#presentation inscriptions

Remember, remember, the fifth of November!

Tonight is Guy Fawkes Night, an annual remembrance in the United Kingdom of the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and other Catholic revolutionaries attempted to assassinate the Protestant King James I by blowing up the House of Lords during the opening of Parliament.

This1606 account of the trial of Henry Garnet, one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, bears an interesting and relevant presentation inscription pasted onto the front endpaper:

Presented to
the Revd. Athels[ta]n Corbet, with
the respects of Revd. Dickinson
Macclesfield March 12th, 1872

I send the above to be pasted
in the book or committed
to the fire, without the
aid of gunpowder

Obviously (and thankfully, for provenance purposes), this presentation note was spared the fire!

~Andrew

WE CAN’T PUT IT TOGETHER. IT IS TOGETHER.

Last semester a Lyman Briggs College class (LBC is a residential college here at MSU that bridges the humanities and the sciences with interdisciplinary teaching and research) used The Last Whole Earth Catalogas one of its texts. 

Students used an online version of the catalog, but were also encouraged to visit Special Collections where we have a number of issues and editions of that venerable icon of the sixties.  I still recall the hours and hours I pored over the first Last Whole Earth Catalog I purchased in 1971. I was in VISTA at the time (Volunteers in Service to America) ready to change the world for the better and finding the Catalog as a guide to do just that.  I was pretty successful with a neighborhood garden (the organic part would have to wait) among other endeavors, but the backyard yurt was a total flop.  Seeing students almost a half century later looking through the catalogs in the reading room was deeply satisfying, especially when one student said that holding and seeing the print copy was so much better than the digital copy.  Yes!

After one of the LBC students was finished, I spent some time revisiting the Catalog and found this lovely inscription from Laurie to Debbie dated December 30, 1972.  Wherever these fellow travelers are today I hope they are well and would take as much satisfaction as I do knowing their Catalog is still being used and teaching, maybe even inspiring another generation.

~Peter

As part of our initiative to collect the first or earliest possible edition of books cited in the Library of Congress “Books That Shaped America” list, we recently acquired two books on the list that are worthy of recognition in our Provenance Project. 

One acquisition is a first edition of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which features the autograph of the author, Betty Smith, while the second book is a later printing of a first edition of How to Win Friends and Influence People. In it, the author Dale Carnegie provides a lengthy inscription on the front endpaper: 

This book is inscribed to Samuel Deutscher with deep salaams and salutations

Dale Carnegie

The book—which is considered the grand-daddy of all self-help books—sold over 15 million copies, and while we’re confident that our readers are already enthusiastic book lovers, perhaps we’ll study Carnegie’s principles to make our audience feel even more “important and appreciated.”

~Peter

This Provenance Project guest post was written by Peter Berg, Head of Special Collections and Associate Director for Special Collections & Preservation at Michigan State University. Dr. Berg received his undergraduate degree in History from MSU in 1969, his Library Science degree from the University of Michigan in 1975, and his doctorate in History from MSU in 1994.

One of the most common kinds of presentation notes we find, especially in books printed within the last 200 years or so, is the Christmas gift inscription. Whether from friends, family, or the authors themselves, these notes show that books have been popular gifts for generations.

The inscriptions shown here appear in the following works (in the order in which they appear above):

http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b1967953~S39a
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b1959977~S39a
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b2963814~S39a
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b10009534~S39a
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b9074626~S39a
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b2959512~S39a
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b1958508~S39a
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b1588168~S39a
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b1570932~S39a

We hope you’ll continue the tradition and give away lots of books this holiday season!

~Andrew