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June 5, 2014

A New Exhibition at the Lilly Library: Spiritualists, Sorcerers, and Stage Magicians

Filed under: Exhibitions — Rebecca Baumann @ 8:52 am

Banner_Sun_v7-editedJoin us this week as the Lilly Library’s summer exhibition, “Spiritualists, Sorcerers, and Stage Magicians: Magic and the Supernatural at the Lilly Library,” makes its debut. The exhibition will run from June 2 to August 30, with a special reception on Saturday, June 21 from 6:00-8:00 PM.

The exhibition showcases the Library’s wide-ranging and eclectic holdings on magic and the supernatural, from 17th-century treatises on witchcraft to modern-day comic books.

Stay tuned to the Lilly Library’s blog and website for details about upcoming special events and blog posts throughout the summer highlighting items in Lilly’s collection such as discussion of spiritualism in the correspondence of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Lilly’s recently-acquired issues of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, and annotated editions of books by the self-styled black magician Aleister Crowley.

May 6, 2014

The Little Prince home from Morgan Library exhibition

Filed under: Books — Lilly Library @ 12:16 pm

You may have seen some of the great press that the Morgan Library and Museum received for its exhibition The Little Prince: A New York Story. We at the Lilly Library were delighted to see the Lilly’s contribution to the exhibition highlighted in an interview with Curator Christine Nelson in the Morgan newsletter, pictured below.

The script Orson Welles wrote for the never-produced film version of The Little Prince is now back home at the Lilly Library. If you are interested in seeing the script for yourself, stop by the Lilly Library. It just takes a few minutes to register. Then ask to see Welles mss., Box 20, folders 23-27.

morgan-lilly_001-c

April 28, 2014

Lilly Library Catches that Catch Can from 1652

Filed under: Books — Kristin Leaman @ 3:40 pm

The Lilly Library recently acquired a lovely English book of music titled Catch that Catch Can, or A Choice Collection of Catches, Rovnds, & Canons for 3 or 4 Voyces. Printed in London by John Hilton for John Benson and John Playford in 1652, the book remains in its original, speckled calf, oblong boards. There are 144 songs by several composers, including William Lawes, Henry Lawes, and John Hilton. Catches appear as early as 1580 in English manuscript, while catches and rounds first appeared in print in 1609 with a collection published in London by Thomas Ravenscroft. Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can is considered an important later collection (Grove).

Catches are humorous songs that were usually written for three or four voices; drinking and women dominate as the main subjects of the lyrics. This is demonstrated in the lyrics by William Lawes on page 37 of Hilton’s book: “Let’s cast away care, and merrily sing, there is a time for every thing: he that / plays at his work, or works in his play neither keep working, nor yet Holy – day: / set businesse aside, and let us be merry, and drown our dry thoughts in Canary and Sherry.” Rounds were also particularly popular in late 16th and 17th century England among men for “convivial social gatherings.” While the social class of men who sang catches and rounds has not been determined, it is thought that their popularity “spread to lower social groups during the reign of James I” (Grove).

Sources:
– Day, Cyrus Lawrence and Eleanore Boswell Murrie. English Song-Books 1651-1702, A Bibliography. London: Printed for the Bibliographical Society at the University Press, Oxford, 1940.
– The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2rd ed. Ed. Stanley Sadie. Vol. V. New York: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2001, 2002. Print.

Images: (1) The engraved title page. (2) Tenor and bass parts of Now we are met lets merry, merry bee by Mr. Symon Ives (p 95).

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Photography by: Zachary Downey

April 15, 2014

The Little Prince: A New York Story

Filed under: Uncategorized — Cherry Williams @ 2:45 pm

The Lilly Library was very pleased to be asked to contribute material to the current exhibition on display at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City, The Little Prince: A New York Story, the first exhibition to explore in depth the creative choices made by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry while writing the manuscript during two years he and his wife spent in New York City at the height of the Second World War. Curated by Christine Nelson, curator of literary and historical manuscripts, the exhibition explores the origins of the story as well as features many of the original art works, including watercolors and drawings made by Saint- Exupéry for the book.

From the its extensive Welles manuscript collections, the Lilly Library contributed Orson Welles’s typescript, with autograph revisions, of a screen play for a film version of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, ca. 1943. According to Barbara Leaming in Orson Welles: A Biography, following the tumultuous productions of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles discovered the work while searching for his “third film that, unlike its two predecessors, would interest a mass audience.” She quotes Welles as remarking that “what I wanted to do with The Little Prince, was a very small amount of animation. It was only the trick effects of getting from planet to planet.” Walt Disney and his crack team of animators were the obvious collaborators of choice. While introductions and a lunch meeting were arranged between Welles and Walt Disney, Welles later reported to Leaming that after arranging to be called from the initial meeting at the Disney Studios, Walt Disney exploded in the hallway outside of the room, “there is not room on this lot for two geniuses,” and the project came to an end.

littleprince

The Little Prince: A New York Story at the Morgan Library & Museum
http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?id=90

Exhibition review, The New York Times, January 23, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/arts/design/the-morgan-explores-the-origins-of-the-little-prince.html?_r=0

Cherry Williams

April 10, 2014

Join us today at the Ross Lockridge, Jr., Raintree County celebration

Filed under: Uncategorized — Lilly Library @ 9:42 am

Dust jacket of the novel Raintree County by Ross Lockridge, Jr.

