Our latest Item of the Month features a book from the Bollinger Lincoln Collection, which has been receiving a good deal of attention due to this week’s Bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Check it out here.
This month’s featured item is a two-volume set of manuscript portfolios created to commemorate tours of Europe undertaken by the Hanlon Brothers, a troup of performers and acrobats in the mid 19th Century. It features a series of beautiful watercolor paintings depicting their act. Check it out here.
After some re-tooling, the Item of the Month series returns in November featuring a program created for a Chautauqua in Algona, Iowa in 1918. View the item here.
Variety posts news that director Ridley Scott has acquired film rights to Joe Haldeman’s 1974 Hugo and Nebula award winning novel The Forever War. Science fiction fans have been waiting for someone to make a film of this novel for many years, and in Scott’s hands it will hopefully receive a respectful and visionary treatment. Perhaps less well known is that The Forever War was published while Joe Haldeman was a student in the Writers Workshop here at the University of Iowa, and a first edition of the novel was submitted as his thesis. This copy circulated for many years in the library, and was eventually rebound into a blue library binding. It has now been transferred to Special Collections. The Haldemans have deep links to Iowa fandom, such as instigating the Icon convention, which will be meeting for its 33rd year Halloween weekend at the Coralville Marriott.
Special Collections & University Archives is now fully operational again following the floods of June 2008. Our collections are secure and undamaged, and we are able to once again provide a full range of normal services.
Special Collections & University Archives closed June 13, 2008 as the Main Library at the University of Iowa was evacuated due to rising floodwaters. The days prior were spent relocating Special Collections & University Archives material from basement storage. We were able to clear four to five feet of material above floor level with the help of hundreds of library and university staff, faculty, students, and community members. The story of the flood preparations in the library has reached many news outlets. We are pleased to say that while the basement of the library received several inches of water, none of our collections were damaged. The Main Library remains closed, however, as clean-up progresses.
Special Collections & University Archives staff are responding to email, but our ability to answer reference questions is severely limited. It may be several more weeks before we are operational again. If you have any concerns we can address in the meantime, please email lib-spec@uiowa.edu.
Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many other famous and influential works of speculative fiction, died yesterday at his home in Sri Lanka. Before he was well-known as a writer, he was active in the British science fiction fan community. He appears in our collections in fanzines produced during the 1940s now held in the M. Horvat Collection of Science Fiction Fanzines. One example is provided below in tribute.
The images are hard to read, as the ink used in the printing of the zine has faded to almost imperceptible levels - so light, in fact, that it fools our scanner and results in washed out images. The images are the cover and first page of the zine Gargoyle from March, 1940. War had already come to Britain by this date, and this first issue of Gargoyle features a news update reporting that a house shared by fans including Arthur C. Clarke, had been destroyed by Nazi bombing:
“War is responsible for some funny things, and I don’t necessarily mean the goings on in the blackouts. The most famous establishment in British fandom the flat at 88 Grey’s Inn Road is finally smashed and Bill Temple is settling down (we hope) to a tranquil existence with his wife. Arthur Clarke we hear is somewhere in Enfield living on top of a hill - or is it two hills? The other hill must be for his famous Ego.”
Clarke had many friends in fandom and was well known in its circles. He went on to a long and highly successful writing career, one that will continue to exert influence even after his death.
In need of some relief from winter? This month’s Item of the Month provides a break from snow and ice in the form of…fruit!
Download PDF of Item of the Month - March 2008.
Special Collections has developed The Atlas of Early Printing, an interactive map depicting the early years of printing in the fifteenth century and the spread of the new technology across Europe. Using historical data and Flash technology, the website depicts information about printing’s spread along with cultural and historical information that provides context for the late fifteenth century. Visit the site at http://atlas.lib.uiowa.edu.
Learn about pre-ROTC military training programs on the UI campus during World War I in this month’s item, from University Archivist David McCartney.
Download PDF of Item of the Month - February 2008
