If you have always wanted to travel to London with a group of
individuals interested in books, libraries, and the
literary side of London life, the Friends offer you the perfect opportunity
this fall. "London, Libraries & Literary England"
is a tour designed specifically for the Friends of the Dartmouth Library.
Beginning on September 23 with a scheduled
flight on British Airways to Heathrow and continuing to October 1, this trip is
not to be missed.The tour group will stay at the Hotel Russell, a first-class hotel in the heart of literary Bloomsbury. We have designed the trip to avoid having to pack and move often, the bane of many such trips. The focus of the visit will be on London and environs with several day trips to nearby points of interest. More to the point, we have arranged for tours and visits to locations that will offer an "inside" view of libraries and the British book trade, something that the individual tourist would not be able to do.
Among the locations we will visit are the Imperial War Museum with its vast collections of artifacts on the two world wars. Included is a tour of the research library and the photographic collections. We will also have an inside tour of the current British Library and a tour of the yet-to-be-opened (and controversial) British Library near St. Pancras. The Saint Bride Printing Library, one of the pre-eminent collections on the history of printing, will host a visit from our group to allow us to examine their important collection of printing tools, presses, type and type specimens, and their remarkable collection of the graphic work of Eric Gill.
No trip to London is complete without a visit to Quaritch's, one of the premier antiquarian booksellers in England. Quaritch's, founded in 1847, will not only give us an inside view of the antiquarian booktrade, but has also graciously offered to host a reception and dinner where we can meet and talk with many of the antiquarian bookdealers of London. We will, of course, also stop in at Christie's, founded in 1766, and recognized as one of the most important auction houses in the world.
One day will be devoted to a trip to Winchester to see the cathedral and the remarkable collection of medieval manuscripts housed there. From Winchester, the tour will travel to Wilton House, the seat of the Earls of Pembroke, to view one of the finest private art collections in Europe. Wilton House has, of course, many literary associations with Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, and Marlowe. The day will end with evensong at Salisbury Cathedral.
Hampstead, once a fashionable spa and now a suburb of London, is the focus of one full day. Sites include Kenwood House, the work of Scottish architect Robert Adam, and its treasured collection of Old Masters. In the afternoon, we will visit Keats House with all of its associations to the great poet.
No literary or library trip to England is complete without a visit to Oxford and the Bodleian Library, one of the greatest of all university libraries. We will visit the Radcliffe Camera, one of the reading rooms, as well as Duke Humphrey's Library. (We have been informed that we will not be required to swear the ancient oath never to kindle a flame within the library.) The day will continue with self-guided tours of the city as well as pointers to the many bookstores and museums of Oxford.
For those who would like to see more of England, we have also scheduled an extension from 1 October to 4 October. For these days, we will fly to Manchester to visit one of the great industrial cities of the world, now revitalized as a center of the arts. Included on this leg of the trip will be the John Rylands Library, the City Art Gallery, Chatsworth House, and Haddon Hall. The latter is perhaps the most authentic of all remaining medieval manor houses.
"London, Libraries & Literary England" is jointly sponsored by the Friends of the Dartmouth Library and the Friends of the Brown University Library. A late-breaking addition to the itinerary is a reception at Old Battersea House, the home of one of the finest private collections of Victorian paintings. A Queen Anne country house, the residence is now owned by the Forbes family.
For more information and a complete itinerary, please call or write: Office of
the Librarian, 115 Baker Library,
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755. 1-603-646-2236.
--Philip Cronenwett
When the letter arrived, we, too, were fascinated by the signature. The letter itself would have fit perfectly into our holdings, for it was a response of Frost to a request for an essay. Already in our Frost collection was the June 20, 1951, letter of Harvey Breit, then Assistant Editor of the New York Times Book Review, asking Frost to write an essay on any subject for the Review with a deadline of mid-July. On the reverse of this letter is the dictated draft, in the hand of Frost's secretary Kay Morrison, declining to write an essay. With this letter was a typed response, signed by Frost, and dated July 18, 1951. Our copy of the letter contains a significant emendation in Frost's handwriting: the greeting is changed from "Dear Mr. Briet" to "My Dear Breit," just as it was in the dictated draft. The signature on this letter is clearly that of Robert Frost.
