In the fall of 2008, during the first semester of my freshman year here at Haverford,  I started working in Special Collections with Digital Collections Librarian David Conners to finish the Cope Evans project.  Started in 2002, the project was to digitize the Cope Evans Family Papers collection in order to make each item available on the web.  This involved reading, scanning, and transcribing almost 3,000 items dating from the 18th to the 20th century.  I had very little knowledge of the Society of Friends before coming to Haverford, and working with this collection of papers was a great way for me to really understand the essence of Quakerism.

At the culmination of the project in the spring of 2009, an event was organized to unveil the work that all of the students, interns, fellows, and librarians had been doing for the project.  Members of the Cope and Evans families were invited, as well as other members of the community, and anyone who had worked on the project in the past.  I spoke on the student panel at the event, and wrote a couple of pieces about some themes that arose from the letters, which were the compiled into a booklet about the collection.

Currently, I am working with Manuscripts Librarian and College Archivist Diana Franzusoff Peterson as the student archivist. I plan to major in Anthropology with a minor in Spanish. I also study Arabic, and plan to spend my junior year abroad in Egypt.

Special Collections was open on Saturday, October 24th, and we had about 35 visitors for Family and Friends Weekend.  Some came with very specific interests, including viewing the 1711 charter of the William Penn Charter School signed by Penn and with his great seal, but others came in as family clusters and were drawn to the displays we made available for them.  There was a good bit of ooh-ing and ahh-ing, as they inspected:

• The 1711 King James Bible and its miniature version
• A 1683 plat survey of Philadelphia by William Penn’s surveyor, Thomas Holme (see illustration), which is essentially the  lay-out of Philadelphia even today

• Amos Nattini’s lithographic illustrations of all 100 cantos of Dant’e Divine Comedy, along with a miniature version of the famous text
• The Germantown Quaker Protest Against Slavery, 1688, the first such protest in North America
• Maxims by William Penn published in the Select Works of William Penn, 1771, along with a miniature of the maxim on Time
• A photograph of a dorm in Barclay with army gear in evidence in the 1940s when a percentage of the students were army men
• A pointed letter by Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas to his friend Fred Rodell, class of 1926, indicating dismay at a meeting of the other justices while he (Douglas) was away that overturned his vote for a stay of execution in the Rosenberg spy case
• And last, but by no means least, the extraordinary illustrated chemistry notebook of Maxfield Parrish while a student at Haverford in 1890.

The event by all counts was most satisfactory.

As mentioned last week, text from a letter in Special Collections is featured in the new film, Bright Star. Jane Campion’s period piece tells the story of the tragic love between sickly poet John Keats and fashionable girl-next-door Fanny Brawne.

Following the death of John Keats in Italy, Fanny Brawne spent several years in mourning, “wandering the Heath,” as the film tells us. But eventually she did marry, and she bore three children. She never told her husband of her relationship with John Keats, but she did keep his letters-over three dozen of them.

After both she and her husband had died, Fanny’s children decided to sell the letters at auction. The news of this sale shocked the literary world. The letters, of course, are intensely personal and many believed they showed the poet in a desperate and pitiful state. One commentator on the sale was none other than Oscar Wilde, who, one day before the auction, penned this sonnet:

On the sale by auction of Keats’ love-letters

These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret, and apart.
And now the brawlers of the auction mart
Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note,
Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant’s price. I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.

Is it not said that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began
To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of a wretched man,
Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?

A first batch of letters was sold by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge on March 2, 1885 and fetched a sum total of 543 pounds. While Oscar Wilde was offended by the sale the day before, he found it in him to attend the auction and purchased one of the letters himself.

In a future blog post, we will describe how our particular letter made its way from this auction to Haverford and we’ll present a facsimile of this most famous billets-doux.

Bright Star, a movie by New Zealand film maker Jane Campion, tells the story of the secret love affair between English poet John Keats and the fashionable girl next door, Fanny Brawne.  The film makes use of several love letters between John and Fanny, including one from the Charles Roberts Autograph Letter Collection in Haverford College Special Collections.  The movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and was shown at Haverford alumnus Harlan Jacobson’s Talk Cinema in Philadelphia and Bryn Mawr this past weekend.  It is scheduled to open commercially on September 18.  Subsequent posts on this blog will reveal more about the Haverford Keats letter.

