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Recently digitized materials shed light on lost silent film

Tod Browning‘s (1880-1962) 1927 silent horror film London After Midnight has been considered lost to history since 1965, when a fire at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Vault 7 destroyed the final known copy of the movie, along with numerous other titles stored on highly flammable nitrate film reels. London After Midnight starred Leonidas Frank “Lon” Chaney (1883-1930) as Edward C. Burke, a Scotland Yard inspector who is eventually revealed to be the villainous Man in the Beaver Hat. While various stills and ephemera survive, London After Midnight remains the most sought-after lost film of the silent era. The film’s lost status has not detracted from its significant cultural impact, as is evinced in films like The Babadook (2014), whose eponymous monster is based on the villain in Browning’s film.

Poster for "London after Midnight"

Poster for “London after Midnight”. Via Wikimedia Commons. Image in the Public Domain.

Materials recently added to the Villanova Digital Library offer insight into the presentation and reception of this film in our area. A review was published on Tuesday, February 7, 1928, in the Public Ledger, Philadelphia’s premier daily newspaper in the early twentieth century. The newspaper issue, along with other titles published in 1928, entered the public domain at the beginning of 2024. A microfilm copy has been preserved on the Villanova Digital Library. The article reads thus:

 

STANLEY—The realm of the unnatural, with its objects unreal—spooks, ghosts, goblins, bats and vampires—rules supreme here in dusty, cobwebbed domains and eerie, mysterious moonlight. Everything is spooky, witches are around every corner, from the comedy in which the dusky Farina battles with the departed spirits to the murder mystery of the main feature.

Those old reliables, Lon Chaney and Tod Browning, the director, are at it again with one of their spookiest and spine-twitching melodramas, “London After Midnight.” It shows the solution of a murder, with Lon Chaney in the part of Burke, a Scotland Yard detective. But it is no ordinary solution, for few of the material forces are called in to solve the clews. Instead, there is the moon-eyed man, an old, tottering reminder of Phantom of the Opera, gruesome and weird, with a chattering smile upon its distorted features—and yes, it may be Lon Chaney, that black bat there in the corner with the luminous eyes—but we’re not telling. Chaney taps a new character as a detective, with very little make-up—but a perfect portrayal. So excellent, is his work, that one almost regrets that he was not cast in a strongly molded, logical detective yarn of the caliber of the famous Sherlock Holmes. In the supporting cast are Conrad Nagel, Marceline Day and Henry B. Walthall to add surprise.

An offering which will doubtless draw many theatre fans is presented by Donal [sic] Brian, a famous musical comedy star in his first appearance in a picture theatre. His ingratiating personality, and smooth, easy manner register nicely in the all-too-brief period assigned to him and he leaves some twinkling tunes, culled in most part from former successes, and just a few stories. Mention should be made of the dance offering done in splendid spook style to introduce the picture. It is “Dance Macabre,” by Saint-Saens.

It seems that London After Midnight played during the week of February 6, 1928, at Philadelphia’s Stanley Theatre. This theater, which existed from 1921 to 1970 on 1902-10 Market Street, showed silent films accompanied by a 55-piece orchestra. It was a popular venue that attracted celebrities of the day, such as Frank Sinatra and Abbott & Costello. (Al Capone was even arrested there the year after the premiere of London After Midnight.) It was one of two major venues in Philadelphia to show horror films, including Browning’s most famous work: Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi (1882-1956), which is available in DVD format at Falvey Library. According to the 1928 Public Ledger article, as well as this article published on the same day in The Philadelphia Inquirer, the screening of London After Midnight at the Stanley Theatre was introduced by Broadway star Donald Brian (1877-1948), who performed excerpts from his previous roles.

The following month, the film would be shown at another local theater. An advertisement in The Suburban and Wayne Times, published on March 23, 1928, informs us that London After Midnight played at Bryn Mawr’s Seville Theatre from March 26 to March 28. Decades later, the Seville Theatre would become the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, which still operates in the same historic building that has stood since 1926. As numerous advertisements in The Suburban and Wayne Times attest, the Seville Theatre regularly showed films starring Lon Chaney during the 1920s, including The Phantom of the Opera (1925), which is compared to London After Midnight in the aforementioned Public Ledger article.

