DeeDee

I’m DeeDee. I am a fangirl who pretends to be a librarian on weekdays. I get obsessed with fandoms to the point where they ruin my life and make me sad that I can’t live in their worlds. Find me on AO3 under deedeeinfj.

[taikawaititi]

[edeainfj]

Lots of cobwebs in here

Back to obsess over Our Flag Means Death.

[msulibraries]

“You must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman.”

Catalog from the Calhoun Institute - “A College for Young Ladies” - in Macon, Mississippi, 1860. Students could learn English, music, foreign languages, embroidery, and… “Wax or Shells.”

[widenerlibrary]

This was a first for us: a novelty ‘shooting book’. As you can see, the book is hollowed out. It has a mousetrap-like mechanism that can be fitted with an explosive cap. As the instructions say, once the cap is in place “the book is now ready to shoot and will go off with a load bang when anyone opens it.” Notice the racy cover, and the promise of illustrations within, both designed to make sure some people can’t resist opening it. 

Adding to the subterfuge, the spine title is “New Arithmetic by Grades: Fourth Year”. That should keep most children from taking it off the shelf.

Thanks again to Allyson Donahoe for uncovering this unusual item!

[edeainfj]

I’m sure Phryne Fisher has several of these.

[msulibraries]

The Stronghold

“What’s the oldest book in the library?” Here at Mississippi State, the answer to that common student question is this incunabulum (a book printed before 1501) printed in Milan in 1499, an edition of the Suda (“fortress” or “stronghold”). 

Originally compiled at some point around the tenth century, the Suda is a kind of Byzantine dictionary, encyclopedia, and anthology all in one, bringing together the histories of words, people, and places, along with extracts of ancient writings. The author/compiler is unknown.

This first printed edition of the Suda was edited by Demetrios Chalkokondyles, a Greek professor in Milan. The book was donated to MSU by the family of Major William Starling of Greenville. It has gone through preservation and rebinding, though the original binding is still in the library’s possession.

[msulibraries]

Run mad as often as you chuse

200 years ago today, Jane Austen died in Winchester at age 41. This book in our Special Collections is a later printing of the first American edition of Love and Freindship and Other Early Works (1922), hilariously gleeful and wicked selections from Austen’s juvenilia. 

[edeainfj]

RIP Jane. You would mock my worship of you, and I would be proud to have amused you in any small way.

[msulibraries]

This owl is judging you.

Happy Feathursday! This plate of the Long-Eared Owl (and it’s lesser-known cousin, seen on the left, the rare North American Side-Eye Owl) comes from Rex Brasher’s Birds & Trees of North America (1968).

[edeainfj]

I love this owl.

[bodleianlibs]

Three scenes that do not occur in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park

How did a blogger’s blackboard become a funny poster featured in the Bodleian Libraries’ Which Jane Austen? exhibition? Imogen Foxell tells her story.

I’m an Oxford-based lexicographer who moonlights as an artist. Last Christmas I spent a lot of time and effort illustrating scenes from Mansfield Park for a Folio Society competition, which I ultimately didn’t win.

But during this period, my exhausted mind was filled with Mansfield Park, and I found myself having a series of vivid dreams: Fanny Price’s secret identity as a killer robot, her face-off with a dragon, her transformation into Mr. Hyde.

Having completed my competition entry, I let off steam by doing a quick sketch of my dreams on the giant blackboard that, I think, the previous residents of my old flat had ‘acquired’ from a pub.

A little while later, I applied to an excellent workshop at the Bodleian on medieval book art, and this is when Maddy Slaven, the libraries’ head of exhibitions, saw my Mansfield Park blackboard blog. Brilliantly, it was just the thing she was looking to add to one of the cases.

Not so brilliantly, the original blackboard picture was no more; I rub them out every week to make space for another illustration.

But I was able to recreate the picture, and now… it’s in the exhibition, and there are even postcards and prints in the gift shop! And as a huge Jane Austen fan, it’s just remarkable to see my picture in the same room as her writing desk and original manuscripts.

Which Jane Austen? at the Bodleian Libraries’ Weston Library will be open seven days a week until 29 October. You will find Imogen on Twitter.

[msulibraries]

A force you could scarce resist

This happy, affectionate letter dated June 17, 1904 was written by Carrie Gray Orr, a young Mississippi woman corresponding with her fiancé, Edwin Wilcox Simpson, a Presbyterian missionary in Kolhapur, India. Carrie was a teacher who had graduated from the Mississippi Synodical College in Holly Springs in 1898.

Friday Morning June 17, 1904

Edwin, dear:

It is eight months since you received that promise for which you had waited so long, and you  have been brave and patient and very thoughtful all the time. I am glad you are what you are and that you love me. I thank you for telling me, in your last letter, that my love drew you to America with a force you could scarce resist. Ah! I am happy since I read that! I have wanted you to say just those words for so long. I have often wondered if you did not long to come home to me and now you have confessed that you do.

… I have stopped drinking coffee altogether, have not touched it since New Year. Do I not deserve a little praise for giving up my favorite drink to please you?

The 29th of June [her birthday] is nearly here and I can scarcely wait for the day to come I am so anxious to know in what way I’ll be remembered by those who love me. It is eight oclock and we all have on our dressing sacques and yonder comes Mr. Richardson. I could wring his neck for coming so early to call or spend the day. I’ll have to stop and dress, to entertain the “Little Minister” for the sake of my minister.

With much love Your own Carrie girl

Carrie eventually married Edwin and joined him in India, working as a teacher and missionary for 42 years. Edwin died in India in 1933 and was buried there. Carrie died in Houston in 1961 and was buried in Byhalia, Mississippi. 

