Nancy Sharon Collins, a New Orleans stationer and graphic designer, recently donated a collection of several hundred engraved steel dies to LSU Special Collections. “Most of these are personal monograms, family crests and seals from local New Orleans private social clubs and organizations,” she writes. These dies were either produced or used by Dameron-Pierson Co., Ltd., of New Orleans, and although none of them are dated, many appear to date back at least as far as the Art Deco period of the 1920s and ’30s.

This collection will be the subject of a mini exhibit in February 2009. Stay tuned for more information.

And for additional images, visit Nancy’s blog at: http://www.typophile.com/blog/14410

Among the many new items recently added to LSU’s Rare Book Collection is a copy of Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African. Published in London in 1782, these letters were written by one of eighteenth-century England’s most well-known and admired men of African descent.

Ignatius Sancho was orphaned shortly after his birth in 1729 on a slave ship en route to the West Indies. At the age of two, he was sent to England and eventually became a butler in the service of the Duke of Montagu. The duke recongized the young man’s talent and saw to it that he received an education. There were few opportunities for educated Africans in England in those days, however. Sancho attempted a career on the stage, playing roles such as Othello, but he was unsuccessful. Thanks to an annuity from the late duke, he was finally able to set up shop as a grocer in London. By all accounts Sancho was an entertaining figure, hobnobbing with members of fashionable English society as well as the actor David Garrick and the novelist Laurence Sterne. In addition to being a “man of letters,” he also composed music and published a now-lost work on music theory.

Although slavery was outlawed in England in 1772, it continued to be permitted in the British colonies until the early 1800s. The abolition movement was on the rise, however, and men like Ignatius Sancho were held up as examples of Africans’ potential. The editor of his letters, a Miss Crewe, declared: “[My] motive for laying them before the public is the desire of showing that an untutored African may possess abilities equal to a European.” The book was popular, and Miss Crewe was pleased to find that the world was not “inattentive to the voice of obscure merit.”

– Michael Taylor, Assistant Curator of Books

Like Leonardo da Vinci, the German scholar Athanasius Kircher (ca. 1601-1680) was a true “Renaissance man.” Interested in both the arts and sciences, he wrote several dozen books on everything from medicine and geology to Egypt, cryptography, Noah’s Ark, and musical harmony. Kircher was especially interested in the history of languages, and just a year before his death, he published Turris Babel, a history of the Tower of Babel.

LSU Special Collections recently acquired a copy of this important work for the library’s Rare Book Collection.

According to the Bible, the people of Babylon attempted to build a huge tower that would reach all the way to heaven. After learning that they were constructing the tower for their own glory rather than His, however, God punished the Babylonians by making them all speak different languages. No longer able to communicate with each other, they stopped work on the tower, left Babylon, and went their separate ways. The tower not only became a symbol for human pride, but also helped explain the origin of languages.

In Turris Babel, Kircher suggested that rather than creating hundreds of languages at one stroke, God preserved Hebrew, which continued to be spoken by the descendants of Noah’s son Shem, and then created four new languages, which he assigned to the descendants of Noah’s other sons. These languages subsequently split apart even further over time, resulting in all the languages that are spoken today. Kircher singled out a few languages for special attention in the second half of his book. Considered the father of Egyptology, he was especially interested in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and he expands on one of his earlier works on this subject here.

Also of interest are several large engravings depicting the Tower of Babel, the hanging gardens of Babylon, the labyrinth of the Minotaur at Knossos, and other mythical sites. Visitors are welcome to use this book in the special collections reading room during the library’s regular hours.

– Michael Taylor, Assistant Curator of Books

In 1513, Gavin Douglas, a son of the fifth Earl of Angus, completed his translation of the Aeneid, Vergil’s epic account of the founding of Rome, into Scots, a dialect of English spoken in the area around Edinburgh and Glasgow. Written in heroic couplets, this work was the first metrical translation of a classical work to appear in English and was much acclaimed in its time. At the end of the poem, Douglas tacked on his translation of the so-called “Thirteenth Book” of the Aeneid, a continuation of Vergil’s poem written by Maffeo Vegio in the 15th century.

After circulating in manuscript for many years, Douglas’ poem was finally published in 1553 as The XIII Bukes of Eneados of the Famose Poete Vergill Translatet out of Latyne Verses into Scottish Metir. LSU Libraries’ Special Collections recently acquired a copy of this important work. Of particular interest in this copy are the numerous marginal notes in several early hands, as well as a page of handwritten notes pasted in at the end of the book which appear to pertain to word choices and spelling.

Another new acquisition is a rare 1548 edition of the philosopher and Protestant reformer John Calvin’s The Mynde of the Godly and Excellent Lerned Man M. Ihon Caluyne. First published in Geneva in 1543, this is Calvin’s scathing attack on French Protestants who avoided persecution by outwardly conforming to the Roman Catholic Church. It was the second of Calvin’s works to appear in English and is one of only nine surviving books to have been printed at Ipswich by John Oswen, whom King Edward VI had authorized to print religious texts, including works by reformers like Calvin.

With the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth coming up in 2009, Special Collections is pleased to announce its acquisition of this exceptionally rare book.

– Michael Taylor, Assistant Curator of Books