Browning eventually remade London After Midnight as a “talkie” starring Lugosi, titled Mark of the Vampire (1935). In 2003, Turner Classic Movies released a reconstruction of the 1927 film using extant stills as part of the Lon Chaney Collection, available through inter-library loan. Nonetheless, decades after the MGM Vault 7 fire, Browning’s original film remains lost. It was screened in at least two theaters in our area, and one of these showings included a live performance by a major Broadway star of the day. London After Midnight was commercially successful and remains culturally significant, but that did not stop it from disappearing. The afterlife of this film demonstrates how easily cultural production can become lost to history. It speaks to a larger need for preservation, especially preservation of media whose storage and access are dependent on ever-evolving technologies like film.


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eBook available: The Spider’s Web

Another book from our Digital Library has been transformed into a Project Gutenberg eBook by the Distributed Proofreaders project. The latest release is The Spider’s Web, an early entry in Street & Smith‘s long-running Eagle Library of inexpensive popular novels, written by prolific author St. George Rathborne and published in 1898.

Like another recent release from this series, Sweet Violet, this story takes place during the Chicago World’s Fair. It follows Aleck Craig, a Canadian who visits Fair, partially in hope of being reunited with a mysterious Chicagoan woman he previously met under dramatic circumstances. He not only finds her but also discovers that she is entangled in a revenge plot focused on her father, a well-known grain speculator named Samson Cereal. Along the way, he is reunited with an old friend, eccentric former actor Claude Wycherley, and the two set out to help the Cereals through a variety of troubles.

The Eagle Library (which was eventually renamed to the Eagle Series, and then the New Eagle Series) specialized in publishing stories of romance featuring female protagonists. The vast majority of the thousand-plus entries in the series fit this pattern. However, this book falls a bit outside of the typical series formula. While its story certainly has romantic elements, it is more focused on action and intrigue. While female characters are important to the plot, it is much more focused on its male protagonists. Since this was published in only the second year of the series’ more-than-thirty-year run, this demonstrates some early experimentation on the part of the publisher.

If you would like to check the story out for yourself, you can read or download the entire book through Project Gutenberg.


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Public Domain Day 2024: 1928 content from Distinctive Collections

As the year turns, another set of materials has entered the public domain. In 2019 the first set of new materials entered the U.S. public domain in over 20 years – finally making older content freely available for reuse, remixing, and open digitization. This extension has continued apace – and so on this past January 1, 2024 most works published in the U.S. in 1928 entered the public domain. In anticipation of this yearly milestone, a section of rare and distinctive materials from the collection from 1928 were digitized in the fall 2023 semester and have now been published! More 1928 content will be added to the digital offerings throughout the year. And for more check out articles from past years documenting this annual celebration: 201920222023

This year newly available from Distinctive Collection are:

Front cover, How 7, v. I, no. 5, May, 1928

How7 (May, 1928 issue)
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:923699

Front cover, Mystery stories, v. XIII, no. 1, January, 1928

Mystery Stories, v. XIII (all 3 issues)
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:865696

Mystery Stories, v. XIV (just the first issue)
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:905149

The Novel Hunter’s Year Book, 1928
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:906635

p. [1], The Gaelic American – Vol. XXV, No. 15, April 14, 1928, Whole Number 1283

The Gaelic American 1928 (51 issues)
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:906344

p. [1], Public Ledger, v. 184, no. 127, Sunday morning, January 29, 1928

Public Ledger (Philadelphia Daily Newspaper – 58 issues January / February 1928)
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:906326

The Suburban, Wayne Times Edition (35 issues from 1928)
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:950838

The “killer’s” protégé / by Robert J. Horton
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:888319

Mrs. Elizabeth O’Brien Brownlow, plate, Journal of the American Irish Historical Society, v. 27

Journal of the American Irish Historical Society, v. 27 for the year 1928
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:894846

Coffin Plate, In old New York; the Irish dead in Trinity and St. Paul’s churchyards

In old New York; the Irish dead in Trinity and St. Paul’s churchyards / by Michael J. O’Brien
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:884015

Front cover, Canadian Folk Song and Handicraft Festival

Canadian Folk Song and Handicraft Festival : under the auspices of the National Museum, National Gallery and Public Archives of Canada, Chateau Frontenac, Quebec, May 24-28 1928
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:891697

Plate, “Cathedral of Learning”, Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh spirit

Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh spirit : addresses at the Chamber of commerce of Pittsburgh, 1927-1928
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:882628

Official jubilee volume; life and work of His Eminence D. Cardinal Dougherty and history of St. Charles Seminary. June 10, 1928
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:889181

