Special Collections

As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Christmas, we feature a nativity image shown in the banner above (click for the full size image). This image is taken from a curious little book in our collection, one that might ordinarily escape notice. “Off the Shelf” is intended to highlight books in our collection that have interesting or unexpected attributes. In this case, the book in question is a 1677 edition of the Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis, known in English as the Little Office of the Virgin Mary.

The book appears to be a fairly standard, if small, size. Upon opening the pages, however, it can be seen that this particular copy was bound without ever having been trimmed. The portion of the page featuring the text block is a fraction of the total size, and reveals that if the pages had been trimmed, the book would be considered a miniature - not over three inches tall, such as the books in the Charlotte M. Smith Miniature Book Collection.

Because the pages have been left as they would have appeared after the gatherings were initially brought together, it is possible to see how the printed sheets were folded. Some pages have very substantial margins, while others are more truncated. The end result is a useful example of one stage of the bookmaking process that is usually, intentionally, lost to subsequent steps in the process.

This particular edition was printed at the Officinia Plantiniana in Antwerp, one of the most successful and long-lasting printing and publishing houses to emerge in the first centuries of printing. The house and printing facilities have been preserved and are open to the public. The museum’s website has information on the history of the printing house, and a good set of photos from throughout the museum, including the press, compositing stations, and libraries, can be found here.

The latest edition of The University of Iowa Faculty & Staff newsletter fyi contains a photo feature on historic children’s books held in Special Collections. Click on the link to see some nice photographs of these materials, which are always available to view in person in our reading room, and they can also be made available for presentations to classes.

The James Bond franchise has been reinvigorated once again, with an adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, climbing to the top of the box office. The long-running film series has produced many memorable films, and most of them were written by a University of Iowa alumnus, Richard Maibaum, whose papers reside in the Special Collections & University Archives department.

Pictured below are a selection of items from the collection, which can be viewed full-size by clicking on the thumbnail. The first image is a typical page from an early story treatment for The Man With The Golden Gun, with Maibaum’s extensive revisions adding and deleting portions of the text. Most of the Bond films in the collection are represented by several groups of notes, multiple story treatments (an outline of the plot and characterization before specific dialogue is written), and many different forms of the screenplay - early versions, drafts, and shooting scripts. The film widely considered the best by most Bond fans, From Russia With Love, features only incomplete treatments and one screenplay, which are still valuable documentation of the development of the series. The second image below is a photograph of lines outside a theater on the opening day of From Russia With Love.

All films are the result of collaboration, and the James Bond material in the Maibaum collection provides evidence of the process. The actor first cast to portray Bond, Sean Connery, had a vested interest in the integrity of the character and participated in critiques of the material he was contracted to play. The third image is a two-page summary of a meeting between Maibaum, Connery, and producer Albert Broccoli to discuss an early draft of Goldfinger. Connery offers his view of the script, pointing out numerous inconsistencies and areas he feels need improvement.

An unusual aspect of the Maibaum papers is the presence of a large series of plastic models, which represent the vehicles that appear in all of the films he wrote. Although these are described as film miniatures, they are not miniatures created by the production crew and filmed for special effects purposes. Rather, Maibaum appears to have been an amatuer modeller, and in some cases created the miniatures to aid in his writing process. Others were purchased commercially and made long after a film’s release.

Finally, the creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming, appears in the Special Collections & University Archives department in the papers of Norman Felton, producer of the espionage-related television series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The series’ main character, Napoleon Solo, was created by Ian Fleming, and extensive negotiations took place to involve Fleming in the show’s production. He ultimately disassociated himself from the project, but remained cordial with Felton, as seen in the piece of correspondence shown here (click for the full size image).

All of these materials are available for consultation in the Special Collections & University Archives reading room, along with many other valuable collections documenting television and film from the perspective of actors, producers, directors, and writers.