Dust jacket of the novel Raintree County by Ross Lockridge, Jr.

Please join us today for a film screening and reception celebrating the centennial of Bloomington author Ross Lockridge, Jr., and his iconic novel, Raintree County. At 2:30 PM a film screening will take place at the IU Cinema, followed by a 5:30 PM reception at the Lilly Library where you can view the related exhibition and pick up a copy of Lockridge’s biography, Shade of the Raintree, by his son Larry Lockridge. All events are free and open to the public.

Read more about the events and the exhibition in the IU News Room:
http://news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2014/04/raintree-county-celebration.shtml

Learn more about Ross Lockridge, Jr., at Indiana Public Media:

The World Of A Novel: Ross Lockridge Jr.’s Raintree County
http://indianapublicmedia.org/arts/world-ross-lockridge-jrs-raintree-county/

April 7, 2014

Now You See Me, Now You Don't: Vanishing Puzzles at the Lilly

Filed under: Uncategorized — Lilly Library @ 4:13 pm

Alex Bellos is a mathematics and science writer for The Guardian. Mr. Bellos has written a number of books on mathematics such as such as Alex's Adventures in Numberland (U.S. title Here's Looking at Euclid), and more recently Alex Through the Looking-Glass (U.S. title The Grapes of Math). He also edited a book about the Golden Ratio, The Golden Meaning, which features 55 graphic designers illustrating the mathematical concept. Mr. Bellos has also served as a South American correspondent for The Guardian, and has written about Brazilian soccer and was a ghostwriter on Pele's autobiography.

Mr. Bellos currently writes for The Guardian at his blog Alex's Adventures in Numberland. Recently he posted an article on vanishing puzzles which features images of puzzles from the Jerry Slocum Mechanical Puzzle Collection.

The blog post can be found at
http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/gallery/2014/apr/01/vanishing-leprechaun-disappearing-dwarf-puzzles-pictures

leprechauns

eggs

Mr. Bellos also wrote an additional post in which he writes about the geometrical concept behind the puzzle, which can be found at
http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2014/apr/01/empire-state-building-images-geometrical-illusion-vanishing-leprechaun

Andrew Rhoda
Curator of Puzzles

March 18, 2014

Mediaevalia at the Lilly 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Lilly Library @ 4:31 pm

detail of Ricketts 162

Please join us in welcoming this year’s Mediaevalia speaker, Dr. Erik Kwakkel, Associate Professor in medieval manuscript studies at Leiden University, The Netherlands, and principal investigator of the research project ‘Turning Over a New Leaf: Manuscript Innovation in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’. Among his publications are articles and book chapters on a variety of manuscript-related topics, as well as monographs and edited volumes on Carthusian book production (2002), medieval Bible culture (2007), change and development in the medieval book (2012), medieval authorship (2012), and Insular book culture (2013). Dr. Kwakkel was the 2014 E.A. Lowe Lecturer in Paleography at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Dr. Kwakkel will be presenting two programs:

Kissing the Neighbor: How Medieval Letterforms Help to Tell Time
When: Thursday, March 27, 2014 5:00-7:00 PM
Where: Lilly Library Lincoln Room
What: Lecture and reception. All are welcome.

“Age is not important, unless you are a cheese.” Historians know this expression not to be true: the age of a piece of writing matters a great deal. The key to determining when a given medieval manuscript was written is to assess the age of its script. The handwriting of scribes developed continuously, meaning that their products can be placed in time if the right reference points are available. This paper deals with such reference points: it shows that developing letterforms provide evidence for dating the book in which they appear; and how we may retrieve this information. The main focus will be on what is arguably the most dramatic development in medieval handwriting: the shift from Caroline to Gothic script. During the century and half of this transformation, in an age known as The Long Twelfth Century, scribes across Europe began to search for new ways of executing letters. Neighboring letters began to ‘kiss’ and ‘bite’ each other, while the ‘i’ became dotted and the ‘t’ crossed. The lecture ultimately demonstrates it is possible to gauge the date of a manuscript in an objective manner: it shows how letterforms help to tell time.

Why Study the Medieval Book?
When: Friday, March 28, 2014 9:00AM—12:00 Noon
Where: The Lilly Library Slocum Room
What: Hands-on workshop for graduate students and faculty

**Enrollment is limited to 16 participants and pre-registration is required. Please contact Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscript, The Lilly Library for information and to register: chedwill@indiana.edu

This workshop focuses on the medieval manuscript as a physical object. It aims to show faculty and students how its features matter for studies that are not primarily interested in the material book itself. It queries how someone working in the disciplines of English, History or Religious Studies, etc. may benefit from a manuscript beyond merely the text it holds on its pages. The workshop will present ‘real-world’ case studies to show how even someone with a basic understanding of the medieval book may benefit from its physical features. At the end of the session participants will be able to answer the query posed in the workshop’s title.

