My case in the exhibit, “Poetic License: Seven Curators’ Poetry Selections from Distinctive Collections,” showcases examples of weird and fantastical poetry from Falvey Library’s holdings. Here, the term “weird” is used not colloquially, but rather in reference to the genre of weird fiction, which emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Owing much to Gothic horror, weird fiction reinvented the creatures and themes of Gothic horror and other forms of speculative fiction, as portrayed by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe. In fact, H. P. Lovecraft, the most widely known practitioner of weird fiction, considered Poe’s writings the origin of the genre. While writers like Lovecraft are now remembered largely for their contributions to prose, my exhibit case highlights their lesser known, but equally interesting, poetic works. Examples are drawn from Weird Tales, arguably the most popular periodical to ever publish weird fiction and poetry. These poems explore themes that are central to the genre, including the supernatural, the passage of time, and the futility of human pursuits in an indifferent cosmos. Formally, the poems tend to implement consistent rhyme and meter, which amplify the haunting quality of these works.

Some poems in the case are quite literally fantastical, like Lovecraft’s “Night Gaunts,” which describes the dreadful flying creatures that first appeared in the author’s posthumously published novella, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kaddath (1943). Other poems adopt a more grounded approach, such as Sudie Stuart Hager’s “Inheritance,” which examines how folklore can pass fantastical notions from one generation to the next. Meanwhile, Leah Bodine Drake’s “The Steps in the Field” uses fantastical motifs to develop a resonant metaphor about the afterlife, but also emphasizes the idea that some knowledge is dangerous and best left undiscovered—a popular theme in weird fiction and poetry. Together, these and other poems in the case paint a vivid picture of weird and fantastical poetry, its primary thematic concerns, and its formal techniques in the first half of the twentieth century.

The case also displays four covers of Weird Tales issues, illustrated by Margeret Brundage, Matt Fox, and Virgil Finlay. These expressive, colorful images, which depict eerie and otherworldly scenes, nicely complement the similarly evocative poetic works that accompany them.

Lastly, the case includes two works by authors who influenced the poetry in Weird Tales. First and foremost, Poe’s 1845 narrative poem “The Raven,” with its exploration of a depressed man’s desperate attempt to derive meaning from a bird’s repetitive sounds, lays the groundwork for numerous character arcs in weird fiction and poetry. The edition of this poem that is displayed in my case has been digitized and made available on the Villanova Digital Library, and may be read in full here. Furthermore, the case includes the Anglo-Irish author Lord Dunsany’s “A Walk in the Wastes of Time,” a metaphorical poem about communal memory, which was published in The Smart Set in 1917. This title has also been digitized and is available here. (A couple of years after this poem’s publication, Lovecraft would attend a talk by Dunsany in Boston; Dunsany’s influence on Lovecraft’s writings during this period is evident in many of Lovecraft’s works. Comic-book writer Alan Moore portrays the Boston talk in his Lovecraftian series Providence, which serves as both sequel and prequel to Moore’s Neonomicon.)

For more content related to weird fiction and poetry, read our digitized copy of Lovecraft’s personal journal of astronomical observations from 1909 to 1915, as well as this blog article that explains the significance of this rare manuscript. The Digital Library also includes other nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts that explore the occult, including several issues of The Paragon Monthly, a handbook on spiritualism, and other examples.

Please join us on Thursday, April 20, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in Speakers’ Corner, Falvey Library, for the official launch and introduction of “Poetic License: Seven Curators’ Poetry Selections from Distinctive Collections,” followed by an open-mic poetry reading. This ACS-approved event is free and open to the public. In the meantime, make sure to view the full exhibit on the first floor of Falvey, and check the library’s blog for additional articles on individual curators’ cases!

In the early years of the 20th century, author Bertram Lebhar wrote a series of novels for publisher Street & Smith about Frank Hawley, an adventurous photojournalist known as “the Camera Chap.” Our latest Project Gutenberg release, produced by the Distributed Proofreaders project using images from our Digital Library, is one of the later “Camera Chap” novels: The Presidential Snapshot; or, The All-Seeing Eye.

In this book, Hawley is sent on a mission by the president of the United States to investigate rumors that a former president of a South American country has been illegally imprisoned by his successor. His mission is made more complicated by government spies, a growing revolution, and the appearance of an old rival. Fortunately, he also finds aid from a variety of allies….

As always, if you’d like to learn more, you can find the entire book available for free online reading, or for download in popular eBook formats, through the Project Gutenberg website.

