Tag Archives: donations

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

‘Tis the Season: Gifts to the Rubenstein Library, Day Five

December 13, 2013 Will Hansen

To celebrate the holiday season this week, we’re highlighting a few of the many wonderful books that the Rubenstein Library has received as gifts over the past year. We are truly grateful for the generosity of our donors. A hearty “Happy holidays” and thanks and to all of those who have contributed to making 2013 a wonderful year for the Rubenstein Library!

A beautiful copy of one of the pinnacles of American literature, the 1854 first edition of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods, has been donated to the Rubenstein Library by Professor Leland Phelps.

Thoreau’s genre-bending record of his experiment in simple living in the forest by Walden Pond has been an important influence and inspiration for literary scholars, naturalists, environmentalist, philosophers, economists, and many others for over 150 years. While it was immediately recognized as an important work by many of Thoreau’s transcendentalist contemporaries, such as his friend (and owner of the land on which Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 2000 copies printed for the first edition took almost five years to sell.

The copy donated by Professor Phelps to Duke was formerly owned by Professor Frederick Whiley Hilles and is in excellent condition, with its original binding and remarkably bright pages. Thanks to this gift, students and scholars at Duke will have the opportunity to experience this iconic text in its original form, nearly as it would have been encountered in 1854, fresh from the press.

Walden is one of the highlights of a large donation by Professor Phelps this year, which also includes other editions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature such as a remarkable collection of William Faulkner’s works (including many first editions), and many important books in art and architecture. We are honored by his support of the Rubenstein Library and thankful for his remarkable donation!

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

‘Tis the Season: Gifts to the Rubenstein Library, Day Three

December 11, 2013 Will Hansen

Frontispiece of Holy Bible, with circular photographic onlay.

Funds donated to the Rubenstein Library in 2013 facilitated the purchase of two very different books featuring photographs. One, the Holy Bible published by Eyre and Spottiswoode in 1865, features twenty mounted photographs by Francis Frith. Frith, an Englishman, was a pioneering photographer of the Middle East in the 1850s, and some of the early photographic views of Holy Land sites such as Bethlehem and Jerusalem are included in this Bible. This purchase was made possible by the addition of funds to the Leland Phelps Rare Book Endowment Fund.

"Bethlehem with Church of the Nativity," by Francis Frith, from Holy Bible. — “Bethlehem with Church of the Nativity,” by Francis Frith, from Holy Bible, 1865.

A generous donation of funds for materials related to military history facilitated the acquisition of Lee and Amy Pirkle’s work A Real Fighting Man. Published in an edition of twenty copies in 2012, A Real Fighting Man is an artist’s book that combines art based on snapshots sent home by Lee Pirkle (Amy’s grandfather) from the Korean War with text chosen by Amy from an essay that Lee wrote about his wartime experience.

PirkleRealFightingMan — Lee and Amy Pirkle, *A Real Fighting Man*. Image courtesy of Vamp & Tramp Booksellers.

A Real Fighting Man‘s flag book structure, as seen above, allows the reader to juxtapose sections of image and text in many revealing ways.

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

‘Tis the Season: Gifts to the Rubenstein Library, Day Two

December 10, 2013 Will Hansen 5 Comments

Richard Heitzenrater, William Kellon Quick Professor Emeritus of Church History and Wesley Studies in Duke’s Divinity School, donated a number of books in the fields of law, religion, and literature to the Rubenstein Library this year. Among them is an early printing of the Magna Carta and other laws of England, Magna Charta cum Statutis tum Antiquis tum Recentibus, published in 1587 by Richard Tottell, the foremost printer and bookseller of law books in Elizabethan London.

A rare and important book in any condition, the copy donated by Prof. Heitzenrater is particularly notable for its unusual format: the paper is much larger than in typical copies of the book, and the printing confined to one upper corner of each page, as seen on the title page below.

This format allowed for very large margins in which those in the legal professions could record their notes and cite additional or updated statutes. Indeed, this copy contains many early (probably seventeenth-century) handwritten notes and citations throughout the text.

Our thanks to Prof. Heitzenrater for this important document of the Elizabethan era!

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

‘Tis the Season: Gifts to the Rubenstein Library, Day One

December 9, 2013 Will Hansen 1 Comment

A donation from Duke Professor of French Studies Helen Solterer features rare and iconic works of Irish and American literature. These volumes came from the library of Elizabeth Solterer, whose father, Constantine Curran, was a friend of James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, and other important figures in twentieth-century Irish literature.

The donation includes a very rare first edition, first printing of At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (the pseudonym of Brian O’Nolan). The book’s publication was poorly timed, appearing a few months before Great Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. Only 240 or so copies were sold before most of the unsold stock was destroyed in a London bombing raid by the German Luftwaffe in 1940. Its reputation as a groundbreaking and hilarious work of comedic metafiction has grown from a small cult following, and it now features regularly in lists of best English-language novels and novels of the twentieth century. Copies of the edition printed before World War II are exceptionally rare, especially in the original dust jacket, present on the copy now at the Rubenstein Library.

Another highlight of the donation is a 1934 edition of the Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats featuring two handwritten lines of his poem “Into the Twilight” and his signature, dated to December 1935.

Other books in the donation include signed works by Robert Frost and Henry James. We thank Prof. Solterer for this marvelous donation!

Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University