Special Collections & Archives Blog

Editing Harold Hayes: The Making of a Documentary Filmmaker
A Discussion with Tom Hayes
Friday, April 19, 2013, 4:00PM
Special Collections Reading Room
Z. Smith Reynolds Library

Please join us in the Special Collections Reading Room on April 19 as Tom Hayes (WFU ’79) takes us behind the scenes of his documentary Smiling Through the Apocalypse, which is a featured film at the 2013 River Run Film Festival. The film explores the life and career of Tom’s father, Harold Hayes, with a focus on his years as editor of Esquire magazine in the 1960s.

In this informal presentation and Q&A session, Tom Hayes will discuss the making of Smiling Through the Apocalypse, a film described by one reviewer as “a 99 minute act of love, the story of a publishing icon through the eyes of his son.” Although he had worked as a television producer for over 20 years, Tom’s tribute to his father, who died in 1989, was his first foray into documentary filmmaking. As such it presented a host of new challenges– from fundraising, to navigating fair use law, to dealing with temperamental interviewees. Tom will discuss what he learned as a filmmaker during this process, and also what he discovered about his father’s profound influence on American journalism of the 1960s.

Harold Hayes, a Wake Forest alumnus and North Carolina native, was chief editor of Esquire from 1963 to 1974. During this time the magazine was on the forefront of the New Journalism. Contributors like Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Gore Vidal, Nora Ephron, Peter Bogdonavich, and many others captured the essence of the turbulent decade in Esquire’s pages. In making his documentary Tom Hayes interviewed many of these authors, as well as designers, photographers, and Esquire staffers. He also made extensive use of archival materials, in particular the Harold Hayes Papers at Wake Forest. Materials from the Hayes collection will be on exhibit in Special Collections.

This event is open to the public. For more information, contact Megan Mulder at 336-758-5091.

Special Collections is happy to announce a new exhibit in the small case in the atrium. The exhibit highlights the Samuel and Sally Wait Collection and shows examples of their letters from Wait. It also includes Samuel’s walking stick and reading glasses. Take a look when you get a chance!

This article is cross posted on the Library Gazette.

In celebration of National Archives Month and North Carolina’s Archives Week (October 22-28), ZSR’s Special Collections and Archives is reaching out to invite departments and student groups across campus to deposit their paper and electronic documents in the University Archives. We particularly encourage submissions from groups underrepresented in the Archives, such as WFU’s ethnic minority, LGBTQ, and international communities. We want to identify, locate, secure, and make accessible these important and at-risk historical records.

The Documenting Diversity initiative seeks to raise awareness of the importance of preserving the historical records, especially of under-represented groups. We will provide consultations and guidelines for the transfer of non-current records to the Archives.

Documenting Diversity kicks off with an Archives open house event in the Special Collections Reading Room from 4-5 pm on October 25^th. Members of the WFU community will have the opportunity to see the University Archives, drop off materials, view some collections already housed in the archives, and discuss the future of a more inclusive and well-rounded University record. Light refreshments will be served.  Participating departments and organizations include

• The Office of Multicultural Affairs
• The Office of Diversity and Inclusion
• The LGBTQ Center
• The Department of Women’s and Gender Studies
• Student Government

We encourage all interested individuals and groups to attend the Archives open house and to contribute appropriate materials to the University Archives. Visit the PDC website to register for the event.  Please send questions to Rebecca Petersen petersrb@wfu.edu.

Detail from the engraved title page of George Chapman’s The Whole Works of Homer (1616)

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold…

John Keats, “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”

The book that inspired Keats’s famous sonnet, George Chapman’s The Whole Works of Homer,  is one of the volumes included in the Z. Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections fall 2012 exhibit.  On view August 2012 through February 2013, Faithfully English’d: Classical Literature in Translation features Greek and Latin classics in English translations from the 14^th through 20^th centuries. All of the books are from the ZSR Rare Books Collection.

The exhibit includes translations by Geoffrey Chaucer, George Sandys, John Dryden, Aphra Behn, Alexander Pope, Ezra Pound, Allen Mandelbaum, and many others.  The books themselves, published from the 16^th through 20^th centuries, are as varied as the texts they convey. From large, lavishly illustrated folios to cheaply bound schoolbooks, the different physical manifestations attest to the diverse readership of classical translations.