“The Oracle” of Mystery Magazine

This Friday Favorite from the Distinctive Collections at Falvey Library is the pulp magazine series Mystery Magazine. One of the earliest examples of the ‘crime pulp’ genre, Mystery Magazine published a total of 216 issues from November 1917 to July 1927. Produced in New York City, readers could purchase the latest issue for just 10cents a copy.

What is Mystery Magazine?

In the words of publisher Frank Tousey in the inaugural issue:

Mystery Magazine has been issued to fill a unique niche in the field of literature. Its objects are both to amuse and instruct. […] Many of the stories are based on such subjects as fortune-telling, astrology, hypnotism, dreams, spiritualism, palmistry, etc., and some will be splendid detective stories.

 

 

 

 

The Oracle: The Mystery of Man and How to Solve It

Mystery Magazine ran a seven-part recurring column called “The Oracle: The Mystery of Man and How to Solve It” (issues 103 – 109) written by Russell Raymond Voorhees, a contemporary fiction author who published in a variety of pulp magazines. On the latest episode of Spare Change Library Podcast I am joined by Erica Hayes (Digital Scholarship Librarian) to read and discuss fortune telling with astrology in “The Oracle.”

Spare Change Library Podcast Episode 2: “The Oracle”

Not only was the content mysterious and strange, but the magazine featured advertisements from mystical sponsors as well, such as the fortune teller Parashira the Adept.

Are you interested in reading your own Oracle horoscope, or learning more about fortune telling in Mystery Magazine? Read your horoscope based on the day you were born in Mystery Magazine, The Oracle Part I: Astrology and decide for yourself if you ‘believe’ in the stars.

Spare Change Library Podcast is a dime novel and popular literature podcast, featuring audio editions of stories and scholarly discussion–available through a shared RSS feed on dimenovels.org

March 25 is Greek Independence Day. The holiday commemorates the start of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, which concluded a nearly 400-year period of Ottoman rule in Greece. The anniversary is commemorated with parades in both Greece and the diaspora. The Philadelphia parade, which is set for Sunday, April 2 this year, takes place along Benjamin Franklin Parkway and 22nd Street. The celebration includes Greek folk dance troupes, educational and religious organizations, government representatives, and members of the Evzones, or Greek Presidential Guard, who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Athens, Greece.

While Greece’s conflicts with the Ottoman Empire are more widely known, the British Empire also exercised colonial rule over parts of Greece in the nineteenth century, specifically in the Ionian islands to the west of the mainland. This region had been under Venetian control from the fourteenth to the late seventeenth centuries, before it was conquered by the French during the French Revolution and again during the Napoleonic Wars. However, in the Congress of Vienna of 1814-1815, the British Empire acquired the Ionian Islands as a protectorate, named the United States of the Ionian Islands, with the island of Corfu (or Kerkyra) as its capital. The protectorate existed until 1864, when Great Britain ceded the Ionian islands to Greece upon the enthronement of the Greek King George I. Sakis Gekas’ Xenocracy: State, Class, and Colonialism in the Ionian Islands, 1815-1864 (2017) explores this period in detail; Falvey offers digital access to the Gekas’ book. The legacy of the Protectorate period is still felt in several landmarks across the Ionian islands, especially in Corfu. For instance, the Old Fortress of Corfu includes the Church of St. George, an Anglican church built for British soldiers in 1840.

A rare pamphlet that was recently added to the Villanova Digital Library as part of the Joseph McGarrity Collection sheds further light on this part of modern Greek history. Titled A refutation of the assertions of Sir Howard Douglas, in his despatch of the 10th April, 1840, concerning the faction which he imagined to exist in the Ionian Islands, the pamphlet was written by Greek historian Giovanni Petrizzopulo and published by Morton’s English and Foreign Printing Office in 1840. The pamphlet’s author describes it as a “remonstrance against one of the outrages of despotic power in the Ionian Islands.” Petrizzopulo’s criticism is directed at Sir Howard Douglas (1776-1861), who served as Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands at the time. Douglas was responsible for an official search of Petrizzopulo’s house in Corfu under suspicion of rebellious activity.

Even though Petrizzopulo appeals to British authority (his pamphlet is addressed to Lord John Russell (1792-1878), Secretary for the Colonies), and attempts to defend himself from accusations of treason, his writing nonetheless adopts a critical tone toward British policy. In a book chapter titled “The Philorthodox Conspiracy in the British-Ruled Ionian Islands,” Lucien J. Frary draws on passages from Petrizzopulo’s pamphlet and argues that “Petrizzopulo was disgusted with the British government and accused it of exercising despotic power.” Moreover, Frary frames the incident at Petrizzopulo’s home as a part of a larger British attempt to suppress revolt in the Ionian Sea, writing that “Any suspicion of communicating with Greece served as a pretext for the government to carry out a search.” Falvey offers digital access to Frary’s full book.

