It’s 31 October so seems appropriate to take a look at a few items from the collection perfect for All Hallows' Eve.

Poe

It seems that both Halloween (and a blog written by me) wouldn’t be complete without a nod to Edgar Allan Poe. The Library holds a number of volumes of the Southern Literary Messenger, a 19th-century literary magazine ‘Devoted to Every Department of Literature and the Fine Arts’. It was Poe’s friend, novelist John Pendleton Kennedy, who encouraged him to write for the Messenger. Poe both edited and had some of his works included in the periodical.

Title page of The Southern Literary Messenger (shelfmark: P.P.6380)

Berenice – A Tale was first published in the March 1835 edition of the Messenger. Richard P. Benton writes that this is ‘one of Poe’s most sensational and horrible tales. Some readers have found it too horrible, and Poe himself confessed it to be such’ (page 123, ‘The Tales: 1831 – 1835’ in A Companion to Poe Studies, YC.1997.b.2189). Indeed, the story caused quite a stir when it appeared in the Messenger, which was considered a ‘refined’ kind of reading.

And it’s not surprising why. Even by today’s standards it’s grotesque. Egaeus, a man driven by his head over his heart, becomes fascinated with his beautiful cousin, Berenice. In contrast, Berenice is a loving woman guided by her emotions. When Berenice falls sick, her beauty fails and Egaeus is gripped by her demise: ‘An icy chill ran through my frame … a consuming curiosity pervaded by soul … my eyes rivetted upon her … My burning glances at length fell upon her face.’ (page 334, Edgar A. Poe ‘Berenice – A Tale’ in the Southern Literary Messenger, P.P.6380) He recounts her sunken eyes, her darkened hair and her thinned lips – a picture ‘lifeless and lustreness’ (page 334, ibid). It is her teeth that he becomes obsessed with. He gradually slips in and out of consciousness picturing the teeth and imagining holding and studying them.

Spoiler alert. It is only at the end of the story that Egaeus comes back to some kind of reality. He is told by a servant that a grave and body – still ‘palpitating’ – has been found. Egaeus notices his clothes are ‘muddy and clotted with gore’ (page 336, ibid), and that there is a spade in his room along with ‘instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances’. (page 336, ibid)

Darkness. Monomania. Bloodshed. If you’re looking for a tale with bite, look no further than Berenice.

It was a fearful page in the record my existence: illustration by Henry Clarke for Berenice (shelfmark: 12703.i.44.)

Pumpkins

Rather get your teeth into something less revolting? We don’t blame you, so we’ve turned to Betty Crocker for some inspiration. You’ve made your Jack-o’-lantern, now what to do with the flesh you’ve scooped out from your pumpkin?

Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cook Book was printed in 1961 by the McGraw Hill Book Company, Inc, in New York. Designed as a guide for making both simple and sophisticated ‘foreign-inspired food and old-fashioned American dishes’, the opening pages boast that each basic recipe in the book ‘has been tested at least 100 times’. As well as being fool proof, the added bonus of calorie charts and ‘celebrities’ favorite menus and recipes’ are also included. Who knew President Eisenhower was a fan of sirloin steak followed by apple pie?

When it comes to pumpkins, the General Mills Betty Crocker Kitchens in the Golden Valley (amazing photos of said kitchens can be found on pages 2 and 3) are not short on ideas. Pumpkin muffins, pudding and, of course, pie (both autumn and spicy options), are all on the menu. Needless to say evaporated milk and sugar are vital components. We’re told that “Pumpkins, or ‘pompions,’ were a standby of the early New England settlements” and an old poetic verse is included with the recipe for those gifted enough to able to sing and bake simultaneously.

One slice or two? Pages 350 – 351 Betty Crocker's New Picture Cook Book (shelfmark: 07938.cc.33.). The book contains an impressive 48 full-colour pages of food to show a number of culinary delights in all their glory.

And it’s not just pumpkins Betty’s got covered: Jack-o’-Lantern popcorn balls with gumdrops and candy corn and Batter Franks with catsup are also recommendations for a 1960s Halloween party.