February 6, 2014

Original Manuscript Scroll of On the Road Returns to the Lilly Library, February 3-22

Filed under: Uncategorized — Lilly Library @ 12:41 pm

The Naked Lunch

The writing of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is the stuff of American literary legend. Kerouac claimed to have written it in three weeks, at such white heat that he taped 12-foot-long stripes of paper together and ran them through a typewriter in a sort of scroll so that he wouldn’t have to pause to feed new sheets into the machine. While this pace is probably exaggerated, the original manuscript of the novel was and remains in scroll format, 119 feet 8 inches long by 9 inches wide. In 2001, it was purchased by Jim Irsay, team owner of the Indianapolis Colts. Since then, the scroll has had a special relationship with the Lilly Library, as the Lilly’s Conservator, Jim Canary, has assisted Irsay in its preservation and in handling it as it toured.

The scroll was on display at the Lilly Library in 2003 as part of a travelling exhibition which took it all around the country and abroad. The Lilly is proud to host the scroll once more, on special loan from Jim Irsay. The scroll appears in conjunction with the Lilly’s exhibition on Beat writer William S. Burroughs in celebration of Burroughs’ 100th birthday. The scroll is unrolled to display the section about “Old Bull Lee,” the character inspired by Burroughs. A digital display of the full scroll – from the first line to the last ragged edges which were eaten by a dog, including all of the fascinating textual variations from the published version – will also be available to view.

January 23, 2014

From Bonnie and Clyde to Jaws: Pauline Kael class at the Lilly Library

Filed under: Events — Lilly Library @ 6:00 am

Indiana University Lifelong Learning proudly presents ‘From Bonnie and Clyde to Jaws: Pauline Kael’s
“Critical Collection” at the Lilly Library’
. The Second Golden Age of Cinema (ca. 1967-1975) was an unprecedented era of creativity and risk in Hollywood moviemaking, and with that came new heights in film criticism. At the forefront was Pauline Kael, the controversial, insightful, wickedly funny film critic for The New Yorker from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. This course focuses primarily on Kael’s criticism during the Second Golden Age, where her influence helped launch the careers of filmmakers like Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg. Additionally, we will watch selected scenes from classic films of this period (such as Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, Nashville, and Jaws) and assess them in the context of Kael’s reviews.

Class: ‘From Bonnie and Clyde to Jaws : Pauline Kael’s “Critical Collection” at the Lilly Library’
Instructor: Craig Simpson
Location: Lilly Library
Times: March 25 and April 1 (Tuesdays) 7:00pm-8:30pm
Fee: $40
Class size is limited to 25 students.

To register for this class, go to https://webdb.iu.edu/Continue/Secure/catalog.asp?dept=Arts#14SA123HU

January 21, 2014

A Conversation with Will Shortz

Filed under: Uncategorized — Lilly Library @ 5:31 pm
Will Shortz IU'74, NPR's puzzlemaster and the crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times.

Will Shortz IU’74, NPR’s puzzlemaster and the crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times.

On December 13, 2013, the crossword puzzle celebrated its 100th birthday, and eyes around the world turned towards IU alumnus Will Shortz for his wisdom on the subject. Will has been immersed in the world of puzzles since he created his first around age eight or nine. Since then, he has honed his knowledge through his individualized major in enigmatology at IU, the only such degree granted in the world; through years of puzzle collecting; and through his work as a professional puzzler: the editor of Games Magazine, NPR’s puzzlemaster, and the crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times.

Will took time out of his busy schedule to sit down with Becky Wood, Director of Communications at the IU Libraries, to talk about his puzzle collection, his passion for table tennis, and what continues to puzzle him.

Becoming a Collector

Will Shortz bought his first antique puzzle book at a hospital sale in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he grew up. Although he devoured the copy of Hirschberg’s Can You Solve It, Will didn’t think of himself as a book collector until his third year of law school at the University of Virginia. The school sponsors an annual essay competition about collecting rare books with prizes in a number of categories, including most interesting collection. Convinced that his puzzle book collection was a certain winner, Will wrote his essay, created a bibliography of his puzzle library, and though he did’t win that competition, ever since then he has considered himself a rare book collector.

Will describes his collection as huge—he has over 25,000 puzzle books and magazines dating back to 1533; eclectic—he collects anything related to puzzles that is in print including books, magazines, newspaper articles; and ephemeral—advertising trade cards, postcards, tickets, newspaper articles, things that are one-of-a kind and normally thrown away.

One of the many gems of his collection is the only existing copy of the first crossword puzzle ever published. It was the Sunday before Christmas, December 13, 1913, and the New York World “Fun” Sunday supplement editor Arthur Wynne wanted something to liven up his newspaper’s games section. The grid Wynne created was diamond-shaped and appears simple compared to many of today’s crosswords. After one hundred years, Will’s copy of that puzzle, carefully stored in an archival sleeve, still retains its original colors and conveys the rich and interesting history of the genre whose genesis it marks.