Plate, Red Barbara and other stories

Red Barbara and other stories : The mountain tavern, Prey, The oar / Liam O’Flaherty ; illustrated by Cecil Salkeld https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:883062

Dance technique and rhythms; companion volume to A manual of dancing steps by Elsa Pohl, B.S.; music arranged by Carolyn Bergheim, B.A.
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:890491

Front cover, Happy hours magazine, v. 4, no. 2, March-April, 1928, whole no. 20

Happy Hours Magazine v. 4
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:809972

For more materials available elsewhere – as well as background on how copyrighted materials enter the public domain – see this article from the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University:
https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2024/


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The Printed Image: Gustave Doré and Paradise Lost

For the final 2023 installment of The Printed Image, I’m continuing our exploration of illustrated works by Gustave Doré within Falvey Library’s Special Collections, this time focusing on John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, in a large format edition published in 1886 by Cassell, Petter, and Galpin.

In my last blog post, we ended with Doré’s depiction of Satan in the deepest circle of Hell, a giant brooding beast encased in ice. Doré’s work within Paradise Lost can be seen as a prequel of sorts, as Milton and Doré, separated by centuries, depict Satan’s rebellion and war with Heaven, his fall to Hell, and his temptation of Adam and Eve.

(Click on images for larger view.)

“Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool / His mighty stature.” Engraved by Charles Laplante.

“With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, / And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.” Engraved by Adolphe Gusmand.

“Now storming fury rose, / And clamour, such as heard in heaven till now / Was never.” Engraved by A. Demarle.

While Milton’s poem features Adam and Eve as key characters, Doré’s illustrations are dominated by the angelic and the demonic, playing to his strengths for dynamic and dramatic imagery. These divine figures are visualized alone within heavenly or infernal realms, or within congregations that are in active conflict. One notable detail is that, with the exception of the wings, there is sometimes little difference between angel and demon, they share nearly the same face and figure. Even Satan doesn’t assume a more sinister appearance until later in the series of illustrations.

“Now Night her course began.” Engraved by Adolphe Ligny (detail).

Another quality that struck me within these illustrations is Doré’s combination of light and the horizon as a way to create an evocative setting. In several instances, Doré sets the scene in a landscape where an edge of light hovers just above the horizon, a liminal realm still waiting to be fully defined and created. While one may assume this is the light of dawn, it could easily be the fading light of dusk, a symbol for the fallen angels. While Doré’s compositional strengths show through here, credit must also be given to his engravers who brought his drawings to life via wood engraving, capturing the light and the way it reveals these unique worlds.

“They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprang.” Engraved by Laurent Hotelin.

“On the foughten field / Michael and his angels, prevalent, / Encamping, placed in guard their watches round.” Engraved by Adolphe Ligny.

“And seems a moving land; and at his gills / Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea.” Engraved by Hildibrand.

A final observation is that one may recognize certain compositional elements with other Doré illustrations. Doré made nearly 10,000 illustrations during his lifetime, so it only makes sense that his style would rhyme within his body of work. Compare the illustration for Satan’s approach to Earth (below left) with the haunting illustration for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, and Nine days they fell (below right) with Dante swoons after hearing Francesca from Dante’s Inferno.

“Towards the coast of Earth beneath, / Down from the ecliptic, speed with hoped success, / Throws his steep flight in many an aery wheel.” Engraved by Paul Jonnard.

“Nine days they fell.” Engraved by Adolphe Gusmand.

“In with the river sunk, and with it rose, Satan.” Engraved by Paul Jonnard (detail).

Paradise Lost may be viewed in-person in Falvey Library’s Rare Book Room by appointment. An edition with Doré illustrations from 1900 can be viewed at Internet Archive. And Gustave Doré’s biblical illustrations continue to be on display in the Divine Inspiration exhibit, on view on Falvey Library’s first floor.


Mike Sgier is a Distinctive Collections Coordinator at Falvey Library.


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“Igdoof”: The precursor to “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” on the Villanova Digital Library

American cartoonist Jeff Kinney is widely known as the creator of the successful children’s book series Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The series was first published in 2004 on the website FunBrain, followed by a print series starting in 2007. Since then, the popular franchise has seen 18 main entries, as well as several supplementary books and spin-off projects. While characters like Greg Heffley, Rowley Jefferson, and Manny Heffley are widely recognizable by both children and adults, a lesser-known character created by Kinney is Igdoof.

p. 22, The Villanovan, Vol. 65. No. 18, March 30, 1990.

