Americas Collections Blog

Civil War Project: Maps - Birds Eye View of the Seat of War (Prang, 1861)

Maps 71495 (69) Birds Eye View of the Seat of War, arranged after the latest surveys (Prang: Boston & London, 1861)

Some more US Civil War materials have been added to the website today, including one of the print and map publisher, Louis Prang's more interesting efforts.  To access the maps, visit www.bl.uk/manuscripts and enter [maps] in the Manuscripts search box.  The system was designed to be used to display Greek Manuscripts, which accounts for some of the current design and UX choices.

 

[MJS]

Civil War Project: The Great Seal of the Republic Redux

(The Great Seal of the Republic, shown on the British Library digitised manuscripts website)

You may recall an earlier post about the Confederate Seal of the Republic, which was supplied to the Southern States by a British firm ("That symbol - the Great Seal of the infant Confederacy - sent to it by its nurse, England").  Well, we've now added it to the Library's digital items site: Digitised Manuscripts, which lets you explore the seal's case, provenance and zoom in on the seal itself.  More to follow.

[MJS]

 

Facebook

Facebook logo from Wikicommons

Team Americas now has a rough-and-ready Facebook page. 'Like' us, if you like, and receive the odd update on British Library events, things we spot on the web, and news of when we've posted to the blog, as well as ask us questions via the 'Wall'.  Let us know what you think of it.

[MJS]

Guest Post: a side of Australasian studies

'A General Chart of New Holland, including New South Wales & Botany Bay', in 'An Historical Narrative of the Discovery of New Holland and New South Wales'

As I mentioned in a previous post on the Terra Nova expedition, 2011 was a busy year for the Americas section of the Library and one of the other developments was being joined by our colleague responsible for Australasian Studies. Unfortunately, Nicholas has now left the Library to enjoy the warmer climes of southern France and so the rest of us from Americas Studies are doing our best to direct readers interested in researching the area for the time being. This being the case, we thought we'd start the best way we know how - blogging.

The Library has a notable collection of materials relating to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands and we aim to show a selection of the historical works we have as 'guest posts' on the Americas blog. For today's post I happened to be looking at the voyage of Captain Cook to the west coast of Canada and thought the Australian materials included in the same volumes would make a good first Australasian post.

'A Man of Van Diemen's Land', contained in the supplementary plates to 'A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean'

Edited by John Douglas, 'A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean' (shelfmark: 10025.bbb.22) has a supplementary volume of plates and charts compiled during the journey, held at shelfmark, C.180.h.11. These charts and plates cover various parts of Cook's expedition and therefore range from Australia to Nootka Sound and illustrate the landscape, fauna and peoples encountered. The above, 'A Man from Van Diemen's Land' is an example of the illustrations included in the volume which charts the diversity of societies and environments encountered.

The Library's collections contain many materials relating to Cook's voyages, including books, maps and manuscripts. Another item I called up was the 1786 publication, 'An Historical Narrative of the Discovery of New Holland and New South Wales' (shelfmark: 1446.c.19). The piece is a much smaller, highly edited account of Cook's expedition which happens to contain the rather nice map seen at the top of this post. Given the amount of material the Library holds relating to Cook's expeditions it is tempting to keep posting highlights from the myriad publications and manuscripts in coming weeks, but rest assured a host of notable collection items on various subjects will be on display in subsequent guest posts.

[PJH]

St. Valentine’s Roses and Massacres

Map of Chicago showing areas in which the alleged gangsters and racketeers operate, National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, vol. IV.

With the feast of St Valentine upon us, with the thought that I am being fleeced by chocolatiers and flower sellers, my mind turns to events in Chicago in 1929. In what became known as the St Valentine’s Day Massacre, associates of the Chicago South Side Italian gang gunned down seven rivals members of the Moran Gang in the alley behind a garage on North Clark Street.

While these events are well established, some may be interested to explore the FBI file on the subject.  It contains over 100 pages of press articles, FBI memos and other material related to the Justice Department investigation.  Central to the massacre was an effort of Al Capone’s South Side Gang to gain control over the underworld in Chicago and the racketeering activities supplying black market alcohol during prohibition. An indication of the scale of racketeering in the prohibition era can be gleaned from the 1929 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Prohibition (A.S. 495), which claimed that in Illinois alone prohibition agents seized and destroyed over six million dollars of property in the crusade against illegal distilling and bootlegging. In addition to the financial ramifications of prohibition, another useful resource is the Report of the Wickersham Commission or National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (A.S.10/4), which documents criminal activity across the U.S.  The Commission’s five volumes offer an insight into the inextricable connections between crime and prohibition in the period, as well as providing an in-depth analysis of organized crime around the U.S. in enormous detail. 

Victims of the St Valentine’s Day Shooting, National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, vol. IV.

The human cost is addressed in a number of sections. One, intriguingly entitled “Reforming America With A Shotgun" (a pamphlet produced by the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment), offers a study of prohibition killings that estimates 286 officers and civilians lost their lives in the enforcement of prohibition laws. A further noteworthy element are the evidence statements of witnesses to the Commission, which provide a window into other aspects of the time such as the testimony of John B. Haggerty, president of the International Brotherhood of Bookbinders, who stated in 1920 that a journeyman bookbinder could expect to earn $25 or $26 for a six day week; by 1930 this had risen to $42 for a 44-hour week. An increase in earnings, he wanted to note, could not be attributed to prohibition.

[JJ]

At the BAFTAs

Team Americas got the red-carpet treatment at the weekend, and here's our new friend, Mr Pitt (to be less disingenuous, we were behind a barrier along with the other gawpers). But, it may serve as a reminder of the film collections in the Library, including access to American Film Scripts Online.

There has, of course, been less happy news from the world of entertainment at the weekend: the death of Whitney Houston. Our (this time, real) friends at UEA blog, Containing Multitudes, have added some comments from an American Studies perspective.

[MJS]

Mapping 1812

Royal United Services Institute maps: Battle of New Orleans, 1815

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) collection of maps at the British Library reveals the importance of mapping to the work of the Institute, which was founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington to encourage the study of naval and military science.  Yesterday, Phil and I visited Tom Harper, the curator of antiquarian mapping, to see what the collections might possessfor our War of 1812 digitization project.   He had kindly pulled from the shelves the very heavy two-volume catalogue to the collection, which is handwritten in leather-bound volumes purchased from the Army & Navy Stores by an Edwardian predecessor.  The collection is catalogued by region and by topic (e.g., Naval, Battlefield, and even Aviation).  We focussed on the United States of America and Canada, passing the numerous maps of the Punic Wars or the Second Carpathian Campaign (and noting details in the catalogue, such as 'to accompany Col. –––––'s lecture'.  Some references noted, we descended below the Northern Line and made our way to the secure 'cage' that houses these particular maps.

We weren't disappointed.  The Battle of New Orleans – tragically fought after news of the ending of the war by the Treaty of Ghent – was clearly an important event for military pedagogy: no fewer than three maps showing the movements of General Edward Pakenham's troops and the defenders under Major General Andrew Jackson are present.  (There was no mention of the forgotten ladders, but a relief drawing of the American defences was present.)  Phil was also pleased to see a number of other maps focussing on the Canadian/US border, with a marked emphasis on defensive forts.  We'll be gathering other materials, and hope to have some proper images on the blog soon.

[MJS]

Picturing the Great Alone: photography and the Antarctic

Robert Falcon Scott on the 'Terra Nova' expedition, by Herbert Ponting. Image from Wikipedia.

Last year was a busy one for Team Americas and one of the many things we managed to do was take on some responsibilities for materials relating to Antarctica, thus adding a whole extra continent to our domain. This being the case, when an opportunity to view 'The Heart of the Great Alone' at The Queen's Gallery came up a couple of us jumped at the chance.

'The Heart of the Great Alone' covers various early twentieth century expeditions to the Antarctic, including that of the 'Terra Nova' during which Scott and his team perished. The main exhibition focus is the photography of Frank Hurley, photographer for Shackleton's 'Endurance' expedition, and Herbert Ponting, who produced the official photographs for the 'Terra Nova' expedition. I could write a lot here about these photographers and the expedition but the best thing to do would be to recommend a visit the exhibition itself or the e-gallery.

 
'Midnight in the Antarctic Summer', by Herbert Ponting. Image from Wikipedia.

However, as always with these trips, I had a mind to mull over the Library's materials relating to the Antarctic when I got back. The Library's collections from this area are not the largest in the world, with institutions such as the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Royal Geographical Society (to name a few) holding a wealth of material, but there is a noteworthy body of material which is well supported by the wider collection of Official Publications and Newspapers (especially in the case of an expedition such as the 'Terra Nova').

That said, there are some stand out items and a notable collection of miscellaneous materials held here. Captain Scott's diary is one of the Library's star collection items and the journal 'The South Polar Times' (shelfmark: Tab.444.d.6.) was the first publication printed on the Antarctic continent. Publications by Frank Hurley and Herbert Ponting also feature, including Ponting's 'The Great White South' (1921, shelfmark: 010460.g.1). These items contribute to a wealth of published material relating to the Antarctic and explorers such as Scott and Roald Amundsen.

As well as holding materials relating to the initial exploration of Antarctica, the Library has a significant collection regarding the continent in the later twentieth century; where scientific progress and international co-operation become the order of the day. Materials arising from events such as the Antarctic Treaty or organisations such as the British Antarctic Survey, as well as many academic texts and articles regarding the continent, are insightful on their own but also suggest an evolving relationship between global society and the frozen continent.

[PJH]

Kodak: framing the last 120 years

'Kodak factory at Harrow, 1890s'. Photographer unknown. British Library Kodak Archive A.1787

The news that Kodak is formally filing for bankruptcy protection has been coming for some time but it still represents a significant moment in the history of photography. Ever since George Eastman marketed his company's first camera in 1888 Kodak has framed the personal, family, social and political histories not just of the Americas but of a significant portion of the world.

As such, I decided to dig around and see the mark Kodak has left on the British Library's collections. In short, it's a big one. Some of the earliest materials we hold relating to Kodak were published by the company itself, for example the Kodak Press publication, 'Picture Taking and Picture Making' (1898, Shelfmark: YA.1998.a.14770). This body of material is quite large and covers various subjects, from 'Motion Picture Laboratory Practice, and Characteristics of Eastman Motion Picture Films' (1936, Shelfmark: 778.1258 DSC) to the journal, 'Dental Radiography and Photography'.

Far larger is the body of material which owes a debt to Kodak equipment in its production, including a number of our photobooks, travelogues, newspapers, journals, and so on. Some early examples here include the Countess of Aberdeen's, 'Through Canada with a Kodak' (1893, Shelfmark: 10470.b.35) and Alfred Leader's, 'Through Jamaica with a Kodak' (1907, Shelfmark: 010470.e.5). Both also illustrate how quickly Kodak developed an intimate relationship with the international traveller and the travelogues many of them produced.

'Shrimp Fisher (September 1908)', entry for Eastman Plate Competition by L. Hillier. British Library Kodak Archive A.1997 

The Library's Kodak related collections do not end with published material, however. Two collections of particular note are, 'The Oral History of British Photography' and the 'Kodak Ltd. Archive'. Kodak receives multiple mentions in 'The Oral History of British Photography', often as a reminiscence but also because of the interviewing of people such as Robert Lassam (former curator of the Kodak Gallery). The Kodak Archive held here was donated in 2009 and is the corporate archive of Kodak's UK arm, providing access to photographs and documents which illustrate the development of photography in the UK as well as the company's history.

Kodak's global reach and legacy is borne out by how pervasive materials relating to or facilitated by the company are in the collections of the British Library and libraries across the world. This, therefore, is one of the many ways in which the significance of today can be impressed upon us.

[PJH]

War, Struggle and Equality: the Tuskegee Airmen

War bonds poster featuring an unnamed Tuskegee airman (displayed on Wikipedia's Tuskegee Airmen entry)

On January 10th the Institute for the Study of the Americas hosted a screening of the documentary, 'Double Victory', an account of the Tuskegee Airmen and their exploits in World War Two. These pilots of the 332nd Figther Group and 477th Bomber Group of the U. S. Army Air Corps were the first African American aviators of the U.S. Armed Forces but they faced a struggle against institutionalised racism in order to fly, fight and be treated as equals during and after the war.

'Double Victory' is a documentary account of this struggle, narrated by Cuba Gooding Jr. and produced to be viewed alongside the film 'Red Tails' (both productions are Lucas Film projects). The high point of the evening, however, was the attendence of two Tuskegee Airmen, Le Roy Gillead and Alexander Jefferson. Gillead and Jefferson's recollections added a great deal to the evening, with Jefferson talking about the struggle for African American men to be allowed to fly and his experiences as a German POW and Gillead highlighting the struggle for equality undertaken by officers who did not see front line service.

Both men also talked about their pride at being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, along with roughly 300 other Tuskegee Airmen. During the award ceremony, President George W. Bush paid tribute to the airmen, saying, "The Tuskegee Airmen helped win a war, and you helped change our nation for the better. Yours is the story of the human spirit, and it ends like all great stories do – with wisdom and lessons and hope for tomorrow." A copy of the act bestowing the medals can be found here and Library holds a number of resources relating to the Tuskegee Airmen, their forces service and the relationship their actions had to the subsequent Civil Rights Movement.

The Library's collection of American newspapers contain a number of insights, with articles such as the Chicago Defender's, '332nd Flies Its 200th Mission Without a Loss' and many accounts of how the Freedman Field Mutiny and other incidents regarding racial equality were reported. There are also published service accounts, Alexander Jefferson's, 'Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free' (shelfmark: YC.2005.a.5960) is a good example, and various journal articles on the exploits and legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen in Europe and the US.

[JJ and PJH]

#Occupy

99% posters and placards

In an odd way, the material culture of the various Occupy movements has already become commodified: thanks to one of our always helpful U.S. dealers, we've had an arrival of posters, pamphlets, newspapers and other ephemera from Occupy Wall Street, Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, Harvard and Boston.  We'll get them catalogued and available for current and future researchers as soon as possible; they may also come in useful for exhibitions in the future.

There are also efforts to create a digital archive at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.  And, in case you missed it, there was this fine piece by George Packer in the New Yorker (5 December).  Both links underscore the importance of the use of digital, as well as more traditional, media.

[M.J.S.]

 

A Hankering to Travel: Charles Dickens and North America

Portrait of Charles Dickens from J. Forster's 'The Life of Charles Dickens' (shelfmark: YA.1993.a.5369)

The British Library's Folio Gallery has a new exhibition up, 'A Hankering After Ghosts: Charles Dickens and the Supernatural'. The exhibition has been put on to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Dickens, who was born on the 7th February 1812, and is well worth a look. While I paid the exhibition a visit the other day it reminded me of some of Dickens' writings, which I had been meaning to read for some time, the notes on his travels to North America in 1842.