The five centuries’ worth of books on view are a testament to the enduring fascination that English-speaking authors and readers have for the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. But the texts also show how styles and theories of translation have changed over the centuries. George Chapman, a contemporary of Shakespeare, was the first author to attempt to render both the Iliad and Odyssey into English verse. Chapman’s extravagant Elizabethan style contrasts with the carefully crafted heroic couplets of Alexander Pope’s 1715 Iliad. William Morris’s Odyssey (1887), inspired by Anglo-Saxon poetry, proves interesting if not particularly readable. And annotated typescript draft pages of Allen Mandelbaum’s 1990 Odyssey show the painstaking process of translating Homer’s verse into modern English poetry.

Interest in Homer’s epics has scarcely flagged for the past 500 years, but some classical authors seem to resonate more strongly in certain periods. Aesop’s fables, for example, are now largely regarded as children’s fare. But in Roger L’Estrange’s 1692 translation they are the basis for pointed political satire. The Roman poet Ovid, widely read from medieval times through the 18^th century, is the subject of many translations and adaptations, from Chaucer’s Legends of Good Women (on view here in a 1515 edition) to Mandelbaum’s 1993 translation of the Metamorphoses.

Throughout the past five centuries translations have provided access to classical texts for those who cannot read the original Greek and Latin. From the Renaissance through the 19^th century, anyone who wanted to participate in the literary culture and intellectual discourse of England needed to be familiar with the classics. But fluency in Latin, and even more so in Greek, required an elite education difficult for anyone but the sons of wealthy families to attain. John Keats, the son of a London stable-master, experienced Homer through Chapman’s verses. William Shakespeare, whose merchant-class origins left him with “small Latin and less Greek,” used Thomas North’s 1579 translation of Plutarch’s Lives as the basis for Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. And Aphra Behn , in a dedicatory verse for Thomas Creech’s translation of Lucretius (1638), praised the translator while lamenting the fact that women were denied a classical education:

The Godlike Virgil and Great Homer’s Muse
Like Divine Mysteries are conceal’d from us….
But… Thou by this Translation dost advance
Our Knowledge from the state of Ignorance;
And Equall’st Us to Man!

The best translations in every era combine thorough scholarship with literary sensibility and a profound appreciation of the original texts. Pope, Dryden, and others preface their works with discussions of how best to render Greek and Latin texts into English. Most counsel a middle ground between literal translation and loose paraphrase. Pope famously observes in his introduction to the Iliad that

It is the first grand duty of an interpreter to give his author entire and unmaimed; and for the rest, the diction and versification only are his proper province, since these must be his own, but the others he is to take as he finds them.

Other authors have adapted Greek and Latin texts to create entirely new works of literature. From Chaucer to James Joyce, whose Ulysses is on exhibit here, countless English authors have taken inspiration from the classics.

The ZSR Special Collections exhibit is one of several fall 2012 events celebrating classical translations and adaptations. Other events include the Reynolda House special exhibit Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey, a celebration of the life of Allen Mandelbaum, and an appearance by children’s author Rick Riordan.

Faithfully English’d: Classical Literature in Translation  is on exhibit in the Special Collections and Archives Reading Room on the 6^th floor of the Reynolds Wing. For more information contact Megan Mulder at 758-5091.

In conjunction with the Words Awake celebration of Wake Forest writers, the spring exhibit in the Z. Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections and Archives features six Wake Forest authors whose papers reside in the archives and manuscripts collections.

Laurence Stallings, Harold Hayes, John Charles McNeill, W.J. Cash, and Gerald Johnson received their undergraduate degrees from Wake Forest. Maya Angelou was awarded an honorary doctorate and is a member of the WFU faculty. Each collection is a fascinating record of the author’s life and career.

A writer’s published works are the end products of a long process of thinking, researching, drafting, and editing. The material on view in Writers’ Lives illustrates this process. In one letter Harold Hayes tries to interest Gerald Johnson in writing an article for Esquire on the hypothetical result of the South winning the Civil War. In another Laurence Stallings describes the trials and tribulations of rehearsing a Broadway musical with his collaborator Oscar Hammerstein. W.J. Cash’s typewriter sits next to his annotated typescript of The Mind of the South. John Charles McNeill’s college notebook contains manuscript versions of poems published in Wake Forest’s Student magazine. An early draft of Maya Angelou’s screen adaptation of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is handwritten on notebook paper.

All of the archival materials in these collections were donated to ZSR Library by the authors themselves or by their family members and friends. The Special Collections and Archives department now makes them available to researchers all over the world.

