From the Stacks
“From the Stacks” offers a regular helping of Newberry sustenance for the hungry intellectual. Every week or so, one of our hidden treasures, meticulous maps, or enduring ephemera will be featured, highlighting the resonance between the Newberry’s 125 years of collecting and the timely—and timeless—issues of today. These items, covering a wide range of subject matter and form, are presented here in all their scholarly pathos and quirky splendor.
May Day
VAULT Ruggles 12
This bilingual broadside, written by labor activist Adolph Fischer, calls on “workingmen” to attend a rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. In the demonstration’s aftermath, eight anarchists (including Fischer) were unfairly accused of slaying police officers. An openly biased judge sentenced seven of these defendants—known as the Haymarket martyrs—to death; the eighth was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In 1887, four were executed, after one committed suicide.
Earth Day the Newberry Way
VAULT Ayer 6 .P9 1482a
Perhaps no single work has exerted a greater influence on the development of cartography in the modern world than the Geographia of the ancient astronomer, mathematician, and geographer Claudius Ptolemy (c. 90–168). Ptolemy lived in Alexandria during a time when the Egyptian port was the cultural, commercial, and scientific center of the eastern Mediterranean. He had access to centuries of Greek scientific and mathematical learning as well as to geographical information world travelers brought to the great port.
Happy Birthday, Henry James!
VAULT Wing ZP 883 .S8935
Henry James, a nineteenth-century behemoth in literary realism, published What Maisie Knew in 1897. This coming-of-age narrative, which follows a sensitive daughter and her divorced, frivolous parents, is an unflinching account of a dysfunctional family. Its pages plunge the depths of childhood guilt, fear, and growth. With astonishing precision and candor, James inhabits the consciousness of his eponymous heroine—from her earliest glimmerings of awareness to her final, comprehensive worldview.
Bringing Auden Full Circle
Vault Oversize Wing MS 196
Bringing Auden’s Poetry Full Circle
In conjunction with one of our current exhibitions, “Exploration 2013: The 27th Annual Juried Exhibition of the Chicago Calligraphy Collective,” we look back at a past Newberry Purchase-Prize winner: “September 1, 1939” by Carl E. Kurtz, a work that attempts to recuperate a line of W.H. Auden’s poetry that the poet himself disavowed.
A Toast to Women's History Month
Midwest MS Walden, Box 6, Folder 168b
May Walden, a Socialist Party organizer and activist based in Chicago, shrewdly capitalized on a number of current political issues when she turned this portable drinking cup into a 1912 presidential-campaign novelty for Eugene V. Debs, the 1912 Socialist candidate for United States president. Printed on the reverse side of this intriguing example of printing ephemera is the slogan “A Clean Cup for Clean Politics.” Debs ran for president five times between 1900 and 1920, the last time from federal prison, where he was incarcerated for his antiwar sentiments.
And the Oscar Went To...
Midwest MS Hecht, Item NL 1106
The introduction of sound into film in 1927 made people who could write naturalistic dialogue Hollywood desiderata. Newspaper reporters, accustomed to hitting the pavement in pursuit of a story and parsing an array of social, cultural, and professional argot, followed the lure west to try their hands at screenwriting. Ben Hecht received encouragement from Herman Mankiewicz, who had just left the New York Times for what was billed as a new gold rush.
Love at Last
Midwest MS Anderson, Box 66, Folder 2494
Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio, met his fourth (and last) wife, Eleanor Gladys Copenhaver, in 1928. Initially, their courtship was fraught with difficulties. Sherwood was considerably older (20 years); moreover, he was still married to his third wife, Elizabeth Norman Prall. By 1931, their once-secret romance was sitting-room chatter—and Eleanor’s reputation, formerly pristine, was in metaphoric tatters. But Sherwood was intent on marrying Eleanor and dedicated considerable energy to winning her hand.
Focus: President Lincoln's Birthday
Ayer MS 3188
In February of 1864, Chief Wanzopeah of the Miami West addressed a letter to President Abraham Lincoln. “My Father,” he begins, “I have not bothered you for the last ten years and now I have one little favor to ask.”