Of course, pumpkins aren’t just for Halloween, also being key players on the Thanksgiving menu. The pumpkin is an unmistakable symbol of fall in the US. Whether as a Halloween prop or part of a Thanksgiving dessert, it is now so much more than the unassuming vegetable it once was: Jacqueline Mansky affirms that ‘the orange field pumpkin, especially the giant version, [has] became wrapped up in the American agrarian myth’ (How the Great Pumpkin Became Great, Oct 21 2019) and is an icon of key US holidays. Why? Read this very enjoyable article on JSTOR to find out.  

Parades

This broadside from 1932 promotes the all-important components for Halloween in the aptly named Wildwood, New Jersey: ‘FUN… GOBLINS… WITCHES’. Attendees are told to ‘Be prompt’ for the 8pm parade and that only decorated vehicles are permitted.

Hallowe’en Parade broadside. Currently being catalogued and available in Reading Rooms soon.

Traditionally in Europe in the 12th century, criers would parade the streets on Halloween in memory of lost souls. Yet the parades that we may be more familiar with today and that became popular in the US during the 20th century include fancy dress, music and elaborately dressed floats. Events like the well-known Village Halloween Parade in New York City, one of the largest in the world, is now in its 46th year and attracts tens of thousands of spectators to the night-time spectacular.

The Halloween parade referred to on this broadside is held ‘Under the Auspices of Wapella Tribe, 238, I. O. R. M’, the IORM being the Improved Order of Red Men. Despite its name, the group was for white men only. Their membership was at its peak in the 1930s when this item was made. The event was organised by this men's fraternal group that claimed descent from the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party and based itself on a stylized but problematic interpretation of Native American culture.

(Blog by RSC)

Suggested reading

Officially Indian: symbols that define the United States by Cecile R. Ganteaume; foreword by Colin G. Calloway; afterword by Paul Chaat Smith. (Washington, DC: National Museum of the American Indian, 2017) Shelfmark: YD.2019.b.673

Southern Literary Messenger (Richmond, Va: J. R. Thompson, 1848-1864) Shelfmark: P.P.6380

A Companion to Poe Studies edited by Eric W. Carlson (Westport, Conn.; London: Greenwood Press, 1996) Shelfmark: YC.1997.b.2189

Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Harry Clarke (London: G. G. Harrap; New York : Brentano's, 1923) 12703.i.44.

Betty Crocker's New Picture Cook Book. Decorations by Joseph Pearson (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co, 1961) Shelfmark: 07938.cc.33.

Death Makes a Holiday: a Cultural History of Halloween by David J Skal (New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury, 2002) Shelfmark: m02/39931

Celebrating Ethnicity and Nation: American Festive Culture from the Revolution to the Early Twentieth Century edited by Geneviève Fabre, Jürgen Heideking and Kai Dreisbach (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2001)

Object Analysis of the Giant Pumpkin by Cindy Ott from Environmental History, Vol. 15, No. 4 (OCTOBER 2010), pp. 746-763 (18 pages)

How the Great Pumpkin Became Great by Jacqueline Mansky, Oct 21 2019

October is Black History Month in the UK and has been celebrated here for nearly 40 years. The month marks an annual commemoration of the history, achievements and contributions of black people in the UK. Originally founded to recognise the contributions made by people of Caribbean and African backgrounds, the focus of Black History Month has now expanded to include the history of African, Asian and Caribbean peoples and the importance of their contributions to the culture of the UK.

To mark Black History Month, we have selected a few items from our collections which highlight significant moments in black history around the world. The British Library will also be hosting Caribbean Fest events on Saturday October 19th 2019 including poetry, food and performance.

