{"id":6918,"date":"2016-11-18T21:10:13","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T21:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/?p=6918"},"modified":"2016-11-18T21:14:53","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T21:14:53","slug":"major-gift-of-victorian-illustrated-childrens-literature-to-be-preserved-in-the-northeast-childrens-literature-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/2016\/11\/18\/major-gift-of-victorian-illustrated-childrens-literature-to-be-preserved-in-the-northeast-childrens-literature-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"Major Gift of Victorian Illustrated Children\u2019s Literature to be Preserved in the Northeast Children\u2019s Literature Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2016\/11\/DoyleREV.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-6919\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2016\/11\/DoyleREV-791x1024.jpg\" alt=\"DoyleREV\" width=\"457\" height=\"589\" \/><\/a>Archives and Special Collections at the University of Connecticut Libraries has acquired\u00a0a major collection of illustrated children\u2019s books by prominent Victorian authors from Melissa Dabakis, Professor of Art History at Kenyon College, Mt. Vernon, Ohio and wife of the late Daniel P. Younger. \u00a0For thirty-five years, Daniel Younger collected rare nineteenth and early twentieth-century children\u2019s illustrated books. \u00a0Hand-selected by Younger for donation to the Northeast Children&#8217;s Literature Collection, this generous gift includes one-hundred and forty-four illustrated books for children published between\u00a01841 and 1935. \u00a0Included in the gift are works by authors such as Lewis Carroll, Charles Kingsley, Edward Lear, Christina Rossetti, John Ruskin, and Robert Louis Stevenson.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the works selected by Younger for the gift\u00a0represent the origins of the fairy tale in children\u2019s literature. \u00a0The early period of children\u2019s literature that was characterized by stories intended to teach morality, gave way to the magic of fairy tales designed to provide an alternative to ordinary life.\u00a0 This shift in story-telling was also accompanied by improvements in the quality of illustration in children\u2019s books.\u00a0 Books by the illustrator George Cruikshank, who worked in copperplate etching, and Richard Doyle, founder of <em>Punch<\/em>, are examples of the detailed, imaginative style developed during the Victorian period. The collection includes <em>George Cruikshank\u2019s Fairy Library<\/em>, 1865 and <em>The Princess Nobody: a tale of fairy land<\/em>, illustrated by Richard Doyle, 1884. \u00a0The donation includes an American edition of [Hans Christian] <em>Andersen\u2019s Tales for Children<\/em> published in 1861.\u00a0 In 2001, Younger, who served as Director of Olin Art Gallery at Kenyon College, featured many of the works in the collection in an exhibition <em>Once Upon A Time: Victorian Illustrated Children\u2019s Books<\/em> dedicated to the memory of puppeteer and children\u2019s book collector Herbert Hosmer.<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0August 2015, Younger contacted Kristin Eshelman, archivist for the Northeast Children\u2019s Literature Collection, \u201clooking for a good home\u201d for a collection of one hundred and fifty titles. The works, Eshelman discovered later, were hand-selected by Younger especially for Archives and Special Collections at UConn. \u00a0\u201cDan wanted to know why we didn\u2019t have these important illustrated children\u2019s books in our collection,\u201d said Eshelman. \u00a0 The history of the children\u2019s literature collection at UConn goes back to 1965, when then Director of Special Collections Richard Schimmelpfeng began collecting works from the period 1860 to 1900, a period that had been overlooked by other regional collections.\u00a0 Illustrated material was also of particular interest. The establishment of the NCLC in 1983 shifted the emphasis to the archives of twentieth-century artists and writers working and residing in the Northeast and East coast.\u00a0 Younger saw a way to fill the gap created by this shift in collecting focus through his gift\u00a0of illustrated children\u2019s books by prominent Victorian authors.<\/p>\n<p>Younger\u2019s interest in children\u2019s literature and connection to UConn dates back to a 1979 graduate internship at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.\u00a0 It was there that he met the puppeteer and collector of children\u2019s books and toys, Herbert Hosmer.\u00a0 Hosmer knew Francelia Butler, who taught children\u2019s literature at UConn. Younger noted, \u201cButler was an informal board member of Hosmer\u2019s all-things-juvenile enterprise, as was I.\u201d\u00a0 Younger was also mentored by William E. (Bill) Parker, UConn Emeritus Professor of Art in the history of photography during his graduate studies in photography and photographic history.\u00a0 Younger\u2019s wife, Melissa Dabakis, is also an alumna of UConn.<\/p>\n<p>Kristin Eshelman, Archivist<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Archives and Special Collections at the University of Connecticut Libraries has acquired\u00a0a major collection of illustrated children\u2019s books by prominent Victorian authors from Melissa Dabakis, Professor of Art History at Kenyon College, Mt. Vernon, Ohio and wife of the late &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/2016\/11\/18\/major-gift-of-victorian-illustrated-childrens-literature-to-be-preserved-in-the-northeast-childrens-literature-collection\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[332,331,208],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NKyO-1NA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6918"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6925,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918\/revisions\/6925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}