 'American Notes for General Circulation' is a travelogue resulting from Dickens' travels and experiences in America and Canada, the Library holds a copy at shelfmark, Cup.410.g.25. The account is well worth a read for the author's flair and as an interesting travelogue in its own right. What caught my attention was Dickens' devotion of the final thematic chapter to the topic of slavery in America. Dickens is strongly critical of the practice and goes to great lengths to illustrate the horrors of slavery through the reproduction of adverts regarding run away slaves.

Dickens is withering in his criticism of Republicans who maintain a system at odds with their stated values, denouncing these individuals as thinking they, 'will not tolerate a man above [them]: and of those below, none must approach too near' (p. 41). He also notes there to be a significant proportion of this group who would, 'glady involve America in a war, civil, or foreign, provided that it had for its sole end and object the assertion of their right to perpetuate slavery' (ibid). While the causes of the later civil war are complex such a statement does seem unnervingly prescient.

Even though the Library's 'A Hankering After Ghosts' led me to call up Dickens' 'American Notes' this chapter caught my attention for another reason, the Americas department's collaborative doctoral award on slavery in Canada. The award is currently open to applications and anyone who is interested can find more information on this previous post.

[PJH]

Canada walks away from Kyoto: another Official Publications post

Publicity photograph from Durban 2011, courtesy of 'UNclimatechange' 

Canada's intention to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol has been a badly kept secret for some time, as the BBC have pointed out. However, questions as to why and what the impact will be still arise; institutions such as the British Library and electronic repositories of official publications can provide a wealth of useful material to furnish answers. 

There are several online repositories that offer useful resources on the Protocol in particular and on the nature and impact of climate change more widely.  Much of this information can be found via the UN Climate Change Portal, which provides useful statistical overviews and links to more detailed reports and numbers from other branches of the United Nations. Information can also be found on UN Data, such as this Greenhouse Gas Inventory Data chart which illustrates output from 41 countries between 1990 and 2008.

The UN also makes available a wide range of materials from the recent Durban Climate Change Conference, these can be found here and provide a large amount of data on a complex and still evolving political event. Canada's withdrawal came subsequent to the Environment Minister, Peter Kent, attending the Durban conference and confirming that the protocol, 'does not represent the way forward for Canada'. Canada's significance as a carbon dioxide emitter is summed up by this graph, perhaps most importantly it also shows how much an economy dominated by oil exports also contributes in relative terms.

The Alberta Oil Sands (which have been on this blog before) have been suggested as a reason for Canada's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol despite not being mentioned directly by the government. This is perhaps appropriate as such decisions rarely come down to a single issue, instead being the result of a complex assortment of social, economic and political pressures. As such, it may be worthwhile also paying attention to Canada's overall status as a pollutor, projected trade interests, demographic pressures and domestic energy needs, all of which could cause Canada trouble in adhering to the conditions set by the protocol and its potential successor.

The British Library holds a significant amount of material relating to climate change and the Kyoto Protocol produced in various countries and from myriad research backgrounds. In particular the Science, Technology and Medicine collections contain English language journals and academic monographs from around the world. There are also publications relating specifically to Canada, including Rodney White, 'Climate Change in Canada' (2010: YK.2011.a.16488) or the previous government's 'Moving Forward on Climate Change: a plan for honouring our Kyoto agreement' (2005, shelfmark: OPF.2006.x.35).

[PJH and JJ]

I can recall seeing adverts for 'Winchester' drives in the 1980s, at a time when the humble tape-recorder provided the common means of saving computer data.  According to Wikipedia, in 1973 IBM had introduced their 3340 Drive, offering commercially for the first time many of the technologies that became standard for future drives (e.g., 'low mass and low load head with lubricated platters').  The drive was designed around two 30 megabyte spindles, causing the project lead, Ken Haughton, to name the machine 'Winchester' after the famous (or, given its violent purpose, infamous) Winchester 30-30 rifle - a gun designed in 1894 by the same firm that manufactured the Henry Rifle during the Civil War: 'that damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!' (also used by the Confederate President Davies' personal security guards).

More peacefully - and more prosaically - the portable hard drive shown above is now being used to ferry giant TIFF files from the Library's scanning studio to my computer, where I am starting to relabel them with the relevant shelfmark and folio (using something called Ant Renamer), and send them on their way to www.bl.uk/manuscripts, making sure that the match up to their catalogue entries and are transformed into 'DeepZoom' .dzi files.

[MJS]



Illustration of where Rosa Parks sat, December 1, 1955, National Archives

A few days late, but the document shared by the U.S. National Archives is such a striking image that bears sharing: the plan of the bus that Rosa Parks took on 1 December 1955. 

If you tumblr, then you can also follow the National Archives, too.

[MJS]

The UK Web Archive team, which includes several colleagues who sit behind the bookshelves that face me, now has a blog.  They're talking a bit about what they are up to, but also highlighting websites in their collections in a kind of online Advent Calendar.  Today's link seems apposite for our blog: 'Three Continents, One History: Birmingham, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, & the Caribbean'

For the US, of course, there's the Internet Archive.

[MJS]

Just back from a meeting about the Library's web site, which reminded me of the many electronic resources to which we subscribe, and that are available in the reading rooms at St Pancras, Colindale and Boston Spa.

There's a listing American-related resources here.

And one of my favourites? Underground & Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels.

Also, if you a British Library reader's pass, then you can access some resources, including some historical U.S. newspaper at https://eresources.remote.bl.uk.

[MJS]

Happy Thanksgiving. As a holiday treat, here's a link to the Library's copy of the Leland-Boker Authorized Edition of the Emancipation Proclamation (1864), recently released as part of our US Civil War digitisation project.  The signatures at the foot are in the hands of Abraham Lincoln, John Nicolay (Private Secretary to the President) and William Seward (Secretary of State).

There's more about the Proclamation on our Americas Collections Highlights pages, and it's available on Images Online.  The Smithsonian also provides an introduction.

[MJS]

['Off for Canada', an illustration from, Glenelg [pseud.] (1889), Broken Shackles, Toronto: William Briggs]

As with the United States, slavery is part of Canada's heritage. This heritage is complex, including the enslavement of native peoples, participation in the African slave trade and Canada's role as an Underground Railroad safe haven (to provide a simple sketch). As these examples suggest it is also an interconnected heritage, involving the United States, Britain and various Caribbean territories, as well as Canada itself. The British Library's collections, therefore, provide a unique resource for the consideration of this history. Information and accounts are contained in many elements of the collections, with monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, journals and various other materials all providing insight into slavery in Canada and its associated connections with the rest of the Americas.

My motivation in sketching this out is to promote a collaborative studentship being offered by Sheffield University in partnership with the British Library. 'Narratives and Depictions of Slaves and Former Slaves in Canada: 1800 - 1900' is an opportunity to conduct PhD research into the Canadian collections of the British Library, investigating how the experiences of slaves and former slaves in Canada are represented therein. It is also an opportunity to contribute to understandings of the richness of the collections here, drawing out the significance of the works held and illustrating their connections to materials and individuals from other parts of the Americas and the British Empire.

The link in the previous paragraph contains more information on the project, eligibility and the application process. There are also contact details for Dr. Jane Hodson (studentship supervisor at Sheffield University's School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics) and myself should you wish to discuss the project further.

[PJH]

In the autumn of 1783, following the signing of the definitive treaty of peace with Britain, John Adams and his son, Quincy, visited London. After spending several years apart from his wife, Abigail, he resolved to tempt her over to Europe.  In November 1783, he wrote,

'Come to Europe with Nabby [Abigail, Adam's firsborn daughter] as soon as possible, and Satisfy your Curiosity, and improve your Taste, by viewing these magnificent Sceenes. Go to the Play -- see the Paintings and Buildings -- visit the Manufactures for a few Months -- and then, if Congress pleases return to America with me to reflect upon them.'

These scenes, the letter reveals, included a visit arranged by the painter Benjamin West to Buckingham Palace, which houses an 'inestimable Collection of Paintings'.  But, he continued, even considering the collections of Rubens, Van Dykes, Wests, etc.,  'The Library is the most elegant Thing I ever saw.'  And here, Adams was best pleased — and in this he probably shared the tastes of George III — by the 'Collection of Plans', which is now largely housed in the British Library and can be seen on the Online Gallery.

Perhaps it worked: Abigail (to whom he signed the letter, 'with Tenderness unutterable') and Nabby joined him in 1784.

Many of Adam's papers are currently available via the University of Virginia 'Founders Early Access Programme', but the November letter itself is held, along with a wealth of other materials, by the Massachusetts Historical Society.  It is available online as part of their Adams Electronic Archive.

You can read more about the contents and history of the George III collection here.  As well, of course, as enjoying the sight of the King's Library Tower in the heart of the Library's St Pancras building.

And, from tomorrow you can 'Satisfy your Curiosity' about earlier royal libraries, when the exhibition, 'Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination', opens.

[Matthew Shaw]

Confederate States of America, Fifty dollar bill, Add. MS. 44511, f. 23.

The last few weeks (well, years, if truth be told) have been a crash course in economics.  Thanks to the news, 'bonds', 'quantitative easing', 'sovereign debt', and the rest, have a more common... currency. 

The American Civil War, like most conflicts, was also a financial clash, in which the Treasuries of the two sides constituted one further weapons of war.  In the South, a new system of currency was issued, often with the promise that the Confederate States of America would pay the bearer after the cessation of hostilities.   Around $1.7 billion in confederate dollars was issued. Widespread counterfeiting and inflation soon made such notes near worthless, and the rise in the worth of gold led to rumours of stashes of Southern bullion, stories that continue to this day.

Above is an example of a fifty dollar bill, from the Library's manuscript collections.   Once the images and catalogue data has been processed, it should join other Civil War materials on manuscripts.bl.uk.

• Chase, Philip Hartley, Confederate Treasury Notes. The paper money of the Confederate States of America, 1861-1865 [A catalogue. With illustrations.] (Philip H. Chase: Philadelphia, 1947)
• Criswell, Grover C., Comprehensive catalog of Confederate paper money(Port Clinton, Ohio: BNR Press, 1996)
• Slabaugh, Arlie R, Confederate States paper money(Iola: Krause Publications, 1993)
• Tremmel, George B., Counterfeit currency of the Confederate States of America (Jefferson, N.C.; London: McFarland & Co, 2003)

[Matthew Shaw]

 

[J. E. H. MacDonald, 'Lake O'Hara', 1929, oil on canvas, 53.6 x 66.5 cm, The Thomson Collection, Copyright Art Gallery of Ontario. Currently displayed as part of 'Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven'', Dulwich Picture Gallery] 

On Saturday I had time to pop over to the Dulwich Picture Gallery and view the recently opened, 'Painting Canada' exhibition. Subtitled, 'Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven', the exhibition displays work from a group of artists who are credited with conceiving how to depict the uniqueness of the Canadian landscape. Wilderness is very much the focus of the exhibition and the works on display evoke both the majesty of the scenes depicted and the facination of this group of men with Canada's wild spaces.

While this wilderness is a dominant theme in the group's work they were prolific and covered many subjects,  from portraits, to rural landscapes and even attempting to capture the modernist beauty of the aircraft after it arrived in Canada. The Group of Seven travelled far and wide, covering a broad span of Canada in their work, and some members also produced art in Europe, notably during the First World War.

[Lieut. A. Y. Jackson, "Camouflaged Huts, Villers-au-Bois" in, Art and War: Canadian War Memorials (1919), London: Canadian War Records Office]

 

In fact, I remembered during the exhibition a collection item from the Canadian War Memorial Commission which contained contributions from some of the Group. (Lieutenant) A. Y. Jackson and (Captain) F. H. Varley were both involved in the war and produced art about it. The publication Art and War: Canadian War Memorials (1919, London: Canadian War Records Office; BL Shelfmark: J/7859.i.15) was produced, "to form a record of Canada's part in the Great War and a memorial to those Canadians who have made the Great Sacrifice" and Jackson and Varley contributed four works to it.

The Group of Seven had a significant impact upon the imagination of Canada and, as 'Painting Canada' shows, continue to today. If you are interested to know more our collections hold various materials relating to Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, including notable items such as, Art and War. There are also useful reference works such as, Housser, F. B. (1974), A Canadian Art Movement: the story of the Group of Seven, Toronto: Macmillan Co. (Shelfmark: X.429/10637); Murray, J. (1994), Tom Thomson: the Last Spring, Toronto: Dundurn Press (Shelfmark: q95/02542 DSC); and, Town, H. and Silcox, D. (1982), Tom Thomson: the Silence and the Storm, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart (Shelfmark: L.42/3735).

[PJH]



The International Space Station, May 2011

 Last night the Quebec Government Office in London hosted the event, 'An Evening in Space with Canadian astronaut, Julie Payette', at the Science Museum's Imax cinema, and Carole and I were invited along. The evening started with a screening of the rather awe-inspiring 'Space Station 3D'. Photographs and videos of space have been part of our visual heritage for a long time and have perhaps lost some of their early impact but the 3D effect and immersive screen reinvigorates the wonder of seeing the Earth from space.

The film is worth seeing, and Julie Payette's short lecture that followed was a treat for anyone who has even fleetingly wanted to be an astronaut. The emphasis of the talk was on how being in space opens up questions about how we relate to land on Earth and our own cultural differences. This was driven home by a great piece of 'it's Earth, but not as we know it' where photographs of parts of the world were shown in a different orientation from that which we would normally see and without any borders or human mapping. The effect of this re-imagining of familiar places was thought provoking and gave an insight into how being an astronaut must drastically change your world view.

One other thing that was mentioned which you may want to know: apparently, you can't see the Great Wall of China from space but you can see the Pyramids and the wake of ferries in the English Channel. It seems the contrast between light and dark is the main way of perceiving things from such an altitude, with the Wall not providing much contrast to its environment while the Pyramids and the bow wakes of ships do.

Finally, the evening drove home to me just how much of a presence Canada has in space, whether it be in the form of astronauts such as Julie Payette or equipment such as the 'Canadarm', a robotic arm used to manipulate loads from the Space Shuttles. You can find out more about Canada's activities in space via the Canadian Space Agency website and more about the International Space Station via the NASA site, or even through the British Library's own resources. I've just been bowled over by the amount of results returned by typing 'International Space Station' into Primo, with everything from books on building the station, to journal articles on experiments run there being available.

[PJH]

And in the blue corner... we have Haruki Murakami, whose early novels were translated and published in the US, and has also taught at several American universities.  He can make writing about a triathlon interesting (and even profound), something that the other Nobel Prize in Literature contenders have not, as far as I am aware, attempted.

We have also recently acquired two of his early novels in English translation, Pinball, 1973 and Hear the Wind Sing, which were published as part of the Kodansha English Library.

[MJS]

If the bookies know anything, then the news from Oslo this year may be that Robert Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan, will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (the other candidates are Haruki Murakami, Tomas Tranströmer and the front runner, Adunis ).  If the DJ, painter, songwriter and performer does receive the honour, we suspect it won't be for the novel shown above (here in bootleg form at YA.1997.b.4195), nor for the more crafted volume of memoirs, but for the poetry/lyrics that Christopher Ricks has famously compared to Keats (cf. his Visions of Sin).