Immersed in the History of Puzzles

Will’s interest in the history of puzzles has deep roots. Between his junior and senior years at IU, he received a research grant to study the history of puzzles at the Library of Congress where he spent most of his time in the Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room. On that visit, Will discovered the National Puzzlers’ League (NPL) and its magazines, The Enigma and before that The Eastern Enigma, the discovery of which marked an important moment in his life. Whereas puzzles are usually a solitary activity, the League connected puzzlers with one another, and for Will, bringing people together has always been a primary goal. He has belonged to the NPL since 1972, has served as program director of the NPL’s national convention since 1976, and remains deeply involved in national and international tournaments and activities that transform puzzling into a competitive social occasion.

Will wrote his thesis on the history of American word puzzles before 1860. He combed through material at the Wells Library as he conducted research, uncovering a microfilm copy of Puritan minister Samuel Danforth’s 1647 almanac, among the earliest surviving examples of the American almanac form. Along with Reverend Danforth’s musings on astronomy and religion, every month of the year he included a puzzle, specifically, a versified riddle. Puzzles held such a grip on people that even in a religious colony in the 17th century, people were creating and solving them.

Will spent weeks in the newspaper room in the basement of the Wells Library looking for puzzle columns in the bound volumes. As he puts it, “IU has a great collection of microfilm and microfiche of all the early publications, so when I was studying the history of puzzles, I literally looked through every newspaper and magazine I thought might contain puzzles. I found a lot of great information on the history of puzzles through months of work at the IU Libraries.”

Shortz at the Table

For many people, solving puzzles—and crosswords in particular—is a relaxing, refreshing activity. Because puzzles are a job for Will, he turns to another activity to recharge: table tennis. Although he was a tennis champion in college, Will says that the two sports are quite different in terms of their physicality as well as the game behind the game. In both you need to figure out your opponent, playing on your strengths and their weaknesses, but Will compares table tennis to puzzles since both are what he terms “brain games.”

Will traces his history with table tennis back to Crawfordsville where his family had a ping-pong table in their rec room. He played as a kid, won some trophies in high school, and continued playing up until his early 30s. The breakthrough moment in terms of his return to the table came in 2001 when his best friend found a table tennis club in Westchester County, where Will currently lives. The club offered table tennis two nights a week so Will played two nights a week, but that wasn’t enough. He convinced the club to offer a third night, so he was up to three nights a week. When that club closed, he found two community centers willing to offer two nights of table tennis each every week, so he was up to four nights a week. As Will puts it, “Things progressed,” and now he owns his own table tennis center. It’s the largest in the country, hosts international table tennis players, and Will gets to play table tennis every single day.

What Puzzles Will Shortz?

In addition to serving as program director of the NPL’s convention, Will is also the organization’s historian. Founded in 1883, the NPL is the oldest puzzlers’ organization in the world, and it has weathered highs and lows, including almost dying out in the late 1960s for lack of interest. Around that time, an old puzzler offered for sale a complete set of The Enigma, the magazine of the NPL, to anyone who was interested, agreeing to donate a certain portion of the price to support the NPL. Soon thereafter evidence of the sale appeared in The Enigma, but the buyer was not named and remains unknown. Who bought that complete set, and where have the seventeen earliest issues of The Enigma gone? That is what puzzles Will Shortz.

Do you know where those seventeen issues are?

Shortz in the News

Interview with Mo Rocca on CBS This Morning

ABC News/Yahoo News interview with Will about crosswords and table tennis

Shortz in the Chicago Sun Times Daily Sizzle

November 12, 2013

Marchetto and Prosdocimo: A Musician and an Astronomer on Music in Medieval Padua

Filed under: Events — Lilly Library @ 5:20 pm

Please join us on Monday, November 18, 2013, at 5:00 pm in the Lilly Library for “Marchetto and Prosdocimo: A Musician and an Astronomer on Music in Medieval Padua,” the inaugural lecture in a new series from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music’s Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature (CHMTL) by the renowned medievalist and musicologist Jan Herlinger.

All are welcome. Refreshments will follow the talks. In order to prepare for the reception, we ask that you please fill out the small form available here if you are planning to attend.

Jan Herlinger is Derryl and Helen Haymon Professor of Music, emeritus, at Louisiana State University and an Adjunct Researcher at the University of Alabama School of Music. Professor Herlinger has edited, translated, and written widely on medieval music theory; he has contributed to the New Grove Dictionary of Music, the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, the New Oxford History of Music, and the Cambridge History of Western Music Theory; and to the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Acta Musicologica, and Music Theory Spectrum. He served as Secretary of the American Musicological Society, 1996–2001, and, from its beginning, as a member of the Board of the Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum, a project hosted by CHMTL.

Abstract:
Marchetto was a choirmaster in Padua in the early 14th century; Prosdocimo de Beldemandis an astronomer, physician, and professor of arts and medicine at the university in that city in the early 15th century. Both wrote extensively on music, covering many of the same topics (Prosdocimo wrote on arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy as well). Their music treatises are well known among students of medieval music and deemed essential for its understanding; but their experiences of music, their views of it, and their attitudes toward it were very different. The talk traces their differences—even conflicts—of opinion, and will include images of medieval manuscripts and audio clips of pieces each writer would have known.

For more information about this lecture, please refer to the Jacobs School of Music blog.

