventures.
And while we’re keeping her around for the summer, we’re also congratulating senior Kate Ceronie on her graduation. This fall Kate will be starting graduate work in library science, the latest in a series of Special Collections students to enter the profession. We’re excited for her, we know she’ll do well in grad school, and we know she’ll make a great librarian.
It’s easy to get caught up in all the changes happening on campus, in our communities, and around the world. When the people around us change, we can be left feeling a little lost. Sometimes these changes leave spaces in our lives difficult to fill. But next fall there will be new students on campus, new students in Special Collections, and the cycle of life at Miami will continue. And every spring, as Walter Havighurst wrote in The Miami Years, “the redbud blooms among the white sycamore trunks along the Tallawanda.”
This year they were especially beautiful.
Elizabeth Brice
Assistant Dean for Technical Services and
Head, Special Collections & Archives
After the Russian Revolution, 1917-1921, many protesters of the new Soviet government left Russia, hoping for its fall. France was one of the more popular places for officers of the fallen anti-bolshevik White army, writers, artists, gentry, and intellectuals. Two of them I find especially remarkable because of their drastically different background and historical function.
Ivan Bunin (1870-1953), a remarkable Russian poet and novelist was one of the truest followers of the classical Russian literary tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov. His rich language was revered among other writers and admirers for its classical realism and texture, often referred to as “Bunin brocade.” Because he opposed bolshevism during the revolution, he had to flee Russia and came to France. Although already in exile, he was the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in literature in 1933.
Anton Denikin (1872-1947) was a general in the Russian Imperial army and was one of the generals of the White Army during the Civil War. After Kornilov was killed in 1918, Denikin assumed command of the anti-bolshevik Volunteer Army. After an unsuccessful attempt to capture Moscow in 1919, his forces retreated until Denikin resigned in 1920 and fled to Europe. He finally settled in France in 1926 and became a prolific writer of memoirs and military observations.
Two very different people, who are never put in the same context or even thought of as acquaintances are nevertheless tied to each other by the common political cause, time, and place. I was very excited to find a book by Anton Denikin on the life of officers under his command. The book’s inscription roughly translates: “To greatly respected Iv. Al. Bunin from the author. A. Denikin. January 25, 1928, Vannes.” This inscription is remarkable because it unifies two very different and equally important historical figures. This very book was at one point a token of respect held by Denikin for Bunin and consequently in Bunin’s personal library. In a very exciting and sentimental way, exiled Russian officers still rub shoulders with refined poets in Walter Havighurst Special Collections.
Masha Stepanova
Catalog & Slavic Librarian
Books from the Edgar and Faith King Juvenile Literature Collection frequently trigger pleasant memories from my childhood. The Dick and Jane Basic Readers from the King Collection hold a special place in my heart. 
I loved books long before I could read. My parents used to tell me that I would take my books to bed with me. Little Wonder Books were my sleeping companions rather than stuffed animals and toys. It should be no surprise then that I still hold the Dick and Jane readers in reverence. They were my introduction to reading. 
The concepts for Dick and Jane were developed in 1927 through a collaboration between Zerna Sharp, a reading consultant for Scott Foresman, and William S. Gray, an editor and reading authority for Scott Foresman and Company’s Elson Readers. Sharp was convinced that if children could identify with the characters in stories and pictures they would learn to read better, especially if the words they were reading were familiar to them. She went to Gray with her ideas and he hired her to create the characters for the stories. 
Sharp, working with others, developed the characters and stories, using simple four letter names and short words. They created a world that would be interesting to a six year old. Dick and Jane appeared in 1930 in Elson’s Basic Reader pre-primer.
The readers used the concept of whole word recognition. The public seemed to love the idea of the stories that related to the large colorful illustrations and the readers quickly became a huge success. According to Growing Up with Dick and Jane by Carole Kismaric and Marvin Heiferman eighty-five million children from the 1930s through the 1960s learned to learn from this series of readers. 
The perfect white suburban family life depicted in the stories began to be criticized in the 1960’s. The publishers responded in 1965 with the addition of new characters but this hardly addressed all of the issues. The family structure found in the stories was based on the 1920s and the world had changed. In 1970, Scott Foresman and Company discontinued the series. Many schools destroyed their copies of the books and consequently, the Readers are somewhat scarce. Special Collections has over twenty books that are part of the Dick and Jane series, spanning the years of their publication. We also have some of the earlier readers by William S. Gray.
The Dick and Jane Basic Readers represent the direction schoolbooks took in the early and mid-twentieth century and nicely complement our other schoolbook collections. Special Collections has one of the most extensive collections of McGuffey Eclectic Readers. We also have an additional 5000 schoolbooks, in numerous subject areas, published primarily in the nineteenth century.
Much of the historical background for this post came from the book Growing Up with Dick and Jane by Carole Kismaric and Marvin Heiferman. It is a colorful history of the Readers and a history of the era that produced them. This book is also in Special Collections.
Jim Bricker
Senior Library Technician
