Poems about Fathers

Happy Father's Day!  Today we're offering a selection of poetry by, for, and about fathers.  John MacKay Shaw, a father of two, was a businessman and bibliophile with a particular interest in the literature of childhood.  He wrote this volume of poetry, entitled The Things I Want, at the request of his young children, Cathmar and Bruce, in the 1930s. Shaw's library is now housed at the Florida State University Libraries.

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Wyatt Prunty is a professor of creative writing at the University of the South, and his poem "To My Father" deals with a son watching his father struggle with disease.  This copy of the poem was produced as a broadside by the Palaemon Press.  The edition was limited to 126 copies; the Libraries' copy is number 99 and was signed by Prunty.

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Finally, from the library of John Gneisenau Neihardt comes Father: An Anthology of Verse, published in 1931.  The anthology contains poetry both humorous and sentimental on the subject of fathers, fatherhood, children and families.  Neihardt received this book as a review copy, and the book still has its original review slip.

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home Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives Skin white as snow, hair black as ebony

Skin white as snow, hair black as ebony

The evil queen, disguised as an old woman, offers Snow white an apple in Walter Crane's illustration from Household stories from the collection of the brothers Grimm (New York, 1896).Snow White's been busy lately. This year alone she’s starring in two movies while also appearing in a television series.

First published by Jacob and Wilhem Grimm as part of their Children’s and Household Tales (Kinder-und Hausmӓrchen), the brief story introduces all the familiar faces: Snow White, her evil stepmother, the huntsman, and the dwarves.  The elements and characters have been adapted in many ways over the years, from films and books to ballets and opera.  Many of the narratives stick close toSnow White- deputy mayor that original tale, while others take a bit of creative license.

In Special Collections we see Snow White in very recognizable tales.  A copy of Grimm’s Household Stories from 1896 and Grimm’s Fairy Tales from 1962 both contain the story as recorded by the Grimm brothers. The illustrations present a young girl with dark hair.

The comic series Fables catches up with Snow White in the present. The action takes place well after the adventures found in the Grimm's tale, with Snow White serving as deputy mayor for a community of relocated fairy tale characters.  She is joined by other familiar faces, including Cinderella and the wolf who appears in many tales.

 

Click on any of the images below to see a few illustrations from some of the many works featuring these characters in our collection. You'll find both the well known versions of their stories and some with creative twists.

Lucille Corcos, illustrator of Grimm's Fairy Tales (New York, 1962) captures the moment when the dwarves find Snow White in their house.

The Big Bad Wolf and Red Riding Hood from Arthur Rackham's illustration in Hansel and Grethel (London, 1920).

The wolf appears in the comic The Gingerbread Man, originally drawn in 1943 by Walt Kelley and republished in Little Lit (New York, 2000).

Now known as Bigby Wolf, the Big Bad Wolf is the sheriff in Bill Willingham's Fables (New York, 2002).

Snow White marries Bigby Wolf in Bill Willingham's Fables (New York, 2006).

Cinderella learns the batik method of dying fabric from her fairy godmother to make her own ballgown. Illustrator Jessie M. King had just learned the process herself, and wrote How Cinderella was able to go to the ball (London, 1924) to introduce others to “the wonderland of batik.”

Cinderella owns a show store but also works undercover as a spy in Bill Willingham's Fables (New York, 2002).

Gardens in Special Collections

June is prime time for gardeners in Missouri, and it’s also a great time to take a look at the rare and historic horticulture and gardening books in Special Collections.  Since MU has a long history as an agriculture school, Special Collections has a great collection of these early texts on plants, gardening, and landscape design.

The Edible Garden

The last decade has seen a renewed interest in local and sustainable food, including vegetable gardening and heritage or heirloom varieties.  The absence of pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers and modern machinery in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries meant that kitchen and market gardeners had to be experts in the care of a wide variety of food crops. Advice for gardeners from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries contains information on historic plant varieties as well as natural solutions to problems with climate, soils, and pests.

Peach, from Charles Hovey's Fruits of America (New York, 1856).Fruit tree branches in flower, from Batty Langley's Pomona, or, The fruit-garden illustrated (London, 1729)Love-apples, or tomatoes, from John Abercrombie's The complete kitchen gardner, and hot-bed forcer (London, 1789).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Flower Garden

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the introduction of a number of new flowering plants as botanists and nurserymen identified foreign species and developed hybrids.  Although color publications such as Curtis’s Botanical Magazine remained popular through the period, most gardeners learned about new flowers through descriptions or black and white plates.  Botanical gardens such as the Royal Gardens at Kew became popular spots for the public to see exotic and colorful plants in person.

A blue gentian, from Curtis' Botanical Magazine (v. 1-4, 1787-1791)

  A seventeenth-century flower garden, from Crispijn van de Passe's Hortus Floridus (Arnhem, 1616)Tulips, from Crispijn van de Passe's Hortus Floridus (Arnhem, 1616)

 

 

      

 

 

The Park

Garden design has changed dramatically from the formalized symmetry of Italian and French gardens to the informal plantings of today.  In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English gardeners began to break away from the geometrical patterns of Renaissance knot gardens and Baroque parterres.  Instead, the new garden style focused on creating picturesque, naturalistic views.  Landscape architects during this period sought to shape the landscape without the outward appearance of control, creating “natural” scenery too perfect to exist in nature.