 

Ottavia Salvador, Fabrizio Denunzio, Morti senza sepoltura. Tra processi migratori e narrativa neocloniale (Ombre corte, 2019) YF.2019.a.14806

 

Chosen by Valentina Mirabella, Curator Romance Collections (Italian)

 

Cover of: Ottavia Salvador, Fabrizio Denunzio, Morti senza sepoltura. Tra processi migratori e narrativa neocloniale (Ombre corte, 2019) YF.2019.a.14806

 

Migrations in the Mediterranean are the subject of a lot of Italian books at the moment. I chose this title because the authors don't shy away from holding neo-colonialism responsible for the immigration process. The title 'Dead without Burial' evokes the horror of dying in a foreign country, in exile, often without a grave with a name on. Like French sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad (more from him, also in English in our collections) says in the essay in the appendix, the way a country treats a foreigner who dies on its soil says a lot.

 

John Michael Vlach, Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993). q93/15775

Chosen by Cara, Deputy Head, Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library

Cover of: John Michael Vlach, Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993). q93/15775        

Inside pages of: John Michael Vlach, Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993). q93/15775;

 

This book made a deep impression on me when I first came across it as part of an MA course on the built environment in America.  I was impressed by how thoroughly Vlach managed to bring the lived experiences of the enslaved into sharp focus through the architectural landscapes they had inhabited.  As he says himself in his Preface his “main objectives here are first to describe, in broad terms, the architectural settings of plantation slavery and then to suggest some of the ways in which black people may have transformed those architectural settings into places that best served their social needs” (p.x).  The major source for the visual material in the book is the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS).  Originally founded in 1933, it still operates as a division of the National Parks Service.  During the 1930s and later, HABS teams documented large numbers of slave buildings and associated spaces and Vlach uses these photographs and plans to great effect in his book.  These are then complemented by another Depression-era source, the oral histories of formerly enslaved people conducted by interviewers for the Federal Writer’s Project.  As Vlach explains “My description of the architecture of slavery thus meshes information from two archival projects that have been separated for more than half a century” (p.xiii).  I found this mixture of first-person accounts, as well as other archival evidence (business records, personal letters etc), with the structures that had shaped people’s everyday lives to be incredibly evocative.  I came away from the book with a deeper understanding of the importance of vernacular spaces to historical enquiry, as well as more especially a better understanding of the way the built environment shaped, and was shaped by, the lives of enslaved African-Americans and their white overseers and owners.  I’ve found myself thinking about this book often over the years, especially as discussions around how to more fully represent the experiences of enslaved people have come to the forefront in heritage and tourism contexts (for example, the incorporation of slave buildings and stories into the interpretation offered to visitors at plantation sites in the US, most notably at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home).

For more information on Federal Writer’s Project holdings at the British Library, including the accounts of former slaves, see the guide prepared by my Eccles Centre colleague, Jean Petrovic.

 

 

 

The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Boston, Mass: G.K. Hall, 1986), Nov.1987/702

 

Chosen by Rachael (Curator, American Printed Collections Post 1850)

 

First edition cover of The Color Purple. Image from Wikimedia Commons sourced from Biblioctopus.

 

I was introduced to the The Color Purple while in my first year as an undergraduate at the University of Nottingham. It was like nothing I’d read before, in both voice and content. I’d never encountered a character like Cecile, nor the abuse she endures in a novel, and I remember being interested in the contrasting ways the various females in the book are portrayed. Told in an epistolary format as Cecile writes to God, she tells of the horrors she suffers at the hands of her father and later her husband, and the life that eventually leads her to Shug – a woman who opens her eyes to a different way of living. The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 and frequently features on lists of banned or contested books (see more of these on our Banned Books Week blog).

 

Land Rights Before Games poster (Brisbane, Australia: 1982) shelfmark HS.74/2436

 

Chosen by Lucy (Curator, Oceania Published Collections Post-1850)

 

Land Rights Before Games poster (Brisbane, Australia: 1982) British Library shelfmark HS.74/2436

This poster represents a key piece of 20th century campaign material in Australian history. The 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane were the focus of a series of protests from Australia's First Peoples who aimed to bring the issue of land rights to the international stage. The campaign called for rights over Indigenous lands in Queensland and control over mining in those areas. The Queensland premier at the time, Joh Bjelke-Peterson, declared a state of emergency and banned street marches during the games. Yet around 2000 people still took to the streets of Brisbane on 26th September in support of the campaign and in protest of the continuing oppression of First Peoples. Further sit-ins and marches were held throughout the games with hundreds of arrests made by police. The protests gained international attention and remain a significant moment in the Indigenous civil rights movement in Australia. In 2012, the State Library of Queensland held an exhibition called 'State of Emergency' to mark the 30th anniversary of the protests.