Petrizzopulo’s pamphlet joins several other items on the Villanova Digital Library that are relevant to modern Greek history, such as an early-twentieth-century French souvenir photo album, which is discussed in a Falvey blog article, as well as Divry’s vest-pocket English-Greek and Greek-English dictionary (1914), which is likewise highlighted on our blog. Petrizzopulo’s pamphlet can be accessed digitally on the Digital Library. Alternatively, it can be consulted in-person in Falvey’s Rare Book Room during walk-in hours (Wednesdays 9:30-11:30 AM and Thursdays 2-4 PM) or by appointment.

My case in “Poetic License: Seven Curators’ Poetry Selections from Distinctive Collections” highlights an unexpected interconnection between two different parts of Falvey Library’s Special Collections by featuring a poet whose work appears in both our Popular Literature and Irish Literature collections.

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836-1919)

Sarah M. B. Piatt was an American poet whose long career began in the mid-19th century and lasted into the early 20th century. She gained prominence in her late teens, with her early work appearing in widely circulated newspapers and story papers under the name Sallie M. Bryan. After her marriage in 1861 to fellow poet John James Piatt, she published more than a dozen volumes of poetry in book form. Although she was well-known during her own lifetime, she sank into obscurity for most of the 20th century as poetic tastes changed, only resurfacing in the 1990’s when she was rediscovered as part of the growing movement to reassess the scope of the literary canon and recover forgotten women writers.

Piatt demonstrated great flexibility as a poet, writing poems that could appeal equally to multiple audiences, including children as well as adults. Her lasting success during her lifetime demonstrates her accessibility to casual readers of popular periodicals, but her work also rewards re-reading and careful analysis. Her poems, which often incorporate multiple voices and perspectives, comment directly or indirectly on social and poetic conventions. Her use of irony to contrast surface meanings with deeper intentions makes many of her poems particularly appealing to modern readers, who may be more attuned to this mode of expression than her 19th century contemporaries were. For one particularly striking example from Piatt’s work, take a look at “Giving Back the Flower.”

The New York Ledger

Story papers were one of the leading forms of home entertainment for much of the 19th century. Resembling a newspaper but containing a mix of serial installments of novels, short stories, poems, household advice, humor, and sometimes even games or puzzles, these publications provided weekly or monthly doses of entertainment for millions of American readers. One of the most successful and influential story papers was Robert Bonner’s New York Ledger, which began publication in 1855 and ran for almost fifty years.

The New York Ledger relied heavily on recurring contributors to fill its pages every week, and these writers gained celebrity as a result of their frequent appearances in the widely-circulated paper. Sallie M. Bryan was one such celebrity poet, contributing works frequently during the early years of the Ledger. Several issues containing her work can be found in Villanova’s collection of New York Ledger issues, available online.

The Sarah Piatt Recovery Project at Ohio State University has collected many of Piatt’s New York Ledger poems in an online archive. The process of preparing this exhibit led to the rediscovery of a Piatt poem, “The Dove and the Angel,” in the March 30, 1861 issue, which had not been previously identified by OSU’s project.

An Irish Garland

Long after she had moved on from story paper contributions, Sarah Piatt and her family lived in Ireland for well over a decade (1882-1893) as a consequence of her husband’s appointment as a United States consul. During this time, she had opportunities for travel and to become part of the local literary community. Piatt’s Irish years produced a significant number of new poems. Most of her published volumes saw first printings published abroad. One such volume was An Irish Garland, first published by David Douglas in Edinburgh in 1884, then reprinted for American audiences in an edition found in Falvey Library’s Joseph McGarrity Collection of works about and associated with Ireland. The full book has been digitized and can be read online in its entirety.

Further Resources

If you would like to take a deeper dive into the life and work of Sarah Piatt, you might enjoy the Discovering Sarah Piatt: America’s Lost Great Writer podcast, hosted by Ohio State University’s Elizabeth Renker, to whom this exhibit and blog post owe a debt of gratitude for valuable input provided.

In honor of Women’s Basketball earning #4 Seed in NCAA Championship, hosting first and second round games at Finneran Pavilion starting tomorrow, AND being a big favorite, here is a look back Women’s Basketball throughout the years.

50 years ago…

1983 & 1993…

And this year with such momentum with the team and Maddy Siegrist, senior guard, who is broke the Big East and Villanova single-game scoring records and became the Big East’s all-time leading scorer, is reminiscent of the 1980s Women’s Basketball team. In fact, Siegrist on January 20, 2023, surpassed Shelly Pennefather, 1983–1987 forward, for Villanova’s career scoring record while scoring 23 points in a 73–57 win over Creighton.