There's a good bit in the memoirs about Zimmerman's early move to New York, where he became Dylan, and the hours he spent in the New York Public Library, reading and rereading microfilmed copies of Civil War and other nineteenth-century American newspapers.  The language, the stories, and the breadth of life contained in these records of Americana surely animates many of the songs in the Dylan songbook.  If you are a registered British Library reader you can read many of these newspapers outside of the Library, thanks to the internet and the Remote e-Resources we are able to offer at present.

Dylan also makes several appearances in our Beats Bibliography.

[MJS] 

 
HIGHRISE logo, courtesy of the NFB 

Two weeks ago, the Library was pleased to welcome Kat Cizek as part of the Eccles Centre sponsored Summer Scholars programme. Kat has made a number of documentaries in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada, including previous work Filmmaker-in-Residence (documenting life at St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto).

The subject of Kat's Summer Scholars lecture was the project HIGHRISE, an online documentary charting life in these structures which are, to quote Kat, 'the most ubiquitous built form in the world'. The project does not limit its view to Canada or even the Americas but instead looks at life in these buildings and neighbourhoods across the world, illustrating their diversity and questioning the way the structures are often stereotyped. During the talk Kat discussed the development of the project, the NFB's unique structure and way of working, the technologies involved (including a camera which provided viewers with a 360 degree view of a scene) and gave a guided tour of the work itself.

I would like to say thank you to Kat for the presentation and the audience, who were a wonderful mix of curators, film makers, geographers, social scientists, and more, for coming along and making the afternoon such an engaging one. It's worth noting that it was also rather fitting having a presentation on an NFB project at the British Library, given that we have collected so much material about and from the instituion over the years.

As the NFB is a Canadian government institution the British Library acquires much of its official material, including annual reports which can be found at BL Shelfmark C. S. E. 74. There are also NFB publications such as, Canada: A Year of the Land (Shelfmark: Cup.1256.ff.2), Contemporary Canadian Photography (Shelfmark: L42/3846) and many others. It is also worth mentioning that we have an extensive collection of the secondary literatures about the NFB and the wider Canadian media, so the collection is well worth a look - as is HIGHRISE and the work of the NFB more generally.

[PJH]

 

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress is currently sponsoring a two day symposium on the Brazilian popular literature known as ‘cordel.’

I was pleased to be able to contribute some bibliographic citations and information to a project that has resulted in an impressive and interesting resource for researchers of Brazilian cordel literature and Brazilian popular culture.

Cordel literature began circulating in the Northeastern states of Bahia, Ceará, and Pernambuco in the late 19th century. Often written as a poem, the subject of cordel literature can range from the fantastical to religious to topical. Cordel books tell their stories through words and wood cut prints. Many cordelistas gained fame as poets, others were the only source of news from afar. Cordeis were crucial to the spread of news about the Brazilian government’s war on the community of Canudos in the late 19th century, as well as the adventures of the famous ‘cangaço’ bandit of the northeast, Lampiao.

At once traditional and innovative – as most popular art is – the cordel is thriving again in contemporary Brazil. And this new energy and attention on the cordel may inspire a researcher to take a look at what is perhaps a lesser known area of our Latin American collections here at the BL. Cordel ‘classics’ such as ‘A chegada de Lampiao no inferno’ (The arrival of Lampiao in hell) as well as Brazilian ‘chapbooks’ are just waiting to be perused by an eager reader!

[E.N.C.]

Our intern, Maro, writes:

Have you ever wondered about research on American Studies in Greece? Well, the Department of American Literature and Culture of the School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh) has not only advanced but also facilitated the study and research of the field in question by launching the American Studies Resource Portal (ASRP) in the spring of 2010. This online database, an initiative developed by the Faculty members of the Department (with the sponsorship of the Information Resource Centre, Embassy of the U.S., Greece, and AUTh) – namely Dr. Zoe Detsi (Ass.Professor), Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou (Ass. Professor) and Dr. Eleftheria Arapoglou (Adjunct Lecturer) –  makes an array of sources and research material relating to American Studies available to a wide community of scholars, academics, university students, educators, independent scholars, school teachers and pupils, as well as the general public. More specifically, the site lists all the academic departments in Greece that run courses in American Studies along with the detailed description of the courses offered – either undergraduate or graduate – in American literature, politics and culture. Moreover, the portal includes an informed list of M.A. theses and the full text of Ph.D dissertations completed and in progress in the field of American Studies nationwide. An important feature of this highly searchable user friendly directory of American Studies is that it provides information for all the forthcoming conferences and events relating to American Studies as well as the HELAAS (Hellenic Association for American Studies) activities and latest publications.  Finally, there are links to American Studies organizations, libraries, research centres in both Europe and the US, publications and a variety of online research resources which range from documentaries and interviews to podcasts and films.

Having been an MA student in the Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for the past three years, I have found this portal extremely interesting and useful not only for the organized and carefully selected secondary material that it provided me with, but primarily because it connected me with Europe and the US, presenting me with options and opportunities on both a national and an international level. Within the framework of a collaborative project between the American Studies Resource Portal team and the Fulbright Foundation, Greece, I spent almost two months in the Fulbright headquarters in Athens researching the development of American Studies in Greece from 1948 to the present day, a research that is actually still in progress. With my internship in the Fulbright Foundation being part of a series of initiatives and projects that the ASRP team has launched, I am delighted to have been given this opportunity. What is more, I am now at the British Library as an Erasmus intern and it was the American Studies Resource Portal that allowed me to find out more about the Eccles Centre and the possibilities of an internship in the BL.

With the American Studies Resource Portal being the token of the ever-increasing national and international profile of the Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University, I think that is a challenging task that came to fill in an academic vacuum with regard to the filed of American Studies in Greece, especially within the context of the growing reliance on electronic sources in a digitized international environment.

To find out more about the ASRP: http://my.enl.auth.gr/asrp

Also read the following interview: http://www.mosaiko.gr/features/our-american-studies-resource-portal/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John James Audubon's Birds of America is undoubtedly a treasure but, it must be said, a bit unwieldy, especially in its double-elephantine folio.  Much handier is this new iPad version, which I spotted being announced on Twitter this morning.  It can be seen in its new habitat in two formats: the full, 'complete version', and the lesser-spotted 'highlights version'.  Both can be purcashed via eBook Treasures (along with other tomes, such as Blake's notebook).

More birds from the blog's backlist.

[MJS]

William Jerome, 'Down in the Subway', 1904, image from the songbook digitized at JScholarship.  BL copy at H.3987.f.(34.)

I just popped out of the Library to St Pancras next door (inadvertently messing up my punch clock), not for travel, but for artistic purpose: the collection of a small sculpture by Ann Carrington, who installed 13 'shell ladies' around Margate (not for the BL collections, I should add, although there are a fair few pieces of art distributed around the St Pancras site).  I am now safely clocked back in, the mini-shell lady is now safely at my desk, and, it turns, out, Carrington has a new work, 'Manhattan Mettle' in the W Hotel, New York, made out of 'metal punching, dollars, dimes, subway tokens, spanners, nails, pins...' and

I wonder if such an endeavour could be constructed from the subway tokens' replacement, the MetroCard?

[MJS]

Camelot still casts its spell, and the press has been full of reports of the recently released Jacqueline Kennedy recordings to tie in with Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F Kennedy, which is published today.  Much of the interest is to do with the gossip and occasional revelation contained in the text, but there is also, at least for many Americans (and many others), the continuing fascination with Jackie O.  As the New Yorker's Amy Davidson noted on the recordings and the current discussions,

Her comments here seem so striking because of the many paper-doll versions of her we’ve played with for so long. How many people have been the object of so much fetishization, of so many kinds—fashion, political, tabloid?

There are many items in the collections, of course, but here's one from the Sound Archive, recording the First Lady's more public utterances:

Biographical highlights of Jacqueline Kennedy - her speeches in the United States and abroad (Almanack, 1964).  disc 2 sides 30 cm 33 rpm.

[MJS]

Last weekend saw the start of the seventh Rugby World Cup. The Americas are well represented in the competition with three teams in the finals. I thought I’d take the opportunity to see what titles in our collection that explore the development of rugby union in the American continent. Arming myself with the Rugby Compendium [BL shelfmark: HLR 796.333 Open Access] compiled by John M. Jenkins (no relation) to see if it could offer any possible hints.  

September 11^th saw the U.S. Eagles' first match of the tournament, against Ireland. The U.S. are currently the Olympic champions, beating France in the final of the 1924 Paris Olympics. This was the last time rugby union was included a competitive sport in the Olympics, though the Berlin Olympics did put it on has an exhibition event. The development of rugby union in the U.S. seems to focus on the West Coast, and the title California Football History by “Brick” Morse, 1937 [BL shelfmark: X.622/20122] appears to be a useful if brief introduction.

Turning to Canada, who have developed as a team recent years from their involvement in the Churchill Cup where they play their southern neighbour and the England “Saxons” regularly. As with the U.S. rugby union in Canada, plays third of forth fiddle to other sports although the lineage of the Canadian Rugby Football Union dates back to 1884. The tome Canada learns to play : the emergence of organized sport, 1807-1914, Allan Metcalfe, 1987, [BL shelfmark: YL.1989.a.1808]  covers the development of sports in nineteenth-century Canada.

As a number of teams have found out to their cost in previous World Cups, you cannot underestimate Argentina, whose prowess on the field shows through time and again. They were unlucky not to prevail in the Pool B clash with England on Saturday last.   The British influence in Argentine sport can be traced in Victor Raffo’s El origen británico del deporte argentino : atletismo, cricket, fútbol, polo, remo, rugby durante las presidencia de Mitre, Sarmiento y Avellaneda 2004 [BL shelfmark: YF.2006.a.19585].

Enjoy the World Cup!

[JJ]

 

Image © Gaylord Schanilec

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is being marked by a steady stream of newspaper features, documentaries on TV, and an ever growing number of books on the subject. In my blog on last year’s anniversary I mentioned Michael Katakis’s Troubled Land series of photographs. Michael’s response to 9/11 was to set out on a trip across America, taking the photos which now make up the aforementioned series.* 

A recent issue of The New York Times carried an article on another type of response. New Yorker Richard Goodman rode his bicycle from the Upper West Side down to Ground Zero nearly every day for three months. His experiences during those cycling trips through Manhattan now make up the book The Bicycle Diaries: one New Yorker’s Journey Through 9/11, which is published in a limited edition by Midnight Paper Sales, the press of poet, wood engraver and printer Gaylord Schanilec. The book is illustrated by Gaylord’s distinctive coloured wood engravings and represents the answer to the question he asked himself on the morning of the 9/11 attacks, ‘what can I do?’ Last autumn he accompanied Richard Goodman on a bike ride, re-visiting the same Manhattan streets of Goodman's earlier cycling expeditions down to the One World Trade Center construction site. The engravings in the book are based on the photographs that Gaylord took during that ride. Text and image combine to provide a view of past and present, referencing both the horrors of the original events, and the hope arising from restoration and renewal in the city.

The blending of word and image has always been an important aspect of Gaylord’s work, as has a strong sense of place, so The Bicycle Diaries seems a perfect project for Midnight Paper Sales. To some it might appear anachronistic in these digital days to produce a limited edition fine press book, using traditional letter press printing and laborious multi-colour wood engraving processes, but books can be so much more than just carriers of information. As e-books become increasingly popular, paradoxically, the number and variety of fine press and artists' books that are appearing also seem to be on the rise. Great, we can have the best of both worlds. I'm looking forward to the arrival of the BL’s copy of The Bicycle Diaries and to holding it in my hands. I have no doubt that, to quote from the NYTimes article,  ‘It has the weight of a small thing done with great care to honor a huge loss.’

 [C.H.]

 *We’ll be displaying a few of these photographs in the forthcoming Folio Gallery exhibition which opens on 10 October. The exhibition ties in with the publication of Michael’s new book Photographs and Words, which will appear under the British Library imprint later this month.

 

We hope that visitors to the Library are happy.  However, this is not always the case, as one American traveller writes:-

Among the manuscripts, we observed... 41 volumes of decisions of the commissaries who settled the boundaries of properties after the great fire of London... We also noticed an original deed to some land to a monastery, dated Ravenna, Anno Dom. 572, written on the papyrus; and the original of Magna Carta. We had no time allowed to examine anything; our conductor pushed on without minding questions, or unable to answer them, but treating the company with double entendres and witticisms on various subjects of natural history, in a style of vulgarity and impudence which I should not have expected to have met in this place, and in this country - Louis Simond, 1810

 
[electroplate copy of the seal of Confederate States of America, Seals.XLIV.229 [1864]]

More images have arrived from the photo studio, including some digital images of the seal of the Confederate States of America that I mentioned in my previous post on the Civil War Project (above; Seals.XLIV.229).

The Library's collections (colony?) of seals are held by the former Department of Manuscripts, which for many years gathered together articles on items in its collections, and which are available in the 'Pamphlets' collection in the Manuscripts Reading Room.  A note attached to the seal (and reference in the Pamphlets card index catalogue), led me to Pamphlet 1072 (vol. LXXV), about fifty steps from my desk.  All very satisfyingly old-fashioned.

Bound in the 75th leather volume is Sigillologia.  Being Some Account of the Great or Broad Seal of the Confederate States of America.  A Monographby 'Joannes Didymus Archæologos', published in Washington, D.C., 1873, and sold for 25 cents.  Another copy is held at shelfmark 8176.b.5.(24).  I will have to ensure that this also get scanned, and added to the digital collections.

The author begins with a long quotation from Harper's Monthly Magazine(Feb., 1869), which, writing during the Reconstruction period, recounts 'the extraordinary spectacle... of the efforts of an oligarchy, small in numbers, but powerful in influence, to establish another nation within the bounds of the Republic [during the Civil War]... and to give it the symbol of sovereignty in the form of a Great Seal.'  Provided by 'its nurse, England', the seal was believed lost and, Harper's continued, 'antiquaries of the future, will search in vain for an impression of an emblem of sovereignty of the 'C.S.A.'  None was ever made.  The broad seal of the Republic kindly covers the dishonored ashes of that child of sin'. 

During its first year, the Confederacy passed a law establishing a seal for the republic, deciding that the work would be executed in England.  James Mason, the Confederate's envoy in London, was sent a copy of the act, and a photograph of the equestrian statue of Washington in Richmond, D.C (designed by Thomas Crawford).  The founder of the USA was also to be the symbolic founder of the Confederacy, surrounded by the agricultural products of the southern states.  Mason thought that cotton, rice and tobacco were 'distinctive products' of the Confederacy, and omitted wheat and corn, since these were produced in the north as well.  Finally completed in 1874, it was sent, along with wax, paper and an iron press (which, it seemed was then sent under seperate cover), in the care of Lieutenant Chapman via Halifax and Bermuda (where, to avoid the risk of Union interception, the press remained),  Chapman being 'charged, under no circumstances to run the risk of its being captured.'

