Salisbury House Library Collection

at Grinnell College Special Collections & Archives

Visit the SHLC at Grinnell College

Sticky post

By

On September 17, 2021

In About, Research

The Salisbury House Library Collection is open to research and visitors while it is being processed. See curated exhibits from the collection this fall in Burling Library Gallery and year round in the Magic Box in Burling Lobby anytime the library is open. Housed in Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives, visit us in the Reading Room (lower level Burling) for research anytime 1:30-5pm Monday – Friday or by appointment. To learn more about collection holdings and research inquiries, email the project archivist at archives@grinnell.edu. Research guides to support research during processing coming soon! 

Not sure what you’d like to see, but excited to see beyond the exhibit cases? Get in touch with us in advance and we can coordinate a visit for you or a small group to handle collection material in topics you are most interested in. Advance notice allows us to pull the material of most interest to you or some of the ‘greatest hits’.

Interested in bringing a class as an instructor? We are happy to plan a class visit to see SHLC material, learn about accessing and working with primary resources, and more. Sessions using Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives material and SHLC are welcome!

Get in touch! We look forward to introducing you to the Salisbury House Library Collection.

Event Announcement: Book Talk at Salisbury House

By

On April 14, 2023

In Collection news, Events

For the Love of Books: the Salisbury House Library Collection’s New Chapter
Book Talk Series with Grinnell College Libraries

THURSDAY, April 27, 2023 at historic Salisbury House |4025 Tonawanda Drive, Des Moines, Iowa

Doors open at 5:00pm, Talk 5:30-6:30pm

Join us for the first in a series of book talks with Grinnell College Libraries on the next chapter of the Salisbury House Library Collection. Hear more about the state of the collection, its life at Grinnell so far, current projects, collection mysteries, favorite finds, and more. For this extra-illustrated talk, select materials from the collection will be onsite for viewing and handling. Presented by Grinnell College Special Collections: Laura Michelson, Project Archivist; Christopher Jones, Special Collections Librarian and Archivist of the College; and Allison Haack, Library Assistant. Light refreshments will be served.

Buy an advanced ticket and learn more at SalisburyHouse.org.

poster image of historic library with event description and details (see post)

Event Announcement: Iowa Bibliophiles

By

On December 8, 2022

In Collection news, Events

Salisbury House Library at Grinnell College: Collection History, Present, and Next Chapter

An Iowa Bibliophiles Talk
When: Wednesday, Dec. 14, 7-8 p.m. CST
Where: Hosted live on Zoom

Learn more about the ongoing work with the Salisbury House Library Collection through a virtual talk with Iowa Bibliophiles hosted by the University of Iowa and by Grinnell librarians Chris Jones and Laura Michelson. Find out about this unique Iowa collection, its original home in a 1920s Des Moines estate, its 2019 move to Grinnell, ongoing projects, and the next chapter. Meet some of the ‘greatest hits’ and favorites from the stacks and find out more about collection holdings, projects ahead, and visiting Grinnell to see more.

See more about this and the Iowa Bibliophiles series from the University of Iowa Special Collections. A recording of the event will be made available on University of Iowa Special Collections YouTube (uispeccoll).

Questions?

Please contact Laura Michelson (michelson@grinnell.edu), Project Archivist, Grinnell College Libraries, or Elizabeth Riordan (elizabeth-riordan@uiowa.edu), Lead Outreach and Instruction Librarian at UI Special Collections.

New in the Magic Box: Leaves of Grass

By

On August 6, 2022

In Exhibits, Featured items

Check out a new feature in the Burling Lounge Magic Box! On display now are three special editions of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Learn more about the infamously evolving collection of poetry and more Whitman in the Salisbury House Library Collection. See the installation through October 2022.

Visit the digital exhibit.

Interested in scheduling a class or group visit or researching with the collection in Fall 2022?
Email us at archives@grinnell.edu.

Event Announcement: Spring Open House

By

On May 2, 2022

In Collection news, Events, Featured items

Grinnell College Special Collections is hosting a Salisbury House Library Collection open house on Thursday May 12 from 4-7pm, with opening remarks at 4:15 in Burling Gallery. Drop in and experience selections from the Salisbury House Library Collection to learn more about some our favorite discoveries from the stacks this year, SHLC in the classroom, current projects, and the next chapter for the collection.

Can’t join us? Open house items will be featured over summer 2022 online (here!) or contact us to schedule a visit to see material in person. 

