#uarklibraries

Adventures in folk music #rarebooks and archives, with that old ballad hunter Vance Randolph. One of three John Lomax inscriptions I know off hand in the #uarklibraries #specialcollections. (at Mullins Library)

Sorry, another #halloween #rarebooks post borrowed from my #uarklibraries FBI posting. #robertgraves #virginiawoolf #batweek Getting ready for Halloween? For an eerie treat, how about this rare edition of Mockbeggar Hall by Robert Graves? It was handmade by the Hogarth Press of London in 1924. Graves included several spooky-themed poems like “Hemlock,” “Full-Moon,” and “Witches” shown here. October 24-31 is also National Bat Week: http://www.savebats.org/bat-week/. #BatWeek Famed artist William Nicholson provided the Gothic cover showing a bat hanging from the storied old building for his new son-in-law’s book. Leonard and Virginia Woolf had established Hogarth Press in their home just a few years before in 1917. Mock Beggar Hall is one of several rare early publications from Hogarth Press in Special Collections, including first editions of works written by several prominent English authors collected by renowned Arkansas poet John Gould Fletcher, such as T.S. Eliot, Nancy Cunard, Edwin Muir, William Plomer, along with Virginia Woolf, including her 1921 book Monday or Tuesday, for which she personally did the binding. To learn more about the rare books and other frighteningly interesting resources in Special Collections, come say “boo” in room 130 in Mullins Library, or write us at [email protected].

From my #uarklibraries FBI post: Dare you try another rare treat to get into the Halloween spirit? This little, precious (and frightening) 1819 book, The Vampyre, is often cited as the beginning of the English fascination with vampire stories. Misattributed to Lord Byron, it was actually written by John William Polidori, Byron’s physician and friend, who also happened to attend the famous summer vacation that gave birth to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and other legendary horror tales. This first American edition of The Vampyre from the Libraries’ Special Collections includes a detailed bookseller’s note on the inside cover explaining the publisher’s mistake that credited Lord Byron as the author. http://library.uark.edu/record=b1507620~S4 #rarebooks #misattributed #specialcollections #vampire

A persistent, new, largely unwelcome fascination: the handmade Hogarth Press books in #uarklibraries Special Collections. (Let's not speak of the ones in circulation....) The Graves is coming to social media Halloween post near you very soon. #rarebooks #hogarthpress #virginiawoolf #notafraidofvirginiawoolf

Needing a bit of a pick me up this afternoon, Fletcher's library can through again. A signed private printing of Yeats' A Vision from 1925. #uarklibraries #Special Collections #rarebooks

Another day, another exhibit. Soon to be described...a few selections from the John Gould Fletcher library contextualized with manuscripts and correspondence from his papers (MS F63). Back left there is an exceedingly rare signed first printing of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover. I'm especially proud of the lecture notes of Fletcher's on Lawrence I found to complement it. #rarebooks #JohnGouldFletcher #uarklibraries #Arkansas #archives #specialcollections

We are moving into the warm, beautiful days of Spring this Ides of National Poetry Month. So perhaps it's good to be reminded of grimness as well in the season when, as the Bible says, kings go off to war. Stephen Crane can help with that. Here is a limited third edition of his 1895 The Black Riders and Other Lines published a year later in London after the first Copeland and Day Boston editions. It's in the rare books collection @uarklibraries. It was Crane's second published volume between Maggie and Red Badge, and the third edition includes the Black Orchid graphic used earlier, but now embossed on black leather boards. #uarklibraries #NPH16 #StephenCrane #blackorchid #rarebooks