However, the Monthly was mistaken in its view that the seal melted in the ashes of the Confederacy. In 1873, Charles Colcock Jones received a letter:

'My Dear Sir,

At considerable trouble and expense, I have been so fortunate as to rescue this interesting memorial from oblivion, and, possibly, a vandalic melting pot (it is of pure silver, and weigh several pounds).  I have had many electrotype impressions of it executed, and in deference to your antiquarian and archælogical tastes and devotion to the Lost Cause, have the pleasure of handing you, herewith, the first one finished, which you may regard as a proof-impression before letters...'

Hoping to raise funds for the relief of the (southern) needy, as well as perpetuate the self-regarding memory of the Confederacy, a electroplated copy had been produced.  This was authenticated by J. S. and A. B. Wyon, Chief Engravers of Her Majesty's Seals, whose predecessor, Joseph Wyon, had produced the original 'symbolical emblem of sovereignty' in 1864.  It seems that other impressions were made at the time for official use.   The author of Sigillologia also wanted it to be known that he was producing impressions in gold, silver, and bronze, and were available for purchase...  The present copy was donated to the British Museum by J. F. Pickett, of Washington, D.C. in 1874. 

As such, it is a reminder of the 'nurse' of the Confederacy.  Along with cruisers, uniforms and other materiel, Britain sold postage stamps and the necessary equipment of provide the new republic with the 'emblems of sovereignty. 

The Seal now resides in the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA (along with materials relating to its rediscovery).

 See also http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v030/v030p309.pdf

 

[MJS]



 

As I've mentioned before, thanks to the generosity of the American Trust for the British Library, we have been able to embark on a digitisation and online exhibition project for the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War.  The focus of the work, as well as helping to develop the Library's digitisation processes and platforms, is to reveal to a broader audience the collection items that tell the history of the British role in the War.  More than a cameo, the fortunes of the British Empire (not least many thousands, if not millions, who were born British or Irish) was closely tied to the course and outcomes of the war.  As well as the geo-political implications, there was also the matter of international trade - and, often, the the supply of goods (and other support) to the Confederate South.   This included the printing of stamps for the South, and we hope to include an image of the die used by a British firm for this purpose.

The image shown above, however, is the electrotype of the seal of the Confederate States of America (Seals XLIV.229), dating from 1864 (or, rather, an image of its image being processed on my desktop).  While two-dimensional digital images are fine for most purposes, and especially so for texts, objects such as these lose more than most in the process of being reproduced for an online world.  So, borrowing some of the techniques picked up during the curation of the Growing Knowledge exhibition, we were able to try a method of rendering objects in what appears to be 3D, known as Polynomial Texture Mapping.  A team from Southampton University kindly came to try out their 'PTM' dome, which records a series of images with light cast from various angles.  These are combined into a single file, which can then be manipulated online, giving the effect of a torch being shone on a 3D surface, casting shadows, highlights and different shades.  Inscriptions and erasures may be able to be seen more easily, and the artefact looks much more realistic.

There are problems, however - not least reflections from metal objects, such as the electroplated seal.  So, Southampton was keen to see what can be done with post processing.  I now have the files, and am in the process of rendering the complete PTM file, and working out how to include the viewer in the online gallery for the Civil War project when it finally goes live.

[MJS]

Maro, our current ERASMUS intern has been busy over the last few weeks.  One of the first fruits is this bibliography of secondary materials on the USA in the 1950s. The Library holds most of these titles, but we will endeavour to fill the gaps over the next few months. 

Maro has broken the period into a number of themes, and has added a few introductory remarks about what she sees as the tenor of the age:

Download 1950s USA Bibliography [.pdf; 240kb]

See also our Guides and Bibliographies page.



Team Americas has got its hands on an Olympus camera with a video facility and an Apple laptop, and is not afraid to use it.  The first fruit of our labours, number one in an ongoing series introducing various aspects of the colllections, the Team, and how to make best use of the British Library, is a headshot of Phil, our curator for Canadian and Caribbean Studies.  If all works out - and once Matt has got the hand of editing and focus pulling, etc. - we plan on doing a range of introductions to aspects of using the Library.  What would you find useful to find out more about?  Email americas@bl.uk, or use the comment field below.  Or ping us a tweet @_Americas.

Dr Philip Hatfield, Curator of Canadian and Caribbean Collections at the British Library from Matthew Shaw on Vimeo.

 

[MJS]

Yesterday (1 August) was the 192nd anniversary of birth the author of fishy tales, Herman Melville.  Perhaps in unwitting honour, the BBC showed Major Dundee on Sunday afternoon.  One of Sam Peckinpah's revisionist westerns, with a fascination with the themes of male friendship, hatred and violence, it casts Charlton Heston as a Union Cavalry officer, forced to draft in Confederate prisoners in a campaign against an Apache raiding party.  Critics have neatly mapped the main characters onto those of Meville's Moby Dick, and the not-entirely satisfactory story tells the tale of the consequences of an obsessive idealistic captain on his 'crew' as they head into the watery part of the world, or, in the film's case, the deserts of Texas and New Mexico.

Read more in John L. Simons & Robert Merrill, Peckinpah's Tragic Westerns (2011).

[Matthew Shaw]

In case you missed it, Phil has also been blogging about Sci Fi in Quebec and Canada at large. Read his post here.

On 21 July 1861, around 62,000 men faced each other near the key railway junction at Manassas, a vital point on the route to the Confederate capital of Richmond.  30,000 of them were Union troops under General Irwin McDowell, most of whom were 90-day volunteers; the 32,000 other were Confederates under the generalship of Pierre G.T. Beauregard.  Both sides thought the day would be decisive and swift.  It was neither.  The Union forces, under the gaze of sightseers from Washington, watching on a nearby hill, were mostly routed by the Confederate troops who then failed to capitalise on their success and press on to Washington.  A year later, between 28 August and 1 September, 48,000 Confederates faced 75,000 Union troops at the Second Battle of Manassas, forcing a Union retreat.  The war, of course, continued for another three and a half years. 

The National Park Service has published an online account, and today hosts an re-enactment of the battle (there are worries about the heat, much as in the disastrous 1961 re-enactment).  Visitors will not be able to visit the nearby Disney history theme park, as it was not built in 1994.  An earlier form of commemoration can be seen above (consecrated 11 June 1865).

For more about the preservation of the battlefield site, see Joan M. Zenzen, Battling for Manassas: the fifty-year preservation struggle at Manassas National Battle Field Park (Penn State University Press, 1998; online book).  On the memory of the Civil War more generally, see William A. Blair, Cities of the Dead: contesting the memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914 (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and David W. Blight, Beyond the Battlefield: race, memory and the American Civil War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2004).  For an account of the battle, including the antics of the Times correspondent, William H. Russell, see Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire.

And for online materials, UEA's Containing Multitudes blog contains a well-curated list.

 [Matthew Shaw]



My colleagues have been moonlighting on the Science Fiction exhibition blog. First, up, it's Aquiles on SF in Latin America:

The narrative of alternative, fantastic worlds is a hallmark of Latin American literature. Many novels written in Latin America, especially in the second half of the 20th century such as The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier or A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez became worldwide famous under the label 'magic realism', a narrative of alternative lives, beings and landscapes that challenge our concept of reality. What many readers do not realise is that the fantastic world as ascribed to contemporary Latin American literature can in fact be identified much earlier in the SF narratives that were published in the continent – a literary genre which has been and continues to be widely published in Latin America.

Dos Partidos en lucha: Fantasía científica by Eduardo Holmberg (Buenos Aires: El Arjentino, 1875) [Two Fighting Parties – Science Fantasy – BL holds it at shelfmark 7006.b.1] is considered to be one of the first Latin American novels written in the genre. This novel does not, in fact, make projections on how a future world would look but, instead, is based on a historic event that happened in Argentina: Charles Darwin’s visit to the country in 1872 during a scientific expedition. The novel narrates how Darwin captured some specimens from Argentina, including what he believed to be some monkeys who turned out to be human beings. The interesting aspect of this work (Holmberg wrote other SF novels dealing with space travel, aliens, etc) is that it brings forward the discussion about how science, working on a system of classification, is but a fantasy (or fiction) since it does not grasp reality as it is but rather projects the scientist’s own values and beliefs onto worlds which are completely alien to him. [read more]

Our intern, Maro, writes:

In light of the Out of this World exhibition, I would like to spend some time thinking through William Gibson’s literary achievement as regards his radical reconfiguration of the notion of space. His Sprawl trilogy – Neuromancer (1984), Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) and Count Zero (1986) – now considered a classic that does not go out-of-date, has come to typify the cyberpunk literary production of the 1980s, the decade when cutting-edge technologies and products started appearing in the American market.  During this decade a huge array of gadgets became widely available to the US market, with the personal computer constituting the icon of an era dubbed by theoreticians as ‘postmodernity.’

With the computer screen functioning as the window to a new world, Science Fiction became more radical in its vision and more experimental in its aesthetics, and it is particularly the notion of cyberspace, a word that Gibson himself coined, that best captures this computer-generated alternative and parallel world. The initiation of the readers into the world of cybernetics, virtual reality and Internet culture, signaled a monumental change in the human mindset and in particular, in the way the contemporary person perceived the concept of space within the context of the emerging Computer Age. As a matter of fact, Gibson’s concept of cyberspace has come to connote a computerized world of virtual reality in which somebody can enter simply by 'jacking in.' With the movement from physical environments to digital ones with or without the intervention of a cyberspace deck, Gibson introduces his readers to the simulated reality of computerized world, where human essence and software meet and interact; Gibson’s cyberspace is the vast and complex web of data into which we are inserted through the screen of our computers, a virtual place where we can project our visions, desires and wishful thinkings. In other words, the digital landscape is just something that we ‘see’ through our heads, a mind-generated space that constitutes another realm of existence in which the bulk of the novel’s action takes place. In another instance, Gibson uses the slightly paranoic phrase, 'There is no there, there,' in an attempt to define and explain cyberspace’s status and quality that defies the traditional notion of lived space as we experience it every day.

Upon their publication, the novels triggered discussion and debate, since the futuristic dystopian visions introduced were not only highly innovative and groundbreaking, but also disturbing, unsettling and difficult to grasp. In fact, I had a hard time reading the Sprawl trilogy, an experience that I would describe as frustrating. Often, I had to struggle with the text to make sense, as I found it hard to follow the complex narrative line, get used to the cybernetic ‘jargon’ and the radical shifts from one realm of reality to another; the process of reading was so frustrating for me that sometimes I would even wonder whether the pages have been scrambled or not. It was only after I had finished the first novel that I realized that this frustrating effect was intentional on the part of Gibson, who wanted to engage the reader in the riddle-like quality of his novel. Indeed, a challenging piece of writing, the Sprawl trilogy is a puzzle, a jigsaw that the reader is not invited to put together but rather to ‘experience.’

Gibson’s literary genius and the prophetic quality of his work can be best evaluated if we consider the fact that for the past two decades we have been experiencing the transition from science fiction to science fact. The science-fictionalized and Gibsonian character of our everyday life can be traced to the wide array of activities that take place on-line; my generation ‘likes’ and ‘pokes’ on Facebook all the time, we can ‘travel’ all over the world with Google Earth and we conduct all our financial transactions without bothering going to the bank. In a sense the contemporary individual is moving between the virtual reality of cyberspace that Gibson could have only imagined and the tangible world of lived experience, blending the boundaries between the ‘real’ reality and the fabricated. We are already part of Baudrillard’s famous argument about ‘the desert of the real.’

For a further elaboration on Gibson’s literary experiments and more specifically his unprecedented perception of space, I can recommend for further reading: 
Rapatzikou, Tatiani. Gothic motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson (2004)
Cavallaro, Dani. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson (2000).

[MS]

MJS adds: and he's out there, on @greatdismal

 

 

 

 
A new and correct map of the United States of North America: layd down from the latest observations and best authorities agreeable to the Peace of 1783... (Newhaven: publish'd according to act of Assembly, [1784])[Maps * 71490.(150)] 
Counterfeiting attracted some of the cruelest punishments in the past, in order to reflect the severity of undermining the coin of the realm.  But, in 1764, the prosecutor of one Abel Buell, a 22-year-old engraver and silversmith, who had been knocking out dodgy thirty-shilling notes in Connecticut, excercised a little mercy.  As punishment for his crime, 'the tip only of Buell's ear was cropped off: it was held on his tongue to keep it warm till it was put on his ear again, where it grew on. He was branded on the forehead as high as possible. This was usually done by a hot iron, in the form of a letter designating the crime' (John Warner Barber, Connecticut Historical Collections, 2nd ed., New Haven, 1836, pp.531-32, quoted in the catalogue for Christie's sale 2361).  Buell moved to New Haven in 1770, where he became the colony's leading copper-plate engraver, and in 1784 producted the first map of the new United States to be published in the United States and which was also the first map published in the new nation to depict the Stars and Stripes.  Eagle-eyed readers may not the absence of New York City and spot the placing of the prime meridian at Philadelphia, the seat of the new government. 

 

A copy was recently on sale, and is now on display in the Library of Congress (above).  The British Library's copy at shelfmark Maps * 71490.(150) is similarlyhand-coloured, and also shows the small scroll celebrating 'INDEPENDENCE/ JULYIV/ MDCCLXXVI'.  Happy Independence Day.

[MJS]
 

 
Canada Day 2010, Trafalgar Square

1 July is here again, which means it’s time to wish Canada happy birthday. I wrote last year about the significance of the day and what the Library’s collections can tell us about it, so I won’t go over that again today.  What I will do is let you know how you can go and experience a little bit of Canada in London during the course of the day.

As ever the heart of things will be Trafalgar Square which will be covered in a celebration of Canadian culture. For interest, the relationship between Canada and the Square is a long one, with the High Commission being based at Canada House since 1923 and various other Canadian institutions calling it home at one point or another.  If you make it down there you will find an entertaining mix of live music, hockey and Mounties, as well as a number of opportunities to learn about living, studying and working in Canada. For those interested, there is more information here.  

This year the opportunity to learn about Canadian culture in the round extends beyond Canada day, as the London-Québec Culture Festival is running until 21 July. The Quebec festival will be part of the Trafalgar Square celebrations too, so if you are interested it's a convenient place to start. To be honest, it’s a good time to find out more about Canadian culture in general, what with the great online presence of many Canadian cultural institutions (such as the NFB), events like Canadian Bookshelf and even the Royal Tour happening.

Given that there’s so much going on I’ve resolved to get more involved in all things ‘CanLit’ myself this year (quite an undertaking as I’m usually buried in a history book rather than the latest fiction), but more on that another time. For now, see if you can find your way to Trafalgar Square today or even just curl up at home, put Scott Pilgrim on and wish Canada ‘many happy returns’.