 

 

 

National Poetry Day is a UK-wide celebration of poetry held annually in October. The theme for 2019 is 'Truth' and this year also marks the 25th anniversary of the national event.  The British Library will be joining celebrations by hosting the Josephine Hart Poetry Hour in the evening of National Poetry Day 2019 with leading actors reading aloud the poetry of  Byron, Keats and Shelley.

On the theme of Truth, the Americas and Australasian team have put forward two of their favourite poems. The first marks truth in the sparseness of the text: a poem laid bare and stripped of punctuation and capitalisation.  The second offers truth in the language and the message: a bilingual poem for a bilingual country.

‘The Red Wheelbarrow’, found in Go Go by William Carlos Williams (New York: Monroe Wheeler, 1923), Cup.501.aa.35.

Chosen by Rachael (Curator, American Printed Collections Post 1850)

       

I love how Williams conveys such a vivid image with so few words in ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’, and the fact that whenever I think about the poem I’m able to picture not only the scene the words create, but the layout of the words themselves. To me, the poem is as striking to look at as its flow is to hear when you read it aloud. I can’t help but pause for breath whenever I finish it; it makes me think of how it’s possible to find beauty in even the simplest or most seemingly ‘every day’ of things. The poem first appeared in Spring and All in 1923, under the title ‘xxii’. In Go Go (pictured here) it has the title we are familiar with and is printed alongside Williams’s ‘The Hermaphroditic Telephones’, which was the first time this particular poem had ever been presented.

Tātai Whetū: Seven Māori Women Poets in Translation edited by Maraea Rakuraku and Vana Manasiadis (Wellington, New Zealand: Seraph Press, 2018) YD.2018.a.3672

Chosen by Lucy (Curator, Australasia Published Collections Post 1850)

 

Tātai Whetū is a delicately handbound chapbook in the Seraph Press Translation Series celebrating Māori writing and te reo Māori (the Māori language). This bilingual collection of poems from seven women writers has text in both te reo Māori and English. The featured poets are Anahera Gildea, Michelle Ngamoki, Tru Paraha, Kiri Piahana-Wong, Maraea Rakuraku, Dayle Takitimu and Alice Te Punga Somerville. Their poems have been translated by Hēmi Kelly, Te Ataahia Hurihanganui, Herewini Easton, Jamie Cowell, Vaughan Rapatahana and Dayle Takitimu

From this beautful collection, I have chosen the poem pictured above. Rākau is by Alice Te Punga Somerville, an Indigenous scholar whose poem was selected for the 2018 publication of Best New Zealand Poems journal. The poem has been translated from English into te reo Māori by Te Ataahia Hurihanganui and you can listen to Rākau in both languages here on the Best New Zealand Poems site.  'Rākau' refers to both wood and a tree in the Māori language and the poem explores the link between the careful carving of wood and the acquisition of a language which has long been hidden in the learner.

Below is the poem in English.

We know that carvers coax something or someone
Who’s already there in the wood.
They remove small pieces of timber, one by one,
until it’s ready.
         
We both know a language is waiting inside my tongue.

Please put down the adze, the skillsaw, the file:
Speak gently to me so I can recognise what’s there.

No, don’t chip away at pink flesh and taste buds:
Oozing and swollen, I will choke on my blood
before you’re done.

The wood you’re trying to carve is still a tree.

 

 

 

       

Chosen by Lucy (Curator, Australasia Published Collections Post 1850)

 

 

       

Chosen by Lucy (Curator, Australasia Published Collections Post 1850)