More images of Villanova Basketball throughout the years can be found in the University Archives and Digital Library.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week, I posted an article on this blog in which I discussed the value of collecting comic books in special collections, while drawing on examples from Marvel Comics in Falvey Library’s holdings. This week, I have another comic-book collection to highlight: Falvey’s holdings in Classics Illustrated. This series, which was published by three separate publishers (Elliot Publishing Co., Gilberton Company, and Frawley Corporation) from 1941 to 1969, adapted literary classics to the comic-book medium. It has significant research value not only in comics studies, but also in adaptation studies, a field that is becoming increasingly central in the arts and humanities. With the tagline “Featuring stories by the world’s greatest authors,” the series sheds light on mid-twentieth-century cultural conceptions of texts that have traditionally been viewed as particularly significant in the United States and elsewhere, as well as how these texts were transmitted to new audiences.

The Tragedy of Macbeth and Paratext

These comics include not only abridged adaptations of their source material, but also paratextual material that assists readers to understand and appreciate the stories. For example, the adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Macbeth includes numerous explanatory footnotes, which make the early modern language of the text more accessible to twentieth-century readers.

Additional segments at the ends of issues often provide biographical and historical context for the preceding narrative, typically in the form of a text box. The following two examples, drawn from the Macbeth issue of Classics Illustrated, explain Shakespeare’s life and the relation between the play and King James I of England (you may click on all images in this blog article to enlarge them).

Other times, this type of supplementary content at the end of an issue takes the form of a comic book, like the following panels on British history, which are again drawn from the final pages in the Macbeth issue.

Another paratextual aspect worth noting is the banner that appears across the bottom of the final page in each adapted story, which urges readers to track down a copy of the original text in a school or public library. This inclusion demonstrates the comics’ goal of developing an appreciation of literature in younger readers. On the one hand, this is beneficial in that it encourages engagement with libraries and promotes further reading. On the other hand, it is potentially problematic in its suggestion that comics are valuable only if they serve as a stepping stone to a more highly respected (and supposedly more advanced) medium or mode of reading, namely prose and verse.

While seeking to cultivate a love of reading, Classics Illustrated promoted bibliophilia, especially as the notion relates to the material aspect of books. The following advertisement demonstrates this attitude, as it aims to sell a “handsome, durable, permanent” binder for storing Classics Illustrated issues, which is “made to last a lifetime of handling.” (However, the primary aim of any advertisement is, of course, to sell a product or service.)

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Getting back to the adapted narratives themselves, it is important to note that Classics Illustrated sometimes altered or added to the source material. An illustrative case-in-point is the adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which is collected alongside two other adaptations in issue #21 of Classics Illustrated. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” published in 1841 in Graham’s Magazine, is widely considered the first modern detective story. It is a predecessor to popular detective fiction like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, as well as numerous dime novels and story papers available on the Villanova Digital Library, most notably Mystery Magazine (1917-1927). Poe’s full short story is available on Falvey’s website. A facsimile edition of the manuscript can also be consulted in-person at the library.

Famously, this short story ends (spoilers!) with the reveal that a runaway orangutan had committed the eponymous murders. In Poe’s story, the orangutan’s fate remains ambiguous. However, the comic book adds an extra page at the end of the story, where detective C. Auguste Dupin and his associate (the unnamed narrator of Poe’s story, who is named “Poe” in the comic-book adaptation) track down and fight the animal, which was changed to an ape for the comic book. These changes and additions to the source material may have happened for a variety of reasons. In this case, perhaps the creators wanted the story to fit more neatly into the conventions of the adventure comic-book genre, hence the action-packed ending. Alternatively, they may have felt uncomfortable depicting an ambiguous ending, where a dangerous animal is still on the loose, especially if their target audience was mainly composed of children. (I have no explanation, however, for why the animal was changed from an orangutan to an ape.)

Robin Hood

Besides detectives like Dupin and Holmes, another famous character portrayed in Classics Illustrated is Robin Hood. Two early issues of Classics Illustrated in Falvey’s collection feature the character. Robin Hood has had a long history of popular culture portrayals (having even become a fox in a Disney animated film), and comics are no exception. In addition to Classic Illustrated issues, the English folk hero also appears in Martin Powell and Stan Timmons’ Robin Hood, published by Eternity Comics in 1989. The series’ first issue, which was recently donated to Falvey, sports a cover illustration by painter N. C. Wyeth. (More information about the original painting is provided in the Brandywine River Museum of Art’s N. C. Wyeth Catalogue Raisonné.) Other popular culture materials at Falvey’s Distinctive Collections that depict Robin Hood’s adventures include dime novels like the Aldine Robin Hood Library and The Story of Robin Hood (1889), both of which are available to read on the Villanova Digital Library.