[PJH]

 
 

Our intern, Maro Salikopoulou, writes

Having been an MA student in the Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece for the past three years, I was delighted to know one year ago that my application for a work placement with the Eccles Centre for American Studies had been approved. Upon the suggestion of my professor Dr. Rapatzikou and within the context of the Erasmus exchange programme, I applied for an internship in this prestigious institution in the hope that I will be given the opportunity to engage myself in practical tasks always in relation to the field of American Studies. After a year of eager awaiting and a series of correspondence with the personnel of the Eccles Centre in order for the specifics to be arranged, I am finally in London, working in the international environment of the British Library, and more specifically, the American Studies team.

For the last two weeks I have been ‘experiencing’ the British Library, in terms of both its unique working environment and its academic appeal along with the possibilities it offers to students and researchers all over the world. Almost overwhelmed by the building, the high level of organization, the wide array of conferences and lively events that are being held, as well as the Library's temporary and permanent exhibitions, I am in a position to say that this goes far beyond my expectations! From the very first moment that I set foot on the British Library I knew that this is going to be a unique experience; in fact, it is my dual function as both a member of the staff and a student doing research for the completion of the requirement of my MA in Greece that makes this work placement much more exciting. In this way, on the one hand I have the possibility to take advantage of the library’s holdings – in both print and digital form – whereas on the other hand, I am given the opportunity to see how one of the greatest libraries in the world functions. Most of all, by working here I realized that one can maintain a connection with what we have been calling ‘American Studies’ outside the sphere of the university and implement theoretical knowledge by being engaged in more practical and pragmatic tasks and assignments.

My first task was to compile a list of secondary sources that pertain to what has been dubbed ‘The American Fifties,’ in an effort to help researchers interested in the particular area. The thematic entities around which this guide is structured aim at making research more focused and specific so that for students and researchers not to feel lost dealing with an unmanageable load of information and bibliography. However, this research guide is by no means exhaustive and the secondary sources that are included can only hint or lead to more directed research.

A guided trip to the Library basements provided a highlight of my first two weeks. Here, I had the unique chance of witnessing the parallel universe that exists underground with all the people meticulously working there, either tracing the books to be sent in the Reading Rooms, or maintaining and cataloguing the library’s holdings. I was surprised by the fact that in the basement there is indeed another realm of activity and interaction, another section of the library, where the underground workers secure and contribute to the excellent level of organization and management that characterizes the national library of the UK. Tim's guided tour was very exciting due to the fact that I had the opportunity to see some of the library’s most rare holdings, manuscripts and writings that date back to 1500, but also the first editions of some of my favourite writers, both English and Americans. In short, it was a great experience and I’m really looking forward to my second trip in the underground labyrinths of the British Library.

With the vast sea of information and knowledge the British Library offers, it can be said that it is a hub of intellectual activity on a worldwide scale and a goldmine for those who are involved in academic research. Having said that, it is a great honour for me to work here and ‘experience’ this international research centre by using at the same time the theoretical background that I have gained from my consistent preoccupation with American Studies the last few years, within the framework of my MA studies in the ever-growing and increasingly internationally-connected Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University (http://my.enl.auth.gr/asrp and www.enl.auth.gr). Finally,my colleagues here in London have made my transition and adjustment easier, always willing to answer my questions and help me discover and explore all aspects of the British Library. All these things considered, this is an excellent opportunity for a Greek MA student like me, particularly when one takes into consideration the situation that my country is currently dealing with and its consequences for the future.

[MS]

Today marks the 200th anniversary of Harriet Beecher Stowe's birth, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin: or, Life Among the Lowly, undoubtedly the most influential novel in American, and perhaps even world, history.

The New York Times carried a pithy piece on Beecher Stowe as the 'unlikely fomenter of wars' by David S. Reynolds (Graduate Center of the City University of New York).  It comes recommended.  Rather than 'an old-fashioned, rather lachrymose affair that features the deaths of an obsequious enslaved black man and his blond, angelic child-friend, Little Eva' we should see Uncle Tom as vital fuel to the antislavery cause, and not just in the U.S.: 'In Russia it influenced the 1861 emancipation of the serfs and later inspired Vladimir Lenin, who recalled it as his favorite book in childhood. It was the first American novel to be translated and published in China, and it fueled antislavery causes in Cuba and Brazil.'  And it had profound influence on the Civil Rights movement.

As it happened, I stumbled across Uncle Tom while I was trying out an online resource.  A letter from Thomas Watts, assistant keeper in the British Museum in the nineteenth century, to a bookseller was published in the  Massachusetts newspaper, The Independent (and was followed up in the Boston Liberator).  The letter is reproduced in full in the excellent Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture(UVA).

Watts spotted the importance of Uncle Tom, which was translated into 'so many languages, and among them into so many obscure ones, languages into which it has been found so hard on many occasions for popularity to penetrate.  Even the master-pieces of Scott and Dickens have never been translated into Welsh, while the American novel has forced its way in various shapes into the language of the ancient Britons.'  He proposed to the head of the printed book department, Anthony Panizzi, that he collect as many editions and translations as possible, in order to be of service to students of language and philology.  The plan was put into action, as the Museum's holdings served as a model for the Boston Public Library, and no doubt elsewhere. 

Watts finished his letter: 'I regret that my account of these versions should be so much less extended than I had hoped to make it, but especially at this period of the year the duties of an officer of the British Museum render it almost impossible for him to make any use of whatever of the treasures committed to his keeping, which are, as a rule, as closed to him as they are open to the public.'

I wonder what he would have made of this wealth of online treasure?

[MJS}

 
Paul Revere is, it seems, an echo of a memory of something that happened.  But as well as taking that pesky (from the British point of view) ride on the night of 18-19 April 1775, when he rode to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington that the British were marching towards them from Boston, sparking a chain of events that would lead the naming of a bunch of restaurants, the great American patriot was also a silversmith and copperplate engraver.  He put these skills to good use in the service of the Revolution, engraving and printing currency for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and in a series of striking prints.  Perhaps his most famous image can be seen above, a dramatic reconstruction of the Boston Massacre: read all about it on our online feature.

There are a number of other Revere prints in the collections.  They can be located by a search of [Paul Revere] in the English Short Title Catalogue, and then by limiting the results to the British Library.  There are a number of bibliographies, studies and biographies.  I can do no better than refer the interested reader in the listing produced by the American Antiquarian Society.

And there's more about the Old North Church and its lanterns here.

[MJS]

 
from Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition... 1838-1842 (Philadelphia, 1845), vol. 5. [10001.d]

Following on from last week's post on Obama's visit to Europe and possible contrasts with earlier claims to be the 'first Pacific president', here is the promised (brief) introductory bibliography on Samoa, in particular its place within the strategic and global interests of the late-nineteenth century and what might be termed the colonial gaze.  This, along with materials held in the UK National Archives, the Congressional Serial Set, and contemporary newspapers, would I'm sure be the basis for a very interesting final year or MA dissertation.

Manuscripts

Add. MS 41633, Log-book of HMS 'Diamond', on the Australian station, 22 Mar. 1882-16 Apr. 1884;

Add. MS 52309, ff. 11-12, Photographs of the ruler of, and a candidate for, the throne of Samoa (1888) [cf. Scott Papers, cf. Add. MS 52296]

Ashley B4313, ff. 21-24, Two Letters from Sidney Colvin to Edmund Gosse, the earlier on the death of R. L. Stevenson, the later on the possibility of moving his bones from Samoa now that it had become German; 18 Dec. 1894, 11 Nov. 1899. [ALC, vi, p. 11]

Printed Books

Edwards, Elizabeth, 'Time and Space on the Quarter Deck: Two Samoan Photographs by Captain W. Acland' in Raw History: photographs, anthropology and museums (Oxford, 2001), ch. 5;

Gilson, R. P., Samoa 1830 to 1900: the politics of a multi-cultural community (Melbourne, 1970);

Kennedy, Paul M., The Samoan Tangle: a study in Anglo-German-American relations 1878-1900 (Dublin, 1974);

Meleisea, Malama, Lagaga: a short history of Western Samoa (Apia, 1987);

Ryden, George Herbert, The Foreign Policy of the United States in Relation to Samoa (New Haven & London, 1933);

Watson, R. M., History of Samoa (Wellington, New Zealand, 1918);

Wilkes, Charles, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition... 1838-1842 (Philadelphia, 1845), vol. 5. (see also this post)

[MJS] 

Civil War Project Update: from rifles to TIFF files

I can recall seeing adverts for 'Winchester' drives in the 1980s, at a time when the humble tape-recorder provided the common means of saving computer data.  According to Wikipedia, in 1973 IBM had introduced their 3340 Drive, offering commercially for the first time many of the technologies that became standard for future drives (e.g., 'low mass and low load head with lubricated platters').  The drive was designed around two 30 megabyte spindles, causing the project lead, Ken Haughton, to name the machine 'Winchester' after the famous (or, given its violent purpose, infamous) Winchester 30-30 rifle - a gun designed in 1894 by the same firm that manufactured the Henry Rifle during the Civil War: 'that damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!' (also used by the Confederate President Davies' personal security guards).

More peacefully - and more prosaically - the portable hard drive shown above is now being used to ferry giant TIFF files from the Library's scanning studio to my computer, where I am starting to relabel them with the relevant shelfmark and folio (using something called Ant Renamer), and send them on their way to www.bl.uk/manuscripts, making sure that the match up to their catalogue entries and are transformed into 'DeepZoom' .dzi files.

[MJS]

The National Archives' 'Today's Document Series'



Illustration of where Rosa Parks sat, December 1, 1955, National Archives

A few days late, but the document shared by the U.S. National Archives is such a striking image that bears sharing: the plan of the bus that Rosa Parks took on 1 December 1955. 

If you tumblr, then you can also follow the National Archives, too.

[MJS]

UK Web Archive gets blogging

The UK Web Archive team, which includes several colleagues who sit behind the bookshelves that face me, now has a blog.  They're talking a bit about what they are up to, but also highlighting websites in their collections in a kind of online Advent Calendar.  Today's link seems apposite for our blog: 'Three Continents, One History: Birmingham, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, & the Caribbean'

For the US, of course, there's the Internet Archive.

[MJS]

Kapow! Electronic Resources

Just back from a meeting about the Library's web site, which reminded me of the many electronic resources to which we subscribe, and that are available in the reading rooms at St Pancras, Colindale and Boston Spa.

There's a listing American-related resources here.

And one of my favourites? Underground & Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels.

Also, if you a British Library reader's pass, then you can access some resources, including some historical U.S. newspaper at https://eresources.remote.bl.uk.

[MJS]

Civil War Project: the Emancipation Proclamation

Happy Thanksgiving. As a holiday treat, here's a link to the Library's copy of the Leland-Boker Authorized Edition of the Emancipation Proclamation (1864), recently released as part of our US Civil War digitisation project.  The signatures at the foot are in the hands of Abraham Lincoln, John Nicolay (Private Secretary to the President) and William Seward (Secretary of State).

There's more about the Proclamation on our Americas Collections Highlights pages, and it's available on Images Online.  The Smithsonian also provides an introduction.

[MJS]

Narrating Slavery and Freedom in Canada

['Off for Canada', an illustration from, Glenelg [pseud.] (1889), Broken Shackles, Toronto: William Briggs]

As with the United States, slavery is part of Canada's heritage. This heritage is complex, including the enslavement of native peoples, participation in the African slave trade and Canada's role as an Underground Railroad safe haven (to provide a simple sketch). As these examples suggest it is also an interconnected heritage, involving the United States, Britain and various Caribbean territories, as well as Canada itself. The British Library's collections, therefore, provide a unique resource for the consideration of this history. Information and accounts are contained in many elements of the collections, with monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, journals and various other materials all providing insight into slavery in Canada and its associated connections with the rest of the Americas.

My motivation in sketching this out is to promote a collaborative studentship being offered by Sheffield University in partnership with the British Library. 'Narratives and Depictions of Slaves and Former Slaves in Canada: 1800 - 1900' is an opportunity to conduct PhD research into the Canadian collections of the British Library, investigating how the experiences of slaves and former slaves in Canada are represented therein. It is also an opportunity to contribute to understandings of the richness of the collections here, drawing out the significance of the works held and illustrating their connections to materials and individuals from other parts of the Americas and the British Empire.

The link in the previous paragraph contains more information on the project, eligibility and the application process. There are also contact details for Dr. Jane Hodson (studentship supervisor at Sheffield University's School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics) and myself should you wish to discuss the project further.

[PJH]

'the most elegant Thing I ever saw': royal libraries and republicans

In the autumn of 1783, following the signing of the definitive treaty of peace with Britain, John Adams and his son, Quincy, visited London. After spending several years apart from his wife, Abigail, he resolved to tempt her over to Europe.  In November 1783, he wrote,

'Come to Europe with Nabby [Abigail, Adam's firsborn daughter] as soon as possible, and Satisfy your Curiosity, and improve your Taste, by viewing these magnificent Sceenes. Go to the Play -- see the Paintings and Buildings -- visit the Manufactures for a few Months -- and then, if Congress pleases return to America with me to reflect upon them.'

These scenes, the letter reveals, included a visit arranged by the painter Benjamin West to Buckingham Palace, which houses an 'inestimable Collection of Paintings'.  But, he continued, even considering the collections of Rubens, Van Dykes, Wests, etc.,  'The Library is the most elegant Thing I ever saw.'  And here, Adams was best pleased — and in this he probably shared the tastes of George III — by the 'Collection of Plans', which is now largely housed in the British Library and can be seen on the Online Gallery.

Perhaps it worked: Abigail (to whom he signed the letter, 'with Tenderness unutterable') and Nabby joined him in 1784.

Many of Adam's papers are currently available via the University of Virginia 'Founders Early Access Programme', but the November letter itself is held, along with a wealth of other materials, by the Massachusetts Historical Society.  It is available online as part of their Adams Electronic Archive.

You can read more about the contents and history of the George III collection here.  As well, of course, as enjoying the sight of the King's Library Tower in the heart of the Library's St Pancras building.

And, from tomorrow you can 'Satisfy your Curiosity' about earlier royal libraries, when the exhibition, 'Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination', opens.

[Matthew Shaw]

Printing Money

Confederate States of America, Fifty dollar bill, Add. MS. 44511, f. 23.

The last few weeks (well, years, if truth be told) have been a crash course in economics.  Thanks to the news, 'bonds', 'quantitative easing', 'sovereign debt', and the rest, have a more common... currency. 

The American Civil War, like most conflicts, was also a financial clash, in which the Treasuries of the two sides constituted one further weapons of war.  In the South, a new system of currency was issued, often with the promise that the Confederate States of America would pay the bearer after the cessation of hostilities.   Around $1.7 billion in confederate dollars was issued. Widespread counterfeiting and inflation soon made such notes near worthless, and the rise in the worth of gold led to rumours of stashes of Southern bullion, stories that continue to this day.

Above is an example of a fifty dollar bill, from the Library's manuscript collections.   Once the images and catalogue data has been processed, it should join other Civil War materials on manuscripts.bl.uk.