 

 

 

100 Years of James Joyce’s Ulysses

By

On February 2, 2022

In Exhibits, Featured items

February 2, 2022 marks 100 years of Ulysses, James Joyce’s masterpiece. The avant-garde novel was published for the first time in its entirety on February 2, 1922 on the author’s 40th birthday by the Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Paris. It originally began publication in The Little Review, a Chicago based modernist literary magazine in the spring of 1918, but was halted in 1920 after the ruling of an obscenity trial in the US. 100 years later, some unique copies call Grinnell Special Collections home. Stop by the Magic Box on the first floor to see a few of these editions or find out more from our digital exhibit.    
Visit the Digital Exhibit

SHLC in the Classroom: Enlightenment Libraries

By

On December 16, 2021

In Featured items, instruction, Research

In November the reading room hosted Professor Guenther’s history course Britain in the Age of Enlightenment, a look at the “long eighteenth century” which brought drastic changes in industrial and social revolutions, scientific advancement, and a new culture of book culture. For an afternoon the Reading Room and Print Drawing Study Room transformed into 8 miniature libraries, each station inspired by the types of reading spaces where Enlightenment readers could be found. 

Students explored the ‘Royal Society Library’, books of science and world exploration like would be found at this British society collection and dug into botanical books at the ‘Oxford Physic Garden’. The imagined country estate library featured beautiful books from a medieval illuminated manuscript to fore-edge paintings, books about genealogy, society life in London, and beautiful bindings. The ‘Burling Book Society’, a reading society library found moralized books and novels deemed ‘suitable’ for all readers, counter the risqué reputation of salacious novels and literature that could be found at lending libraries like ‘Lane’s Circulating Library’. Our lending library included contemporary works by Byron and Henry Fielding alongside a treatise on the art of dancing and guide for house keeping. A book shop challenged students to locate original prices marked on books and use a historical currency converter to learn more about the investment purchasing books was for Enlightenment readers. (Check it out at nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter! An 1822 edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater in the collection cost 5 shillings.) A corner of the PDSR transported to ‘Lloyd’s Coffee House’, an integral location for intellectual discussion and trade along with the circulation of political pamphlets and periodicals alongside art from William Hogarth, an English printmaker and satirist who immortalized London culture, including coffeehouses in scenes and satire. Hogarth’s father for a short time ran an unsuccessful London coffeehouse.  The final imagined library was the ‘Royal Academy of Arts’ library, where books about art, collections, and instruction were complimented by a gallery wall of Enlightenment era artists like JMW Turner in the Museum collection.

 

Upclose at the 'Academy of Arts' station.
The miniature botanical garden library.
A short visit to Lloyd's Coffeehouse and the artwork of Hogarth, inspired by life in London.
The imagined estate's library.
Gallery wall of Enlightenment art.
A 'bookshop' and 'lending library' laid out in the PDSR.
A private book club's meeting space for the afternoon.
The 'Royal Society' station.
A student researches at the 'estate library'.
A student reading a novel at the book club station.

Take a closer look: furniture, fashion, and fabric samples, oh my!

At the gallery and arts library station were three volumes of the Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics, or Ackermann’s Repository. This periodical was published between 1809 and 1829 and distributed as single pamphlets. Many surviving today were bound into compendium volumes, such as these in the Salisbury House Library Collection. SHLC is home to 5 volumes with issues from 1810-1813. Among the pages of the magazines are reports of the newest fashions, advancements in architecture, and samples of literature. They include many detailed images that were hand tinted and samples of fabrics that have survived in excellent condition. See more from the Internet Archive.
We look forward to recreating these Enlightenment libraries - and more imagined libraries - to share in open houses and events coming soon!

New Magic Box feature: Order of the Garter

By

On October 14, 2021

In Exhibits, Featured items

A new feature from the shelves of the Salisbury House Library Collection is on display in the Magic Box. Stop by to see The institution, laws and ceremonies of the most noble Order of the Garter. Collected by Elias Ashmole with illustrations by Wenceslaus Hollar. London: 1672.

This 1672 folio details the history of the Order of the Garter, the oldest and highest chivalric order in Britain. It features detailed illustrations of architecture of St. George’s Chapel, a location at Windsor Castle associated with the group, garb and processions of ceremonies, and more. We don’t know much about its provenance before Salisbury House–the only section with traces of a reader marking the book are in the protocol if a knight of the order loses their membership in the case of treason. Today the order includes both men and women knights appointed in recognition of national service. We pulled it for a class visiting Special Collections this semester on the legacy of Saint George and were wowed by the detail of Hollar’s illustrations.

Take a closer look! 

SHLC in the Classroom: the Eliot Bible and education

By

On October 8, 2021

In Featured items

This week the Reading Room hosted an education course for two sessions examining historical perspectives on US education. Material from the SHLC joined Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives material in five stations covering course themes. One of the SHLC items students worked with was a 1685 excerpt from the Eliot’s Indian Bible, a touchpoint for class material on race, assimilation, and history of education. Alongside students this week, we learned more about the history one page from the collection carries and its context in history.

