Join the University of Maryland Libraries’ Special Collections for a night of revelry and merriment–William Morris style! Enjoy entertainment, food, and an exhibit featuring the works of this incredible artist. Click on the invitation to the left for details!
Can’t get enough of French culture? Check out the French Pamphlets from the 1788-1804 Revolution, and the project that’s making them even more available to you.
Click the image to visit the IMDB page for the 2012 movie Les Misérables.
Fiction provides an incredible lens through which readers can relate to events from the past. Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway’s performances in the 2012 hit Les Misérables brought the famous musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel into pop culture. Some readers may imagine the French Revolution (which started over 40 years before Hugo’s student barricade) based on a popular high-school text: A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. Stories like these touch the heart and provide a personal experience of history that high-school textbooks just can’t achieve.
However, primary source materials also provide insightful perspective from the point of view of people who experienced the era first-hand. Take the French Pamphlets, a collection of publications during the French Revolution (June 1788 – December 1804). Students and researchers from fields like sociology, linguistics, government and politics, even art and design, benefit from studying documents that everyday people shared then like Internet memes are shared today.
Now, a collaboration of departments at the University of Maryland are working from a collection of 12,000 French pamphlets to make them more accessible to students and researchers.
Learn more about the incredible project at this page.
Read about the grants and partnerships that allowed this project to happen.
The World’s Fair Ephemeral and Graphic Material Collection is now available at the Maryland Room, 1st floor Hornbake Library. To celebrate, we are featuring four blog posts about World’s Fair history and the collection. Read the first post here.
Part 2 of 4
Centennial Exhibition (1876 : Philadelphia, Pa.). R. Magee & Son (Philadelphia, Pa.). Reproductions, Cards; 10.2 x 14.1 cm.
The 1852 London exposition set the precedent for the many international exhibitions or world’s fairs that have continued to be held to the present time. The character and focus of world expositions has evolved to keep up with the changing times, but they have always allowed people to experience ways of life outside their normal way of living.
Admission ticket, Abraham Lincon, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893.
The fairs introduced the world to new scientific advancements and new inventions such as the Ferris wheel, telephone, zipper, Cracker Jacks, x-ray, fax machines and television. The world’s fairs also gave us some of the world’s most notable landmarks and buildings such as the Crystal Palace, the Eiffel Tower and the Space Needle.
Visit the recently expanded finding aid for the World’s Fair Ephemeral and Graphic Material Collection and A Treasury of World’s Fair Art & Architecture digital archive for more information.
Article by A. Moore, Historic Preservation Graduate Assistant.
The World’s Fair Ephemeral and Graphic Material Collection is now available at the Maryland Room, 1st floor Hornbake Library. To celebrate, we are featuring four blog posts about World’s Fair history and the collection.
Part 1 of 4
Crystal Palace, New York Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations (1853-1854). Carstensen, Georg, 1812-1857. Periodical Illustrations: monochrome.
Before the internet, World’s Fairs gave people the chance to explore the world outside their everyday experience. People from all over the world flocked to the fairs to see the monumental architecture and exotic landscapes and to experience different cultures, international foods and new inventions. For a brief amount of time, cities would transform their everyday setting into places of magic and entertainment.
Festival Hall, Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.). Photomechanical prints: black and white; 23.5 x 18.5 cm.
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, held in 1851 in London’s Hyde Park, is known as the first international exposition. The Great Exhibition was organized by Henry Cole and Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, to celebrate modern industrial technology and design. It became a platform for countries from around the world to display their achievements.
Crystal Palace, Great Exhibition (1851 : London, England). Paxton, Joseph, Sir, 1803-1865. Gelatin silver print: black and white.
Visit the recently expanded finding aid for the World’s Fair Ephemeral and Graphic Material Collection and A Treasury of World’s Fair Art & Architecture digital archive for more information.
Article by A. Moore, Historic Preservation Graduate Assistant.
Get into the holiday spirit than by visiting the Special Collections Literature and Rare Books Collection in Hornbake Library! On display now in the Maryland Room are books written by celebrated authors about the holiday season or retelling classic tales. Visit the UMD Libraries hours website for our holiday hours – you definitely don’t want to miss this display!
Books featured in the display include:
An important collection has moved across campus and is now available at the Maryland Room, in Hornbake Library’s Special Collections. You can visit us anytime during our open hours to learn more about the history of the World’s Fair. If you want to take a look before you visit, you can browse the digital version of the collection. Below is a description of what can be found in this collection.
The World’s Fair Collection contains nearly 1,700 non-book items including photographs, stereographs, prints, illustrations, scrapbooks, sheet music, periodicals, maps, pamphlets, and memorabilia, as well as many artifacts, such as trade cards, tickets, exhibitor entry forms, postcards, menus, souvenir ribbons and scarves, and a stereograph viewer.
Represented fairs range from the 1851 London exhibition through the present, although the collection’s holdings are strongest for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial exhibition, the 1893 Chicago Exposition, the U.S. fairs (as a whole), and Paris fairs (as a group).
The World’s Fair Collection also includes numerous books on international expositions. Its holdings are strongest for the fairs held in Paris (as a group), the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851, and the Chicago World Columbian Exposition of 1893.
