New Exhibition: By Hand
By Hand: A Celebration of the Manuscript Collections of Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
January 18 – April 29, 2013
By Hand celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript with an exploration of its manuscript collections. The exhibition begins where the Yale College Library collection of early manuscripts began, with a mirror of humanity, a copy of the Speculum humanae salvationis given by Elihu Yale. It ends with the manuscripts and drafts of “Miracle of the Black Leg,” a poem written by U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey while she was a research fellow at the Beinecke Library in 2009.
Manuscript, from the Latin term “by hand,” derives from the ablative case: locational, instrumental, situated always in relation to something or someone else. Like the term, this exhibition explores the reflections of humanity in the Beinecke’s manuscript collections, presenting them as markers of the social contracts of love, creativity, need, power, that bind us into historical record even as they bind us to one another.
The exhibition ranges across the Beinecke Library manuscript collections, in an extraordinary display of the Library’s manuscript holdings, from papyri of the 2nd century A.D. through working drafts by contemporary poets, from manuscripts in the original Yale Library to recent additions to the collections. On view are manuscripts, notes, and proof copies of works by Langston Hughes, Rachel Carson, Edith Wharton, Zora Neale Hurston, Terry Tempest Williams, James Joyce, F. T. Marinetti, Goethe, and others; the Voynich Manuscript, the Vinland Map, the Lewis and Clark expedition map and journals, the Martellus map; the last paragraphs of Thoreau’s manuscript of Walden; letters, postcards, poetry, and notes by Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Georgia O’Keeffe, Franz Kafka, Mark Twain, Erica Jong, and others; early manuscripts from a tenth-century Byzantine prayer roll, a fragment of lyric verse on papyri, the Rothschild Canticles, a fourteenth-century ivory writing tablet, and the first illuminated medieval manuscript known in a North American collection.
My Little Pony
[Baker, J.]. My Pony : A Poem. Philadelphia: Published and sold by Wm. Charles, 1818.
A Tale of Redemption
The Cross Boy Reformed (ALbany: G. J. Loomis & Co., 1822) in its entirety.
Fabled Old Friends
Old Friends in a New Dress; or, Familiar Fables in Verse (New Haven, CT and Charleston, S.C. : Sidney’s Press, 1823)
A versified retelling of moral stories, two of which are shown here in full.
This copy bound with a lovely remnant of wallpaper.
Funny rhymes!
Ye Comical Rhymes of Ancient Times, Dug Up Into Jokes For Small Folks (New York: Hurd & Houghton, circa 1864)
Laughing! Out! Loud!!!
A Barrel full of Rhymes
A curious object – a small wooden barrel housing a strip of linen printed with Alphabet rhymes.Circa 1880.
Featuring Beinecke
#22 YALE
Yale Special. Planned, edited & designed by graphic design department, Yale School of Art.
PARTICIPANTS & CONTRIBUTORS include Beinecke curators Kevin Repp and Timothy Young.
Other Yale contributors include: Jack Balkin, James Berger, Julian Bittiner, Karla Britton, Craig Buckley, Francesco Casetti, Gregory Crewdson, Glen Cummings, Sheila Levrant De Bretteville, Keller Easterling, Paul Elliman, Michael Faison, Peter Halley, Roni Horn, Matthew Jacobson, Wayne Koestenbaum, Karel Martens, Dan Michaelson, Sigi Moeslinger, Alexander Nemerov, Margaret Olin, Sarah Oppenheimer, Mark Owens, Michael Rock, Elihu Rubin, Julika Rudelius, Holly Rushmaier, Susan Sellers, Rob Storr, Masamichi Udagawa, Daniel Van Der Velden, Linda Van Deursen, Lyneise Williams, Yale Gdmfa ’11
The Laughable Game of What D’Ye Buy
A set of a popular card game.
This edition published around 1850 by S. Hart & Co. in Philadelphia.
No rules included.
How are Multitides?
EXHIBITION CLOSING PARTY
How is a Book?
and
Multitudes: A Celebration of the Yale Collection of American Literature, 1911 – 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 5:00
More about Multitudes and How is a Book
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Yale University, 121 Wall Street, New Haven
Free and open to the public
Image: [Crowd gathered for a tug-of-war competition at the University of Montana, Missoula], [1911-12]
Visualizing History
Pages from Elizabeth Peabody’s Universal History: Arranged to Illustrate Bem’s Charts of Chronology. New York: Pub. for the author by Sheldon and Co, 1859.
A system for charting historical events on a grid (representing historical periods, arranged chronologically); squares, divided into 9 parts each, to represent distinct categories of historical events; and colors, to show different “Nations”.
A curious abstract visual system for reducing history to shapes and color on a standard, single field of two-dimensional representation.
The end product, while perhaps not becoming a real mnenomic device for learning history (or a compelling Visual Display of Quantitative Information), produced some intriguing designs.
_________
______
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The Lantern – part 1
Pages from issues of handmade juvenile publications, The Lantern, created by 8-year-old Frederic Gerrish of Portland, Maine, 1853-1859.
Tune in again later for the tale of John Carty . . .
“Tut-tut it looks like rain”
November, 1930 from The Pooh calendar: verses by A.A. Milne ; decorations by E.H. Shepard (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. [1929]
Naughty tricks
Lothar Meggendorfer. Bubenstreiche: ein Verwandlungsbilderbuch. Eßlingen & München: Schreiber, 1899.
One of Meggendorfer’s ingenious moving books, showing the pranks of children.
Fröbelgabe (or kindergarten pixelation)
A beautiful example of a kindergarten exercise – specifically the 14th of Friedrich Fröbel’s “gifts”
intended to allow young children free range of play and expression.
This 26-panel paper weaving book shows a variety of patterns,
including one page with the makers initials and the date of creation.
This example is apparently American, from 1892, made by “M. Kistler”
The Agnes Magazine
A handmade magazine by Gelett Burgess, created for his crush, Agnes Bouchard, while living in London in 1898.
Two elegies
Two moving poems written to mark the passing of two young sisters in New Hampshire in 1814.
“[An Elegy], Composed on the sudden deaths of Lydia Page Sanborn . . . and Rebecca Sanborn . . .”
by John Paige, Jun. – with a second elegy by Elder Joseph Badger.
People of all nations
From: People of all nations : an useful toy for girl or boy. Philadelphia : Published by Jacob Johnson, No. 147, Market-street, 1807 (Whitehall [Pa.] : A. Dickinson)
Baby Party!
Happy children posing in historical vignettes from themed birthday parties, ca. 1910-1915,
likely in New Jersey. From a “baby book” recording events in the life of
one Helen Mary Stratz, born March 6, 1906, near Egg Harbor, New Jersey.
Geographic Sing-Along
Sample pages from an 1848 book for children intended to teach physical and political geography by way of rhymes set to popular tunes – jingoism notwithstanding.
Lyon, Sarah M. 1848. The musical geography: a new natural arrangement of the names of all the physical features of the globe. Troy [N.Y.]: Young & Hart.
Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities 
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