Special Collections and University Archives: Literature and the Arts

The Nineteenth Century Children's Chapbook Collection consists of over 900 children's books. The books forming the bulk of the collection were issued mainly between 1801 and 1900 and measure 10 centimeters or less in height. They are generally bound in paper wrappers and are of miscellaneous provenance. Most titles were published in America, although some British publications are included as well. The collection includes religious tracts, toybooks, primers, catechisms, alphabets, hymns, songbooks, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, miniature books and wordless picture books, among other popular genres, and reflects the growth and development of American book illustration and wood engraving. The collection also includes some advertising formally imitative of children's books and evidently directed at children.

The Harry B. Weiss Chapbook Collection comprises some 880 chapbooks dating from the late 18th through the mid-19th centuries, as well as a selection of peripheral material. These chapbooks represent Weiss’ collecting interests and focus on British and, to a much lesser extent, American chapbooks, with other examples from Germany, Italy, and Mexico. Nearly half of the collection is from publishers in Scotland, primarily those printed in Glasgow "for the booksellers," though Paisley, Stirling, Falkirk, and Edinburgh are also present. Many other centers of chapbook publication in Great Britain are represented in the collection. London comprises about a fifth of the collection, though Coventry, Newcastle, Otley, Leeds, and others are here, as well. A sample of chapbook printers and publishers collected by Weiss includes J. Catnach, W.S. Fortey and J. Marshall of London, J. Johnson of Leeds, Francis Orr & Sons of Glasgow and William Walker of Otley. Subjects include collections of songs, stories of villains and victims, morality tales, famous events and personages, children's fairy tales, Bible stories, and instructions on how to handle money. Many are illustrated with woodcuts and engravings, some in color. In addition, the collection contains chapbooks that are oversized, reprinted, in anthologies, and from the 20th Century. Other material includes correspondence and notes, with extensive correspondence from Walter N. H. Harding and correspondence related to the chapbook The Life of Amos Wilson, Pennsylvania Hermit. Booklets and drafts of articles written by Weiss are in the collection. In addition, library, exhibit, and publisher's catalogs relating to chapbooks, children's books. and other topics are included, as are examples of a 19th-century children's game, a printed circus advertisement, and small copies of chapbook engravings.

Artist and printmaker John DePol (1914-2004) had a career spanning 50 years in wood engraving and printing. He produced etchings, prints, pamphlets, and book illustrations in a style that became the signature look of the American press book. This collection primarily consists of proofs and prints of wood engravings by DePol. Also included are etchings, paintings, correspondence, exhibition announcements, miscellaneous documents, woodblocks, and ephemera, as well as publications and other texts that feature his work or were collected by DePol.

This collection consists of late 19th-century woodblocks, engraving tools, and ephemera constructed by George Howes Whittle, an engraver and biographer of Timothy Cole, as a teaching collection in the early 20th century.

Lynd Ward (1905-1985) was a graphic novelist and illustrator of over a hundred children’s books and literary classics. The collection consists of 355 wood engraving blocks by Lynd Ward, including 233 blocks from his wordless novel Vertigo, 9 from Ward's illustrations for Frankenstein, 77 related to a wordless novel that remained unfinished at Ward's death and 36 miscellaneous blocks. The blocks are accompanied by eight prints, four of which correspond to images in Vertigo as it was published and four which were not used in the novel.

The collection consists of over 830 collages, drawings, prints, sketchbooks, watercolors, and other works of art representing many significant phases of Winifred Milius Lubell's artistic career, spanning the years 1933 to 2011. Also included are 118 woodblocks, linocut blocks, and plates for many of the prints. Archival material includes draft illustrations for her book Metamorphosis of Baubo, research studies for a project on marginalia in medieval books, and materials related to exhibitions of her works, videos of the artist discussing her works, and an autobiographical sketch. Subjects of recurring interest in both her art and papers include social issues, particularly of the depression era, landscapes and nature studies, the role of women over time, with a focus on goddesses and the mythic regard for fertility, as well as numerous portraits.

In 1995, following the success of the first New Jersey Book Arts Symposium (NJBAS), SC/UA began to collect the book arts as such. The collection preserves for study and teaching examples of book art relating to the history and material culture of New Jersey, emphasizing contemporary artifacts and the field of artists' books. The related fields of papermaking, or paper-marbling, bookbinding, graphic design, illustration, printmaking, calligraphy are implicit and well-represented within the collection. Likewise, the archive tends to focus on the work of individuals rather than on history, craft, theme, region, theory, chronology, etc., although it makes an exception (institutional) by documenting book arts activities within the libraries. The largest and most important part of this last category is the annual New Jersey Book Arts Symposium, which has been held at the Dana Library since 1995. It also preserves and documents related activities, such as the exhibitions of book artists and book art regularly held at the Dana Library and SC/UA.

The archive grew organically as a miscellany of administrative papers, letters, articles, slides, etc. and only coalesced as an archive in 2002-2003. While it began reflexively in response to the New Jersey Book Arts Collection, in its present form it goes beyond the collection by documenting the careers of New Jersey artists whose works are (as yet) absent from the collection, and book art activities within New Jersey. A subordinate but valuable part of the archive consists of materials relating to the book arts beyond the state. This allows scholars to examine the practice of the book arts in New Jersey in relationship to the practice of book arts elsewhere. This part of the archive corresponds to the books, prints, and related materials contributed to the collection.