October 14, 2013

An Interview with Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

Filed under: Uncategorized — Lilly Library @ 2:52 pm

williams-cherryPloughshares Literary Magazine‘s blog recently featured an interview with the Lilly Library’s Curator of Manuscripts, Cherry Williams. Read about Cherry’s perspective on the book today and in the future, as part of the blog series “People of the Book”.

From the Ploughshares blog:
People of the Book is an interview series gathering those engaged with books, broadly defined. As participants answer the same set of questions, their varied responses chart an informal ethnography of the book, highlighting its rich history as a mutable medium and anticipating its potential future. This week brings the conversation to Cherry Williams, Manuscripts Curator at the Lilly Library at Indiana University.

Read the entire article at:
http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/people-of-the-book-cherry-williams/

October 2, 2013

Dennis Walder on South African Drama, October 3, Wertheim Lecture in Comparative Drama

Filed under: Uncategorized — Lilly Library @ 5:19 pm

The Department of Comparative Literature, Indiana University, invites you to the Wertheim Lecture in Comparative Drama:

October 3, 2013, 4:30 p.m. at the Lilly Library
“The Play’s the Thing: A Journey through the Drama of South Africa”
by Professor Dennis Walder

Dennis Walder is Emeritus Professor of Literature at the UK’s Open University. He is the former director of the Open University’s Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies, as well as the founding director of the Post-Colonial Literatures Research Group. A graduate of the University of Cape Town, Professor Walder completed his doctoral degree as Aytoun Research Fellow in English at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Walder’s research interests range from 19th-century fiction to 20th-century literature. His thesis was published as Dickens and Religion (1981; reissued 2007). He published the first book on South Africa’s best-known playwright, Athol Fugard, in 1984, and he has since edited three volumes of Fugard’s plays for Oxford University Press. In 2003, he produced a new study of the playwright, Athol Fugard, in the series “Writers and Their Work.” He regularly writes program notes and gives theatre talks for performances of Fugard.

Professor Walder has contextualized his research on South African drama in Post-Colonial Literatures: History, Language, Theory (1998). His 2000 essay “The Necessity of Error: Memory and Representation in the New Literatures” began a series of papers and journal articles on topics linking memory, identity and narrative in post-colonial contexts, leading up to his most recent book Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing, Memory and Representation (2010).

The Wertheim Lecture in Comparative Drama commemorates Albert Wertheim’s contributions to the field of Comparative Drama. Wertheim, who passed away in April 2003, was Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Theatre and Drama.

September 26, 2013

Race, Filmmaking, and the Silent Screen

Filed under: Uncategorized — Lilly Library @ 1:57 pm

Rebecca Stanwick is an MLS Candidate in the Department of Information and Library Science in the IU School of Informatics and Computing. Her major focus is on Children and Youth Librarianship, but she also works part-time at the Lilly Library. She recently organized an exhibition about the R. E. Norman papers for the Lilly Library’s foyer. Here she talks about the experience:

Richard E. Norman Studios: Race, Filmmaking, and the Silent Screen: Exhibit at the Lilly Library

flyingace

Before beginning work on this exhibition, I had never heard of R. E. Norman or his project. Coming from a background in literature and working with my love of narrative, I was looking for a good story I could tell. I was also unaware of the scholarly recovery of Norman that is currently taking place and of newfound recognition that Norman’s movies are receiving. In November, Barbara Tepa Lupack will be publishing Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking, the first full-length critical study of Norman and his film company’s place in cinematic history. Here at Indiana University, the Norman revival is in full swing. In November, Norman’s project will play a part in a conference taking place at the Black Film Center/Archive where Norman’s only surviving full-length film, The Flying Ace, which was preserved by the Library of Congress in 2010, will be screened with live accompaniment at IU Cinema. The newfound critical attention is deserved, and it is exciting to see what scholars have to say about this long dormant, yet exceedingly interesting, character of black film history.

As I said, however, I knew none of this. I ultimately came to choose the R. E. Norman collection because I was intrigued by how the Norman Studios Silent Film Museum/Norman Studios website characterized Norman. It describes him as “disheartened about the state of race relations at the time, both in real life and in the movies…” This characterization of a progressive man in a time when African Americans were still firmly seen as second class citizens made me want to learn more about Norman’s motives for creating all-black films. Was Norman as racially progressive as the statement suggests?

mazelleperry

What I discovered in Norman’s papers, especially letters to his brother Bruce, is that he was first and foremost a businessman. It is well documented that Norman and other race filmmakers saw an untapped market in all-black films. Often excluded from white films and cinemas and dismayed by the stereotypically racist portrayal of blacks by white filmmakers, black audiences were excluded from cinematic entertainment. Black audiences were hungry for stories and cinematic portrayals that spoke to them and reflected their experiences. These are the films that Norman offered.

As progressive as the films seem now, to characterize Norman as a proponent of better race relations is problematic. In his correspondence with his black talent, Norman was often dismissive and harsh. In his letters to his brother Bruce, he often uses racist language in reference to different actors and talent as well as to theater owners with whom Norman was conducting business. The letters suggest that his project was more about good business and making money than it was the betterment of the black community.