• Chase, Philip Hartley, Confederate Treasury Notes. The paper money of the Confederate States of America, 1861-1865 [A catalogue. With illustrations.] (Philip H. Chase: Philadelphia, 1947)
• Criswell, Grover C., Comprehensive catalog of Confederate paper money(Port Clinton, Ohio: BNR Press, 1996)
• Slabaugh, Arlie R, Confederate States paper money(Iola: Krause Publications, 1993)
• Tremmel, George B., Counterfeit currency of the Confederate States of America (Jefferson, N.C.; London: McFarland & Co, 2003)

[Matthew Shaw]

The Group of Seven comes to Dulwich

 

[J. E. H. MacDonald, 'Lake O'Hara', 1929, oil on canvas, 53.6 x 66.5 cm, The Thomson Collection, Copyright Art Gallery of Ontario. Currently displayed as part of 'Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven'', Dulwich Picture Gallery] 

On Saturday I had time to pop over to the Dulwich Picture Gallery and view the recently opened, 'Painting Canada' exhibition. Subtitled, 'Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven', the exhibition displays work from a group of artists who are credited with conceiving how to depict the uniqueness of the Canadian landscape. Wilderness is very much the focus of the exhibition and the works on display evoke both the majesty of the scenes depicted and the facination of this group of men with Canada's wild spaces.

While this wilderness is a dominant theme in the group's work they were prolific and covered many subjects,  from portraits, to rural landscapes and even attempting to capture the modernist beauty of the aircraft after it arrived in Canada. The Group of Seven travelled far and wide, covering a broad span of Canada in their work, and some members also produced art in Europe, notably during the First World War.

[Lieut. A. Y. Jackson, "Camouflaged Huts, Villers-au-Bois" in, Art and War: Canadian War Memorials (1919), London: Canadian War Records Office]

 

In fact, I remembered during the exhibition a collection item from the Canadian War Memorial Commission which contained contributions from some of the Group. (Lieutenant) A. Y. Jackson and (Captain) F. H. Varley were both involved in the war and produced art about it. The publication Art and War: Canadian War Memorials (1919, London: Canadian War Records Office; BL Shelfmark: J/7859.i.15) was produced, "to form a record of Canada's part in the Great War and a memorial to those Canadians who have made the Great Sacrifice" and Jackson and Varley contributed four works to it.

The Group of Seven had a significant impact upon the imagination of Canada and, as 'Painting Canada' shows, continue to today. If you are interested to know more our collections hold various materials relating to Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, including notable items such as, Art and War. There are also useful reference works such as, Housser, F. B. (1974), A Canadian Art Movement: the story of the Group of Seven, Toronto: Macmillan Co. (Shelfmark: X.429/10637); Murray, J. (1994), Tom Thomson: the Last Spring, Toronto: Dundurn Press (Shelfmark: q95/02542 DSC); and, Town, H. and Silcox, D. (1982), Tom Thomson: the Silence and the Storm, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart (Shelfmark: L.42/3735).

[PJH]



Team Americas in Space

The International Space Station, May 2011

 Last night the Quebec Government Office in London hosted the event, 'An Evening in Space with Canadian astronaut, Julie Payette', at the Science Museum's Imax cinema, and Carole and I were invited along. The evening started with a screening of the rather awe-inspiring 'Space Station 3D'. Photographs and videos of space have been part of our visual heritage for a long time and have perhaps lost some of their early impact but the 3D effect and immersive screen reinvigorates the wonder of seeing the Earth from space.

The film is worth seeing, and Julie Payette's short lecture that followed was a treat for anyone who has even fleetingly wanted to be an astronaut. The emphasis of the talk was on how being in space opens up questions about how we relate to land on Earth and our own cultural differences. This was driven home by a great piece of 'it's Earth, but not as we know it' where photographs of parts of the world were shown in a different orientation from that which we would normally see and without any borders or human mapping. The effect of this re-imagining of familiar places was thought provoking and gave an insight into how being an astronaut must drastically change your world view.

One other thing that was mentioned which you may want to know: apparently, you can't see the Great Wall of China from space but you can see the Pyramids and the wake of ferries in the English Channel. It seems the contrast between light and dark is the main way of perceiving things from such an altitude, with the Wall not providing much contrast to its environment while the Pyramids and the bow wakes of ships do.

Finally, the evening drove home to me just how much of a presence Canada has in space, whether it be in the form of astronauts such as Julie Payette or equipment such as the 'Canadarm', a robotic arm used to manipulate loads from the Space Shuttles. You can find out more about Canada's activities in space via the Canadian Space Agency website and more about the International Space Station via the NASA site, or even through the British Library's own resources. I've just been bowled over by the amount of results returned by typing 'International Space Station' into Primo, with everything from books on building the station, to journal articles on experiments run there being available.

[PJH]

Oslo, 2011?

And in the blue corner... we have Haruki Murakami, whose early novels were translated and published in the US, and has also taught at several American universities.  He can make writing about a triathlon interesting (and even profound), something that the other Nobel Prize in Literature contenders have not, as far as I am aware, attempted.

We have also recently acquired two of his early novels in English translation, Pinball, 1973 and Hear the Wind Sing, which were published as part of the Kodansha English Library.

[MJS]

Robert Zimmerman goes to Oslo?

If the bookies know anything, then the news from Oslo this year may be that Robert Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan, will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (the other candidates are Haruki Murakami, Tomas Tranströmer and the front runner, Adunis ).  If the DJ, painter, songwriter and performer does receive the honour, we suspect it won't be for the novel shown above (here in bootleg form at YA.1997.b.4195), nor for the more crafted volume of memoirs, but for the poetry/lyrics that Christopher Ricks has famously compared to Keats (cf. his Visions of Sin).

There's a good bit in the memoirs about Zimmerman's early move to New York, where he became Dylan, and the hours he spent in the New York Public Library, reading and rereading microfilmed copies of Civil War and other nineteenth-century American newspapers.  The language, the stories, and the breadth of life contained in these records of Americana surely animates many of the songs in the Dylan songbook.  If you are a registered British Library reader you can read many of these newspapers outside of the Library, thanks to the internet and the Remote e-Resources we are able to offer at present.

Dylan also makes several appearances in our Beats Bibliography.

[MJS] 

HIGHRISE at the British Library

 
HIGHRISE logo, courtesy of the NFB 

Two weeks ago, the Library was pleased to welcome Kat Cizek as part of the Eccles Centre sponsored Summer Scholars programme. Kat has made a number of documentaries in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada, including previous work Filmmaker-in-Residence (documenting life at St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto).

The subject of Kat's Summer Scholars lecture was the project HIGHRISE, an online documentary charting life in these structures which are, to quote Kat, 'the most ubiquitous built form in the world'. The project does not limit its view to Canada or even the Americas but instead looks at life in these buildings and neighbourhoods across the world, illustrating their diversity and questioning the way the structures are often stereotyped. During the talk Kat discussed the development of the project, the NFB's unique structure and way of working, the technologies involved (including a camera which provided viewers with a 360 degree view of a scene) and gave a guided tour of the work itself.

I would like to say thank you to Kat for the presentation and the audience, who were a wonderful mix of curators, film makers, geographers, social scientists, and more, for coming along and making the afternoon such an engaging one. It's worth noting that it was also rather fitting having a presentation on an NFB project at the British Library, given that we have collected so much material about and from the instituion over the years.

As the NFB is a Canadian government institution the British Library acquires much of its official material, including annual reports which can be found at BL Shelfmark C. S. E. 74. There are also NFB publications such as, Canada: A Year of the Land (Shelfmark: Cup.1256.ff.2), Contemporary Canadian Photography (Shelfmark: L42/3846) and many others. It is also worth mentioning that we have an extensive collection of the secondary literatures about the NFB and the wider Canadian media, so the collection is well worth a look - as is HIGHRISE and the work of the NFB more generally.

[PJH]

Literatura de Cordel

 

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress is currently sponsoring a two day symposium on the Brazilian popular literature known as ‘cordel.’

I was pleased to be able to contribute some bibliographic citations and information to a project that has resulted in an impressive and interesting resource for researchers of Brazilian cordel literature and Brazilian popular culture.

Cordel literature began circulating in the Northeastern states of Bahia, Ceará, and Pernambuco in the late 19th century. Often written as a poem, the subject of cordel literature can range from the fantastical to religious to topical. Cordel books tell their stories through words and wood cut prints. Many cordelistas gained fame as poets, others were the only source of news from afar. Cordeis were crucial to the spread of news about the Brazilian government’s war on the community of Canudos in the late 19th century, as well as the adventures of the famous ‘cangaço’ bandit of the northeast, Lampiao.

At once traditional and innovative – as most popular art is – the cordel is thriving again in contemporary Brazil. And this new energy and attention on the cordel may inspire a researcher to take a look at what is perhaps a lesser known area of our Latin American collections here at the BL. Cordel ‘classics’ such as ‘A chegada de Lampiao no inferno’ (The arrival of Lampiao in hell) as well as Brazilian ‘chapbooks’ are just waiting to be perused by an eager reader!

[E.N.C.]

American Studies Resource Portal (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

Our intern, Maro, writes:

Have you ever wondered about research on American Studies in Greece? Well, the Department of American Literature and Culture of the School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh) has not only advanced but also facilitated the study and research of the field in question by launching the American Studies Resource Portal (ASRP) in the spring of 2010. This online database, an initiative developed by the Faculty members of the Department (with the sponsorship of the Information Resource Centre, Embassy of the U.S., Greece, and AUTh) – namely Dr. Zoe Detsi (Ass.Professor), Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou (Ass. Professor) and Dr. Eleftheria Arapoglou (Adjunct Lecturer) –  makes an array of sources and research material relating to American Studies available to a wide community of scholars, academics, university students, educators, independent scholars, school teachers and pupils, as well as the general public. More specifically, the site lists all the academic departments in Greece that run courses in American Studies along with the detailed description of the courses offered – either undergraduate or graduate – in American literature, politics and culture. Moreover, the portal includes an informed list of M.A. theses and the full text of Ph.D dissertations completed and in progress in the field of American Studies nationwide. An important feature of this highly searchable user friendly directory of American Studies is that it provides information for all the forthcoming conferences and events relating to American Studies as well as the HELAAS (Hellenic Association for American Studies) activities and latest publications.  Finally, there are links to American Studies organizations, libraries, research centres in both Europe and the US, publications and a variety of online research resources which range from documentaries and interviews to podcasts and films.

Having been an MA student in the Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for the past three years, I have found this portal extremely interesting and useful not only for the organized and carefully selected secondary material that it provided me with, but primarily because it connected me with Europe and the US, presenting me with options and opportunities on both a national and an international level. Within the framework of a collaborative project between the American Studies Resource Portal team and the Fulbright Foundation, Greece, I spent almost two months in the Fulbright headquarters in Athens researching the development of American Studies in Greece from 1948 to the present day, a research that is actually still in progress. With my internship in the Fulbright Foundation being part of a series of initiatives and projects that the ASRP team has launched, I am delighted to have been given this opportunity. What is more, I am now at the British Library as an Erasmus intern and it was the American Studies Resource Portal that allowed me to find out more about the Eccles Centre and the possibilities of an internship in the BL.

With the American Studies Resource Portal being the token of the ever-increasing national and international profile of the Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University, I think that is a challenging task that came to fill in an academic vacuum with regard to the filed of American Studies in Greece, especially within the context of the growing reliance on electronic sources in a digitized international environment.

To find out more about the ASRP: http://my.enl.auth.gr/asrp

Also read the following interview: http://www.mosaiko.gr/features/our-american-studies-resource-portal/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tweet Tweet: John James Audubon's Birds of America

John James Audubon's Birds of America is undoubtedly a treasure but, it must be said, a bit unwieldy, especially in its double-elephantine folio.  Much handier is this new iPad version, which I spotted being announced on Twitter this morning.  It can be seen in its new habitat in two formats: the full, 'complete version', and the lesser-spotted 'highlights version'.  Both can be purcashed via eBook Treasures (along with other tomes, such as Blake's notebook).

More birds from the blog's backlist.

[MJS]

From Margate to Manhattan...

William Jerome, 'Down in the Subway', 1904, image from the songbook digitized at JScholarship.  BL copy at H.3987.f.(34.)

I just popped out of the Library to St Pancras next door (inadvertently messing up my punch clock), not for travel, but for artistic purpose: the collection of a small sculpture by Ann Carrington, who installed 13 'shell ladies' around Margate (not for the BL collections, I should add, although there are a fair few pieces of art distributed around the St Pancras site).  I am now safely clocked back in, the mini-shell lady is now safely at my desk, and, it turns, out, Carrington has a new work, 'Manhattan Mettle' in the W Hotel, New York, made out of 'metal punching, dollars, dimes, subway tokens, spanners, nails, pins...' and

I wonder if such an endeavour could be constructed from the subway tokens' replacement, the MetroCard?

[MJS]

Jackie O

Camelot still casts its spell, and the press has been full of reports of the recently released Jacqueline Kennedy recordings to tie in with Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F Kennedy, which is published today.  Much of the interest is to do with the gossip and occasional revelation contained in the text, but there is also, at least for many Americans (and many others), the continuing fascination with Jackie O.  As the New Yorker's Amy Davidson noted on the recordings and the current discussions,

Her comments here seem so striking because of the many paper-doll versions of her we’ve played with for so long. How many people have been the object of so much fetishization, of so many kinds—fashion, political, tabloid?

There are many items in the collections, of course, but here's one from the Sound Archive, recording the First Lady's more public utterances:

Biographical highlights of Jacqueline Kennedy - her speeches in the United States and abroad (Almanack, 1964).  disc 2 sides 30 cm 33 rpm.

[MJS]

USA: Olympic Rugby Champions

Last weekend saw the start of the seventh Rugby World Cup. The Americas are well represented in the competition with three teams in the finals. I thought I’d take the opportunity to see what titles in our collection that explore the development of rugby union in the American continent. Arming myself with the Rugby Compendium [BL shelfmark: HLR 796.333 Open Access] compiled by John M. Jenkins (no relation) to see if it could offer any possible hints.  

September 11^th saw the U.S. Eagles' first match of the tournament, against Ireland. The U.S. are currently the Olympic champions, beating France in the final of the 1924 Paris Olympics. This was the last time rugby union was included a competitive sport in the Olympics, though the Berlin Olympics did put it on has an exhibition event. The development of rugby union in the U.S. seems to focus on the West Coast, and the title California Football History by “Brick” Morse, 1937 [BL shelfmark: X.622/20122] appears to be a useful if brief introduction.

Turning to Canada, who have developed as a team recent years from their involvement in the Churchill Cup where they play their southern neighbour and the England “Saxons” regularly. As with the U.S. rugby union in Canada, plays third of forth fiddle to other sports although the lineage of the Canadian Rugby Football Union dates back to 1884. The tome Canada learns to play : the emergence of organized sport, 1807-1914, Allan Metcalfe, 1987, [BL shelfmark: YL.1989.a.1808]  covers the development of sports in nineteenth-century Canada.