The Villanovan, Vol. 65. No. 18, March 30, 1990, p. 22.

Igdoof was the eponymous protagonist of a comic strip that Kinney wrote and illustrated as a university student from 1989 to 1993. The series was originally published from September 8, 1989, to April 20, 1990, in The Villanovan, volume 65, issues 1-20; the rest of the series was published by the University of Maryland’s newspaper after Kinney transferred there. Unlike Kinney’s later creations, Igdoof did not feature entirely child-friendly humor, but was instead aimed at a college-student audience. In the comic strip, the character of Igdoof gets into trouble and has a hard time adjusting to college life, generally to comical effect. Sometimes, he makes jokes at the University’s expense.

The Villanovan, Vol. 65. No. 7, November 3, 1989, p. 28.

The Villanovan, Vol. 65. No. 7, November 3, 1989, p. 28.

Kinney attempted to continue Igdoof in professional newspapers after his time at the University of Maryland, but never actualized this goal; this 1994 article from The Washington Post provides context for this period in Kinney’s career. However, Kinney was able to rework various aspects of Igdoof in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. While the jokes in Igdoof were often inaccessible to or inappropriate for younger children, the comic strip nonetheless influenced Kinney’s famous children’s book series. Several characters in Diary of a Wimpy Kid are based on Igdoof characters, most notably Greg Heffley’s younger brother Manny Heffley, who bears a strong resemblance to Igdoof himself.

The Villanovan, Vol. 65. No. 20, April 20, 1990, p. 21.

The Villanovan, Vol. 65. No. 20, April 20, 1990, p. 21.

All Igdoof comic strips from the 1989 and 1990 issues of The Villanovan have been digitized and are available to view on the Villanova Digital Library. Later Igdoof stories have been digitized by the University of Maryland and are available to view here. Falvey Library also offers digital access to several entries in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, including Big Shot, The Deep End, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Special Disney+ Cover Edition).

Note: In recent years, Igdoof has attracted the attention of the internet’s lost media community, which seeks to track down and preserve media that is in danger of becoming lost to history. This page on the Lost Media Wiki website chronicles the attempts at uncovering the comic strip, which was believed to be lost for a time. The website credits Villanova University with making Igdoof available, but provides a hyperlink to digitized copies on the Internet Archive, rather than the Villanova Digital Library.

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Geography Awareness Week: The First Statistical Atlas

If you’ve been following Falvey Library’s social media, blog, and in-person events this week you already know all about Geography Awareness Week. On Tuesday, we hosted an open house featuring some highlights from The John F. Smith, III and Susan B. Smith Antique Map Collection and other map holdings from Distinctive Collections. Visitors especially enjoyed browsing through several nineteenth-century grade school geography books. In case you missed it, many maps can be found online in the Digital Library. Here is one of my favorites:

 

Walker’s Statistical Atlas of the United States: Based on the Results of the Ninth Census 1870 with Contributions from Many Eminent Men of Science and Several Departments of the Government.

See the full atlas in the Digital Library here: https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:611320

Geological Map of the United States, 1874.

 

Published in 1874 and compiled by Francis A. Walker, the superintendent of the 1870 census, this is the first statistical atlas – that is, the first national atlas that took data from the United States census and published visualizations in the form of maps and charts. (Hint: take note and check out the Falvey Data Visualization Competition!)

Part I of the atlas shows maps of the physical features of the U.S., including geological formations, woodlands, river systems, rain-fall, and temperature. Parts II and III feature thematic maps and graphs of “Population, Social and Industrial Statistics” and “Vital Statistics.” There are maps showing the Black population, the population of those with “foreign parentage,” wealth, debt, birth rates, death by specific diseases, and so much more.

In a section titled, “The Progress of the Nation,” several maps show the density of general population (ahem, “excluding Indians not Taxed”) in a series of maps from 1790 to 1870. The 1870 map includes the addition of Native American reservations to the map.

 

Inspired by Merril Stein’s recent demo of PolicyMap, an online GIS data mapping and analytics tool, here is a demographic map showing the population density in the United States in 2020 (the source is the 2020 census).

 

PolicyMap. (n.d.). Number of people per square mile in 2020 [Map based on data from Census: US Bureau of the Census, 2000 Longform]. Retrieved November 16, 2023, from http://www.policymap.com.

 

Learn more about statistical atlases and the U.S. Census Bureau here: https://www.census.gov/history/www/programs/geography/statistical_atlases.html

 


Rebecca Oviedo is Distinctive Collections Librarian/Archivist at Falvey Memorial Library.