A leaf from the Eliot Bible, or Mamusse wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God. 2nd edition printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1685. 

 Alternate titles: Algonquian Bible. Eliot’s Bible. The Indian Bible.

About the Eliot Bible  

The Eliot Indian Bible was the first bible printed in British North America. The work is a translation of the Geneva Bible into the indigenous Massachusett dialect, a branch of Algonquian language. The first edition was printed as New Testament only in 1661 and was followed in 1663 by a full translation of 66 books from the Old and New Testament.  

John Eliot (1604-1690), an English Puritan minister, arrived to the Massachusett Bay Colony in 1631. In an attempt to evangelize and convert Native Americans, he spent fourteen years learning the Massachusett language and translating the Christian Bible into a language previously unwritten. Eliot and other English collaborators are credited on title pages of early editions of the “Indian Bible”, but omit his indigenous collaborators Job Nesutan (Massachusett), John Sassamon (Massachusett), Cockenoe (Montaukett) and James Printer (Nipmuk) who assisted in his learning the language, devising a written system, and translation. James Printer was a printer’s apprentice at Samuel Green’s press where original editions were printed.  

About the second edition  

Many first editions of Eliot’s translations were lost during the destruction of King Philip’s War (1675-1676) which decimated the indigenous population of southern New England. In 1685, Eliot and surviving collaborators assisted in a corrected second edition being published, again at the press of Samuel Green and with the assistance of John Printer. It is assumed about 2,000 second editions were produced; an unknown number of books exist today. A surviving copy of this edition is digitized at the Internet Archive.  The Salisbury House Library Collection leaf is page 449/450 in the digitized edition; it comes from the book of II Chronicles. 

The image at right shows the original title page of this edition; an English translation reads:

Image of an original title page from this print edition from the Internet Archive digitized copy.

The Whole Holy His-Bible God, both Old Testament and also New Testament. This turned by the-servant-of-Christ, who is called John Eliot. [Nahohtoeu ontchetoe Printeuoomuk.] 

Cambridge.  

Printed by Samuel Green.  MDCLXXXV (1685) 

Samuel Green was one of the earliest printers in the American colonies and was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. James Printer worked in his print shop as a printer’s apprentice, then typesetter.  

The SHLC Leaf: What we don’t know

The origin of the SHLC leaf–including when or from whom it was purchased–remains unknown as this item doesn’t have corresponding provenance information. It is housed in a paper folder with mylar (a preservation safe film) window cover with a mount that appears to be the second or third instance of it being displayed as a single leaf. Book breaking, or separating pages from books for individual sale was common among book sellers during the Weeks family era of collecting. One of the most infamous ‘book-breakers’ or biblioclasts, as he called himself, was Otto Ege who would assemble portfolios for sale. Who sold this leaf–was it from Otto Ege himself? Where have other leaves from this copy gone? Who were past owners?

The language today

The historical Massachusett language recorded in the Eliot translation is also known as Natick or Wôpanâak and associated with the Wompanoag tribe today. With great losses to the population during the 17th century from epidemics, violence, relocation, and assimilation inflicted by colonization, the language has been an endangered or “sleeping language” for over a century with lack of native and fluent speakers and communities of youth learning the language. The Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP) began in the 1990s to revitalize the language and continues today. Learn more about the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project at www.wlrp.org or hear more about language reclamation from a March 2021 public radio highlight On Point. 

Exhibit announcement | Book Fool: Reading a Bibliophile’s Library

By

On September 10, 2021

In Collection news, Exhibits

Book Fool: Reading a Bibliophile’s Library

is installed now in the Burling Library Gallery (lower level). The exhibit features the Salisbury House Library Collection material ranging from 1483 to the 1940s. Visit the gallery anytime during library open hours. Book worms, book fools, bibliophiles, and all lovers of books will find something to enjoy. Learn about the bibliophile who built the Salisbury House Library Collection, the range of material that calls it home, and how it came to Grinnell College Special Collections. 

Visit this fall exhibit during Burling Library’s open hours September – December 2021. Join us for a glimpse into the Salisbury House Library Collection and its exciting new chapter at Grinnell College. 

Live Now: Digital Exhibit

Get a sneak peak from the comfort of your own computer screen! Explore the exhibit through StoryMaps and take a closer look at the items on display.
Click Here
Second Folio Shakespeare (1632)
The Ship of Fools (1570)
Modern Books on display
The Book Fool | Fall 2021
Glimpse of the gallery.
Meet the Book Fool and a Bibliophile collector

Page 1 of 2

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén

css.php
The views and opinions expressed on individual web pages are strictly those of their authors and are not official statements of Grinnell College. Copyright Statement.