As a number of teams have found out to their cost in previous World Cups, you cannot underestimate Argentina, whose prowess on the field shows through time and again. They were unlucky not to prevail in the Pool B clash with England on Saturday last.   The British influence in Argentine sport can be traced in Victor Raffo’s El origen británico del deporte argentino : atletismo, cricket, fútbol, polo, remo, rugby durante las presidencia de Mitre, Sarmiento y Avellaneda 2004 [BL shelfmark: YF.2006.a.19585].

Enjoy the World Cup!

[JJ]

Remembering 9/11 again (or What you won't be reading on your Kindle, part 3)

 

Image © Gaylord Schanilec

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is being marked by a steady stream of newspaper features, documentaries on TV, and an ever growing number of books on the subject. In my blog on last year’s anniversary I mentioned Michael Katakis’s Troubled Land series of photographs. Michael’s response to 9/11 was to set out on a trip across America, taking the photos which now make up the aforementioned series.* 

A recent issue of The New York Times carried an article on another type of response. New Yorker Richard Goodman rode his bicycle from the Upper West Side down to Ground Zero nearly every day for three months. His experiences during those cycling trips through Manhattan now make up the book The Bicycle Diaries: one New Yorker’s Journey Through 9/11, which is published in a limited edition by Midnight Paper Sales, the press of poet, wood engraver and printer Gaylord Schanilec. The book is illustrated by Gaylord’s distinctive coloured wood engravings and represents the answer to the question he asked himself on the morning of the 9/11 attacks, ‘what can I do?’ Last autumn he accompanied Richard Goodman on a bike ride, re-visiting the same Manhattan streets of Goodman's earlier cycling expeditions down to the One World Trade Center construction site. The engravings in the book are based on the photographs that Gaylord took during that ride. Text and image combine to provide a view of past and present, referencing both the horrors of the original events, and the hope arising from restoration and renewal in the city.

The blending of word and image has always been an important aspect of Gaylord’s work, as has a strong sense of place, so The Bicycle Diaries seems a perfect project for Midnight Paper Sales. To some it might appear anachronistic in these digital days to produce a limited edition fine press book, using traditional letter press printing and laborious multi-colour wood engraving processes, but books can be so much more than just carriers of information. As e-books become increasingly popular, paradoxically, the number and variety of fine press and artists' books that are appearing also seem to be on the rise. Great, we can have the best of both worlds. I'm looking forward to the arrival of the BL’s copy of The Bicycle Diaries and to holding it in my hands. I have no doubt that, to quote from the NYTimes article,  ‘It has the weight of a small thing done with great care to honor a huge loss.’

 [C.H.]

 *We’ll be displaying a few of these photographs in the forthcoming Folio Gallery exhibition which opens on 10 October. The exhibition ties in with the publication of Michael’s new book Photographs and Words, which will appear under the British Library imprint later this month.

 

Negative feedback

We hope that visitors to the Library are happy.  However, this is not always the case, as one American traveller writes:-

Among the manuscripts, we observed... 41 volumes of decisions of the commissaries who settled the boundaries of properties after the great fire of London... We also noticed an original deed to some land to a monastery, dated Ravenna, Anno Dom. 572, written on the papyrus; and the original of Magna Carta. We had no time allowed to examine anything; our conductor pushed on without minding questions, or unable to answer them, but treating the company with double entendres and witticisms on various subjects of natural history, in a style of vulgarity and impudence which I should not have expected to have met in this place, and in this country - Louis Simond, 1810

"That symbol - the Great Seal of the infant Confederacy - sent to it by its nurse, England", or Civil War Digitisation Project Update (II)

 
[electroplate copy of the seal of Confederate States of America, Seals.XLIV.229 [1864]]

More images have arrived from the photo studio, including some digital images of the seal of the Confederate States of America that I mentioned in my previous post on the Civil War Project (above; Seals.XLIV.229).

The Library's collections (colony?) of seals are held by the former Department of Manuscripts, which for many years gathered together articles on items in its collections, and which are available in the 'Pamphlets' collection in the Manuscripts Reading Room.  A note attached to the seal (and reference in the Pamphlets card index catalogue), led me to Pamphlet 1072 (vol. LXXV), about fifty steps from my desk.  All very satisfyingly old-fashioned.

Bound in the 75th leather volume is Sigillologia.  Being Some Account of the Great or Broad Seal of the Confederate States of America.  A Monographby 'Joannes Didymus Archæologos', published in Washington, D.C., 1873, and sold for 25 cents.  Another copy is held at shelfmark 8176.b.5.(24).  I will have to ensure that this also get scanned, and added to the digital collections.

The author begins with a long quotation from Harper's Monthly Magazine(Feb., 1869), which, writing during the Reconstruction period, recounts 'the extraordinary spectacle... of the efforts of an oligarchy, small in numbers, but powerful in influence, to establish another nation within the bounds of the Republic [during the Civil War]... and to give it the symbol of sovereignty in the form of a Great Seal.'  Provided by 'its nurse, England', the seal was believed lost and, Harper's continued, 'antiquaries of the future, will search in vain for an impression of an emblem of sovereignty of the 'C.S.A.'  None was ever made.  The broad seal of the Republic kindly covers the dishonored ashes of that child of sin'. 

During its first year, the Confederacy passed a law establishing a seal for the republic, deciding that the work would be executed in England.  James Mason, the Confederate's envoy in London, was sent a copy of the act, and a photograph of the equestrian statue of Washington in Richmond, D.C (designed by Thomas Crawford).  The founder of the USA was also to be the symbolic founder of the Confederacy, surrounded by the agricultural products of the southern states.  Mason thought that cotton, rice and tobacco were 'distinctive products' of the Confederacy, and omitted wheat and corn, since these were produced in the north as well.  Finally completed in 1874, it was sent, along with wax, paper and an iron press (which, it seemed was then sent under seperate cover), in the care of Lieutenant Chapman via Halifax and Bermuda (where, to avoid the risk of Union interception, the press remained),  Chapman being 'charged, under no circumstances to run the risk of its being captured.'

However, the Monthly was mistaken in its view that the seal melted in the ashes of the Confederacy. In 1873, Charles Colcock Jones received a letter:

'My Dear Sir,

At considerable trouble and expense, I have been so fortunate as to rescue this interesting memorial from oblivion, and, possibly, a vandalic melting pot (it is of pure silver, and weigh several pounds).  I have had many electrotype impressions of it executed, and in deference to your antiquarian and archælogical tastes and devotion to the Lost Cause, have the pleasure of handing you, herewith, the first one finished, which you may regard as a proof-impression before letters...'

Hoping to raise funds for the relief of the (southern) needy, as well as perpetuate the self-regarding memory of the Confederacy, a electroplated copy had been produced.  This was authenticated by J. S. and A. B. Wyon, Chief Engravers of Her Majesty's Seals, whose predecessor, Joseph Wyon, had produced the original 'symbolical emblem of sovereignty' in 1864.  It seems that other impressions were made at the time for official use.   The author of Sigillologia also wanted it to be known that he was producing impressions in gold, silver, and bronze, and were available for purchase...  The present copy was donated to the British Museum by J. F. Pickett, of Washington, D.C. in 1874. 

As such, it is a reminder of the 'nurse' of the Confederacy.  Along with cruisers, uniforms and other materiel, Britain sold postage stamps and the necessary equipment of provide the new republic with the 'emblems of sovereignty. 

The Seal now resides in the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA (along with materials relating to its rediscovery).

 See also http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v030/v030p309.pdf

 

[MJS]



The American Civil War in the Round (Digitisation Project Update I)

 

As I've mentioned before, thanks to the generosity of the American Trust for the British Library, we have been able to embark on a digitisation and online exhibition project for the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War.  The focus of the work, as well as helping to develop the Library's digitisation processes and platforms, is to reveal to a broader audience the collection items that tell the history of the British role in the War.  More than a cameo, the fortunes of the British Empire (not least many thousands, if not millions, who were born British or Irish) was closely tied to the course and outcomes of the war.  As well as the geo-political implications, there was also the matter of international trade - and, often, the the supply of goods (and other support) to the Confederate South.   This included the printing of stamps for the South, and we hope to include an image of the die used by a British firm for this purpose.

The image shown above, however, is the electrotype of the seal of the Confederate States of America (Seals XLIV.229), dating from 1864 (or, rather, an image of its image being processed on my desktop).  While two-dimensional digital images are fine for most purposes, and especially so for texts, objects such as these lose more than most in the process of being reproduced for an online world.  So, borrowing some of the techniques picked up during the curation of the Growing Knowledge exhibition, we were able to try a method of rendering objects in what appears to be 3D, known as Polynomial Texture Mapping.  A team from Southampton University kindly came to try out their 'PTM' dome, which records a series of images with light cast from various angles.  These are combined into a single file, which can then be manipulated online, giving the effect of a torch being shone on a 3D surface, casting shadows, highlights and different shades.  Inscriptions and erasures may be able to be seen more easily, and the artefact looks much more realistic.

There are problems, however - not least reflections from metal objects, such as the electroplated seal.  So, Southampton was keen to see what can be done with post processing.  I now have the files, and am in the process of rendering the complete PTM file, and working out how to include the viewer in the online gallery for the Civil War project when it finally goes live.

[MJS]

A Research Guide to Secondary Sources on the American Fifties

Maro, our current ERASMUS intern has been busy over the last few weeks.  One of the first fruits is this bibliography of secondary materials on the USA in the 1950s. The Library holds most of these titles, but we will endeavour to fill the gaps over the next few months. 

Maro has broken the period into a number of themes, and has added a few introductory remarks about what she sees as the tenor of the age:

Download 1950s USA Bibliography [.pdf; 240kb]

See also our Guides and Bibliographies page.



Please Allow Us to Introduce Ourselves: (I) Dr Philip Hatfield, Curator, Canadian and Caribbean Studies

Team Americas has got its hands on an Olympus camera with a video facility and an Apple laptop, and is not afraid to use it.  The first fruit of our labours, number one in an ongoing series introducing various aspects of the colllections, the Team, and how to make best use of the British Library, is a headshot of Phil, our curator for Canadian and Caribbean Studies.  If all works out - and once Matt has got the hand of editing and focus pulling, etc. - we plan on doing a range of introductions to aspects of using the Library.  What would you find useful to find out more about?  Email americas@bl.uk, or use the comment field below.  Or ping us a tweet @_Americas.

Dr Philip Hatfield, Curator of Canadian and Caribbean Collections at the British Library from Matthew Shaw on Vimeo.

 

[MJS]

Moby Dick on Horseback

Yesterday (1 August) was the 192nd anniversary of birth the author of fishy tales, Herman Melville.  Perhaps in unwitting honour, the BBC showed Major Dundee on Sunday afternoon.  One of Sam Peckinpah's revisionist westerns, with a fascination with the themes of male friendship, hatred and violence, it casts Charlton Heston as a Union Cavalry officer, forced to draft in Confederate prisoners in a campaign against an Apache raiding party.  Critics have neatly mapped the main characters onto those of Meville's Moby Dick, and the not-entirely satisfactory story tells the tale of the consequences of an obsessive idealistic captain on his 'crew' as they head into the watery part of the world, or, in the film's case, the deserts of Texas and New Mexico.

Read more in John L. Simons & Robert Merrill, Peckinpah's Tragic Westerns (2011).

[Matthew Shaw]

Another guest post on Out of this World

In case you missed it, Phil has also been blogging about Sci Fi in Quebec and Canada at large. Read his post here.

In Memory of the Patriots who Fell: Manassas and the Bull Run

On 21 July 1861, around 62,000 men faced each other near the key railway junction at Manassas, a vital point on the route to the Confederate capital of Richmond.  30,000 of them were Union troops under General Irwin McDowell, most of whom were 90-day volunteers; the 32,000 other were Confederates under the generalship of Pierre G.T. Beauregard.  Both sides thought the day would be decisive and swift.  It was neither.  The Union forces, under the gaze of sightseers from Washington, watching on a nearby hill, were mostly routed by the Confederate troops who then failed to capitalise on their success and press on to Washington.  A year later, between 28 August and 1 September, 48,000 Confederates faced 75,000 Union troops at the Second Battle of Manassas, forcing a Union retreat.  The war, of course, continued for another three and a half years. 

The National Park Service has published an online account, and today hosts an re-enactment of the battle (there are worries about the heat, much as in the disastrous 1961 re-enactment).  Visitors will not be able to visit the nearby Disney history theme park, as it was not built in 1994.  An earlier form of commemoration can be seen above (consecrated 11 June 1865).

For more about the preservation of the battlefield site, see Joan M. Zenzen, Battling for Manassas: the fifty-year preservation struggle at Manassas National Battle Field Park (Penn State University Press, 1998; online book).  On the memory of the Civil War more generally, see William A. Blair, Cities of the Dead: contesting the memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914 (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and David W. Blight, Beyond the Battlefield: race, memory and the American Civil War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2004).  For an account of the battle, including the antics of the Times correspondent, William H. Russell, see Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire.

And for online materials, UEA's Containing Multitudes blog contains a well-curated list.

 [Matthew Shaw]



Guest posts on Out of this World

My colleagues have been moonlighting on the Science Fiction exhibition blog. First, up, it's Aquiles on SF in Latin America:

The narrative of alternative, fantastic worlds is a hallmark of Latin American literature. Many novels written in Latin America, especially in the second half of the 20th century such as The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier or A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez became worldwide famous under the label 'magic realism', a narrative of alternative lives, beings and landscapes that challenge our concept of reality. What many readers do not realise is that the fantastic world as ascribed to contemporary Latin American literature can in fact be identified much earlier in the SF narratives that were published in the continent – a literary genre which has been and continues to be widely published in Latin America.

Dos Partidos en lucha: Fantasía científica by Eduardo Holmberg (Buenos Aires: El Arjentino, 1875) [Two Fighting Parties – Science Fantasy – BL holds it at shelfmark 7006.b.1] is considered to be one of the first Latin American novels written in the genre. This novel does not, in fact, make projections on how a future world would look but, instead, is based on a historic event that happened in Argentina: Charles Darwin’s visit to the country in 1872 during a scientific expedition. The novel narrates how Darwin captured some specimens from Argentina, including what he believed to be some monkeys who turned out to be human beings. The interesting aspect of this work (Holmberg wrote other SF novels dealing with space travel, aliens, etc) is that it brings forward the discussion about how science, working on a system of classification, is but a fantasy (or fiction) since it does not grasp reality as it is but rather projects the scientist’s own values and beliefs onto worlds which are completely alien to him. [read more]

'There is no there, there': William Gibson

Our intern, Maro, writes:

In light of the Out of this World exhibition, I would like to spend some time thinking through William Gibson’s literary achievement as regards his radical reconfiguration of the notion of space. His Sprawl trilogy – Neuromancer (1984), Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) and Count Zero (1986) – now considered a classic that does not go out-of-date, has come to typify the cyberpunk literary production of the 1980s, the decade when cutting-edge technologies and products started appearing in the American market.  During this decade a huge array of gadgets became widely available to the US market, with the personal computer constituting the icon of an era dubbed by theoreticians as ‘postmodernity.’