The Writers’ Lives exhibit will be on view in the library’s Special Collections Reading Room (Reynolds Wing, 6th floor west) through June 2012. Special Collections is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. For more information or to make an appointment to view the exhibit after hours, please contact Megan Mulder at 336-758-5091 or mulder@wfu.edu.

In the fall of 2012 ZSR Library will offer a new class called History of the Book, 1500-2000 (LIB260). Taught by Special Collections Librarian Megan Mulder, the 1.5 credit class will introduce students to the exciting interdisciplinary field of Book History.

Book History (sometimes called History of Print Culture) combines history, literary studies, and bibliography. Its purpose, as set out by Robert Darnton in his seminal 1982 essay “What Is the History of Books?,” is “to understand how ideas were transmitted by print and how exposure to the printed word affected the thought and behavior of mankind during the last five hundred years.” While it is impossible to cover the whole scope of book history in one semester, this course will give students an introduction to the field and provide them with the theoretical and practical tools to pursue further study in the History of the Book and its many related disciplines.

The course will begin with the premise that we can approach printed texts as objects of study in three major ways: 1) as material objects with artifactual value, 2) as vehicles for text, and 3) as social constructs and agents of social change. Beginning with the first approach, students will learn to examine books as physical objects and to understand the processes by which they were created. In the process students will gain a basic vocabulary of descriptive bibliography, a necessary starting point for further study in the history of print culture. Our studies will also incorporate the other two approaches to the study of print culture, considering the role of books in the societies that produced them and the ways in which print conveys and shapes texts.

The class will meet in the ZSR Library Special Collections reading room. In each class meeting students will examine materials from the Rare Books Collection that illustrate concepts under discussion. They will learn how books were made during the hand-press period and will construct a small book of their own in the library’s Preservation Lab. As a final project each student will select one book from the Rare Books Collection and write its “biography”. This will provide practical experience with bibliographic description and with other techniques of book history research, including provenance research and reader analysis.

This class will meet weekly on Wednesdays 3:30 – 4:45 p.m. for the entire fall semester. It is open to anyone with an interest in books and their histories. For more information, contact Megan Mulder at mulder@wfu.edu or 758-5091.

God’s Sacred Word Amongst Us: Historic Bibles from the Z. Smith Reynolds Library Rare Books Collection

On exhibit in the Special Collections Reading Room, September 2011-January 2012

Title page from the 1612 octavo edition of the King James Bible

The title of this exhibit, God’s Sacred Word Amongst Us, comes from the dedication of the of the English translation of Christian scriptures that came to be known as the King James Bible. 2011 marks the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible’s first publication, and in commemoration of this event the Z. Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections has mounted an exhibit of 30 historic Bibles.

The exhibit includes a 1611 first edition folio King James Bible. Other Bibles and historical documents from the English Reformation are also featured. These include a 1599 edition (probably pirated) of the Geneva Bible, the popular Calvinist-influenced translation that James I hated and that he hoped would be replaced by his newly commissioned version; a 1582 first edition of the Catholic Douay-Rheims New Testament; and a 1612 second edition King James Bible.

Another section of the exhibit features some of the first Bibles printed in North America. Highlights include a 1685 second edition of John Eliot’s Algonquin Bible, published in Cambridge, Massachusetts and translated into the language of the surrounding native peoples. The 1663 first edition of Eliot’s Bible was the first Bible printed in the western hemisphere. Also on view is a 1782 first edition of Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken’s Bible, the first English-language Bible to be published in America. Often called the “Bible of the Revolution,” its publication was commissioned by the newly formed Congress when the embargo of English goods cut off the supply of Bibles from London.

From Gutenberg onwards, printed Bibles have inspired artistic and technological innovation, and the final section of the exhibit features examples of this. Artist Hans Holbein’s Images of the Old Testament is an important work in the history of biblical illustration (also featured on the Special Collections website as August’s Rare Book of the Month). Examples of Renaissance printer/scholar Robert Estienne’s Latin psalter and Greek New Testament display advancements in typeface design and in scholarly editing inspired by the Reformation. John Baskerville’s 1763 folio Bible, Owen Jones’s 1862 chromolithographed Victoria Psalter, and the beautiful Dove’s Press Bible printed in the first decade of the 20^th century all represent milestones in book design.

During the last week in October, ZSR Special Collections will coordinate with the Wake Forest School of Divinity to host a traveling exhibit of historic Bibles from the personal collection of Atlanta collector Michael Morgan. Mr. Morgan will be the featured speaker at a Library Lecture Series event on Friday, October 28 at 3:00 p.m. This lecture is open to the public and will take place in the ZSR Library Special Collections Reading Room.