In addition to Norman’s letters, the exhibition features other items that document the actors and actresses with whom Norman came into contact. The actors include Anita Bush and Bill Pickett as well as vaudeville performers like Mazelle M. Perry. I have also included letters and pictures of lesser known African American talent who, vying for a chance to be in a Norman production, sent inquiries to Norman about parts great and small. This small exhibition only scratches the surface of the richness of the R. E. Norman collection. I hope many more scholars will come to investigate the R. E. Norman papers at the Lilly Library and at the Black Film Center/Archive where a large portion of the collection is also housed.

Rebecca Stanwick

IU Cinema – The Flying Ace, November 15 – Friday 7:00 PM, http://www.indiana.edu/~bfca/events/#regener8

August 23, 2013

Meet author Robert K. Elder! Saturday September 7, 2013 1:00-3:00PM

Filed under: Events,Film — Cherry Williams @ 1:23 pm

“Ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction, this is a film about trickery, fraud, about lies…almost any story is most certainly some kind of lie.” – Orson Welles, F for Fake

ElderRob

The Lilly Library is delighted to join with the IU Cinema in welcoming author, Robert K. Elder, whose archive the Lilly Library is proud to house. A meet-the-author reception will be hosted at the Lilly in the Main Gallery from 1:00-3:00PM prior to a double-screening of Orson Welles’ “F for Fake” and Lasse Hallström’s “The Hoax” which will be shown at the Indiana University cinema on Saturday, September 7 beginning at 3:00PM. http://www.cinema.indiana.edu/?post_type=series&p=4864

Rob’s new book “The Best Film You’ve Never Seen,” in which he interviews 35 directors about their favorite overlooked, forgotten or critically-savaged gems will be available for purchase and signing at the theater following the reception. http://robertkelder.com/

The Lilly is also honored to hold the archives of Orson Welles, as well as those of other film greats John Ford and Peter Bogdanovich.

Orson Welles: http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/index.php?p=welles

John Ford: http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/index.php?p=fordj

Peter Bogdanovich: http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/index.php?p=bogdanovich

— Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

August 21, 2013

Elmore Leonard at the Lilly Library

Filed under: In the news,Manuscripts — Craig Simpson @ 8:53 am

A small, interesting collection of author Elmore Leonard’s papers (http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/findingaids/lilly/InU-Li-VAC2547) is available for research use at the Lilly Library. Leonard, who passed away at the age of 87 on Aug. 20, 2013, revolutionized the crime fiction genre (which had become grim and heavy-handed) with his distinctively snappy dialogue and fast-paced, often comedic storylines in novels like Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Freaky Deaky, Out of Sight, and LaBrava (winner of the 1984 Edgar Award). Many of these works were adapted into notable feature films, sometimes by Leonard himself. Late in his career, he turned to writing and producing TV drama with the successful “backwoods noir” series Justified.

The Leonard, Elmore mss. contain materials from the crucial period of 1970-1988, when Leonard transformed himself from a writer of Westerns into a crime novelist. Correspondence includes letters from Leonard recounting his struggles (“I’ve been getting by… on the strength of style and characterization in lieu of a good story… So what I’m going to do now is plot better stories. I’ll show ‘em.”) and eventual successes to his literary agent H.N. Swanson; letters from Leonard to Clint Eastwood, Kirk Douglas, and Burt Reynolds concerning their respective screen adaptations (Joe Kidd, Posse, Stick) of Leonard’s work; as well as a letter from Paul Newman, who starred in the movie adaptation of Leonard’s novel Hombre, regarding the author’s script The Hunted. Publishing materials include ad copy, press releases, and a rejection notice from Random House. Legal documents include contracts, copyright assignments, and agreements.

-Craig Simpson, Lilly Library Manuscripts Archivist

Excerpt from a letter from Elmore Leonard to his literary agent H.N. Swanson, dated September 31, 1981.

Excerpt from a letter from Elmore Leonard to his literary agent H.N. Swanson, dated September 31, 1981.

August 8, 2013

Scrapbook of Bicycle Accidents from 1896

Filed under: Manuscripts — Isabel Planton @ 2:57 pm

A new addition to the Lilly Library collections is the Cycling mss. The collection consists of images, clippings, and ephemera documenting the sport of cycling in in the U.S. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

A scrapbook of newspaper clippings detailing cycling accidents and cycling news from 1896 was created for the Statisticians Department of the Prudential Insurance Company of America. This snapshot of late 19th century cycling culture gives us some perspective on current tensions between motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists.

Bicycle accidents covered in the scrapbook involve scorching (i.e., speeding), railroad stunts, and an array of collisions. Cycling collisions in the 1890s appear to have included everything from roosters and canal boat mules to trains and trolley cars. Perhaps the most amusing article in the scrapbook is one describing a cycling path made slippery by caterpillars.

cycling_00004

 

Another unsettling problem was the absence of dependable brakes on most bicycles.

cycling_00010

 

A major controversy of the era was whether or not cycling was appropriate for women. Some community leaders such as Mrs. Charlotte Smith, President of the Woman’s Rescue League, argued that straddling bicycle seats posed a threat to women’s purity. Perhaps even more dangerous was the idea that bicycles would give women a newfound sense of independence.

cycling_00007

 

The collection is in the process of being digitized. The digitized content can be accessed through the finding aid: http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/findingaids/lilly/InU-Li-VAD0285. Interested visitors also may view the Cycling mss. in the Reading Room at the Lilly Library.

