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Volume CXXXII, Number 11 |
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Library displays numerous rare books
TED REINERT
STAFF WRITER
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| Hawthorne and Longfellow library is opening up its collection of rare and antique books for public viewing. The exhibit is titled "Old Wine in New Bottles" and will continue through the spring. (Hans Law, Bowdoin Orient) |
A plethora of rare volumes from the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives is now on display on the second floor of Hawthorne-Longfellow Library. The exhibition "Old Wine in New Bottles: Publishing Old Texts in New Ways" includes books published throughout the last few hundred years, with early versions of works alongside the same texts presented differently.
Richard Lindemann, the Director of Special Collections, put together the exhibit he characterized "Old Wine" as "an attempt to get people to realize that books come in many flavors."
"Different people read books for different reasons," said Lindemann. "Publishers find different markets. A work can live for a long time by finding different audiences."
One of the highlights of the exhibit is a copy of The Smallest English Dictionary in the World. This volume is only 27 mm tall and contains 384 pages. Encased in a tin locket with a magnifying glass, it was sold in the 1890s when such curiosities were popular.
The exhibit also includes much larger and lavishly illustrated volumes. The artist Leonard Baskin's reinterpretations of the scientific illustrations in a 16th Century human anatomy book are presented along with the originals. Two volumes in the exhibition, a version of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome and a French Revolution trial account, feature illustrations by Bowdoin's own Thomas Cornell, Richard E. Steel Professor of Studio Art.
Bowdoin is connected to several other artists in the exhibit. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, written while she was a faculty spouse at Bowdoin, is exhibited in many different versions including newspaper where it was serialized and a 1852 mass market paperback proclaiming itself "An Edition for the Million."
The library's namesakes are well-represented with numerous versions of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha on display. Special Collections has 1,200 volumes of Hawthorne and 1,700 of Longfellow. Among the Longfellow volumes is a comic book version and a parody entitled The Song of Drop O' Wather by a Harry Wandsworth Shortfellow. Longfellow is also included in the Dante exhibit, where his translation of The Divine Comedy is presented alongside commentary-rich versions intended for scholars and volumes illustrated by Gustave Doré, Rico Lebrun, and Antonio Antony de Witt.
Among the other featured volumes are a Matisse-illustrated Ulysses and Picasso's illustrations of Shakespeare.
"Old Wine in New Bottles" went up around the end of September and will continue into next spring.
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