Morris’ first home with wife Jane, Red House
William Morris began designing furniture when he and bff, Edward Burne-Jones, moved into their first flat together in London (1856). They disliked the furnishings that they found so they painted them, not a solid color but with scenes from their favorite medieval tales. When Morris and his bride Jane Burden (1859) moved into their new home, Red House, Morris was once again faced with finding suitable furnishings. He called on his friends and fellow pre-Raphaelites to help him design and decorate the home. This undertaking is considered the impetus for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, & Co. (eventually Morris & Co.).
Edward Burne-Jones cartoon of Morris demonstrating weaving
Morris & Co. produced stained glass windows, tiles, fabric, wallpapers, carpets, and embroidery among their many wares. Morris would teach himself as much as he could find about each of the goods created by Morris & Co. prior to beginning production of the item. In the case of embroidery, fabric dying, and carpet tying Morris even undertook several sample projects prior to teaching his staff the techniques necessary.
Morris & Co Embroidered Coverlet
The act of creating an object was important to Morris and a significant principle of the Arts and Crafts movement. Yes a person should live surrounded by beautiful objects! But those objects should be of the highest affordable quality and created by a skilled worker rather than a factory drone. Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement did not mean to belittle the factory worker by their ideology but instead wanted to provide more meaningful labor for the majority of people living in industrialized society.
Learn more about Morris & Co. and the Arts and Crafts movement by checking out How We Might Live: The Vision of William Morris exhibit and William Morris Guide created by Special Collections Staff.
Sitting at the welcome desk in Hornbake Library puts me right in front of our exquisitely designed William Morris exhibit, which opened at the beginning of September. Aesthetic quality aside, I did not have the slightest clue as to who William Morris actually was. So I decided that the only reasonable decision would be to find out exactly who this guy was and how he contributed to society. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that William Morris was a rebel of his generation and in simpler terms, a pretty cool dude.
Morris was born in England in 1834 and raised in a wealthy family. He was a child who was incredibly spoiled by his parents who lavished him with extravagant gifts. Around the age of nine, he became the lucky recipient of a pony and a suit of armor. Morris, in addition to his fiscal wealth, was also very intelligent. He was reading novels at the age of four and attended Oxford at the age of nineteen. When he was seventeen, Morris began to receive a generous allowance of 900 £ a year from his family fortune, which equates to $114,000.00 in today’s money. To me and probably a lot of other people, it sounds like Morris was living the dream.
However, Morris was a remarkably independently principled individual who rejected the values of the Victorian class system. Growing up in the Victorian Era, Morris was a part of the upper class that was born into money. One could not acquire wealth through individual strengths such as intelligence, hardwork, and perseverance. A family legacy of wealth and success dating years and years back was the only route to a life of the utmost privilege. In an impressive demonstration of autonomy, Morris became an advocate for socialism, a far cry from the principles he had been exposed to throughout his youth. Morris wrote various books about socialism and was the founder of the Socialist League, which dealt with equality, workers’ rights, and anti-war movements. He also fraternized with other famous socialists who joined the Socialist League, such as Eleanor Marx, Karl Marx’s daughter. Without much success, Morris often tried to persuade his rich friends to join the socialist movement. Morris also participated in protests for the freedom to publish pro-socialism texts and was actually arrested on more than one occasion.
Morris often felt that he belonged in another time period, much like many young people of today wish they were born in the 1960s. He was fascinated with the medieval way of life. The art, labor, and writings of the Middle Ages influenced much of his fantasy literature. Morris is considered the father of the fantasy literary genre, and has been cited as a major influence upon fellow authors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. So next time you crack open a Game of Thrones novel or decide to sit down for a Harry Potter marathon, thank William Morris.
If you need someone interesting to focus on for a class project (Morris was active in politics, literature, and architecture), come visit the William Morris exhibit! Hornbake Library also has poetry and books written by Morris. Or, if you have an awkward gap between classes and want something better to do than wander through cyberspace, come visit our exhibit. You won’t be disappointed.
For more information on William Morris, visit:
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/morris/wmbio.html
For more information on Hornbake Library’s William Morris exhibit, visit:
http://www.lib.umd.edu/williammorris/index.html
Tracey G.
William Morris
The Special Collections curators spent the last year hard at work preparing the current exhibit How We Might Live: The Vision of William Morris. We felt Morris was deserving of this exhibit because of the breadth of resources concerning Morris in Special Collections and because he was such a remarkable person. The curators realized that we had a rich collection of Morris’ writings, translations, and Kelmscott Press publications (and ephemera from Kelmscott Press). The University of Maryland Libraries had also recently purchased a copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer and felt an exhibit the perfect opportunity to show off this gorgeous book.
In addition to showing off the excellent William Morris collection here in Special Collections, the curators were inspired by William Morris’ take on life. He was a man who always strove to improve the world around him. He wrote stories because he wanted to entertain and inspire people. Morris began a home decorating business, Morris & Co., because he wanted people to have beautiful and affordable decorations in their homes. He was a founding member of the historic preservation movement in Britain as well as the socialist movement. He cared about providing workers with meaningful work and making sure that the efforts of workers from previous eras was maintained. What do you find admirable about William Morris?
Special Collections & University Archives 