Isabel Planton, Reference Associate, Lilly Library

July 31, 2013

Lincoln at the Lilly

Filed under: Illustration — David Frasier @ 2:24 pm

The Oldroyd mss., the letters and papers of Osborn Hamiline Oldroyd (1841-1930), a museum director and a well-known collector of Lincolniana, includes a pencil sketch rendered by Union Army Major General Lew Wallace (1827-1905) of Lincoln assassination co-conspirator Lewis Powell (1844-1865), a.k.a. “Lewis Paine” (often misspelled as “Payne”). The 24-year-old Florida-born Powell attacked and grievously wounded United States Secretary of State William H. Seward in the bedroom of the Cabinet member’s Washington, D.C. home on April 14, 1865. General Wallace, best known as the author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880), was a member of the nine person military tribunal that found Powell (tried as “Payne”) and three others guilty in the conspiracy that killed Lincoln and injured Seward and others. The general’s “drawn from life” sketch of Powell (here “Payne”) is undated, but the assassin and his co-conspirators were tried, found guilty, and later hanged on July 7, 1865 at the Arsenal Penitentiary in Washington, D.C.


Sketch of Lewis Payne

Pencil sketch of Payne by Army Major General Lew Wallace.

Lewis Payne carte de visite

Carte-de-visite photograph taken ca. 1865.

The Lilly Library is a major repository for manuscripts, books, and other items related to Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), the nation’s 16th president. The respective links below provide descriptions of these Lincoln-related manuscript collections and a short title list of miscellaneous uncataloged materials including a bronzed Lincoln life mask:

www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/subject/lincoln.html

www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/shorttitle/lincoln.html

A fuller description of many of these holdings may be found in the Lilly’s in-house Manuscripts Index Catalog while monographs may be located in IUCAT and the Public Card Catalog in the library’s Reading Room.

In addition to the Lincoln-related collections, the Lilly also holds the papers of General Lew Wallace including the original manuscript for Ben-Hur and other novels (see collection descriptions at www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/index.php?p=wallace and www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/index.php?p=wallace2).

David K. Frasier, Reference Librarian, Lilly Library

July 8, 2013

Anthony Arnove: Dirty Wars

Filed under: Events — Cherry Williams @ 2:02 pm

We recently received notice that Anthony Arnove’s production of Dirty Wars, will be playing at the Indiana University Cinema for one night only: THURSDAY, August 8, at 7 pm, and that Mr. Arnove will be on hand for a question and answer session after the screening.

The Lilly Library is honored to be the repository of Anthony Arnove’s papers and the archive of Haymarket Books.

The film features independent journalist Jeremy Scahill, the New York Times bestselling author of Blackwater and now Dirty Wars (the book of the same title as the film).

Dirty Wars won the Cintematography Prize at Sundance. Variety says it is “astonishingly hard-hitting” and adds: “This jaw-dropping, persuasively researched pic has the power to pry open government lockboxes.” Below is a poster with some of the highlights of this and other write ups.

You can see the trailer here: http://dirtywars.org/trailer

Details on the screening are here:
http://www.cinema.indiana.edu/?post_type=film&p=4690

And details on ticketing are here:
http://www.cinema.indiana.edu/about/visiting-the-cinema/

Tickets are $3 students and $6 public. Tickets are required for all screenings. You can pick up tickets at the IU Auditorium Box Office, which is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday or — if they are not sold out — 30 minutes prior to any IU Cinema screening.

May 1, 2013

The Curious Story of the Electropoise

Filed under: Books — Rebecca Baumann @ 4:18 pm

The Electropoise was a fraudulent medical device invented and patented by huckster Hercules Sanche, the self-proclaimed “Discoverer of the Laws of Spontaneous Cure of Disease.” Initially marketed in the early 1890s (sources differ on the exact date), it was the first of several devices that provided “gas pipe therapy,” and its story provides an interesting portrait of late 19th –century American alternative medicine, the power of advertising, and the potent mix of gullibility and desperation that allows quack cures to flourish.

rz420-b7_00014 There is nothing electric about the Electropoise, and the “Plain Directions” (which are actually anything but plain) that accompany the object tell its user, “Do not expect any sensations of current or shock. Nature does not work that way.” The Electropoise is simply a brass lozenge called the “Polizer” to which is attached at one end a flexible uninsulated cord. At the end of the cord is a small metal disc with an elastic band, which the user attaches to her ankle for a general cure or to whatever part of the body ails her for specific therapy. The user is directed to put the tube in a bucket of cold water (the exact temperature of the water and the amount of time for the therapy being determined by a complex series of disease classifications and formulae) and then let healing oxygen flow through the cord and into the body. The instructions claim that “[t]he oxygen … is carried into the general circulation and oxidizes the blood, thus burning out all manner of poisonous impurities, destroying bacteria and preventing their further propagation.” Of course in reality, the Electropoise did absolutely nothing at all. Its makers relied on the principle that a portion of those who are sick – and, more importantly, those who believe they are sick – will get better without any treatment. A contemporary promotional feature in an 1894 issue of The New York Evangelist promises that the Electropoise could cure “an alphabet of ailments” from abscesses to vertigo. The brochure that accompanies the instrument includes seventy pages of testimonials from satisfied customers who believe they have been cured of headaches, insomnia, “female complaints,” rheumatism, malaria, pneumonia, paralysis, nervous disorders, consumption, and cancer. The directions include further serious ailments that the device is supposed to cure; for example, they advise that sufferers of “apoplexy, apparent death, congestion of the brain … drowning and epilepsy” can be aided by “chang[ing] the plate from one wrist to the other every twenty or thirty minutes during continuous application.”

