Between 1920 and 1939, independent American publishers flourished in Paris. Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company produced James Joyce’s magnum opus Ulysses; Bill Bird’s Three Mountains Press published the early work of Ernest Hemingway, Mina Loy, William Carlos Williams, and Ford Madox Ford; and shipping heiress Nancy Cunard handprinted limited editions of experimental poetry by Becket, Pound, and Richard Aldington for Hours Press. Even Gertrude Stein was bitten by the publishing bug. Her imprint, Plain Editions, put out “an edition of first editions of all the work not yet published by Gertrude Stein.” At least eight other notable expatriate presses were publishing the best in early twentieth-century Modernist writing, work either overlooked or ignored by a conservative American market.

To read more about it: “Book Lovers: Harry and Caresse Crosby and the Black Sun Press,” The Missouri Review, v. 41, no. 1, 2018: 74-84.  https://muse.jhu.edu/article/689974/pdf

 

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In 2017, Marianne and Blouke Carus of Peru, Illinois, founders of Cricket Magazine, along with their son Andre, generously donated their Cricket Media records to the Special Collections Research Center of Morris Library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The collection complements the archive’s related Edward Hegeler- Paul Carus family papers, 1868-1936, and Open Court Publishing Company Records, 1886-1998. Published by Open Court Publishing Company, Cricket is a literary magazine for children. Originally housed in more than 160 boxes, the collection of business records, correspondence, and sixteen magazine titles, including the full run of Cricket Magazine, marks Cricket’s 45^th year in print. The records document a story of remarkable vision and dedication to education reform.

The finding aid is available: https://archives.lib.siu.edu/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=3456

Thanks to Dr. Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm, Special Projects Archivist, for leading the effort to make this invaluable collection available to researchers.

 

Learn more about our current community archives project: Reclaiming the African American Heritage of Southern Illinois

http://thesouthern.com/news/local/finding-history-where-it-lives-group-works-to-document-african/article_d0a819be-79ce-5024-889a-7dd752efa1ea.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

Dr. Pamela Smoot, SIU Carbondale Professor of History

The Art and Life of Horace H. Pippin

 

Janice Harrington, Professor of English, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

 

Thursday, April 5, 2018

 

5:30 PM till 7 PM

 

Guyon Auditorium, Morris Library

 

 On display at the Art Institute of Chicago is a painting entitled Cabin in the Cotton I by Horace H. Pippin, who visited Illinois in 1941.  Many people who pass by the now-darkened painting, which depicts a simple scene of a woman sitting before a farm cabin, without giving it much thought would nevertheless be captivated by the story of the artist’s service in the legendary Harlem Hellfighters in World War I, during which he was wounded in the shoulder by sniper fire.  Already accomplished at drawing, Pippin took up painting and wood burning as therapy for both his injured arm and his haunting memories of the war.  He became one of the foremost African American folk artists of the 1930s and 1940s.

 

Janice Harrington will give a presentation about Horace H. Pippin on April 5, 2018.  She will invite the audience to discuss what we can learn about war, the experiences of African Americans, and other subjects from Pippin’s work.  The event will be free and open to the public.

 

Sponsored by: Special Collections Research Center and the Friends of Morris Library

 

Individuals with disabilities are welcomed.  Call 618/453-5738 to request accommodations.

 

In 1887 the Open Court Publishing Company had its founding in a philosophy of monism. The company’s proprietor Edward C. Hegeler began the enterprise in an effort to promote his personal philosophic, religious, and moral ideas. He believed that these ideas could be conciliated with the growing scientific trends of the late nineteenth century, and that monism was the intellectual framework for doing so. Paul Carus, the editor of the journals The Open Court and The Monist, joined Hegeler as an intellectual ally in this regard. For thirty years he openly defended the doctrines of monism in countless articles and books, successfully grounding the Open Court on this philosophy.  This paper uncovers the historical development of the philosophical origin of the Open Court as it began with Hegeler’s personal religious motives, his ideological tension with the original editor Benjamin Underwood, and his embrace of the monistic writings of  Paul Carus.  It also examines Hegeler’s and Carus’s publications and personal letters from the 1880s and 1890s in order to determine the fundamental doctrines of their unique sense of monism. In Carus’s writings in particular is proposed a monism of  causality that is compatible with a deterministic worldview and a unitary conception of  the sciences. Also, both Carus and Hegeler propose a monistic ethics of meliorism that conceives the diverse periods of human history to be evolving toward the one final end  of the moral improvement of humankind. While these are the positive doctrines that they accept, they further reject the antitheses of philosophical dualism and irreligious attitude of agnosticism of all varieties.

To read more about it, please go to: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1072

Nicholas L. Guardiano, « Monism and Meliorism », European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], IX-2 | 2017, Online since 22 January 2018, connection on 24 January 2018. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1072 ; DOI : 10.4000/ejpap.1072

During the nineteen-twenties, Paris was at the centre of literary modernism, and in the years after the Armistice nearly all the best-known young American writers spent at least some time there. The expatriate literary community revolved around the bookshops and cafes. Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Company, in particular, became a meeting-place for older and younger modernists. With this community there developed also a series of literary magazines and small publishing houses, under whose imprints appeared many of the most famous modernist works, by James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and others.