 


 

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eBook available: A Tragedy of Love and Hate

The latest dime novel from our collection to be made available as a free Project Gutenberg eBook by the Distributed Proofreaders project is A Tragedy of Love and Hate; or, A Woman’s Vow, part of Street & Smith‘s Bertha Clay Library.

The novel opens with a mysterious murder, then gradually reveals the cause of the tragedy through a flashback which makes up the majority of the book.

The identity of the book’s author may be a bigger mystery than the identity of the murderer in the story. While attributed to the fictional “Bertha M. Clay” pseudonym for this edition of the work, the novel was first anonymously serialized in The Family Reader under the title Lady Alden’s Vow. Many Bertha M. Clay novels were pirated reprints of works by the British author Charlotte M. Brame; the tone and content of this book seem very close to Brame’s usual territory, but because of its anonymous publication, it cannot be definitively identified as her work. (See the Victorian Fiction Research Guide to Brame for much more detail on this).

Whether or not Brame is the author, the book is comparable to some of her most successful works, while also having some unique characteristics of its own. The tone is darker than many romances of the period, featuring comparatively complex and flawed characters, and a plot where love cannot conquer all problems. The mystery elements and non-linear narrative also set it apart from more formulaic fare.

If you would like to read the book for yourself, the full text can be found online or downloaded in common eBook formats through Project Gutenberg.


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Tricks and Treats from the Vault

Thank you to all the students and staff that attended DCDE’s annual Halloween event on Tuesday! Each year DCDE opens our deepest darkest vault to unveil our spookiest material as well as bring some levity to your day’s studies in Falvey.

Many treats, from candy to pizza, were available to Halloween revelers to enjoy. In addition, DCDE had wooden block prints created by our DCDE coordinator, Mike Sgier, available for people to take home.

A print demonstration was done at the event and intended to highlight the type of printing done for some of the bibles on display in the our new exhibit, Divine Inspiration: Revealing the Sacred in Biblical Texts and Imagery.

This year was a return of our Haunted Villanova Map with attendees placing stickers on places at Villanova they think are eerie or know of a good ghost story. Alumni Hall, Tolentine Hall, Middleton Hall, and Falvey Library seemed to be the spookiest places on campus lately.

And as we do every year we had on display some of DCDE collections’ spookiest and fantastical items. These items illustrate the discourse around the unexplained in the past or what was considered popular stories of ghosts, monsters, etc.

Always a fan favorite is  hand drawn jack-o-lanterns of Halloween letter from 1925, which demonstrates how Halloween was celebrated in the past.

On display and available to see by appointment in Special Collections:

Irish Witchcraft and Demonology from the McGarrity Collection

Letter, To: “Dear Papa” From: Catherine Meave McGarrity, October 22, 1925 from the McGarrity Collection

Issues from Weird Tales from our Dime Novel Collection

The Amateur’s Guide to Magic and Mystery and the Black Art: Fully Exposed

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Printed Image: Gustave Doré and Dante’s Inferno

For this October installment of The Printed Image, we’re continuing the exploration of Gustave Doré’s illustrated works within Special Collections while also journeying to an underworld of doom and darkness.

Doré’s illustrations for Dante’s Inferno have defined this literary masterwork for modern audiences, to the point where readers may know the images without knowing the artist. Doré began work on the illustrations in 1855 and eventually self-published his own edition in 1861, after he was unable to find a publisher willing to take the financial risk. Doré’s own risk paid off, and the Inferno illustrations became a defining point in his career. [1] (The edition in Falvey’s Special Collections was published later by P.F. Collier in New York.)

Hell, as depicted by Doré and his engravers, is a desolate, desiccated realm; a smoldering, scorched earth with jagged, sharp rocks and barren landscapes, where lost souls swirl through the air as the damned are tormented alongside the monsters and gods of pagan days past. Surprisingly, we don’t see much in the way of fire depicted in these illustrations; the Inferno has already occurred, Hell is what remains.

Dante swoons after hearing Francesca’s story, engraved by Louis Paul Pierre Dumont

Arrival of Geryon, engraved by Adolphe François Pannemaker

Dante addresses Pope Nicholas III, engraved by Adolphe François Pannemaker

Virgil addresses the False Counselors, engraved by Héliodore Pisan

As mentioned briefly in my previous post, Doré’s prolific illustration output would not have been possible without the engravers who helped bring his drawings and designs into print. Within the Inferno illustrations, we can see that an engraver’s treatment of a Doré drawing could impact the tone and atmosphere of the final image, which we can see in the pair of following illustrations.

