Twelve Centuries of Manuscripts and Rare Books
at Dartmouth College

(A PDF version is available Collecting.pdf)

By Philip N. Cronenwett, former Special Collections Librarian
Image Credits: Joseph Mehling and Jeffrey Nintzel

Part Two

A gift of a major and significant group of materials will often help define a collection. Such was the gift of Edward Sine, Class of 1951, whose collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth century British illustrated books

and the original ink, watercolor, and pencil illustrations gave new shape and focus to our holdings. The six thousand books and three thousand original works of art in the collection

are a comprehensive gathering of materials on the history of illustration for that period. When bequeathed to the Library in 1993, the collection was treated as the two millionth acquisition, with appropriate celebrations, and distinctly modified the focus of our illustrated book collection. This collection had, for decades, revolved around our interest in the history of the book in America. With Ed Sine's magnificent gift, we now can boast of one of the finest collections of British illustrated books as well.

Geography, of course, plays an important role in determining collection development. The White Mountains of New Hampshire have generated great enthusiasm in artists, writers, tourists, and entrepeneurs for several centuries. It is natural for the College, which owns a number of grants in the White Mountains, to have an interest, and it is also natural that the Library would have a lively interest in an area that is so attractive to so many people. One of the first non - native inhabitants of the mountains was the Crawford family. Lucy Crawford became the first chronicler

of the history of the region and her book stands as one of the finest early examples of regional/local history in the nineteenth century. To give an example of the depth of collecting in the White Mountains, we hold not only the first edition of the book, but also

the manuscript, and the

printing blocks used to illustrate the book. These scenes

depict the before and after of a major disaster.

As a tourist attraction, the White Mountains was exceedingly popular in the nineteenth century when special trains left Boston and New York City bound for the cooler climate afforded by the the mountains in the summer as well as the lure of grand tourist hotels. The newspaperAmong the Clouds was

published in the mountains for the tourist trade on a regular basis during the season. We cannot leave these mountains without acknowledging the splendid and significant work of the late Walter W. Wright who, as Special Collections Librarian during the decade of the 1970s, developed the White Mountains Collection to international stature. One of the great strengths of any special collections is the inter - relationship between existing collections and the concept of building on strength. An excellent example of this is the sprawling collection of materials by and about members of the Cornish Colony. Located in the Cornish - Plainfield vicinity and originally a summer escape from urban heat, this group of writers, artists, and activists were a driving force in American culture at the end of the ninteenth and well into the twentieth century. While the Cornish Colony was more a state of mind that a specific geographic venue, the women and men of the colony spent longer and longer periods of time in residence in the Connecticut River Valley until a permanent core group of individuals and families populated the colony.

The inhabitants of the colony at one time or another included artist Lucia Fairchild Fuller and her husband Henry; poet and dramatist Percy MacKaye and to a lesser extent his brother Benton, the creator of the Appalachian Trail; artist Maxfield Parrish and his father Stephen, an equally well - known painter; the sculptor Augustus Saint - Gaudens; Louise Cox; Francis Duncan Manning; Herbert Adams; suffragist Juliette Rublee and her diplomat - husband George; and the novelist Winston Churchill, about whom more anon. The papers of each of these individuals are at Dartmouth in the Rauner Special Collections. Individually, they are of great interest. As a record of a group of cultural giants living and working in the same area, the collection is unparalleled.

Lest it be thought that collection development - the acquisition of important individual pieces or collections - can be accomplished quickly or easily, one example will suffice. The Library began negotiating with Maxfield Parrish shortly after World War II for his papers. After his death in 1966, we negotiated with his son Max, Junior. After his death, we finally signed - in 1986 - the deed of gift and other legal documents that gave us the collection. Thus it took nearly forty years of dicussion with Parrish and his family before the collection was acquired. Although this is perhaps the most time - consuming of discussions we have had with donors, it is not the only example of involved collection development that we could recount. One of the more fascinating aspects of working with special collections is to see the act of creation, the process by which an author takes blank paper and pencil and drafts a poem, a novel, a play. Although no longer in vogue, the historical novels of Kenneth Roberts

were once best sellers. In title after title, Roberts wrote in fiction of the early history of North America and the United States. Striving for accuracy, Roberts amassed a collection of printed histories and source material of great research value and used these resources to craft historical fiction in minutely accurate detail. Pouring over maps, for

example, to insure that his novel Boon Island, which has been recently republished in a new edition, was geographically accurate and then

revising and rewriting galley proofs heavily. The result was prize - winning fiction.

Both Roberts' remarkable library of Americana and his papers are a part of the Rauner Library's holdings.

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