For more information, contact Megan Mulder at 336-758-5091 or mulder@wfu.edu .

Although it has been a while since the students from Mount Airy came on a tour of the Rare Books reading room, and the rest of the library, I have not forgotten about the video I made to record the occasion. Gretchen has been helpful in guiding me in my video editing, and hopefully my next attempt will be a little more polished than this first try.

I have posted the FlipVideo on the ZSR Vimeo Channel. Enjoy the jaunty music and the enthusiasm show by these young students:)

Here’s the original post I started on the Library Gazette:

Millenium Charter Academy Students in Special Collections

THIS WORK has a greater aim than mere illustration; we do not introduce colours for the purpose of entertainment, or to amuse by certain combinations of tint and form, but to assist the mind in its researches after truth, to increase the facilities of instruction, and to diffuse permanent knowledge.

Oliver Byrne (ca. 1810-1890) was an eccentric Irish mathematician and teacher. His Elements of Euclid is a classic of enough enduring interest that a facsimile reprint was published in 2010. Byrne’s Euclid is admired as much for its surprisingly modernist design and color palette–which seems to anticipate Bauhaus and De Stijl– as for its innovative pedagogy.

Geometry was emphasized as a particularly vital part of a basic mathematical education in 19th century Britain, and Euclid was still the standard curriculum. However, many reform-minded educators (including Byrne) believed that Euclid’s geometry was not being taught effectively to modern students [cf. Alice Jenkins, "What the Victorians Learned: Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Schoolbooks" Journal of Victorian Culture 12.2 (2007) 267-272]. Several 19th century mathematicians attempted to make use of new printing technologies to produce new and improved editions of Euclid, but Byrne’s Elements was the most innovative. As Jenkins describes it,

This beautiful book adopts the principle of explanation via visual illustration, but goes much further than other attempts. Where many other textbooks confined themselves to providing enlarged diagrams and replacing Greek letters for angles with Roman ones, Byrne’s book eliminates letters altogether, instead printing lines, angles and figures in different vivid colours. Byrne’s book was far more than a response to new markets for textbooks: although clearly Euclidean, it was an entire rethinking of the nature of geometrical pedagogy. [270]

Byrne’s book was printed by Charles Whittingham II at the Chiswick Press, a small press noted for its innovative design and devotion to high quality printing, especially of illustrated works. And it is the graphic design elements of Byrne’s book that spark the most interest today. The New York Times review of the Taschen facsimile reprint enthused that “The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid is so rationalist, minimalist and aesthetically pure, every graphic designer, book lover and math nerd will be as awe-struck as I was.”

Wake Forest’s 1847 first edition of The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid was purchased by the Library in 1986.

*Note: most of this post is duplicated at the ZSR Professional Development blog.

From 10 am this morning until 3 pm this afternoon, Z. Smith Reynolds Library was inhabited by 50 excited archivists and librarians (from across the state and as far away as Texas) to learn about Archivists’ Toolkit. The workshop, sponsored by the Round Table on Special Collections of the North Carolina Library Association and ZSR Library, included in-depth exploration and instruction about the modules of AT: names and subjects, accession records, resource records (finding aids), importing and exporting EAD/MARCXML, assessment records, and statistics.

Katherine started off our session with a warm welcome to the participants and I introduced our speakers. Dale Sauter, chair of the RTSC, also helped organize the workshop and was in attendance. Participant registrations included lunch, which was catered by our on-campus service. Planning the event was worth the effort after seeing 50 eager participants in room 204.

Speakers Dawne Howard Lucas from Duke University and Kacy Guill of ECU incorporated practical explanations of concepts with hands-on demonstrations of the relational database desktop client. Katherine, Megan, Vicki, Julia, Rebecca, Beth, intern Leatha, and I all learned a great deal about some of the additional customizations and tools that will help Special Collections and Archives better describe, prioritize, and measure our archival collections. Some of the reports that AT generates will help us quantify our preservation and processing needs, as well as demonstrate the accomplishments of our department as we complete projects.

Thanks go out to Giz, Susan, and Roz for helping me with the room reservation, Rebecca for helping with setup, and also to Katherine for her warm welcome to the participants. Now that we all have a better understanding of how to use and customize Archivists’ Toolkit to our needs, we are better prepared for a collaborative, streamlined effort to make our archival resources even more accessible!