With the computer screen functioning as the window to a new world, Science Fiction became more radical in its vision and more experimental in its aesthetics, and it is particularly the notion of cyberspace, a word that Gibson himself coined, that best captures this computer-generated alternative and parallel world. The initiation of the readers into the world of cybernetics, virtual reality and Internet culture, signaled a monumental change in the human mindset and in particular, in the way the contemporary person perceived the concept of space within the context of the emerging Computer Age. As a matter of fact, Gibson’s concept of cyberspace has come to connote a computerized world of virtual reality in which somebody can enter simply by 'jacking in.' With the movement from physical environments to digital ones with or without the intervention of a cyberspace deck, Gibson introduces his readers to the simulated reality of computerized world, where human essence and software meet and interact; Gibson’s cyberspace is the vast and complex web of data into which we are inserted through the screen of our computers, a virtual place where we can project our visions, desires and wishful thinkings. In other words, the digital landscape is just something that we ‘see’ through our heads, a mind-generated space that constitutes another realm of existence in which the bulk of the novel’s action takes place. In another instance, Gibson uses the slightly paranoic phrase, 'There is no there, there,' in an attempt to define and explain cyberspace’s status and quality that defies the traditional notion of lived space as we experience it every day.

Upon their publication, the novels triggered discussion and debate, since the futuristic dystopian visions introduced were not only highly innovative and groundbreaking, but also disturbing, unsettling and difficult to grasp. In fact, I had a hard time reading the Sprawl trilogy, an experience that I would describe as frustrating. Often, I had to struggle with the text to make sense, as I found it hard to follow the complex narrative line, get used to the cybernetic ‘jargon’ and the radical shifts from one realm of reality to another; the process of reading was so frustrating for me that sometimes I would even wonder whether the pages have been scrambled or not. It was only after I had finished the first novel that I realized that this frustrating effect was intentional on the part of Gibson, who wanted to engage the reader in the riddle-like quality of his novel. Indeed, a challenging piece of writing, the Sprawl trilogy is a puzzle, a jigsaw that the reader is not invited to put together but rather to ‘experience.’

Gibson’s literary genius and the prophetic quality of his work can be best evaluated if we consider the fact that for the past two decades we have been experiencing the transition from science fiction to science fact. The science-fictionalized and Gibsonian character of our everyday life can be traced to the wide array of activities that take place on-line; my generation ‘likes’ and ‘pokes’ on Facebook all the time, we can ‘travel’ all over the world with Google Earth and we conduct all our financial transactions without bothering going to the bank. In a sense the contemporary individual is moving between the virtual reality of cyberspace that Gibson could have only imagined and the tangible world of lived experience, blending the boundaries between the ‘real’ reality and the fabricated. We are already part of Baudrillard’s famous argument about ‘the desert of the real.’

For a further elaboration on Gibson’s literary experiments and more specifically his unprecedented perception of space, I can recommend for further reading: 
Rapatzikou, Tatiani. Gothic motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson (2004)
Cavallaro, Dani. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson (2000).

[MS]

MJS adds: and he's out there, on @greatdismal

 

 

 

INDEPENDENCE/ JULY IV/ MDCCLXXVI

 
A new and correct map of the United States of North America: layd down from the latest observations and best authorities agreeable to the Peace of 1783... (Newhaven: publish'd according to act of Assembly, [1784])[Maps * 71490.(150)] 
Counterfeiting attracted some of the cruelest punishments in the past, in order to reflect the severity of undermining the coin of the realm.  But, in 1764, the prosecutor of one Abel Buell, a 22-year-old engraver and silversmith, who had been knocking out dodgy thirty-shilling notes in Connecticut, excercised a little mercy.  As punishment for his crime, 'the tip only of Buell's ear was cropped off: it was held on his tongue to keep it warm till it was put on his ear again, where it grew on. He was branded on the forehead as high as possible. This was usually done by a hot iron, in the form of a letter designating the crime' (John Warner Barber, Connecticut Historical Collections, 2nd ed., New Haven, 1836, pp.531-32, quoted in the catalogue for Christie's sale 2361).  Buell moved to New Haven in 1770, where he became the colony's leading copper-plate engraver, and in 1784 producted the first map of the new United States to be published in the United States and which was also the first map published in the new nation to depict the Stars and Stripes.  Eagle-eyed readers may not the absence of New York City and spot the placing of the prime meridian at Philadelphia, the seat of the new government. 

 

A copy was recently on sale, and is now on display in the Library of Congress (above).  The British Library's copy at shelfmark Maps * 71490.(150) is similarlyhand-coloured, and also shows the small scroll celebrating 'INDEPENDENCE/ JULYIV/ MDCCLXXVI'.  Happy Independence Day.

[MJS]
 

Mounties, Music, Hockey: Canada Day in Trafalgar Square

 
Canada Day 2010, Trafalgar Square

1 July is here again, which means it’s time to wish Canada happy birthday. I wrote last year about the significance of the day and what the Library’s collections can tell us about it, so I won’t go over that again today.  What I will do is let you know how you can go and experience a little bit of Canada in London during the course of the day.

As ever the heart of things will be Trafalgar Square which will be covered in a celebration of Canadian culture. For interest, the relationship between Canada and the Square is a long one, with the High Commission being based at Canada House since 1923 and various other Canadian institutions calling it home at one point or another.  If you make it down there you will find an entertaining mix of live music, hockey and Mounties, as well as a number of opportunities to learn about living, studying and working in Canada. For those interested, there is more information here.  

This year the opportunity to learn about Canadian culture in the round extends beyond Canada day, as the London-Québec Culture Festival is running until 21 July. The Quebec festival will be part of the Trafalgar Square celebrations too, so if you are interested it's a convenient place to start. To be honest, it’s a good time to find out more about Canadian culture in general, what with the great online presence of many Canadian cultural institutions (such as the NFB), events like Canadian Bookshelf and even the Royal Tour happening.

Given that there’s so much going on I’ve resolved to get more involved in all things ‘CanLit’ myself this year (quite an undertaking as I’m usually buried in a history book rather than the latest fiction), but more on that another time. For now, see if you can find your way to Trafalgar Square today or even just curl up at home, put Scott Pilgrim on and wish Canada ‘many happy returns’.

[PJH]

Guest Post: First Impressions of the Library

 
 

Our intern, Maro Salikopoulou, writes

Having been an MA student in the Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece for the past three years, I was delighted to know one year ago that my application for a work placement with the Eccles Centre for American Studies had been approved. Upon the suggestion of my professor Dr. Rapatzikou and within the context of the Erasmus exchange programme, I applied for an internship in this prestigious institution in the hope that I will be given the opportunity to engage myself in practical tasks always in relation to the field of American Studies. After a year of eager awaiting and a series of correspondence with the personnel of the Eccles Centre in order for the specifics to be arranged, I am finally in London, working in the international environment of the British Library, and more specifically, the American Studies team.

For the last two weeks I have been ‘experiencing’ the British Library, in terms of both its unique working environment and its academic appeal along with the possibilities it offers to students and researchers all over the world. Almost overwhelmed by the building, the high level of organization, the wide array of conferences and lively events that are being held, as well as the Library's temporary and permanent exhibitions, I am in a position to say that this goes far beyond my expectations! From the very first moment that I set foot on the British Library I knew that this is going to be a unique experience; in fact, it is my dual function as both a member of the staff and a student doing research for the completion of the requirement of my MA in Greece that makes this work placement much more exciting. In this way, on the one hand I have the possibility to take advantage of the library’s holdings – in both print and digital form – whereas on the other hand, I am given the opportunity to see how one of the greatest libraries in the world functions. Most of all, by working here I realized that one can maintain a connection with what we have been calling ‘American Studies’ outside the sphere of the university and implement theoretical knowledge by being engaged in more practical and pragmatic tasks and assignments.

My first task was to compile a list of secondary sources that pertain to what has been dubbed ‘The American Fifties,’ in an effort to help researchers interested in the particular area. The thematic entities around which this guide is structured aim at making research more focused and specific so that for students and researchers not to feel lost dealing with an unmanageable load of information and bibliography. However, this research guide is by no means exhaustive and the secondary sources that are included can only hint or lead to more directed research.

A guided trip to the Library basements provided a highlight of my first two weeks. Here, I had the unique chance of witnessing the parallel universe that exists underground with all the people meticulously working there, either tracing the books to be sent in the Reading Rooms, or maintaining and cataloguing the library’s holdings. I was surprised by the fact that in the basement there is indeed another realm of activity and interaction, another section of the library, where the underground workers secure and contribute to the excellent level of organization and management that characterizes the national library of the UK. Tim's guided tour was very exciting due to the fact that I had the opportunity to see some of the library’s most rare holdings, manuscripts and writings that date back to 1500, but also the first editions of some of my favourite writers, both English and Americans. In short, it was a great experience and I’m really looking forward to my second trip in the underground labyrinths of the British Library.

With the vast sea of information and knowledge the British Library offers, it can be said that it is a hub of intellectual activity on a worldwide scale and a goldmine for those who are involved in academic research. Having said that, it is a great honour for me to work here and ‘experience’ this international research centre by using at the same time the theoretical background that I have gained from my consistent preoccupation with American Studies the last few years, within the framework of my MA studies in the ever-growing and increasingly internationally-connected Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University (http://my.enl.auth.gr/asrp and www.enl.auth.gr). Finally,my colleagues here in London have made my transition and adjustment easier, always willing to answer my questions and help me discover and explore all aspects of the British Library. All these things considered, this is an excellent opportunity for a Greek MA student like me, particularly when one takes into consideration the situation that my country is currently dealing with and its consequences for the future.

[MS]

Aeluyd f'Ewythr Robert, or Uncle Robert's Hearth: Uncle Tom in Translation

Today marks the 200th anniversary of Harriet Beecher Stowe's birth, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin: or, Life Among the Lowly, undoubtedly the most influential novel in American, and perhaps even world, history.

The New York Times carried a pithy piece on Beecher Stowe as the 'unlikely fomenter of wars' by David S. Reynolds (Graduate Center of the City University of New York).  It comes recommended.  Rather than 'an old-fashioned, rather lachrymose affair that features the deaths of an obsequious enslaved black man and his blond, angelic child-friend, Little Eva' we should see Uncle Tom as vital fuel to the antislavery cause, and not just in the U.S.: 'In Russia it influenced the 1861 emancipation of the serfs and later inspired Vladimir Lenin, who recalled it as his favorite book in childhood. It was the first American novel to be translated and published in China, and it fueled antislavery causes in Cuba and Brazil.'  And it had profound influence on the Civil Rights movement.

As it happened, I stumbled across Uncle Tom while I was trying out an online resource.  A letter from Thomas Watts, assistant keeper in the British Museum in the nineteenth century, to a bookseller was published in the  Massachusetts newspaper, The Independent (and was followed up in the Boston Liberator).  The letter is reproduced in full in the excellent Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture(UVA).

Watts spotted the importance of Uncle Tom, which was translated into 'so many languages, and among them into so many obscure ones, languages into which it has been found so hard on many occasions for popularity to penetrate.  Even the master-pieces of Scott and Dickens have never been translated into Welsh, while the American novel has forced its way in various shapes into the language of the ancient Britons.'  He proposed to the head of the printed book department, Anthony Panizzi, that he collect as many editions and translations as possible, in order to be of service to students of language and philology.  The plan was put into action, as the Museum's holdings served as a model for the Boston Public Library, and no doubt elsewhere. 

Watts finished his letter: 'I regret that my account of these versions should be so much less extended than I had hoped to make it, but especially at this period of the year the duties of an officer of the British Museum render it almost impossible for him to make any use of whatever of the treasures committed to his keeping, which are, as a rule, as closed to him as they are open to the public.'

I wonder what he would have made of this wealth of online treasure?

[MJS}

Ring Any Bells? Paul Revere and printmaking

 
Paul Revere is, it seems, an echo of a memory of something that happened.  But as well as taking that pesky (from the British point of view) ride on the night of 18-19 April 1775, when he rode to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington that the British were marching towards them from Boston, sparking a chain of events that would lead the naming of a bunch of restaurants, the great American patriot was also a silversmith and copperplate engraver.  He put these skills to good use in the service of the Revolution, engraving and printing currency for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and in a series of striking prints.  Perhaps his most famous image can be seen above, a dramatic reconstruction of the Boston Massacre: read all about it on our online feature.

There are a number of other Revere prints in the collections.  They can be located by a search of [Paul Revere] in the English Short Title Catalogue, and then by limiting the results to the British Library.  There are a number of bibliographies, studies and biographies.  I can do no better than refer the interested reader in the listing produced by the American Antiquarian Society.

And there's more about the Old North Church and its lanterns here.

[MJS]

How do you measure a Sequoioideae?

 
from Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition... 1838-1842 (Philadelphia, 1845), vol. 5. [10001.d]

... and the Pacific (II)

Following on from last week's post on Obama's visit to Europe and possible contrasts with earlier claims to be the 'first Pacific president', here is the promised (brief) introductory bibliography on Samoa, in particular its place within the strategic and global interests of the late-nineteenth century and what might be termed the colonial gaze.  This, along with materials held in the UK National Archives, the Congressional Serial Set, and contemporary newspapers, would I'm sure be the basis for a very interesting final year or MA dissertation.

Manuscripts

Add. MS 41633, Log-book of HMS 'Diamond', on the Australian station, 22 Mar. 1882-16 Apr. 1884;

Add. MS 52309, ff. 11-12, Photographs of the ruler of, and a candidate for, the throne of Samoa (1888) [cf. Scott Papers, cf. Add. MS 52296]

Ashley B4313, ff. 21-24, Two Letters from Sidney Colvin to Edmund Gosse, the earlier on the death of R. L. Stevenson, the later on the possibility of moving his bones from Samoa now that it had become German; 18 Dec. 1894, 11 Nov. 1899. [ALC, vi, p. 11]

Printed Books

Edwards, Elizabeth, 'Time and Space on the Quarter Deck: Two Samoan Photographs by Captain W. Acland' in Raw History: photographs, anthropology and museums (Oxford, 2001), ch. 5;

Gilson, R. P., Samoa 1830 to 1900: the politics of a multi-cultural community (Melbourne, 1970);

Kennedy, Paul M., The Samoan Tangle: a study in Anglo-German-American relations 1878-1900 (Dublin, 1974);

Meleisea, Malama, Lagaga: a short history of Western Samoa (Apia, 1987);

Ryden, George Herbert, The Foreign Policy of the United States in Relation to Samoa (New Haven & London, 1933);

Watson, R. M., History of Samoa (Wellington, New Zealand, 1918);

Wilkes, Charles, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition... 1838-1842 (Philadelphia, 1845), vol. 5. (see also this post)

[MJS]