During “reunion week” (the second week of June) this year there were several opportunities to see Watkinson rarities.  On Wendesday the 6th about a dozen alumni attended a presentation entitled “John James Audubon: American Dreamer.”  Born in Haiti, educated in France, and sent to America to avoid the draft (i.e. Napoleon’s conscripted legions), Audubon is an early example of American self-fashioning.  Works by Audubon, as well as his contemporaries Alexander Wilson and Prideaux John Selby, and his fore-runner Mark Catesby, were out on display for folks to view.

On Friday a crowd of some 40-50 people (mostly Class of ’57) enjoyed a screening of David Elliott’s award-winning film The Curious Mr. Catesby (2007).  Mr. Elliott (’57) is the Executive Director of the Catesby Commemorative Trust.  I brought out the Watkinson’s copy of the first edition of Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731-43) and showed it to an appreciative crowd.  Trinity was able to purchase this copy in 1883 through the generosity of a “rich uncle” of a Trinity alumnus (George Lewis Cooke, class of 1870).

The next day a steady stream of visitors were able to view the “bird of the week” from John James Audubon’s Birds of America set, which has been at Trinity for 112 years, as well as the newly acquired 2nd Folio of Shakespeare.  At 1:30, with the help of Watkinson Trustee Jack Enders (’92), I presented a selection of recent acquisitions of ornithology material for the Enders collection, given by his grandfather, Ostrom Enders in the 1980s.

Thanks mostly to the enthusiastic comments made by President Jones during Commencement weekend, we had over 100 visitors to the Watkinson on Saturday to see the recently acquired “Second Folio” of Shakespeare.  We don’t often see people literally lining up to see our books, but it is entirely gratifying.

Folks also were impressed by our marvelous copy of John James Audubon’s Birds of America, which is on permanent display (we turn the page to show a new bird every week).

Other items which I brought out for the day included two engravings on copper sheets which were used to illustrate Prideaux John Selby’s Illustrations of British Ornithology (published 1834-39), which were placed alongside the book itself.  Selby was a contemporary of Audubon, and the two ornithologists compared notes and shared insights when the latter was at work in England.

Parents and students appreciated the current exhibition, Drawing Birds, which features sketches done by students last semester for Devin Dougherty’s Studio Arts class (Drawing I), especially as they noticed the work of friends and classmates.

On Thursday May 3rd, at 5:30pm in the Watkinson Library reading room, our five Creative Fellows will present their projects (amid light refreshments) to the Trinity community. Faculty and students who wish to see some of the possibilities of this program “made real” are especially invited. One project, still in process, is Chloe Miller’s (’14) online semi-fictional travelogue across the temporal and geographical spectrum, based on sources she found here.

You will also hear music composed by Francis Russo (’13), view Norse myths retold by John Bower (’12), hear poetry composed, hand-printed and read by Lelsie Ahlstrand (’12), and see a film produced by Perin Adams (’13). ALL of these projects were based on books and manuscripts found in the Watkinson:

Last night we were happy to host Michelangelo Zaccarello (Università di Verona), a philologist and expert on book history, who held a two-hour “master class” seminar on several early printed books from Italy in the Watkinson’s collection.

Professor Dario Del Puppo brought the group together, which included students from both Trinity and UConn.  Michelangelo provided a narrative about the history of each book (which included our copy of Galileo’s Diologo (1632),  and why he chose these in particular. He also emphasized the book market in Italy in the Renaissance and Early Modern period, and spoke with knowledge about the market conditions for these rarities today.

On December 7th we hosted a History Day seminar for eighteen 8th-graders from Renzulli Academy in Hartford.  The theme this year for History Day in Connecticut is “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History.”  In the first part of the workshop I brought out one (1) primary resource held by the Watkinson related to the following revolutions in history:

The Glorious Revolution (1688)

A 1689 pamphlet attributed to Daniel Defoe titled Reflections upon the late great revolution, about the Glorious Revolution (1688), when James II of England was overthrown by William of Orange (backed by a Dutch fleet), who becomes William II of England; James was tolerant of Catholics (which was unpopular) and had just had a son, which disrupted the line of succession (William’s wife Mary, a Protestant, had been the heir presumptive).  The new heir threatened England with a Catholic dynasty.  Members of the opposition in Parliament invited William to invade, and with that support the revolution was won with only a few minor battles and little bloodshed.