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More Information

Search for Gardening, Fruit, Botany, or Landscape architecture in the MERLIN catalog.  Limit your search to Special Collections to find more primary sources on historic gardens and gardening practices.

home Resources and Services Edwin Ellis Art on Display

Edwin Ellis Art on Display

Edwin E. Ellis has over 35 Years of photography experience, traveling throughout the United States plus a few trips to mexico and Canada to capture nature, scenic, and wildlife photographs. He has been awarded 17 first place trophies for prints and slides in competitions and numerous gold ribbons and medals in nature, photo travel, color, contemporary and photo Journalism at Camera Circle of Glendale and (S4C) Southern California Council of Camera Clubs. Mr. Ellis now resides in the beautiful town of Columbia, Missouri, his original home state before leaving Missouri May 2nd 1957 when he was 17 to journey to California where he has lived for many years. Mr Ellis now plans, in between employment to photograph the beauty of Missouri and surrounding states for the rest of his life. His art is on display in the Bookmark Cafe.
home Resources and Services, Zalk Veterinary Medical Library Parasitology Resource: The ICMVZ Online

Parasitology Resource: The ICMVZ Online

The Index-Catalogue of Medical and Veterinary Zoology (ICMVZ) is an historic compendium of parasitological literature and a key resource for researchers in emerging diseases and global animal health. It comprises more than 100 publications with about 20,000 pages of references.

With funding from the National Library of Medicine, Oklahoma State University and Texas A & M digitized the Index-Catalogue and made it freely available online and electronically searchable.

Oklahoma State’s version of the ICMVZ is great for browsing: http://www.library.okstate.edu/ICMVZ/index.htm

Texas A&M’s version has higher-quality images: http://repository.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/90524

Both are awesome!

Celebrating Teaching

Students from Sean Franzel's class doing research in Special CollectionsToday and yesterday, participants from across campus gathered for the annual Celebration of Teaching in recognition of faculty innovation and achievements.  We’re celebrating another record-breaking year for classes and groups in Special Collections, and we count ourselves lucky to work with such dedicated and creative instructors.  Here’s just a sampling of the classes we taught this past year:

  • History of Modern Engineering
  • Jane Austen and Her Contemporaries
  • Theatre Scholarship
  • Italian Civilization
  • Letterpress and Book Arts
  • Historiography of Medieval and Early Modern Convents
  • The Inhuman Subject (English honors seminar)
  • Information and Student Success
  • History of Typography
  • Introduction to Visual Culture
  • Introduction to German Literature
  • History of Western Dress
  • Beginning Latin
  • Color Theory
  • Monstrous Births: Tales of Creation in 19th Century Literature

Graduate student Amy Jones shows ancient Asian artifacts to Smithton Middle School studentsYou can find out more about some of our student and faculty patrons in our Spotlight posts, and we look forward to adding even more profiles and interviews once the fall semester begins.

Wondering if Special Collections can support your next course?  Contact us at SpecialCollections@missouri.edu, or check out the Resources for Instructors section on our web site.

home Resources and Services New at the Library – Health Literacy Advisor

New at the Library – Health Literacy Advisor

The J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library has been awarded a 1-year license for the English/Spanish software Package, Health Literacy Advisor from Health Literacy Innovations, Inc. The National Network of Libraries of Medicine /Midcontinental Region awarded licenses to regional libraries to improve health information literacy.  Described on the HLA website “[a]s a health literacy checker, the HLA streamlines the review and simplification process by allowing users to assess the health of their documents and then fix it using plain language principles.”

 

Documents can be reviewed for readability level and stamp the results in the footer. The software will scan the document and highlight words that compromise the readability. It will then suggest easier to read alternatives. Spanish documents can also be checked.

 

The Health Literacy Advisor program will run for 1 year from the end of April 2012 through the end of April 2013. This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, under Contract No. HHS-N-276-2011-00006-C with the University of Utah Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library.

 

For more information about how to have your materials checked, feel free to contact Darell Schmick at the Health Sciences Library at 884-3575 or SchmickD@health.missouri.edu.

 

home Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives Ten Etchings on the Theme of Mothers

Ten Etchings on the Theme of Mothers

In honor of Mother’s Day, we’re highlighting a portfolio of prints and poetry by artist Michel Fingesten.  This collection, 10 Radierungen über das Thema Mütter (10 Etchings on the Theme of Mothers) was released in 1920 in an edition of 100 copies.  The Libraries’ copy is one of ten that also included an original pen and ink drawing by Fingesten, and each page is signed by the artist.  The etchings depict the tenderness and sweetness of motherhood, but at the same time, Fingesten’s figures tend to be solid, monumental and immovable. 

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Although he is virtually unknown today, Fingesten was a prominent graphic artist and bookplate designer in Germany during the interwar period.  He studied art briefly in Vienna and Munich, but was largely self-taught.  Known for the Cubist and surrealist currents in his work, he was a member of the Berlin Secession, produced several well-received portfolios of prints, contributed to numerous art publications, and was himself the subject of a scholarly monograph.

During World War I, Fingesten explored the nature of violence and peace through his work, themes that would stay with him for the rest of his life.  He was persecuted by the Nazis in the early 1930s, both for his Jewish ancestry and for practicing “degenerate” modern art.  He died in an internment camp in Italy in 1943.

home Resources and Services PubMed: “Limits” are now “Filters”

PubMed: “Limits” are now “Filters”

Where did the PubMed Limits go? The Limits page has been replaced by a Filters sidebar.

Information on the change

Questions? Ask Kate

home Resources and Services Campus Authors Exhibit

Campus Authors Exhibit