Special Collections Research Center presents a brief introduction to several of the major Paris imprints, through the works they have produced.  Part of the Rare Book collection, all are representative publications of nine small presses from the expatriate area, all at the forefront of literary modernism.  Included are items from:

• Bob Brown and the Roving Eye Press
• Gertrude Stein and Plain Editions
• Harry and Caresse Crosby and The Black Sun Press
• Jack Kahane and Obelisk Press
• Nancy Cunard and The Hours Press
• Sylvia Beach and Shakespeare and Company
• Edward W. Titus and The Black Manikin Press
• Bill Bird and the Three Mountains Press
• Robert McAlmon and Contact Publishing

Curated by David Bond.  Please visit this exhibit in the Hall of Presidents and Chancellors in Morris Library between 8:30-4:30, Monday – Friday.

 

This year marks the 100th anniversary of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” which was first excerpted in the Little Review in 1918.

Interesting article based in part on material from our collections, thoroughly researched by Joseph Hassett

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/trump-cant-ban-fire-and-fury-thank-james-joyces-100-year-old-ulysses-for-that/2018/01/10/ab3bc20c-f584-11e7-beb6-c8d48830c54d_story.html?utm_term=.02a592b22c42

 

The records of the children’s literary magazine, Cricket, have been donated to the Special Collections Research Center of Southern Illinois University Carbondale. They were donated by former editor and founder, Marianne Carus, along with her husband Blouke and son Andre Carus. In all, the Cricket literary magazine collection consists of 168 boxes of archival materials, including illustrations, literary manuscripts, printed materials and a complete set of the literary magazine itself.  In addition to early records, the collection features correspondence from well-known authors, illustrators, and other professionals in the publishing industry.

Pam Hackbart-Dean, director, Special Collections Research Center, says “we are proud to welcome the Cricket Literary Magazine collection to its new home in the Morris Library’s Special Collections. The Cricket literary magazine made an enormous contribution to United States children’s literature and art.  Now these very records offer a rich resource of academic research potential.”  Project archivist, Dr. Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm, believes these records “provide this rare glimpse into visionary children’s publishing and the professionals who engineered its success.”

The brain child of Open Court Publishing’s Marianne Carus, Cricket Magazine was launched in 1973 as the only children’s magazine dedicated to literature. Determined to create a magazine for children comparable to The New Yorker, Marianne Carus founded Cricket Magazine with the enthusiastic assistance of well-known authors, illustrators, and leading figures in publishing.

Along with daring illustrator Trina Schart Hyman, and respected literary editor Clifton Fadiman, popular children’s author Lloyd Alexander was a major contributor to the magazine’s development and content, often sharing wisdom in the guise of “Old Cricket”. Designed to stimulate curiosity, imagination, and a sense of wonder about history, art, science, and world cultures, the magazine featured new stories and adaptations written by celebrated authors and interpreted by award winning illustrators. Cricket further inspired a line of literary magazines for children of different ages: Babybug, Ladybug, Spider, for newly independent readers, Cricket, and Cricket and Cicada for young adults.

 

Celebrate Archives Month!!  Archives Month is a way to celebrate the value of Illinois historical records, publicize the many ways historical records enrich our lives, and recognize those who maintain our communities’ historical records.

Celebrate your right to read,  as well as to bring to light censorship and banned books  Your words have the power to challenge censorship. Join the us in celebrating Banned Books Week (Sept. 24 – 30) and continue to stand up for your freedom to read every day of the year.

Special Collections Research Center has Ralph E. McCoy’s personal collection of material related to First Amendment Freedoms. This collection traces the intellectual history of the concept of freedom of expression in the United Kingdom and the USA from 1600 to the present. The McCoy Collection is perhaps the most rich and diverse research collection of printed materials in SCRC. Freedom of expression has been developed and debated in many arenas in the Western world, and the materials in the McCoy Collection document such varied topics as the Popish Plot of 1678, Victoria Woodhull’s advocacy of women’s suffrage and “free love,” and the legal controversy over the “obscene” nature of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.   So we are highlighting our 1st amendment collection which contains many of these banned books and more.

Please visit our exhibit highlighting banned books beginning Monday September 11 until October 2^nd.  This is behind Delyte’s cafe in Morris Library.

On September 27th from 10 am to 12 pm. explore a banned or challenged book at the Morris Library’s Banned Books Buffet. Celebrate your freedom to read and right to choose during Banned Books Week!  Every year there are hundreds of attempts to remove banned books from schools and libraries. The Banned Books Buffet is an annual event celebrating your freedom to read and right to choose during Banned Books Week! Explore books like Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, and Captain Underpants. Fight censorship, read a banned or challenged book, learn about intellectual freedom, have a snack, and more at this event.

Included will be a selfie booth, selection of banned books, and light refreshments.  Open to students, staff and the general public.  This will be located in Morris Library by Abraham Lincoln’s head.