The image on the right, engraved by Héliodore Pisan, is composed with a density of lines and marks, many of them short cuts and stipples that create a gradual gradation from the dark landscape in the background to the bright flame within Farinata’s tomb.

This is contrasted with the illustration below, by an engraver only known as ‘Delduc,’ where the negative space dominates the image. We can see evidence of an engraver’s tools in its making, but it also closely resembles a pen-and-ink drawing, which is not an easy feat for a wood engraving. Pisan’s treatment creates an aura of dark menace while Delduc presents Hell’s torments with clarity and precision.

Virgil and Dante before Farinata degli Uberti, engraved by Héliodore Pisan

Sowers of Discord in the Ninth Circle, engraved by ‘Delduc’

No overview of Dante’s journey would be complete without remarking upon the deepest and darkest circle of Hell, where Satan resides. Doré presents Satan not reveling in his kingdom but brooding, trapped in ice, a creature of frustration and simmering grievances. How he came to be there, by means of Doré and a different author, will be featured in the next Printed Image installment.

Dante’s Inferno may be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment. To see more illustrations based on Dante’s works, please visit the online exhibit Dante Illustrated, which includes a reading from the Inferno by Father Peter Donohue, O.S.A. To learn more about Gustave Doré, watch this video on Peter Beard’s illustration Youtube channel. And visit Open Culture to view illustrations Doré created for Dante’s Purgatorio and Paradiso.

Satan, engraved by Héliodore Pisan

References
[1] “Gustave Doré’s Hauntingly Beautiful Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno.” The Marginalian, 2 Oct. 2015, www.themarginalian.org/2015/10/02/gustave-dore-dante-inferno/.


Mike Sgier is a Distinctive Collections Coordinator at Falvey Library.


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Over the Garden Wall and the McLoughlin Brothers

Episode two: “Hard Times at the Huskin’ Bee,” Cartoon Network, original air date November 3, 2014.

Fall, with all its gloomy skies yet cozy days, is known as time for a rewatch for fans of the cartoon, Over the Garden Wall. Since 2014 and with each passing year the cartoon has garnered new fans of all ages. The richness in storytelling interweaving childhood hurt, fear, insecurity, and sense of adventure against the backdrop of the unknown. The story draws on folk and fairy tale conventions and forms a story where the tone seems familiar yet unrecognizable at the same time that seems to keep audiences captivated. Adventure Time storyboard artist, Patrick McHale, created the ten-part Cartoon Network miniseries which draws inspiration from Dante’s Inferno, nineteenth to early-twentieth century Halloween cards, lithography, 1930s animation linework, the illustrations of John Tenniel, a 1890 board game called Game of Frog Pondfolk art, early twentieth century American music, and, for those in the know, McLoughlin Brothers children’s books.

Distinctive Collections has a small collection of McLoughlin Brothers Inc. children’s books in our Dime Novel and Popular Literature collections. McLoughlin Brothers Inc. produced children books, board games, puzzles, and paper toys between 1858 and 1920. The artwork was considered vibrant for the time as the company pioneered color printing technologies for children’s books with chromolithographs and photo engravings. The company specialized in retelling of classic stories for children. Their success and influence went hand in hand with the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries growth of children’s literature, also known as the Golden Age of Children’s Literature. Even many of the earliest board games in America were produced by McLoughlin Brothers, though, in 1920, the company’s board games were sold to Milton Bradley & Company. Today, the American Antiquarian Society holds one of the largest collections of McLoughlin Brothers archives including over 1,700 toy books, games, paper toys, publishers’ catalogs, and original art work. But you can view Distinctive Collections’ small collection in the Digital Library and/or in person in our reading room.

 

The cartoon pays homage to the McLoughlin Brothers in subtle ways as many believe in the opening credits the two boys playing with the steamboat in the creek to be the McLoughlin brothers. In the episode, “Lullaby in Frogland,” the steamboat Wirt, Greg, and Beatrice sneak on board is called the “McLoughlin Bros” steamboat. Throughout the episodes it’s easy to see the influence from color palette and style to characters.

         Two boys playing at a stream with a toy steamboat.       The back of a steamboat with the McLoughlin Bros name

Episode six: “Lullaby in Frogland,” Cartoon Network, original air date November 6, 2014


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