According to an advertisement in an 1895 issue of The Cosmopolitan: A Monthly Illustrated Magazine, the cylinder is filled with, “a composition, the nature of which is not made public.” In the December 1, 1900 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, N.C. Morse, M.D. writes, “I have had it sawed into sections and alas, like the goose that laid the golden egg of fable fame, there is nothing in the carcass!” However, despite its literally hollow claims, the Electropoise was very popular, so much so that the Electrolibration Company, founded in Birmingham Alabama, soon added offices in New York and London and began marketing new devices such as the Oxydonor, which was the same as the Electropoise except that instead of being hollow, it contained a stick of carbon inside. Other companies followed with their own versions. In 1899, Sanche tried to prevent the sale of the rival Oxygenor but it was held by the court that there was insufficient evidence to show that Sanche’s invention was useful or valuable enough to be afforded protection. The American Medical Association released official statements, such as a 1915 book on “Mail-Order Medical Fraud,” condemning this kind of ersatz medical treatment.

As well as being potentially dangerous, the Electropoise was also expensive. Advertisements from the period indicate that this model of the Electropoise was priced from $10 to $35. The booklet included with the Lilly Library’s copy lists the price of the pocket model as $25 and the standard model (a large device which was mounted on a wall) as $50. This may sound like an inexpensive cure for all ills, but $25 at the turn of the century was comparable to several hundred dollars today. The testimonials included in the literature make it clear that consumers could pay in installments. The two books included with the Lilly Library’s copy of the Electropoise are undated. The book which includes testimonials has the name L.A. Bosworth on the cover, and many of the testimonials are addressed to him in the form of letters. Bosworth was a reverend in Boston, MA, but his connection with Sanche or the Electrolibation Company of Birmingham is not clear.

rz420-b7_00002So who used the Electropoise? The illustration included in the literature that accompanies the device gives us a clue. A woman in the “Gibson Girl” style lounges prone on a settee, reading a book while the cord of the Electropoise snakes delicately from her ankle into a vase on the floor. This woman in her lacy dressing gown is the perfect consumer for the product. She is clearly of the middle or upper-middle class and she has leisure time in which to convalesce. While the testimonials reveal that both men and women used the product, it would have been especially appealing for vague “female complaints” or the ubiquitously-diagnosed condition of “hysteria” – in other words the types of ailments that may well be “cured” by a device that doesn’t do anything except make the sufferer believe that he or she will get better. The Electropoise enjoyed its reign of popularity at the same time that the vibrator was invented to “cure” hysterical women by means of genital massage – a method practiced manually by doctors and midwives since the times of Galen and Avicenna and brought into the age of electricity in the late 19th century by enterprising inventors who aspired to save doctors the trouble of inducing “hysterical paroxysm” manually. In the Paris Exposition of 1900, over a dozen medical vibratory devices were available for the perusal of visiting doctors, from low-priced foot-powered models, to the $200 elaborately-designed “Chattanooga.” The Electropoise was perhaps a distant cousin of these devices designed to cure hysteria, the great bugaboo of 19th-century medicine, a catch-all for everything from serious mental illnesses to boredom and sexual frustration. The instructions for using the Electropoise includes a section for female complaints and advises that “[i]n many cases the internal female generative organs can be treated more successfully by local application to the organ itself. For this purpose the Uterine Electrode [a long metal rod that could be attached to the device] should be used. Agents can furnish it. Price, $2.50.” Specific male complaints, including hydrocele, varicocele, and “self abuse” could be treated by applying the metal disc to the scrotum. In its promise to provide relief to even the most intimate of problems, bypassing the process of visiting a real doctor, this curious little device illustrates the allure of quack medicine and is not so different from placebo products shilled on late night infomercials today. There will always be a market for the phony miracle cure.

Rebecca Baumann, Reference Associate

Sources Consulted:

American Medical Association. Medical Mail-Order Frauds. Chicago: American Medical Association, 1915. Hathi Trust Digital Library.

“The Electropoise.” New York Evangelist. December 6, 1894. ProQuest American Periodicals.

“The Electropoise.” The Cosmopolitan: a Monthly Illustrated Magazine. 1895. ProQuest American Periodicals.

Rachel Maines. The Technology of Orgasm : “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

N.C. Morse. “Modern Empirical Inventions.” The Journal of the American Medical Association. Volume 35, part 2. December 1, 1900. Hathi Trust Digital Library.

Carolyn Thomas de la Peña. The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern American. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

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