The letter offered by David Holmes is also to Harvey Breit and dated July 18,
1951. In looking at this letter and those
noted above, it is clear that the letter offered to us is the one sent to
Harvey Breit after Mrs. Morrison had retyped it,
incorporating the change requested by Frost. Thus far, the tale is
straightforward. What was puzzling to David Holmes--
and to us--was the signature on the final copy. Frost signed his letters in a
very characteristic style using a wide-nibbed
pen and dark ink. On both typed versions of the letter, the same pen and ink
are used. A close inspection of the letter "F"
in the signature presents some interesting problems. Frost usually made the "F"
with a very straight ascender, a head-
stroke that began at the top of the ascender and continued to the right, and a
similar, but shorter, cross-stroke. In the letter
offered to us, the ascender is canted from left to right, the
head-stroke is curved and crosses the ascender, and
the cross-stroke also crosses the ascender. A search of our Frost
correspondence, a voluminous collection enriched by the
gifts of many friends of the library, turned up no signature comparable to the
one on the letter offered to us. Two
possibilities exist: that Frost was standing or sitting in a very uncomfortable
position when signing the letter, or that Frost
did not sign the letter. The latter appears to be the more likely case.
We communicated the results of our research and our concerns to David Holmes,
returning the letter to the firm. Mr.
Holmes told us that he had acquired the letter from another reputable firm in
Pennsylvania, J. Howard Woolmer, Rare
Books, of Revere. After discussing the document, both Mr. Holmes and Mr.
Woolmer determined that it should not be on
the market where someone with little or no knowledge of Frost's handwriting
might unwittingly acquire it. They jointly
decided that the interests of scholarship would be best served if the letter
was taken off the market and given to
Dartmouth. Thus, the firms of J. Howard Woolmer, Rare Books, and David J.
Holmes Autographs presented the letter to
Dartmouth.
Dartmouth College Library is grateful to both firms and delighted to have
friends such as this.
--Philip Cronenwett
Reproductions by permission of The Estate of Robert Frost
William Morris (1834-1896) described his rationale for founding the Kelmscott Press, perhaps the greatest of all the private presses, in a few short phrases that mask the complexity of his work: "I began printing books with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity of form in the letters." Combining his fascination with the Middle Ages, calligraphy, paper, design, illustration, and the printing of early books, Morris published over fifty books between 1891 and 1898, creating works that even now are recognized for their distinctive style and beauty. The Kelmscott Press, although short-lived, has left its mark on modern printing and the book arts.Dartmouth's Book Arts Summer Workshop will, within the context of an intensive examination of printed examples that issued from the Kelmscott Press, undertake a hands-on approach to the actual creation of individual broadsides--broadsides based, in their design and their execution, on the program's particular focus upon William Morris and the Kelmscott Press. Each participant will, through instruction and guidance provided by the workshop staff, prepare such a printed piece, utilizing foundry types, handmade papers, and hand presses. In addition to this craft activity, there will be interaction with historical and bibliographical scholars, variously focusing on special aspects of the work of William Morris and that of certain other late nineteenth-century British artists and printers of his circle.
Attendance will be limited to twenty persons. The workshop is intended for college students, librarians, book collectors, bibliographers, literary scholars, and graphic artists who wish to acquire a better, more detailed understanding of the practice and the accomplishments of printing done by handcraft means.
For further information, write to the Book Arts Summer Workshop at the address below, telephone 603-646-2236, fax 603-646-3702, or e-mail phil.cronenwett@dartmouth.edu.
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Your Executive Committee
George W. Berry '66, Carlisle, MA |