Special Collections organized an exhibit of the entire collection of Classical antiquities donated in 1989 by Ernest and George Allen, both class of 1940.  Altogether 24 artifacts, they range from a small Mycenaean side-spouted jar (mid-14th century B.C.), which was used as a baby feeder, to an Attic Black-figure olpe (520-500 B.C.) depicting Peleus (father of Achilles) in a tree escaping the intentions of a lion and a boar.

On April 23, 2009, the exhibit was part of an event entitled “The Journey: the Greek American Dream,” in celebration of the Jaharis family and Professor Alexander Kitroeff, creator of the film.  You can read an article about the event by student Kyle McCloskey in the Bi-Co News.

The entire collection of artifacts can be viewed online.

left-right: Mr. and Mrs. Jaharis, Classics Prof. Bret Mulligan, Pres. Stephen Emerson, Dr. Stephen Jaharis '82, Archbishop Demetrios of America, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, History Prof. Alex Kitroeff

There are two opportunities in Philadelphia this month to hear about Quaker botanists John Bartram and Peter Collinson whose collaboration enriched the horticultural knowledge of the 18th century.

Elizabeth McLean, co-author of Peter Collinson and the Eighteenth-Century Natural History Exchange will speak at The Library Company April 15, 2009 at 5:30 pm. Collinson found British clients for the Philadelphia naturalist John Bartram at a time when the English landscape was evolving to include exotic trees and shrub and American specimens were in high demand.

On April 29, 2009 The Brother Gardeners, Botany, Empire & the Birth of an Obsession will be presented by author Andrea Wulf at The Academy of Natural Sciences at 2:00pm. Wulf will illustrate how the initial efforts of Collinson and Bartram grew to include a circle of influential scientists who brought science and rational thought to horticulture and shaped the landscape of Georgian estates.

This serendipitous pair of events will make for fruitful growth of appreciation for the Philadelphia roots of botanical science.

"Blinking Sam, ‘Johnson’s Grimly Ghost’ and the Haverford Portrait of Samuel Johnson"

Talk by Robert Folkenflik, Distinguished Visitor in the English Department

Tuesday, March 3, 2009 — 4:30 pm; Tea at 4:15 pm

Magill Library, Quaker & Special Collections

Robert Folkenflik is Professor of English/Comparative Literature, UC-Irvine. His books include Samuel Johnson, Biographer; The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation; and The English Hero: 1660-1800. Folkenflik’s research interests include: Eighteenth-Century; Renaissance; Novel; Autobiography; Biography; History of Literary Theory; Literature and Other Arts; Cultural Studies.

For more information please contact Laura McGrane (610-896-1155) lmcgrane@haverford.edu

Past Haverford Gest Fellow, Maurice Jackson, will speak at the Library Company on Thursday, February 5, 2009, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm.  Jackson’s new biography of Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet will be the subject of his talk entitled "Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism." Jackson is Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University. RSVP acceptances only to 215-546-3181 or email lpropst@librarycompany.org.

The Young Academic Alumni Lecture Series presents

Brent S. Sirota ‘98,
North Carolina State University

Monday, November 10, 2008
Tea at 4:15 P.M., Talk at 4:30 P.M.
Magill Library — Philips Wing 

In the early eighteenth century, voluntary associations were enshrined at the heart of British public life. The philanthropy and sociability of these organizations underpinned a self-proclaimed "age of benevolence" in which clubs, societies, and projects were designated the preeminent instruments of social improvement, religious renewal and moral reform. How may we account for this moral valorization of civil society in Britain? This paper will trace the origins of the "age of benevolence" to the defeat of absolutism in the Revolution of 1688-1689. By recovering the revolutionary origins of British civil society, it will be possible to view the eighteenth century "age of benevolence" as a key moment in both the rise of British liberalism and the development of the British state.

Presented by the Library, the John B. Hurford ‘60 Humanities Center, and the Office of Alumni Relations.

Author Thomas Slaughter, Professor of History at the University of Rochester, presents The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition at the Library Company, 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia, Tuesday, October 14, 2008.

John Woolman (1720-1772), a Quaker tailor from New Jersey, had an extraordinary commitment to attaining self-purification through the rejection of slavery, war taxes, and rampant consumerism. Though not a famous politician, his persuasive ideals influenced the likes of fellow Quakers, social reformers, labor organizers and peace advocates. Through Woolman’s essays and Journal, Slaughter illuminates his transformation from a humble idealist to a prophetic voice for the Anglo-American world.

A reception will begin at 5:30 with the program to follow from 6:00 to 7:00 pm. The event is free and open to the public, but reservations are requested:  dshapiro at librarycompany.org or 215/546-3181.