All the comics shown in this article, and several more issues of Classics Illustrated and other titles, are available to see in Falvey’s Rare Book Room during walk-in hours (Wednesdays 9:30-11:30 AM and Thursdays 2-4 PM) or by appointment. Make sure to check the library’s blog for more articles on our growing collections of comic books, dime novels, and other popular literature.

To commemorate St. Patrick’s Day, we’re highlighting new additions to the Philadelphia Ceili Group’s online archives in the Digital Library. The Philadelphia Ceili Group is dedicated to the promotion of Irish music, dance, and culture, and hosts festivals, concerts, and lectures in the greater Philadelphia area to support this mission.

The efforts to digitize the archival recordings of the Philadelphia Ceili Group are ongoing and new recordings are added on a continual basis. New recordings can be heard from the 1983 Fall Festival, which features over a dozen musicians performing reels, jigs, airs, and songs. Performers include Johnny Cunningham, Liz Carroll, Joe and Antoinette McKenna, Mick Moloney, the Egan family, and a tap dancing performance from Howard “Sandman” Sims.

There is also a separate concert with fiddler Kevin Burke and guitarist Mícheál Ó Domhnaill (parts 1 and 2), as well as two installments from the Oíche Cois Tine (Night Beside the Fire) lecture series on the Irish sense of place, given by Dr. Henry Glassie and Brian Donnelly. The Donnelly lecture in particular features readings of poems by W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Mahon.

This second installment of ‘Winged Words’ is brought to you in honor of Women’s History Month. This week’s picks includes selections of Falvey Distinctive Collections materials pertaining to the visual interpretation of the ancient poetess Sappho (c. 630—c. 570 BCE) from the ancient world to the 20th century.

The Life of Sappho

There is not much biographical information on the life of Sappho of Mytilene. Historical records tell us that she was a Greek poet from the capitol city of the island of Lesbos. Extant sources provide only one date, that of her exile to Sicily by democratic despot Pittacus in 598 BCE. Sappho married a rich man from Andros, with whom she had one daughter, named after her mother Cleïs. Sappho was known to have intimate relationships with women, notably with Atthis, Telesippa, and Megara.

 

On the Wings of Sappho

Much of Sappho’s reputation today has been mediated through the lens of the Roman poet Horace (c. 1st century BCE). The few surviving sources on her physical appearance describe her as having bird-like features, and aviary metaphors are frequently used to describe both Sappho and her poems.

“[Sappho is] small, dark, and very ill-favored… like a nightingale with ill-shapen wings enfolding a tiny body”.

Depicting Sappho in the 20th century

This English translation and glossary of Sappho’s work contains illustrations by Véra Willoughby that depict Sappho in the contemporary Art Deco-style with Greek features.

“A selection of the poems of the world’s greatest woman poet”

The selection of poems was illustrated by E. A. R. Collings, who interpreted Sappho’s poetry in an Art Nouveau-style as Greek mythological tropes within surrealistic landscapes, including fragmented Greek statues that symbolize the fragmented nature of her work today.

These and other works are featured in the spring 2023 exhibit “Poetic License: Seven Curators’ Poetry Selections from Distinctive Collections” located on the first floor of Falvey Library.

A Fay King column and cartoon, from page 85 of the scrapbook.

But as cartoonist and historian Trina Robbins observes in her book Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century, the norms of the time limited the subjects that King was able to address, both in her cartoons and columns. Robbins writes, “Although they (Fay King and Nell Brinkley) avoided the mother and child ghetto that most other women cartoonists and illustrators seemed to have inhabited, both artists were still ghettoized simply by drawing for women” [1].

One aspect of King’s cartoon persona that is widely noted is its similarity to another famous comic character: Olive Oyl, from E.C. Segar’s Thimble Theatre and Popeye comic strips. However, this comparison is somewhat inexact. A similarity can be detected, but King’s cartoon avatar predates the creation of Olive Oyl, whose first appearance was in 1919. While there is no definitive record that Segar was inspired by King, if an influence does exist, King would be the influence on Olive Oyl, and not the other way around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fay King’s scrapbook can be read in its entirety in the Digital Library, and is available to be viewed in the Rare Book Room during walk-in hours or by appointment. Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century can be borrowed from Falvey Library’s circulating collection.

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[1] Robbins, Trina. Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2001. p. 37.