(American Revolution, 1776)

Issue 2 of Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis (1776), one of a series of pamphlets published from 1776 to 1783 during the American Revolution. The first part was written during Washington’s retreat across the Delaware and by his order was read to his dispirited and suffering soldiers. The opening sentence was adopted as the watchword of the movement to Trenton: “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

(French Revolution, 1789)

Historical and critical memoirs of the general revolution in France by an Irish nobleman (Sir John Talbot Dillon), published in 1790, is interesting not only as a collection of original documents, but as giving the views of a contemporary while the revolution was yet in its first stage.  Dillon was an ardent advocate of religious liberty, and an uncompromising enemy of intolerance in every shape. He was a firm believer in the moderation of the revolution. With all his enthusiasm for liberty, however, he was not disposed to extend it to African slaves in the West Indies. ‘God forbid,’ he says, ‘I should be an advocate for slavery as a system;’ but in their particular case he regarded it as a necessary evil, and believed that upon the whole they were far better off as slaves than they would be if set free.

(Haitian Revolution, 1791)

For this I showed Marcus Rainsford’s 1805 An historical account of the black empire of Hayti, a famous source.  The slaves in the French colony of St. Domingue (now known as Haiti) staged a revolt and declared independence from France.  Other than the American Revolution, this was the only rebellion that successfully created a new government in the Western Hemisphere during the eighteenth-century.  In 1789 St. Domingue produced 60 percent of the world’s coffee and 40 percent of the world’s sugar imported by France and Britain. The colony was the most profitable possession of the French Empire, but enslaved blacks outnumbered whites and free people of color ten to one.

(The Mexican War of Independence, 1810-21)

What started as an idealistic peasants’ rebellion against their colonial masters ended as an unlikely alliance between Mexican ex-royalists and Mexican guerrilla insurgents.  The source for this was William David Robinson’s very popular Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution (1820).

(The Easter Rising, Ireland, 1916)

For this I showed a 1916 “extra” issue of the London Times, detailing the British response.  An insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916, the Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798, and led to the Irish War of Independence, and the formation of the Irish Republic in 1921.

In the second part of the workshop I had the students look at scans from an 1811 textbook on geography, a book which students their age would have used in school 200 years ago in Connecticut.  The sections on meteorology and science were particularly interesting to the kids.

The opening of the student-curated exhibition “Seven Wonders” on December 6 was a great success.  Over 50 people braved a dark and rainy Tuesday night to look at the show.  Many were also in attendance to pay their respects to Paul Lauter, who spoke movingly about his wife, Ann Fitzgerald (a Trinity professor who died tragically in mid-October), the original instructor of the course.

The students wrote, designed, and raised money for the production of a full-color 16-page illustrated catalog of the collection, printed in 100 copies.  These were sold for a pay-what-you-can donation to Ann’s charities (Doctors without Borders and Amnesty International), for which we collected over $200.

Faculty, staff, students, parents, and other members of the community mingled and chatted as local talent Romulus Perez played classical piano on one of the keyboards we have in the library.  After Paul spoke, we visited each exhibit, and its curator said a few words about why she chose her topic, and what items in particular were fascinating or compelling to her.

Going forward, this is clearly a model for us to follow.  Creating an exhibition is one of the best ways to learn about a topic, and about a collection (its strengths and weaknesses).  The librarians need not have all the fun–we will be encouraging students and faculty to be our partners in years to come.

Missing from the class photo is student Emily Bloom, who could not attend because of a family emergency–you were here in spirit, Emily!

We have been thrilled to host the amazing Dr. Scott Gwara, of the University of South Carolina, who has come to the Watkinson Library for several reasons.

First, he was to give a talk about one of his current projects: a history of medieval manuscripts in North America (he focused his talk last night on those in America’s liberal arts colleges), which he did on the 19th.  Dr. Gwara has visited 80 libraries and seen over 3,000 manuscripts so far, and he says he has some 25,000 to go before the project is finished.  It was rather breathtaking to hear the stories of the individual collectors who have made it possible for these institutions to own these amazing artifacts of the medieval world.

The Watkinson’s collection of some two dozen manuscripts were, of course, featured in part of the lecture.  Scott had already blogged about them for us on his first visit.  Several of these manuscripts came by way of the 19th-century collector Joseph Jesse Cooke (1813-1881), who will be the subject of another post.

Dr. Gwara is also an extended guest speaker in Jonathan Elukin’s History of the Book class, where he is teaching the students about the structure of Books of Hours and medieval Bibles.  Here they are hard at work at their assignments and presentations.

Each student was asked to identify different parts in their books of hours and Bibles, and it was a great moment to see one group exclaim “we GET it!” in surprised delight.

Scott Gwara graduated summa cum laude from Hamilton College and, as a Marshall Scholar, earned a second BA in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic from Cambridge University.  He received his PhD from the University of Toronto, where he was a Mellon Fellow.  Scott has authored five books and forty articles on Medieval Latin, Old English literature, manuscript transmission, and medieval education.  His forthcoming works are on genre in Old English, treasure-giving in Beowulf, and the notorious book destroyer Otto F. Ege.  Among other things, he is currently writing a history of medieval manuscripts in North America.  For the past 18 years Scott has taught at the University of South Carolina.