(Thomas H. Smith postal collection)

[edeainfj]

Researching for this post, I found a picture of Carrie and Edwin and their two sons on a 1923 passport application. =)

[unchsl]

Women and Chymistry

Want to get more women involved in STEM fields? So did Marie Meurdrac, a seventeenth century chymist, proto-feminist, and author of  La chymie charitable et facile : en faveur des dames (1680, located in the UNC HSL Special Collections).  Written by a woman, dedicated to a female patron, and intent on making chymistry accessible to women, M. Meurdrac’s work is essential for anyone studying women in the history of science.

The text (which translates to Charitable and Easy Chymistry: In Favor of the Ladies) served as both an introduction to chymical principles, as well as a recipe book for chymical remedies.  In addition to containing female-oriented recipes for concerns ranging from childbirth to cosmetics, Marie’s text also included a variety of other useful recipes (like the one for plague water, pictured above).

[edeainfj]

This is so cool.

[msulibraries]

Bite the bullet

One of the most popular and enduring myths from the Civil War battlefield (and early medicine in general) is the idea of “biting the bullet” during a painful procedure such as amputation. Scholars overwhelmingly agree that this is a myth. What, then, should we make of Minié balls which have been discovered at Civil War sites and clearly show impressions of human teeth? One theory is that battlefield hospital patients, who might spend hours in pain or boredom, would chew on these bullets as a distraction or coping mechanism, rather like chewing gum. Soldiers waiting on the battlefield and in the camps may have done the same thing.

The chewed Civil War-era Minié balls shown below are part of the Todd Herring collection.

[edeainfj]

My hand is what really makes this special, IMHO.

[msulibraries]

Missing a tooth?

Archivists process a lot of documents… and sometimes we process a pillbox of teeth (and a button). This unusual keepsake came to us from the Boswell and Stevens family of Noxubee County, Mississippi.

[edeainfj]

I had the distinct honor of processing this collection. *grin*

[msulibraries]

“Murdered in cold blood”

Letter to Dr. Charles Grider Mitchell and his stepdaughter, Sarah Amanda “Dallie” Duncan in Mississippi from Mrs. Jesse Atchison in Lexington, Kentucky, recounting the murder of her brother, Orlando F. Paynes, by a John Throgmorton: “one of thoes Yankees Shall I say Devil do pardon me for the expression.”

Lexington June 15th 1866

Mr C G Mitchell Kind Friend

It is with greate sadness I pen these lines to you but my heart is breaking for my darling Sonnie so well known to you & his dear friend Miss Dallie Duncan. He was spared to return to his loved ones on the 4th of July last as well and as bouyant with hope as could be when sudenly cut down and murdered in cold blood by one of thoes Yankees Shall I say Devil do pardon me for the expression but oh! dear friend could you see and know my heart you would not wonder. He was my brother but oh! God he was noble to a fault he was my Idol my darling Sonnie oh! when I think I never can behold thoes Eyes and feel his embrace hear him say Sister Can I stand it no never.

[…]

Orlando was shot at Paris a small place 18 miles from hear on the 7 day of last September 1865 by John Throgmorton killed instantly we had all gone down as happy as could be to attend the Agricultural Fair but oh little did we think when we left home we should be ushered back bearing the Corps of my dear Sonnie will the day ever come that we will have our revenge I will enclose in this letter to you one of his Photographs thinking you like to look at it some time and remind you of the many pleasant times you had together we received the cards you sent oh how Sonnie with his always happy heart would like to be present on the occasion can’t you hear his merry laugh he was the pride of his mother’s heart oh it would make your heart ache to see her. The last words he said tell my ma & sister alls well. I shall forward Capt Jones card my love to Miss Dallie hoping to hear from you soon I am an unseen but not unknown friend & sister of Orlando F Paynes

Mrs Jesse L Atchison

PS ask Miss Dallie please to send me her Photograph

From the Duncan and Blackwell family papers.

[libraryadvocates]

The Senate Dear Appropriator deadline got extended to Wednesday! Keep calling your Senators - help us save federal library funding!

Use ALA’s Legislative Action Center today to ask your Senators to sign both the LSTA and IAL letters. Many Members of Congress will only sign such a letter if their constituents ask them to, so it’s up to you to help save LSTA and IAL from elimination or significant cuts.

Five minutes of your time could help preserve over $210 million in library funding now at risk.

[statelibrarynsw]

On this day May 24th, 1930 aviation pioneer Amy Johnson landed in Darwin having left England on May 5th in her De Havilland Gypsy Moth named Jason. This feat made her the first woman to fly from Britain to Australia. Johnson later flew to Sydney where in June, she was rapturously received. These photographs are from the Hood collection held by the Library. Amy Johnson was killed in an air accident caused by poor weather in Oxford, England, 1941. Her body was never located, leading to many theories surrounding her death. 

[edeainfj]

Reminded me of Phryne. <3

[msulibraries]

Dangerous amusements

This 1911 book, Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls: Or, War on the White Slave Trade, issues dire warnings about the ways young women are entrapped and enslaved in vice. As seen in the illustrations below, these dangers include “the lure of the stage - answering a want ad,” ice cream parlors and fruit stores (“largely run by foreigners”), and dance halls (“the brilliant entrance to hell itself”).

At a time when more and more young women were finding independence and exploring careers, especially in cities, books like these no doubt alarmed parents into keeping their daughters under lock and key at home.

[edeainfj]

THE BRILLIANT ENTRANCE TO HELL ITSELF